Rose's Last Summer

by Margaret Millar

  “I’m glad you did.”

  “I didn’t want to go to the police, it’s no place for a respectable woman.”

  “I suppose they came here to look at her room?”

  “They did, Tuesday afternoon before supper. Rose had left a lot of stuff behind and they went through it. But it was all just junk that she was too lazy to throw away, left it for me to clean up.”

  “Did you clean it up?”

  “No, they wouldn’t let me. They said I had to wait till after the inquest. Well, the inquest’s over.” Mrs. Cush­man rose, giving her skirt a decisive little tug. “I might as well get at it.”

  “Perhaps I could be of some help.”

  “You? Well, I don’t know. It’s real nice of you to offer.”

  “I didn’t offer out of niceness. I’m more curious about Rose than you are.”

  “It’s funny how she had that effect on people. You sort of couldn’t believe she was real, and then she turned out to be realer than anybody, you know?”

  “Yes, I know.” It was the same conclusion he and Miriam had reached, put into different words. Frank preferred Mrs. Cushman’s: Rose was realer than anybody.

  He followed Mrs. Cushman up the stairs. She paused at the top and glanced uneasily over her shoulder, as if she half-suspected that the footsteps behind her were not Frank’s.

  “I don’t relish the thought of going through her things,” she said in a whisper. “It was all right when she was alive. But a dead person’s things are creepy, they make you wonder what it’s all about.”

  Mrs. Cushman didn’t get her chance to wonder. Rose’s room was locked, and the door was triple-sealed, across the keyhole and at the top and bottom, with identical printed notices: Sealed by order of the County Admin­istrator.

  8

  Rose’s funeral—paid for not by Willett or the County Administrator, but by Dalloway—was held in Malgradi’s chapel on Friday afternoon. The solemnity of the occasion was marred by several small incidents which Rose herself might have thoroughly enjoyed.

  In the first place no one knew what minister to ask to conduct the services, since Rose’s attendance at church had been limited to getting married, and she had left no will containing funeral instructions. Still no decision had been reached by noon, so Malgradi called a conference in his office. Malgradi liked conferences and he invited everyone he could think of who might be concerned with Rose’s send-off: Greer, who declined without reason; the County Administrator, who said the estate was now out of his hands and he had no jurisdiction or interest; and Frank and Dalloway, who accepted the invitation.

  Dalloway was in a difficult mood. He said that he thought a religious service was unnecessary, inasmuch as Rose had been an atheist when he knew her and probably still was when she died.

  Malgradi made protesting little noises, like an alarmed rabbit. “If she was an atheist, all the more reason why we should give her a boost.”

  “You asked my opinion. I gave it.”

  “Perhaps, as a girl, she was baptized? Or confirmed?”

  “Never.”

  It was finally decided, under Frank’s guidance, that they choose the minister in a fair and impartial way, by looking through the yellow pages of the phone book until they found a likely-sounding name. The Reverend Pickering was selected because Pickering was the name of Malgradi’s mother-in-law.

  Pickering was sent for in a hurry and given a brief resumé of Rose’s career and character. The choice turned out to be somewhat unfortunate. The Reverend was quite elderly, his eyesight was poor and the lights in Malgradi’s chapel where Rose was resting were dim and flattering. Through this combination of circumstances, Pickering got the impression that Rose was a young woman, and hav­ing no time to prepare anything new, he fell back on his cut-off-in-the-flower-of-her-youth eulogy.

  Sensing disaster, Malgradi immediately stepped up the volume of the organ music to drown Pickering out, or at least soften the discrepancies. Pickering was a hard man

  to drown. He had competed during his lifetime with epidemics of coughs and whispers, squalls of babies, gig­gles of choir boys, and even personal attacks in the form of spitballs from the gallery and peashooters from the vestry. He had no intention of giving ground to a mere organ.

  By shouts and pantomime he indicated to the rather dazed audience that Rose was a flower and only the fairest flowers were plucked to grace the garden of the infinite.

  Hearing this, Mrs. Cushman, who had arrived late and taken a seat in the back row, assumed that she had some­how come to the wrong funeral and she immediately rus­tled out again to look for the right one.

  “Let us pray,” Pickering said, and pray he did, for the soul of this lovely young woman to enter the eternal glory and eternal youth.

  Malgradi did his best. He coughed, shuffled his feet, and under cover of his hand, made faces at a small boy on the aisle in the faint hope that the boy would become frightened and start screaming and all hell would break loose. The boy merely stuck out his tongue at Malgradi in a friendly way and refocused his attention on Pickering.

  Malgradi could stand the agony no longer. He slipped out into the corridor. Here he met Mrs. Cushman who had been wandering in and out of rooms finding out a good deal about the embalming business. The experience had unnerved her and left her quite unprepared to cope with this sudden meeting.

  “Eeeee,” Mrs. Cushman said, and made a frantic beeline for the nearest door, which happened to be that of the chapel. So she didn’t miss Rose’s funeral after all.

  It was, on the whole, exactly the kind of funeral Rose would have liked, since it left everyone in a state of con­fusion. Pickering finally exhausted himself and sat down; Malgradi locked himself in his office and took two stiff drinks of the sherry he kept to revive female mourners attacked by fainting spells; and Dalloway remarked sourly to the man sitting next to him that the whole thing had been a farce.

  The man next to him happened to be Willett. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said it was a farce.”

  Willett’s eyes were rimmed with pink and a little swol­len. Willett often cried on melancholy occasions and at sad movies while Ethel chewed gum.

  He gave Dalloway a cold look. “A farce, sir? I don’t agree.”

  “You’re Mr. Goodfield, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “My name is Haley Dalloway. I was hoping I might meet you here today.”

  “You were? Well—that is—this is my wife, Ethel. Ethel, Mr. Dalloway.”

  Ethel parked her gum deftly beside a molar and ac­knowledged the introduction with a dreamy smile. She knew who Dalloway was and she tried to warn Willett by kicking him quite smartly on the left shinbone, a gesture that produced no reaction from Willett except pain.

  “The fact is,” Dalloway said, “I’m not satisfied with the results of the inquest. Are you?”

  “I—well, I haven’t thought about it. I mean to say, it’s not my business.”

  “Justice is everybody’s business.”

  “Oh, quite, quite. But—”

  “I have a strong suspicion that there’s foul play in­volved and that it’s being hushed up.”

  “Do you really think so?” Ethel murmured. “Isn’t that interesting.”

  “It’s more than interesting. I think something should be done about it.”

  “Willett would be just thrilled to do something, wouldn’t you, Willett?”

  Willett denied this with some vigor. “I would not. For heaven’s sake, Ethel, I’m not a policeman, I’m a business­man.”

  “So am I,” Dalloway said. “My business is lumber. What’s yours, Mr. Goodfield?”

  “Dolls. That is, we manufacture dolls. The Horace Goodfield Doll Corporation of California.”

  “Let me explain my interest. You see, Rose French was my first wife and the mother of
my daughter. I came here looking for them.” Dalloway paused a moment. “Do you know a young man called Frank Clyde?”

  “I believe I—yes, yes, he was one of the witnesses yester­day.”

  “He has a curious story to tell. Would you like to hear it?”

  “No,” Willett said decisively. “I mean to say, this isn’t the time or place—”

  “Clyde claims he talked to Rose on the telephone a couple of hours after she died. Now Clyde seems to me to be a very sensible young fellow. It isn’t likely that he was mistaken about the time, no matter what the jury decided. But it’s quite possible that he was mistaken about the voice.”

  “Voice?”

  “On the telephone. It’s my conviction that he didn’t talk to Rose at all, but to an impostor. Someone, for rea­sons I can’t fathom, imitated Rose on the telephone.”

  “Isn’t that interesting,” Ethel said. “Well, we’d better be leaving now, everybody else is. It’s been so nice meet­ing you, Mr. Dalloway, and we hope you’ll come out to the house and see us sometime, don’t we, Willett?”

  Willett didn’t answer.

  “Don’t we, Willett?”

  “Oh, certainly, by all means.” Willett reached under­neath the folding chair for his hat. “Be delighted.”

  People had started to file out, talking quietly among themselves. In five minutes they were all gone. Malgradi cut the organ music, paid the Reverend Pickering off in cash and harsh words, and went in to see Rose. He stood beside the casket with his hands clasped and his head bowed.

  “Please excuse the bungling, dear Lord, and accept this woman into your heavenly kingdom where she may see the light that she did not see on earth. Thank you. Amen.”

  9

  Dalloway spent a restless night. The people in the adjoining suite gave a party and there was a woman in the crowd whose full, hearty laughter reminded him of the way Rose used to laugh.

  In the morning he phoned Captain Greer at his office.

  “This is Haley Dalloway, Captain.”

  “Yes, Dalloway.”

  “I may as well say it before you do—I have this Goodfield family on my brain.”

  “I hardly envy you.”

  “As far as you’re concerned, I expect this business about Rose is finished.”

  “It’s finished,” Greer said, “because there’s simply noth­ing to go on with.”

  “You could be wrong.”

  “I often am. You’re at liberty to correct me if you can.”

  “That’s the trouble. I have nothing definite except Clyde’s statement.”

  “Which is hardly definite enough.”

  “I realize that. Call it a hunch, if you like, but I have a strong feeling that at some time or another Rose had a connection with the Goodfields.”

  “What if she had?”

  “They deny it. That’s suspicious in itself—if, of course, there was a connection.”

  “My own opinion is that the Goodfields are exactly what they seem. The mother’s a tyrant, Goodfield is a mouse, and his wife has forty-eight cards in the deck. If I investigated every family like it, I’d be working seventy-two hours a day. The Goodfields are more along Clyde’s line than mine.”

  “Then you intend to drop the case?”

  “Officially it’s dropped.”

  “What about unofficially?”

  “Some time if I ever get up to Frisco I may drop in to see how dolls are being made these days. No pun in­tended.”

  “That’s really very good of you,” Dalloway said ear­nestly. “I appreciate it.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, after all, Rose was my wife.”

  “You didn’t see her for thirty years, the bonds couldn’t have been too strong.”

  “Perhaps I’m getting sentimental in my old age.”

  “Perhaps, but I wouldn’t bet a plugged nickel on it.” There was a pause, and a rustle of paper. “We’ve had no word so far on your daughter, Lora.”

  “I didn’t expect any.”

  “To be perfectly realistic about it, the police don’t break their necks on these voluntary disappearance cases unless a minor is involved. When a girl’s old enough to vote and earn a living, she’s old enough to leave home.”

  “She’s never earned a living, but I suppose that’s beside the point.”

  “What is the point?”

  “I merely want to find out where and how she is. I have no intention of forcing her to return home or anything like that. But the fact is she’s my only child, I’m no longer young, and I have a fair amount of money to leave behind. Before I make another will, I want to know just how that money’s going to be spent.”

  “You mean if you find her married to a bum, no money, eh?”

  “Not a cent.”

  “Those are hard words for such a sentimental man.”

  Dalloway laughed. “Money and sentiment don’t mix.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Greer said. “I’ve never had enough of either to try mixing them.”

  “I’ll hear from you then, perhaps soon?”

  “Perhaps soon, perhaps never. I haven’t committed my­self.”

  “By the way, I would like to look over the things Rose left behind in her room, but I was told by Clyde that it was sealed.”

  “Not anymore. One of the boys from the County Ad­ministrator’s office made a routine check through every­thing in case any money or valuables were hidden around. Nothing was found.”

  “I suppose they checked thoroughly?”

  “That’s their job. They examine every feather in the pillows, every book, magazine, picture, mattress, letter—”

  “I get it. You wouldn’t have any objection if I went and took a look around myself, though?”

  “None at all. Just square yourself with Mrs. Cushman. It’s her house, and if she doesn’t want to let you in, no one can force her to.”

  Force was not necessary. Mrs. Cushman was flabber-gasted by the appearance, in the flesh, of one of Rose’s husbands. Until the moment when Dalloway introduced himself at the front door, Mrs. Cushman had viewed Rose’s husbands as legendary creatures who might or might not have really existed.

  “My land, I’ve heard Rose mention the name Haley Dalloway a hundred times.” Mrs. Cushman’s tone im­plied that each of the hundred mentions had been flatter­ing; nothing could have been further from the truth.

  “It’s nice to know that Rose didn’t forget me,” Dallo­way said dryly.

  “Oh dear, no, she didn’t forget you, I should say not. She often said—” Mrs. Cushman paused, trying desper­ately to invent something pleasant that Rose might have said, but the task was beyond her. “She spoke of you frequently. She was a great talker, Rose was. But look who’s telling who. I bet she talked your arm off.”

  It was at this point that she noticed that Dalloway’s arm was indeed talked off, or at any rate missing.

  Dalloway touched his artificial arm, casually. “Rose didn’t talk it off, she merely tried.”

  “I didn’t mean—I—”

  “Please don’t be embarrassed. I’m not.”

  “It was real tactless of me. That’s what my late husband used to say, that every time I opened my mouth I put my foot in it.”

  To avoid further marital reminiscences, Dalloway told her why he had come, and Mrs. Cushman led him up­stairs explaining, as she paused on the landing, that she hadn’t had the spirit to clean Rose’s room and it was very likely a mess.

  It was. The bed, the bureau, the chairs were strewn with old magazines, dresses, stockings, underwear, letters, sachets, empty containers of makeup, a discarded light bulb, an apple, and a flattened and distorted red rose that looked as though it had been recently pressed between the pages of a book.

  Dalloway glanced around the room, frowning. It w
as a crude ending for a sentimental journey.

  “A real mess,” Mrs. Cushman said with considerable satisfaction. Cleaning up a real mess was more enjoyable than cleaning up a half mess, since the results were more startling.

  “I thought Rose had given up this room,” Dalloway said.

  “She did.”

  “It seems odd that she’d leave so much stuff behind, especially clothing. I understood she was broke.”

  “Couldn’t be broker. She was always behind in her rent. Impractical, Rose was—not wishing to speak ill of the dead, but that’s the honest truth.”

  “When did she decide to leave? Did she give you any notice?”

  “Not a minute’s notice. Monday at lunchtime she comes in, hands me the money she owed me, and says she’s leav­ing to take a job out of town. Inside of twenty minutes she was gone, taking just that one suitcase with her best clothes in it. Gone like that.” Mrs. Cushman snapped her fingers. “Of course I knew she was up to something be­cause of the maps.”

  “What maps? I don’t see any.”

  “She must of took them with her. She had a lot of maps that she’d marked things on with a pencil.”

  “Things such as?”

  “I didn’t pay too close attention, but I remember one where she’d written some people’s names on the top and some dates beside the names.”

  “Can you recall any of them?”

  “Phil was one. And Baker, I remember that because it was my maiden name. Now let me think a minute, don’t rush me.”

  Dalloway went over to the bureau and picked up the pressed rose while Mrs. Cushman thought a minute.

  “Paul. That’s another,” she said finally. “And Byron. Or Bernard, was it? Yes, it was Bernard.”

  “Any women’s names?”

  “I can’t recall any, but I think there was. Yes, I’m sure there was. Millie or Minnie, something like that.”

  “And a date beside each name?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you make of it?”