The Plain Old Man

by Charlotte MacLeod

  Sarah didn’t see at all, but she never got a chance to say so. The gilt and ivory French phone on her aunt’s poudrière was already ringing. Somebody was being terribly sorry to bother Emma so early but she simply had to know what was happening about the baskets for the auditorium because somebody else had this minute called to say she’d fallen and wrenched her shoulder so she couldn’t possibly.

  “What a dreadful shame. No, it’s quite all right. My niece is going to take care of them. Yes, the scenery’s all finished and delivered. Not a thing in the world to fret yourself about. Thank you for calling.”

  Emma put the receiver back on its cradle. “That woman hasn’t the common sense of a good-sized rabbit. But she’ll work her head off for you so long as you don’t expect her to think with it. You will get at those baskets right after breakfast, won’t you? I hate to slave-drive, but I want this performance to be perfect in every way. You do understand, don’t you? Now come along. Mrs. Heatherstone must be wondering what’s kept us.”

  Breakfast at Emma Kelling’s was porridge, eggs, bacon, muffins, toast, and marmalade. Sarah ate it all, in a sort of sinking-of-the-Titanic mood. Anyway, lunch would probably be salad and yogurt. Her aunt was wont to take spasms of dieting in the middle of the day, provided she didn’t have a luncheon engagement, as she so often did. In the midst of buttering a piece of muffin, Sarah had a thought.

  “Aunt Emma, didn’t you say you were having the whole cast over here tonight, chorus, orchestra, and all, for supper and a pre-dress rehearsal?”

  “That’s right. We’d hoped to have it in the auditorium, but they’re booked for a dance recital or some ridiculous thing.”

  “Then what about the Romney? People will notice that great, gaping hole inside the frame and ask questions.”

  “Oh dear, so they will. I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll have to pretend I’ve sent it away to be cleaned.”

  “But you’ve already told Ridpath Wale you didn’t want to bother until after the show.”

  “Then I’ll tell him I changed my mind.”

  “He won’t believe you. When did you ever? Anyway, how could you have made the arrangements on such short notice? Last night you said you didn’t even know whom to call.”

  Sarah added a dollop of marmalade to her muffin and finished it off. “I’ll tell you what,” she said when she could talk again, “I could slap off a comic portrait of you as Lady Sangazure on a piece of the leftover scenery canvas and stick that into the frame. The cast will think it’s just part of the fun.”

  “Darling, that would be magnificent! But can you?”

  “I don’t know, but I can try. It doesn’t have to be good, you know.”

  “I didn’t mean that kind of ‘can you,’ I meant will you have time? There are all those baskets “to be done.”

  “What about your garden club? Couldn’t you get some of them to cut your greens?”

  “Good heavens, it’s high time I was put out to pasture. The garden club never crossed my mind. I’ll just make a couple of phone calls.”

  Emma Kelling was off and running again. Sarah picked up some of the breakfast dishes and carried them out to the kitchen.

  “Why, Sarah, you didn’t have to do that,” Mrs. Heatherstone fussed. “Here, set them on the drain-board. I’ll get the rest.”

  “This was just an excuse to talk to you.” Sarah got rid of her load. “Mrs. Heatherstone, I’m sure your husband must have told you what we think happened last night.”

  “About us all drinking the poisoned Slepe-o-tite? I can’t believe it.”

  “It can’t have been poisoned, just loaded with sleeping pills or something of that sort. Didn’t it taste strange to you when you drank it?”

  “No worse than usual. I hate Slepe-o-tite, if you want the truth.”

  “Then why do you drink it?”

  The cook shrugged. “Because it’s good for me, I suppose. Mrs. Kelling says so, anyway. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t have tasted the Slepe-o-tite much last night anyway. Mr. Frostedd brought me a lovely box of those chocolate-covered liqueur cherries I’m so fond of, and I’d been eating a few of them while I was reading the paper before I went to bed. Not that I need ’em, the Lord knows,” she sighed, smoothing her apron over her ample frontage. “But anyway, I remember taking one more just before I drank the Slepe-o-tite, figuring the maraschino would take the taste out of my mouth. I guess likely it did, all right.”

  “That’s interesting. Would your husband have eaten some, too, do you suppose?”

  “Oh yes, I expect so. Mr. Heatherstone’s not one for snacking between meals as a rule, but he does enjoy a little bite of something sweet before bedtime.”

  “I see,” said Sarah, who had a fairly good idea that she did. “When did Mr. Frostedd give you the cherries?”

  Yesterday afternoon, right after he got here, I suppose it must have been. He came out to the kitchen and told me how much he appreciated all the nice teas and dinners he’d been getting here since we started working on the show. He knew how much extra work it must be making for me, and he just wanted to do a little something to show his appreciation.”

  “How thoughtful of him. Is Mr. Frostedd in the habit of bringing you presents?”

  “Well, no, I can’t say as he is. He’ll come out here and pass the time of day once in a while when the spirit moves him, but he doesn’t usually bring me anything. He’s more apt to help himself to some of whatever happens to be on the table, if you want the truth. Not that I mind, and not that Mrs. Kelling would ever begrudge a bite to a living soul. You know how open-handed she is.”

  “Oh no, she wouldn’t mind,” Sarah assured her. “Now, Mrs. Heatherstone, I don’t want to put ideas into your head that aren’t there already, but I wonder if you could just tell me where those two thermos jugs were when Mr. Frostedd came into the kitchen.”

  “Sarah Kelling, you’re not trying to tell me a nice man like him would do a thing like that?”

  Sarah knew that scolding tone of old. For a fleeting moment she wondered if she was about to be sent to her room. “I’m not trying to tell you anything, Mrs. Heatherstone,” she pleaded. “I just want to know. Mr. Frostedd has a habit of teasing my aunt about her Slepe-o-tite, she says. I was thinking he might have made some joke to you about it.”

  “Oh, now I get what you’re driving at, though I must say I don’t see what’s so funny about Slepe-o-tite. Let’s see, now. No, I hadn’t put the jugs out yet. They must still have been in the butler’s pantry.”

  “Whereabouts in the butler’s pantry?”

  “Sitting on the counter above that long cabinet where we store the larger serving pieces. Normally I’d set them down inside, but my back’s been bothering me so lately that anything I know I’m likely to want again right away, I just leave on top. Saves me having to stoop so much.”

  Sarah made the appropriate noises about Mrs. Heatherstone’s back. She was picturing the butler’s pantry, not really a separate room in this house but a rather narrow passage lined on both sides with glass-fronted china cabinets and lockable silver drawers, separated from both the kitchen and the dining room by swinging doors. She’d just come through there herself. Sebastian would have done the same to reach the kitchen, unless he’d gone around and come through from the back of the house, which would have been absurd. So he’d have had plenty of time alone with the jugs both coming and going.

  “Thermos jugs tend to scare me a little,” she remarked. “I always think I have to scald them out with hot water before I put in anything hot, for fear of cracking the glass liner.”

  “You always were an old-fashioned child, Sarah. That might have been true years back, before they got this tempered glass, or whatever they call it, but I don’t think it makes any difference these days. Though I must say I do it myself, often as not.”

  “Did you rinse out the jugs last night?”

  Mrs. Heatherstone had to stop and think. Then she shook her head. “I can’t for the life of me re
member. I might have and I mightn’t, that’s the best I can tell you. The jugs were washed clean yesterday morning, I do know that. I’m not one to leave dirty dishes sitting around.”

  “I know you’re not.” This wasn’t helping a bit. “Would you happen to recall whether any other member of the cast came into the kitchen last night?”

  “Nope. I can swear to that easily enough. Mind you, I’m not saying one of them couldn’t have snuck into the pantry and dropped something into those jugs, if that’s what you’re driving at. They’d have had to be pretty nippy about it, though. Mr. Heatherstone was back and forth a lot, serving the tea and setting the table and getting ice for the drinks and whatnot. He never got a chance to sit down to his own dinner till after he’d taken the coffee into the drawing room. Not that he minds, as I’m sure I don’t have to tell you. He always has an early tea and a little rest, knowing Mrs. Kelling as we do, so we’re ready for anything by the time she tells us she’s got company coming unexpected.”

  “So in fact it would have been—what? About half-past eight before the coast was clear for somebody to get into the pantry undisturbed?”

  “Closer to nine, I should say. But by then I’d have had the jugs in the kitchen with me. I remember putting the milk on to heat in the double boiler and going in to get the jugs, and hearing you all talking around the dinner table. Mrs. Kelling was saying she’d have the buffet set out in the sun parlor by the time people began arriving for the rehearsal. That was news to me. I’d assumed she’d want Mr. Heatherstone to serve drinks and hors d’œuvres in the drawing room first as usual, which would have given me extra time to be setting the food out in the dining room. They often want the sun parlor clear for rehearsing the dance numbers, you see, because the tiled floor out there’s easier to skip around on than the drawing-room carpets.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to think I make a practice of eavesdropping, Sarah, but this was my business as much as anybody’s, so I stayed there till I’d made sure what the plans were. Then I had to run back and grab the milk off the stove before it came up to the boil, and let the Slepe-o-tite cool down a little before I poured it into the jugs. Mrs. Kelling hates to scald her tongue.”

  So much for Aunt Emma’s scorched-milk theory.

  “After you’d finished and Mr. Heatherstone had taken the coffee into the drawing room, he and I sat down here at the kitchen table and had a bite of dinner ourselves, as I told you. Then we took care of the dishes together, and I took our jug of Slepe-o-tite and the box of cherries I mentioned and went along to our place.”

  Then there had been a short interval, though perhaps only a couple of minutes, when somebody could have ducked into the kitchen and dropped a sedative into the pan of milk that was heating on the stove. Who, for instance? Everybody but Charlie Daventer and Ridpath Wale had left. Sarah knew perfectly well neither of them had got up till Emma gave the signal, and that they’d all four gone back to the drawing room together. Soon after that, however, she herself had gone off to Cousin Frederick’s.

  And what if she had? By that time the Heatherstones must have been eating their own belated dinner with the filled jugs sitting right under their noses. Then Mrs. Heatherstone had taken one of them and gone home. It made no sense whatever, as far as she could see, to imagine the jugs could have been tampered with after that. The doping must have been done while they were sitting in the butler’s pantry.

  “Unless somebody sneaked in the back door,” she said aloud.

  Mrs. Heatherstone snorted. “That’s crazy, Sarah Kelling, if you don’t mind me saying so. That back door’s always locked, and it stays locked or I don’t stay in this kitchen. I said so to Mrs. Kelling as soon as I heard about what happened to that cook of the Terwilligers’, and she agrees with me one hundred percent.”

  “Well, of course. I was only wondering. Now, about those scenery flats that were picked up this morning. Mr. Heatherstone says you stood right there and watched the men carry them out.”

  “I did, not that they were what I’d call men. It was just that Mannering boy and a couple of his friends. One was Skip and the other was Chill. I suppose they must have real names, but I never heard ’em. Anyway, they took out the big square pieces first, that make up the house, you know, and then the other ones that have the bushes painted on them. I eyed them like a hawk the whole time because I was afraid they’d scar the nice, clean woodwork Mrs. Kelling just had repainted, and I’m willing to swear that was all they took. Mr. Heatherstone asked me if maybe the painting could have got carried out with the scenery. I told him I didn’t see how, though I could see where he got the idea, all of them being just canvas stretched over a framework.”

  “Perhaps he meant they might have hidden it between two of the other flats.”

  “Not unless they were magicians, they didn’t. Guy was scared stiff they’d scratch up the artwork, as he called it, and I was worried for fear they’d get smart and poke a hole in one of the windows, let alone mess up the paint, so we made sure each piece was handled separately. Furthermore, they’d have had to be taking an awful chance, pulling a stunt like that in broad daylight.”

  Not really, Sarah thought, if Guy had taken the forethought to disguise Ernestine with a skin of new canvas painted to look like part of Sir Marmaduke’s mansion when she was taken out of the frame and stacked her with the rest of the flats. Theoretically, Guy could even have laid down a fresh ground and painted scenery right on top of the old canvas, but Sarah didn’t think Guy would have had enough time or skill to manage that, even if he’d had all night to work on the project.

  Assuming for the sake of argument that Guy and his cronies had stolen Ernestina and managed to get her out of the house right under Mrs. Heatherstone’s nose, they’d have had to be awfully harebrained to truck her all the way to the auditorium. Guy must know Emma Kelling well enough by now to realize she was apt as not to swoop down for a pre-breakfast ride on her high-wheeled bicycle to make sure they’d got the scenery delivered safely, and that she’d know merely by the dimensions if one flat was actually her Romney.

  Sarah supposed it wouldn’t hurt to go and take a look, but how could she? There was that fake Romney to be painted and all those baskets of greenery to be got ready before the cast started to arrive at half-past five this afternoon. Aunt Emma would be going down there soon; let her take a tape measure along and see what she might find. Nothing but scenery, was Sarah’s guess. As for herself, she must get to work. What a shame Cousin Brooks wasn’t around to build her a stretcher and help stretch the canvas. She herself was no good at that sort of thing.

  Come to think of it, Cousin Frederick was. He’d taught himself to do all sorts of odd jobs for his tenants, in order to get out of paying a handyman. Surely he could nail four pieces of wood together and tack a piece of canvas over the middle. She wouldn’t have to tell him why it was needed, just that it was one of Aunt Emma’s bright ideas. She ran to the phone.

  Chapter 5

  FREDERICK GROUSED A BIT, but he came. By the time he’d assembled the stretcher, Sarah had completed a sketch of her aunt on a huge piece of brown wrapping paper, throwing in as much detail as she could recall from the Romney and adding a few touches of her own. Her birdbath was all right, but the dove turned out to look more like a Boston Common pigeon. She wasn’t going to worry about that. This was merely another piece of scenery. All that counted was the general effect.

  Together, she and Frederick stretched the canvas, tugging at opposite sides of the crude frame, whanging in staples and tugging some more. Considering that this was a maiden effort for both of them, they didn’t do too badly. Sarah transferred her drawing to the canvas, corrected it here and there, and lined up her paints. By lunchtime she’d slapped on a vaguely gardenish background and got the figure blocked in. She knocked off gratefully for a quick bite and sup, then went back to work. By three o’clock she’d produced a reasonably credible likeness of Emma Kelling in her purple bustle, complet
e with roses and lorgnette. The lorgnette was a detail Romney hadn’t happened to think of. Nor, for a wonder, had Emma, but Sarah put one in anyway.

  Then came the problem of getting Lady Sangazure into Ernestina’s frame. That took the combined efforts of Sarah, Frederick, Emma, and the Heatherstones, none of them any great shakes as weight lifters, but the consensus was that the effect was worth the effort. “And now, Sarah,” said Emma Kelling, “the baskets.”

  The ladies from the garden club had known far better than Sarah how much greenery those big baskets were going to swallow. They’d stacked the flag-stoned flower room full of branches, along with plastic buckets of tulips and daffodils that were being, Sarah gathered, conditioned.

  One kind soul had even stayed to help. So, for a wonder, did Cousin Frederick. The three of them filled dishpans with bricks of Oasis, taped chicken wire over this unlikely assemblage, forced the filled pans down inside the baskets, and began sticking the greens through the holes in the wire, into the Oasis. First, it turned out, stems had to be bashed to let the water up through. This was all news to Frederick, but he willingly elected himself chief basher so that Sarah and her new mentor, called Peg, could work off their aesthetic urges on the baskets.

  Gradually the arrangements took shape. At four o’clock Heatherstone brought them cups of tea. At five, Peg had to go and pick up her daughter from dancing class. At half-past, they began to hear cast and orchestra members arriving. At a quarter to six, Sarah and Frederick thrust the last well-bashed branches into the baskets and called it quits.

  There was to be no dressing for dinner tonight since there was no dinner, only the buffet set out in the sun parlor so that performers could help themselves as they wished during lulls in the rehearsal. Sarah and her elderly cousin merely washed off the pitch and joined the throng. That was when they heard about Charlie Daventer.

  “You mean to say you didn’t know?” That was Sebastian Frostedd, spreading the news. He had a rather dark whiskey and soda in his hand, Sarah noticed. “The cleaning woman found Charlie this morning, in his pajamas. Evidently he’d got up in the night, slipped on the bath mat, and hit his head on the edge of the tub.”