The smile was still on only one side of his mouth. And his eyes looked those shards at me. But he did answer. “Helping out generally. Bags. Kitchen. Dining room. Getting groceries, since I have a car.”
He did not appear to be trying to impress us with the car. I assumed it was the old black Chevy that I’d passed. But at my age, any car would impress me; I mean owning one.
He said, “What do you do?”
“I work. Seven days a week, three meals a day. Waitressing.”
“Wow.” He said this without emphasis, quite sarcastically.
Ralph did not like me, probably because he was onto the fact that I did not like him and, consequently, might be trouble. But his dislike seemed more focused. “Excuse me,” he said, “but I’ve got to get my stuff out of my car.”
We said good-bye and I watched him leave and then followed. I stood outside of the garage and I looked as he walked to the Chevy and opened the trunk. He took out two cheap-looking suitcases and a hatbox.
A hatbox.
A bellhop.
Wow. With emphasis.
I watched him carry these things, shoving the smaller case up under his armpit and holding the larger one underneath by its handle, as if he’d had bellhop experience. The hatbox he held in his other hand.
He was heading toward the back door in the far wing, and I wondered if Mrs. Davidow had put him up on the third floor, where the least of us had our rooms. In other words, the third floor was empty except for me.
Keeping well behind, I followed him. He went through the door to the back staircase, which lay down a short hallway. I made sure I heard his feet ascending before I put my own foot on the stair. His feet stopped at the second-floor landing and continued along that hall.
He wasn’t to sleep on the third floor, for which I was grateful. When I saw him turn the corner on the second floor and keep on down the long hall, I followed.
His room was on that hall, where Will’s was, and Mill’s beside it. I peeked around the corner and saw Ralph Diggs had entered a room halfway down; number 51.
Now, all of this following was, of course, unnecessary simply to find out his room number. But I think it was in the nature of Ralph Diggs that he should be followed.
The hotel was often silent when you got above the main floor, especially as we had so few guests. So I could tell when Ralph Diggs left his room after a few minutes. I realized that if he came back this way, I’d be exposed, and was about to slip into an empty room, but then I heard his footsteps getting farther away. He would go down by way of the stairs that ended up outside of the dining room.
I waited until the silence became even more silent, as if a thick layer of fog had come down to muffle every sound. Then I crept down the hall to number 51, on the right. The door, I was surprised to see, was open, or halfway open. I put my hand to it and pushed a little. The suitcases were on the bed, also open. It was as if Ralph Diggs had nothing in the world to hide.
Except the hatbox. That I didn’t see. He must have put it in the wardrobe.
I stood there, scratching my elbows and debating. I had never searched a guest’s room, never tried to look at their possessions, opening drawers, looking under beds or in wardrobes. That was mostly because our guests were boring and probably wouldn’t have anything I wanted to see.
But that hatbox, now, that was interesting. There was a movie called Night Must Fall. Robert Montgomery played a bellhop in a big hotel, who carried a hatbox around. He charmed a rich old lady in a wheelchair so much that she had him move into her little house. Her companion, played by Rosalind Russell, was really suspicious of him, and he knew it.
The house was in the woods, where it always seemed to be dark or in deep shadow, and where the branches of trees dripped rain.
There was a great mystery surrounding one of the hotel guests, a woman who had disappeared. Finally, they found her body in the woods. It didn’t have a head—
“Looking for me, are you?”
The voice fell like the hand on my shoulder that I lurched to shake off.
Ralph Diggs stood there with one of the towels from his room slung over his shoulder. How stupid of me! He hadn’t walked down to the stairs; he’d simply walked the few doors down to the hall bathroom. Few of our guest rooms had private baths.
“No,” I said. “I mean, I just wondered if you were going to help out at dinner.”
“Am I supposed to? Lola didn’t say anything about it.”
Lola? He was calling her by her first name?
“Maybe”—I looked upward, as if I could see all the way to the fourth floor—“you could take a drink up to my great-aunt Aurora Paradise.” I smiled. “She always has a drink before dinner. It would help because there’s a dinner party tonight and I’ll be really busy.”
He did not say yes or no, as if it were his choice. “Doesn’t she come down to dinner?”
“Oh, no. No. She never comes down. She lives up on the fourth floor.” I jabbed my finger toward the staircase at the end of the hall. “You could say she’s a . . . recluse.”
“Sounds a little crazy.” He pulled the towel from his shoulder. We were both still standing in his doorway.
That, I thought, was impertinent and forward. I wondered how far forward he would get with Aurora Paradise. “I was just wondering—why are you here? In Spirit Lake?”
A shrug that hardly touched his shoulders. “Just passing through.”
But he wasn’t, was he?
He was stopping and staying.
14
I hightailed it back up to Squirrel Hall and banged on the door. I wanted to see if I could get any information out of Will and Mill about him.
Blood out of a stone would have been easier as well as a bit less frustrating. Did they know anything about Ralph Diggs? No. Why was he here? Shrug shrug. Where had he come from?
Mill stopped trailing his fingers along the piano keys, like lifting his hand from river water. “Doylestown.”
“Doylestown? Where’s that?”
Mill shrugged. “Pennsylvania?” He returned the hand to his river of music.
Will said, looking at his “production notes” book, which looked to me like one of the Hotel Paradise registers, “We’ll find a part for him.”
“Part? Well, good grief, he’s not a kid! He wouldn’t want to be in a play with us.”
Will looked at me as if I’d gone crazier than usual. “Are you joking?”
That, apparently, was all that needed to be said. He turned a page of the book.
I gave up on Ralph. I didn’t know what to ask. So I just said, “Why do you need that clumsy, hard-to-hold book?”
“All producers have them.”
“They also have money, Broadway, and paid actors.”
He smiled, undaunted. “Well, they don’t have me and Mill.”
To Will, this was just stating a fact. If David O. Selznick had given him the nod, he would have nodded back and checked his schedule. I have never known anyone, not even the Sheriff, with such steely confidence as Will. I can’t imagine where he got it.
As a musical backdrop for our conversation, Mill’s fingers were flying all over the keyboard. He was probably making up his variation of a gospel piece they’d heard over at the Tabernacle. Putting their own words to gospel music was a favorite pastime.
“Okay,” Will said. “You can be Patty Flynn.” He snapped the book shut.
I frowned. “Who’s Patty Flynn?”
“The murderee. The victim.”
“That’s my whole part?” I’d only been guessing when I told Ree-Jane I was the victim.
“As of now.” He was chewing his Teaberry gum mercilessly.
“Wait. You mean you haven’t finished writing it?”
“We’ve got most of it down. We’re kind of hung up on who killed you and why.”
I just looked at him. He was unfazed by the look. “In Perry Mason, the whole point is who did it and why.”
“That’s TV.” He moved hi
s gum to the other side of his mouth. “This is theater.”
I ignored that distinction. “But it’s a mystery. That’s what they are. They go by certain rules—”
Will interrupted with a blubber of his lips.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Why was I arguing?
He didn’t answer. Instead, he yelled over to Mill, who was pounding out a tune I didn’t know. “You finished that number?”
Mill raised a hand with a thumb up.
“Great! I’ll be over if Emma ever stops talking.”
“What number?”
“Look. I haven’t got time to go into all the details right now.” He looked at his big-faced cheap and showy watch.
“Wait. Wait. It sounds like Murder in the Sky is going to be one of your musicals.”
“Yeah. So?”
“A murder-mystery musical?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Those two things just don’t go together.” I nearly whined this out.
“We’ve got some neat numbers. The one we do at the beginning after you drop down dead is terrific. So. Are you playing Patty Flynn or not?”
“But all I know about her so far is she’s dead.”
“Well, she’s alive when the curtain goes up.”
“Then does she—do I have lines?”
Will had to think, which meant he was right now inventing one. His gum was stilled and his lips moved ever so slightly. He was being Patty Flynn. “Okay. Patty is pretty old, around fifty—”
“Don’t let Mrs. Davidow hear you say that.”
“—and she’s kind of arrogant. Rich, filthy rich. A lot of her money is tied up in jewelry. Diamonds, mostly. She’s carrying it with her on the plane—”
“The jewelry?”
“Yeah.”
“Is she wearing some?” I had never worn diamonds. This was not surprising, given I was twelve.
“Yea-ah, I guess she is.”
He guessed. It was clear that very little, if any, thought had been given to the story or Patty Flynn. “Who else is in it?”
Will opened the production notes again and ran his finger down the page as if he had so many possible actors to choose from, he couldn’t remember the ones he’d picked. Picked? He didn’t have any to pick.
“Chuck. He’s playing an airplane steward and maybe someone else.”
They had to double up on parts, there were so few performers.
His finger stopped again. “There’s Paul. He may be a stowaway besides handling the clouds.”
Paul was, at the moment, up in the rafters, and I hoped he was tied there.
“You mean you’re using those fake clouds again, the same ones we used in Medea, the Musical?”
“Sure. That creates the illusion of being up in the air.”
“Listen, I don’t want to be up in the air if that’s where Paul is. I don’t want to be anywhere near Paul.”
“Well, you won’t care. You’re dead.”
Dead was no protection against Will’s and Mill’s imaginations.
He went on. “Then, June. She’ll be a passenger.”
“June Sikes? You can’t have her again!”
“She did a great job as Medea.”
I stepped closer. “She’s got a reputation.”
“So did Medea.” He snorted out a laugh. “Then we might bring back the Hummers.”
That was truly outlandish. “They’re just little kids you scared up because you needed a Greek chorus. And one of them you even shanghaied!”
“Who? Bessie?” He shrugged. “She’s gone now.”
This was the lonesome child who’d been wandering the croquet court; only four, and if she’d stuck around she might never have got to five.
“When will they hum in this one? That’s all they do is go huuummm.” I drew it out to make a point. Not to Will. I never scored a point there.
He didn’t bother answering that. “And we’ve got June’s sister for the stewardess.”
“Reba Sikes. Oh, swell. Well, except for her, all the cast is the same as in Medea.”
“Yeah. It’s repertory.”
“It’s what?”
“Repertory. Exclusive. It’s when you use the same actors again and again. Look, I can’t stand here jawing with you all day. I’ve got things to do.”
“Well, but when do you hand out scripts?”
“After we’re finished, of course.”
“When will that be? I want to know what Patty Flynn is like.”
Mill’s piano started up, and so did Will:O Patty Flynn,
Where have you been?
In your granma’s basement bathroom
Drinkin’ bathtub gin again?
It was all I could take, so I left.
15
Hours later, I came downstairs to find Ralph sitting on the porch with the Duchess of Devonshire, rocking and smoking, sending streams of smoke upward as if he owned the air.
Ree-Jane was doing her appreciative laugh in answer to something he’d said, her head thrown back, ruby lips parted.
Their backs were to the front screen door, so I stood behind it and listened to hear if either said anything quotable.
“So how . . . be staying?”
“. . . business . . .”
“What . . . ?”
The tall backs of the rockers muffled their voices, especially Ralph’s as his was deep. Ree-Jane’s was often high and screechy, so her words carried better. But from the little I could make out, Ralph Diggs was here on some kind of business. Then why had he said he was just passing through? And she was speaking to him as if he were a guest, not an employee.
I heard her high-pitched laugh again. It was mirthless.
He would of course charm her to death.
I thought of Night Must Fall.
“Why don’t you like him?” I said to my mother as she slid a chicken breast onto Aurora’s dinner plate. Just a moment ago, she had said hiring Ralph might not have been the best idea in the world.
“Like who?”
I rolled my eyes. “This Ralph-Rafe Diggs.”
“I don’t know; he just seems suspicious. Hand me that napkin.”
“It’s Chicken Cordon Bleu, isn’t it?” I knew my chicken, at least my mother’s. I knew my French too, if it was attached to food.
“It is.” She was wiping a narrow stream of chicken juiciness from the rim of the plate. Peas from the Emerald City of Oz were spooned onto it.
“I don’t think Great-Aunt Aurora likes this kind of chicken.”
“I don’t think I care.” Mashed potatoes, pooled with butter, crowned with a snip of parsley, made up the plate.
“But if she likes chicken at all, how could she not like this?” I said.
I took note of how quickly my mother and I could change the subject of suspicious bellhops to food.
It was another “Night of the Baby Bibbs” with Mrs. Davidow hovering over them protectively. She seemed to look on these lettuces as the communion wafers of the Hotel Paradise. I liked to imagine Father Freeman on a Sunday, as he was going down the line, placing tiny Bibb lettuces on the tongues of his flock, then coming back with a chalice of French dressing.
“Emma!”
Vera jumped me right out of my church visit.
“Don’t put too much dressing on them; don’t use the ladle, use a spoon.”
I liked the big ceramic pot of French dressing. At the bottom, an onion sat, marinating for a long time like a hermit in a cave. I liked to stir the dressing and watch it bind together, the oil and vinegar, the paprika, garlic, salt, pepper, sugar.
“All right,” I said. “Who’s coming?”
“The Custises and their party.” She sniffed.
Vera had a thin, angular nose, good for disdainful sniffing. When she sailed out into the dining room in her black uniform with starched white cuffs as sharp as knives, she could have cut the Custises’ throats by passing the Parker House rolls. I dwelt on this image awhile and then started ladling out
the dressing.
Now Lola Davidow was back, martini in hand, to make sure herself I didn’t drown the baby Bibbs. Seeing they still breathed, she grunted and went away.
I counted the salads, subtracting two for Miss Bertha and “her party” and one more for Mr. Muggs, our traveling salesman.
That left eight salads, so that was the number of the Custis “party.” I myself couldn’t stand the Custises. They lived in one of the big white frame houses across the highway on nearly an acre of land. They were “summer people” and liked to take over each and every holiday and event they could. Every summer there was a tennis tournament, where they’d play mixed doubles, but were always so hung-over they had a hard time seeing the net. But they made sure they were at the center of every cocktail party, every corn and weenie roast, every dance and prize award.
Ree-Jane drifted in (she didn’t seem tied to earth) and came over and leaned on the salad table. She’d lean on one hand, jutting her shoulder up and hip out in what I guess she thought was a model’s pose. All she wanted was to make sure I noticed her new dress.
“I don’t think I’ll have a salad tonight.”
Eleven baby Bibbs breathed a sigh of relief.
When I didn’t mention the dress, she said “We went to Europa today.”
Europa was Heather Gay Struther’s dress shop. It was expensive, and that’s where the Davidows got their clothes. She was wearing a caramel-colored, off-the-shoulder silky dress; she held out the skirt. “How do you like it?”
“It’s okay. Excuse me.” I brought a ladle of dressing dangerously close to where she leaned.
“Rafe thinks it’s beautiful.” Here, she gave me a big-eyed look, as if she really wondered. “Or haven’t you met Rafe yet?”
“You mean Ralph? The bellboy replacement?”
“Rafe. It’s the English pronunciation.”
“I know. It rhymes with ‘safe.’ ”
“He prefers to be called Rafe.”
I wondered if this was true, or if she was telling me he did so she could keep saying Rafe, Rafe.
She watched me do the salads for a minute, then said, “I might have a lobster tail for dinner.”
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