The Withdrawing Room

by Charlotte MacLeod

  And why should she have expected Mr. Bittersohn to drop his own work and rush to the rescue of a woman who couldn’t even afford to pay? With art thefts becoming more fashionable every day, he must already have plenty of profitable cases on his hands. She’d meant to deal with her own problems. Only she hadn’t expected to have to cope with anything like Miss Mary Smith.

  Sarah stared down at the small mountain of raw carrot she’d accumulated. “What on earth am I going to do with all this?” she wondered. Put the surplus to soak in cold salt water and pray for guidance, perhaps.

  Or make a carrot pudding. Anora Protheroe’s cook and her now deceased but still lovingly remembered cat Percival had been particular friends of Sarah’s ever since the little Kelling girl used to be sent out to pet the nice kitty while the grownups visited. Cook had taught her the recipe ages ago. This elegant but economical dessert, so like plum pudding but so much lighter and more digestible, was always hailed with delight at Anora’s dinner parties. Sarah had made it for her father a few times, quite successfully. The one time she’d tried it here, Aunt Caroline had snapped, “Much too spicy,” and laid down her dessert fork and spoon with disdain.

  Perhaps her boarders would be less critical. Anyway, it was something to do with all these carrots and a good excuse to use the old tin pudding mold that had hardly ever been taken down from the top pantry shelf after Uncle Gilbert died and the cook was let go. Edith had foisted the cooking off on Sarah by the simple expedient of never producing an eatable meal. The young bride had often found it excellent therapy during her difficult marriage. Now in her sudden widowhood she turned to her pots and pans even more eagerly.

  After the pudding was mixed and set to steam Sarah still had some minced carrot left so she hunted out a recipe for carrot bread that could be baked and kept until needed in the secondhand freezer her henchman Mr. Lomax had got for her at a pittance from some people who were moving out of state. In order not to waste the oven heat, she threw together a batch of muffins for breakfast and an apple cobbler from the fruit she and Mr. Lomax had salvaged. She’d serve the cobbler tonight and save the pudding for tomorrow, she decided. Cook always said it tasted better after standing a day.

  All in all, Sarah passed a far more productive afternoon than she’d expected to, forgot about Mr. Quiffen in her anxiety over the pudding, and was unmolding her creation with total success and immense relief when Max Bittersohn entered the kitchen.

  “Wow, what are we celebrating? Do you do this every day?”

  “No, I was just trying to get ahead of the baking for a change. The pudding’s for tomorrow, but you may have a muffin if you like.”

  “You mean a muffie. That’s what my mother calls them. She makes a batch now and then to relieve the monogamy.”

  “Does it?”

  “Who knows? My mother tends to invent her English as she goes along.”

  “She sounds delightful. Why don’t you invite her and your father in to dinner sometime?”

  “They don’t go out much.”

  Of course, they probably kept a kosher home. Sarah mentally kicked herself. Well, no doubt it would have been a mistake to have them anyway. One oughtn’t get on family visiting terms with one’s boarders, ought one? Only Mr. Bittersohn wasn’t exactly in the same category as her other boarders, was he? If he wasn’t, he’d better be. And she’d better get back to the business at hand.

  “Did you have a chance to talk with Miss Smith?”

  “I did.”

  “What did she say about Dolph?”

  Bittersohn shrugged. “She was sure she’d seen him around, but she couldn’t say just where or when. It might have been that day or it might not. It might have been Haymarket Station or someplace else. He looked too tall, but he might have been bending over. The overcoat might be the right color, but it was so hard to tell under those lights. The gloves were okay, but she wasn’t sure about the size of the hands. It added up to what you might call a doubtful maybe. Did you get anything out of your cousin?”

  “I flopped completely. In the first place, I couldn’t manage to put a word in edgewise until the very last minute. When I made my little speech, Dolph just did a bit of snapping and snarling about rotten service on the T, then looked at his watch and rushed madly off toward the Parker House. I honestly can’t say whether he was dodging my question or being his usual sweet self. You’d have to know Dolph to understand.”

  “Then maybe you’d better arrange for us to meet,” said Bittersohn. “So that’s all you have to report?”

  “Not quite. I think you can stop worrying about Mr. Hartler’s being taken in by swindlers. As I was coming in this noontime I met a man who’d just had his genuine Hawaiian art treasure rejected. He was going out with whatever it was, neatly wrapped in brown paper. Mr. Hartler came out and told me all about the agonies he goes through having to turn down most of the stuff people bring in because he can’t get it authenticated.

  “He says they don’t mean to defraud him, it’s just that families tend to attach romantic tales to their heirlooms. I could understand what he meant. Remember we were speaking the other day about that old campaign chair in the cellar?”

  “The one I was sitting in when the mouse ran up my pant leg. There can’t be much left of it now.”

  “There isn’t, but I’d stuck the pieces in the broom closet and Uncle Jem found them while he was prowling around trying to find where I’d hidden the whiskey. He dragged them out to show the boarders, and to hear him tell the story you’d think Great-uncle Nathan rode that chair up San Juan Hill two lengths ahead of Teddy Roosevelt. Mr. Hartler did show me a sweet little trinket box that I know is authentic because it’s got the same crest on it as the fan we turned in.”

  “Bully for him,” said Bittersohn, reaching absentmindedly for another muffin. “Well, I’d better get out of here before my high-class landlady catches me hobnobbing with the cook. Am I supposed to dress for dinner, by the way, or do I maintain a discreet distance in rank from the upstairs gentlefolk?”

  “You do whatever you feel comfortable doing,” Sarah told him. “I hope you don’t think Mr. Porter-Smith’s cummerbund was my idea, but it seems to make him happy so I go along as best I can. Now, scat! I see Charles coming in through the alley gate and you’re not supposed to know I do the cooking. Charles thinks it might lower the tone. Thank you again for your trouble today. I’m sorry it was such a complete bust.”

  Chapter 11

  AS SARAH HAD ANTICIPATED, Mrs. Sorpende did express a polite hope at dinner that Mrs. Kelling was making satisfactory progress with her artwork.

  “I’ve progressed to the point of buying myself a new bottle of ink,” Sarah replied. “My cousin and I had to go and do some legal business which rather took up my time. He sends you his particular regards, by the way.”

  “How kind of him.”

  Mrs. Sorpende smiled. Professor Ormsby made a low growling noise. Miss LaValliere and Mr. Porter-Smith exchanged knowing glances. Mr. Bittersohn went on eating his ham, a fact which Sarah noted with relief. She’d forgotten to ask whether he observed Orthodox dietary restrictions, but she might have known there’d be nothing orthodox about Mr. Bittersohn.

  After dinner, Miss LaValliere suggested going over to the Common to see if the Christmas lights were still up, but found no takers. Mrs. Sorpende had letters to write and so did Mr. Hartler. Professor Ormsby had to give a paper over at MIT, and Miss LaValliere could walk over “with him if she wanted to, but Miss LaValliere didn’t want to. What she wanted was Mr. Bittersohn, but Mr. Bittersohn had unspecified business elsewhere. When Mr. Porter-Smith, who preferred to go someplace where he could show off his new cummerbund, suggested the alternative of dropping down to a coffee house on Charles Street, Miss LaValliere faced reality and accepted.

  Sarah left Mariposa and. Charles to practice togetherness in the kitchen and went upstairs to grind out an illustration or two. She picked one of the photographs at random, and began making a detailed sketc
h of the clasp. Trying to make out its intricacies tired her eyes, so she began inventing them as she went along, as Mr. Bittersohn claimed his mother did with the English language. What difference did it make? The sketch was only for window-dressing, anyway.

  Sarah hadn’t drawn anything since she’d made that fatal sketch of the family vault. She’d had to screw up her courage even to pick up a pencil. Once she got into it, however, she began taking some of the old pleasure in what she was doing. Before she quite realized, the clasp had turned into a design for earrings to go with Granny Kay’s bluebird.

  What a charming idea! She’d never have them, probably, but it was fun making believe. She’d turned on the FM radio that she’d brought up from the library when she was setting up her private lair and found WXHR was playing César Franck’s Symphony in D Minor, which she loved and hadn’t heard in ages. All at once Sarah realized she was, for the first time since the day Alexander died, quite happy.

  Her first reaction was guilt. How could she know any joy, with another murder on her hands and Dolph perhaps involved? Then she got angry. Why shouldn’t she? Barnwell Quiffen’s nastiness and Dolph’s temper weren’t her fault, were they? Anyway, how could she be a hundred per cent sure Miss Mary Smith hadn’t been building an amusing little fantasy, just as she herself had been doing with the earring design?

  But the pleasure was gone. The sketch was finished, the concert was over. Sarah switched off the radio and got ready for bed. She took two aspirin and tried to read Schopenhauer. Even his dreary prose took a long time to put her to sleep.

  She woke feeling strangely confused, but this was no time for confusion. Because of her boarders’ varying time schedules, Sarah had elected to serve breakfast English-style from assorted dishes on the sideboard, with herself presiding over the coffee urn and Mariposa fluttering decoratively about in her orange ribbons to poke more bread into the pop-up toaster or take away used plates and cups.

  Professor Ormsby was always the first one down, and Mrs. Sorpende most often the last. After the queenly matron had eaten her way through whatever was left from previous depredations, Sarah and Mariposa would retire to the kitchen to wash dishes together and talk business.

  Because both of them were always so busy keeping the house in order and the lodgers happy, this was about the only chance they ever had for real conversation. Though they kept up the pretense of an employer-employee relationship in front of the others, the pair of them had become real partners in their private war on poverty. Mariposa served as acting general as often as Sarah took her turn at the dishpan. She was a great deal the more knowledgeable of the two in many ways, had an original turn of mind and an often hilarious way of expressing her ideas;

  Today, however Mariposa was in no mood to be funny. As Sarah was scrubbing egg off forks, she said, “I got to talk to you about something.”

  “Then spill it. Hand me that silver polish, will you? What’s the big problem?”

  “It’s Mrs. Sorpende. I’m worried about her.”

  “After the breakfast she just ate? Surely it’s not her health? I cannot imagine how that woman manages to keep her weight under any sort of control.”

  “She skips lunch,” said Mariposa.

  “How do you know?”

  “Simple logic, as Charles would say. If she had the dough for a sandwich, she’d spend it on something else. You know she washes out her underwear in the bathroom?”

  “Actually I didn’t, but what if she does? Unless she leaves it hanging where it will drip all over Miss LaValliere.”

  “Uh-uh! She’d never leave it where anybody could see it. You know why?”

  “She’s too modest?”

  Considering the amount of frontage Mrs. Sorpende exposed to public view every evening, Sarah didn’t think that could be the right answer, and it wasn’t. Mariposa sniffed in contempt.

  “Because it’s in rags, that’s way.”

  “So is mine.”

  “Yeah, we got to get you something decent. It’s bad for the image, you sitting in front of that silver urn with holes in your underpants. What if there was an earthquake or something? But anyway; yours was good quality to start with. Hers is nothing but junk. And how many dresses you ever see her wear?”

  “Why, I haven’t the faintest idea. I never kept track. She seems to have a different outfit about one night in three.”

  “Seems to, right. But you take away all them scarves and flowers and beads and stuff, and what would you have?”

  “A plain black dress, I suppose. She always wears black.”

  “You said it, honey. One plain black long dress for evening and if that didn’t come from Filene’s Basement then I’m Queen Liliuokawhoozis. And one plain black short dress for daytimes and one plain black coat and one pair of plain black leather pumps and one pair of black vinyl boots and a drawer full of fake flowers and cheap scarves and five-and-ten jewelry, and one pair of nylons and some knee-highs that have been darned real nice, and anybody that takes the trouble to sew up a run in a pair of forty-nine-cent knee-highs—”

  “Mariposa, you’ve been snooping through her dresser drawers!”

  “Honey, you got class. Charles has got class; We get too much class around here, this place is going to fold up flatter than a four-flusher’s wallet. Me, I got no class. I never could afford it. And believe me, honey, that lady can’t afford none, either. She’s not behind in her rent, I hope?”

  “Why, no. She pays right on the dot, like everybody else.”

  “How?”

  “Hands it to me in a little envelope. Oh, you mean does she pay by check or whatever? Actually she always pays cash. Come to think of it, she’s the only one who does. Everyone else writes me a check. Is that supposed to mean something?”

  “It sure does to me,” said Mariposa. “You start a checking account, you need money to start it with, right? You don’t keep a big enough balance, you pay a service charge for every check, right? You add up a few service charges, you got the price of another pair of them forty-nine-cent knee-highs you can wear under that jazzy black dinner dress nobody’s going to know the difference, right?”

  “But, Mariposa—”

  “Don’t go buttin’ me, honey. I figure she’s got a little savings account someplace. That way she gets maybe a buck or two interest on her money instead of paying out. She takes out a week’s rent, she hands it to you, she eats what you give her, she doesn’t spend a cent more than she has to anyplace else. She keeps on doing her dance of the seven veils, maybe she can kid you along for a few more weeks she’s the society dame she makes herself out to be. But anytime she don’t come across with the rent on time, you better have a sick aunt who needs that room in a hurry.”

  “Really, Mariposa! I’d hardly make a sick aunt climb two nights of stairs.”

  “Then you got a well aunt. Look, maybe what you better do is come down with a sore throat and let Charles handle it. I guess you never had much experience at giving anybody the bum’s rush, huh?”

  “But I like Mrs. Sorpende,” wailed Sarah. “I like her the best of the lot, except—well, of course I’d known Mr. Bittersohn before.”

  “You’d known Mr. Quiffen before, too, honey. I haven’t noticed you hanging out any black crape for him.”

  “Maybe you don’t see as much as you think,” Sarah snapped back. That was as close as she’d ever got to being cross with Mariposa. “If you have all that surplus energy to work off, I wish you’d do something about that front hallway instead of counting the holes in people’s underwear. It’s always a mess these days, I can’t think why. We’ve never had this problem till the past day or so.”

  “It’s all them visitors Mr. Hartler has sashaying in and out all the time. Don’t even wipe their feet and act like they done you a favor letting you open the door for them. Mr. Hartler may be one of your fine old Boston gentlemen but he’s sure got some mighty peculiar friends.”

  “They’re not his friends,” Sarah corrected. “They’re just pe
ople trying to sell him things that are supposed to have come from that Iolani Palace he’s always talking about.”

  “Then how come they all come in empty-handed and go out carrying bundles?”

  “Because they’ve left their pieces to be authenticated and he’s had to let them know they’re not what he’s looking for and would they please come back and take them away. I suppose they’re all cross and disappointed, and that’s why they don’t bother to be polite.”

  “That’s no excuse for bad manners.” said Mariposa huffily. “Specially not in a high-class joint like this. Charles says inability to cope with frustration is a sign of immaturity. How does that grab you? Anyway, I guess that’s why Mr. Hartler told me not to bother cleaning his room. He’s afraid I’ll pinch some of those genuine fake antiques, I bet.”

  “I’m sure he thinks nothing of the sort. It’s just that he’s so wrapped up in this business about the Iolani Palace that nothing else seems important to him. If Mr. Hartler doesn’t want us dusting things that don’t belong to him, that’s understandable, but we’re certainly going to keep the room clean. Otherwise we might start having earwigs and cockroaches and heaven knows what. I think I’d better have a little chat with him about that. I’m also going to tell him to make sure his callers wipe their feet. After all, this is a private house. Semi-private, anyway. Now I have to go to the bank and deposit the rent checks, and pick up Aunt Emma’s order at Boston Music Company, which I forgot to do yesterday, and buy whipping cream for that pudding we’re going to serve tonight. Anything else?”

  They did their heavy marketing on Saturdays when Charles was available to carry the bags, trundling off in the Studebaker to a run-down neighborhood store Mariposa knew of where the food was a lot cheaper. However, there was always something to be got at the last minute so the neighborhood grocers got their share of the Kelling business as they always had. Mariposa mentioned one or two items, Sarah put on her coat and left the house.