The Fat Lady's Ghost

by Charlotte MacLeod

  Now she knew why the mysterious Leo never showed himself.

  The small, bent figure stood frozen before her, his gnarled hands halfway up to what had been his face, as though he would have shielded her from the appalling sight if he could. Then he let them drop.

  “A bear done it,” he said quietly. “One o’ the Danno Danilo Trained Skating Bears. Don’t never trust a bear.”

  He turned away and began fussing over Alex.

  “It’s okay, Leo,” said the painter. “I’m better now, thanks to you. I only wish I could get my mitts on that joker with the squirt gun! Have you any idea who it could be?”

  “If I did, I’d o’ wrung his neck,” said the old man. “It wasn’t no ghost, that’s for sure. There’s been strange happenin’s down here for quite a while, even before Rosie died. Comin’s an’ goin’s. I never seen nothing before tonight, though. O’ course, I got to admit my sight ain’t what it used to be. The bear got one o’ my eyes, an’ then the other got infected, which didn’t help none. He clawed my ears up some, too; so I can’t hear only on the left side. I been tryin’ to keep a lookout, but I ain’t what you’d call equipped for the job. I can see you sometimes, Miss, flittin’ around that ol’ kitchen like a red flower come to life. Prettiest thing I seen in a long time. An’ Al with that there apron on, I seen him, all right.” Their rescuer gave another of his rusty chuckles.

  “But why didn’t you ever come in and say hello to me?” asked Corin.

  “’Cause I didn’t want to scare the livin’ daylights out o’ you,” Leo replied frankly. “This clawed-up map o’ mine ain’t nothin’ to come on a nice young lady with sudden-like. I keep out o’ sight as much as I can.”

  It might have been because her own eyes were still dimmed from the effects of the gas attack; but suddenly, Corin did not even notice the ghastly scars any more. She was aware only of the wistful friendliness in the old man’s voice, of the gentleness of his hands when he had eased her sudden agony, of the concern for others’ feelings which had kept him a voluntary prisoner in this dark basement room.

  “Well, from now on, you needn’t keep out of my sight,” she cried. “Any time I’m in the kitchen, you’re welcome to join me. I’d love to have you.”

  “That’s right kind o’ you, Miss.” Leo sounded deeply moved. “It gets kind o’ lonesome down here sometimes. Not that I ain’t got good friends. Al here, he’s an old carny like me. Him an’ me’s buddies. Ain’t we, Al?”

  “We sure are, Leo,” said the young man warmly. “You’ll have to tell Corin some of your stories about old-time circus days when the big parade rolled down every Main Street in the country from Tallahassee, Florida, to Walla Walla, Washington, and you rode the elephant.”

  “Yes, Miss,” said Leo, “you mightn’t think it to look at me now, but I rode the elephant, right at the head o’ the whole shebang, with Rosie ridin’ behind me in a little pink cart carryin’ a lace parasol; an’ Dina settin’ up on the seat of her wagon all spangles with Selim an’ Tommy inside roarin’ ferocious-like to draw the crowd. They was both great showmen, Selim an’ Tommy. Some cats got it born in ’em, seems like. Oh, them was great days, till ol’ Ben Hanning put them Trained Skating Bears in the show.”

  The old man sighed deeply. “Well, I can’t complain. Rosie took me in an’ gave me a better home than I ever had before, an’ Dina’s been as good to me as if I was one of her own cats. I tell you, Miss, I’ve known two angels in my lifetime, an’ them two is it. I says to Dina the other day, Dina, I says, where would I be without you? An’ she says to me, ‘Leo, I’m the one that’s indebted to you. Don’t ever leave me,’ she says, ‘because I couldn’t possibly manage this house alone. You’re the one that keeps it going,’ she says. Now, I tell you, don’t that make a man feel great? I’d do anything in the world for Dina.”

  A bright light dawned. “Leo,” said Corin, “is it you who keeps this house so fantastically clean?”

  “I do my best, Miss.”

  “Well, there’s one mystery solved, anyway,” she beamed. “It’s been puzzling me ever since I came here. I never see anybody doing anything, yet this is the best-kept house I’ve ever been in. Even my own mother doesn’t do as well, and she’s a real demon.”

  “You ain’t just sayin’ that to make me feel good are you, Miss?”

  “I certainly am not. And my name’s Corin.”

  “Corin. That’s right pretty. I knew a Bearded Lady once named Corinne. Real nice woman. She was the greatest draw in the sideshow till she took to shavin’ an’ ruined her career. Finally married a used-car salesman in Bayonne, New Jersey. Any special thing you want done, Corin, you just come an’ ask me.”

  “All I want right now is to find out who’s hiding stolen jewelry in the kitchen and dressing up like a ghost and squirting poison gas at us.”

  “Stolen jewelry? So that’s the game, is it?”

  It was impossible to read expressions on the former elephant rider’s ruined face; but he sounded both shocked and furious. “I figured it must be somethin’ pretty bad. All that folderol about Rosie killin’ Selim, an’ Selim killin’ Rosie! He never would o’ lifted a paw to her, nor she to him. It was that there devil who tried to blind you that killed ’em both, you mark my words.”

  “I’ll buy that,” said Alex. “The only problem is, who is he? Corin thought it must be you.”

  “Oh, Alex, did you have to say that? Of course it couldn’t have been Leo.” Or Alex, either. What a relief to know that!

  “But it must be somebody who lives here,” the painter insisted. “Leo, you go into everybody’s room to clean. Have you ever seen anything suspicious?”

  The old man pondered. “No, can’t say as I ever have.”

  “It wouldn’t necessarily be something obvious, like a gun or a set of burglar’s tools,” Corin put in. “It could be some little thing that didn’t seem important at the time. For instance, if one of the kids suddenly bought a lot of expensive things that you wouldn’t have thought he could afford.”

  “Lemme see, now. Jack Banks, he’s always buyin’ stuff. But his folks is well-fixed. Father runs a bank, Dina told me. Funny, ain’t it, a man named Banks in a bank.” He emitted another of his rusty chuckles.

  “An’ Steve Koliawski has nice things. Them microscopes an’ fancy instruments o’ his must cost a heap. Steve don’t seem like the kind o’ feller to be swipin’ gewgaws, though. When he ain’t in school, he sets in his room readin’ them big books I can’t even pronounce the names of. Will McDermott, now, he don’t have nothin’ anybody’d accuse him of stealin’. His folks sends him a box o’ peanut butter cookies every week, but that’s all they c’n afford, looks like.

  “Now the girls, I couldn’t rightly say. If it was the twins, I can’t picture ’em takin’ nothin’ they couldn’t get two of. Everything they got is in pairs, just alike. Good stuff, but no more’n what you’d expect girls like them to have. Angela, she could have the British Crown Jewels in there an’ you wouldn’t find ’em if you hunted for a week. Maybe you could sort o’ sneak in an’ give her room a once over, Corin.”

  “I can’t barge in and go prowling through somebody else’s things,” the girl protested.

  “I think you could, Corin, in a case like this,” said Alex. “Don’t forget we’ve been the victims of a vicious attack, and it looks more and more as though Rosie Garside was murdered by the same guy. There’s not much sense in going to the police till we get a few more facts; but I certainly think we’re entitled to do a little investigating on our own. For one thing, we ought to find that gas gun, if we can, before he uses it again.”

  “I’d sure hate to be on the receiving end of that thing a second time,” shuddered the girl. “All right, I’ll do it. I’ll cut class in the morning. As soon as everybody’s gone out, I’ll go through all the rooms. Leo, you can be my lookout.”

  “Don’t worry, Corin, I’ll be within yellin’ distance every minute,” the old man assured her. “Main thing is,
I don’t want Dina to know nothin’ about this till she has to. She’s goin’ to be awful upset. Dina downright hates anything that ain’t honest an’ aboveboard. She never forgave her husband when she found out he was usin’ a collapsible blade in his sword-swallowin’ act. It wasn’t long after that he run off with the Tattooed Lady. Good riddance I says at the time, an’ I’d say it again. Some men is downright rotten clear through, like bears. Well, you two better go get some sleep.”

  Chapter 15

  Corin missed school without a struggle that morning. She slept until after ten, too exhausted from the previous night’s adventures even to hear the twins’ daily battle with Angela.

  At last she got up, dragged herself down the hall, and relaxed for a long time in a hot bath. It was luxury to have the room all to herself, with no Jeanie and Jennie fidgeting anxiously on the other side of the door. Then she dressed, went down to the kitchen and put on the coffee pot, peeked to make sure Madame Despau-Davy was nowhere in sight, and rapped at Leo’s door.

  The old man was not in his room; but his scarred face poked diffidently around the edge of the door as she was drinking her second cup of coffee.

  “Good morning, Leo,” she called. “I was just looking for you. Sit down and let me get you some coffee.”

  “That’s right kind of you, Corin. I shouldn’t take the time; but I ain’t had an invitation from a pretty young girl since nineteen thirty-two, an’ I sure ain’t going to turn this one down.”

  He seated himself on the very edge of a freshly scrubbed wooden chair, talking care to keep the pot of artificial daisies as a screen between himself and his hostess. “You feelin’ all right this mornin’?”

  “My eyes were dreadfully bloodshot when I woke up,” she replied, “but I bathed them with boric acid solution, and that seems to be helping. Your first aid probably saved us from a really bad time. I never did thank you properly for coming to the rescue last night.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ to thank me for. I’m glad I was around at the right time, that’s all. I know a little about doctorin’, bein’ in hospitals so long myself.”

  “If you hadn’t been. there,” all at once, Corin felt sick. “I just this minute realized how awful it could have been. Alex and I could both have been blinded permanently. An artist’s eyes are his life! All that wonderful talent of his—” her hand shook so hard that she had to set down her cup.

  “Now, don’t you take on,” soothed Leo. “It’s over now, an’ no real harm done. But we got to get that no-good skunk before he hurts somebody else. It might be Dina next.”

  “Come on.” She pushed back her chair. “Forget about the dishes. Let’s go through those bedrooms right now.”

  It was amazing how much one could learn about people, she found, just from seeing how they lived. Leo’s descriptions had been fairly accurate, especially about Angela. Although he tried to keep it clean, the model’s bedroom looked much like the way she always left the bathroom. Junk of all descriptions littered the dresser, the night table, even the floor. Only her clothes were arranged with any sort of care, and what a lot of them there were! They bulged out of the closet, filled a long chrome-plated garment rack which had been crowded in between the bed and the wall, and even hung from the old-fashioned light brackets. If Angela was stealing and selling jewelry, it was plain to see what she was doing with the money. She must be spending every cent on her back. However, Corin’s investigation soon showed her that the clothes were not expensive. They had been chosen with a keen eye to style and dramatic effect, but no regard for quality. It looked as though Angela haunted the bargain basements.

  Even buying just one thing a week over a two-year period, she could have collected the lot with no undue strain on a working girl’s budget, Corin decided. Provided, of course, that she did work steadily. Modeling was a precarious business, and the wage scale in Boston was probably far below the New York rate.

  After rummaging through an endless jumble of shoes, handbags, costume jewelry, scarves, and whatnot, Corin found nothing to incriminate Angela for anything but being a natural-born pack rat and a first-class slob. But there was certainly room for doubt, if for nothing else in this overstuffed room.

  The twins’ room was larger than either Angela’s or her own. It contained, of course, twin beds. Two charming, hand-enameled toilet sets were laid out side by side on the bureau. Two pairs of fluffy pink mules stood together on the mat between the beds. In the closet hung two tweed suits, two green wool coats with little round mink collars, two gray flannel blazers, two each of several other attractive outfits. The twins’ clothes were less high-styled than Angela’s, but of far better materials and workmanship.

  There was an air of comfort and good breeding, but not of individuality, about the room. Evidently Jeanie and Jennie were exactly what they appeared to be: nice young girls from an upper-middle-class family, distinctive in no particular except that they had happened to come in a matched set.

  “There’s nothing here, Leo,” said Corin. “We might as well tackle the boys’ rooms. I only hope Madame Despau-Davy doesn’t take a notion to come up to the third floor. She’d have a fit if she found me up there.”

  “She ain’t here,” he assured her. “She’s walkin’ down to Faneuil Hall Market to buy meat for the cats. It’ll take her the best part of an hour just to get there.”

  Nevertheless, the girl felt strange trespassing on the out-of-bounds third floor.

  “This here’s Alex’s room,” said Leo as they reached the head of the stairs.

  She could have told that herself. Now that the artist had moved his equipment to the studio, the room was almost monastically bare, except for a charcoal sketch of her own face pinned up on the wall and a copy of Thomas Craven’s Men of Art on the night stand. Alex’s one jacket and slacks, a worn trench coat, and a pair of rumpled chinos hung in the closet. The dresser drawers were empty except for a few clean shirts, socks, and undergarments. There was certainly no sign of suspicious affluence here.

  Steve Koliawski’s room presented a sharp contrast. This boy obviously had a mother who cared about her son’s comfort. It had been fixed up as an attractive study with well-tailored blue corduroy cafe curtains, couch cover, and throw pillows. A long foldaway table had been set up in one corner and equipped with a serviceable desk lamp. On it stood what looked to be a very good microscope and several other instruments whose functions she could not even guess at. The lounge chair had been freshly slipcovered in blue-and-green plaid, and beside it stood a bookcase crammed with solid-looking volumes.

  Here, as in the twins’ room, there was every sign of affluence but none of extravagance. Unless Steve had some scientific project going which required a great deal of capital, he seemed a most unlikely suspect. But appearances could be deceiving. How could she know if he really read all those books, or used the impressive instruments, since she had no idea what they were even meant for? The pose of a serious student would not be hard to maintain among a group of people who understood nothing about the subjects he professed to be studying. It would be the simplest thing in the world to sit with a book in your lap until everybody else had gone to bed and you could sneak down to the kitchen with your little squirt gun. It would be easy enough for a quiet, prosperous-looking, attractive young man to get invited to the right places to pick up useful information. And a fellow as bright as Steve ought to be able to plan a successful robbery. No, she could not dismiss young Mr. Koliawski just because he owned a microscope.

  The next room, she did not have to be told, was Jack’s. Jack did not have as many clothes as Angela, but he had a staggering wardrobe for a boy. In fact, Jack had a great deal of everything, and all of it expensive. A movie camera, a tape recorder, a miniature television set, an elaborate stereo hookup, a short-wave radio—there seemed no end to Jack’s possessions. Some of the things had never even been unpacked from their original cartons.

  In the midst of the hand-tooled leather stud boxes and silver-backed hair brushes
on the dresser stood a large framed photograph of a well-dressed man and woman.

  “Them’s his folks,” said Leo. “I don’t wonder he likes to keep their picture out where he can look at it. Can’t say I’d care to, myself. The man’s got a look in his eye that reminds me o’ Danno Danilo. He was a mean cuss, just like his bears. But they sure treat him nice.”

  “They sure do,” said Corin.

  She poked through Jack’s possessions, somewhat overwhelmed by their number and magnificence, but found nothing except what a wealthy banker’s overindulged son might conceivably be expected to own.

  That left only Will McDermott’s room. At a glance, it was plain that nobody was spoiling Will. The tall redhead’s possessions were few in number and only average in quality. One slightly threadbare suit, a few pairs of slacks, two sports jackets, and an inexpensive car coat constituted his wardrobe. The photographs on his dresser were not silver-framed portraits, but only snapshots stuck into the frame of the mirror. He was evidently one of a large family of boys and girls.

  “He’s workin’ his way through Northeastern,” Leo remarked.

  Everything, in fact, pointed to Will’s being a hardworking, deserving young man, until Corin opened his bottom dresser drawer. It was empty, but a queer bump showed under the paper liner. Lifting one edge, she uncovered a splendid brooch of pearls and black opals.

  “Leo,” she gasped, “look at this!”

  The old man brought his one good eye close to the flashing object. “Glory be! Where did he get that?”

  “Somewhere he shouldn’t have, I’m afraid.”

  The room told the story clearly enough. Will was obviously hard up for money. Without such a driving sense of purpose as Alex, he might be tempted to look for an easier way to get rich than by a long, hard grind of toil and study. But Will, with his freckles and his carroty hair and his engaging grin!

  “It’s crazy,” said Corin, “but all I can think of is that it can’t be Will, because he looks like my brother Sven.”