Old Sinners Never Die (The Mrs. Norris Mysteries Book 3)

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “Where?”

  Tom drew a deep breath. He never thought the boss would take up with a stupid woman. “Sure, if I knew that, ma’am, I wouldn’t be calling you at all.”

  “Tom, do you have a car where you are?”

  “I do.”

  “Come right up to the hotel now. I’ll leave word you’re to be sent up.”

  And with that she hung up on him. A command performance, no less.

  17

  JIMMIE MOVED CLOSER TO the orchestra by several tables so that he could see the faces of the club’s patrons. Dolores might not sing well, but she sang on and on.

  What a strange group of people sat as though in a torpor. Middle-aged malcontents, he thought. They were people who did not lack for a certain success in life, for there was the look of prosperity about them, if not of wellbeing: but their success was not enough, or perhaps they had paid too high a price. Something had turned it to ashes. He was reminded curiously of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Suicide Club: the bond of the damned.

  Jimmie’s pulse quickened: he recognized one and then another of Chatterton’s dinner guests. Joshua Katz was here, a visitor … a guest of a regular? Maria Candido, of course. Jimmie searched his memory for what he knew of Katz: he had been a boy prodigy; that would have been twenty-five years ago, and Jimmie seemed to remember having heard that he was once the spoiled darling of the last royal courts of Europe. He must be a very special catch for this crowd. Candido seemed to be his patroness: perhaps she had been then, too.

  Jimmie became aware that he was the object of attention of another lady at that table. She was batting her eyes at him like a mechanized canary—familiar to him but not quite recognizable, as though some vital attribute were missing, a notable husband, perhaps—Latin, attached to some embassy, he decided. He consulted the Chatterton guest list. Of course, Madame and Ambassador Cru. Where was the ambassador?

  And where was Father? Gone off with Miss Blues in the night? It was a wise son who knew, Jimmie thought grimly. He bowed slightly to Madame Cru, and ever so gently pulled the chair next to him out from the table by way of invitation.

  Madame Cru gathered her purse and gloves. Jimmie wondered if she knew him, or if she was always indiscreet.

  “I know you, don’t I?” she said, coming up. “Aren’t you Ransom Jarvis’ son?”

  “I am. Madame Cru, I believe?” Jimmie held the chair for her and then sat down beside her.

  “We had so counted on your father’s joining us here. He’s the life of the party, as they say in America.”

  “They have said it of him in a great many countries besides America, I suspect,” Jimmie said.

  She looked him over frankly. “You are nice-looking. I’ve been promised you at one of our affairs by a mutual friend.”

  Dead or alive, Jimmie wondered. “I should be honoured,” he murmured, feeling very brittle and not liking it.

  A small flurry of applause greeted Dolores’ high note. Jimmie and his companion clapped perfunctorily.

  “She’s not very good, poor child, is she?” The ambassador’s wife sighed. “Only very young. Do you know, I shouldn’t want to be that young again. Isn’t that a strange thing to say? Not … in the world out there now anyway.” She gave a nod of her dark head to indicate the land beyond the walls of the Club Sentimentale.

  Jimmie doubted that he would ever get a better opening. “May I ask, Madame Cru, have you known Montaigne long?”

  “We do not speak of time here—not in specific … pieces. But then, I forgive you. How would you know our rules? It was in Europe I met him. Elizabeth Jennings was your country’s ambassador at The Hague. Leo, you see, is her nephew—if you know what I mean.”

  Jimmie made a noncommittal noise. He certainly did not know what she meant. But he began to see a pattern in the Chatterton guest list—or at least its link between extremes. “The Jennings are a very well known family,” he murmured.

  “Really?” Madame Cru smiled unpleasantly. “And which branch of it does he come from, pray?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Jimmie, seeing her meaning now.

  “No one else seems to either. But then Americans in high places are so loyal—since the days of Andrew Jackson, or even Jefferson—I believe, if the threat of scandal is a woman. If it is merely money, favours, whoosh! it is in every newspaper and on television. But if it is a woman involved, it is a sacred cow, as though all the country would have a moral collapse if a word of it got out. So naïve. You are too many contradictions.”

  “Better, though, than too many nephews, wouldn’t you say?”

  She smiled and then made her mouth round with sympathy. “You do not like what I am saying, do you?”

  “No,” Jimmie said, but amiably.

  “And yet it was you who asked the question, and I am not sure it was the question you really wanted to ask at all. You wish to know how a young—what do you call him?—upstart, a saloon-keeper really—receives an invitation to a house like your Under Secretary of State Chatterton’s. Am I right?”

  “That would have been a more direct question,” Jimmie admitted.

  “I think I know. But I could not prove it.” The ambassador’s wife laid her fingers on his wrist for a moment. “You must promise to come to tea and tell me if you find out I am wrong.”

  “All right,” Jimmie said, and smiled as he would to a child or to someone very old who needed humouring.

  “Laura Chatterton, you see, is one of us … a member of the club. It is so much better than, well, some other things we might be doing, isn’t it? No. I don’t mean you to answer that. How would you know what it’s like to reach the end in the beginning?

  “You see, we are a cult, the cult of reality, you might say. All of us, each in his or her own way, discovered one day midlife that we were not going any farther, in fact, that we had already been by very many years at that pinnacle you in America very nicely call ‘having arrived’.

  “For example, my husband reached the ambassadorial level at the age of twenty-six. It was a wedding present from the president of our country. We have had fourteen presidents since, and my husband has been our chief delegate to fourteen countries. Life has been one long bore.”

  “Still,” Jimmie said, “there are some who would consider the United States an important assignment.”

  She smiled quite ingratiatingly. “We are Latin American, Mr. Jarvis. In the United States, for us, it is like being very busy in a bottle, in a vacuum—that is the word. Nothing ever happens except the noise we make ourselves.”

  Jimmie didn’t say anything.

  Madame Cru continued: “But to talk about Leo. We had all gone past our great moment, you see, and we knew that if we were ever to have anything like its excitement again, we should somehow have to go backwards. Leo taught us that it was possible. He is our guide. He belongs himself in the eighteenth century, he is so very elegant. But he won’t admit it. He says not enough people alive now would recognize him. And perhaps he is right. Who knows, they might even think him mad, as he suggests. And he is perfectly at home in that wild decade when all of us were very, very young. Have you understood anything I have told you, Mr. Jarvis?”

  “Not everything,” Jimmie admitted. “For example, Montaigne himself must have been a child in the early ’twenties.”

  “I told you—we never think of that. I suppose Virginia Allan is really responsible for his … education. Really, I do not enjoy talking this way. It is like taking something exquisite apart: it becomes quite ordinary. It’s unfortunate for you, though, that Virginia is not here tonight.” Madame Cru cleared her throat delicately. “I think your father may have persuaded her. I hope she doesn’t—how shall I say it? Delude him? You see, she and Leo seem to have had a quarrel, but I assure you they are quite inseparable.”

  “Obviously,” Jimmie murmured. “She was at the Chattertons’ also.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  Leo himself had come to lead the singer, Dolores, from the spotli
ght, and all the way to her he applauded, so that a few others of the audience, out of embarrassment perhaps, lent her a hand also.

  “She looks genuine, doesn’t she?” Jimmie said.

  “Yes, but a little too much the flapper, don’t you agree?”

  Jimmie agreed.

  Madame Cru went on: “She does not ring true, like a bad impersonation. Now and then the original comes through, but not enough to keep up the illusion. She doesn’t have a heart big enough.”

  “Only a diamond big as the Ritz,” Jimmie murmured.

  Madame Cru seemed shocked. “Oh, no.”

  “It was just a manner of speaking,” Jimmie said, somewhat embarrassed. “I was quoting the title of a story.”

  Madame breathed more easily. “Really it was naughty of your father to have carried Virginia off. It is liable to lead to trouble, or so my husband told me when they did not appear at the ball.”

  “Is your husband here?” Jimmie inquired.

  “No. Something rather important,” she said.

  “Anything to do with Senator Fagan’s allegations about the Chatterton party?”

  “I should think not. Our instructions, frankly, are to stay quite clear of Senator Fagan. And my husband always obeys to the letter our government’s instructions.” The last remark carried the touch of bitterness. Madame shrugged. “I have the imagination in the family or I should not be here, I suppose. At the club, I mean.”

  “You were going to confide in me, Madame Cru, why you thought Montaigne was welcome at the Chattertons’.”

  “I was? Yes. Well, now, that does have something to do with Senator Fagan. If I am right, it does. I believe it was through Leo that Madame Secretary Jennings came there to dinner tonight. And it was quite important to Chatterton at this moment in his career to have someone of her influence at, shall we say, his table?”

  “Thank you,” Jimmie said, and he thought about how much Secretary Jennings must be under the influence of the young nephew. “I take it—since I got in here without any difficulty—the club membership is not secret.”

  “Certainly not. Anybody is welcome. But we do not talk about it. How could we explain?” She threw up her hands. “Impossible!”

  “Is Secretary Jennings a member?”

  “Of course not. She has just become an officer in your president’s cabinet. That is getting on in the world. You have not understood what I have told you at all. We are the members of the status quo. Now do you understand?”

  Jimmie nodded. “Forgive me. I’m rather in the position of a non-believer at a church meeting. I would if I could, but I can’t until I’m converted.”

  The ambassador’s wife laid her hand in his for a moment. “It has been charming talking to you.” She looked up. “A lovely service, Leo.” Jimmie also looked up.

  Montaigne had almost taken them by surprise, and Jimmie wondered if that were not his intention. And he had never before in his life seen eyes quite so fascinating: they fastened onto a person without seeming to see him at all, as though the mind behind them was somewhere else. Jimmie would have sworn at that moment that he was confronting a madman. The ambassador’s wife turned a cheek, and Leo bent to kiss it, his hair falling over his eyes. He straightened up and threw his hair back, running his hands over it to settle it in place. He brought himself into the present to give Jimmie his full attention. “I do not believe we have met.”

  “I thought perhaps I had just missed you,” Jimmie said, “finding your card in my house.” Jimmie showed him the calling card.

  Montaigne scarcely glanced at it. His arrogant manner was, to Jimmie, insufferable.

  But Madame Cru did not so find him. She was fluttery in his presence. “This is General Jarvis’ son,” she said, as though eager to account for him as other than her company.

  “Indeed? I had thought the old gentleman a bachelor.”

  Jimmie yielded for the first time to an old temptation in response to so inane a remark: “He is,” he said blandly.

  “How droll,” Montaigne said, smiling. “Are you in government yourself?”

  Jimmie quite loathed this elegant fraud. “Not at this moment. I should like an account of why your card awaited me when I got home tonight.”

  Madame Cru was sidling away from the table. “Don’t go, Madame,” Montaigne said, and turned back to Jimmie. “As a matter of fact, I am awaiting an account of it myself.” He looked at his watch. Jimmie glanced at it. Almost two. “Do you live with your father, Jarvis?”

  “We share a house.”

  Montaigne smiled again. “You have presumed then. That card, dear Jarvis, was presented to your father—or someone acting on his behalf—by my dear friend, Ambassador Cru. I have challenged your father to a duel, come daylight this morning.”

  “How marvellous!” Madame Cru exclaimed. “Dear Leo, you are magnificent!”

  “Leo the magnificent,” Jimmie repeated, and sat down. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  Leo was adjusting his coat sleeves to show the proper length of white cuff.

  “Now do you understand, Mr. Jarvis, what I meant by his belonging in the eighteenth century?” Madame Cru said.

  Jimmie nodded and sipped some very miserable whisky the blonde hostess just now brought him. It was a publicity gambit, of course, and probably rigged never to come off even if the General could be brought to arms.

  The hostess said, “Leo, there’s a phone call for you. It’s important so you better hurry up.”

  Montaigne excused himself. “Please don’t go, Jarvis. I trust you’re a gentleman in an affair like this.”

  Jimmie did not know for the moment what he would do in either case, acting a gentleman or not acting one. The Key Bridge must be the rendezvous, of course; and whatever else Mrs. Norris heard, she and Tom had taken off with it.

  “Your husband’s just come in, Madame Cru,” the blonde said. “He’s got half the newspapermen in Washington with him, it looks like. One of them’s even got striped pyjamas on under his suit.”

  “Probably a zebra,” Jimmie said. And in truth, nothing that happened this night would surprise him now.

  18

  THE GENERAL SPLASHED COLD water on his face and then rubbed his neck with his cold, wet hands. Finally he stuck his head under the kitchen tap. Groping for a towel, he knocked the telephone off its wall cradle.

  Thus did it come to his attention. He replaced it and began to wonder if the monotone which he had thought in his stupor to be Virginia singing had not been Virginia on the telephone. The General looked at his watch. It was after two o’clock. Someone must think a very neat plan to be going according to schedule. And wasn’t it? The fact that he was conscious instead of unconscious at the moment was small impediment. He had been virtually kidnapped: he was not at all sure, however, that he would like to try to prove it, especially before the court of public opinion where everything seemed to be first tried these days.

  But to what purpose was he brought here?

  The General was not without resources of his own. He took the phone from the hook. “Let me have the supervisor please.”

  A few seconds later he said, “I’ve been trying to put a call through to Washington. I expected the operator to call me back. I wonder if you would be so kind as to check.”

  “One moment please.”

  “Right.” The General was an old hand at putting just the right tenor in his voice to carry authority.

  The operator came on again. “That call was completed, sir.”

  “Oh?” The General was all apologies. “My wife must have put it through,” he improvised with magnificent aplomb. “Have you the number there?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, and repeated the number.

  “Ah-ha. That’s it. I’m sorry to have bothered you.” He hung up and waited a long moment. He then called the Washington number.

  The moment the receiver was lifted from the hook at the other end, the General knew somebody was having one hell of a party, he felt much relieved.<
br />
  “Hello out there,” a man shouted into the phone at him.

  “Who’s speaking?” the General demanded.

  “Dempsey of the Post-Citizen. Who do you want?”

  A newspaperman. The reassurance vanished. But the General hesitated only a second. “Listen, Dempsey, I’ve got a devil of a story for you … Where are you now?”

  “The Sentimental Club … Club Sentimentale. Excuse me, honey child.”

  “What’s going on there?” The General tried again.

  “Who the hell are you?” the reporter came back at him.

  Ever so gently, General Jarvis broke the connection.

  So, he thought, whatever the game was, Virginia Allan was playing it with her boss, her boyfriend. What was it? Conspiracy? Blackmail? She did think he had money, foolish girl. But the truth was, he had not done anything so far that could not have stood photography. And to the best of his knowledge he had not even said anything that the Army Chief of Staff could not have tapped in on. It seemed like nothing more than a scheme to keep him out of circulation for a few hours. He was probably going to find out that somebody was doing it for his own good! Everybody was so damned solicitous of his good! The State Department once had airlifted him out of Berlin on the same pretext … Good God, not Chatterton’s doing, this, surely!

  The General began to explore the house. A place as well equipped as this might very well have a jeep or some such conveyance for mountain travel. After all, he was presumed sleeping. He was not expected to do much exploring. He got his tails and dress shirt out of the closet—a woman’s closet. His things smelled delicious. Just let Mrs. Norris get a whiff of them. The dear woman, he would have been better off having spent the night in her company, and by this night’s end he might very well be content to retire into it.

  A peculiar thing happened then: all the lights in the house—and a fair number of them had been left lighted—dimmed down to where the General thought they were going out. Then they came on again. Something around the place was demanding an extraordinary amount of electric power. But there was not the sound of any motor anywhere, furnace, heater, freezer.