AND DANGEROUS TO KNOW
Elizabeth Daly
FELONY & MAYHEM PRESS • NEW YORK
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE Interior
CHAPTER TWO Bargains
CHAPTER THREE Sheltered Life
CHAPTER FOUR The Other One
CHAPTER FIVE Comment
CHAPTER SIX The Private Life
CHAPTER SEVEN Nice Couple
CHAPTER EIGHT References
CHAPTER NINE Conscience
CHAPTER TEN Indescribable
CHAPTER ELEVEN Call of Condolence
CHAPTER TWELVE Informal
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Request Number
CHAPTER FOURTEEN End of Evening
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Perfection
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Statements
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Black Valentine
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Position Is Everything
CHAPTER NINETEEN Red Raincoat
CHAPTER TWENTY Best Motive of All
CHAPTER ONE
Interior
THERE ARE STILL a few such rows of old brownstone houses on the upper East Side in New York, and among the bright remodelled dwellings and the glossy apartments that hem them in, they look rather grim. Some of their high stoops and deep areas are in bad repair or not cared for at all, since these belong to rooming-houses or to property that is boarded-up, for rent or for sale, waiting for an estate to be settled or an absentee landlord to die.
But among these relics there are still living fossils, private residences with well-swept doorways, where window boxes bloom all spring and summer; people like the Dunbars live in them, people who have plenty of money but are careful about spending it, who have a strong attachment to the past and dislike change and novelty. They bring their plumbing and their kitchens up to date, and go comfortably on where their grandparents were comfortable three-quarters of a century ago.
The Dunbar house was pleasantly situated on the south side of the block and just off the park, and in summer it had dark blue Holland shades in the windows, and a caretaker to water the geraniums in the window boxes while the family was away. But on this twenty-second of July the shades were up and the storm doors open. The family was at home.
At about one o’clock Miss Alice Dunbar climbed the front stoop and rang the bell. She was in her early thirties, of medium height, and thin. Her complexion was sallow, her hair and eyes dark, her face quite without expression. She was wearing conservative and expensive clothing: a dark blue voile dress, a small dark blue hat, fawn kid gloves, black shoes.
Her blank look was not a look of indifference; there was nothing calm about it. It might have meant a deliberate withdrawal into herself, the tension of long years of defence. It did not express passivity. Waiting for the door to open, she glanced to the right towards the dusty trees of the park, to the left, past a vacant lot, towards Madison Avenue; but her dark eyes saw nothing. She was preoccupied with her own thoughts.
A maid opened the door. Miss Dunbar asked: “Am I late, Eileen?”
“Just on time, Miss.”
“I hope there’s iced tea.”
“Iced coffee, Miss.”
“Oh. Good,” said Miss Dunbar vaguely. She climbed the two flights of stairs to her bedroom.
When she came back, without her gloves and hat, her family were at table in the dining-room: Mr. Dunbar, Mrs. Dunbar, and their widowed younger daughter, Mrs. Richfield Tanner. Mr. Angus Dunbar was a man of sixty-five, thin everywhere—a narrow head, a thin long nose, a thin mouth. He had a certain amount of dry humour, which Mrs. Dunbar appreciated, but it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that she never laughed. When amused, she smiled. She was pink-faced and blond, a little plump, and she sat up straight in her chair.
Abigail Tanner had lost her husband, a flying man, in the war. Blond like her mother, she had been a very pretty girl; now she had lost her fresh colouring, and looked a little dissipated. Her father and mother did not see the change like that; they said she had been through so much it had aged her. She had her husband’s money, and in winter-time she lived alone in a hotel. This summer she had been with her family in their cottage on Cape Cod, and had come to the city with them for a funeral. The funeral, that of an aged relative, had taken place the week before, but Mr. Dunbar was staying on as executor of the estate.
Alice came in and sat down opposite her sister. Her brown hair was in a low pompadour, and wisps escaped from it. She looked very tired.
Her mother said: “Why is it, I wonder, that the rest of us can always be in time for meals.”
Alice said nothing; she began on the jellied bouillon the maid put before her. After a pause her father observed: “I think your mother spoke to you, Alice.”
“Yes, Father; did she? I’m sorry if I was ten seconds late.”
“Well, really,” said Mrs. Dunbar in her rather high voice.
“I suddenly remembered another errand. Stockings for the shore.”
“Where?” asked Mrs. Dunbar, always interested in shopping.
“Just a little place.”
“It’s a waste of money to go to those shops.”
Abigail, her elbows on the table, languidly eating celery, said that she’d go without stockings at the shore and in town too, if she had to go errands in this heat.
“Alice was getting things for me this morning,” replied Mrs. Dunbar.
“I still think we might have given the funeral a miss,” said Abigail. “In the circumstances, I mean.” She smiled. “Don’t you, Father? Why should we bother?”
Mr. Dunbar answered indulgently: “Wouldn’t have done. Your great-aunt! No other family to go.”
“But my goodness, to open the house!”
“Your father will be here for a good while,” said Mrs. Dunbar, “with all the estate business to settle. His comfort comes first. Do you think I should allow him to be all by himself at the club?”
“Your poor children could have stayed at the Cape,” said Mrs. Tanner, smiling at her mother.
“And keep two establishments going? Besides, it looked very much better for us to be here.”
“Don’t we get anything out of it, Father?”
“My executor’s commission,” replied Mr. Dunbar drily.
“We always expected Aunt Woodworth to leave a great deal to her charities,” said Mrs. Dunbar.
“And we don’t need the money. Quite right to leave it as she wished,” said Mr. Dunbar.
“I know, but—” Mrs. Tanner looked across the table at her sister, who had seemed oblivious of the conversation. She asked: “You had plenty of time; why on earth didn’t you go up there now and then?”
Alice replied: “I try not to go where I bore people. And I wasn’t brought up to truckle for money; or was I?”
Mrs. Dunbar said: “Hush,” as the maid came in, removed cups and brought salad. When they were alone again, she went on: “Decent attention is not truckling.”
“Well, anyway,” said Mrs. Tanner, “there weren’t any legacies except for the servants; I was afraid she’d put in a codicil in favour of the protégés.”
Mr. Dunbar laughed. “No, thank Heaven, nothing like that! Your great-aunt wasn’t doddering.”
“I had an idea she was,” said Mrs. Tanner, laughing. “The way she went on about that convalescent ex-marine of hers, what was his name? Dobbs. And the others before. She talked about nothing else when we were there at Christmas.”
“Cases from the hospital,” said Mrs. Dunbar quickly. “Of course she would be interested. She lived for that hospital.”
“Oh well, I suppose they got cash presents,” said Mrs. Tanner.
“Nothing considerable,” said her father. “Her accounts were very well kept. Mr. Baynes attended to
them for her.”
“Well then,” said Mrs. Tanner idly, “I suppose none of the protégés pushed her downstairs. That’s something.”
“What on earth!” Mr. Dunbar, gazing at his daughter sternly, spoke in a tone of strong disapprobation.
“Just joking, Father.”
“Gail,” said Mrs. Dunbar in some agitation, “you must not speak so carelessly. Aunt was over eighty years of age, and she didn’t fall downstairs. She had had a stroke before. She simply fell in the hall. There is no excuse for—”
“Oh please, Mother darling! I didn’t mean it. I was just trying to be funny,” said Abigail, her hand on her mother’s arm.
Mr. Dunbar was still shocked. “A lawyer doesn’t care for that kind of joke, Gail; unless he happens to be the wrong kind of lawyer, in which case you would find yourself in court answering to a charge of slander.”
“Oh goodness.”
Mrs. Dunbar, suddenly frowning, looked at her husband. “I suppose none of those young men would put in a claim of any kind, Angus?”
“Nonsense.”
“You hear of such things.”
“Impossible here.”
“But it happens, after old people die, and it doesn’t look well when the family refuses to pay.”
Mr. Dunbar was really irritated. “These fellows were simply cases she heard of through the hospital, war cases. She had them out at her place sometimes for a little rest, or a good meal. One of them—this Dobbs—helped in the garden and with the car. I understand that they all have work now; perfectly respectable young men.”
“Handsome young men,” said Mrs. Tanner, laughing.
“Who says so?” asked Mrs. Dunbar.
“Aunt Woodworth said so; at least one of them was.” She added, moving her salt-cellar about and looking at it, “By the way, talking of young men, would you two pets mind if I had a couple in this evening after dinner?”
Alice looked up at her sister, and then down at her plate again.
“Not at all, dear,” said Mrs. Dunbar.
“You needn’t meet them, don’t bother,” said Mrs. Tanner. “They’re nobody you know, just friends of Richie’s. Some of his squadron pals might seem a little rough to you. Just types from the wide-open spaces, nice boys, but you wouldn’t quite understand them.”
Mr. Dunbar said: “I suppose they won’t break the furniture.”
Alice said with a short laugh: “More likely to break the piano,” and Gail cast a viperish look in her direction.
“Oh dear,” said Mrs. Dunbar.
“It isn’t the playing,” said Mr. Dunbar, “it’s what they play.”
“And when they play,” said Alice. “Excuse me; I take it back.”
Her parents looked at her, puzzled; Abigail went on: “I really oughtn’t to do this kind of thing to you dear people.”
“But we never sit in the drawing-room,” said Mrs. Dunbar. “It won’t be a bother if they don’t stay too late.”
“I ought to go back to the Stanton,” said Mrs. Tanner.
“No, no, darling. For such a short time! And it’s so nice to have you here again.”
“Cheers us all up,” remarked Alice.
“At least your callers can’t be accused of doing that.” Mrs. Tanner smiled. “There used to be a word for them. What was it? Muffs?”
Mr. Dunbar leaned back in his chair to laugh. “I haven’t heard that word for fifty years!”
“I picked it up in the R.A.F.,” said Mrs. Tanner smugly.
The maid came in and began to clear the table for dessert. Mr. Dunbar, still laughing, said: “All very nice fellows. Now Arthur Jennings—quiet, but he’s an excellent lawyer. Knows a lot about patent law.”
Abigail said with affected pique: “But he’s my gentleman friend, Father; I just lend him out sometimes.”
Alice had flushed a little, but she did not carry on the fray with much interest. She said: “I’m always flattered, of course, to go out with him after you’ve refused the invitation. But I wish he didn’t always insist on coming in afterwards. I get a little tired of his conversation.”
Mrs. Dunbar said: “Sometimes we hear him droning on for half the night. What do you find to talk about?”
“He finds it.” As if her contribution to the talk had been an effort, and had tired her, she sank against the back of her chair. The maid went out of the room with her tray. When she had gone Abigail addressed her father demurely: “Why don’t you ask the muffs their intentions, Father? They’ve been hanging around for at least ten years.”
Alice said absently: “Or Father might ask you your intentions. Rich has been dead four years—that’s a long time.”
Mrs. Tanner, very angry, cast her napkin on the table and seemed about to rise. She said: “I won’t take this kind of thing.”
Mrs. Dunbar said sharply: “No quarrelling, Alice. You know I can’t stand it.”
“I know,” said Alice. “If I say anything, that’s quarrelling.”
“It takes two.”
Alice burst out laughing. The maid came in with ice-cream, and had just finished passing the plates when the doorbell rang. She hurried out, and then there was a sound of giggling and whispering in the hall.
“What on earth,” murmured Mr. Dunbar. Mrs. Dunbar was frowning heavily, but her face cleared when a young man came into the room.
Everybody turned to look at him. “Why Bruce,” exclaimed Mrs. Dunbar and Mrs. Tanner together, and Mr. Dunbar was smiling too. Even Alice showed interest, but it was mingled with a certain irony.
The young man was very blond, light-haired and grey-eyed, with a faint look of Mr. Dunbar about him; but he was very good-looking, full of vitality, and with a natural gaiety that he had not inherited from any Dunbar. He went over to Mrs. Dunbar and kissed her cheek.
“Wha hae, wha hae, how’s the clan? Dear Auntie Pibroch. And Uncle Haggis, and little Plaidie and Kiltie.” He went around the table, shaking hands with Mr. Dunbar, kissing Abigail and Alice, sitting down at last in the chair between Mrs. Dunbar and Abigail that the maid, smiling, had pushed up for him. “No, no ice-cream, thanks. Iced coffee? Just what I need.”
“But why so Scottish?” asked Mr. Dunbar, laughing.
“Well, I’m doing a genealogy for an old gentleman, he’s looking for his clan. I don’t know how I’m ever going to get him into the Highlands, unless”—his eyes fell on a stained-glass plaque let into the middle light of the window—“Alice might give me a hand. That was a job!” He laughed with wholehearted amusement. “Alice, you’ll have to help me; you’re a whiz at bridging the gaps and blotting the ’scutcheons.”
Mrs. Dunbar was unable to be cross with this privileged relative; but she said with dignity: “It’s only what Alice found in the books, Brucey. My people really were—”
“I know, Auntie, I know. Alice, mind you do me my next Christmas card with my armorial bearings on it.”
Abigail said: “You certainly seem to have found yourself a man-sized job this time, Brucey.”
“Jobs? They pay for my real jobs—my tennis, you know, and picking the winners.”
“Are you staying in town?” Mr. Dunbar was also indulgent towards the lively young man.
“Lord no, I just came up to see my tailor and so on. I’m driving back this afternoon, in fact right away.”
“Driving!” exclaimed Abigail. “When on earth did you start from Washington?”
“Oh, in the small hours. That’s when I like to drive in summer, and I’ll get back in the cool of the night. Ever see the Pennsville Ferry at sunrise? Beautiful sight.” He got his cigarette case out of his pocket, and looked at Mrs. Dunbar. She nodded. “Have one, anybody?”
Abigail took one, and he lighted it and his own.
“You’re a very bad boy, you know,” said Mrs. Dunbar affectionately. “You ought to have come on for the funeral.”
“Well, Auntie, I never laid eyes on any Woodworth in my life, and I wasn’t expecting a legacy.”
“Neither we
re we,” said Mr. Dunbar. “But families must show a united front on these occasions.”
“I saw in the papers that she left everything to some hospital. Hanged if I’d have bothered to go in your place.”
“I’m her executor, Bruce my boy.”
“Is that a good thing to be?”
“I think her own lawyer, old Baynes, would have liked the job,” said Mr. Dunbar with a quirk of his mouth.
“And Bruce,” said Mrs. Dunbar, “you did lay eyes on Aunt Woodworth. Your mother took you there once when you were a little boy.”
“I must have been a very little boy. I don’t remember a thing about it. Well, she probably knew you don’t need the money, but my God, why didn’t somebody tell her I do?”
“You don’t really, Bruce?” His aunt looked concerned for him.
“I get by. And they say it’s just as expensive to live in Europe, so I think I’ll stay on here after all.”
“I’m glad of that.”
“Do you miss it frightfully, Bruce?” asked Abigail.
“That’s a foolish question,” said Mr. Dunbar. “Of course he misses it, and he misses his home.”
“They certainly didn’t leave much of the villa,” said Bruce. He finished his coffee, stubbed out his cigarette. “My mother was well out of it—I’m glad she never lived to see that ash heap. I got a glimpse of it while I was back there on the staff.”
“Too bad, too bad.”
“Might be worse, mightn’t it?” He got up.
“Why don’t you come up to the Cape and stay with us, dear?” asked his aunt, while he kissed her.
“Just wait till I finish Mr. Gummy’s fairy tale; I’ll have him a lineal descendant of King Duncan before I’m through with him. He has wads of money; perhaps he’ll send me to England to confer with Portcullis. Don’t forget, Alice—paint me that Christmas card. How about a couple of winners, proper, supporting tennis balls quartered with highballs?”
When he had gone, and the front door had been heard to slam, Mrs. Dunbar sighed deeply.
“Poor boy; it was very sweet of him to drop in on us. Did he get anything at all out of France, dear?”
And Dangerous to Know Page 1