The Bilbao Looking Glass

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “Facts?” said the elder Bittersohn inexorably.

  “Well, I suppose there’s the fact that Fren’s started paying me attention all of a sudden. For instance, he barged in here day before yesterday while Max and I were eating breakfast and ordered me to meet him at the yacht club that night for dinner. Yesterday on Bradley Rovedock’s boat, he went through the motions of throwing a snit because I hadn’t gone. It wasn’t very convincing, but I suppose if he’s been planting false evidence here, courting the widow would give him some semblance of an excuse to be hanging around if anybody saw him on the premises.”

  “Speaking of hanging,” said Jake, “how come he’d have hung that Bilbao looking glass you kids keep talking about in plain sight? Is he that stupid?”

  “But he didn’t,” Sarah contradicted. “That is, he did but it wouldn’t normally have been, if you follow.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then come with me.”

  She led him into the cramped little front entry. “The glass was hanging here, on this wall. You couldn’t help noticing it when you came in the front door, but the point is, we almost never do. The side door into the living room is much more convenient, and that’s the one everybody always comes to. It just happened the day Max and I arrived, I had my purse full of junk and the key to this door was the first one I found, so I used it. Otherwise, the looking glass might have hung here for days, maybe even weeks, without my noticing.”

  “And these Beaxitts and Larringtons would have known that?” Jake was asking as they went back to join Max and Jofferty.

  “Alice B. would, at any rate. She knew I never got around to cleaning the entryway because it wasn’t used, so she always made a point of coming to the front door. Then we had to race around and find the key.”

  Jofferty stood up. “I’m beginning to wonder why somebody didn’t clobber that Beaxitt woman long ago. ’Fraid I’ve got to beat it, folks. The wife’s expecting me with a bucket of clams for supper. Hey, Sarah, you want some nice steamers?”

  “I’d adore just a few. I’m the only one who’ll eat them. Here, take this bowl to put them in.”

  “Okay. It’ll take me a minute or two. I left my car down by the road so Jed wouldn’t have to move his barricade.”

  “I’ll drive you down,” Max offered. “I expect Uncle Jake wants a lift back to Miriam’s.”

  “He’s welcome to stay and eat with us,” said Sarah.

  “Thanks, but if I know Miriam she’s been cooking all afternoon and she’ll be sore if I don’t show up.” The older man dragged himself out of the chair he’d just got settled back into. “You want to ride over with us, Sarah?”

  “No, I’d better wait for the clams.”

  Sarah had a feeling she might not be received with open arms at the Rivkins’ just now. Besides, she had her own cooking to start. She was out in the kitchen puttering around when she heard, “Yoo-hoo! Anybody home?”

  “Aunt Appie!”

  Sarah rushed back to the living room. “How did you get here?”

  “Pussy and Biff came over to house-sit, so Bradley and I decided we’d play hooky and here we are. Though I must say we had quite a time getting here. What’s all that fuss down at the end of the drive? I actually had to speak sharply to Mr. Lomax before he’d let us through.”

  “Lomax does seem to be taking his responsibilities as caretaker somewhat overzealously, we thought,” Bradley drawled.

  “I couldn’t agree with you less,” Sarah informed him rather crisply. “If it hadn’t been for Mr. Lomax, we’d be overrun by television crews and souvenir hunters by now.”

  “Great Scott, I hadn’t realized. One doesn’t really expect such things to happen, but we did collect a mob down at Miffy’s, come to think of it. Luckily there was a policeman outside moving them on. Your problem is on account of that scoundrel who tricked you into renting him the carriage house apartment, I gather. He’s been arrested, they tell us. That must be a load off your mind, at any rate. Pussy had some yarn about the police having found the murder weapon and one of Miffy’s paintings hidden among his socks or whatever, but I expect she got it wrong as she so often does. Surely the man wouldn’t have been that stupid.”

  “No, Max is far from stupid,” Sarah answered, “and I’m surprised whoever planted that evidence against him thought such a silly trick would work. Pussy was right about the police finding the axe and the painting, but they weren’t in Max’s apartment. They’d been hidden behind a loose board in the staircase.”

  “How ingenious,” said Aunt Appie. “I knew he was clever. What a pity he was never taught not to go around killing people. I blame the parents, myself. Dear, shall I make you a nice cup of tea?”

  “I’ve just had one, thanks, with Max and his uncle. Would you please try to get it through your head that my fiancé hasn’t killed anybody? As for his parents, they’re furious with me for getting him in with the wrong crowd.”

  “Well, dear, I’m afraid that’s what happens when people don’t stick with their own kind. For a truly happy marriage—”

  “Like Lionel and Vare’s?”

  That wasn’t kind and Sarah was sorry she’d said it, but not very. Appie and Bradley exchanged looks.

  “Appie, didn’t you say you wanted to get some things out of your luggage?” said Bradley.

  Perhaps that was a prearranged signal. Appie blinked twice, then took off upstairs like one of the Ganlors’ goats bounding over the crags of Little Nibble. Bradley stretched out a hand to Sarah.

  “How about pouring us each a drink and sitting down with me for a little chat?”

  What could she reply except, “Scotch or sherry?”

  “Sherry would be a pleasant change. I’ll throw on another log, shall I?”

  Sarah would much rather he didn’t. A cozy tête-a-tête by the fire could only mean Bradley was about to unload some unwelcome counsel about getting rid of Max Bittersohn and returning to the fold. She’d already heard enough of that from both sides of the fence, but how could one be rude to Bradley Rovedock? She might as well let him say his piece, then say hers and get it over. Sarah took the drink she didn’t particularly want and joined him on the sofa.

  “How’s Perdita?” she asked for lack of a more intelligent opener.

  “I haven’t been aboard since our little cruise.”

  Bradley stretched his legs toward the fire, and took a sip of his sherry. “I think this is the first happy moment I’ve spent since that day. You’re a restful person to be with, Sarah.”

  After Aunt Appie, who wouldn’t be? Poor Bradley! The penalty for being kind and available must be a dreadful one sometimes. She smiled back at him, and he laid his free hand lightly over hers.

  “You don’t know how I’ve envied Alex all these years.”

  This wasn’t what she’d expected. “But why?” Sarah stammered. “Alexander’s life was one long deprivation. You’ve had everything you wanted.”

  “I haven’t had you, Sarah.”

  Bradley’s hand closed tight. “For a long time now, I’ve been breaking the commandment about coveting my neighbor’s wife.”

  “How can you say that?” she answered in bewilderment. “You hardly knew me as Alexander’s wife, compared to the years you’d known me as a kid growing up. Bradley, if you’re trying to be gallant, I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “I’m trying to be honest. Dash it, Sarah, do I have to spend the rest of my life being that nice old buffer who used to take you sailing once in a while?”

  “There’s no reason why we can’t—” Sarah faltered. There was every reason in the world why she couldn’t expect Bradley Rovedock to invite her on any more of his agreeable day cruises once she’d become Mrs. Max Bittersohn.

  Bradley either thought she’d meant something else, or pretended he did. “Of course there isn’t, no reason at all. Sarah darling, please listen to me. I can give you the kind of life Alex always wanted you to have, the life you’re entitled to by birth and breeding. We’ll
straighten out that nonsense with the High Street Bank right away and you’ll never have to worry about another thing, ever again. God, when I think of your being forced to turn your beautiful old home into a common boarding house!”

  “Hardly common, Bradley.” What in God’s name had she got herself into now? “We run a very deluxe operation, I assure you.”

  “Now who’s being gallant?”

  His lips were much too close to her ear. “Sarah, my adorable child, you don’t know how much I admire the way you’ve made the best of a bad situation. Believe me, though, if I’d known about it in time, you wouldn’t have had to.”

  She edged away as best she could without being too obvious about it. “Bradley, I do have relatives of my own who’d have bailed me out if I’d let them. I chose to deal with my own problem in my own way, and I can’t say it’s done me any harm.”

  “No harm? Getting mixed up with—Sarah dear, you’ve been through such a long ordeal, I’m afraid you’re not thinking quite straight. What you need is a complete change of scene and a good, long rest. What do you say we two slip quietly aboard Perdita and sail off by ourselves? Go poking among the islands up around Casco Bay, perhaps, just to give you a chance to get used to Perdita and me. I promise to behave as a perfect gentleman. As long as you want me to.”

  He was caressing her hair now. This had to be stopped. Sarah stood up.

  “Bradley, I’m going to marry Max Bittersohn as soon as we can get a license.”

  “Bittersohn? That jailbird? Sarah, you’re mad! I’m sorry, dear, I didn’t mean that. You’re bewildered by the terrible things that have happened to you, and Bittersohn’s managed to take advantage, God knows how. You should never even have known that sort of person.”

  “I gather it’s all right for me to know an oaf like Fren Larrington.”

  “Fren at least is one of our own crowd, and he’s managed so far to stay out of jail. Sarah, think of Bittersohn’s background. That shyster lawyer for an uncle, a brother-in-law who runs a filling station, his father a common laborer—”

  “Jacob Bittersohn is hardly a shyster. Ira Rivkin’s an agreeable, intelligent man who’s built up a good business from nothing at all. As for being a common laborer, I’m one myself. Anyway, Max’s father is one of the most respected men around here, as you’d know if you ever bothered to talk to the natives.”

  “Sarah—”

  “Bradley, I don’t know what sort of romantic notion you’ve built up about me, but honestly you’ve got it totally wrong. I’m not the person you seem to think I am. We have different sets of values, we don’t even like the same kinds of people. There’s no sense in going on with this. It would only end in a fight and I don’t want that. I’m too fond of you.”

  “And isn’t that enough to go on with? Sarah darling, I’m afraid you’re the one who’s having romantic notions. You can’t throw yourself away like this. Can’t you understand what’s happened? After Alex died, you were feeling lost and helpless. This Bittersohn came along and got around you somehow, just as he wormed his way into Miffy’s house. And I don’t have to tell you the consequences of that.”

  “You certainly don’t, because you’ve obviously got them wrong, too.”

  “My dear girl, look at the facts. Bittersohn’s even had the gall to drag you into this ghastly mess, trying to make you look like his accomplice. The police aren’t fools, you know. Don’t you think they suspect you of having shown him that hiding place behind the stairs in the carriage house? How else could he have found it? Surely Alex must have told you he and I built that cubbyhole together when we were boys. God, to think of its being used for such a purpose!”

  “I never knew about any secret hole in the stairway, Bradley. I expect you and Alexander swore an oath of secrecy when you built it, and he never broke his word. He’d do that, you know.”

  “Sarah, don’t try to shield that fellow. He isn’t worth it. Good God, he even had the effrontery to hang Miffy’s looking glass right in your front entryway!”

  Sergeant Jofferty, holding Sarah’s bowl of steamer clams, stepped into the darkening room. “How’d you happen to hear about us finding that Bilbao looking glass, Mr. Rovedock?”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  Could this be the Bradley Rovedock she’d known all her life? Or had she ever known him? Sarah said what she had to.

  “This is Sergeant Jofferty of the Ireson Town police. Tell him how you knew about the looking glass, Bradley.”

  “Why, I—” Rovedock began to look wary. “I suppose Pussy Beaxitt must have told me, or Lassie Larrington. They’re generally the ones who know what’s going on. I don’t recall, actually. Everybody at the club’s been talking about this ghastly affair, of course. That’s only natural, isn’t it?”

  “Did whoever it was tell you how the glass happened to be found?” Jofferty asked him.

  “What was there to tell? I assume you just looked and there it was. You can’t blame Mrs. Kelling for not having known, Sergeant. She herself never uses the front door, none of the Kellings ever have. Alice B. used to joke about it as a sort of terra incognita.”

  “Where the spiders grew big as cats and nobody’d swept down the cobwebs for the past seventy-seven years,” Sarah finished for him. “Don’t you think that ever got back to us? Think hard, Bradley. Who told you about the looking glass?”

  “I can’t remember, I’ve already said so. Whatever does it matter?”

  “It matters plenty, Mr. Rovedock,” Jofferty told him, setting down the bowl of clams and shifting his stance a little. “You see, the police didn’t find that looking glass. Sarah and Max found it as soon as they came out here. They called me right away. I came over and took the glass, all wrapped up, to the police vault in the bank, which I’m in charge of. I filed no report. We agreed among us not to say a word to anybody, and we haven’t. The only people who knew where Miss Tergoyne’s looking glass could be found were myself, Sarah Kelling, Jed Lomax, Max Bittersohn, and the guy who hung it in her front entry.”

  “But Bittersohn was the man who hung it there. Can’t you see that?”

  “No I can’t, Mr. Rovedock. Max came out from Boston with Sarah, he’d never been inside Miss Tergoyne’s house, he didn’t know he was going till they wound up at that cocktail party, and that was after I’d already taken the glass away. Furthermore, it was Max’s idea to hide it and keep quiet about it. He knew something so valuable had to be stolen property, and he figured our best chance of catching the thief was to keep our mouths shut and see what happened. Now can you think of anything you’d like to tell me?”

  Bradley shook his head. “Sarah never uses that front door.”

  “I did this time,” said Sarah. “Too bad, Bradley, but there it is. My grandmother always did say the Rovedock fortune came from piracy and the opium trade. I should have remembered sooner. All those vaguely described cruises, all those unsolved robberies. Alice B. found out what you were up to, didn’t she? And she started blackmailing you to pull one with her. And you knew what would happen if you did, so you had to kill her.”

  “Sarah, whatever has come over you? You’ve always been such a docile little thing.”

  “Not docile, Bradley. Outnumbered. It was blackmail, wasn’t it?”

  He only looked at her.

  “You might as well talk, you know. Perdita won’t be hard to trace. It will all come out fast enough, now that you’ve blown your cover.”

  “Blown my cover?” Bradley let his lips curl in a fastidious sneer. “Is that the sort of talk you’ve been picking up from Bittersohn?”

  “That and a lot of interesting information about running antiques. It’s hard for anyone to prove they’ve been stolen once you’ve got them out of the country, isn’t it? I expect someone with your background and connections wouldn’t have much trouble disposing of a cargo.”

  “Sarah, you did say you were fond of me.”

  “That was before you started trying to plant your crimes on an innocent
man because you thought he was too low in the social scale to matter. You really are a pirate, aren’t you, Bradley?”

  “If you say so, my dear. Since I appear to have worn out my welcome here for some reason I still don’t quite grasp, perhaps I’d better think of taking my leave. Mind if we have one last drink for the road?”

  He picked up the sherry bottle and started to pour. Jofferty leaped to pry a tiny glass vial out of his hand.

  “No you don’t. None of that big suicide scene stuff. Thought you’d poison your own drink for a change, eh?”

  “No, Sergeant.” For the first time, Bradley Rovedock hoisted the black flag. “Not mine. Sarah’s.”

  Chapter 22

  LIKE HER SON, APPIE Kelling had a magnificent sense of mistiming. She chose that particular moment to bustle into the living room, wreathed in smiles.

  “Well, my dears, are congratulations in order? Sarah, I’m so happy for you!”

  She tried to throw her arms around her niece, but Sarah shoved her away.

  “For God’s sake, Aunt Appie, not now.”

  “But why, dear? And whatever is that man doing to dear Bradley? Here, you sir, stop it at once.”

  Bradley had counted too heavily on the natural superiority of the Rovedocks. He was tough, but Jofferty was a man of the clam flats.

  “Sarah, reach in my hip pocket and get out the handcuffs, will you? The wife’s always jawing at me about carrying ’em around in my civvies. Claims it tears hell out of the pockets. But like I tell her, you never know when they’ll come in handy. Hold still, you bugger. I’ve got to read you your rights.”

  Jofferty had completed the formalities, deputized Sarah to phone the chief, and was tying Bradley’s feet with Bradley’s own elegant silk ascot when Max Bittersohn came back, carrying a plate covered with aluminum foil.

  “Miriam sent over some bubka. Where’s Sarah? Hey, what the hell’s going on here?”