Widow's Web

by Ursula Curtiss

  He introduced himself and was invited to sit down on a white chair shaped like a palette, while Mrs. Kirby perched on the iron arm of another and regarded him with her eyebrows up. In spite of the metal curlers the turban didn’t conceal, she had an air of rakish magnificence—the lady of the manor working for a living and doing it with gusto. He wondered what it was about her likable urbanity that he didn’t quite trust.

  He said that he had driven by the Mallow house several times and was interested in it on behalf of friends; had Mrs. Kirby any idea whether it might be for sale?

  “Dear me, I hope not,” said Mrs. Kirby with a short ebullient laugh. “I knew the original people quite well and I still have some old trunks stored in that attic. The present owner, a Miss Blair, has been a lamb and let me keep them there.” Torrant said mildly, “It seems like a big place for a woman living alone.”

  “It is, with servants what they are. But Miss Blair inherited the house under terribly sad circumstances—oh, you’d heard? —and I think she feels obliged to keep it for at least a time. And, of course, you might say she was still recuperating.”

  Mrs. Kirby uncapped a bottle of nail polish on the butterfly-shaped glass table beside her and began to use it dexterously. Torrant said inquiringly, “Recuperating?”

  “From the shock when the Mallows were killed. It happened late at night, you see, and when the doctor went to the house to tell her, she collapsed. Utterly,” said Mrs. Kirby, looking up from her nails with an air of critical approbation. “As a matter of fact, the doctor wouldn’t let a soul except the nurse come near her for twenty-four hours—not even,” the stripes swelled slightly, “me.”

  Twenty-four hours of isolation, under official sanction-ample time for Annabelle to gather herself together and assume a face of quiet grief. The first buzz of town interest would have begun to dim after that, because they had arrived in Chauncy only three weeks before and speculation needed a few shreds of knowledge to feed on. And the benumbed secretary played her part so completely . . . but then, she had had practice. She had practiced on Martin.

  Mrs. Kirby was still bridling. “Naturally, having handled the sale of the house and made arrangements for them to occupy it, I felt a rather personal interest. And you could see that Annabelle—Miss Blair—needed a friend.”

  Now we come to it, Torrant thought, quickening; the groundwork. He looked his question, and Mrs. Kirby painted another nail and said, “I mean, it was lonely for her. She had her work, of course, but the correspondence on this particular deal couldn’t have amounted to much. It turns out that Mr. Mallow bought the property in the first place in order to sell it to a Boston housing syndicate—there are thirty acres with the place—but they were still negotiating at the time of the accident. He must have known in advance about the branch bottling plant going up here in the fall.”

  Mrs. Kirby’s right hand was giving her trouble. She used the brush absorbedly, and said, “Then, Mr. and Mrs. Mallow went out a good deal, particularly in the evenings. My own idea is that they turned Miss Blair into chief cook and bottle-washer—a man wouldn’t begin to know the work there is in a house that size, with three people to clean up after. I must say I felt for her.”

  Torrant was beginning to reach out for something he couldn’t quite grasp. He said, “Was Mrs. Mallow attractive?”

  “Oh, stunning,” said Mrs. Kirby. Her eyes were hard. “They made a striking couple . . . but we’re getting off the subject, aren’t we? The house definitely isn’t on the market, so—My God, look at the time. Tell you what, Mr. Torrant, drop around when you can and I might be able to show you something else your friends might be interested in.”

  She was jaunty again, her bold smiling face acknowledging Torrant’s friends for the mythical things they were. He thanked her and took his leave; he wondered as he walked down the snowy path why she had frozen at the mention of the dead Mrs. Mallow.

  It was five o’clock when he got back to his room. Much too early for dinner, possibly too early for the drink he presently made himself from the flask that had travelled with him ever since Martin had given it to him at the airport nearly three years ago. Torrant weighed the silver curve in his hand, remembering that and a hundred other things, and then he crossed to the bed, beat Mrs. Judd’s supine pillows into some form of support, and stretched out against them.

  Had Mrs. Kirby really told him anything, apart from her own odd reaction at the end? Yes, in a way. Acting as a broker’s secretary was one thing; being reduced to household errands in his temporary home was another. Annabelle Blair, who wasn’t a child and who must have put away a good part of the thirty thousand dollars she had gained at Martin’s death, couldn’t have liked that. How had she felt, washing dishes for her employer’s attractive wife?

  Something there, somewhere . . . a corollary that stayed teasingly on the edge of his mind. He chased it briefly and gave it up.

  The Mallows were no concern of his—that was Maria Rowan’s bailiwick, apparently—except as they related to the woman he wanted to unmask and destroy. Had the same quality that had drawn Martin to her persuaded Gerald Mallow to alter his will in her favor shortly after they arrived in Chauncy?

  It wasn’t impossible; no one could ever blueprint the woman who would attract a given man. It was the kind of thing the Greeks had kept themselves busy writing proverbs about, and Torrant gave it its due.

  He finished his drink and swung abruptly off the bed; ten minutes later, warming the Renault’s motor, he had to force himself not to drive out through the storm at once and confront Martin Fennister’s widow.

  The Bluebird Cafe was crowded. As he entered Torrant looked for Maria Rowan, but none of the dark-haired women he glanced at had her particular poise of the head or her sure clear profile. He was conducted to the last available booth, and he had ordered a drink and dinner when there was a stir behind him. A rain-coated man rounded the edge of the booth and said in the deep fluid voice Torrant had listened to once before, “You’re Mr. Torrant, aren’t you? My name is Simeon, and I believe we share the top floor at Mrs. Judd’s house. They seem to be hard up for tables here—may I join you, or are you expecting someone?”

  Torrant said, “Not at all,” and shook hands. Seated again, he caught a passing waitress and leaned casually back, assimilating shock, while Simeon began complicated instructions for a Martini.

  This was the man who had almost certainly been a factor in Martin’s death; this was the man whom Annabelle had mentioned once, betrayingly, during an evening at the Starks’. He wasn’t big and solid but of barely average height, wide-shouldered and nimble; he seemed somewhere in his early forties. He had a beaked parrot’s face, startlingly carved under a cap of yellow-gilt hair that looked as though it might have been painted there. His eyes were dark and tired and ten years older than the rest of him.

  He was ugly, but it was the kind of ugliness that had probably always appealed to women, on the premise that under it must He some attribute far more fascinating than mere good looks. Torrant watched him from a cold distance that had nothing to do with the measurements of the booth, and Simeon gave a final instruction about lemon peel and turned back, smiling.

  “A ritual,” he said, “and pointless most of the time. I’m sorry about intruding on you this way, Mr. Torrant. I think, though, that we have a mutual friend in town, haven’t we? Miss Blair?”

  Torrant’s purely utilitarian drink arrived. He turned the icy glass once on the table without moving his gaze from Simeon. “As a matter of fact, it was her husband who was a close friend of mine. Did you know him at all—Martin Fennister?”

  “Not as well as I would have liked to,” said Simeon. If he was surprised by the instant counterplay he didn’t show it. “He seemed a brilliant man. I was shocked to hear of his suicide.”

  “So was I,” said Torrant, and put it down like a card between them. “He wrote me about his marriage about a year and a half ago, when I was abroad. I wasn’t getting a daily newspaper at that point
and I came home expecting to see him.”

  “And so,” murmured Simeon, “you wanted to look up his widow. Naturally.”

  Something in the tone rather than in the words caught Torrant’s sharp attention. The bold beaky face across the table was sombre, a brooding parrot’s. “I’ve just lost a very good friend unexpectedly, too,” said Simeon. “Gerald Mallow and I knew each other well, in fact I was a partner of his at one time.”

  Nice, Torrant thought after a moment of blank surprise; very nice. Cosy, lets match notes, you tell me what you know and I’ll tell you . . . He must have missed something in that instant of speculation, because the other man was saying reflectively, “—I was responsible for getting Miss Blair the job with Gerald.”

  Torrant waited, his attention tightening. “I’d met her originally at the office of a friend, shortly before her marriage. When Gerald needed a capable secretary, trained in his line and with a mind of her own, I thought of her at once—and by that time,” said Simeon briefly, “she was . . . available again. I introduced her to Gerald and, as I knew he would, he found her more than competent.”

  And nothing in between? thought Torrant. No deepening intimacy, no secret meetings when she wasn’t a secretary but a woman—and Martin’s wife? He said nothing at all, partly because there was no comment to make and partly because explanations were apt to grow in the face of a silence.

  The waitress set down Simeon’s Martini, the color of well-chilled ice water. Simeon tasted it and gave a shudder of approval. He said, “I was in Florida, winding up some business there, when Miss Blair got in touch with me about the accident. She was in quite an upset state, as you can imagine, and on top of that in a strange place with no one to turn to. I came as soon as I could, of course. Under the circumstances I felt . . . involved.”

  It was, Torrant felt, prettily put. In a few casual sentences it explained Simeon’s presence in Chauncy and advised Torrant to pack up his sleuthing kit and go home, because no murderess would send instantly for her victim’s close friend. The other man had drawn a parallel between them earlier, and this was the point of it: that Annabelle Blair, widowed by suicide and so soon confronted again by death in a violent form, was a woman to be helped instead of hunted.

  There f was something surprisingly genuine in the beaked brooding face across the table, and for a brief moment Torrant almost believed in its sincerity. Then he remembered Simeon’s smooth bridging of his acquaintance with Annabelle, and the parrot mask looked what it was again, measuring and ugly and extremely clever. He had the attitude, it occurred to Torrant, of a chef wondering if a special dish didn’t need a dash more of something.

  It came. Signalling to the waitress for another Martini, Simeon said with every air of frankness, “Of course, fond as I was of Gerald, and shocked as I was to hear of his death, I wasn’t blind to some of his . . . I don’t like to call them faults. But he drank very heavily—”

  “And,” said Torrant, speaking for the first time except for a few polite and interrogative syllables that committed him to nothing, “he made very peculiar wills.”

  In the booth behind them someone dropped a coin into the juke-box selector and a mournful female voice swelled over the restaurant noises. Torrant heard it only dimly; he was watching Simeon, who said after that small pause, “But is it so very peculiar, Mr. Torrant?”

  “I think so,” said Torrant pleasantly. “I think it’s as peculiar as hell.”

  “On the face of it, perhaps,” Simeon agreed slowly. “But— personalities aside, Mr. Torrant, why does a man generally make a will like that?”

  The beat of the music entered the booth, putting a pulse into the waiting silence. Torrant considered a number of bald answers and said nothing; he wanted to watch Simeon’s game but he didn’t want to play it.

  Simeon said softly, “Because he’s afraid of his life, Mr. Torrant. Because he’s worth a good deal of money, and he wants to remove a motive for murder from the person who would in the normal course of events inherit that money.”

  Torrant stared for an instant. Then he said deliberately, “Oh, come.”

  “ ‘Come’?” repeated Simeon. He sounded laboredly quiet, as though he had just gotten over a flash of anger. He stared back at Torrant out of tired eyes. “It sounds melodramatic, I suppose. But Gerald nearly died from poisoning a night or two before they left for Chauncy.”

  CHAPTER 7

  UNHURRIEDLY, TORRANT raised his glass and finished his drink; the gesture covered the jolt Simeon’s last words had given him. He had known the other man would start a fresh hare as a matter of course; he hadn’t thought it would be anything as bold as this.

  He said bluntly, putting down his glass, “How nearly—and what kind of poisoning?”

  “Very nearly, I gather, though you could get an official opinion on that from the house doctor at the Hotel Cranford in St. Louis. As to the kind of poisoning . . .” Simeon shrugged and looked down at the table. “The—evidence had been cleaned up very neatly by Mrs. Mallow by the time the doctor arrived.”

  “Not unnaturally, in a hotel room.”

  “No?” Simeon smiled faintly. “Perhaps I ought to explain that Louise Mallow was the only child of a wealthy Chicago family, Mr. Torrant, and had been brought up to expect a great deal of service. It would never have occurred to her, normally, to scrub a hotel rug simply in order to save some chambermaid a rather unpleasant job. However, to go on . . .

  He himself, Simeon said, had been staying at the Hotel Cranford for a few days before departing for Florida. He had seen the Mallows in the late afternoon of December fifteenth, and had learned that as Louise was complaining of a headache they were to dine alone in their suite—which they did.

  He learned later, from a cluster of excited hotel employees, that Gerald Mallow had been stricken with violent cramps and nausea about an hour and a half after his dinner. Fortunately his stomach had emptied itself, but the acuteness of the attack had affected an already tricky heart. When the house doctor arrived on the scene in answer to Mrs. Mallow’s summons, Gerald was in a state of collapse on the floor in the bedroom, the sitting-room rug was damp but clean, and the dishes from which they had eaten had long since gone their way back to the hotel kitchen. There was nothing from which to make an analysis.

  “I went up to the Mallows’ suite as soon as I heard, of course. Mrs. Mallow met me at the door. She said,” said Simeon, his voice wry, “ ‘Gerald would eat lobster.’ ”

  Lobster. Torrant had an instant sense of release; it was like looking closely at a scorpion and finding it to be a tangle of wool instead. That must have showed on his face, because Simeon said, “Ptomaine? It’s always possible, although I’ve eaten lobster with Gerald countless times and the Cranford is known for its kitchen . . . But you see, I’m being fair, Mr. Torrant. What I’m getting at is that only a short time after the attack, Gerald left his estate away from his wife. So that it comes down to what he thought—or had reason to think.” Torrant had listened in silence. He felt, from the queer vividness of the telling and the meticulous detailing of facts, that all this was true; the inferences to be drawn from it were something else again. He said, making it a polite question, “After poisoning and a heart attack, Mallow proceeded East the next day?”

  “The day after that—as planned. Whatever Gerald had planned, he did, no matter who or what stood in the way,” said Simeon slowly, and again this had the indefinable ring of truth. “I suppose he was ruthless, in a sense. I know that Miss Blair tried to talk him into postponing the trip, but—” Simeon stopped short. Torrant said pleasantly, “Oh, Miss Blair was there, was she?”

  “Later in the evening, on some business connected with the closing of the office. In all the confusion,” said Simeon, shrugging, ‘‘no one had thought to call her and put it off.”

  At Torrant’s elbow the waitress said briskly, “Lamb chops?” and thrust a menu at Simeon. Simeon shook his head, smiling, and asked for his check. When the girl had departed he glanc
ed at his watch and moved out of the booth, shouldering into his raincoat. “I’m dining with Miss Blair, as it happens, and I’ll just about make it . . . Thanks for letting me join you, Mr. Torrant.”

  Torrant nodded casually. He said, “Remember me to Miss Blair.”

  He had coffee and, rarely for him and for the Bluebird Cafe, brandy. The snow was slowing when he went out to the Renault, but enough of it had filtered through the slotted rear covering to soak the spark plugs thoroughly. Eddie Judd had evidently not been unprepared for this kind of emergency; under the hood Torrant found a much-soiled length of cotton waste. He dried the spark plugs like a mother, and eventually the Renault started.

  He drove out along Vanguard Street before he returned to Mrs. Judd’s. The willow grove, cloaked in snow, looked like a circle of hunched and secret gossips. The light from Maria Rowan’s apartment window glowed down and across Simeon s car, parked close to the bank in front of the Mallow house.

  He wished as he drove back towards town that he could shake off the illogical feeling that, whatever his previous connection with Annabelle Blair, Simeon had been shocked by the sudden death of the Mallows and was quietly speculating, too.

  The storm ended during the night, but for Torrant it left an aftermath that didn’t melt under the morning sun; it left him with the dark faceless figure of Louise Mallow.

  Attempted murder, during that quiet dinner alone in their hotel suite? Or, for Annabelle Blair, the happiest of accidents? She had already proved herself a master of the art of suggestion; she had destroyed Martin with words and covered her tracks at his doctor’s office with a few skillful phrases. What more fertile ground for implication than a man who, just a few hours earlier, had been stricken with all the symptoms of poisoning after dining with his wife?