Her hand was moving over the bandages on my head now, stroking my hair. “Darling, don’t you remember? You loathed cameras. You’d never have your picture taken.”
I might have known she would have an answer ready for that. She perched herself on the arm of my wheel chair. As she did so, her hip must have hit the corner of the photograph frame, for she glanced down and, slipping her hand under the robe, pulled out the photograph.
For a moment she stared at it, her dark blue eyes narrowing very slightly. Then she laughed and kissed my ear, murmuring:
“Darling, what on earth are you doing with this dreary photo?”
I didn’t have Selena’s technique in deceit. I hesitated just a fraction too long before I said:
“I just found it. I didn’t know what I looked like. I told you. So I carried it over to the mirror to see if it was a picture of me.”
That didn’t explain, of course, why I had so obviously been concealing it under the rug or why I had “just found” something that had been in a drawer. But it was the best I could do.
Casually I said: “Is it of me, by the way? It’s hard to tell with all these bandages.”
She laughed again. “Baby, don’t be absurd. Of course it’s not you. I told you you never had your photograph taken. It’s your Cousin Benjy. Don’t you remember him? Such a dismal boy. Yale loved him though. They gave him all kinds of prizes for meteorology. Now he’s doing something gloomy about the weather in China.”
From the tone of her voice I knew I hadn’t fooled her and I cursed inwardly. She knew now that my new trusting attitude was a fake. She knew that, in spite of my protestations, I had still been suspicious enough to have sneaked into the house and snooped through drawers for the photograph. I’d lost my only advantage.
From now on they’d be doubly on their guard.
Selena tossed the photograph onto a couch and announced that she had come to wheel me back to the pool. I told her the sun was too hot and that I preferred to stay indoors for a while. I didn’t expect her to leave it at that, but she did. She must have been sure that I could do no more damage.
She smiled, kissed me, said: “Come soon, baby. We miss you,” and left me.
I had refused to go with her not because I had any idea of what to do next but simply because I felt too depressed to keep up a pretense in front of the others. The lavender-scented handkerchief, Netti, and now the photograph—one by one, with an efficiency that was appalling, the Friends had trumped all my aces.
I was left with nothing now to counteract that sensation of impending danger.
The phone on the corner table started to ring. Quickly, before the ring could attract Mrs. Friend or anyone else in the house, I rolled the chair over and picked up the receiver. My pulses were racing. I had no plan, only an instinct that any contact with the outside world was desirable. I was more cautious now, though. My latest defeat by Selena had taught me that.
I said into the receiver in a flat, impersonal voice: “Mr. Friend’s residence.”
A man’s voice replied. It sounded elderly and rather fussed. “May I speak to Mrs. Friend? Mrs. Friend Senior?”
“Mrs. Friend is out at the pool,” I lied. “Can I take a message?”
The man coughed. “I—ah—to whom am I speaking?”
Be careful, I thought.
“This is the butler. “For safety I added: “The new butler.”
“Oh,” the man paused. “Yes, perhaps you would give Mrs. Friend a message. This is Mr. Petherbridge, the—ah—late Mr. Friend’s lawyer. Please tell Mrs. Friend that I will be up tomorrow afternoon with Mr. Moffat as arranged unless I hear from her to the contrary.”
“Very well, Mr. Petherbridge.”
“Thank you. And—er—how is her son, by the way? What a distressing accident! I trust he will be well enough for—for tomorrow?”
“Yes, Mr. Friend seems pretty well considering,” I said. In my precarious role as butler, I dared ask no more than: “Tomorrow’s the day then, sir?”
“Yes, tomorrow.” Mr. Petherbridge made a strange gurgling sound that might have been a cough. “Tomorrow’s the ordeal.”
The ordeal.
“Anything else, sir?” I asked.
“No, no. That will be all. If you will be kind enough to have Mrs. Friend call me if the plans are changed. But I do not see how they can be.”
There was a click that cut me off remorselessly from contact with Mr. Petherbridge, the—ah—late Mr. Friend’s lawyer.
For a moment I sat staring at the receiver. I was still an invalid emotionally as well as physically. My control over myself was slight and that conversation, so incomprehensible and yet so filled with hints at a plan coming to a head, toppled me over into extreme anxiety. The ordeal—tomorrow. Time then was a crucial factor. I had only a few hours left before—something happened. The trapped feeling was almost more than I could endure. I felt like a fly on a fly-paper.
As I looked at the telephone, a reckless idea came. Netti was gone, but she had left something behind. She had told me that Emma, the old cook, was working for some people called Curtis on Temple Drive.
I picked up the receiver. I said to the operator:
“I want some people called Curtis on Temple Drive. I haven’t got the number.”
The wait seemed interminable. At last the operator said: “George Curtis, 1177 Temple Drive?”
“That’s it.”
“Lona 3-1410. You want me to call that number now?”
“Please.”
I heard the soft buzz of the call tone at the other end of the wire. How I would persuade Emma to come to the Friends’ house I did not know. I did not know, either, how, once I got her there, I would be able to smuggle her in and use her to expose the conspiracy. But Emma thought Mr. Friend had been murdered. Somehow I had to know what had put that idea in her mind.
As I waited, the silent room behind me seemed crowded with invisible enemies. At last the call buzz was cut. A woman’s voice said: “Yes?”
“Is that the Curtis house?”
“Yes.”
“Can I speak to the cook, please?”
“The cook? Why—er—yes. Wait a moment.”
There was a second, grueling pause. Then another female voice, hoarse and defensive, asked: “Hello. Who is it?”
“Is that Emma?”
“Who?”
“Is that Emma who used to work for the Friends? “
“Emma?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I guess you mean the cook. Old with grey hair?”
“Yes, yes,” I said.
There was a pause. Then the voice said: “She’s been gone a couple of weeks. I’m working here now.”
My heart sinking, I said: “You know where I could get in touch with her?”
“Emma? She got sick. She’s old, you know. She doesn’t work no more.”
“But do you know where she is?”
“She went off to live with her daughter. Where was it now? Wyoming? Wisconsin? One of them States.”
“Then...”
The wire was cut at the other end. Slowly I let the receiver slip out of my fingers back onto its stand.
“Telephoning, Gordy?”
I looked up. Marny was standing in the doorway. She was leaning against the door frame, a cigarette lolling from her red mouth. Her young eyes, curiously bright, were fixed on my face.
The hopelessness of escape even for a moment from the Friends’ watchfulness swept over me. I tried to smile.
“Just a call came in for mother,” I said. “A Mr. Petherbridge.”
I didn’t know how much of my disastrous call to Emma’s successor she had overheard. She gave no sign either. She moved to my side and put her hands on my shoulders. Suddenly the cynical veneer left her face and she was just a young unaccountably frightened kid. In a strange broken voice, she blurted:
“Is it too awful?”
“Too awful?”
Her lips were trembling.
“Watching what?”
“What they’re doing to you. Selena... Mimsey... Nate, all of them. They’re fiends. That’s what they are—fiends.”
Impulsively she slid onto the arm of the wheel chair. She put her arms around my neck and pressed her cheek against mine. When she spoke again, her voice was choked with sobs.
“I hate them. I’ve always hated them. They’re as bad as Father, worse.” She was kissing my cheeks, my lids, my lips, wildly. “They’ll do anything—anything and never care.”
I was staggered. Was this some new diabolic ruse of the Friend family? Or had I, incredibly, been given an ally when all hope seemed gone? I put my arm around her, drawing her close so that I felt her young breasts pressed against me. She was weeping passionately now. I kissed her hair. She shivered and clung closer.
“Tell me,” I said. “Marny, baby, tell me. What are they doing to me?”
“I can’t... I can’t... I...”
She pulled herself out of my grasp. She looked down at me, her face spattered with tears.
“I can’t... I can’t...”
She put her hand up to her mouth. She gave a little whimper. She turned, abruptly, and ran out of the room.
Chapter 12
I hurried the wheel chair out onto the porch.
“Marny,” I called. “Marny, come back.”
She was running down the grass path away from me. She paid no attention. In a moment she was out of sight through the arch which led to the swimming pool.
Fiends. That ominous word echoed in my ears. Mimsey, Selena, Nate—they’re all fiends.
And it was Marny who had said it, Marny who was in the conspiracy, Marny who knew exactly what they were going to do to me.
“Hello, dear. All alone?”
I looked up. Mrs. Friend had come out of the library and was moving towards me. Her massive beauty was opulent as the blossoming flower-beds. She had a wicker garden basket looped on one arm. In her hand she carried a large pair of garden shears. Who did she remind me of? One of the Fates? The Fate who cuts the thread of life?
“How nice, dear. I thought you’d be down with the others by the pool. We can have a little visit together. Let’s go around the corner into the patio. It’s shady there.”
She started pushing my wheel chair down the terrace, chattering blandly. My nerves were strung very high then. It was almost unendurable having her invisible behind me. I think I half expected her to plunge the scissors into my neck.
“Here we are, dear. So charming here.”
We had entered a little walled patio. Poinsettias and climbing roses in white tubs were massed along the walls. White and green porch chairs were arranged under the shade of a drooping pepper tree. Mrs. Friend maneuvered my chair close to one of the others and sat down. She produced knitting from her garden basket, and her white fingers started a flow of wool across the needles. Everything Mrs. Friend did was so unswervingly maternal. That was the most frightening thing about her.
“Well, dear”—she smiled up from the knitting—“how does it feel in the wheel chair? Overtiring yourself?”
The incidents of the past half-hour had left me limp as a grass stalk. Of all the conspirators, I was sure now that Mrs. Friend was the most formidable. If only I could break her down, the whole edifice here might collapse. But how? She was so sublimely sure of herself and I had nothing—nothing except Mr. Petherbridge.
Calmly I said: “Mr. Petherbridge just called.”
“He did, dear?”
“My father’s lawyer?”
“Yes, Gordy. I know that, of course. What did dear Mr. Petherbridge want?”
“He said to tell you he was coming tomorrow afternoon with Mr. Moffat as arranged unless he hears from you.”
She smiled. “Oh, good. Then I won’t have to telephone him.” Her monumental placidity was exasperating beyond words.
“Why’s Mr. Petherbridge coming tomorrow?” I asked.
“For the meeting, dear,” she said gently. “The Clean Living League. He’s a member, you know. Your father insisted that he join and your father was a very lucrative client. I’m afraid, as a Clean Living Leaguer, Mr. Petherbridge’s tongue is a little in his cheek.”
I said: “Then there’s going to be a meeting of the whole league here tomorrow? I thought you said it was just Mr. Moffat.”
“Oh, no, dear, the whole league.” Mrs. Friend had come to the end of one ball of wool. She took its tail and started to weave it onto the next ball. “Didn’t I make that clear? It’s to be a memorial service for your father with Mr. Moffat presiding, of course. I suppose service isn’t quite the right word. They’re not exactly a religious institution. More of a ceremony. Perhaps that’s what we should call it.”
“Mr. Petherbridge called it an ordeal,” I said.
“And so it is, my dear. You wait and see. So terribly, terribly good we have to be. No liquor, no cigarettes, of course. Not even an ashtray visible. All of us in black. No make-up. And a sort of dismal holy expression. You know, dear. Like this.” She put the knitting down and twisted her face into an expression of the most lugubrious piety.
“I do hope you’ll be able to put on the right face, dear. You must practice. Think of something that smells particularly unattractive, like a dead mouse. That’s how I do.” She sighed, “This is the very last time, Gordy. I’ve promised myself that. After tomorrow, we’re going to eschew the Aurora Clean Living League forever. My dear, if you knew how I suffered from it. Because they’re not good people. You’ll realize that when you see them. They’re disgusting, revolting hypocrites. Their whole life is one big, fat, smug sham. The times in St. Paul when I’d have given my soul to lift my skirt up over my knees and plunge into a can-can in the middle of one of Mr. Heber’s harangues! I never did, of course,” she added sadly. “I was always too scared of your dear father.”
Mrs. Friend was being charming. I was beginning to learn that she used her charm as a decoy whenever I got near a danger spot. Pulling the conversation back into the path I wanted it to take, I asked:
“And just what am I expected to do tomorrow?”
“You, dear?” A little tawny butterfly settled on Mrs. Friend’s satiny white bosom. She brushed it off tranquilly, “Why, nothing, Gordy. Just look respectable and be polite and try to pretend you’re not bored. Oh yes, and you can recite the Ode to Aurora too.” She glanced at me under her lids. “Have you learned it all yet?”
“Not all of it.”
“Then we’ll all help you tonight. Mr. Moffat would love that so because—well, dear, you were always thought of as the damned one of the family, you know. It would give him enormous satisfaction to feel you had been reformed.” She put the knitting down on her comfortable lap. “You never know, dear. Perhaps the meeting will bring your memory back. Of course you never met Mr. Moffat and you never attended one of these California meetings. But you had so much of the same thing in St. Paul. Perhaps it’ll strike a chord.”
It was a terrific strain never taking what they said at its face value, trying to catch a hint of the truth from an inflexion or an overtone. Now I was thinking: Gordy was the damned one of the family, the one with the bad reputation. If Mr. Friend had been murdered and the fact was discovered, Gordy would therefore be the most obvious suspect. And Mr. Moffat and Mr. Petherbridge had never seen Gordy. Gordy then was the only member of the family who could be represented by a substitute without the ruse being immediately obvious.
Yes, the Friends could have a sporting chance of getting away with the incredible scheme of which I suspected them—if they were daring enough.
And, heaven knew, they were daring.
Fiends. Was that what Marny had meant when she called them fiends?
Mrs. Friend’s sweetness had the effect of scented pillows smothering me. An overwhelming desire to push my way out into the open rose up in me. Surely, whatever resulted, I could be in no wo
rse a situation than I was right now.
“You want a chord struck?” I asked, deliberately challenging her. “You do want me to get my memory back?”
“Gordy, what a weird thing to say.” She put the knitting down on her lap and made a weary grimace. “Oh, dear, you’re still suspicious of us. I thought so when Selena told me how you’d ferreted that photograph of your Cousin Benjy out of the drawer.”
Selena had already passed on the news. They had a superefficient organization all right.
“Cousin Benjy?” I said. “Oh, you mean the whiz from Harvard who’s being a botanist in India.” I paused. “It is India, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Friend went on knitting serenely. “Yes, dear.”
I could hardly believe it. At last I had tripped her up. Staring straight at her, I said: “You didn’t get that story quite straight with Selena, did you?”
“Gordy, dear, what do you mean?”
“Selena said this mythical cousin Benjy went to Yale, was a meteorologist and lived in China. You should tell her not to make her lies so elaborate. With four of you working together it must be hard enough keeping the pretense going without having to memorize a lot of odd detail.”
“Really, darling. “Mrs. Friend put down her knitting again. She seemed faintly aggrieved. “What do you mean about lies? Is your Cousin Benjy a meteorologist in China? I’m sure I don’t know. He’s on your father’s side. I’ve never even met him. Selena’s much more apt to be right about it than I.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “By and large you’re much more effective than Selena. Her lie about the old woman, last night, for example. You could have done better than that.”
Whatever the consequences, it was a terrific relief to come out with that at last.
Mrs. Friend was staring at me with a surprise that seemed devoid of any alarm.
“The old woman, dear?”
“It’s not worth pretending you don’t know about her. Selena woke you up last night especially to tell you what happened.”
“My dear Gordy, please tell me what you mean or I’ll go mildly crazy.”
“It’ll save a lot of time if you get a few simple facts into your head. Selena never fooled me about the old woman, not even after the handkerchief was stolen from me. Netti told me, anyway. I was able to get that much information out of her before you fired her.”
Puzzle for Fiends Page 10