Gin and Panic

by Maia Chance

  I dropped to my hands and knees and gathered the diamonds up in a clammy panic. Cedric, meanwhile, snuffled into the banana-pecan cake.

  Diners at nearby tables looked on with idle interest but—thank goodness I was in New York—no one came to my assistance, although a little girl picked up a rather large raw diamond that had bounced under her chair and said, “Look, Mommy! A little rock!”

  “Don’t touch that, dear,” her mother said. “It looks dirty.”

  Berta’s Edwardian boots appeared in my line of vision.

  “Are you quite ready, Mrs. Woodby?” she whispered, glancing furtively about.

  “I was waiting for you.” I stashed away the last diamond and peered up at Berta. “Are you well? You look a little … flushed.”

  “Nonsense. Come along.”

  Outside, Berta asked softly, “Did you retrieve all the diamonds?”

  “For the most part.”

  Then I happened to look through the Automat windows to see a bandy fellow in a fedora and a swanky little suit looking right back out at us—or, rather, at Berta.

  “Is that Jimmy the Ant?” I cried. “Berta! You were talking to Mr. Ant in there! That’s what took you so long.”

  “He does so dislike that name.” Berta hastened to the crosswalk.

  “You arranged a meeting?”

  “Yes, if you must know. I telephoned him from the launderette, just to say hello, and he insisted upon a brief rendezvous when I told him we planned to stop at the East Twenty-third Street branch of Sterling National. He is, as you know, lying low, so I have not seen him for at least two weeks.”

  “A bona fide drought. Did you kiss?”

  “Mrs. Woodby!”

  I trotted after Berta, shaking my head. Jimmy the Ant—no idea what his real surname is, if he even has one—was Berta’s low-life, on-again, off-again gangster beau. He was Bad News, and frankly, with his petite physique and lolling glass eye, I couldn’t for the life of me figure why Berta even gave him the time of day. He was a dapper dresser, though. I’d never seen him without spats.

  We reached Sterling National Bank. Fancy iron grilles had already been fastened over the glass doors, and a man inside the lobby was locking up.

  “Stop!” Berta cried. “We must come in!”

  The man shrugged theatrically.

  I checked my wristwatch. “We’ve still got one minute!”

  Sorry, he mouthed, and walked deeper into the bank. A moment later, the light snapped off.

  “Rats,” I muttered. Rain dribbled off my hat brim, and my handbag with the sockful of diamonds suddenly felt as heavy as an anvil.

  * * *

  After that, we didn’t motor down to our poky little Washington Square apartment; there was no time. We went directly to the vicinity of Grand Central Terminal and left the Duesy parked high inside one of those alarming new car elevators. I convinced Cedric to pay his taxes on the sidewalk, cleaned it up with a newspaper and disposed of it—Berta looked on smugly—and then we plunged into the echoing chaos of the station.

  At the ticket window, I purchased two one-way fares to Boston’s South Station on the Merchants Limited. Twenty minutes later, we boarded the train.

  This was an all-parlor car, a splurge since we’d been unexpectedly paid cash by Mrs. Hodges and because we were both bone-tired. Instead of blah rows of seats and no-frills compartments, the Merchants Limited boasted red velveteen seats with tasseled pillows, arched ceilings edged in gold, and thick carpets. The first time I rode in an all-parlor train, I felt like I was rattling down the track inside a Fabergé egg.

  Berta and I settled into squashy seats, made our dinner reservations with a conductor, and a few minutes later, the train groaned and lurched through the long tunnels of Grand Central Terminal and, presently, out into the cold wet night.

  “Seven fifteen for dinner?” I said with a sigh. “That’s nearly an hour away.”

  “You will survive.” Berta took an issue of Lurid Tales from her handbag and passed me a second magazine, the cover of which depicted a beleaguered girl with a waved bob surrounded by a gray phantom swirl. “Here is the new Spectral Stories. I have not even read it yet.”

  “Thanks.” I stared moodily out at the lights flicking past, petting Cedric, the magazine resting unopened on my knee.

  At 7:13, Berta and I migrated to the dining car, where we were led to a small, beautifully laid table near the front end. Outside the velvet curtains, the dark night whizzed past. Raindrops streaked sideways across the window.

  We were enjoying after-dinner coffees with slices of orange-chocolate torte when two men in suits and hats stood up at the back end of the dining car and made their swaying way down the aisle. Our waiter leaned over our table to refill Berta’s coffee cup just as the men were attempting to pass. The shorter of the two men, a sallow fellow with thick, owlish eyeglasses, stumbled heavily against the waiter. The waiter toppled to the aisle, and the owlish fellow thumped on top of him. The well-bred diners in the car murmured and exclaimed at decorous volumes. I scooted back my chair and lent the owlish fellow a hand. The waiter was on his hands and knees, mopping up spilled coffee.

  “Gee, thanks, miss,” the owlish fellow said. “It’s these new eyeglasses. I’d bet you anything the doc gave me the wrong strength ’cause the whole world’s been bucking like a wild pony.”

  The other man, tall and gangly with a long, scholarly looking face, was helping set to rights the cups and saucers and plates on our table. “There you go, ladies,” he said in a rich baritone. “Right as rain. Beg your pardon.” He lifted his fedora, and he and the other fellow turned and exited the dining car through the rear door.

  The waiter was now on his feet. He finished refilling our coffee cups and went on his way.

  “Such gentlemen,” Berta said.

  “Something isn’t right,” I said. “I can’t put my finger on it.”

  “I know what it is. You have not finished your cake.”

  “It’s not cake. It’s torte.”

  Berta and I returned to our seats in the parlor car. It wasn’t long before Berta was snoring softly beside me with Lurid Tales lolling open on her lap. I read Spectral Stories for perhaps an hour, and it reminded me distressingly of that moaning Lolaaaaaaa business in the hallway of Montgomery Hall the night before. Even so, I found myself quite unable to keep my eyes open. I swirled down into a dizzy black pit with the endless, rhythmical chugging of the train rebounding inside my skull.

  * * *

  “Madam?” a man’s voice said, muffled as if through layers of gauze. Someone shook my shoulder, setting off rolling breakers of nausea. The voice grew more distinct. “Madam, wake up. We have arrived in Boston.”

  With great effort I opened my eyes to see a blurry blue blob. “Whuh?” I managed. Cedric bounced up, paws on my shoulder, and licked my face.

  “Madam, we have arrived at South Station. This is the end of the line. You must disembark the train.”

  “Thrain?” I said.

  “Is this woman beside you your traveling companion?” the blurry blue blob asked.

  “Thtop talking tho loud,” I mumbled. I turned my head. Berta was still snoring beside me, head thrown back, molars exposed.

  “Clearly you two ladies have had too much to drink,” the blue blob said. “Please leave now or I shall be forced to summon the station police.”

  “All right, all right,” I muttered. I shook Berta until she snorted awake. “C’mon, Berta, we muss go. We’re here.” I wobbled to my feet, hugging Cedric so tightly that he wriggled until I loosened my hold. Berta struggled to her feet, clutching her handbag and Lurid Tales. She practically fell down the steps onto the nearly deserted, lamplit platform, where our two suitcases sat waiting for us. I went shakily down the steps, tripped at the bottom, and Cedric boinged neatly from my arms just before I splatted onto my hands and knees, knocking both suitcases sideways.

  “Enjoy your stay in Boston,” the blue blob said coldly, withdrawing into the
car.

  I got to my feet. My knees throbbed.

  “I am ever so dizzy,” Berta said, her Swedish accent twice as thick as usual.

  “Me, thoo. Leth find a bensh and siddown for a minute before we try to find a hothell.”

  We picked up our suitcases and weaved along the platform and into the echoing bright station. Travelers crisscrossed. Luggage carts rumbled. Enormous clocks whirred and clicked.

  “I fear I am going to be sick,” Berta said, and staggered to a garbage bin, where she was indeed sick.

  Call me a bozo, but it wasn’t until then that it dawned on me: something was terribly wrong with Berta and me. We hadn’t drunk any alcohol, not even a drop. Had we contracted some horrible plague? I wobbled over to Berta, still bent over the garbage bin, and patted her back. “I see thome benshes over there,” I said. “Nice and quiet thpot. Leth go rest and then find a doctor.”

  I stretched out on one of the benches with my head on my handbag, Cedric on my belly, and my suitcase under the seat. Berta curled up on the other bench. The ceiling did the foxtrot for a moment and then everything went black.

  * * *

  When I woke again, I had a headache like a pulsating hatchet blade. My mouth was tacky, my legs felt rickety, but my thoughts were stark and clear.

  “Knockout drops,” I muttered. I sat up on the bench. “Berta!”

  Berta sat up gingerly. Her gray bun sagged one way, her hat another, and her cheeks were ashen.

  “Berta, those men in the dining car gave us knockout drops. Crashing into the waiter was just a distraction. How could we have been so stupid? They turned around and walked out of the dining car the way they’d come.”

  Berta clucked her tongue. “Mickey Finns. How dare they? Oh! Check your handbag!”

  Oh golly golly golly. I opened my handbag.

  The diamonds were gone, sock and all.

  “Phooey!” I screamed up to the lofty ceiling. My voice echoed back. None of the other travelers even glanced in my direction.

  10

  We made a plan. In a nutshell, it was: (1) Change into clean clothes and brush teeth. (2) Drink coffee. (3) Make another plan.

  I clipped on Cedric’s leash and we walked woozily out into a clear, cold Boston morning. Poor little Cedric had been a perfect gentleman in the train station. I led him to the nearest lamppost.

  Then we crossed noisy Atlantic Avenue, passing beneath the elevated train tracks, found a small, respectable-looking hotel, and booked two rooms. Berta and I both washed, changed, and then, leaving our suitcases in our hotel rooms, wandered a few blocks until we found a dinette. The hostess eyed Cedric doubtfully, so I slipped her a fiver. She stuffed it into her apron pocket. “Keep him outa sight under the table,” she said, and led us to a window booth.

  Berta and I did not speak until we both had drunk a full cup of coffee and eaten several bites of steak and eggs.

  “How’s your head?” I asked her.

  “Aching. Yours?”

  “The same. And I’m breaking into a cold sweat about those missing diamonds. Once I lost several hundred dollars on a bad colt at Saratoga Springs, and I felt just awful. But this … oh golly, Berta, what’re we going to do?”

  “First, we will not panic. It is a waste, and it is terribly aging. Second, we do not yet know whom Rudy Montgomery named as his heir, and thus, we do not yet know whom those diamonds belong to. We are here in Boston to locate Isobel Bradford and we must focus all our energies upon that. Not only is she one of our murder suspects, but if she was seen knocking on hunting trophies, she likely knows about those diamonds.”

  “Okay, okay.” I shook tomato catsup on my steak and eggs. “Berta, I hate to bring this up, but you didn’t happen to mention the diamonds to Jimmy the Ant when you spoke to him at the Automat, did you?”

  A pause. “It is possible.”

  “Berta! Jimmy works for Lem Fitzpatrick. He might’ve squealed about the diamonds.”

  “Jimmy would never do such a thing.”

  Lem Fitzpatrick is one of New York City’s most notorious gangsters. He’s got his fingers in all sorts of criminal pies, but convictions stick to him like oil sticks to butter.

  I brought my voice down to a murmur. “If we’ve gotten ourselves mixed up with Fitzpatrick, things could get—”

  “It was not necessarily Fitzpatrick who sent those thugs on the train, Mrs. Woodby. It could have been Coral, for instance—”

  “Coral?”

  “She did see the diamonds last night.”

  “Sure—in double. She was blotto.” But she had seen me holding the sock in Rudy’s study …

  “Why, the thugs could even have been sent after us by Lord Sudley—”

  “Hooey!”

  “—as a way to keep the diamonds for himself without letting on to us that he was the thief.”

  “That’s a stretch.”

  “Did it not seem odd to you that he asked us to lock up the diamonds when the lawyer was already on his way?”

  “No, I thought he was being conscientious. And I think you’re biased against poor Eustace. He’s our client, for goodness’ sake, and he’s also the most gentlemanlike fellow I’ve ever met.”

  “You are blinded by his good looks. And by the notion of his estate in England.”

  Ignoring that (because I suspected it was a teensy bit true), I slipped a nibble of steak under the table for Cedric. “You’re right about one thing: We have no proof that those were Fitzpatrick’s thugs. You must telephone Jimmy and ask him about it, okay?”

  Berta nodded. Her pale blue eyes shone wetly.

  Uh-oh. Was she crying? Over Jimmy the Ant, who resembled an inexpertly taxidermied lizard?

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Men really are hangnails.”

  “Not all men.” Berta touched the locket she always wore at her throat. I had never asked her about it before; I’m a chicken. Berta is familiar with my extended menu of flaws, embarrassments, foibles, and anxieties, but she keeps her own cards close.

  I took a deep breath. “All right. Tell me about him.”

  “Whom?”

  “The fellow in the locket.”

  “Locket?” Berta slid it out of sight between two dress buttons.

  “Is it Mr. Lundgren?”

  Berta buttered toast. “There is no Mr. Lundgren.”

  “You mean you’re a widow?”

  “No, I mean I was never married.”

  “How can that be? You’re Mrs. Lundgren.”

  “Lundgren is in fact my maiden name. I assumed the title of Mrs. to lend myself an air of respectability when I came to the United States to pursue work in domestic service. Ladies of the house prefer to hire married women. They worry about their husbands and sons, you know, and in my youth, I was considered very pretty.”

  “You never told me you’re not really a Mrs.”

  “Because I lied to you, in essence, when you hired me as your cook.”

  I waved my fork. “Water under the bridge. But, say—who’s in the locket, then?”

  Berta smeared marmalade on her toast, meticulously avoiding the edges. “Lars.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “He was a young fisherman in my village in Sweden. He quite turned my head—I was only seventeen years old, of course, so a bit impressionable.”

  But you still have his picture in your locket and you’re over sixty. “What became of him?”

  I braced myself for one of those sad tales of deadly influenza, or disappearance in a war, or of Lars marrying the village harpy and proceeding to father ten kids. But Berta said, “I do not know. He simply vanished one day. He left all his things behind in his cottage. And no one in the village ever heard from him again. I do not wish to discuss this further. It tends to rile my heartburn.”

  “Okay,” I mumbled. “Sorry.” A long-lost love for Berta! I never would have guessed.

  * * *

  After breakfast, we purchased a city map at a newsstand on Boston Common and studied
it carefully. We discovered that Marlborough Street, where Isobel Bradford’s house was, began just on the other side of the park. I’d been to Boston before, of course, although on those occasions, I had been either a spoiled debutante or a pampered Society Matron, and thus I had zipped about in fancy motorcars thinking of little besides how much I loathed my mother and/or my husband. But one really knows a city only if one walks around in it.

  Berta and I agreed that our headaches and lumbars would benefit from fresh air and exercise, and set off on foot with Cedric gamboling along at the end of his leash.

  The Bradford house was one of a long block of tall, regal brownstones with bow windows, postage stamp–sized front gardens, and spiked iron gates. The door was painted shiny black, and the brass kickplate reflected my battered T-strap pumps. I rang the bell. After a moment, a butler, squat, pin-striped, and sporting a fussy little clipped mustache, answered.

  “Yes?” he said with a disapproving eye-flick down and up the three of us crowded on his threshold.

  I passed him one of our cards. “My name is Mrs. Woodby, and this is Mrs. Lundgren. We are private detectives investigating the death of Rudolph Montgomery in Carvington, Connecticut. We would like to speak with Mrs. Bradford. She left so soon after Mr. Montgomery’s death, we didn’t have a chance to ask her if she had seen or heard anything amiss.” I’d had enough doors slammed in my face not to let on that Isobel was our uppermost murder suspect.

  “I am sorry, but there must be some mistake. Mrs. Bradford has not been in Connecticut since Easter.”

  Berta and I exchanged frowns. Had Isobel somehow sneaked off to Connecticut without her butler knowing?