Family Vault

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “I thought you’d like to know my brother-in-law checked out your car and could find nothing wrong. Mike’s going to bring it in to Boston tomorrow morning, if that’s okay with you.”

  Sarah was a little taken aback. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Bittersohn, I’d forgotten about the car. I ought to have got in touch with your people myself, but it’s been absolutely wild around here. Yes, if you’re sure he’d be safe, I’d love to have your nephew drive it in. Where should I meet him? As for the bill—”

  “Forget it. They didn’t do anything, just looked. And Mike may never get another chance to drive a Studebaker.”

  “I ought to see that he does, after this. Really, you and your family are being much too kind to a—I was going to say a stranger, but we can’t be that now, can we?”

  “How about ‘colleague’? That’s a fancy word I’ve always wanted to have applied to myself. Seen Lackridge, by the way?”

  “Heavens, yes. He and Leila have been sticking like flies on honey. I just got rid of them a little while ago.”

  Sarah realized what she was saying. “Please forget that. It’s only that I’ve been deluged with visitors, and it’s been such a chore trying to look after them.”

  “What about your maid?”

  “What, indeed? I don’t have her any more.”

  “Why not?”

  “We never had got along, and finally things came to a boil. I knew I’d have to do something about her sooner or later, though I must admit it came a bit sooner than I’d planned.”

  “When did she leave?”

  “About half an hour ago.”

  “Then who’s with you?” Bittersohn asked sharply.

  “Nobody.”

  “You can’t stay there alone.”

  “Why not? Don’t you believe in liberated womanhood?” Sarah asked with a bravado she didn’t feel.

  “Look, Mrs. Kelling, this is no time to be a heroine. You’ve been through one hell of an experience, and you’re not used to being by yourself in a big house. If you can’t find somebody to come in, you’d better clear out of there. Go to a hotel or something.”

  “But I’d still be alone there, and it would cost a fortune. You’re sweet to be concerned, Mr. Bittersohn, but I’ll be fine, truly I will.”

  “Then at least do me a favor and write down this telephone number. Do you have a phone by your bed?”

  “No, I wish I did. We just have the two on the first floor.”

  She thought he swore, but what came through was, “Got a pencil?”

  “Yes, right here.”

  He gave her the number, slowly and distinctly, then made her read it back to him to make sure she’d got it right.

  “Okay. Now, no matter what time it is, call me for any reason at all—if you’re scared, if you think you hear mice in the cellar, if you can’t sleep and want to talk, if you need eggs for breakfast. I’m not far from you, and I can be there in a few minutes. I’d come now, but you’d probably be better pleased if I didn’t.”

  “I was planning to go to bed soon,” Sarah admitted.

  “You don’t take sleeping pills?”

  “No, nothing like that. I don’t have any and wouldn’t use them if I did.”

  “Good. Take a couple of aspirin if you need something to calm you down. They’re about as effective and a damn sight safer. Could you make up a bed downstairs, near the phone?”

  “I expect so. A cousin of my father’s slept on the library couch last night, as a matter of fact, although I’m afraid he didn’t find it very comfortable.”

  “There are things more uncomfortable than a bumpy sofa.”

  “Mr. Bittersohn, are you by any chance trying to frighten me?”

  “I’m trying to keep you from being frightened if I can,” he said. “If I’ve picked the wrong way to go about it, I’m sorry.”

  “Please don’t be. I do appreciate your concern, and I’ll certainly take advantage of your extremely kind offer if I have any occasion to call. Thank you again for taking care of the car.”

  Sarah put the phone back on its holder and sat looking at the number she’d written down, memorizing the digits without quite meaning to. Either Mr. Bittersohn was simply one of the sweetest men she’d ever met, or else he knew something he wasn’t telling. Would it be safe to phone him if she needed to, or would she be letting herself in for more trouble?

  In any event, his urging her to sleep closer to a telephone made sense. She was not about to torture her exhausted body on that lumpy old couch, but she might at least move to Aunt Caroline’s room instead of cloistering herself on the third floor. Then she wouldn’t be constantly reminded that Alexander was no longer up there with her. She was getting so that she could think of him without starting to cry, which was a help. What she ought to do right now was start clearing out Aunt Caroline’s closets and drawers, and moving her own things downstairs.

  The work was therapeutic though wearisome. Sarah lugged armloads of clothes down to the laundry room where they could be sorted out and got rid of, to charities or relatives. Caroline Kelling had never thrown anything away. Sarah found evening gowns that must have been part of her trousseau, bought, no doubt, to set off the Kelling jewels. They might fetch a tidy sum at the Bargain Box even now. She herself wanted none of the things, lovely as they were. How could she ever wear them, knowing what had happened to the man who paid for them?

  Sarah went on with her search. She rooted through drawers crammed with embroidered crepe-de-chine night-gowns, with lace-trimmed chemises and step-ins from the flapper era, with real silk stockings that had seams up their backs. She unearthed a mauve satin lingerie case containing some astonishing black panties and, to her ineffable relief, the neatly tagged key to the safe-deposit box.

  By ten o’clock, Sarah couldn’t have lifted another handkerchief. She found geranium-scented bath salts in the bathroom that was so much more luxurious than the one she’d shared with Alexander, and used them lavishly. After a hot soak, she felt drowsy enough to crawl into Aunt Caroline’s massive bed and hope for sleep. It came.

  Shortly before three o’clock, Sarah was awake again. She didn’t know what had roused her, all she knew was that suddenly she was sitting up straight, straining her eyes and ears into the silent dark. For a moment it seemed impossible that she would ever move again, then she persuaded her hand muscles to reach out and switch on a light.

  It was cold, astonishingly cold. She hadn’t opened the window when she had gone to bed—there was never any dearth of fresh air in this drafty old house. Yet she could feel a blast coming from somewhere.

  Either burglars or a broken sash cord, she thought. More likely a sash cord. She was used to such mishaps. Boston was always damp, with the harbor in front and the river alongside. Cords rotted, releasing iron sash weights. Plate-glass windows with their heavy wooden frames fell with a crash, losing their panes as often as not. She’d better go stick something over it before she froze to death.

  Sarah’s bathrobe was still upstairs, so she wrapped Aunt Caroline’s velvet-covered down comforter around her, shoved her feet into a pair of furtrimmed satin mules she found, and padded out into the hall. Soot-laden wind was swirling down from the third floor.

  It was coming from Alexander’s room, and that was odd. The last sash cord that had let go was also in his room, also in the middle of the night, and he’d replaced both cords forthwith to make sure he didn’t get another such rude awakening. That was only a few months ago. How could it happen again so soon?

  She switched on the light. It was not one window, it was both, wide open from the top, their white curtains whipping out like dancing ghosts. More incredibly, the bed Sarah had made up fresh a few hours before was in total disarray, sheets and blankets dragged off on the floor as though a sleeper had waked feeling suffocated, flung off his bedding, and rushed to let in the night air.

  In spite of her down comforter, Sarah began to shiver. It’s only a burglar, she kept telling herself, only a plai
n flesh-and-blood burglar. And she must be out of her mind, standing here waiting to be pounced on. She slammed Alexander’s door shut on the eerie scene, made a mad scramble for Aunt Caroline’s room, and locked herself in. If he wanted the silver, let him take it and go in peace.

  But if someone had come to steal the tea service, what was he doing on the third floor, tearing the beds apart? How did he get there? She’d locked everything tight, she knew she had. After that phone call from Mr. Bittersohn, she’d even gone up to the attic and checked the skylight, in case anybody might take a notion to break in from the roof.

  Could a thief have tied a rope to the chimney and swung down over the side of the house, jimmying open Alexander’s windows to get in? But why both? Why choose the side that faced the street, instead of coming down the alley way where he’d be less apt to be spotted?

  Aunt Caroline’s boudoir was directly under her son’s bedroom. Sarah went in there and stuck her head out the window to see if she could spot a dangling rope. Something moved up there. She ducked back in a hurry, then realized it was only those thin white curtains billowing out in the wind. Nevertheless, she didn’t want to look any more. She clutched the heavy draperies and pulled them over the glass, feeling those myriad French knots under her hands, like Braille.

  God in heaven, it was Braille! All those hours when she’d shut herself in here alone with needle and thread, Aunt Caroline had not been aimlessly killing time. She’d been writing her diary.

  20

  SARAH DROPPED THE TAPESTRY as though it had been the shirt of Nessus. To pry into somebody else’s private writings was one of the most revolting breaches of courteous behavior any decently bred person could commit.

  And what if it was? Caroline Kelling had killed her own husband, had got rid of a murdered woman’s body as coolly as if she’d been setting out the garbage, had somehow contrived the timely death of Walter Kelling, had almost certainly been sent to her own death along with her only son as a result of what had happened in the past. If there was any explanation of this ghastly chain of events anywhere, it had to be here. She picked up the cloth again, held it flat against the window frame, and began to sort out the letters with her fingertips.

  “My little love,” those were the first three words she read and the ones that kept recurring. Caroline Kelling had a lover! It was for his sake she’d got rid of Gilbert Kelling. She had intended to go away with this man, to share her life and her fortune with him as she had already begun sharing her body while her husband was alive. The French knots went into voluptuous detail. Sarah would never have believed Aunt Caroline capable of such erotic passion.

  It was appalling to think of that aging woman sitting here in black solitude, pouring out her soul in this almost eerie manner, reliving every moment of a love affair that must still consume her even though it had inevitably been blighted by the years and her growing incapacity. Probably, to Caroline Kelling, the passage of time had not been very real. Her little love was always young, always as handsome as adoring memory pictured him, although God alone knew what the man might look like by now.

  The entries, if such they could be called, followed no logical order. When the brooding fit came over her, Aunt Caroline must simply have caught up a fold of the material, felt for a smooth place, and filled it in at random. Words were abbreviated, jumbled together without connectives, without punctuation, sometimes with no apparent sense. Reading was a puzzlement as well as an agony. Yet Sarah became wholly engrossed in piecing together the incredible revelations that emerged from those thousands upon thousands of meticulously worked French knots, forgetting that whoever murdered Caroline and Alexander might even now be in the house with her.

  Caroline and her little love, whoever he might be, had been carrying on their tempestuous romance for some months before they came to the decision that Gilbert Kelling must be got rid of. It was the lover, she gathered, who first hinted at murder, but Caroline herself who worked out the plan that had succeeded so neatly in its objective, but ruined the hopes they’d had of enjoying Gilbert’s fortune together.

  Caroline had been vehement in taking all blame to herself. The man had been swept into tragedy by his wild adoration of her. He must be shielded at any cost. Even in her most incoherent rhapsodies, Caroline had been careful to avoid putting in any tangible clue to her lover’s identity. The one fact that came out was that he’d been forced by circumstances to go through a form of marriage with somebody else, although his heart and his thoughts would always be with his beloved. Poor Aunt Caroline!

  It was Ruby Redd who’d wrecked their lives, not Gilbert’s murder or Caroline’s affliction. Until the stripper entered the picture, the affair had been waxing hotter and heavier than ever. The rich widow and her little love still had every intention of getting married after a discreet interval had passed, no matter what the world might think of the match.

  Was that a clue? Why should the world, or that minuscule portion of it whose opinion Caroline Kelling gave two pins for, have any objection to her marrying again unless the man was for some reason blatantly unsuitable? Some of the clan might indulge in a bit of cat about Gilbert’s money going to an outsider, but most of them were of the opinion that their relative had given his beautiful wife a pretty raw deal. Sarah couldn’t think offhand of anyone, except possibly Cousin Mabel, who’d have been spiteful enough to begrudge the family heroine a second husband who could give her the loving care she needed. Perhaps Caroline was being morbid about her afflictions here, picturing herself accused of trapping the man into being her nurse and depriving him of a normal wife’s attentions.

  Whatever her qualms, Caroline’s little love had evidently kept insisting he wanted her under any conditions, until Ruby Redd showed up demanding blackmail. How a stripper from the Old Howard ever learned the pair had murdered Gilbert Kelling, or what the damning proof she held against them was, Caroline didn’t say. Possibly she never knew. More likely, the proof would have pointed too clearly toward the man whom she was so determined to protect.

  Ruby made her approach to the lover, but it was Caroline who paid. The man must not have had any real money of his own. That, Sarah thought cynically, could explain his unswerving devotion to a rich widow. Aunt Caroline herself might have had some inkling that once her fortune gave out his attachment would lessen. She didn’t admit any such thing, but it was clear that she’d been thrown into panic by the speed at which Ruby was bleeding her of her funds. At last she’d put her foot down.

  “I said no more…face her down…deny…forgery…slander…”

  That hadn’t worked. Ruby demanded a confrontation, forced the lover to bring her face-to-face with Caroline late one night, when Alexander was off at a stag party and the maids could be got rid of.

  Caroline had planned the meeting herself, expected an unpleasant scene, but the reality was beyond anything she’d imagined. “Here in this house…railing…threatening…grinning sidewise at him with that vampire’s mouth as if they shared some obscene joke. Said promised rubies…must have them or dreadful things…kept yelling you promised…how could I…said ridiculous…how did she know about rubies…”

  Then it came out. Piecing the incoherencies together, Sarah managed to understand that the lover had finally been put in the position of having to explain that Alexander had let himself be seduced by the creature who was blackmailing them. Ruby had been stringing the infatuated boy along so that she could pump him about the true extent of his father’s fortune. Alex had been a willing dupe. Knowing her obsession with rubies, he’d bragged about the family jewels, promised to let her wear the parure in return for her disgusting favors.

  Caroline went on and on about the appalling scene.

  “Outrage…laughed at me…called me fool…stupid …said I didn’t know what…flaunted herself before his eyes…twined her body…tried to make me think he and she…”

  The lover had repulsed the dancer’s blatant sexual advances, pushed her away in anger. Caroline seemed not t
o have comprehended precisely what happened after that. Ruby must have become enraged and tried to fly at her. To save her life, the lover struck out. Suddenly Ruby was dead on the hall floor and the man was protesting, “I did it for you. She was going to kill you!”

  It was not a killing, it was sheer heroism; noble, justified, no wrong at all. Yet they couldn’t risk putting their case before a judge. Again Caroline thought of a plan. They must hide the body in the old family vault, soon to be part of a historical site, never to be opened again.

  Alexander wasn’t meant to be involved, he simply happened to come home at the wrong moment. However, they immediately realized they could use him. Even while he was kneeling beside Ruby Redd’s body, feeling for a pulse that wasn’t there, the others were out in the kitchen, plotting.

  The lover must get away by the back door. Caroline would go back and pretend she thought Alex had killed his paramour in a drunken quarrel. It served him right for having betrayed his mother. Obviously, Aunt Caroline had never felt the slightest compunction about laying such a dreadful punishment on her child, only exultation at having so valiantly shielded her little love.

  For her, the tragedy was that the blackmailing didn’t stop. Ruby, too, had betrayed them. She’d shared their secret with an accomplice who stood guard outside the house and saw what happened. Now they were more vulnerable than before. Again the lover got the threats. Again it was Caroline who paid.

  That was where Gilbert Kelling’s estate had gone, every cent of it, to save another man from disgrace and prosecution for murder. Caroline reveled in the sacrifice she had made, never caring that she’d robbed Alexander of his birthright. She actually seemed to think she’d done a mother’s duty when she laced Walter Kelling’s mushrooms with her eyedrops so that Alex could marry Sarah for her inheritance.