SKULDOGGERY
by Fletcher Flora
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
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The Brass Bed
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Copyright
1
IT WAS, all in all, quite a pleasant funeral. At the cemetery, the sun was shining but it was cool under the elms beside the family mausoleum, and you could smell the red clover that grew wild in the field beyond. Uncle Homer was there, and Aunt Madge, and Junior, and Flo, and Flo’s twins, Hester and Lester. And, of course Grandfather Hunter. As a matter of statistics, it was Grandfather’s funeral. He was, in a manner of speaking, the host.
Everyone was grateful to Grandfather for dying, and was, consequently, in a good humor. Uncle Homer was sober for a change, even though it was already three o’clock in the afternoon, and Aunt Madge and Flo kept scraps of cambric pressed to dry eyes in a decent pretense of sorrow that was proper and convincing even when Flo, at the church, caught a short nap. Junior and Lester, being young men with expensive tastes and meager funds, amused themselves by anticipating the fruits of Grandfather’s will, which would be all the sweeter for coming to them in the natural course of events, the old man having departed, however reluctantly without the slightest nudge. Of all the mourners, though, the most impeccably impressive by far was Hester. Throughout the brief ceremony, her eyes were lifted to a cotton cloud drifting slowly across a pale blue sky, as if Grandfather were riding it bareback into heaven, and her face was so serene and lovely that Uncle Homer, observing it, felt a faint twinge in his leathery heart and was diverted for a few seconds from his dream of a five-to-one martini.
The ceremony completed and Grandfather properly disposed of, the mourners returned to the two black limousines, supplied by the undertaker, that would return them to Grandfather’s house in town. They returned, as they had come, in family units. Uncle Homer and Aunt Madge and Junior rode ahead in the first limousine, Flo and Lester and Hester following in the second. A glass partition separated chauffeur and passengers, and so it was unnecessary to sustain the fiction of excessive grief, or of any grief at all, although it would have been unwise, of course, to demonstrate excessively any contrary emotion. As for Flo, relief was sufficient, she felt, and she expressed it simply by putting away her scrap of dry cambric and settling back with a sigh between her twins.
“Well, children,” she said, “Father is gone at last.”
“So he is,” Lester said, “and if you ask me, I’ll have to say that he took his own sweet time about going.”
“You’re so impatient, darling,” Flo said. “You should try to develop a little more self-discipline. Things generally turn out for the best in the end. As you see, Father has died naturally of a bad liver, and there are no unpleasant consequences.”
“I wonder,” Hester said. “I must admit that I was rather uneasy until the medical examination was completed.”
“Perhaps it was your conscience, Sister,” Lester said. “Did you tamper with the old man’s soup or something?”
“Nothing of the sort. My concern was quite unselfish. I confess, however, that I should hate to be known as the twin sister of a man who was hanged.”
“No fear. Grandfather’s liver has removed that grim possibility. I’ll not deny that the pressure has been considerable. I have several unreasonable creditors.”
“Darling,” said Flo, “I wish you would try to be more careful with money.”
“Yes, darling,” Hester said. “Especially with money that you don’t have.”
“In present circumstances,” Lester said, “that is merely a technicality. As an heir, I’ve suddenly become a good risk, and I’m sure that everyone concerned will be happy to wait until Grandfather’s will is probated. I anticipate, as a matter of fact, that I’ll be able to reestablish my credit sufficiently to survive on it in the meantime.”
“It would be a gas if Grandfather left you only what you deserve, which is clearly nothing whatever.”
“Don’t even breathe such a hideous thought, Sister. Anyhow, it would be unfortunate for you and Mother, if you were lucky enough to miss exclusion on the same grounds as I. It would reduce me, I mean, to the status of an expensive dependent.”
“In a pig’s eye.”
“You mustn’t quarrel like naughty children,” Flo said. “Father assured me that he remembered us all generously in his will, and so there is no need for apprehension.”
“Nevertheless,” said Hester, “I’ll feel better when the exact terms of the will are known. Grandfather was a crafty old devil in many ways, and I don’t mind saying that he never inspired me with complete confidence.”
“I agree that it will relieve matters to have the terms known at once,” Flo said. “That’s why Homer and I, as Father’s only issue and principal heirs, have arranged to have the will read this very afternoon.”
“Mother,” said Hester, “I wish you wouldn’t be so smug about being a principal heir. It’s entirely possible that you won’t be anything of the kind.”
“Yes,” Lester said, “and I wish you wouldn’t refer to yourself as an issue. It sounds like you’d come out of a vending machine or something.”
‘Well, what a perfectly disagreeable thing to say. Lester, you should be ashamed for speaking in such manner to your own mother.”
Flo was so offended by being spoken to in such a manner that she sat erect and expressed her disapproval by staring aloofly out the limousine window past Lester’s handsome nose, finishing the ride in silence. As an appropriate tempo to grief, the cars had been moving slowly through the city streets, the first spaced neatly ahead and constantly in sight of the second, and in due time, in that order and so paced, they reached the house of the late Grandfather Hunter. It was a huge house of yellowish stone set well back from the street behind a deep lawn bearing oaks and pines and sycamores. It was approached by a brick drive and surrounded by an ancient iron picket fence. The drive entered the grounds on the east and exited, after completing half of an elipse, on the west. On both sides of a walk that bisected the half-elipse from street to house were a pair of cast-iron deer, one grazing through all the seasons on grass green or brown, the other fixed in an attitude of alarmed listening, presumably to the stealthy approach of a beast of prey from the general direction of the garage in the rear.
The place was, in brief, a monstrosity of the first chop and a white elephant of the highest order. No sane person would have wanted to live in it, unless Grandfather Hunter could have been considered in legal possession of his wits, and probably the best thing that could be done with it, now that Grandfather had vacated, would be to sell it to the city for a museum or an orphanage or maybe a reform school. As the only surviving son, who had every moral right to anticipate this real estate, Uncle Homer had already considered carefully its disposition, and had, indeed, laid out a strategy involving the exploitation of several vulnerable officials. He can be excused, then, for waiting in the drive beneath a portico, after Aunt Madge and Junior had gone inside, to welcome his sister and her twins as if it were his perogative, as well as his duty.
“Well,” he asid, “here we are, aren’t we? Flo, I must say that you’ve survived the ordeal of Father’s last rites beautifully. You look as fresh as a mint julep. Did you ever in the world hear such monstrous hyperbole dished u
p by a member of the clergy? You’d think they’d have more regard for the truth, wouldn’t you?”
“He was a dreadful old bore,” Flo said, referring to the member of the clergy, “but I confess that I am myself inclined to see Father in a more favorable light, now that he is securely in the family mausoleum. After all, he at least had the virtue of being rich.”
“You are right there, Flo. You have expressed the matter exactly, as usual. Hester, my dear, you are positively radiant. I noticed it at the cemetery. As serene and lovely as an angle. Whatever were you thinking about?”
“That’s easy,” said Lester. “It was all that beautiful money of Grandfather’s.”
“I don’t really remember,” Hester said, “but you may be right.”
Uncle Homer chuckled and patted his neat little pot that was growling softly for gin.
“It’s as well to be candid in these things,” he said. “Flo, you have a charming pair here. You should be proud of them.”
“They’re incorrigible,” Flo said. “They say naughty things to their mother.”
“Is that so? Children, that’s too bad of you. You shouldn’t say naughty things to your mother.”
“We only say them because they’re true,” Lester said.
“Well, never mind. We mustn’t engage in a family spat.” They had by this time moved from the drive into the front hall of the house, which had the dimensions and atmosphere of a small hotel lobby, and Uncle Homer waved a stubby arm at a massive oak door leading from it at the rear. “We are gathering in the library. Brewster is not here yet, but I expect him any minute.”
“Homer,” said Flo, “I hope you’ve made sure that we won’t be interrupted.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. I let it be known explicitly that we would not receive callers after the ceremony.”
They went along the hall and into the library. Aunt Madge and Junior were waiting there, Aunt Madge in a high-backed walnut chair with Grandfather’s Chihuahua looking lonely and deserted on her lap, and Junior idling along the wall-shelves reading the titles of books, which was as much of any book as Junior had ever read, even during the three years he had spent as a freshman in three colleges here and there. As the others entered, he reached the hiatus of a window and a window seat, and he collapsed on the seat and crossed his legs and regarded Hester with the admiration that she customarily incited and expected.
“Greetings, Cousin Hester,” he said. “You too, Cousin Lester.”
“Oh, never mind me,” Lester said. “I don’t mind being omitted.”
“I wouldn’t mind it myself,” Hester said, “so far as that goes.”
“Are you children being disagreeable?” Aunt Madge said.
“Not at all,” Hester said. “Lester was referring, on the contrary, to Junior’s expression of extraordinary affection. He appears to be considering the pleasures of a brood of little cretins.”
“Cretins? What on earth does she mean? Homer, what are cretins?”
“It’s all right, Madge, dear,” Uncle Homer said. “A cretin is what Junior is, and therefore it is perfectly logical that he should have a brood of them.”
“Well, all right, then. I’m sure that Junior will do what is right and logical.”
“In my opinion,” said Junior, “it is a myth that cousins are sexually incompatible.”
“It may be a myth that they are sexually incompatible for the reason of being cousins,” Hester said, “but there are plenty of other reasons I can name if necessary.”
“I’m sure,” said Aunt Madge, “that this is no time to be talking about sex. Hester and Junior, you should be ashamed of yourselves.”
“Quite right,” said Lester. “This is the time to be talking about money.”
Hester sat down on an ancient sofa of leather and oak that she suspected of being stuffed with horsehair. She drew her legs up under her, displaying a pretty pair of nylon knees, and looked at Aunt Madge with a stony expression.
“Aunt Madge,” she said “must you hold that nasty, naked little bitch on your lap?”
“I must say that I agree with Cousin Hester, Mother,” Junior said. “She has the look of an obscene rat.”
Aunt Madge, driven by this critical assult to a defensive attitude, scratched the Chihuahua between the ears with an index finger and assumed a haughty indignation.
“Surely,” she said, “you do not mean this dear little dog.”
“Inasmuch as she is the only nasty, naked little bitch on your lap,” said Hester, “we surely do.”
“I’d like to remind you,” Aunt Madge said, “that she was your late Grandfather’s precious pet, and was allowed every privilege.”
“You don’t have to remind me,” Hester said, “and I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Grandfather,” Lester said, “was in many ways a simple-minded old curmudgeon.”
“As his only surviving son,” Uncle Homer said, “I am in no position to deny it. What I am in a position to do, however, is to offer everyone a nice martini. Father, as you know, was drier than Woodrow Wilson, but I took the opportunity, immediately after his sad departure, to lay in a small stock of gin and vermouth. Just to see me through the difficult days of final arrangements, you understand. It’s in the kitchen, and so I’ll just go and mix up a pitcher.”
He headed directly for the kitchen, and Hester, who had been nagged by awareness of an incongruity she couldn’t quite place, watched him go with sudden sympathy and understanding.
“Now I’ve got it,” she said. “I’ve been wondering and wondering what was different about Uncle Homer. He’s sober.“
“How could you have missed it?” Junior said. “Let me tell you that it’s been almost more than I could bear. Sober, Father is a frightening apparition.”
“Speaking of frightening apparitions,” Lester said, “where in the devil is old Brewster?”
2
AS IT HAPPENED, old Brewster was directly outside in the hall, and he came in immediately as if on cue. In his case, the apparition tag was not altogether inappropriate. He was tall and incredibly thin with a big bald head and a long cadaverous face with eyes sunk deep in purple pockets. His gait when moving normally was not so much a walk as a kind of fast lope, as if at any moment he might break into a gallop, and his arms and legs seemed to fly in all directions in a multiplicity of acute and obtuse angles. Hester had once remarked, in a flash of inspiration, that he looked as if he were constantly in a rush to get to an anatomy lecture on the human skeletal structure. Not as a student or the lecturer, she said, but as a speciman.
“Well, here you are, here you are,” he said. “Ready and waiting, I see. How are you, Madge? Flo? Junior? Hester and Lester? Where’s Homer?”
“He’s out in the kitchen mixing up a batch of martinis,” Junior said.
“Hardly necessary, I should say. Hardly appropriate. It could have waited, I should say, until after the conclusion of our business. I greatly fear, Junior, that your father is an addict.”
“What he is,” said Junior, “is a lush.”
“Perhaps he would have waited,” Hester said, “if you hadn’t been so late. You can hardly expect a person to sit around forever as dry as pop corn. Especially Uncle Homer.”
“Late? Who was late?” Willis Brewster consulted a huge pocket watch and waved it indignantly at the end of its long chain. “Young lady, I was precisely on time. I am always precisely on time. I make a point of it. A point.”
“Well, you needn’t make it over and over. You have come to read Grandfather’s will, if I understand the occasion correctly, and I suggest you get on with it.”
Brewster had appropriated the library table, depositing a worn brief case upon it and himself behind it. Now, before answering, he loosened the straps of the case and removed from it a sheaf of legal-sized sheets. He placed the sheaf beside the case and patted it as gently as if it were the Chihuahua’s head.
“In good time. Good time. As it is, I declare that we are rushing things a bit,
I was against it from the beginning. From the beginning. I said so to Homer. Also to you, Flo, if you will be so kind as to remember. I was for a decent interval. A few days, at least. At least. It would have shown proper respect for the late Artemus Hunter.”
“As for me,” said Lester, “I am trying not to lose proper respect for the late Willis Brewster.”
“Late? Never. Not I, young man. Not I. I repeat that I was precisely on time.”
“For God’s sake, Lester,” said Hester, “will you please stop making him repeat things? At this rate, we’ll never know what’s in the will.”
“You mustn’t be so impatient, darling,” Flo said. “Father assured me that we were all remembered generously.”
“It is well known that Grandfather’s idea of generosity was not quite the same as mine. I for one would appreciate being reassured as quickly as possible.”
“We must wait for Homer,” Brewster said. “What the devil is keeping Homer? It strikes me that he is taking an inordinate time. Inordinate.”
“That’s because you are a teetotaler and have no understanding of Uncle Homer’s position,” Hester said. “Making a batch of martinis is a sensitive operation. It requires time and precision.”
“Thank you, my dear, for that perceptive comment,” said Uncle Homer, appearing all at once with a tray bearing a pitcher and six glasses and a small bowl of olives. “Brewster, what’s kept you? We’ve been waiting and waiting for you.”
“He was on time,” Hester said. “Precisely. For God’s sake, don’t get him started on that again.”
“No matter, no matter. Brewster, if you were a little late, no harm has been done.” Uncle Homer set his tray on the table and began to pour martinis around. “There are only six glasses, Brewster, but I seem to remember that you don’t indulge. Will you have a glass of orange juice or something?”
“Nothing to drink. Nothing. I will, however, if you don’t mind, just have one or two of those olives.”
Uncle Homer stared at him for a moment with his little mouth gaping.
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