The Bilbao Looking Glass

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “Well, it’s awfully récherché for ordinary burglars, wouldn’t you say? They appear to have taken only paintings and objets d’art. No silver, for example, and Miffy has tons of it. And none of the larger pieces like that horsehair sofa they took from Pussy Beaxitt.”

  She wrinkled her nose in thought. “It seems as if the burglar must have known in advance what was worth stealing and also where to find it, because Miffy kept things in such a jumble. Is that what you wanted me to say?”

  “Right on the button. Who in her crowd would have that kind of expertise?”

  “Max, surely you don’t—but it would almost have to be, wouldn’t it? Unless it was the window cleaner or the rug washer or someone like that. We do get lots of college students doing odd jobs around here during the summer season. Some of them are fairly erudite.”

  “Do you hire them to help out at parties?”

  “Some people do. Miffy doesn’t bother since she never serves anything but martinis she makes herself and has Alice B. to take care of the food and the washing-up. Had, I should say. As for her friends—” Sarah hesitated.

  “It’s hard to say, really. They’ve all been to private schools and I suppose they got force-fed a certain amount of art history. But they’re an awfully dim lot, by and large. Why, Fren,” Sarah added unkindly as a gangling form in shorts and sweatshirt manifested itself in her kitchen, “we were just talking about you. I didn’t hear you knock. Do you know Max Bittersohn?”

  Fren Larrington did not know Max Bittersohn and clearly didn’t intend to. He stared straight through the man at the table, turned to the open pantry shelves, found a mug, and helped himself from the coffeepot.

  “Where do you keep the sugar, Sarah? Not a very shipshape galley, I must say.”

  “Must you? It’s none of your business, you know. The sugar’s in that canister marked ‘Sugar.’ Take a clean spoon and don’t spill any or we’ll have the place overrun with ants. Why aren’t you down at the boatyard?”

  “Good question.”

  Fren gulped half the coffee scalding hot and whacked off a hunk of prune cake. “I know I came here for some damn reason or other. Oh yes, dinner at the yacht club. Half-past seven. You’ll have to bum a ride from one of the gang. I shan’t have time to pick you up. Can’t rely on the old Milburn any more, eh?”

  It seemed not to occur to Fren that he’d just said something unpardonable. He snatched the last piece of coffee cake from the plate, gulped down the dregs of his coffee, and left without waiting for Sarah to answer.

  Chapter 7

  SARAH GOT UP AND hooked the screen door after Fren. She picked up the used mug he’d rudely set on the kitchen table right under Bittersohn’s nose, and carried it over to the sink to wash. Then she changed her mind, unlocked the door again, opened it, and hurled the mug as far as she could into the deep grass.

  “Now,” she said, putting up the hook again, “where were we?”

  “We were discussing the quaint social customs of the local fauna,” Max replied.

  “Oh Christ, here’s another.”

  “Miz Alex.” That was Pete Lomax bawling through the screen. “The door’s stuck.”

  “No it’s not,” she told him. “The door is locked because I’m sick and tired of having people barge in without knocking. And I’m Mrs. Kelling, since you appear to have forgotten how to address me. Where’s your uncle?”

  “He had to go over to Ipswich. Told me to come ahead an’ get started. He’ll be along pretty soon.”

  Pete spoke absentmindedly. He was eyeing Max. Sarah decided she might as well explain.

  “This is Mr. Bittersohn, who’s renting the carriage house and having his meals up here. I hope one of these days he’ll be allowed to eat in peace. What do you want, Pete?”

  Pete wasn’t even listening to her, he was too interested in Max. “Hey, I know you. You used to catch for Saugus High.”

  “Yes, and I still have the scars on my left leg where you spiked me on purpose after I’d tagged you out trying to steal home,” Max replied with no particular animosity. “That was the year we licked you nine to nothing. What’s new, Pete?”

  “S’pose you heard about Miss Tergoyne’s lady friend gettin’ bumped off last night?”

  Pete lounged up against the door jamb and cast an ever so casual glance at the coffeepot. Jed Lomax would have dropped dead on the spot if he’d arrived here to find his nephew sitting down for a cozy chat with one of his customers. How did one handle this? Sarah decided flight was her best solution.

  “If you two are going to hash over old times, I’ll get on with my work. Pete, since you’re here you may as well get started cutting that grass in the back yard. I told you to do it last week, and the week before.”

  “Don’t you think it looks sort o’ pretty the way it is, Miz Kelling?”

  The way Pete drawled out the “Miz Kelling” was more than Sarah cared to take. “There’s nothing pretty about picking up ticks on one’s legs every time one steps outside the door. See that you have it finished by noontime.”

  At least being a landlady had taught her how to bully people. Sarah stalked out of the kitchen and went upstairs to make beds, wondering whether Pete had ever tried to steal anything other than home plate.

  Max might be wondering the same thing. If so, he’d stand a better chance of getting information out of Pete if Sarah wasn’t around.

  It was strange to picture a Lomax doing anything even mildly reprehensible. Most of them were policemen, firemen, or honest fisher folk. One was a Methodist minister, two were security guards at a college somewhere up around Ashby. There was a grandson at Tabor Academy on scholarship and a fair sprinkling of first mates and chief engineers in the merchant marine. Still, any large family was bound to have its black sheep, and Pete looked to Sarah like a plausible candidate.

  Maybe she oughtn’t to fault him for helping his uncle instead of painting houses. Lots of men around here would no doubt welcome the chance to put themselves into a position where they might hope to take over Jed’s customers when, if ever, he hung up that old swordfisherman’s cap for the last time. Despite its enclaves of wealth, this part of the North Shore was none too affluent by and large. Nor were some of the allegedly wealthy all that rich, as Sarah herself had reason to know.

  It wasn’t what Pete did but what he didn’t do that bothered her, she thought sourly as she glanced out at the back yard where grass still waved knee-high and the ticks, no doubt, were busy proliferating. Furthermore, she didn’t like Pete’s manner. She didn’t expect to be kowtowed to by the hired help, but neither did she care to be leered at.

  Also, while she was on the subject, she didn’t go much for being bullied by her old acquaintances. What did Fren Larrington think he was getting at, sailing in and barking orders as though he had some God-given right to take charge now that Alexander wasn’t around? Even Cousin Lionel hadn’t managed to make himself quite so intolerable in so short a space of time, though to give Lionel his due, he’d tried. He’d just better keep that pack of cubs out of her hair or she might start sharpening the axe herself.

  Sarah sat down on the bed she’d just finished straightening, and thought about the dead woman over in the village. What did she actually know about Alice Beaxitt? Nothing much, when she came down to facts, except that Alice B. had managed somehow to live with Miffy a good many years in apparent harmony and that she’d had the most vicious tongue in the yacht club crowd, which was saying a good deal. She’d always seemed more or less the same, got up in some outfit she’d picked up at the shops around Bearskin Neck, always trying out some exotic recipe and trying to make you eat more of it than you wanted, always deftly slitting somebody’s throat with her tongue the way she’d done Max’s yesterday.

  Could Alice B. have been a happy person? Sarah supposed she must have been reasonably content with the life she’d led. Otherwise, why hadn’t she done something else? If she hadn’t attached herself to Miffy, no doubt she’d have found another p
atroness. Some people were born hangers-on. Perhaps that was why Alice B. had to dress up in stagey costumes and search out new dishes to surprise Miffy’s guests with and new scandals to titillate them with. Ordinary clothes, ordinary food, and ordinary human courtesy couldn’t have disguised the fact that Alice had no genuine life of her own.

  Cutting down other people would have been her revenge against them for being real enough to make mistakes and get into situations. Maybe Alice B. had always yearned to become the center of some great drama herself, and never dared to venture into one. One mustn’t wish for things, or one would be sure to get them.

  Well, this wasn’t getting the floor mopped. Even Pete had gone to work finally. She could see him through the window, using the old scythe Alexander had always kept so well sharpened with a whetstone. Pete must be angry about having to mow by hand, from the look on his face. Too bad for him. It was his own fault he’d let the grass grow so high it would have kept binding in the mower. From now on, Sarah decided, she’d funnel all her instructions through old Jed. The less she had to do with Pete Lomax, the better she’d be able to endure having him around.

  She still had the apartment over the carriage house to tidy. If Max Bittersohn knew how to make a bed, he’d shown no sign of it since he’d been boarding with her.

  They still hadn’t got things settled about Barbara, either. Though what was there to settle, actually? Maybe she’d ask him to take her grocery shopping instead. They could swing by Miffy’s and leave another bagful of clothes for Aunt Appie in the hope that she’d take the hint and stay longer. Now, if Cousin Lionel could only be palmed off on Miffy, too.

  No hope of that. In the first place, Miffy hated children. In the second, she had no land fit for camping; only a quarter acre or so of perfect lawn with a rigidly pruned privet hedge around it and some ornamental shrubs clipped into cones and spheres. Miffy had to show even Mother Nature who was boss.

  If it had been Miffy instead of Alice B. who’d got brained with the axe, the killing might have made more sense. Alice B. was vicious and sly, but not violent. Miffy was openly brutal. Anybody who objected to getting jumped on became her sworn enemy.

  By now, Miffy had running feuds on with any number of people, many of them year-rounders because she always stayed on so long after the yacht club closed down for the winter and her usual drinking buddies dispersed. Was it in fact possible that Alice B. had been killed in mistake for Miffy? Or was Alice B. so closely identified with her patroness that the killer hadn’t cared which one he got? That of course was assuming there’d been anything personal in the killing, which Sarah had no right as yet to assume.

  As to that list of stolen items, Sarah didn’t know what to make of it. She herself didn’t claim any great expertise but she was a trained artist, she’d spent a lot of time at museums and picked up a good deal lately from Max. Moreover, she’d inherited some good things herself and read up on them because she’d had to peddle a few to antique dealers during the early days of her sudden penury.

  To her, the list seemed almost too good to be true. Surely Miffy must have owned those particular items or she wouldn’t have gone to the expense of insuring them. Miffy couldn’t have had much more good stuff, though, or some of it would have been on view and Sarah would have remembered. She’d spent enough time staring at Miffy’s walls during her younger days. The burglar must have skimmed off the cream and left the less desirable pieces even though many of them were larger and more showy. This was a connoisseur’s crime. How could it fit in with the primitive barbarity of an axe murder?

  To believe Alice B. had come downstairs and surprised the robber, then stood patiently waiting in the dining room while he ran around back to the woodpile, fetched the axe, and came back to slaughter her was absurd. To suppose someone intending to steal precious, fragile items like that Bilbao looking glass would encumber himself at the outset with such a heavy, awkward weapon was even sillier.

  A knife would have been just as effective and a lot easier to manage. Alice B. had slews of fine French steel knives for her gourmet cooking. She’d kept them razor sharp as a cordon-bleu chef ought to, and ready to hand in wooden racks screwed to the kitchen wall. Anybody who knew the house well enough to ferret out its valuables could surely have laid hands on any knife he wanted, or a cleaver if he’d rather hack than stab.

  Was it possible two separate crimes had been committed on the same night? Could Alice B. have heard the first burglar leaving, perhaps, and come downstairs only to run into a second who’d had the same idea but a less polished approach?

  More likely, the knowledgeable thief had brought a helper. There’d have been considerable fetching and carrying involved even if the items taken weren’t large. That Bilbao looking glass alone would have been as much as most people would risk trying to handle at one time. What would be the point in stealing a thing like that if you smashed it getting it out to your car?

  They must have had a car, Sarah thought. That wouldn’t have presented any great problem. Miffy’s house wasn’t off in the woods like this one, but situated at the intersection of two roads down in the picturesque part of the old village. Cars were more common than not around there, especially now since the tourists had begun to arrive and there was plenty of hedge to hide one behind.

  Suppose the person inside, the one who knew his way around, had been handing loot out the dining room window to a confederate who was taking it to a conveniently parked vehicle. Suppose Alice B. had in fact come downstairs and grappled with the thief, who might even have been a woman no bigger than she. Seeing his partner in trouble, the outside man might have run to get the axe from the woodpile, climbed in the window, and struck Alice B.

  That could explain why the dining room silver hadn’t been taken. They’d have meant to get the valuable smaller items first, then scoop up the bulky ones on their way out. Once murder had been done, however, they wouldn’t have dared do anything but flee. There must have been a certain amount of noise. Maybe Alice had cried out, and they couldn’t be sure Miffy would still be deep enough in her drunken stupor not to hear.

  Would Alice B. have been reckless enough to attack a burglar single-handed, even if it was somebody she knew? She’d have been drinking, of course, but she wouldn’t have been drunk. Perhaps that had been one flaw in what must otherwise have been a well-planned crime. Because Miffy never went to bed sober if she could help it, everybody tended to take it for granted Alice B. didn’t, either.

  In fact, however, Alice B. had been clever about pretending to keep up with the rest of the crowd while secretly watering her drinks with innumerable ice cubes so that she’d be able to keep her wits together and not miss anything. Miffy’s brand of hospitality being what it was, most of her guests had probably gone home fairly well anaesthetized last night, but Alice B. ought to have remained sober enough. Early on, she’d been occupied with her clam puffs. After the cocktail party broke up, some of the crowd would surely have stayed for supper. That meant she’d have been doing her thing in the kitchen, flipping crepes or whipping up two perfect omelets at a time with a frying pan in each hand while the rest sat around the big kitchen table swilling wine and cheering her on.

  She wouldn’t have drunk the wine herself. Putting on a show for company would have been intoxication enough for Alice B.

  When the guests at last cleared off, there’d have been a mess to clean up and Miffy to put to bed because by then the hostess would have been out on her feet. By the time Alice B. got a chance to rest, she’d hardly have required a nightcap to put her to sleep.

  Alice B. couldn’t have been any youngster, after all. She must have been at least Appie Kelling’s age, and Sarah herself had baked the cake for Appie’s sixtieth birthday party ages ago, when Uncle Samuel was still able to be up and about. It was surprising Alice B. had been able to manage as well as she had, especially with tasks like getting Miffy undressed and decently tucked into bed.

  Aunt Appie would have that honor tonight, no dou
bt. Sarah folded a nightgown her aunt had left thrown over the foot of the guest room bed and laid it back in the suitcase Appie hadn’t bothered to finish unpacking. Just as well she hadn’t. Now it would be easy to close the case and cart it over to Miffy’s.

  As she straightened up, Sarah glanced out the window to see how Pete was getting on with the mowing. Was that a dog sneaking up through the tall grass behind him? No, a dog wouldn’t be wearing a green and purple striped rugby shirt. It had to be one of Lionel’s brats. What was he doing up here? If Pete—good God!

  “Hey!”

  That was the boy shouting. Alive, thank heaven. He’d leaped straight into the air as Pete whirled around and swung the scythe blade viciously through the weeds where he’d been lurking.

  “Pete!” Sarah screamed out the window. “You could have killed that boy.”

  “Yeah? Well—” the hired man was shaken, Sarah could see that. Still he couldn’t help twisting his lips in a self-satisfied smirk. “I got fast reflexes.”

  “Then you’d better slow them down. Stop crying Woody. I’m coming.”

  It was typical of Lionel and Vare that they’d named their first three sons Jesse, Woodson, and James. The fourth and no doubt last now that Vare had switched her sexual proclivities, was Frank, of course.

  Max was just finishing a phone call when Sarah got downstairs. “Sorry I couldn’t cut that short,” he apologized. “I was talking to a guy at the Sûreté. Don’t look at me like that. I charged it to my business account. What’s all the hullabaloo out back?”

  “Pete Lomax just tried to chop one of Lionel’s boys in two with the scythe.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Woody was playing the fool, sneaking up through the grass. He startled Pete, and Pete swung on him. He claims he has fast reflexes. I’ve got to go out there.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Max. “I know all about Pete’s fast reflexes. Remind me to show you his footprint in spike marks on my thigh, if our acquaintance ever progresses that far.”