by Maia Chance
Berta smiled. “Oh dear, how confusing. Do you suppose we might speak with Mrs. Bradford all the same?”
“I do not think—”
“I myself have become a detective only recently, after more than forty years in domestic service,” Berta said, “so I am only too aware of how busy you must be, Mr.—”
“Adams.” His mustache relaxed a notch.
“Mr. Adams. We would very much appreciate you telling Mrs. Bradford we are here.”
“Very well. Come in.” Adams let us into a narrow entry foyer and left us there.
“Swanky pad,” I whispered, taking in the marble floor, carved staircase, and gilt-framed portraits of sour Puritans.
After a minute, Adams returned. “Mrs. Bradford says she will see you, as she is most dismayed about Mr. Montgomery’s death.” He led us upstairs and into a parlor with tall windows overlooking the street. Velvet furniture mingled with potted orchids and ivory bric-a-brac, and at first I didn’t see the woman in the armchair in front of the fireplace.
“Thank you, Adams,” she said in plummy, Boston Brahmin tones.
Adams left, shutting the double doors.
Berta and I stared in disbelief at the woman by the fire. We had never laid eyes on her before.
“Oh dear, I see you have brought a dog,” the woman said. She was about sixty years of age and reminiscent of a greyhound, with a long face, protuberant and clever brown eyes, an old-fashioned silver chignon, and yardstick posture. A book lay in her lap. “Nasty, pushy things, dogs. Never mind, come and sit down. Adams will bring coffee. Why are you two standing there like lost ewes? Goodness. I was expecting hard-boiled dames, but you look as though you should be selling ice creams at a carnival—” This was directed at Berta. “—and you look like you’d be running the kissing booth.” That was directed at me.
“Thanks for seeing us, Mrs. Bradford,” I said brightly. “The funny thing is, we were expecting someone else, too.” Berta and I settled in chairs opposite Isobel. I kept a firm hold on Cedric in my lap, because Isobel looked as though she’d enjoy kicking him.
“Why would you expect someone else? I have lived here for decades.” The book on Isobel’s lap was The Pilgrim’s Progress. The literary equivalent of having one’s mouth washed out with Ivory soap.
Berta and I explained how another woman calling herself Isobel Bradford had attended Rudy Montgomery’s fateful hunting party and scarpered just after the death.
“Do you have a sister?” I asked Isobel.
“A sister who is also named Isobel? Don’t be ridiculous. It sounds as though someone was pretending to be me.”
“But who?” I asked.
“How would I know? Some sort of foul charlatan or actress, I suppose. The world is crawling with desperate women on the make.” Isobel gave Berta and me pointed looks. “I read of Rudy Montgomery’s death in the newspaper this morning. There was no mention of foul play, so why are you investigating? And who hired you?”
“Our client has reason to believe that Rudy was murdered,” Berta said.
“Goodness.” Isobel did not appear fazed.
“Did you know him?” I asked.
“Actually, no. My late husband, Winslow, was great friends with him, but they always met out in Africa or India or the Poconos. I do not hunt, so I never went along. However, although I did not know Rudy, I cannot say I would be terribly surprised if someone did murder him.”
Berta and I leaned forward. “Why is that?” I asked.
“He was a cad. Winslow would tell me the most shocking stories. A woman in every port, as they say. So if it was murder, well, I’d blame it on a girlfriend, or a jilted girlfriend, or perhaps an enraged husband.”
“Do you really have no idea who might have been impersonating you at Montgomery Hall this weekend?” Berta asked.
“No.”
“Whoever the impostor was,” I said, “she was someone who was aware that you had been invited to the hunting party in the first place.”
“I wasn’t invited.”
“But everyone there seemed to have been expecting you. Coral—Rudy’s girlfriend, who was acting as hostess—behaved as though it were natural that the woman impersonating you should be there.”
“I never received an invitation. When would it have arrived?”
“Sometime in early October.”
“I see. Well, Rudy always invited Winslow down to Connecticut for those sorts of things, but not only were wives not welcome—I can see you know precisely what I mean—but I wouldn’t dream of going. Winslow would come home from Montgomery Hall with the most appalling reports of debauchery. Chorus girls, gin and cards, jazz, and all the rest.”
“Didn’t you mind your husband going?” I asked.
“Although I did not approve of Rudy’s style of living, it was my duty to permit dear Winslow some pleasure in life. Men’s clubs and hunting parties and so forth. At any rate, Winslow did not approve of Rudy’s style of living, either. It was more that he overlooked it for the sake of the hunt.” Isobel paused. “I do think Rudy might have been mixed up in something rather horrid, something worse than the run-of-the-mill girls, liquor, and cards.”
Aha. Here it was. “Go on,” I said.
“My poor Winslow seemed greatly troubled at the end of his days. His conscience was troubling him. He rambled vaguely about the nature of guilt, and in a roundabout way I pieced together that he was in particular troubled by something that had occurred on the latest safari in Kenya. One night, only a week or so before he died, I was at his bedside reading to him one of his favorite novels, Collins’s The Moonstone—do you know it?”
“No.”
“Well, I had barely begun reading when Winslow suddenly cried out, ‘It’s not right, Isobel! Something must be done!’ I had no idea what he was speaking of, and he would tell me no more.”
Adams glided in with a coffee service and placed it on the low table before the fire.
“Adams,” Isobel said, “did you see an invitation arrive from Montgomery Hall in early October?”
“Why, yes, madam. I do recall accepting an envelope from the postman with Montgomery Hall as the return address—although I must mention that the handwriting was appalling, like that of a shopgirl.”
Coral must’ve addressed the envelope.
“But I never saw the invitation,” Isobel said. “What became of it?”
Adams moistened his lips. “I cannot say, madam.”
Isobel finally lost her composure. Her voice became shrill. “You cannot say what became of my private correspondence?”
“It must have been the kitchen maid whom we let go in early October. A poor decision on my part to have ever hired that girl in the first place.” Adams cleared his throat. “German.”
“The woman who was impersonating Mrs. Bradford in Connecticut was at least fifty-five years of age,” Berta said. “A somewhat dowdy person with an abundance of unruly gray hair—”
“Ah!” Adams exclaimed. “I knew that woman was up to no good.”
“What woman, Adams?” Isobel asked.
“In the first or second week of October, a woman matching that description came to the door and insisted upon being given entry into the house. She said she had some business with Mrs. Bradford related to her charitable work at the Museum of Fine Arts. I left her in the entry hall—it was raining that day and I could not in good conscience allow her to wait outside, particularly if she was indeed associated with the museum—and went to ask if Mrs. Bradford would see her in the parlor. However, as Mrs. Bradford did not feel inclined to do so, I returned to the entry hall and sent the woman away.”
“This woman would have had access to Rudy’s invitation?” I asked.
“Yes. The mail sits on a side table in the entry foyer after the postman delivers it.”
“Did she give you a name?” I asked.
“I cannot recall. And she did not pass me a visiting card.”
“Well, then,” Isobel said with a superior
little smile. “There you have it. Some woman off the street stole the invitation, and Rudy’s death has nothing to do with me. So if there is nothing else…”
Berta and I stood. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Bradford,” I said.
Berta left one of our cards on Mrs. Bradford’s coffee table, and Adams ushered us, with corgi-like urgency, out of the house.
11
“It sounds as though this woman is a con artist,” I said to Berta. We walked slowly down Marlborough Street so Cedric could sniff every shrub and iron fence. “It sounds as though she came to the Bradford house, saw the invitation to Montgomery Hall, and seized a chance opportunity. For all we know, she’s escaped from a women’s prison or a loony bin. She could be more than capable of murder.” I thought of the woman who’d been posing as Isobel. She’d seemed so composed, so sure of herself. “We must find her.”
“She could be halfway to Texas by now, Mrs. Woodby.”
“We’ll go back to Carvington and ask around the town. Someone must have seen something.”
“Why would this impostor have wished to go to Montgomery Hall at all?” Berta said.
“To steal something, of course. She could’ve easily guessed from the invitation that it would be a wealthy household, and don’t you remember that Miss Murden said the impostor was snooping around the house, knocking on trophies and so forth?”
“That sounds like a lot of bother when she could have simply stolen the silverware.”
“Maybe she knew something we don’t.”
“That there were diamonds in one rhinoceros trophy, you mean.”
Right. The diamonds. “Well, yes.” I gulped. It was time to face the music. “Which reminds me—we must telephone Lord Sudley and break the bad news that we lost track of the diamonds.”
“You never should have agreed to lock them up for him.”
“The silver lining is that if the diamonds were Rudy’s, he’ll never know the difference six feet underground. And with any luck, his only heirs are his Labrador retrievers.”
We meandered through the Back Bay neighborhood, and inside the lobby of a Copley Square hotel I found a coin-operated telephone and asked the exchange girl to put me through to Montgomery Hall in Carvington, Connecticut.
After a lot of clicks and crackles, the phone rang and someone picked up. “This is Miss Murden,” the familiar doomsday contralto said, sounding very far away.
“Oh, hello, Miss Murden, this is Lola Woodby, the private detective.”
Tomblike silence.
“Would you be an absolute doll and fetch Lord Sudley to the telephone for me?”
“I suppose I could try.”
I waited for a few minutes, tapping my toes, rolling my eyes at Berta, and inspecting my woefully unkempt fingernails. Would Berta consider a beauty salon manicure to be a business expense? I was afraid to ask.
“Hello? Lola?” This was Eustace’s smooth, reassuring voice on the line.
“Hello, Eustace. I’m afraid I have a bit of bad news. I’m awfully sorry about this, but some—ah—” I swallowed. “The diamonds have been stolen.”
A pause. “Is this a joke?”
“Afraid not. We didn’t make it to the bank in time to lock them up, you see, and on our train to Boston a couple of goons slipped us Mickey Finns and made off with the goods.”
“Well, dash it all, isn’t that a hideous bother. Are you quite all right? Do you require me to wire funds?”
Berta, who was bent close to the telephone receiver, nodded vigorously.
“No, no,” I said. “Our pocketbooks were left untouched.”
“All right. Now, you ought to return to Montgomery Hall at once. I don’t wish to speak of it over the telephone—an operator girl could be listening in. I’m told that’s a bit of a problem here in America—”
I was fairly certain I heard an indignant sniff on the line.
“—but there has been a rather stunning development.”
“Not another murder?”
“It’d be best if we spoke in person.”
“All right, we’ll come as soon as we’re able.” I rang off. “I’m surprised he wasn’t angry about the stolen diamonds,” I said to Berta.
“You can do no wrong in his eyes, Mrs. Woodby.”
I wished Ralph had been present to hear Berta say that. And, phooey. Between being wrecked by that Mickey Finn, feeling lousy about the stolen diamonds, and meeting the real Isobel Bradford, I hadn’t really thought of Ralph all day. Nice while it lasted.
We walked to South Station and purchased tickets for a New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad train that stopped in New London, Connecticut, about fifteen miles from Carvington. It wouldn’t depart for two hours.
“I confess I am glad about that,” Berta said to me, “for I must have a lie-down. That Mickey Finn made me feel quite old.”
Berta returned to her room at the hotel across from the train station for a nap. Cedric and I found the nearest beauty salon and I had my nails filed, buffed, and varnished in a fashionable scarlet with white half moons. Then I was ready to take on the world. Or at least a well-sealed envelope.
* * *
After we’d settled our handbags and luggage plus one Pomeranian in our train compartment a while later, Berta said to me, “I telephoned Mr. Ant from the hotel.”
“Oh, you mean Jimmy the snitch?”
“He is not a snitch. He said that he indeed saw you spill diamonds beside the Automat cakes dispenser, but that he did not breathe a word of it to anyone.”
“And you believe that—”
“It seems that his colleagues—the two thugs we encountered on the train—were dining at the Automat as well, and they witnessed you spilling the diamonds.”
“Oh.”
“Mr. Ant would not betray me, Mrs. Woodby.”
“He’s a gangster,” I said darkly. “Do you really wish to get serious with a gangster?”
“Goodness. No one said anything about ‘serious’—although Mr. Ant has proposed marriage on two occasions, come to think of it.”
“What?” Even Jimmy the Ant, wielder of tommy guns and wearer of white wing tips, was more capable of domestication than was Ralph Oliver?
“I am not a young woman with marriage and babies on the brain, Mrs. Woodby. I have my own income, a roof over my head, and every intention of enjoying my freedom.”
That gave me pause. Should I simply follow Berta’s lead and become a fancy-free gal about town?
“Well,” I said, “here’s one thing we know with certainty: Lem Fitzpatrick has those diamonds. They might as well be locked up in the Tower of London, for all the chance we have of getting them back.”
“We will think of something, Mrs. Woodby. We always do.” Berta pulled out the glossy new issue of Dime Dramas she’d purchased in the station.
Frowning—how could Berta be so dratted complacent?—I pulled out Spectral Stories and a Hershey’s bar. With Cedric curled up in my lap, I began to read. The train shuddered out of South Station, past the endless, depressing, wooden triple-decker houses that ring Boston, and into the dusk.
* * *
It was nearly midnight when we stepped onto the platform at the New London station. There had been some sort of trouble on the track near Providence, and we’d wound up stalled for hours. We had eaten dinner in the dining car, however, read our pulp magazines cover to cover, and fortified ourselves with chocolate and nips of gin from Berta’s handbag flask. Altogether it was a nicer way to spend the evening than fessing up to losing a sockful of diamonds.
We entered the empty station. As Berta used the coin-operated telephone to call a taxi service, I studied the posters and flyers tacked to the walls. Chesterfield cigarettes. Women’s Temperance League meeting. And taking top prize for shuddersome, a large poster advertising the Wednesday performance of something called Menchen’s Manikins on Carvington’s village green. Garish illustrations depicted grinning marionettes: ballerina, kid in baseball cap, wigged judge
, Big Bad Wolf. What is so very unnerving about puppets? Is it their almost-humanness, or is it their proclivity for violence?
At last, a battered taxi rolled up, and the driver agreed to motor us to Carvington.
As we rolled up Montgomery Hall’s drive, rain bucketed down. Beyond silhouetted trees, the sky glowed a weird metallic indigo. Every window in Montgomery Hall’s main floor was lit up, and only two motorcars remained in the front drive—Eustace’s black Duesenberg and a disreputable, saggy-topped Chalmers that looked … familiar.
“No paddy wagons, ambulances, or hearses,” Berta said. “And it appears that the hunting-party guests have gone.”
“Things are looking up,” I said with forced jauntiness.
I leaned forward to pay the driver. The windshield wipers squeaked back and forth.
“Better you than me staying here tonight,” he said as he counted the change. “Folks say this place is haunted, and on a night like this, I just might start to believe it.” He got out, dragged our suitcases from the back, and rumbled away into the night.
No one answered the door when we rang the bell, so Berta and I let ourselves in. We heard voices and, leaving our luggage in the foyer, made our way toward the drawing room. Cedric bounded ahead joyfully, but I peered hard at every shadowy corner.
We stopped just outside the drawing room’s open doors and attempted to grasp the tableau within:
Redheaded vixen Coral perched on the edge of a sofa in a gold velvet dress, thin bare arms hugging her elbows, shoulders hitched, eyes wide. Radio star Glenn Monroe lounged beside her, one ankle on his knee to expose a checked sock, bobbing his foot up and down, nursing both a cigarette and a G and T. History student Theo Wainwright paced in front of a roaring log fire with a glass of brandy in hand and a forelock of dark hair loose across his forehead. He spoke in animated undertones to a man with an open briefcase on his knees. The fat Labradors loafed on the hearth, and Cedric joined them. No one seemed to notice Cedric’s arrival.
Eustace appeared beside us in the corridor. “So you’ve made it,” he said softly. His eyes were warm with concern as he looked me up and down. “I’d instruct Miss Murden to send hot-water bottles up to your rooms, but I’m afraid she’s cashed in her chips.”