The Case of the Seven Sneezes

by Anthony Boucher

  He jerked Fergus into the room across the hall from the livingroom. This had presumably been built as a library, but the shelves were unfilled and the furniture sparse. Fergus sat on the edge of a large table, lit a cigarette, and began apologetically, “I assure you, sir, that I—”

  Mr. Brainard was not listening. “Everything,” he was saying. “Everything happens to me. My own daughter. Five years and I wouldn’t know her. A stranger in my house. And Corcoran. Never knew his place anyway. Insolent lazy lout. Would pick today of all days. And Hugh. Pamper him. Care for him like a—like a thoroughbred horse. Never a thought for me. Is it my anniversary or Corcoran’s? And now a redheaded young idiot dressed for a sandlot scrimmage!”

  Fergus tried his usually effective inoffensive-young-man manner. “I simply understood from Miss Paris, sir—”

  “I will not have my anniversary made into an open house for vagabonds. Understand me, sir? Ramirez still here?”

  “Yes, he is. But Mr. Brainard—”

  “Then get down to that boat! Hear me? He’s taking you back to Santa Eulalia tonight. And that damned nephew of Lucas’ with you. ‘Tom’s coming.’ And see her eyes light up. No thought for her father. What’s he? What’s his anniversary? But Tom’s coming and she’s all aglow. Shan’t even see the fool!”

  “Horace.”

  Fergus knew the voice at once, that cold level voice with its own harsh strength. He looked around to see Lucas Quincy, heavy and red-faced, bulking large in the doorway.

  “Yes, Lucas,” Brainard snapped.

  Quincy’s sharp little eyes passed over Fergus without displaying either recognition or curiosity. “If my nephew wishes to stay here as company for your daughter,” he said flatly, “I see no reason why he should not.” His cigar bobbled to emphasize his words.

  Horace Brainard gave a jerk at his little mustache and reluctantly spluttered, “Very well, Lucas. But you,” he turned on Fergus. “Still goes. Every word of it.”

  Fergus looked to Quincy, who in turn looked solely at the point of his cigar.

  “Hear me?” Brainard shouted.

  A curious intent grin spread over Fergus’ face. “I hear something else, too.”

  “Indeed? And what may that be?”

  “Listen. I hear a motor launch. And it’s leaving the island.”

  Mr. Brainard listened. Mr. Brainard swore. Then Mr. Brainard dashed into the hall and thence out of the house, with Fergus at his heels and Lucas Quincy contemplating them from the hall doorway.

  It was hard to see clearly. That might have been a human figure slipping across the sands to the back of the house. It might have been a shadow. There was no time to investigate now, not now that they could see a body huddled on the wharf.

  Fergus got there first. When Mr. Brainard caught up with him, he rose to his feet and said, “it’s Ramirez. Nothing serious, I think. Just a nasty bump on the back of the head. But we’d better carry him up to the house and have Dr. Arnold look at him.”

  Mr. Brainard was not concerned with the body. “Damned lazy Mex,” he snorted. “But if that’s Ramirez,” he looked down at the water beside the wharf and off into the distance where a fading wake still gleamed, “if that’s him, who the devil drove off in his launch?”

  ___________

  * Any argumentative reader who can disprove this statement is urgently requested to communicate with Anthony Boucher, c/o Simon and Schuster. The drinks are on me.

  Chapter 3

  Fergus had to carry the unconscious Mexican up to the house alone. The fuming Mr. Brainard obviously felt that physical aid to the lower classes was beneath his dignity.

  The entire houseparty was gathered in the hallway in one excited knot. Even in this confusion, Fergus’ trained and curious eye picked out the one person he had not yet met, the fluffy little peroxide blonde with the lifted face who must be Mrs. Brainard.

  Hugh Arnold stepped forward from the group, no longer a suave ornament to a drawingroom, but a crisply efficient professional man. “Library, O’Breen,” he said. “I’ll give you a hand.” Together they got the unconscious Mexican onto the large library table. “Whisky,” Dr. Arnold ordered tersely as he bent over the still form.

  Fergus hurried across the hall to the livingroom, snatched the whisky decanter from Alys with an unintelligible murmur of explanation, and hastened back to the library. Then, as he handed the decanter over to the doctor, a sudden chill ran down his spine. He looked again at his mental photograph of the hall he had passed through so rapidly. No, there was something that he had not seen …

  He went back out into the hall. The middle-aged blonde that must be Catherine Brainard was crying now in grotesque little gulps. Janet and Miss Paris were trying to comfort her, while Alys nestled for protection against the stolid bulk of Lucas Quincy.

  Fergus caught Tom’s arm. “Our bags. Did you take them upstairs?”

  Tom frowned. “I took mine. I didn’t know where you—”

  Fergus said loudly, “Has any one seen a large and battered leather suitcase?”

  Horace Brainard went on chattering wrathfully to his brother-in-law about boats that stole themselves. The women went on comforting and being comforted. No one answered.

  “Has any one—” Fergus started to repeat on a higher pitch.

  “Are you sure you brought it up from the boat?” Tom asked.

  “Am I sure? Am I—” Abruptly Fergus stopped. To raise hell now about the bag might only precipitate trouble. Let it ride. See what happened. “No,” he said. “I’m not quite sure. I thought I did, but …” He looked down ruefully at his slacks and sport shirt. “I’m going to be a beautiful dinner guest.”

  Without question the stolid Lucas Quincy dominated the library. But though his cigar-chewing silence fixed your attention, it was Horace Brainard’s shrill and angry voice which filled the room.

  Stella Paris, with a glance at Fergus to indicate that he should join her as soon as possible, had gone back to the kitchen. Janet had taken her half-hysterical mother upstairs. And the others had gathered here in the quasi-library, beside the unconscious Ramirez, to listen to the ranting expostulations of their host.

  “Suppose we’ll have to put up with it!” he went on shouting. “Launch gone. No contact. These damned young fools stay on. And on my anniversary! Damn it. No peace for a man.”

  “You mean,” James Herndon ventured timorously, “that we are entirely out of touch with the mainland?”

  “Damn it, yes. Wanted peace and quiet. No telephone. Cut myself off. Told this damned Mex to come here every day in his launch. Bring milk and eggs, take back messages if I had to contact the market. Now he’s here. Launch gone. Who the devil can come?”

  The quiet voice of the doctor was cool after Brainard’s rage. “I doubt, Horace, if you are concerned with the condition of this damned Mex; but the more humane among you may be relieved to know that he is not seriously injured.” He managed, in his perfectly tailored evening clothes, to look quite as competent and professional as though he wore a surgeon’s gown.

  Lucas Quincy went to the point. “What happened?”

  The doctor smiled as one might at a family joke which no one else could be expected to appreciate. “His head was bumped.”

  “But Dr. Hugh,” Tom protested, “who bumped him? Who got away in that launch?”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Brainard snapped. “Not more than’s natural. Who got away? Who the devil could get away? Every one that was on this island is in this room now. Plus two damned louts that wandered in unasked.”

  “Corcoran,” grunted Lucas Quincy.

  The doctor shook his head. “Afraid not, Lucas. I saw Corcoran not twenty minutes ago. He is utterly unable to move from his bed. Curious, Horace, that such ills should befall both your employees, and, as you never tire of pointing out, on your anniversary.”

  “Damn it, Hugh, stop babbling! What happened?”

  The doctor took a cigarette from a chaste and unbelievably slender silver ca
se. “Since no one has left this island, no one stole the boat. Since no one stole the boat, no one had any reason to attack Ramirez. Since there was no reason to attack him, he was not attacked. And since he was not attacked, he met with an unusual accident.”

  Unusual, thought Fergus, is a mild word for it; but who am I to point out flaws now? He kept his mouth shut, and prayed that the alert glint of his green eyes was not enough to betray his professional interest.

  “But what sort of accident?” Tom insisted.

  “Let us suppose,” suggested the doctor, “that Ramirez, cold and restless as he waited in the boat, decided to get out and stretch his legs. As he clambered up onto the wharf, his foot kicked against some piece of mechanism which started the boat. He tried to stop it, but in his excitement tripped and fell, receiving the blow that knocked him out, while the boat sailed on out into the Pacific.”

  There was a moment of incredulous silence. Then James Herndon protested mildly, “I’m awfully afraid, Hugh, that that’s nonsense. The boat wouldn’t have been headed—”

  “Have you,” the doctor broke in sharply, “any more satisfactory theory?”

  Herndon looked up quickly, then shrugged.

  “N … no,” Herndon admitted. “No,” and he looked sorry that he had ever spoken.

  “Then we may for the time being accept this hypothesis, at least until Ramirez recovers consciousness.” There was a certain stress, almost a threat in that added clause. “It will not be the first time that this group has chosen the more comfortable interpretation. Should we, the renowned camel-swallowers, now boggle at the gnat?”

  Alys Trent had left Quincy’s side and slipped unnoticed to the table, where she gazed down upon the unconscious Ramirez almost as intently as she had stared at the sand. “Then he will live?” Her throaty voice shook a little.

  “Yes,” said the doctor firmly. “Sorry, Alys. Now if two of you men will help me carry this fellow to one of the upstairs bedrooms—”

  “That greasy peon sleeping in my house!” Brainard exploded. “Won’t have it. Put him … put him …”

  “If you cannot suggest any other place for him, Horace,” said the doctor quietly, “he may have my bed. This man must rest for the next few hours. Come, gentlemen. Who will help me?”

  Fergus and Tom came forward and picked up the fat little body. Alys stepped back reluctantly, her eyes still fixed on the bruised head. For a moment, Fergus was afraid that she was going to follow them. The last sound he heard as they left the room was Brainard’s high bellow of, “And on my anniversary!”

  “You will notice,” the doctor observed, “that singular pronoun. Highly indicative.”

  “And on my anniversary!” Catherine Brainard was protesting to her daughter. She lay face down on one of the twin beds in the master bedroom and clutched desperately at a foolish gangling Pierrot doll.

  “The poor man,” said Janet.

  “The poor man indeed! And is that all the sympathy I get from my own flesh and blood?” Mrs. Brainard began sobbing again. “It just spoils everything.”

  “Please, Mother. Don’t be so … so … And besides,“ Janet added with a flash of inspiration, “if you toss about like that you’ll spoil all those nice ruffles. And you do look so young and pretty with them.”

  Mrs. Brainard sat up promptly.

  “Even Hugh!” Horace Brainard went on expostulating in the library. “Damned impudence of him. Use his own bed indeed! Man must be looked after! Look after a Mexican that lets some damned vagabond steal his boat. One of those young fools of Stella’s, I’ll lay odds.”

  James Herndon was puffing quietly at his curved briar. “But the boat wasn’t stolen, Horace. Hugh proved that.” There was something like a snort from Lucas Quincy. “And the young men are still here.”

  “You needn’t remind me!” Brainard snapped.

  “Nice boy, Tom,” Herndon went on peacefully. “And that friend of his looks alert.”

  “Alert? Doesn’t look as though he had a penny to his name. Lost his bag! Hmf! Probably doesn’t own any decent clothes and hid the bag away to give himself an excuse. And on my—”

  “On my sister’s anniversary,” said James Herndon temperately.

  Alys stood beside the table, running her hand idly over its surface, still warm from the body heat of Ramirez. There was a secret smile on her lips.

  “What the devil can be keeping Stella?” Brainard fumed. “If she’s getting dinner, why in God’s name not get it? Why should we have to wait around like this?”

  Alys left the table and went over to the silent Lucas Quincy. “Isn’t it too exciting, darling? Here I thought this was going to be just another weekend, and now all this … !” She leaned over the red-faced man, fully aware of the effect of that leaning on the low-cut vee of her gown.

  Lucas Quincy stared at her heavy-lidded, stared at her glistening eyes, at her quick breathing, at the almost imperceptible twitching of her hips. “Alys,” he said gruffly.

  “Yes, Lukey darling?”

  Quincy continued to stare impassively. “Lay off of Tom,” he said flatly.

  “Yes, darling.” She crossed the room again and gazed out of the window to the sands where she had stood earlier.

  Ramirez was now comfortably bedded in the doctor’s room, and Arnold was busy with his bag. “You shall now,” Tom announced as the two younger men emerged into the upstairs hall, “see the setting of a new world’s record. That noted young psychologist and athlete, Thomas Lucas Quincy, is about to get into a tuxedo in the fabulous and breathtaking space of five minutes. Want to race me, Fergus?”

  “With what?”

  “Oh. Sorry. That’s right. You’re going to have to show up at this extraspecial anniversary dinner in—”

  “In this, God help me. ‘And the king saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having on a wedding garment? And he was speechless.’”

  “And from the look in Brainard’s eye, he’d like to carry out the rest of it: ‘Bind us hand and foot, and take us away, and cast us into outer darkness.’”

  “My!” said Fergus. “Can psychologists quote scripture?”

  “Sure. Didn’t you know? We’re personal agents of the devil. Want to come watch my deathdefying battle with time?”

  “No thanks. There’s something I’ve got to check before dinner.”

  Tom’s easy smile vanished. “Something about… ?”

  Fergus’ lips were tight and firm, and there was a sharp glint in his green eyes. “You go get dressed,” he said dryly.

  ii

  “You can take this into the dining room,” said Stella Paris.

  Fergus lifted the cover of the sterling silver vegetable dish and looked at the peas. “Canned,” he observed unhappily.

  “I know. That’s Horace for you. He knows a man who knows a man and he can get canned goods wholesale. So the market is full of fresh peas and we eat canned. It’s a miracle we’re not having canned beef for dinner. Corcoran says What’s the good of being a cook if you’ve got nothing to cook with.”

  “Miss Paris …” Fergus began.

  “You’re being mother’s little helper, aren’t you? Take that dish in.”

  He took it. “Miss Paris …” he started again when he returned.

  “Nobody ever calls me that. I’m not used to answering to it. I’m just Stella.”

  “Stella, then. Though that does sound as sacrilegious as meeting Miss Pickford and saying ‘Hiya, Mary!’ Stella, why did you invite me here?”

  Miss Paris devoted careful attention to the stirring of the gravy. “I thought you’d guessed that,” she said at last.

  “I did guess about Valentino—my sneezes and that little mound … And I knew about the Stanhope case and put them together.”

  “Then you know why I asked you.”

  “You want me to find Martha Stanhope’s murderer? Then why won’t you talk to me? Why won’t you tell me what actually happened on the sands this afternoon? Why don’t you t
ell me the whole story of that hotel at Santa Eulalia, the story that isn’t in newspapers?”

  She stirred on. “What should I know after twenty-five years?”

  “No conceivable motive, the papers said. That’s nonsense. There hasn’t been a group of people ever, close to each other, tightly knit as you of that wedding party were, where there wasn’t some conceivable motive for death, if you probe deep enough. Motives aren’t so simple as the classifiers make out. You can’t just say, ‘She didn’t have a lover, she didn’t leave a fortune, therefore no motive.’ Talk to me about that group, tell me all you know, and let me—”

  “Fergus.” Miss Paris stopped stirring and looked at him earnestly. “I don’t think that is why I invited you. Not to find out who murdered poor dear Martha. If it’s only that, let it be only that. If Martha was … If it was one of us, let it go. We’ve all lived on since then at peace with society. We’ve lived relatively decent lives. You can’t take a man after a quarter of a century and put him in the gas chamber for something so long ago that it might as well have been done by someone else.”

  “I don’t feel that way,” said Fergus. “And especially not in this case. Not after Valentino.”

  Miss Paris nodded. “That’s it. That’s why I wanted you. Not to catch the poor devil for what he did centuries ago, but to keep him from doing it again. If Valentino was … was the same as Alys’ kitten, then we need you. And if he was … just something extra, then I don’t want you to learn too much. I don’t want the dead past to bury the living.”

  “And if I can prove to you that Valentino was not something extra?”

  “Then … Oh heavens! Lumps!” She returned her attention abruptly to the gravy. There was a minute of vigorous stirring and then at last she relaxed. “Even Horace,” she said, “would protest over lumpy gravy. Not that he has palate enough to notice its flavor.” She tasted the gravy and frowned. “Want to taste?”

  Fergus took a clean spoon and tasted. “Good,” he said reservedly.

  “Don’t be polite. I know it’s not quite right. What would you suggest?”

  Fergus thought. “I’d say a little lemon juice and a pinch, maybe, of celery salt.”