“Yes.” Her voice was shaking. “It means she wanted everyone to believe she’d been Alexander’s mistress. If that isn’t typical! Alice B. couldn’t even get herself murdered without being nasty about it.”
“You didn’t know about this bequest?”
“Know about it? Of course I didn’t know about it. Of all the slimy, rotten—I’m sorry. What’s the use of ranting and raving? She’s had her fun and I’m left with the consequences. You might as well arrest me, Chief Wilson, because I probably would have murdered that scheming old bitch if I’d known what she was up to.”
“Then you don’t think there’s any chance she might in fact have had some kind of relationship with your husband—back when they were young, I mean.”
“You’re a brave man to ask me that, Chief Wilson. No, I do not. My husband had been so deeply traumatized, if that’s the word, by his one disastrous love affair when he was still practically a boy that he didn’t even care to think about sex, much less engage in it with a woman who went around telling everything she knew and a great deal she didn’t. It’s entirely possible Alice B. did have some kind of romantic crush on Alexander, because he was a remarkably handsome man, as you know. Since he was always courteous and considerate toward everyone, Alice B. may have read more into his behavior toward her than he’d meant to convey. It’s far more likely, however, that she was just being funny in her own vicious little way. There’s going to be a grand free-for-all among the Beaxitts now.”
“What about yourself, Mrs. Kelling?”
“What about me? I have nothing to do with it.”
“You were your husband’s sole legatee, weren’t you? Now that they’re both gone, I should think if you got yourself a smart lawyer—”
“I shall certainly do no such thing. Anyway, Miffy lived long enough to inherit, thank God, so I doubt if I’d have any sort of case, assuming I’d ever have touched a penny in the first place. The Beaxitts must be having fits. Three hundred thousand dollars is quite a sum. Oh my,” Sarah had been visited by a stray thought. “I wonder if that’s why Fren Larrington’s started paying attention to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he’s recently been divorced as you may know. I shouldn’t have put it past Alice B. to start dropping him hints that Sarah Kelling wasn’t going to be left so hard-up as people thought. I’m sure they all know to a penny how much I got from my father, which is no great fortune by today’s standards, so Fren would have been led to believe I had money coming to me from somewhere else.”
“Why would Miss Beaxitt do a thing like that?”
“Partly for fun, partly because she was out to break up Max and me.”
“Sarah,” Max began warningly.
“Max, you can’t be in more trouble than you are already, and I’m not telling Chief Wilson anything he can’t find out elsewhere, if he doesn’t already know. Miffy Tergoyne was rich, bored, not particularly bright and not at all amiable. Alice B. was her court jester. Miffy liked scandals so Alice B. nosed them out for her. If she couldn’t find one, she’d stir up a sensation to keep things lively.”
“So you think this Beaxitt woman was trying to break up your marriage to Bittersohn in order to hand Miss Tergoyne a laugh?”
“There’d be more to it than that, of course. Miffy was also a snob of the first water, and one doesn’t go around cutting down other people unless one’s afraid of them.”
“Why would she be afraid of Bittersohn?”
“Because my marrying him would be one more step toward breaking up the old gang. Miffy clung to the yacht club crowd, I suppose, because it was the only family she had left. She’d have liked to see everything go on forever the way it used to be back when she was young and life was one grand party. That was impossible, of course. People grew up and moved away, or joined other clubs, or lost their money and couldn’t keep up their memberships. The ones who’ve hung around are mostly of her own generation and needless to say, they’ve been dying off.”
“But what about their sons and daughters?”
“They haven’t the time or don’t want to be bothered. I certainly didn’t, but I was more or less dragged into it. My late mother-in-law and her husband used to sail out of the club. After he died, she dropped her membership but Miffy kept right on regarding her as one of the group. She liked being included. My husband and I had to tag along because his mother needed somebody with her.”
Sarah shrugged. “When I came back this summer, I had no intention of getting involved again, but Miffy was on the phone before I’d fairly set foot inside the door, demanding that I bring Max along so she could get a look at him. She’d already prodded my aunt into coming, to make it harder for me to refuse. I’m sure she and Alice B. had carefully staged that bit of business about Max’s old girl friend, knowing it would embarrass us both and hoping it would start a fight, which it did.”
Wilson grinned. “You really had it in for those two, didn’t you?”
“I’d have been happy to leave them alone if they’d done the same for me. All I’m trying to do is show you the sort of people they were. You mustn’t think for a moment Max and I were their only targets.”
“So what you’re saying is that any number of people might have had reason to want them out of the way, aside from the money.”
“I’m saying you shouldn’t be so quick to arrest Max, because it’s perfectly obvious he’s being set up to take the blame for what somebody else did.”
And it was perfectly obvious Chief Wilson was thinking Sarah Kelling would have said the same thing if he’d caught Max Bittersohn with the axe in his hands and a corpse at his feet. All she’d accomplish was to brand herself as another spiteful gossip. He was already moving toward the cruiser, taking Max with him. They didn’t even get to kiss good-bye.
Chapter 18
Six months ago, Sarah might have gone back to the house, curled up on the sofa, and had a good cry. She was tougher now, and she still had Max’s car keys. Ten minutes later, she was at the Rivkins’.
Miriam was in the kitchen alone, stirring a potful of boiling macaroni shells. “Hi, Sarah, just in time for a cup of tea. Why so glum? Isn’t Max with you?”
“No, he’s been taken to the police station. Miriam, where’s your uncle, quick?”
“Mike drove him downtown to buy a Wall Street Journal.”
“How long ago?”
“Just before I started the macaroni. I’m making kasha varnishkes. Fifteen minutes maybe. They ought to be back any time now, unless they stop for—you said Max is at the police station? Look, maybe I’d better call Freddy’s.”
Miriam ran to the wall phone and dialed the one shop in Ireson Town where it was possible to buy both a Wall Street Journal and a halfway respectable cigar.
“Freddy, this is Mrs. Rivkin. Are my son and my uncle there? They are? Then tell them to cut it short and get back here fast. The house is on fire.”
She hung up, giggling weakly. “Oh my God, what did I say that for? Freddy’s calling the fire station right now, I’ll bet. Sarah, sit down before you fall down. Eat something.”
Sarah was going to say, “I couldn’t,” then she realized she hadn’t had a bite since breakfast except that glass of tomato juice at Miffy’s. Maybe if she got some food inside her, she wouldn’t feel so wobbly. When Miriam slid a cup of hot tea and a chopped liver sandwich in front of her, she took a bite. Then she remembered Max hadn’t gotten any lunch either, and pushed the plate away.
Miriam was eyeing her anxiously. “You don’t like chopped liver?”
“It’s not that. It’s—oh, Miriam!”
She mustn’t start bawling. There was no time for that now. She must keep her head and explain exactly what had happened. What she in fact said was, “Max and I are going to get married.”
“Mazel tov! How soon?”
“I don’t know,” Sarah took a sip of the hot tea to steady herself. “That’s the problem. I have to get him out of jail first.”
“Nothing, that’s just the point. Somebody’s trying to make it look as if he did the robbery and killed Alice B. and Miffy.”
“Miffy who? What are you talking about?”
Sarah told her, stammering, choking on the food she was trying to force down, wiping at her eyes with a paper napkin when she couldn’t be brave any longer. Miriam went on stirring the macaroni, her face grim and her jaw set.
“And so—that’s it.” Sarah tried to take another nibble at her sandwich. “I’m sorry, Miriam. It’s very good, but I just can’t eat.”
“You’re crazy about him, aren’t you?”
“Oh yes.”
Miriam took the macaroni over to the sink and drained it, turning her eyes away from the steam. Then she came and sat down across the table from Sarah, heavily, like the middle-aged woman she suddenly was.
“I knew it was going to be you, that very first night when he went to the gas station looking for you after your first husband was—” she shook her head. “My kid brother. God, what’s Ma going to say?”
“I know what she’s going to say, Miriam. She’s going to say what they’re all saying about me down at the yacht club. Why couldn’t he have stuck with his own kind? But we are the same kind. Miriam, I didn’t go chasing after your brother. I’ve given him every excuse to get out of my life if he’d wanted to go. Right now I’m ready to do anything that might reconcile your parents to our getting married, but I can’t give him up to please them or anybody else. Why are we even talking about it? It’s too late for talk. Where’s your uncle, for heaven’s sake?”
“Take it easy, Sarah. They just drove into the yard.”
Mike burst into the room before his mother had got the words out of her mouth. “Where’s the fire?”
“There isn’t one,” Miriam told him. “Your Uncle Max has been arrested and we need Uncle Jake to get him out. I wasn’t going to explain all that to Freddy, was I?”
“Oh Ma! You and your inhibitions. Uncle Max has got pinched before. What’s he in for this time?”
“They’re trying to claim he killed those two women from the yacht club and stole all their paintings.”
“No kidding!” Even Mike was impressed by that one. “It’s a frame.”
“Of course it is,” said Sarah. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell Chief Wilson, but he won’t listen. Uncle Jake, you’ve got to get him out.”
“So?” said the older man. “Uncle Jake, is it?”
“Sarah and Max just got engaged,” Miriam explained wearily.
“Nice timing. You said two women. Who’s the second?”
“Miffy Tergoyne,” Sarah told him. “The one who owned the paintings. Max had driven me to Alice B.’s funeral—that’s the one who got axed to death at the time of the robbery. We weren’t going back to the house afterward but we did on account of my Aunt Appie. Miffy gave Max her drink to hold while she was taking off her girdle. Then she took the glass back from him and drank what was in it and fell over dead.”
“Wait a minute. How come she took off her girdle in front of Max?”
“It wasn’t just Max, it was in front of everybody.”
“That’s how they act over there?” Miriam gasped.
Sarah felt a twinge of anger. There it was again, the they-and-we thing, even from the woman who was going to be her sister. And how often had the Rivkins been invited to join the yacht club, and how many blackballs would they have got if they’d ever tried?
“No, that’s not how they do it,” Sarah told her. “That’s what Miffy happened to do on this particular occasion. She was an elderly woman who’d been through a dreadful experience, she was probably still in shock, she’d had far too much to drink, and she’s always been a little bit batty anyway. I’m so used to her that it didn’t even strike me as a strange thing for her to do. She’d worn the girdle to hold up her stockings. As a rule she never wore stockings at all, summer or winter. I suppose they were bothering her.”
“So how come she gave the glass to Max?”
“Because he happened to be standing right in front of her. Can’t we please go get him now?”
“Out of where?” asked Jacob Bittersohn. “Have they lugged him off to the county jail, or what?”
“I don’t know. They said they were going down to the station. You see, they’d found the bloodstained axe and one of the stolen paintings hidden in the carriage house where Max is staying. I tried to explain, but Chief Wilson thought I was only trying to cover up for Max.”
“Look, could we start from the beginning?”
Under the lawyer’s expert questioning, Sarah managed to tell a coherent story. When she’d finished, he nodded.
“So they detained him for questioning. Come on, let’s go post bail.”
“Will they let us?”
“Don’t worry, they’ll be glad to get rid of him. All it takes is money.”
“Then I’d better get hold of Cousin Dolph first. He has scads of money. He hates to part with any, but his wife will make him. Mary adores Max.”
“We’re not exactly paupers ourselves,” Bittersohn said rather huffily. “Let’s find out how much they want before we push the panic button. Who wants to come to the bailout?”
“Me,” said Mike. “How about you, Ma?”
“No, go ahead without me. I’ve got to call your grandmother before, God forbid, she hears it from somebody else.”
“Please reassure her it’s all a stupid mistake,” Sarah begged. “The police will have to clear him of any suspicion soon.”
“The police?” Miriam shrugged. “That’s Uncle Jake’s department. It’s the engagement I’m worried about.”
Chapter 19
“THEY GOT THE MEDICAL examiner’s report while I was there.”
Max spoke wearily. The bailing-out had taken too long. He was sitting in the back seat of his own car, perhaps for the first time since he’d bought it, with both arms locked tight around Sarah.
“That cocktail must have been about half gin and half nicotine. It’s a wonder the woman lived long enough to swallow it.”
Mike answered him without turning his head. He was driving the car, proudly but somewhat nervously. “Must have tasted gruesome.”
“That wouldn’t have mattered to Miffy.” Sarah’s voice sounded muffled because she was burrowed against Max’s chest. “She’d drink anything if it came in a cocktail glass. But how could the poisoner have dared? Max, what if you’d got the glasses mixed and drunk it yourself?”
“I wasn’t having anything. Therefore it looks as if the object of the exercise was in fact to get rid of Miss Tergoyne and have me take the rap for it. I wish I knew whether making me the fall guy was just a matter of convenience or something personal.”
“Any rabid anti-Semites in that crowd, Sarah?” Uncle Jake asked sharply.
“I honestly don’t know, Uncle Jake. Some of them aren’t above making disparaging remarks about Jews and I’m sure Max and I shan’t be invited to join the club, but I daresay if we or you were to ask them out to an expensive restaurant, they’d graciously permit us to pick up the check. They’re not all like that, of course. I’m talking about real dimwits like the Beaxitts and the Larringtons. Miffy herself was the worst of the lot, but she’d hardly have poisoned herself to throw the blame on Max just because he’s Jewish.”
“If she’d been pickling her brains in straight gin all those years, who’s to say what she might be crazy enough to do?”
“I did think of suicide,” Sarah admitted. “Lassie Larrington was with Miffy in the funeral car, though, and she claims all Miffy did was fuss about having to find a new housekeeper because Alice B. used to do the work. She didn’t act depressed when she was talking to you, did she, Max?”
“She acted sloshed. Or did she always undress in public?”
“She might have if she’d taken the notion, but she’d never burned her clothes before. Miffy was always so
tenacious of her possessions that Alice B. claimed she used to have to sneak the garbage out when Miffy wasn’t looking. Actually that was what made me wonder about suicide. Remember how she said ‘I’ll never wear this again,’ and chucked that old girdle on the fire just before she took the drink?”
“Maybe she killed herself on a sudden impulse,” Mike suggested.
“How could she? I don’t know anything about nicotine except that people used to put it on plants to kill bugs instead of that stuff in the squirt cans they have now. Maybe they still do, but it hardly seems like stuff one would leave lying around the living room. Furthermore, Max would have seen her fussing around with the bottle or whatever it came out of. Miffy couldn’t do anything without making a big to-do about it.”
“What about this drink?” said Uncle Jake. “Who poured it for her?”
“They had a guy there tending bar,” Max told him, “and a couple of women passing things. As far as I can remember, one of the waitresses brought over a trayful of drinks and Miss Tergoyne took one.”
“It wasn’t the last one on the tray?”
“I don’t think so. About fourteen people were grabbing at once. I’m inclined to rule out the possibility that the drink was poisoned while it was still on the tray, unless whoever had the nicotine didn’t give a damn who drank it. You know, if it hadn’t been the Tergoyne woman herself who got killed, I’d say she might have staged her strip act for the purpose of attracting everyone’s attention and giving an accomplice the chance to poison the drink I was holding.”
“Could that have been done without your noticing?”
“Why not? Hell, I was gawking with the rest of them. If someone had the stuff palmed, as Chief Wilson suggested, it wouldn’t take you a second to slop in a slug. If any happened to drip on my hand, I’d have thought I was spilling her drink, that’s all. Or somebody was spilling one on me. You know how it is, you put fifty people in a room big enough to hold an army and the next thing you know, forty-seven of them are clustered together in one tight little knot. It’s the herd instinct.”
The Bilbao Looking Glass Page 16