by Marlowe Benn
“You can’t!” Glennis jumped up. “Her things are here. You can’t make her leave, not until she can take her things.”
“Three days.” Chester’s voice went icy soft. “You have three days to get out of my house forever. Then if I ever see you here again, I’ll have you shot for trespassing.” He silenced Glennis’s protest with a step toward Alice. “Get out!”
As if blown by the force of his anger, Alice fled.
CHAPTER 20
Glennis darted across the room and pulled Julia from her chair. This time she was only too glad for a hasty exit tethered to her friend’s grip. At any moment someone—Chester? Nolda? Winterjay? Russell?—would confront her for stirring up this new maelstrom. She and Glennis slipped out as the others besieged Russell and Dr. Perry for something overlooked or misinterpreted, anything to blunt the double catastrophe. There was no mistaking their bleats of fury.
Glennis had prepared. After locking her bedroom door, she produced a silver bowl filled with shaved ice. She set it on the vanity table and drew from the cabinet a tall bottle of Dewar’s and a spritzer of soda water. “I knew we’d need fortification,” she said, handing Julia a heavily poured highball. “But I had no idea things would get this awful. Did Dr. Perry say someone murdered Naomi and then tried to make it look like suicide?”
Julia wrapped both hands around her glass. Good liquor would help. “Not precisely. He said she didn’t die from an overdose of tablets. It leaves open the question of what did kill her, but it’s too late for an autopsy to tell us.”
“Which is a problem for us who want to know but a huge relief for whoever killed her. That much I get.”
“If someone did kill her. That’s still an if, Glennis. But yes.”
“I don’t think it’s an if at all. If it wasn’t Chester, it was Nolda. She’s every bit as rancid about Naomi as he is, and they were both home that day.”
“Weren’t others here too?”
Glennis’s face puckered in thought. “Vivian and Edward were in Boston that week for his nephew’s christening, though she came back early for that awful séance party with her Talbot League crowd. I suppose Edward could have hoofed it back in secret, but really. Edward?”
Julia shrugged. She too found it hard to imagine either Vivian or Winterjay sneaking into Naomi’s apartment to—what? Poison her? Cram tablets into her mouth? She hadn’t had time to consider how Naomi’s pregnancy altered the possible scenarios of how she had died, much less why or by whose hand.
“Let me think.” Glennis settled back. “Russell stopped by that afternoon to see Chester and Nolda, but he couldn’t stay for dinner. I don’t think anyone else was here, except the help. I didn’t even know Naomi and Alice were downstairs. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? We don’t normally see who comes and goes from their apartment. I suppose anyone could have snuck in and killed her.”
“Anyone with a motive,” Julia said. “Let’s concentrate on that, not opportunity. Who wanted her dead?”
“Chester. No wonder he couldn’t wait to see her cremated.”
Julia took a long swallow of Scotch. Her patience was thinned to breaking with Glennis’s determination to whisk her brother off to the gallows. “He didn’t resist the idea, that’s true. But remember, it was Russell who suggested it.”
“You’re right. I’d forgotten. But that reminds me. On top of everything else, you’ll never guess what I found in Naomi’s journals.”
Julia could jolly well guess. If she was right, it made breaking her own news easier. Glennis pulled Naomi’s homemade diary from behind a stack of hatboxes on the floor. “You won’t believe it,” she said. “There’s lots I couldn’t figure out, but I know boy talk when I see it. I think she had a boyfriend, and he was a big secret. And do you know why?”
“Why?”
Glennis dimpled. “Because I think her boyfriend was Russell.”
Julia did her best to look amazed.
“She calls him R, but with stuff about him being a lawyer and knowing him from way back, it has to be Russell. Can you even imagine? Russell’s had a hundred girlfriends, and Naomi never seemed the least bit interested in any man. I always thought she might be, you know. It’s just amazing. Russell and Naomi!”
In some sense Julia did not have to feign astonishment. The past few days had been so thick with surprises that she’d hardly had time to ponder Russell’s admission that he and Naomi had been lovers. Glennis was titillated by her discovery, but Julia found it rife with painful implications.
Glennis’s face clouded. “One problem, though. She never put dates on anything. I couldn’t tell when stuff was happening. And the ink color changed a lot, like she only wrote now and then. The whole last half was just jottings, really, a few words or numbers strung together, not real sentences. The only actual names were Chester and Vivian, and hardly ever them. There was R for Russell and an A, I suppose for Alice, and a couple other initials now and then. I guess it was so personal she’d be the only one who needed to make sense of it.”
Glennis closed the journal. “Do you think they were still at it, Russell and Naomi?”
“It’s hard to say. What were her last entries about?”
“At the end it’s just lists. I think they’re about money. Like this.” She showed Julia a litany of abbreviations interspersed with numerals and such commentary as ask M. first, only fair! and half $ enough? The pages were stippled with dollar signs, question marks, and exclamation points of all sizes, some underscored.
“She does seem preoccupied with money matters,” Julia said. With excellent reason.
“Plus she changed her will.”
That alone made perfect sense to Julia. It had been altered last October, the month Chester forced Naomi to accept his draconian terms. She must have resolved to ensure that at least in death she could control her own money.
“It’s queer she didn’t tell Russell, though,” Glennis said. “Maybe she dumped him.”
“Maybe.”
Glennis frowned. The time had come. Julia freshened their highballs. “There’s something else you should know. I only learned it myself this afternoon, and I hardly know what to make of it. Matters are more complicated than we imagine, Glennis. When I telephoned the office of that Dr. Greenbaum, the receptionist was quite tight-lipped, as I suppose she should be. But eventually I gathered that Naomi’s appointment concerned, ah, female matters.” Julia switched to the vague euphemism, remembering that Glennis digested information best in small doses.
“Naomi had womb trouble? I guess she was pretty old. That’s not much help.”
“Not womb trouble, not exactly. I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, but Naomi was seeing Dr. Greenbaum because she was pregnant.”
As usual, the labored progress from confusion to understanding was visible on Glennis’s wide face. Julia moved to sit beside her on the bed. “You must think me awfully thick,” Glennis said. “I thought I knew at least my own family.”
“Naomi was a woman of secrets. You can’t blame yourself for not knowing what she kept hidden—from everyone, it seems.” They leaned against one another, the mattress sagging beneath their weight. Julia held her glass to her forehead to cool its dull ache. Beyond the occasional crack of settling ice and fizzing soda, they heard distant raised voices, indistinct but agitated. Her mind was full with fragments that would not fit together. Naomi’s life was more complex than she or Glennis had ever imagined, and the commotion downstairs suggested the rest of the Rankin family was coming to the same realization.
Glennis roused herself with a groan. “Do you think Russell was the baby’s father?”
Julia had had more time to ponder that likelihood but was no less troubled by it. Russell claimed his intimacy with Naomi was long over. Why would he lie, if not to deny his role in her predicament?
Or in her death? Julia’s stomach plunged. Russell would have had great incentive to see Naomi’s body cremated, destroying the secret of her pregnancy forever. If Naomi had know
n of such darker streaks in his character, it would explain why she had changed her will without his knowledge. She would not have been the first woman to have feared a man she’d also loved.
Julia stirred, sickened at this plausible scenario. Was she wrong about the man? She liked Russell. Had she been a fool, taken in by his fondness for books and intimate candor? She rubbed Glennis’s shoulders to disguise her own fidgeting.
“He’d marry her, though, wouldn’t he?” Glennis said. “Unless he didn’t know. But why wouldn’t she tell him?” She shook her head. “I’m a dunce. None of this makes any sense.”
“It’s more than I can understand too.”
“I bet Chester found out. I bet she refused to go to Arizona, or wherever those baby farm places are, and he decided to finish her off once and for all.” Glennis’s eyes fogged with tears. “Maybe he hounded her, roughed her up, boxed her good to kill the baby, and her too. Or maybe he told her she had to get rid of it. Handed her a poker and made her . . . I’ve heard about . . . it can kill you for sure. Oh Lordy. Even Chester couldn’t be that vile, could he?”
Julia had witnessed appalling cruelty, physical and emotional, during those dark days in London when broken soldiers had returned to lives they could never resume. The mildest lamb could attack if backed into a corner. Chester clearly valued his family’s illustrious name almost to obsession. But enough to subdue his own sister with such malice?
Logic intervened, a welcome comfort. “I don’t think that’s what happened. If she lost the baby, there’d be no mystery about how she died. There would be quite a lot of, you know, blood.” Julia lowered her voice for the graphic word, but still Glennis slapped a hand across her mouth. “Much as Chester may have despised her, no, I can’t see him doing anything so ruthless.”
Glennis nodded a little, as much stymied as relieved. She licked her lips, intent on finding a new connection between Chester and Naomi’s fate. “All right, so he telephoned her to meet him somewhere, put poison in her tea or something, then made it look like suicide. Clean and tidy—you can’t say that doesn’t sound exactly like him.”
“Glennis, listen to me. Forget about Chester. It’s time we took a hard look at the one person who’s repeatedly lied to us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Alice knows much more than she’s admitted.”
“Alice? You can’t be serious. She loved Naomi. She’s worked harder than anyone to keep Chester from sweeping her out with the rubbish.”
Julia couldn’t blame Glennis for resisting. She liked Alice too. “There are just too many inconsistencies. Remember the big calendar on Naomi’s desk at the Union?”
Glennis nodded.
“I saw the note for the meeting on the night Naomi died.”
“The one she made Alice go to instead.”
“Yes. It was scheduled for eight thirty. Dr. Perry saw Naomi shortly after midnight, and he was certain—he said it twice—she’d been dead for at least eight hours. Don’t you see? Alice wouldn’t need more than an hour to get to the meeting. If she left the apartment before Naomi died, as she claims, she left several hours earlier than necessary. She may have gone somewhere else first, somewhere she’s never mentioned. Or—”
Glennis calculated. “Or she was still there when Naomi died.”
“Exactly. And another thing. Those anonymous threats someone sent us, like the notes Alice showed us?”
Glennis gave a reluctant nod, lower lip caught under her teeth.
“I found the typewriting machine that made them. It was hidden in Alice’s bedroom.”
“No. Impossible. Someone put it there to scare her off or make her look guilty. Alice would never send those threats.” Glennis upended her empty glass over her mouth. Ice dropped against her teeth, splashing liquid onto her cheek.
“You must admit Chester’s accusation isn’t so rash. It’s an awfully strong coincidence that Naomi should die in mysterious circumstances within a year of changing her will to provide for Alice.”
There were more suspicions Julia might have confided, but they’d only provoke a new hailstorm of whys, which was the question she most struggled to answer herself. The new will gave Alice a strong financial motive for murder. She might have been jealous of Naomi’s bond with Russell or believed he was distracting her from their work. Maybe she feared the scandal of Naomi’s pregnancy would hurt the Union. Alice could have staged the suicide scenario, and she’d repeatedly revived the notion with her questions about the missing note. Suicide made Naomi a martyr to persecution, which served the Union’s interests nicely. But Julia said none of this. More critical matters demanded answers first.
“Glennis, look at me. This is getting serious. We’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest here, and things could get dangerous. Maybe we should let the police decide what happens next.”
Glennis’s fist bounced against the mattress. “I’ve told you. We can’t. If we call the police, Chester will go straight to the superintendent, to the bloody mayor if he has to, and tell them I’m an excitable nincompoop. That would be the end of it, except he’d boot me down into that nasty apartment quicker than you could blink, and Archie would marry the next rich American he sees.”
She twisted, knocking her knees into Julia’s. “I know I’ve whinged on and on about Chester. I don’t like him. I think he’s tossy and evil. But I’m not imagining things. He’s done everything he can to make Naomi disappear like some worthless nobody. And now he’s going to get away with it, because we cannot go to the police.”
“Maybe not, but we can still ask Alice some hard questions.”
Glennis rolled her eyes. “I don’t see what good that will do.”
“At least let’s have another look around the apartment, when she’s not there.”
“Sneak in and snoop?”
“I suppose. She won’t need to know. Tomorrow morning, when she’s at work? The apartment’s in your house, after all, and if Alice did have some role in Naomi’s death, we’re perfectly justified in poking around.”
Glennis shooed away any moral qualms. The prospect of more snooping cheered her. “Or we might find something else, something Chester missed. Tomorrow’s good, before he runs her out. Meet me here at ten, and we’ll go down through the cellar when the kitchen’s empty.”
It was late when Julia returned to Philip’s apartment. She was glad it was dark, as it meant he was still out and their paths would not cross. She dropped the key in her handbag and stepped into a fragrance of gardenias thick as fog. Dwarfing the fine Jacobean table in the hall, another floral delivery waited, possibly more exuberant than the first.
There too in the deep shadows stood Philip and Mrs. Macready. She appeared to be leaving, a wool cape across her shoulders and one glove tugged smooth over her hand. Philip’s back was to Julia. Jacketless, loose tie flung over his shoulder, he leaned one elbow into the wall, ear cupped in his palm. At Mrs. Macready’s start, he turned. For the second time in a week, he and Julia gaped at each other.
Philip recovered first. “That stench is suffocating.” He clawed through his hair, and the usual lock fell back across his brow. “Can’t you just marry the poor Lothario?”
Julia started. She’d told Philip nothing of David, much less of his wedding intentions. She paled at her brother’s eerily apt remark and then at his shrewd gaze observing her discomfort. She looked away and promised to move the flowers into her bedroom, though where they would fit, she couldn’t imagine. A hasty glance conveyed the card’s cabled message: Monaco judge booked 9 November return Sunday next SS Majestic brother business over or not ticket waiting New York office your expiring David. A small sound caught in her throat, and heat flared across her cheeks.
“Perhaps you intend to,” Philip observed. “Just as well. Regardless, isn’t it about time to take your plunder elsewhere? My apartment’s no bower for aging fiancées.”
“Philip!” His jaw flinched at Mrs. Macready’s sharp reproof. He turned without a word and strode aw
ay down the dark hallway.
“Forgive him, Julia,” Mrs. Macready whispered. “Lillian died a few hours ago.”
Julia felt a pang of grief for the ill-tempered and impertinent but lively old woman. “I’m sorry to hear it, Philip,” she called to his retreating back.
He ignored her, disappearing into the gloom. Another snub. Soon, soon, she reminded herself. Soon she’d be a continent away, beyond reach of his erratic moods.
Mrs. Macready sighed. “Think about it, my dear.” She pulled on her remaining glove. “Please. I beg you. Think about it.”
Julia stared at her. Think about what? The man’s atrocious manners? Mrs. Macready lifted a finger to slowly brush her left ear.
And Julia understood. So simple and yet so astonishing. It made sense of everything, of his occasional rude disregard, his contorted postures, his always twisting to one side. That infernal peering. To what degree she couldn’t be certain, but suddenly the explanation was plain as pudding. “He’s deaf?”
“Only in one ear. But please say nothing. He wishes no one to know. He forgets himself, though; that’s the trouble.”
Julia felt doubly ashamed at her irritation. Philip hadn’t spurned her sympathy, only failed to hear it. It was clear he loved his old aunt, in a rascally sort of way, and now she was dead. But his grief, however genuine, must be the least of Julia’s concerns.
She reread the cable. November 9 jerked the laces of the phantom corset squeezing her ribs. Expiring? Hardly. David’s fingertips might trill a tabletop in exasperation, he might pace twice about his flat, but he no more expired than he perished. In three days his matrimonial intentions had progressed from blissful news to an appointment in Monaco. Julia still did not quite fathom his momentous decision—and certainly needed more time to respond to it—but he seemed to take her silence for maidenly hesitation, an obstacle to be swept aside with a declarative urgency many females might construe as charming devotion. Glennis would swoon flat at this cable; Julia was reduced to shallow breaths.
The harsh financial constrictions of her new life were beginning. Without money of her own, she would have to return on the ticket David purchased for her. Time to discover the treachery behind Naomi’s death was running out. She was due to sail in six days.