The Bilbao Looking Glass

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “It’s all right, I’ll be there. Do you need anything from your luggage?”

  “Thank you dear, but I’m already togged out in my brown crepe. Alice B. used to tell me how much she liked it.”

  Alice B. had never failed to comment on that weary old dress. What she’d meant was, “For heaven’s sake, aren’t you ever going to buy a new one?” but Appie was too sweetly dense to realize she’d been insulted.

  “Now Sarah, don’t you worry about a thing. It’s all arranged. Just get ready and Fren Larrington will be along to pick you up.”

  “Aunt Appie, I don’t want Fren to pick me up. I’m going with Max.”

  “Max? You mean that young man from the—but Sarah, we have it all arranged.”

  “Forget it, Aunt Appie. Max and I have our own arrangement.”

  She raised her eyebrows at him. He nodded and she took the plunge. “It’s going to be a permanent one.”

  “What, dear? I’m afraid I don’t quite—”

  “I mean Max and I are going to get married. This week, if we can manage it.”

  “Sarah! We all thought it would be so much nicer if you and Fren—”

  “Max and I will see you at the church.”

  Sarah hung up the receiver. “Poor Aunt Appie. Maybe that will cure her of making nice little arrangements. How about toast and scrambled eggs? We haven’t time for much else. I’ve got to change into something respectable, and I suppose you should put on a jacket and tie. Half of them will show up in jogging suits or tennis shorts, but we may as well set an example. We needn’t stay on after the service.”

  That was more easily said than done. By the time Alice B. had been preached over in the little fieldstone church that served the summer colony and interred in the cemetery nearby, Aunt Appie was in an advanced state of the weeps. Sarah hadn’t the heart to desert her, especially since Lionel had stayed back at the camp with the boys and Vare, though present, was making no effort to be civil. Max, with his well-developed sense of family solidarity, was quite willing to go along back to Miffy’s if Sarah thought they should.

  Miffy herself was bearing up surprisingly well. She’d even had sense enough to get in a local catering outfit to handle the drinks and the food, which turned out to be mostly things like chocolate chip cookies and dull chicken salad sandwiches with the crusts imperfectly trimmed. The cuisine was going to be far less interesting around here now that Alice B. was gone. Also the conversation, no doubt.

  At least Sarah and Max were giving them something to talk about today. Startled glances were being directed their way. Max must be realizing what people would be saying, and either not giving a hoot or managing to look as if he didn’t. Why should he? Sarah certainly didn’t.

  It was Vare and Tigger who stole the show, however. This was not a dressy gathering, by and large—Aunt Appie’s brown crepe was by no means the tackiest outfit present—but Tigger’s cumbersome hiking boots, dirty corduroys, and hairy poncho did seem a bit much. As always, Tigger wasn’t saying a word, just lurking in a corner and glaring at anybody who tried to approach her.

  “You know,” Sarah murmured to Max, “I wouldn’t put anything past that woman. If that’s what she is.”

  “Looks like a psycho to me,” he agreed. “I hope your cousin’s wife realized what she was getting herself into.”

  “I doubt it.”

  Vare had shown up in a man’s dark gray pinstriped three-piece suit with a black four-in-hand tie and a starched white shirt. Her notion of what the well-dressed lesbian should wear to a favorite aunt’s funeral, no doubt. The suit did not fit. It must be one of Lionel’s. Suspecting that a real lesbian would be more inclined to wear whatever was becoming and appropriate, Sarah decided Vare was merely exploring another experience. She’d be back with Lionel and the boys, most likely, as soon as she’d had enough of Tigger.

  Assuming Tigger would let her go. Watching that sullen face under the tangle of unwashed black hair, Sarah wasn’t at all sure Vare was going to get away without a struggle. According to Lionel, Tigger was doing nicely out of the present arrangement, playing Vare for all her husband was worth. Would she be amenable to letting the gravy train roll off without her?

  Miffy was not making the pair welcome. She ignored Tigger, walked up to Vare, took a long look at the three-piece suit and the black necktie, then snorted.

  “Well, well. What have we here? I thought I’d seen the last of you, Vare, now that Alice isn’t around to revel in your devotion.”

  “My interest in Aunt Alice was wholly sincere,” Vare replied without a flicker of emotion.

  “I don’t doubt that for a moment. Interest and dividends both, not to mention the principal. Now that you’re here, you might as well have a drink. I’m going to.”

  Miffy turned and strode over to the bar the caterers had set up. Vare, still poker-faced, followed her and took a glass of tomato juice. That must have been Aunt Appie’s contribution. Miffy would never think to provide anything nonalcoholic.

  Lassie was standing nearby. Sarah went up to her.

  “I hadn’t realized Vare was in the habit of visiting Alice B.”

  “That’s because you’re never around. Vare’s been haunting the place for quite a while now, though she did have sense enough not to bring that creature with her until today, of all times to pick. Never brought her own whelps either. I expect she realized she herself was about as much as Alice B. could take. Vare’s no fool, you know, even if she does act like a jackass more often than not.”

  Vare was, after all, Sarah’s cousin-in-law. She wasn’t about to start bending Lassie Larrington’s ear about Lionel’s wife’s shortcomings.

  “I know,” she said. “Vare’s terribly bright, actually. I’ve never met anyone keener on self-improvement.”

  “You can say that again. Especially when it comes to improving her financial position. She did everything but write Alice B.’s will for her.”

  Then there was a will. This was interesting, though Sarah tried to pretend it wasn’t.

  “But why should she bother? Not that it’s any business of mine, but I always thought of Alice B. as—well, not exactly an employee but a sort of companion-help to Miffy. I assumed her cooking and whatnot was a way of earning her keep.”

  Lassie took a swig from her glass. “Alice B. earned her keep all right, but not because she had to. Her own little nest was pretty well feathered. In my opinion, a few people are going to get quite a surprise when the will’s probated.”

  “Really?” said Sarah. “Then I hope from a purely selfish family point of view that Vare does come in for something. You can imagine the sort of financial burden Lionel’s carrying now with four boys to educate and all this hoo-ha going on.”

  She could see no sense in pretending it wasn’t, when Vare and Tigger were taking such pains to let everybody know it was. “And you know what Don was telling us yesterday about the stock market,” she threw in for good measure.

  “Don’t remind me,” Lassie yipped. “I get the stock market every day of my life for breakfast and dinner, not to mention cocktail time. God, these Bloody Marys are flat. Appie must have made them.”

  “I expect you’ve got hold of a glass of plain tomato juice,” Sarah told her. “That’s what I’m having.”

  The look of horror on Lassie’s face was almost worth having come to see. She slammed down the glass on one of Miffy’s pearwood tables and hared off to the bar, leaving Sarah to remove the glass before it left a white ring, and to wonder about Vare.

  She wished Max had been beside her to hear what Lassie’d said, but he was trapped by Pussy Beaxitt, who was doubtless trying to pry out of him the lurid details of his and Sarah’s courtship. Sarah’s lips twitched. There weren’t all that many, even counting last night. Pussy wouldn’t have got much out of Max in any case.

  Aunt Appie was still red around the eyelids but nobody else appeared to be mourning Alice B. By now, the rest of them had evidently forgotten what they were supposed to be
here for and turned the gathering into just another of Miffy’s parties.

  Miffy herself was going right along with the crowd. She was standing beside Pussy, grilling Max with the zest of a prosecuting attorney facing a hostile witness. Lassie, having equipped herself with two martinis, one in each hand, drifted over to the group. Almost everybody else, not excepting Vare and, for a wonder, Tigger, was doing the same. Even Bradley Rovedock was among them, though his motive must have been to urge a decent restraint because Sarah heard Miffy yap at him, “Shut up, Brad. Don’t be such a damned old maid.”

  The crowd shifted. Sarah caught a glimpse of Miffy reaching down to tug at the stockings she’d put on for the occasion. This was the first time in her life Sarah’d ever seen those hairy, knotted old legs so demurely covered. When it was paralyzingly cold, Miffy wore woolen pants and rubber boots with heavy socks inside them. Most of the time, she slopped around in nothing more than a battered pair of rawhide sandals.

  Perhaps Miffy decided she’d been respectable long enough. She thrust her drink at Max, barked, “Hold this,” hiked up her skirt, tore off the stockings and the baggy girdle they were attached to, and chucked the whole doings into the fire.

  “Last time I’ll ever wear those damn things.”

  Miffy grabbed the martini back from Max and poured it down her throat. Then she gasped, choked, dropped the empty glass, and doubled over.

  For a second, Max was the only one who did anything. He caught the falling body, eased Miffy into a chair, and bent over her trying to make out what was wrong. Then Biff Beaxitt sprang on to his back.

  “Get away from her, you murdering devil! First Alice B., and now—”

  Now Miffy. She was dead, anybody could see that. Of course Biff was thinking of murder. They all were. How often did a person just drop like that from natural causes? How could it be only coincidence that Alice B. had been killed just three nights ago, right here in Miffy’s house, and that her murderer was still at large? Who knew Alice and her amusing little secrets better than Miffy? Who’d been up and around hunting for Bromo Seltzer when perhaps the blood wasn’t yet dry on the axe? Who might be too great a threat to be left alive? And what could have been in that glass, to have worked so horribly fast?

  Chapter 15

  MAX HAD ALMOST MANAGED to wrench free of Biff when Don and Fren Larrington jumped him together. Against the three of them he hadn’t a chance. Sarah tried to intervene by shrieking, “Stop it, you idiots,” and pounding at them with her fists, but Bradley Rovedock gently pulled her away.

  “Don’t, Sarah, you’ll get hurt. We’d better call the police and let them handle this.”

  “Oh yes, quickly! Ask for Sergeant Jofferty.”

  She was sane again, but it was agony to watch Don Larrington ripping off Max’s belt and using it to lash his feet together while Biff and Fren tied his hands behind his back. Max caught Sarah’s eyes and actually managed a rueful smile.

  “Did you send for Jofferty?”

  “Shut up, you!”

  Fren hauled off to punch Max in the face, but Don struck his fist away.

  “Belay that, you damn fool. Next thing we know, he’ll be yelling police brutality and getting some left-wing jackass of a judge on his side.”

  “What do you mean, police brutality? We’re not police.”

  “We’re performing a citizens’ arrest.”

  “Like hell you are,” said Max. “You’re laying yourselves open for a fat lawsuit and don’t think I’m not going to win it. Sarah, the car keys are in my right-hand coat pocket.”

  “Keep away from him, Sarah,” bawled Biff. “If you’ve got any half-baked ideas about rescuing this Jew bastard—”

  Sarah was too furious to say more than, “Don, you seem to be the least insane of the three. Would you please reach into Max’s pocket and get his keys for me?”

  “What do you want them for?”

  “I have no other means of transportation. Is that sufficient reason?”

  “I suppose so.” Don fished out the keys and was about to hand them over when Fren stopped him.

  “Wait a minute. How do we know she’s not going to rush off and destroy the evidence?”

  “What evidence?” Appie Kelling had by now managed to wriggle her way through the press to her niece’s side. “I don’t understand this at all. I must say it does seem—with dear Alice B. just buried—and now poor Miffy—she—it’s hardly—and after all, Mr. Bittersohn is formally engaged to Sarah. Really, Fren, such roughhousing might possibly be acceptable at the bachelor party, but—”

  “Roughhousing, hell! Appie, this man is a killer. First he sneaks in here at night and steals all the paintings and bashes Alice B. with the axe, and now he poisons Miffy’s drink. It was a fresh one. She hadn’t even touched it!”

  One couldn’t tell whether Fren thought Miffy’s death or the waste of a virgin martini was the worse crime of the two.

  “But he’s engaged to Sarah,” Appie moaned.

  “Then Sarah had better get herself disengaged pretty damn fast. This son of a bitch—”

  “This man’s name is Max Bittersohn,” Sarah interrupted, “and I’ll thank you to use it, as I myself shall be doing in the very near future.”

  Fren sneered. “Naturally you’ve got to say that now. You’ll be singing a different tune in a day or so.”

  “Shut up, Fren,” said his brother. “Appie, look at the facts. Mr. Bittersohn,” he leaned heavily on the name, “first entered this house, to the best of our knowledge, something like eight hours before Alice B. was killed by a burglar she caught stealing Miffy’s painting. Mr. Bittersohn,” again the implied sneer, “is a self-confessed dealer in stolen paintings.”

  “Correction, Don.” That was Bradley Rovedock, back from making his telephone call to the police station. “As I understand it, Bittersohn runs a detective agency that specializes in the recovery of stolen art objects.”

  “It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

  “Not quite. I suggest we leave the investigating to the police. They said they’d be right along.”

  “But damn it, Brad, he handled Miffy’s drink. He was holding it while she took her stockings off. We all saw him.”

  “We did not,” Vare contradicted. “We may or may not have all observed Mr. Bittersohn accepting the glass from Miffy’s hand, but I should venture to assume that we then focused our eyes on the somewhat unusual spectacle of an elderly woman removing her nether garments in the presence of a large mixed group of guests.”

  “What’s she talking about?” Fren asked Don.

  “She means nobody was watching Bittersohn hold the drink because we were more interested in seeing Miffy do her strip tease,” Pussy Beaxitt interpreted. “Vare’s right, too. I know I was.”

  “To think that when dear Miffy said this was the last time she’d ever wear—” Aunt Appie started to cry again.

  “But that’s exactly what she meant,” Sarah exclaimed. “Don’t you realize how totally out of character it was for her to burn that girdle? You saw what a rag it was. I’ll bet it was fifty years old, and she’d hung on to it all this time. Why should she decide to get rid of it right after Alice B. died?”

  “Because she was drunk,” said Pussy. “Good try, Sarah. You want us to believe Miffy had planned to do a Sarah Bernhardt out of grief over losing Alice B. Forget it. Biff and I rode with her to the funeral and back. She did nothing but bitch the whole way about how she was going to have to hire someone to cook and housekeep because Appie was hopeless and she couldn’t stand her flapping around anyway. If that’s suicidal mania, I’m Jessica Dragonette.”

  “Why Jessica Dragonette?” Lassie Larrington wanted to know.

  “I don’t know, it’s just a name that sticks in my mind. My father was crazy about her. We used to listen to her on the radio every Sunday night. It was an Atwater-Kent. I shouldn’t be surprised if my mother still has it.”

  “Why would she keep the radio if this Dragonette woman was your
father’s mistress?”

  “Lassie, for God’s sake! She was a soprano on the Bayer Aspirin hour. Father liked to hear her sing. I don’t suppose he ever laid eyes on her, much less anything else. Forget I ever mentioned Jessica Dragonette, will you? What I meant was that Miffy did not commit suicide. So if this Bittersohn didn’t put the poison in her drink, who did?”

  “What makes you so sure Miffy was in fact poisoned?” asked Vare quite sensibly.

  “Because she was roaring around in great form, until she gulped down that drink and keeled over. How else could she have died that suddenly?”

  “She might have had a massive coronary attack.”

  “Vare, knock it off,” snarled Biff Beaxitt. “You’re supposed to have brains, aren’t you? Of course Miffy was poisoned. We’ve caught the bastard who did it and if Sarah chooses to take umbrage at my use of the word ‘bastard,’ that’s just too damned bad. What I’m wondering right now is who gets Miffy’s money.”

  “You can hardly be intimating that she’s left it to Sarah.”

  “One never knows. If Appie’d been working on her—”

  Biff stopped. Even he must have realized he was talking nonsense. Appie Kelling would be the last person in the world to try such a thing, and the first to louse it up if she ever did. Nevertheless, his question had set everybody thinking. With Alice B. gone and none of the Tergoyne family left alive, at least none that anybody knew about, any member of the group Miffy had dominated for so long might stand a fighting chance of getting something out of her estate.

  Or if she’d left it all to Alice B. as they’d expected her to, would Alice’s heirs automatically become Miffy’s residuary legatees? Was that why Tigger’s eyes were glittering so from under all that hair, and why Biff Beaxitt had been so quick to dub Max Bittersohn the scapegoat?

  Biff himself had been right there in the crowd beside Max while Miffy did her striptease act. So had Pussy. In fact, she’d been about as close to Max as a woman could get unless they’d happened to be participating in a group orgy. Either of the Beaxitts could have poisoned the drink easily enough while the rest were watching Miffy.