The Plain Old Man

by Charlotte MacLeod

  Somewhere down cellar would be the obvious place, or rather the sort of un-obvious hideaway the thieves would have been looking for. There was stuff down there from generations back, even pieces Uncle Bed’s great-grandparents hadn’t been able to part with because who knew when they might come in handy? As children and grandchildren moved or married or set up apartments or redecorated their houses, things got shifted around, taken away, brought in, parked wherever a spot could be found. Even something the size of Ernestina could easily escape notice, especially nowadays when there were only the Heatherstones and part-time outside help to run Emma’s complicated household. Nobody had time to keep tabs on nonessentials. Sarah folded the napkins into swimming swans the way Mrs. Heatherstone had taught her ages ago, set a pot of Aunt Emma’s fairy primroses on the table to add a springtime note, and slipped down the back hall to the cellar.

  Her first thought when she got down there was, “This could take forever.” Her second was that things were neater than she’d expected and that none of them resembled a missing Romney. That didn’t mean Ernestina wasn’t there, naturally she’d be well camouflaged. Sarah poked around until she heard her aunt’s voice demanding, “Isn’t Sarah down yet?” and decided she’d better go up. She wouldn’t say anything yet about her hunch. If she was right, Ernestina was safe enough. If she wasn’t, this was hardly the time to start a hunt for an imaginary hare.

  Cousin Frederick looked chipper enough after his night in Young Bed’s outgrown pajamas. Looking at him and Emma together, both pretty much of an age, Sarah wondered why she called him cousin when Emma’s sons, both a good deal older than she, called him uncle. In fact none of them could have said precisely how and in what degree Frederick was related to anybody. That was the way things tended to be among the Kellings. Relationships got so wildly intertwined that it didn’t pay to be picky about accurate titles. Nobody cared anyway, except Cousin Mabel, who took her own spectacular brand of umbrage if any of the young folks dared to address her as aunt.

  Mabel’s invitation had been for lunch. Having a pretty good idea what that would amount to, Sarah decided she might as well fill up on pancakes and sausages. She didn’t have to talk much; Emma and Frederick were absorbed in deciding whom they should ask to the memorial gathering tomorrow. Aunt Emma had come to the table equipped with her big address book, the slim gold pencil that hung from a chain around her neck and was as much a part of her as the diamond solitaires in her ears, and à fresh blue notebook.

  At last Emma let the pencil swing back against her hand-embroidered gray silk blouse. “That’s the lot, I think. Thank you, Fred. Sarah, if you’re not keen on going to the crematorium, I wish you’d stay here and make some calls. Not that Saturday morning’s the best time to catch people in, but I don’t know what other time we’ll have. We’ll take the Buick, Heatherstone. Mrs. Heatherstone tells me she’d like to go, too. We can all stop on the way back and shop for groceries. I can’t imagine what we’re going to feed them all on such short notice, but we’ll think of something. Too bad about Cousin Mabel, Sarah, but at least her having you to lunch gives us a golden excuse not to take her to the cremation with us. We’ll have to ask her here tomorrow, I suppose, or I’ll never hear the last of it. You give her the message, dear, will you? If I don’t call her myself, perhaps she’ll choose to be offended and stay away.”

  “No such luck,” grunted Frederick. “You know what else to ask her, Sarah?” He was clearly weaseling out, as who wouldn’t?

  “If I can get a word in edgewise.”

  “What’s Mabel supposed to know that I don’t?” Emma demanded.

  “Don’t ask me,” said Sarah. “It’s just that her name came up night before last while Cousin Frederick and I were having our little chat with Sergeant Formsby. Somehow or other, he got the idea he ought to go over and give her the third degree.”

  “What a lovely idea.”

  “Aunt Emma, be serious. You know perfectly well what would happen if we’d ever let a policeman start asking Mabel about Charlie Daventer’s private life. She’d have stirred up such a scandal you’d have had to call off the show. So I hurled myself into the breach and managed to persuade him that I’d have better luck worming things out of her than he would. Frankly, I don’t think he needed much convincing.”

  “No, I don’t suppose he would,” Emma agreed, helping Frederick to the last sausage. “Mabel calls them to report a Peeping Tom on an average of six nights a week. Wishful thinking, pure and simple. What a pity her parents were too close-fisted to keep a gardener she could have run off with when she was a girl. Now then, Frederick, don’t you think we ought to start girding our loins pretty soon?”

  “My loins are as girded as they’re going to get, Emma. It won’t take us more than fifteen minutes at the outside to drive to the cemetery, so I’m going to sit here and digest my breakfast. Don’t get one like this very often, I must say. If I weren’t afraid of having my face slapped, I’d go out in the kitchen and kiss Mrs. Heatherstone.”

  “Why, Fred, what’s come over you all of a sudden?”

  “Keeping up my spirits, I suppose. No sense pulling a long face, is there? Charlie wouldn’t want that. Anyway, I’ll be joining him soon enough. I just hope I live long enough to get my hands on that swine who did him in. I’ve never thought of myself as a vindictive man but, by God, this is more than I can swallow.”

  Emma gave him a little pat on the shoulder. “I know, Frederick. I think what horrifies me most is the fear that his death may somehow have been connected with this stupid business about Ernestina. If I ever found out Charlie Daventer had lost his life over a few square feet of canvas off my own wall, I honestly believe I’d drop dead for shame.”

  “No you wouldn’t. You’d be mad as hell, like me.” Frederick pushed back his chair, stood up, and faced her squarely. “Emma, you don’t for one split second think Charlie had any part in stealing your painting?”

  “Frederick! How can you even dream of suggesting such a thing? My only thought was that since Charlie was here that night, he might possibly have caught on that something was in the wind. He was awfully clever at puzzles, you know, all those Double-Crostics and the crossword puzzles from the London Times when he could get hold of a free copy. But I don’t see how that could have happened. Can you?”

  “Emma, what’s the sense in brooding over it before we have anything to go on? Where’s your coat?”

  Emma smoothed down her dark gray skirt and buttoned her jacket. She hadn’t put on black for Charlie, Sarah noticed, probably because she’d had none to wear. She’d often said black was unflattering to women over forty. But she’d come as close as she could.

  “I shan’t want a coat, Fred. It should be warm enough in a crematorium, wouldn’t you think? Heatherstone, please tell Mrs. Heatherstone we’ll be ready by the time you bring the car around. Here’s the list of names to call, Sarah. Just tell them what it’s about, and four o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Oh, and the snapshots, if they have any. I’ll just run upstairs and get my hat. Charlie always liked me in a hat.”

  Aunt Emma probably wanted a quiet sniffle, Sarah thought, as who wouldn’t in her place? She carried the few remaining dishes out to the kitchen, told Mrs. Heatherstone not to bother with them now because Mrs. Kelling was putting her hat on, and went into the library. She might as well do her phoning where she could be most comfortable. It was going to be a long job.

  Most of the people on Emma Kelling’s list were either completely unknown to Sarah or the most casual of acquaintances. A few remembered her as the child who’d stayed with Emma and Bed when Walter’s wife was in such a bad way and wasn’t it a pity she went so young? They supposed Sarah must miss her mother dreadfully but didn’t wait to be confirmed in their erroneous surmises. They were too eager to tell her how sad they felt about poor Charlie and how eagerly they were looking forward to The Sorcerer. Sarah cut them as short as she decently could, and went on dialing numbers.

  She didn’t catch many
men. These must all have gone fishing or golfing, or be locked in their studies writing their memoirs, or whatever the males of Pleasaunce did on Saturday mornings. Fortunately, most of them had wives or daughters or housekeepers or possibly lady friends at home to take Sarah’s message. She d managed to contact all but a few of the names on Emma’s list by the time she had to bite the bullet and get ready for Mabel’s luncheon. And she still hadn’t got back to searching the basement.

  Sarah was dithering on the doorstep, wondering if it was safe to leave the house unattended and telling herself she was just stalling because she didn’t want to go, when Emma’s car pulled up.

  “Sarah, haven’t you gone yet? I must say you look stunning in that outfit. Mabel will be livid. Hop in, dear. Heatherstone will drive you there.”

  “I was going in my own car,” Sarah protested.

  Emma waved her gloves in horror. “Sheer madness. If you do, Mabel will nag you into chauffeuring her all over Pleasaunce and you’ll be stuck for the afternoon. Heatherstone will return punctually at half-past one with a message that you’re urgently needed here. That will give you a safe out and Mabel can revile me instead of you for breaking up her party.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that, not that I don’t expect to be reviled for something or other anyway. Where’s Cousin Frederick?”

  “He asked us to drop him at Charlie’s place. I do hope he’s not going morbid. All this detecting, you know. I’m not sure it’s healthy.”

  “I’ll ask Max when he comes home. Here’s your list. The checks mean yes, the x’s mean no, and the question marks mean they’re to call back. No mark, no luck.”

  Sarah kissed her aunt and got into the car. She didn’t mind being driven, actually. She could use a few minutes of doing nothing at all. Except, unfortunately, worry.

  What did Frederick think he was looking for now? Maybe just papers to do with Charlie’s estate? She kept forgetting he was an executor. Still, Sarah wished he hadn’t gone there by himself. That had been a funny remark of Aunt Emma’s, “I’m not sure it’s healthy.” She wasn’t usually tactless, unless one was trying to interfere with her current project. The worst of it was, she was right. Detecting could be the unhealthiest activity possible for a feisty old amateur who didn’t know where the hazards might lie.

  “Heatherstone,” she said, “it mightn’t be a bad idea for you to stop by on your way back and see if Cousin Frederick’s changed his mind about lunching with my aunt.”

  “I was thinking of that myself, Sarah. To tell you the truth, I don’t much like him being over there alone.”

  She might have known he’d see through her feeble wile. “It’s just that all these nasty things have been happening. I wish my husband would come home.”

  “Better not say that in front of Miss Mabel. She’ll have you divorced before you’ve finished your soup.”

  “What makes you think I’ll get any soup? Ever stop to think what a privileged position you’re in, Heatherstone?”

  “Sorry if I’ve spoken out of turn,” he replied somewhat huffily.

  “I didn’t mean that, silly. I meant about never having to eat lunch at Cousin Mabel’s. She’s always on a strict diet, you know, when she’s the one who’s paying for the groceries.”

  “Has to be, I suppose, on account of the way she eats when it’s somebody else’s grub. Mrs. Heatherstone’ always cooks extra when we’re having Miss Mabel over, and I must say she never has to worry about what to do with the leftovers. Not that she minds doing it, you understand, and not that Mrs. Kelling would ever begrudge anybody a square meal regardless. Well, here we are, Sarah my girl. I better get out and hold the car door for you or she’ll be down here reminding me I’m paid to wait on my betters.”

  “Not in front of me, she won’t. Thanks, Heatherstone. I’ll see you in a while, then. Just sit outside and honk the horn.”

  On that outrageous note, Sarah allowed herself to be helped from the car in grand style. She refrained from waving good-bye to the chauffeur and swept up the walk, her nose in the air and her heart in her boots.

  Chapter 14

  BACK BEFORE RESTORING VICTORIAN houses got to be fashionable, one of Emma Kelling’s Boston friends had described Pleasaunce as a town where the architectural sins of the fathers were visited upon the children. There did seem to be a disproportionate number of leftover offspring rattling around inside their beporched and beturreted ancestral piles. Mabel Kelling was one of the rattlers.

  Whereas Emma and Beddoes had, by judicious remodeling and decorating, made their house a thing of beauty, and Frederick, by self-denial, had turned his into a philanthropy, Mabel had elected to keep the agglomeration of stained glass and chocolate-colored clapboard she’d inherited just the way it was. The way it was was awful.

  Mabel’s long-departed grandparents had chosen wallpapers that wouldn’t show the dirt. As the papers still hadn’t been showing the dirt to any noticeable degree when her parents took over the house, the said parents had let them alone. Whether or not they were finally showing the dirt would have been difficult to ascertain. Whatever the pattern might once have been, it looked now like a great deal of undercooked pigs’ liver.

  By inheritance or pillage, Mabel had acquired a great deal of furniture. Unlike Emma, Mabel did not keep the overflow in her cellar. She preferred, as she often said, to enjoy her treasures. What enjoyment Mabel derived from three hatstands with hangers made of real deer hooves, three worsted-worked love seats, and a large bronze statue of Atlas carrying an illuminated globe on his shoulders and having his private parts discreetly dealt with by means of a barometer set into his lower abdomen was a mystery not even Max Bittersohn would have cared to tackle. And that was just the foyer.

  Sarah had to sit on one of the love seats for several minutes while Zeriah, the maid, a hard-bitten specimen from the wilds of upper New Hampshire who claimed she could lick her weight in wildcats and worked for Mabel, it was assumed, to keep in trim, went to find out if the mistress was in. This was routine procedure. If Sarah hadn’t been on time to the dot, Mabel would have been out on the doorstep with blood in her eye.

  In due course the lady of the house made her entrance. Mabel was a big woman like Aunt Appie, but a good deal dressier. Over the years she’d collected the wardrobes of several departed relatives, and naturally wanted to enjoy these treasures along with the rest. Today she had on a Voices of Spring number in green and yellow chiffon with trailing sleeves, trailing shoulder panels, and various other trailing bits here and there, all of them wildly aflutter as she tramped down the hall in her sensible brown oxfords. With her high color and masses of badly waved white hair, she looked something like a giant peony in a windstorm, Sarah thought. The peony, of course, would have been prettier.

  “Well, Sarah, you finally made it,” was her affectionate greeting. “I’m surprised you managed to spare the time.”

  Her bulbous blue eyes were fastened on Sarah’s waistline as she spoke. “Nothing doing in the family line yet, eh? You don’t have much luck with husbands, do you?”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t say that,” Sarah replied with a wicked little smile she’d been practicing for just such a contingency. “You’re looking well, Cousin Mabel. What an interesting dress you have on.”

  Mabel Kelling was not to be beguiled by flattery. She hated being told she looked well almost more than she hated being told she looked ill. She treated Sarah to an account of her latest brush with the Grim Reaper, a spectacular gastric upset designed, no doubt, to account for the meager fare of which they were about to partake and, with luck, to destroy her guest’s appetite altogether.

  Sarah didn’t care, she hadn’t come here to eat. She threaded her way among the hassocks and taborets to the morning room, accepted one of the many chairs there present, and waited patiently for Zeriah to come and serve her a grudging puddle of abominable sherry in one of Great-aunt Berengaria’s ruby-glass goblets.

  Mabel took the best of the chairs for herself, spent s
ome time getting comfortable, then buckled down to business. “I suppose there are great doings over at Emma’s this week. Everybody working for her full tilt so she can reap the glory as usual.”

  “It hasn’t been all fun and games,” Sarah was willing to concede in the interests of diplomacy. “I suppose you’ve heard about poor Charlie Daventer.”

  “Fell in the bathtub blind drunk and cracked his head open,” Mabel replied with unconcealed relish. “I understand they found him stark naked except for a black-lace garter belt and a pair of rhinestone ear-rings.

  “Cousin Mabel, whoever told you that? Isn’t it amazing how vicious gossip gets around? Don’t you often wonder who thinks up these wild yarns?”

  “Oh, Sarah, don’t try to pull that guileless act with me. Considering the scandals you’ve managed to get yourself mixed into, a person might think you’d know the facts of life by now. Everybody knows what Charlie Daventer was. Why do you think he never married? All that nonsense about being devoted to Emma. Huh!”

  Mabel touched her sherry glass to her lips and brought it away with the puddle undiminished. “Is it true he’s left his money to some young fellow he’s been running around with?”

  “Heavens, no. He’s left it to the school for the handicapped. And I know that for a positive fact because Cousin Frederick’s an executor and he told me so himself.”

  “Ah, I see. Then it was one of the male teachers from the school.” Mabel treated herself to a genuine gulp of her sherry. “I can’t say I’m surprised. I always did think there was something fishy about that place. All those do-gooders cooped up together with a pack of cripples. I must attend the next open house and see what’s going on.”

  “Mabel, you wouldn’t.”

  “Sarah, a woman in my position has a civic duty to keep an eye on the morals of the community. You wouldn’t understand that, obviously. More sherry? Then let’s go in to lunch,” Mabel added without giving Sarah a chance to say yes or no.