The Devil's Stronghold

by Leslie Ford

  “Nonsense, Stinky,” I said, smiling at him. “Cut it in smaller pieces if you really want me to swallow it.”

  He smiled back. “I thought I could appeal to you as an American Mother, Grace, dear. And I much prefer you don’t call me Stinky. I spend a large sum yearly on the better-class deodorants… But practically, dear: Viola plans to buy a little place here in Bel Air. I know one that’s available for a mere two hundred thousand that would be a lovely setting for our young lady. She could have furs and jewels and clothes and a suitable car without the usual bother, and—”

  “What’s in it for Viola Kersey? What does she get out of it? What’s she doing it for?”

  “Spite, dear. Just sheer, unmitigated spite.”

  Eustace smiled at me again, the false smile, and fluttered his hands.

  “Or perhaps that’s unfair. What she gets out of it is glamour. Let’s put it that way. She becomes duenna for one of our most promising starlets. She doesn’t have to live alone and lure people to her gilded web by mere food and liquor. It’s superb publicity for her, now that Hollywood is so domestic and respectable. My dear Grace, it’s a natural—”

  “Was it you that suggested it, by any chance?”

  “Oh, dear, dear! I’m so grossly misunderstood, always. I would be really distressed if Sheep and Bill got the impression I thought their tutelage was inadequate. You’re a practical woman, Grace. You can face facts. You don’t truly want your son to fall in love with a girl like Molly, do you? I mean, what of her antecedents? Do you know anything about them?”

  “I thought possibly you’d tell me something about them, dear,” I said.

  “When neither your son nor his friend Sheep has done so? Ah! No, my dear. That would be disloyal. Disloyal in the extreme.”

  “I didn’t dream you’d regard that as a plausible excuse, Eustace,” I said.

  “And you’re so right, dear.” He spoke with the highest good humor. “I shouldn’t, not for an instant, unless there were also genuine reasons. I wouldn’t, myself, dream, however, of being disloyal to a friend if it cost me money, as this would. We’re old enough, and have known each other long enough, to be perfectly frank, Grace. And I’m sure you’d never be so stupid as to try to come between your son and people he feels to be his friends.”

  I was a little annoyed. “I might, as a matter of fact, just give him a copy of your famous book—”

  Eustace Sype’s small jade-hard eyes glanced brittle sparks at me. His jowls had a mottled unhealthy paleness.

  “I don’t like that, Grace,” he said venomously. “I don’t like that at all. You and Lucille—”

  That was as far as he got. The dogs had been yapping in a sort of off-stage chorus of alarm that Eustace had noticed but ignored when it became joyful greeting. But now the torrential patter of their little feet on the bare floors, coming from behind the lacquered doors, and running footsteps with them, couldn’t be ignored. Nor could Eustace get himself up from his cherry-silk divan to intercept them before the doors burst open.

  “Eustace! Where’s my mother? Where’s Mother, and where’s Dad—?”

  It was Molly McShane. She saw me sitting there. For a stupefied instant she was petrified into immobility, her hands still out, holding the black glistening doors apart, the dogs in a noisy sea of ecstatic writhing fur around her feet.

  “Boys and girls!” Eustace clapped his hands together. “Quiet!”

  They subsided magically. And as magically Molly came to vibrant passionate life.

  “Where are they, Eustace! I don’t care if she does know! I don’t care who knows! I’m not ashamed of them, and I won’t stand this any longer! You can’t do this, do you hear me?”

  “Oh, come, come, Molly.” Eustace rolled his body more comfortably into his cushions. “That’s not fit for a fourth-rate East Lynne. Come, come. Stop being absurd. It’s a frightful bore. I can’t bear corn, darling.”

  “I don’t care if it is corny. I mean it. You can’t do it, and you’re not going to!”

  “I’m not going to do what, sweet child?” He spoke with mountainous imperturbability. “I’m afraid I’m old and very dull, today—and completely bewildered, my child. What gross evil am I accused of now?”

  “Oh, you beast! You beast! You know! You know what I mean, and I hate you! It’s your fault—you know it is!”

  She broke down in a passion of sobbing, tormented beyond any control. Eustace looked at her with distaste and profound ennui. Then he rolled over a little and tapped on a silver-gilt gong, pagoda-shaped and electrified, I gathered, because it sounded beautifully through the house.

  “I personally would never think of trusting Mrs. Latham, Molly, but if you wish to it’s your own affair. And I despise melodrama. Nor do I care to be misjudged, my dear child. I assume you’re talking about Mrs. Kersey’s very kind and generous offer? Is that what all this— this sound and fury signify? Correct me if I’m mistaken.”

  “Kind! Generous!”

  Through her storm-torn efforts to control herself, Molly still put all the contempt in the world in those two words.

  “And I’ve asked you to dress yourself properly when you come to this house,” Eustace said, tapping the gong again.

  He let a distasteful glance move from her scuffed moccasins up to her plaid skirt and blue sweater, and rest on her hair.

  “And go to a hairdresser, occasionally.”

  He tapped the gong again, with irritation this time.

  “I was trying to hide your unhappy parents. I went to the trouble of opening the front door with my own hands, to save you humiliation.” He ignored the savage tension that quivered through her, and motioned her to silence. “But disloyalty is something I’ve never been accused of, and we’ll just settle this right now. Molly, my dear. I assure you, dear child, it is not I who am insisting you go with Mrs. Kersey. It isn’t at all. It’s your own parents.”

  He snapped the word out and at the same time gave the gong a really healthy bang. I could hear slow footsteps coming toward us. The dogs went into a flurry of delight, cut short by the commanding clap of their master’s white hands.

  “It is your parents who want you to go with Mrs. Kersey, my child.”

  He raised his voice, turning his head, waiting for them to appear.

  “Oh, Mother!”

  The girl ran forward and threw herself into the arms of the dour woman with the lined face. It was the night maid, Rose, from the Casa del Rosal, and standing wretchedly there beside her, in a servant’s white coat, was Morris Shavin, the Casa del Rosal night watchman. Rose held the child to her, looking silently at Eustace.

  “Molly thinks it is I who insist she go to Mrs. Kersey, Rose,” he said.

  “Mother—oh, please, not, Mother!”

  It was all going on around me as if I were pinioned in the grip of a relentless dream, unable to wake. I remembered Rose interrupting the girl at my door the night before, sending her up to her room to sleep, Molly’s suddenly deflated acquiescence and obedience that I’d taken as an anticlimax of an interrupted scene— and Morry Shavin, the night watchman, putting his coat around the weeping child, leading her docilely to her room from her four-thirty tryst with Viola Kersey.

  “You see, Grace, the boys took ‘M. Shavin’ and made ‘McShane’ out of it,” Eustace said indifferently. “It’s more euphonious, don’t you think?”

  What I did think was that I hated him, at that moment, with almost as much of a sense of frustration and violence as Molly herself did.

  “You may go now, Morris. Get us some tea. Use the package that came yesterday. Rose will remain and explain to Molly. I’m sure Rose will make it all quite clear.”

  Molly drew away from her mother, white-faced and incredulous.

  “I don’t—I don’t have to go to her? Please, Mother-say J don’t! I hate her.”

  There were no dramatics then. She was a child, explaining, and truly confident of understanding and protection. The face of the maid went through a spasm o
f uncertainty and hardened into grim determination. I remembered the towels and the pitcher of ice cubes, the abrupt fashion in which Viola Kersey had said “Maid,” when she ordered her to bring them to her room, the sullen angry figure that came along the flagstone path bringing them—and Viola Kersey’s confidence the next morning. I knew what Rose was going to say before she said it.

  “You have to go, Molly.”

  She pushed the two brown hands that flew out to her in appeal roughly away.

  “You must go. I’ve said it, and you must obey.”

  She moved back, her mouth drawn tightly down. Dour was no longer the word. She was stone, and bitter stone. If her hands hadn’t been trembling so she had to clasp them together, I would have thought she was a ruthless and awful woman. But I didn’t think it. All I thought was, what a horrible price to pay for a stolen bracelet, even if it had had all the diamonds in the world in it.

  And then I thought of something else, and for a moment everything seemed strangely quiet. A diamond bracelet, a piece of hemp string… Viola Kersey had lost the bracelet. Viola Kersey had found the string.

  “Mother!” Molly’s voice sounded lost and far away. “I can’t, Mother.”

  “You must go to her, Molly.”

  The girl’s frail little shoulders slumped forward. She bent her head down. Just the line of her body was an abstraction of a concept of obedience and submission that Heaven knows few parents of today could demand and get, and that few would require. It was a strangely moving and pathetic moment. Eustace, who I’m sure felt nothing of it, shattered it with a sudden double clap of his hands.

  “All right, boys and girls!” The dogs, who’d been sitting like so many little frozen puppets, burst into an hysterical frolic. “Go with Rose!” They jumped and scrambled at her skirt. “We’d like some rice cakes, Rose, and tell Morris not to bother with tea. We’ll have some of the rice wine, I think. Will you sit down and join us, Molly, dear? If not, you can run along home. Rose has a good deal of work to do. She has to see the police at some fantastic hour this afternoon. But do stay, dear.”

  “No, thank you.”

  Molly spoke very quickly, and as quickly crossed the room and went out the black lacquered doors.

  Chapter Fourteen: Kiss of death

  EUSTACE PULLED A PAINTED IVORY FAN from one of his embroidered sleeves and moved it indolently in front of his face once or twice.

  “You see what I mean, dear Grace. Emotions are a luxury that the poor can’t afford to have. Rose is a sensible and ambitious woman. She wants the best for her daughter. I think it’s all very commendable, don’t you, dear?”

  “I think it would be better if I didn’t say what I think, Eustace.”

  I had to get up. I knew my knee joints were going to creak and make my exit seem a little absurd. But I had to chance it, and my pent-up fury must have secreted some annealing fluid, because I managed without indignity.

  “And I think I’ll go now. Goodbye.”

  “If you’ll wait I’ll call a taxi. I shall need my own car.”

  “I’d rather walk, I think.”

  Eustace Sype got very slowly to his feet. How he did it I didn’t see, and as it was the one opportunity I was likely to have, it was a distinct loss if I’d ever had any interest in the operation of large but still movable bodies. I was only interested in getting out of that malevolent house.

  “Of course you understand, Grace,” Eustace said. “I’m sure you understand, dear. If I were in the least alarmed at your possible interest, we would have played the scene somewhere else. I allowed you to see it merely to impress you with the fact that your interference would be both untimely and dangerous. I have no doubt Lucille told you that Rose was dear Viola’s maid, and Morris her chef, when Viola was married to poor old Georgie Gannon. Viola has a genuinely sweet and forgiving spirit. She wouldn’t think of making trouble for either of the dear souls.”

  His hands fluttered.

  “I was so happy when I discovered that their child would be able to make the recompense for them. Viola has been most patient.”

  He waddled after me to the front steps.

  “I dare say there are some people who would regard it as most unfortunate that dear Viola didn’t go down the stone steps before that wretched young woman got so foolishly muddled about the way out of the hotel, last night. I hope no one suggests to the police the absurd idea that there was anyone on the premises to whom dear Viola’s death would be a real benediction. It would be most unkind. It would be such bad publicity for dear little Molly. We’ve outgrown that sort of thing, these days. In these days scandal is Hollywood’s kiss of death.”

  “If I hear that again, or read it again, Eustace, I’m going to begin not to believe it,” I said. “There’s a line you’d probably call corn—The lady doth protest too much…”

  “It’s box office, darling. We have to be realistic about a lot of things.”

  Tottering down the narrow, winding cement road on high heels, long, shining cars streaking silently around the curves blinded with high hedges and high walls, I thought another lady would have been better advised if she’d been a little realistic herself and waited for a taxicab. Righteous indignation is all right but its box office is usually bad. By the time I’d lost my way half a dozen times and quite by accident found that enchanting little spot, the Bel Air Hotel, I was ready to drop. It didn’t help much that one of the sleek gleaming leviathans that whizzed past me, missing me by miraculous inches, contained the rotundity of my recent host. A white hand fluttered at me, Stinky Sype squinted his face up in a vanishing smile.

  I was furious, first because clopping along the road I knew I was a ridiculous figure, and second because I knew he was out to catch up with Molly McShane. He must have changed from his Chinese getup with extraordinary speed. And he had to see her. He had to see her before she saw Sheep and Bill and while she was still storm-torn and wretchedly unhappy, in order to frighten her into deeper submission and at the same time reestablish himself in his Tartuffe role of sympathetic friend. I was sure that was what was already in his mind when he said he was using his own car but he’d call me a taxi. He wouldn’t have whizzed past me on the road we both were going on if it had been anything else.

  And he hadn’t arrived at the Casa del Rosal when I got there, over an hour later. Nor had Molly McShane. The uniformed attendant who let me out of the taxi had seen neither of them. But he had seen Bill. He volunteered that.

  “I guess he’s scared you’ll get lost in the wide-open spaces, Mrs. Latham,” he said.

  I went along, to discover further that the grim departure of the girl from Seattle to a soberer, better land seemed to have had no visible effect on the lighthearted cordiality of the staff of the Casa del Rosal. My first-born was coming up the stone steps from Viola Kersey’s cottage, carrying a chromium food warmer in one hand, a table loaded with dirty dishes balanced on his shoulder with the other. He was whistling cheerfully, as gay as a lark.

  “Hiya, Ma! Where’ve you been?”

  I expect I presented a somber note in the happy scene. His grin disappeared at once.

  “What’s the matter? Something wrong?”

  I shook my head, if things had been much worse I would still have loved him at the moment—for his resilience to the depression he and Sheep had been in the night before, and for the cocktail sauce that was dripping down the table onto the shoulder of his white starched coat—and for the poignant knowledge I had that he didn’t yet have.

  “Nothing, sweetie,” I said. “If you’ll bring me some coffee or something, I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Okay, Ma. Coming up.”

  “And you’re spilling stuff, baby,” I said.

  He grinned cheerfully and tilted the table level.

  “People shouldn’t eat so much. Mrs. Kersey spends the dough like she had it, all right. She threw ’em the works. Old Gee Gee ate oysters, stuffed squab Amandine, and crepes suzettes. He’ll be back on worse than rabbit f
ood tonight. I’ll see you, Ma.”

  I unlocked my door, closed it behind me, and stood there wondering. After the morning’s scene between George Gannon and his former wife I could understand the stuffed squab only if the Amandine exuded a slight but unmistakable bitter odor. And I’d have expected her to be eating it at his invitation instead of vice versa. I also wondered who the rest of them were that she was throwing the works to. It was evident that when Mrs. Kersey moved in she moved fast, with none of the deliberate rhythmic grace that characterized her personal locomotion. But there was one person I knew wasn’t there at her luncheon, and as she was the center of Mrs. Kersey’s scheme of things it could only mean that whatever Molly McShane thought or felt was of no importance whatsoever.

  It merely confirmed what had been already very adequately proved in that Peke-infested room in Bel Air—a diamond bracelet wasn’t worth it, neither was a piece of hemp cord. Somehow I had the feeling that the girl from Seattle wouldn’t like it to be that way. If she didn’t want some screwy dame accusing her of lifting her crown jewels, she would want even less for some other screwy dame to use her death as an instrument of refined torture under the guise of kindness and generosity. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I could almost see her standing there in my patio window, saying “See? Didn’t I tell you? I know these dames down here.”

  It may be fantastic and there’s probably no truth in it, and the reason I went directly across the room to the telephone and put in a long-distance call to Washington was entirely different and had nothing to do with the girl from Seattle. I only know I felt so then. I felt her presence so strongly that I looked back at the window to see if she was there. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s the way it was. And at the risk of being thought a complete psychopath I’ll go on with the rest of it.