by Frances
She arose obediently and went inside to powder her nose and, at it, thought, The great oaf, and, at the same moment, felt like giggling. She went back to the terrace. He was standing up. He looked at his watch, obviously in comment. He took her arm, then, rather as if he were arresting her, and marched her to the MG and put her in it.
He did something to the little car and it instantly seemed to leap in the air, as if jabbed by a needle. It backed violently and, without perceptible pause, went ahead violently. Lois put a hand to the back of her neck, more or less to see whether her head remained attached.
“Needs a tune-up,” Bob Oliver said, the wind of their progress whipping the words away. “Sluggish.” He went out of the driveway, onto the blacktop, without slackening speed. “Not a Jag at the best of times, of course,” he added and went around a curve by, Lois thought, holding on, a miracle.
There were further miracles. Then there was more moderate progress down Main Street. Then they were at the Inn.
“You drive fast, don’t you?” Lois said, sitting for a moment, regaining breath.
He seemed sincerely puzzled. He looked at her and repeated, “Fast?”
“Not,” she said, “that you aren’t very good.”
“Good?” he repeated. “You ought to see the good ones, girl. Found that out a long time ago when I came up against some of them when I thought—never mind.”
He went out of his side of the car, this time by stepping over the door, and came to her side and opened the door.
“You used to race?” she said, and swung her legs out. He pulled her, but with no abruptness, to her feet.
“Tried it a few times,” he said. “Years ago. I was in France for a while. Not good enough by miles. Decided a typewriter was nearer my speed.” They were walking up the sidewalk to the Inn. They were walking into the taproom. He said, with only the quickest of glances for approval, “Two martinis.”
They sat and waited, and all urgency seemed, suddenly, to have drained out of Bob Oliver. He lighted her cigarette and his own and, when the drinks came—very cold and very dry, although he had made no stipulation; they knew him here, it was evident—sipped slowly.
“She may drop in,” he said. “I gather she does.”
She nodded.
“No use making a point of anything unless we have to,” he said, and for an instant the word “we” flickered in her mind. But then it seemed, as of course it was, the most natural usage in the world. “You must have been meeting most of the old timers. Did you run into—”
She had. But it was he, while they sipped—relaxed, with now no sense that anything was awaited—who talked most about the “old-timers”—talked of them with relish and, at the same time, with what seemed to her remarkable friendliness and understanding. Violence seemed now to be no part of him—a changeable man, Mr. Robert Oliver. It was to be presumed he would change back again.
He finished his drink before she did, although they both drank slowly. He raised eyebrows in enquiry and, when she shook her head, held up one finger to the bartender. But when he had half finished his new drink and she, timing herself with him, had only almost finished hers, he looked at the watch on his wrist.
“Doesn’t look as if she’s going to show,” he said. “So—the reporter had better do a little digging. All right?”
“Of course,” she said, and he eased the table from them and went out around it, lithely for so angular a man, and left her sitting, with a few sips to sip. He went out into the Inn’s lobby—a reporter seeking an item for a weekly newspaper. After a few moments, she heard a murmur of voices from the Inn’s desk. She could not distinguish words, and remembered how, when the slight brown-haired woman had, presumably, been standing at the desk, arranging about a room, she had heard her words clearly. At least, she thought, I didn’t make it up that she has a very carrying voice. She listened now, expecting to hear the voice again.
But even the murmur stopped. Oliver came back into the taproom. He shook his head in the doorway, indicating defeat, and came to the table and pulled it out and sat down.
“Gone,” he said. “Ned brought her back. Around four—four-thirty. Then she got a telephone call and checked out. So—”
“She said ‘a few days—only a few days,’” Lois said. “That was the first thing I heard her say.”
“Yes,” Oliver said. “That’s the impression Mrs. Fellows got.” Mrs. Fellows, Lois remembered, ran the Inn. “So she said she hoped it wasn’t that the room was unsatisfactory, etcetera and etcetera, and Mrs. Banks said ‘not at all,’ presumably intending to say that the room was fine, but that she found she had to go back to the city. And, Mrs. Fellows supposes, must have taken the five-eighteen bus, because she didn’t seem to have a car and what else is there? Except the seven-thirty-one train.”
He finished his drink. He sat and looked at the empty glass, his eyes narrowed, his expression one of concentration.
“Look,” she said. “We’re chasing shadows, aren’t we? It couldn’t matter less whether this Mrs. Banks is the one your wife knew. Because—it’s all make-believe. Nobody’s done anything to anybody. An old, old lady makes a will and dies and—”
He shook his head, the motion curiously sharp.
“The Grace Banks my wife knew,” he said. “The one I met a few times. She was an actress of sorts, Lois. Character actress. Used to complain that she was typed.”
He looked at her, as if expecting comment. She slightly raised slender shoulders in the only comment she had available.
“Played as Grace—” He frowned. He snapped his fingers. “Farthing,” he said. “That was it. Her maiden name, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“No,” Lois said, “I never heard of her. Should I have?”
“No,” he said. “No reason you should have. But—there’s a rather interesting point. She played old women’s parts. That’s what she was typed as. In her late twenties when I met her, and good-looking enough. And the youngest character she ever played was around seventy, and had white hair and went around shaking and—using a high thin voice. Got used to using it, she sometimes forgot and used it off stage.”
His words fell into silence, as if silence were a well.
“Oh!” Lois said, finally, and it was as if his words had splashed at the bottom of the well of silence.
V
But there wasn’t any “funny business.” Several times, as they sat over coffee, she repeated that, using the term he had used first. They knew there wasn’t any “funny business”—knew a woman had died of old age, most evidently (to layman’s eyes and ears at any rate) in full possession of her faculties; had left a will, duly signed and witnessed. So?
He agreed; admitted there was nothing to do but agree. There wasn’t any funny business. Blake might look at it differently but—
“Blake?” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “Blake Montfort. The grandson. The one who doesn’t get the money. Might be interesting—” He did not finish. He glared at his empty coffee cup. “Undue influence,” he said. “Probably was, come to that. Or—influence, undue or otherwise. The influence of propinquity, if nothing else—of dependence on an old friend, of appreciation of loyal service.”
“But that,” Lois said, “doesn’t add up to ‘funny business.’ Or —bring in this Grace Banks of yours. Who, as far as we know, may merely be another woman named Banks. Not this one at all.”
“Exactly,” Bob Oliver said. “Spot of brandy? Anything—”
“No.”
“Then,” he said, “how about taking a little run into town with me? See if my Mrs. Banks is your Mrs. Banks?”
She felt surprise; she showed surprise.
“Bob,” she said, “do you really take this seriously? All this—”
“It’s a nice night for a little drive,” he said. “Get in in an hour or so. Have a little chat with our friend. Get back in an hour or so.”
Which did not, she po
inted out, answer her question. He hesitated.
“Actually,” he said, “I don’t know. You’re obviously right that there wasn’t any funny business we can put a finger on. On the other hand—” He paused. “On the other hand,” he said, “I’m one of the executors. Howdy’s got it in hand, of course. But—”
He turned and looked at her.
“Nice guy, Howdy,” he said. “The bluff, honest type. And—a bit of a woolly lamb.”
She smiled suddenly at that, remembering the dream in which Howard Graham had, indeed, appeared wearing wool. He raised his eyebrows.
“Nothing,” she said. “I’ve met Mr. Graham only a couple of times.”
“Good,” he said, a little bafflingly. “Also, I’m a reporter. Don’t get too much chance to work at it nowadays— Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Q. Zilch entertained their son and daughter-in-law, and their five children, over last weekend. Mrs. Zilch was admitted to Glenville Hospital Monday as a medical patient. But—” He shrugged. “And,” he said, “it’s a nice night for a drive.”
He waited.
“Also,” he said, “you saw the Glenville Mrs. Banks. I didn’t—or hear her. On the other hand—”
“All right,” she said. “Only—are you sure she’s in New York? And, do you know where?”
“No,” he said. “Not sure, of course. I do know her address—looked it up in the phone book while you sat here with an empty glass. Using her stage name—Farthing. Living on Commerce Street. And I didn’t telephone and ask for an appointment because if there is any reason to see her, she probably doesn’t want to see me. Clear?”
“Reasonably,” Lois said. “All right.”
They went out of the taproom and across the lobby toward the door.
“Commerce Street?” Lois said. “Is that down in—”
“The Village,” Bob Oliver said to her. “One of the little twisty —hi, Howdy.”
Howard Graham had come out of the dining room, toward them. He beamed at them. He said, “Hello, hello.” He said, “Saw that bug of yours outside. Thought about putting it in my pocket and thought, ‘What the hell, he’s a nice guy.’ Don’t let him get you into it though, Mrs. Williams.”
They went on across the lobby to the door. For a moment, Graham stood and watched them. Conscious of this while they stood at the door, while Bob Oliver opened it, Lois smiled back at the ornament of the bar, the woolly lamb. Graham beamed at her and nodded his head, as if he confirmed something. An affirmative man, Mr. Graham, she thought, and looked for a moment at the MG at the curb. She took a quick breath and got into it. The car came alive and trembled with eagerness.
“Needs new plugs, probably,” Bob said, and u-turned dizzyingly in Main Street. They leaped in the growing dusk on blacktop roads. They stopped for lights at the Katonah entrance to the Saw Mill River Parkway, lunged convulsively when the lights changed, darted toward New York. Once one got used to it, it was exhilarating—close to the ground, skimming the roadway. It was not particularly comfortable, but there was certainly nothing dull about it.
There was not much traffic on the parkway, not a great deal more on the West Side Highway. They plunged down at the Nineteenth Street exit. Then, after a few minutes, they went much more slowly through crooked streets. They went unhesitatingly, although after the first turn west from Seventh Avenue Lois was quite lost. It is an area which even hack drivers enter hesitantly, about whose streets they say “Never heard of it,” and utter the words with contempt. For a country editor, Bob Oliver certainly knew his way around.
“Used to live down here,” he said, answering a question not asked. “This ought to be it.”
“This” was a four-story brick house, not quite a tenement, in a solid row of four-story brick houses. They had to roll on for half a block before a parking place appeared. They had to walk back half a block. In a dimly lighted lobby, Bob Oliver leaned down and glared at mailboxes, with associated bell pushes. He pressed one of them and nothing happened. He pressed it again and held it longer and then a voice came out of the grating above the boxes. The voice sounded as if it were mechanically produced. The voice said, “Who is it?”
“Bob Oliver,” Bob told the grating. “Grace?”
“Bob Ol— Oh—you. Why—?”
“Like to come up a minute,” he said. “O.K.”
There was a pause. “Well,” the mechanical voice said. “All right, I guess. I was just about to—”
“Only a minute,” Bob said.
Something clicked in the door. Bob pushed it open. They climbed three flights of stairs. Oliver knocked on a wooden door. The door opened a little and a chain stopped it.
“Sure enough,” the woman inside said, after a moment. “The animal trainer.”
There was no special quality in the woman’s voice, except that it was a little husky.
Bob Oliver grinned at her. She was a small woman, slight. (But, Lois noted, by no means flatly slight.) She wore a silk robe, belted tight. She had yellow hair and wore a good deal of lipstick and—yes, eye shadow. A cigarette fumed between fingers of her right hand.
“Cousin of mine,” Bob Oliver said, and indicated Lois, who did her best to look like a cousin of his. “From out of town-showing her the Village. Came down from Glenville—two hicks seeing the town, you might say.”
He did not, Lois thought, sound like Bob Oliver—not, at any rate, a Bob Oliver she had ever met.
“You know what it’s like in Glenville, Grace,” he told the woman with yellow hair and husky voice.
“Not I,” she said. “I’m a city gal. All I know about Glenville is what Laurie called it.” She looked at Lois. “Not for country ears,” she said.
“Are you going to let us in?” Oliver asked. “For old times’ sake?”
“My friend,” she said, “you see a lady ready for bed. Anxious for—all right. If you have to. Why do you have to?”
She did, however, release the chain. She let them in. She led them into a square room with windows at one end.
“Cordial,” Bob said. “Always cordial.”
It was, apparently, a joke of some sort. The woman said, “Same old animal trainer,” which apparently was another.
“All I want,” Bob said, “is a lady’s address. Call her a lady. Call her Laurie.”
“Oh,” Grace Farthing said, “you do, do you? Why?”
“Because,” Bob said, “I’ve got a letter addressed to her, forwarded up to me. To Glenville. Somebody who doesn’t know the present setup. I’d send it back except it seems to be from a lawyer and maybe somebody’s left her a million dollars.”
“Let’s see this letter,” Grace said.
He shook his head. He didn’t have the letter with him. All he wanted was an address.
“If she wanted you to know where she is, she’d tell you,” Grace said. “If you want her to have the letter, send it to me and I’ll mail it along. Or—send it back to this lawyer who wrote it.”
“The same old Grace,” he said. “Always obliging. Go out of her way to find a fallen sparrow’s neck and wring it.”
Now he glared at the woman with yellow hair. Now he turned abruptly and took Lois’s arm and took her out of the apartment, as if rage blew him. He slammed the door behind them and then, instantly, leaned down to Lois and whispered.
“Rat-a-tat-tat,” he whispered, and pointed down the stairway.
She went, making heels click on the wooden treads. She reached the landing, and heard Bob Oliver’s heavier tread behind her, and looked back. He was marking time, slowly, on the top step. He motioned, and she went on.
She waited in the building’s dim entry. After what seemed some time, and was actually a minute or two, she heard his tread on the stairs again, and this time he came down them.
She started to speak, but he shook his head and directed her out of the house, and down the worn sandstone steps to the sidewalk. Only after they had gone some yards toward the car did he speak, and then it was to say, “Well?”
“I d
on’t know,” she said. “The voice—no. And I told you about the hair. And the woman at the Inn wore almost no makeup and it isn’t too light in the taproom. And—” She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said again. “It could be. She said she’d never been in Glenville. Was that true about a letter?”
“What?” he said. “Oh—no, as a matter of fact. And I know perfectly well where Laurie is. Grace likes to think she made trouble. Likes things dramatic. There wasn’t anything dramatic—just something that dried up and blew away. Grace is an actress. You’re not sure, then?”
She shook her head.
“Allow for makeup,” he suggested—he ordered. “For an actor’s tricks with it—even not much of an actor’s. For a wig—and time enough to put it on after we rang her bell. General—cut of the jib? The way she moved?”
Neither time she saw the woman—if she had seen her twice, and not two women—had there been enough bodily movement to reveal anything. The woman had walked a few steps into the taproom; a few steps across a room.
“Not merely twice,” Bob said. “Three times—once pretending to be Mrs. Montfort, once at the Inn, once upstairs there. One woman? Three women?”
As for Mrs. Montfort—Mrs. Montfort, actual or impersonated, had been a muffled figure in a dim light. That and a voice. With makeup, with whatever tricks an actress would know, either of the Mrs. Bankses might have been the Mrs. Montfort she had seen so briefly, under conditions so adverse. And Mrs. Montfort had not moved at all; had merely sat huddled in a chair.
“A wild-goose chase,” Lois said, and got into the MG. “I’m sorry. I—”
He glared at her. He said, “Mean to say you didn’t smell it?” He was impatient and showed it. (An impossible man.) She said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and said it sharply.
“Don’t bush your tail,” he said. “Told you I was rude and that you’d have to get used—”
“Do I, though?” she said.
“Sure,” he said. “Cigar smoke.” He waited an instant, watching her face.
“That’s it,” he said. “In the apartment. Grace doesn’t smoke cigars. That I’ll have to give her. Marijuana—quite possibly. Opium—no doubt. But cigars—not cigars.”