Gin and Panic

by Maia Chance

  “Well—”

  “I’m done with weeping. Rudy is gone. I’ve got to move on with my life.”

  That was speedy. Although, perhaps Coral was in shock. That would explain the brittle edge to her voice, the hitch of her shoulders.

  “Poor old Rudy,” I said. “But I suppose he’s smiling down at us from heaven, pleased that we’re having a whoop-up in his honor.”

  “I’m sure he’s tickled pink,” Coral said. “He got his way, didn’t he, because now here I am, left utterly in the lurch. Totally broke, with not a nickel to my name except for whatever I can squeeze out of the pawnshop for the jewelry he gave me—which won’t be much. He never even gave me any diamonds! Only some rotten pearls and emeralds and heaps of these stupid things.” She rattled the lustrous beads around her neck. “Cheap junk. Seven months at Rudy’s side through thick and thin, playing hostess and mistress and nursemaid and mommy and psychiatrist to him, and what do I have to show for it? Nothing! I was his latest trophy, but I guess I was starting to get a little moth-eaten, too.”

  “I beg your pardon, but why did you stay?”

  “He led me on, and I was stupid enough to keep on taking the bait. When I first met him in Antibes last spring, he gave me a song and dance about being lonely and needing a woman’s touch in his life and all of that trumpery. He asked me to travel with him to Monte Carlo and I said yes—the fellow from Austria I’d been on holiday with in Antibes had suddenly remembered he had a wife and kids back home and he’d left me high and dry, so I was at loose ends. After Monte Carlo, it was Egypt, and then the safari in Kenya. It was my first outing with a bush rifle, but I bagged a zebra on my first try. Had it made into a handbag and matching shoes. A little itchy, actually. Well, flipping to the end of the book, Rudy was only leading me on the same way he always led girls on. He wanted a pretty kitten in the house, but not a wife, and anytime I dropped any hints about going down the middle aisle, he told me not to get any funny ideas.”

  This didn’t sound at all like a man driven by tormented love to suicide. No sirree. Rudy sounded like your standard playboy. I knew the type, all right—reader, I married one. Playboys married only rich girls, and only when funds got low. And when playboys stopped having fun with a girl, why, they got rid of her and found a new one. They didn’t kill themselves.

  Looked like Eustace’s murder theory held water.

  “I’m sorry Rudy’s dead.” Coral slid a finger beneath her eye to catch a teardrop. “I think he was just about to agree to marry me, never mind that stupid argument we’d had before he—he…” She gulped. “And now it’s too late! Instead of being a rich widow, now I’m several months older, and back to square one.”

  I scanned the crush. “Is Miss Murden serving this evening?”

  “Ugh. No. Sulking up in her rooms, I’d guess—although why she’s been so sulky all evening, I can’t imagine, since she’s one lucky duck.”

  “Oh?”

  “Rudy was about to fire her. He meant to do it once the hunting party was done with. But now, well, she’s still in a job.”

  “Not precisely. Her employer is dead.”

  “Oh. Yes. Well, she’s still got a chance at keeping her job, anyway, once we figure out who inherits this place. Miss Murden is like some massive old light fixture that no one knows how to unscrew from the ceiling. She likes to say her family has always served the Montgomerys. She even goes so far as to claim that she’s of Indian blood and that really, this land that the house stands on is hers. Can you imagine? And, well—the clever old boot—I suppose she has made certain she’s here to stay.”

  In the kitchen earlier, Miss Murden had said Rudy was disloyal. “Did Miss Murden know that her job was in jeopardy?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t doubt it. She’s the good old-fashioned kind of servant who listens at keyholes.”

  “Why did Rudy mean to fire her?”

  “He didn’t tell me. ‘Men’s business,’ he’d say, as though hearing about facts or figures would cause my head to explode.” Her slanted green eyes fastened on me. “Say, what’s with all the questions, anyway?”

  I told her that Lord Sudley had hired Berta and me—private investigators par excellence—to look into Rudy’s death.

  “Look into a suicide?”

  I shrugged. “Lord Sudley merely wishes to clarify the details.”

  “Oh, how fun. God, I need to find a cigarette. Biffo had the most scrummy Turks—where did he go?” Coral wandered off, foxtail swaying.

  I found Berta pouring herself a stiff one at the drinks cabinet. I hastily told her how Isobel Bradford up and left as soon as the police had gone.

  “Oh my.” Berta sipped gin. “That does make her seem rather guilty.”

  “What are we doing here? We ought to be tracking her down.”

  “We have three other suspects, Mrs. Woodby, and there is also the matter of retrieving the rhinoceros trophy for Lord Sudley. That is a paying job as well. We must stay, at least until the morning, and make what progress we are able. And do attempt to relax. Your face is as rumpled as a pair of linen trousers.”

  * * *

  The party barreled like a rudderless frigate into the night, and I did not get Lord Sudley alone again. I was eager for Isobel Bradford’s Boston address, but there wasn’t much I could do with the address till the morning. The Victrola boomed and keened, cigarette haze congealed, and the flapper mistresses began to shed articles of clothing. Someone tossed a rubber ball for Cedric to fetch. An archery match commenced in the dining room, couples took turns cuddling in the back stairway, and bowling with empty gin bottles and billiard balls was under way in the entry hall. Coral and Glenn were the twin eyes of the hurricane.

  “It’s almost as though Coral and Glenn are the host and hostess,” I said to Berta as we observed the drunken bowling. The manservant, Mwinyi, wearing elegant livery, was in charge of righting the bottles after every roll. He was sculpturally handsome, and he never spoke. “It’s as though Glenn simply stepped into the role of Man of the House the minute Rudy was out of the picture.”

  “Glenn is not really very manly,” Berta.

  “Well, no.”

  We watched Glenn slide down the banister, crooning Van and Schenck’s latest hit, “You Can Have Him, I Don’t Want Him.”

  I shrugged a shoulder. “Modern young men. They don’t wish to be like their fathers and grandfathers, with great big muttonchops and top hats and forbidding expressions.”

  “There was something to be said for those old-fashioned men, Mrs. Woodby. One felt there were adults in charge of things. It was, if nothing else, reassuring. Nowadays when I read the newspaper, I have the sense that enormous moody toddlers are running the show.” She paused. “I notice that Glenn converses only with the prettiest girls.”

  “Why not? He’s famous—or almost famous. He gets to be choosy.”

  “But he does not even pay the girls much attention, once he has them cornered. He keeps looking out of the corners of his eyes as though to see who is watching. I suspect that he is in love with Coral and he hopes to make her jealous. Now, I do not think we will make any more progress with our inquiries. The party has reached a new level of frivolity. I shall go upstairs and take a nap. With a bit of luck, the party will end before dawn so we may investigate the rhinoceros trophies.”

  “Good idea. I could use a nap myself.”

  6

  I was only a little tipsy, since I had made a concerted effort to eat a great number of smoked salmon sandwiches with my four highballs. Upstairs, first I used the—alas—shared bathroom. In my bedroom, I changed into my nightgown, cold-creamed my face, pinned back my hair, and slid into bed with Cedric beside my pillow. I read a few pages of an issue of Lurid Tales borrowed from Berta, and I suppose I drifted off, for I bolted upright some time later with the bedside lamp ablaze and my heart squeezing like a church organ in bad repair.

  I blinked. What had woken me?

  From somewhere on the other side of my bedr
oom door came the slow tapering crrrrrrreeeeeeeekkkkk of a door hinge.

  My heart kept on squeezing, but I swung my legs out of bed. As I was stuffing my feet into my slippers, a woman’s voice said, “Lolaaaaaaaaaaa.”

  Just outside my door.

  Cedric was snoozing through all of this. He’s a flop of a guard dog.

  Dew arose on my upper lip, but I crept to the door and forced myself to open it.

  The corridor was empty. Wait. No. Someone was floating through the darkness toward me in a plaid belted robe.

  “Berta!” I cried, going limp with relief.

  “Oh, Mrs. Woodby, I thought I heard you,” she whispered. “I was just coming to fetch you. I believe the party has abated and we may attempt to procure the rhinoceros trophy.”

  That was it. I was quitting Lurid Tales before it shaved too many months off my life. Just as soon as I finished “The Lost Lass of Cairn Gorm,” I would. Pinky swear.

  * * *

  Downstairs, everyone seemed to have gone to bed, although the place was in bacchanalian wreckage. Chairs had toppled. The suit of armor sat on a love seat. Two curtain rods were going the way of the RMS Titanic. Berta and I tiptoed around drifts of bottles, glasses, discarded garments, and spilled ashtrays.

  “Miss Murden will be furious,” I whispered.

  “She will bring in the cleaning women from town.”

  “She’ll still be furious.” We stood in the center of the drawing room. I switched on my flashlight and shone the beam on the several rhinoceros heads, one by one. “Which one should we have a look at first? The depressed-looking one or the one that looks as though it’s wearing three turtleneck sweaters?”

  “That describes all of them, Mrs. Woodby. At any rate, here is the one with the nick out of its left ear. I identified it during the party. I am surprised you did not.”

  “Oh.”

  Berta pulled a screwdriver from the pocket of her robe. “Now, then. Would you just fetch that ottoman?”

  I regarded the rhino, ten feet up. “We’re going to need more than an ottoman.”

  “Please do not quibble.”

  “And … what if the trophy isn’t really Eustace’s?” I whispered. “We’ll be stealing from a dead man.”

  “Mrs. Woodby, now is not the proper time to grapple with your conscience. Please. The ottoman.”

  Three minutes later, I scaled a precarious tower constructed of an armchair and two ottomans, with a screwdriver between my teeth. From down below, Berta shone the flashlight on the large wooden plaque upon which the head was mounted.

  “Do you see any screws?” she whispered.

  “Yes. Steady, now—shine the light to the left a smidge—that’s it. Right there.” I bit my tongue in concentration and twisted out a screw. “Now the one on the right.” I held on to the rhino’s front horn for balance, positioned myself near the second screw hole, and got to work.

  “Are there more than two screws?” Berta whispered loudly. “Because otherwise—”

  “I’m the one standing on this dangerous tower of furniture, Berta, so please stop interfering and let me—” The second screw gave way, and the entire rhino’s head swung violently on a third and last screw. The horn hit me in the temple and I lost my balance. I spiraled my arms into space for a hideously drawn-out moment before plummeting backward—

  THUMP. Onto a sofa.

  There was a clickety-clackety-clickety sound of something showering to the floor. Lots of little things, flowing out of the cockeyed rhino trophy up there on the wall, bouncing, skittering.

  “Mrs. Woodby! Are you all right?” Berta exclaimed.

  “Um. I think so.”

  I heaved myself upright on the couch, nerves in my lower back pinging. Berta went to the floor below the rhino’s head and beamed the flashlight on a pile of what looked like gravel.

  I crept closer, mesmerized. The gravel shone with a low luster. “Diamonds,” I breathed. “Berta! These are diamonds.”

  Berta picked one up. “Are you quite certain? They resemble bits of rock that someone has chewed upon.”

  “They’re uncut. Raw. I’m sure of it—I saw some once in a jeweler’s shop.” I couldn’t resist; I knelt and plunged my hands into the pile.

  “I thoth I heardth voices,” a woman’s voice slurred behind us.

  I reared back from the diamonds. The overhead light snapped on, and Berta and I turned.

  Coral swayed in the doorway, barefoot but still in her sequined fox-colored party dress, white beaded necklace, fur ears, and tail. Kohl streaked below her eyes.

  Drunk as a sailor.

  I got to my feet, trying to block the diamonds with my legs. Which, my mother would have noted, shouldn’t have been difficult given my ankle concern. “Why aren’t you in bed?” I said.

  Coral tipped her head to look around my legs, then staggered a little. “Wass that?” she slurred. “Rocks on the floor. Mizz Murdenz will be grouchy about that! Oldth grouch.” She giggled.

  I went to Coral, took her by the arm, and led her out of the drawing room. She smelled of sweat and liquor. “Let’s get you tucked into bed, why don’t we? You’ve had a trying day and you shouldn’t be wandering around all by yourself like this.” I sent Berta a meaningful look over my shoulder: Pick up the diamonds and get the trophy out of there!

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, I left Coral snoring juicily in the guest bedroom in which she’d been weeping earlier. I assumed she had bunked with Rudy, but I decided it would be too macabre to tuck her into their shared bed. Besides, the bedroom door’s hinges were surely still broken after the fireman’s muscular attentions earlier.

  When I reached my own bedroom, Berta was waiting. The rhino’s head sat on the carpet behind her, looking especially enormous in the cramped quarters.

  “That was tremendously heavy,” Berta whispered breathlessly.

  “You’re a marvel.”

  “The diamonds came from the separation you tore between the head and the wooden mount. I removed the mount entirely to see if there were any more diamonds inside.”

  “And?”

  “None. Only a wire framework and a lot of cotton rags.”

  “Where are the diamonds now?”

  Berta patted the pockets of her robe.

  “All right, we must have a word with Lord Sudley.”

  “Indeed we must. He owes us a large check.”

  “He also has some explaining to do.”

  Lugging the rhino trophy between us, Berta and I limped along the dark upstairs corridors to Eustace’s bedroom. We lowered the trophy to the floor outside his door and I knocked.

  A slice of light winked on below the door and then it opened. “Great Scott,” Eustace said, looking blearily handsome in paisley satin pajamas. “Is this a dream?”

  “We urgently require a word with you,” I whispered.

  “Do you recall that I asked you to deposit the trophy in the boot of my motorcar?”

  “Things have changed.”

  “All right. Come in.” Eustace hefted the rhino trophy, staggered with it into his room, and dumped it onto the hearth rug. Berta stepped inside and shut the door.

  I swung on him. “Diamond smuggling! If I had known what sort of nefarious motives you had, we wouldn’t have had anything to do with this job.”

  “Or,” Berta said, “at the least, we would have requested a far more substantial fee.”

  “I don’t quite understand what you’re suggesting,” Eustace said. “Diamond smuggling? What has that to do with my hunting trophy?”

  Berta went to the desk and emptied her robe pockets onto the blotter. “This.”

  “Raw diamonds? Where did you get those? They must be worth a fortune.”

  “Do you mean to say you didn’t know these were hidden inside your trophy?” I asked.

  “Good God, no! Inside it, you say?” Eustace lowered himself slowly into a chair.

  His amazement seemed genuine. Then again, I’ve come across some
swell actors.

  “To whom do these diamonds belong?” I asked. “Where did they come from? Who put them in that trophy, and if they were smuggled, well, why were they still inside the rhino’s head?”

  “I don’t know, Lola. Perhaps they weren’t smuggled at all. Perhaps for some mad reason, Rudy chose to keep them there.”

  “Does that sound like something he would have done?” I said. “Was he the hide-cash-in-your-mattress type?”

  “Well, no. Even so, perhaps his finances were in danger and he wished to hide liquid assets.”

  “Where was this trophy manufactured?” Berta asked. “I mean to say, when was the head removed from the body, stuffed, and mounted?”

  “In Kenya, a day or so after I shot the beast. The African chaps do it right out there in a carcass tent. We ate some of the meat.…” Eustace’s voice trailed off, and it might’ve been the lamplight, but I thought he looked a touch chartreuse. He swallowed. “Then the head was preserved and it rode about in one of the safari trucks in our little caravan as we traveled from point to point—we were out there six weeks all told, and I bagged this old boy in the second week. When we finally sailed out of Mombasa, all the trophies we’d accumulated were shipped on our vessel, in crates. Once we’d reached Turkey—we took the Suez route—I boarded the Orient Express for England, and Rudy, Winslow, and Coral sailed for America by way of France. Oh—and the African manservant accompanied them, of course—Mwinyi. That was the last I saw of old Winslow, sadly. I’ll miss him … but here I am going soft. Now, see here, I’ll just write you a check for the agreed-upon amount for retrieving this trophy, we’ll stash it in my motorcar, and then we’ve got to puzzle out a way to keep these diamonds safe until the arrival of the lawyer, at which point, I’ll turn them over to him. After all, we have no reason to believe the diamonds were not rightfully Rudy’s.” Eustace opened one of the desk drawers, pulled out his checkbook, and wrote us a check.

  Berta took it, folded it, and slid it into her robe pocket.

  Eustace scooped the diamonds across the desk with the side of his hand, and they pitter-pattered like falling rain into the open drawer. He shut the drawer, locked it, and pocketed the key. “Allow me to assist you in carrying that brute to my motorcar.”