The Black-Headed Pins

by Constance Little

  I was not clearly aware of anything more until I found myself in Rhynda's room, with Rhynda and Rosalie Hannahs shaking their heads over me. I looked at them dully and started to tell them that I was cold, and then I remembered about Freda sitting in the rocking chair with her mouth stretched in a stiff grin and her eyes staring sightlessly into the moonlight, and I began to shiver violently, with my teeth chattering.

  Rosalie pulled the bedclothes up around my neck and talked to me in a low voice. She told me that I must be quiet, and that I would not have to sleep alone again, that Rhynda wanted me to share her room.

  "She has the twin beds there, and she's nervous herself, so we'll just move all your things in."

  I glanced at Rhynda, who nodded and said that she had suggested the arrangement because she could not stand being alone any more. I felt myself relaxing a bit, and Rosalie presently brought me one of Mrs. Ballinger's sleeping tablets and a glass of water.

  I swallowed the tablet and thought vaguely that they must be running low, we had used so many of them since John's death. I could see Mrs. Ballinger telling Joe that he must clear up the mystery because she could not stand the sleeping-tablet upkeep, and I had to struggle to keep from shrieking with laughter at the idea. I went to sleep after a while.

  Doris woke me at half past nine the next morning. She told me I'd have to get started if I wanted to make the funeral, and when I rolled over, I was astonished to see that she had my breakfast on a tray. The other bed was empty, and Rhynda's dressing gown lying over a chair and a drifting of powder along the mirror indicated that she had dressed and gone down.

  I thanked Doris profusely for the breakfast, since I knew that breakfast in bed was against her principles. She settled another pillow behind my back and told me that they had taken Freda away and that her funeral was to be on Tuesday.

  "But are they sure—I mean, was she really dead?"

  "Dead as a herring," said Doris firmly. "I don't guess they know, though, whether she drowned or was killed when she was hit over the head."

  I shuddered. "I feel as though it were my fault somehow. I was right there with her. I shouldn't have let her go into the bathroom alone."

  "Don't you worry about it, dearie," she said kindly. "It's silly to blame yourself for anything, just as though you could help it!"

  She went off, and I ate my breakfast and dressed quickly. I cleaned up the bathroom and tidied Rhynda's room and made the beds, and then I swore to myself that that was all the housework I intended to do. I went out to the hall and ran directly into Joe. He was furious.

  "Can't leave a damn thing alone for a minute around here without somebody meddling." He stared hard at me. "Do you know who's been foolin' in the bathroom?"

  I'm sure I went pale. "Er—foolin'?" I said weakly.

  "Who cleaned up in there?"

  "Well, it—it was messy," I stammered. "I did clean up a bit. I always do, every day."

  He gave me a long cold stare and turned on his heel. "You've washed all my clues away," he said bitterly and loped off down the hall.

  I stood looking after him and feeling a bit troubled. I supposed that I should not have touched the bathroom, but then, I thought irritably, why doesn't he lock the door so that no one can spoil his clues? And remembered immediately that he could hardly lock us all out of the only bathroom in the house.

  Brief funeral services for John were held in the village undertaking parlors. It was very cold, and the whole thing was inexpressibly dreary. Rhynda and Rosalie Hannahs cried quietly throughout the service, and Mrs. Ballinger blew her nose vigorously several times. Berg stared at the floor without expression.

  Amy misbehaved herself, as usual. She kept tapping her foot audibly and looking impatiently around the room. It was very obvious that she wanted to be done with the whole thing. I saw Donald Tait nudge her twice when she became too noisy and restless.

  They buried John in the old Ballinger plot in the bleak little cemetery, and then we all headed for home. Doris had a very tasty lunch waiting for us, and the food was so plentiful that Mrs. Ballinger emerged from her grief and eyed it suspiciously. However, she made no comment, and we presently went to the living room where some of us smoked while the others talked of the funeral in low voices.

  I noticed that the room was in a mess. Newspapers were strewn about, ashtrays filled to overflowing, and there was dust over everything.

  Mrs. Ballinger looked it over and then called to me imperiously. "Leigh! Why haven't you seen to this room?"

  "It's no concern of mine," I said coldly. "You discharged me."

  She frowned and tapped on the arm of her chair with impatient fingers. "You'd better consider yourself employed again. I can't have this mess around."

  "Then I must ask for five dollars a week increase and not so much work." I was conscious of the fact that Richard was grinning at me, but I kept my eyes carefully away from him.

  Mrs. Ballinger continued to beat agitatedly on the arm of her chair, and her face grew red. "I cannot pay you any more," she said at last. "Your salary is ample, and there are plenty of girls who would jump at the job."

  "Then you had better get in touch with one of them. Perhaps Amy can help you out until you make some arrangement."

  Amy jerked her head out of her magazine and said promptly, "Not me. I don't know the first thing about housework. You'll have to pick on someone else."

  "You don't have to know anything about it, Amy," I said kindly. "It will come to you as you go along, and if you need advice, don't hesitate to come to me."

  I left the room, and after a brief hesitation in the hall, decided that this would be as good a time as any to go upstairs and search for the black-headed pins. I started in Mrs. Ballinger's room after making up my mind to play no favorites. I intended to search even my own room. It did not take me five minutes to realize that somebody else was going through the bedrooms thoroughly, too. I nearly ran into him, once or twice, and at last I got a glimpse of him. It was Joe.

  I took care to keep out of his sight after that, but I knew he was getting uneasy. Once he called out, "Who's there?" and I crouched down behind a chair and did not answer. I knew the house so well that it was easy for me to avoid running into him.

  We continued with our search, and after a while I began to feel the need for a notebook and pencil. I wanted to write down some of the curious things I found in the various rooms so that I would not forget them.

  Providentially, I came across a small leather-bound shopping list with an attached pencil on Rosalie's bureau. It did not seem to have been used, so I borrowed it and jotted down the things I had discovered and in which rooms.

  When I had only Freda's room and my own left to search, I heard Joe give voice to what must have been an explosion of nerves. He swore loudly and freely and bellowed out that whoever was following him had better stop it and come out into the open.

  I was in Freda's room when this crisis developed, so I slipped through the connecting door to my own room, kicked my shoes off, stretched out on the bed, and pretended to be asleep. I had barely arranged myself when Joe burst in. He stopped short, breathed heavily for a moment, and said, "Very pretty—you're doin' fine."

  I stirred drowsily and opened one eye.

  "You can save those antics for Jones," said Joe rudely. "You ain't foolin' me. It just so happens that this was the room I was searchin' before I went to the hall to find out who was tailin' me. So there hasn't been time for you to go to bed and get to sleep."

  "Embarrassing," I admitted and sat up. "In that case, I'll talk. What were you looking for?"

  "None of your business," said Joe simply. "The point is, what were you lookin' for?"

  He was obviously not in a mood to be trifled with, so I told him.

  "Did you find any black-headed pins to match up with the one you got?" he asked.

  I shook my head. "I've been through all the bedrooms but this one and could not find any."

  He walked to the door. "Next time yo
u find a clue, leave it lay and call me, and don't waste your time runnin' around trying to find out what the clues mean. That's my job."

  He went out and slammed the door, and I found I was shaking with helpless laughter. I went to the bureau for a handkerchief and had it in my hand when I noticed a packet of plain pins lying in the drawer. I picked it up and looked closely and saw that each pin had a black head.

  CHAPTER 16

  I STOOD FOR SOME minutes, turning the packet over in my hands and trying to remember where I had got it.

  It came to me at last. It belonged to Mrs. Ballinger. She had been altering her lace dress two days before the arrival of the houseparty, and I had pinned it together for her to sew. I recalled that I had absentmindedly walked back to my room with the packet still in my hand and had thrown it into the drawer, intending to return it later.

  I remembered, too, that when Mrs. Ballinger had sewed the dress she had removed the pins carefully and put them into a folding needlebook in her sewing basket. I dropped the packet back into the drawer and went straight to Mrs. Ballinger's room, where I was confronted by Joe and Richard. I stopped short and lost my poise to the extent of looking distinctly embarrassed.

  Joe pinned me down with a suspicious stare. "Did you find them pins?

  I said, "Yes," meekly.

  "Where?" he barked.

  "In my bureau drawer," I said sheepishly.

  Richard laughed heartily, but Joe was not amused and curtly requested him to shut up, after which he shoved his hands into his pockets and pinned me down again. "So you found them in your own room?"

  I nodded uncomfortably, and Richard, who had been staring in mild astonishment at a photograph of Mrs. Ballinger's father, turned around and observed, "Nothing suspicious about that. After all, she came bounding in here the minute she found them to tell you about it."

  "She came bounding in here all right," Joe agreed, "but not to tell me nothing. Nobody's gonna tell me that they come straight to the old dame's bedroom when they wanta find me. I'm a married man, and even if I wasn't, I got some pride."

  Richard and I looked at each other, and then we both turned to stare at Joe, who chewed his toothpick unconcernedly.

  "You're quite right, Joe," I said after a moment. "I did come here for something else, but I'm quite willing to tell you about it."

  I explained about the pins, and the two of them watched while I went to Mrs. Ballinger's sewing basket and picked out the needlebook. The pins were there, and I started to count them carefully. I knew that I had used exactly one row in pinning the dress, and there had been none but the one row missing from the packet in my room.

  There were two missing from Mrs. Ballinger's needlebook. One of them, of course, was still in the collar of my dressing gown.

  "Musta lost the other while she was sewin' the dress," Joe observed.

  I shook my head. "I'm sure it was not lost then. She's always careful about replacing pins. They cost money."

  Joe thought it over. "But you had the whole packet salted away. Why didn't she raise hell about losin' that?"

  "I told her I had them and promised to put them back. The next time she goes to her sewing basket she'll probably come flying to me in a fury about it."

  Joe rested his bulk on the edge of a table and appeared to go into a brown study. Richard turned the photograph of Mrs. Ballinger's father to the wall and said idly, "I'd like to track down that last pin."

  "Even Mrs. Ballinger loses things occasionally," I said doubtfully. "She might have dropped it somewhere, I suppose."

  Joe evidently decided at this point to drop Mrs. Ballinger and the pins, for he said abruptly, "Now I wanta hear all about last night."

  I told him everything that I could remember, and he listened closely.

  "You say you locked both doors—the one to the hall, and the one to your room?"

  "Yes."

  "What did you do with the keys?"

  "Why, I left them in the doors," I said faintly.

  Joe just looked at me and shook his head in sorrow.

  "Why didn't you lock up yourself, Joe?" Richard asked mildly.

  "I wanted to, but the old dame was hollerin' out that somebody had to stay with the corpse all night, so when I left, this here Rosebud Hannahs was holdin' the fort."

  "Well, it's obvious," Richard said, "that while we were drinking coffee in the kitchen, someone went through Leigh's room, brought Freda back, and arranged her in the chair. Someone with a rather ghoulish sense of humor."

  It seemed a ripe time to ask Joe if I might move out of the house forthwith, but he answered my request with a curt "No," and his aspect was so forbidding that I let it drop without further ado. I did wonder if he had any legal right to keep me there and was inclined to think that he had not. I told him that I intended moving into Rhynda's bedroom, and he said, "All right," indifferently.

  I went back to my room and started gathering my things together. I was not particularly anxious to make the change by that time, but Rhynda had reminded me of it, urgently, and had repeated that she could not stand being alone any longer. I made two or three trips with my various belongings, and when I had nearly finished I met Berg in the hall. He whispered to me that there was to be another conference in the small music room at four o'clock. It was just three-thirty then, so I nodded to him, and he went off.

  I completed the arrangement of my things in Rhynda's room and then wandered downstairs to see if I could pick up any information from the gossipers. I went to the living room and found Mrs. Ballinger alone there. She had various brooms, dusters and mops lying about, and she was carrying an overstuffed chair from one side of the room to the other, her arms straining at it awkwardly. I went over and shouldered half the chair and helped her to set it down.

  "I want no help from you, Leigh Smith," she said coldly.

  I shrugged and left the room as silently as I had come. I thought that a little workout would do her no harm. I was pretty certain that she'd snap me up if I offered to return to my job a little later, and in the meantime, I was getting a nice rest. I went on to the large drawing room to see if the others were sitting in there.

  They were not. Amy, surrounded by more brooms, dusters and mops, was trying to clean up and not making much headway. Her face had a streak of dirt and an expression of complete disgust. I lit a cigarette, leaned against the doorjamb, and watched her silently.

  She looked up, pushed her hair back with a bent wrist, and said crossly, "Oh, for God's sake, go away."

  I said, "No. I find it too interesting. It reminds me of my own early days as a skivvy."

  "It wouldn't hurt you to help me."

  "It would hurt my sense of justice," I explained kindly, "because I know you wouldn't help me if our positions were reversed."

  She turned her back on me and set to work again, and after a minute or so she dropped an ashtray complete with butts onto a section of the carpet she had just cleaned. She stared at it in silent fury for a moment and then slowly stooped to pick it up.

  I gave a refined little laugh. "Too bad. It's just those little things in housework that make it all so difficult."

  She rose up and threw the ashtray straight at my head. It missed me, hit the doorframe, taking a chip out of it, and crashed to the floor in several pieces. I gazed at the fragments and clicked my tongue. "It cost five cents, too, and it will have to be replaced. Mrs. Ballinger will be upset."

  "You don't have to tell her," Amy said quickly. "I'll get another one."

  I nodded. "At the five, ten, fifteen and twenty-five cent store in the village. But tell me, Amy, what is this hold that Mrs. Ballinger has over you? It brings you to this dull uncomfortable place, throws a scare into you when Freda is on the point of telling her something about you, and actually has you wrestling with housework."

  She looked me straight in the eye and said scornfully, "What do you think?"

  I looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. "You surely don't think she has any money to leave, do yo
u?"

  "She has plenty," said Amy grimly. "Just because she's stingy doesn't mean she hasn't got it."

  I thought she was making a mistake. I wondered if she had heard the story about Mrs. Ballinger having put all her money into insurance annuities which would stop at her death. I had supposed that all the nephews and nieces would know, since Freda had told me about it quite casually.

  According to Freda, who had characterized the action as most selfish and inconsiderate, Mrs. Ballinger received quite a large monthly income from her annuities, of which she saved a considerable amount. She allowed this to accumulate for a time and then usually gave it to some charity or cause where her name would appear prominently. There would be nothing left for the relatives but the house itself. That was Freda's tale, and I was inclined to believe it.

  I let it drop, however, for I had no proof of anything, and even if Amy were mistakenly exerting herself for nothing, I thought that a little housework would be good for her soul.

  "What was the trouble concerning you and Freda and Donald Tait?" I asked after a while.

  "None of your damned business," she snapped promptly.

  "It is, as it happens," I said equably. "But I don't expect that to move you. Only, I want to know, and you can tell me—and Mrs. Ballinger would like to know certain things about you and Donald Tait—and I can tell her. So—"

  "Oh, my God!" said Amy, in exasperation. "All this tittle-tattle! If it helps you any, Freda thought she was married to Donald."

  CHAPTER 17

  I STARED AT HER and did not realize that my mouth was hanging open until she said, "You don't look so bad that way. Your face is so naturally insipid that any sort of expression helps a bit."

  I pulled myself together and said, "Oh well, an insipid face is a minor evil—better than being hideous, you know. You can always paint some glamour onto an insipid face, but it's awfully hard to paint off a nose or mouth, you know—?" I laughed brightly.