Strong Spirits (1)

by Alice Duncan

  “Did he wake up?” Rotondo asked.

  “No. James sleeps like the dead. I was packing my stuff in a carpetbag, still mad as hell. I was aiming to get in touch with Edie the following day and tell her to quit her damned job and get another one, even if it meant working as a hotel maid.”

  He shot a guilty look at Edie, I guess because he’d cursed again, but Edie was still crying into her hankie and I don’t think she even heard him. Or if she did, she didn’t mind. She probably thought her love was akin to a knight in shining armor for wanting to remove her from a miserable situation.

  Ah, young love. I almost remembered the emotion from my own life, although recent years had blunted the memories considerably.

  “So,” said Rotondo, trying to keep Quincy on the right track, “you were packing to leave the Kincaids’ employ.”

  “Right. The bastard couldn’t stand hearing the truth, especially coming from such a low person—” He added toxic sarcasm to the “low” part of this speech “—and he fired me.” He grimaced spectacularly for a couple of seconds. There’s nothing quite like a bruised and battered face to add emphasis to a good grimace. “The moon was full. I remember it because you could see the rose garden from the stable loft. That doesn’t happen very often.”

  I noticed Rotondo’s knuckles whitening around his pencil and assumed he didn’t care for these diversions. He didn’t say anything.

  “Anyhow, while I was standing there, trying to calm down and also trying to figure out how the devil I was going to make a living for Edie and me now that I’d been fired from the Kincaids’, I saw a car pull up outside the door to the service porch.”

  “Did you notice what kind of machine it was?”

  Quincy thought for a minute. “It was a big one, and black. At least, I think it was black. It was night, you know, and even though the moon was full, I couldn’t make out a whole lot of details. But I think it was either a Maxwell or a Duesenberg. It was big, is all I know for sure.”

  Rotondo wrote it down.

  “Well, when I was standing there looking out the window and thinking, I saw Mr. Kincaid walk out through the back door carrying a suitcase.”

  “He was walking?” Rotondo stared hard at Quincy. “Without his wheelchair or anyone assisting him?”

  “He was walking,” Quincy stated firmly. “As well as any man alive. That wheelchair of his was an act. It had to be, because the bastard wasn’t even limping. And the bag he carried seemed heavy.”

  “He carried only the one bag?”

  Quincy squinted at Edie, I surmise to help his memory along. “I think . . . No. He also carried a satchel in his other hand. That one didn’t seem as heavy as the suitcase.”

  Rotondo wrote it all down.

  “I knew right then and there that something fishy was going on. I mean, why would Mr. Eustace Kincaid sneak out the back door of his own house if he wasn’t trying to hide something or get away with something? And why was he walking as if he’d never been crippled, when he’d been rolling around in that damned wheelchair for years and everybody thought he was sick?”

  “You said the automobile was driven up and parked at the service-porch door. So there was a driver?”

  “Yeah, the old bastard had a driver, all right. Cars don’t generally drive themselves.” Quincy’s hand lifted to the pad covering his lump.

  “The driver’s the one who hit you?”

  You couldn’t fault Rotondo when it came to jumping to obvious conclusions.

  “Yeah. He was the one, all right. But you’re getting ahead of me. A lot of things happened before that.”

  I smiled inside. Good for Quincy.

  “Of course.” Rotondo didn’t like being told the truth when it wasn’t to his advantage. I was thinking ha, ha, ha. “Please continue at your own pace.”

  “I knew something was up, and that it probably wasn’t right, because Kincaid’s a real rotter, and I never have trusted him. Sneaking out of his own house carrying luggage in the middle of the night—and walking, to boot—well, it looked mighty shifty to me.”

  “Is there any other reason you suspected him of wrongdoing?”

  Quincy looked apprehensive for a second, glanced at Edie and me, swiveled (undergoing great pain to do so to judge by his expression) to look at Harold, then shrugged, which made him wince. I was definitely going to have the men bind his ribs as soon as I could get my hands on him and dump some laudanum down his throat.

  “Listen, Mr. Rotondo—”

  Rotondo didn’t correct him. I mean, he could have told Quincy to call him Detective Rotondo. I guess even smart-aleck detectives know what’s important and what’s not sometimes.

  Quincy went on, “—servants talk. All the time. And they usually know what’s going on in the family because rich people forget we’re people, too.” He recollected that Harold was present and almost broke his neck turning to offer an apology.

  Harold held up a hand and smiled winningly. “No need to apologize for telling the truth Mr. Applewood. You’re right. Most of us are awful snobs.”

  Visibly shaken, Quincy stuttered a bit when he said, “I . . . I . . . Er, thank you, sir.”

  “Let’s get along here, all right?” Rotondo said through gritted teeth.

  After wiping his sweaty brow with a dirty handkerchief (he hadn’t had a chance to bathe or change clothes yet), Quincy continued his story. “All right, the truth is, I’d heard from everybody in the servants’ quarters for weeks that people thought something was wrong at Kincaid’s bank.

  “When I saw him slinking out of his own house in the middle of the night carrying a suitcase and a satchel, and when I added that to the fact that he must have been faking being crippled . . . well, I knew he was doing something rotten, is all. Probably having something to do with the bank. I could feature that satchel full of money.”

  “So what did you do then?”

  “I left off my packing and decided I was going to follow the machine he was in and see what was up. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d kidnapped Edie.” His scowl was a beauty.

  Edie sort of yipped, slapped a hand over her mouth, and shut up.

  Frowning heavily at Edie and me, Quincy added, “And that’s another thing. I’d like to know why nobody ever told me about that bastard Kincaid bothering Edie before Daisy let it slip. God knows, they knew all about the bank business. I’ll bet everyone in the whole house knew he was harassing Edie, and nobody bothered to tell me about it.”

  That was an easy one, although I didn’t go into it, not wanting to incur Rotondo’s wrath. But if Quincy would only allow himself to think for half a second, he’d understand that everyone was trying to prevent exactly what had happened when he had learned the truth. No one in the servants’ quarters wanted him to be fired from his job.

  “I’m sure you’ll have an opportunity to ask your friends later why they kept the information from you. Right now, let’s keep to the subject, all right?” I heard Rotondo’s teeth grinding.

  Quincy mumbled, “Sorry.”

  Rotondo squinted hard at Quincy. “Why was that? I mean, why did you think she might have been kidnapped? Did you ever see Miss Marsh with Mr. Kincaid?”

  “Naw.” Quincy shrugged once more, evidently forgetting how badly it had hurt the first time he’d done it, because he came out with a short, sharp word that I shan’t repeat on these pages. “I guess I thought . . . Ah, hell, I was afraid he’d killed her, chopped her up, and stuffed her in the suitcase. You know, like that freak Crippen a few years back.” He was embarrassed after his admission. When this session was over, I aimed to ask Quincy if he liked to read crime novels as much as I did.

  Rotondo didn’t crack a smile. “And then what did you do?”

  “As soon as he went out through the service porch door, the driver got out of the machine and went to the back of it. He took the bag and satchel from Kincaid and put them in the rumble seat. Then he went to the back door on the passenger’s side and opened it for Kinc
aid.” Quincy sneered, which didn’t seem to hurt any of his cuts or bruises. “It was like he was the guy’s chauffeur or something.”

  Hey, I thought, my pa’s been a chauffeur for years, and he never went around whacking people over the head with blunt instruments. Or even knobby instruments.

  “And then?”

  Rotondo sure was a pushy fellow. I guess he had to be, given his line of work.

  “Then I decided to follow the son of a bitch and see what he was up to.”

  “Quincy!”

  Quincy shot a guilty look at Edie and muttered, “Sorry.”

  “If you don’t clean up your language, I won’t marry you.”

  Wow, I didn’t know Edie was so tough.

  Abashed, Quincy repeated, “Sorry.”

  “Please go on.” It was getting harder and harder for Rotondo to push words through his teeth as he became more frustrated. I got the feeling he’d be really happy if Edie went somewhere and dusted something. He sure didn’t care for interruptions.

  “Okay. So, anyhow, I decided to follow Kincaid’s machine to see what he was up to. I figured it couldn’t be anything honest because of how it was happening.

  “I went downstairs and stood at the barn door, making sure neither Kincaid nor his driver could see me. As soon as their car had been cranked up and was moving, I waited until it had gone quite a ways down the deodar drive before I started up the Ford and followed them.”

  “You kept them in sight the whole time?”

  Quincy looked at Rotondo as if the detective was the biggest dimwit in the world. “How the hell could I keep them in sight? They were behind a bunch of trees once they left the circular drive.”

  Edie opened her mouth, I imagine to chastise Quincy for using the word “hell,” but she shut it again. I think she’d caught some sort of vibration emanating from Rotondo and feared he’d ask her to leave the room if she interrupted the interview again.

  “How do you know you were following the right car, then?”

  It was an almost-reasonable question, I decided, but not quite, as Quincy instantly pointed out.

  “Because it was past midnight and nobody else was on the damned road!” Quincy’s voice had risen, but he was in a lot of pain, so he didn’t keep shouting. Rather, he pressed a hand to his head, grimaced horribly, and said, “Aw, nuts.”

  Rotondo’s tone of voice softened. “I’m sorry about this, Mr. Applewood, but I have to ask these questions. I’m sure you’ll understand if you think about it.”

  “I guess.” Quincy didn’t sound convinced to me.

  “You followed the car in which Mr. Kincaid was riding,” Rotondo prompted.

  “Yeah. I followed it. I tried to stay sort of far back, and I drove a lot with the lights off, because of the full moon, but I had to turn them on sometimes because you can’t see much in the dark.”

  “Right.”

  “I followed them down Fair Oaks. Way down Fair Oaks, until you get to that sycamore grove they’re turning into a park, past the ostrich farm. It’s real rural there.”

  “I’m familiar with the area,” said Rotondo. His pencil never left his paper.

  “Anyhow, that’s where I lost them. When I made that curve near the sycamore grove, I didn’t see another car anywhere. I wondered if they’d driven into the sycamore grove to stash the loot somewhere, but that didn’t make much sense to me.”

  Me neither. Naturally, I didn’t say so.

  “What did you do then?”

  “I drove on for a little bit, then pulled over to think.” He made a face, not that he had to, because the one he was sporting at the moment was enough to scare a witch off her broom. “Brother, was that a mistake. As I sat there thinking, Kincaid’s driver snuck up on the driver’s side of the Ford, opened the door, and yanked me out of it.”

  “Did you recognize him? Did you know who he was? Had you ever seen him before?”

  “Hell, no. All I know is he was about nine feet tall and six feet wide and strong as an ox. I don’t know what he hit me with, but I saw stars, believe me. I think he hit me on the head twice, although I don’t know for sure, and I went down hard. He must have kicked me when I’d passed out, because—” He stopped speaking and glanced over at me, as if he didn’t want me to hear the rest of his statement.

  Too bad. I wasn’t going anywhere. I crossed my arms over my chest and stared back at him to let him know it.

  He sighed. “I guess he kicked me a couple of times, because my ribs hurt like the devil.”

  “Did you see Mr. Kincaid during this period of time?”

  “All I saw were stars,” Quincy said gloomily. “He got me good.”

  “So I see,” said Rotondo. He didn’t sound precisely sympathetic.

  “I don’t know how long I was out. It could have been minutes or hours. It took me a forever even to stand upright. I managed to get to my hands and knees twice, I think. Maybe three times, but every time I tried to stand, I passed out again.”

  Edie sobbed out loud. I noticed Rotondo’s lips tighten.

  “That’s about it,” Quincy said after thinking about it for a minute. “Thank God the Ford was still there by the time I finally managed to get my feet working. If it had been stolen, I’d have been in worse trouble than I already was.” He glance apprehensively at Rotondo and corrected himself. “Am.”

  “True.” Rotondo sounded cynical.

  Quincy recognized that tone of voice as one that boded ill for his own personal future, because he said, “But I didn’t do anything! I was trying to stop Kincaid from doing whatever he was doing! I know he was up to no good, dammit!”

  “Yes, so you say.” Rotondo perused his notes as Quincy gazed upon him with a mixture of worry and dislike.

  “What did you do with the bearer bonds, Mr. Applewood?”

  Quincy blinked a couple of times. “Huh?”

  “The bearer bonds. You took them from Mr. Kincaid, didn’t you? Where are they now?”

  There was a period of silence in the room that I swear lasted a century. Then Quincy said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s a bearer bond?”

  Rotondo laid his pencil and notebook on his knee and looked straight at Quincy, unsmiling. “There’s a theory—a good theory, in my opinion—that Mr. Kincaid stole the bonds from the bank.”

  “Well, yeah, I guess so.” Quincy sounded confused. “I figured he’d stolen something. I thought it was money.”

  “I can well imagine,” said Rotondo in his most detectival mode, “that you did indeed follow Mr. Kincaid in a car. It also wouldn’t surprise me if it was Mr. Kincaid with whom you fought, and that you stole the stolen bonds from him. Where’s the body, Mr. Applewood?”

  “What? Where’s the body? What body? If you think I killed that son of a bitch, you’re crazy! I never touched him.” He frowned sulkily. “For that matter, he never touched me. He didn’t need to. He had his hired goon do it for him.”

  “Hmmm.” Rotondo wasn’t convinced.

  I was. I thought Quincy had told the absolute truth. So, of course, did Edie, who had begun crying again. I can’t keep away from crying women to save myself.

  “So what happens now?” Quincy was scared stiff. His fingers clutched the arms of his chair as if he were trying to wrench them off.

  “I haven’t decided that yet,” Rotondo said. “First we’re going to give you some medicine, bind your ribs, and have Mrs. Majesty tape your nose. Other policemen are questioning the rest of the servants in the household as we speak.”

  Golly, I didn’t know that. These guys were thorough when rich people were involved.

  “I don’t want any damned laudanum,” Quincy grumbled.

  Rotondo gave him what could only be deemed an evil grin. “Too bad. You’re getting it.” He turned and nodded at Harold and me.

  Harold picked up the brown bottle Edie had brought downstairs. I noticed that it was more than half full, which I hoped meant that Mrs. Kincaid didn’t depend on the drug too much
. I knew from talking with Billy’s doctors that people could become addicted to laudanum and morphine and other drugs derived from opium. The thought of Billy becoming an addict worried me during those periods of time when I wasn’t worrying about other things. In other words, I worried about it approximately half my waking hours.

  “Would you like me to telephone Dr. Dearing, Detective? I know for a fact that Daisy can perform magic, but it might be wise to call in a doctor for this situation.”

  “That’s a good idea, Mr. Kincaid. Let’s get this over with first, and then the doctor can give him a thorough examination and patch anything else that needs patching.”

  “Good. Mr. Applewood can stay in the apartment off the breakfast room.” The Kincaids were so rich, they had a dining room and a breakfast room. “Daisy’s aunt doesn’t sleep here at night, and the room is fully furnished and has its own bathroom.”

  “For God’s sake, you don’t have to do that!” Quincy was plainly undergoing tortures of humiliation and irritation.

  Harold winked at him. “Too bad you’re too busted up to do anything but complain, isn’t it?”

  Oh, my, but I did like Harold Kincaid.

  “One minute, everyone.” Rotondo stood up. He looked awfully tall, standing there when everyone else was sitting down. “I have yet to make up my mind whether or not Mr. Applewood is to be arrested for murder.”

  “Murder?” It was embarrassing, but I admit I screeched the word. “You can’t arrest Quincy for murder. You don’t even know if there’s a body involved yet! And if there is a body, where is it?”

  “If you will recall, Mrs. Majesty, I am the police officer in charge in this situation.”

  I stood up, too. I don’t suppose I made a very impressive figure, since I’m only a little over five feet tall, but I was furious. “I don’t care if you’re the Lord God Almighty! Until you can prove that Mr. Kincaid is dead, and that his death was the result of murder, you have no business arresting anyone, and especially not Quincy, because he’s wounded! What’s more, he was wounded in action. So to speak. I mean, he was trying to figure out what Kincaid was up to, and if he’d succeeded, you’d be calling him a hero instead of a criminal!”