Very Old Money

by Stanley Ellin

  Take the repetition of that furtive banking and Plaza Hotel excursion, this time plainly tied in with another packet from the Upshur Institute in the mail. The only differences were that this check had to be made out for two thousand dollars, and instead of an immediate calling for the car, that was put over a day.

  While the car was waiting outside the hotel the thought of now five thousand dollars secretly dispensed within a week to God knows whom for God knows what was too much to live with. Amy announced to Mike, “I’m going in there. After all, she can’t see me, can she? And the Palm Court’s not a room, it’s a wide-open space. I’ll be able to see her without getting close.”

  Mike looked doubtful. “Baby, with that hair and that height, you are the world’s least likely private eye. You show undue interest in the lady, and whoever she’s with might describe you to her.”

  “I have an excuse all ready. I had to go to the ladies’ room. And you said yourself she’s involving us in this thing. I am not happy just sitting here and wondering about it.”

  After warily skirting the perimeter of the Palm Court, making careful inspection of the chattering lunch-hour clientele, she found she really had something to wonder about. She headed back to the car full-tilt to report this.

  “You’re absolutely sure she’s not there?” Mike said.

  “Absolutely. She must be somewhere else around the hotel. But she clearly and distinctly said the Palm Court.”

  “Indicating,” Mike said, “that she doesn’t trust us completely. And who can blame her when her confidential secretary stealthily sets out on her trail?”

  “Oh, don’t be so self-righteous about it. And I can’t altogether blame her for not trusting us. She must know she was being reported on by Hegnauer and Wilson and everybody else around her. So until she does learn to have faith in us—”

  “And here she comes now,” Mike said. “Not quite twenty minutes, same as last time. It had to be a payoff, not a lunch.”

  “You see?” said Amy.

  But it was a depressing triumph at best. Another pall maker. And now this Friday morning came that thing with the canary Philomela.

  There had been fair warning from the McEye that Miss Margaret would not be in good mood this morning because it was an alternate Friday, when Domestique Plus took over the housecleaning.

  “They’re quick and thorough, Mrs. Lloyd,” said the McEye, “but they do use noisy machinery and they do create a sort of confusion, so to speak. Miss Margaret finds this all very disturbing. If you could persuade her to breakfast in the dining room this morning it would be to your advantage as well as hers.”

  Fair warning. The actuality of the impending noise and confusion came clear to Amy while she and O’Dowd were sorting mail in the outer pantry, and she had a view of the legions entering, young men, middle-aged women, a fair number black or Hispanic, all in neat dark-blue coveralls, each having ID’s checked at the door by Inship and Krebs, the security men. And with the legions came an impressive assortment of motorized houscleaning equipment.

  Distraction from this scene was provided by O’Dowd’s holding up a couple of letters, the petitioner who, though having been granted special privileges when it came to getting mail out of turn, still politely renewed the privilege each time. “All right if I take these, ma’am?”

  There was something about the way she said it, Amy thought. “Yours, O’Dowd?”

  “Well, not exactly, ma’am. This one’s for little Walsh, and this other’s for Peters who’s going to valet for Mr. Craig so mail can’t get to him for a while, and both are in staff hall right now.”

  “O’Dowd, no one’s supposed to know you have the privilege.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we must have been seen at it here, because some do know. Not Mrs. McEye or Nugent though. So it could do no harm surely if poor little Walsh—”

  “That is pure blarney, O’Dowd.”

  O’Dowd grinned. “Just a bit of it, ma’am.”

  Amy gave up. And, in fact, as time had gone by all the staff had steadily warmed to her, administration though she might be. Nor could this secretive mail privilege nonsense be regarded as a bribe for their goodwill, Amy decided, since already O’Dowd was no longer sullen in her presence, nor junior maids Walsh and Plunkett timid to paralysis, nor housemen Peters and Brooks stony-faced. And any protocol about staff’s mail delivery was nonsense.

  However, in trying to lure Miss Margaret down to the dining room for breakfast until Domestique Plus had its way with her room, Amy found she lacked O’Dowd’s hand at blarney.

  “I will not be dispossessed by these people, Lloyd.” Ma’am had to raise her voice to be heard over the roar of vacuum cleaners from her bedroom. “Never mind the tray. Bring the newspaper into Hegnauer’s room. Intolerable, really. When I was young one’s home wasn’t converted into a factory to keep it clean.”

  Almost predictably, Hegnauer’s room turned out to be spartan, half of it given over to basic personal furnishings, the other half to body-building equipment: massage table, heat lamp, shelves of towels and linens, and a glass-doored cabinet in which were arrayed—worrisomely—large bottles of pills, none showing labels. If these were pills that shouldn’t be here, Amy thought, there could indeed be five thousand dollars worth of them. Unfair really to consider any such possibility, but there it was, planted by Mike somewhere in the brain cells.

  She saw Ma’am to the straight-backed chair at the foot of the bed and seated herself close by on the bed to read the obits above the racket in the sitting room and bedroom. Ma’am, leaning close, eyes shut, lips compressed, listened with the familiar absorption. At the conclusion of the reading she sat back, her mood plainly brighter.

  “So many deaths,” she remarked. “It’s surprising there’s anyone left alive in the city. Describe this room, Lloyd.”

  Amy looked around. “Well, there’s this bed—a single bed—and that chair, a bedside table with lamp, a chest of drawers—”

  “Any attempt at decoration?”

  “No, ma’am. I’d say the only things not strictly utilitarian are a television set on a stand and magazines on the bedside table.”

  “Indeed? What sort of magazines?”

  Amy craned her neck to see. “Movie fan magazines, ma’am.”

  “Of a garish nature?”

  “Well, yes.”

  Ma’am smiled broadly. “When I asked Hegnauer about it, she was so evasive I suspected something like this. From her demeanor and that unpleasant guttural speech, one would suspect she’s deep into Ibsen and Strindberg. What else does she have to offer?”

  “Across the room, the equipment for massage. And”—Amy nerved herself to say it—“a cabinet of pill bottles. So many pills,” she added disingenuously.

  “Hegnauer is a great believer in what she calls megavitamins, Lloyd, and I permit her to feed them to me. It makes her feel like a ministering angel. I doubt it does me any harm.”

  Or, Amy wondered, is this lady protesting too much?

  The noise of machinery suddenly ended. Blessed silence prevailed.

  “See what’s going on, Lloyd,” Ma’am said.

  Amy went into the sitting room where a Domestique Plus squad was in the process of departure. It appeared to be under the command of a tall, gray-haired black man.

  “All finished?” Amy asked him.

  “All done, lady.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the bedroom. “You know that little birdie in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I put the cover on the cage so he wouldn’t get fussed while we was there. You ought to look at that birdie.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “You just look at him, lady.” There was reproach in the voice.

  Amy watched him depart, then returned to Hegnauer’s room. “All clear,” she reported.

  “Good,” said Ma’am. “What was that man complaining about?”

  “Not complaining exactly. He thought I should look at the bird. At Phil
omela.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. He did seem concerned though.”

  “Then do look now. If they’ve hurt the creature with that machinery—”

  Ma’am led the way into the bedroom and stood there poised. Amy lifted off the cover of the birdcage and peered within. The misnamed Philomela, she saw, did look worse than ever, hunched on its perch into a little bunch of bedraggled feathers, its beak gaping. When she looked closer she realized there was a gray film over its eyes. She poked a finger along the perch and the bird didn’t move but simply yielded to the pressure of the finger. One more little push, she thought, and down it tumbles.

  “It does seem very ill, ma’am,” she said.

  “Birds and beasts are not ill, Lloyd, they are sick. Well, what do you recommend?”

  “Perhaps a veterinarian, ma’am?”

  “To what purpose?”

  The purpose should be obvious, Amy thought with annoyance. “Well, ma’am, I wouldn’t know how to—”

  “Neither would a veterinarian, Lloyd. That creature’s been sickly since the day it was thrust on me. My niece is an arrant sentimentalist, Lloyd, the kind who buys the runt of the litter out of misguided charity. Then, unable to bear the sight of it, makes a gift of it to someone unable to see it. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes, ma’am. But I don’t think Miss Gwen—”

  “Did you bring in the newspaper with you, Lloyd?”

  So much for any kind words about meditative Gwen, Amy thought. “No, ma’am.”

  “Then bring it here and lay a page of it on the dresser.”

  Ma’am was at the dresser when she returned. A forefinger indicated a cleared space there. The other hand was loosely clenched around the pathetic Philomela exposing only its head. Amy folded a sheet of newspaper and laid it down. Ma’am rested the clenched fist on it. Then with her free hand she opened the drawer and drew out those long narrow shears. She opened the blades wide and guided by the flat of one blade against the thumb restraining the bird she snipped off its head. One quick purposeful snip, Amy saw, not quite sure she was seeing it, and that was that. The head lay there, and the body, released from the executioner’s grasp, lay nearby. The claws contracted a little and then were still.

  Dead, Amy told herself. Quite completely dead.

  And it must have been almost bloodless all along. There was one small spot of blood and a few specks of it on the paper. When Ma’am laid down the shears a red stain showed midway on one blade.

  “Dispose of it, Lloyd.” The voice was indifferent.

  “Ma’am?”

  “What’s wrong with you? Wrap the remains in the paper and dispose of it in the wastepaper basket. Then call a houseman to clear away the basket and that cage. And do wash the shears thoroughly in the lavatory with very hot water.”

  Amy found that while she couldn’t remove her eyes from the remains, neither could she bring herself to touch the paper. Those ears tuned to her every move, so it seemed, must have helped Ma’am to reconstruct a vivid picture of her plight.

  “You’re behaving very oddly, Lloyd.” The voice took on a sardonic edge. “Squeamish?”

  “I’m afraid so. I’m sorry.”

  “Indeed? Do you feel it would have been kinder to allow that thing to continue its suffering?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “No, you don’t. Then you evidently feel that the proper course would have been to foist this duty on one of the other servants. Someone of coarser grain. We ourselves are too fine to confront the uglier aspects of life.”

  Amy found that anger could be a potent antidote to squeamishness. “No, I don’t feel that. I’ll take care of everything.”

  “Good. And bear in mind that when necessity can be dealt with only by a sharp blade, the one concern is to wield the blade efficiently. Don’t expect others to do it for you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  It wasn’t until late that night that all this could be shared with Mike who, these past evenings, had been on duty driving various Duries to the theater or to concert halls at Lincoln Center, waiting and returning.

  His response was irritating. “There wasn’t any reason to react like that, baby. You’ve seen my father and me chop off chickens’ heads at the farm. No big deal.”

  “I saw it just once, thank you. And that was you and your father, not Margaret Durie.”

  “Yes, but the impression you’ve given me is that she’s a very tough and efficient little lady.”

  “Oh, yes. Efficient with those shears all right, even without eyes. Same with that dagger thing she uses to open the mail. Absolute certainly. Zip, zip.”

  “Fifty years of practice there,” Mike pointed out. “And she was right in what she said. She could have asked you to do it, and if you didn’t have the nerve, one of the other staff would have been stuck with it. But instead of dumping on anyone else, she did it herself. Give her credit for that.”

  “Except that she didn’t say one of the other staff. She said one of the other servants.”

  “Oh? And the terminology bothers you? Baby, I thought you were over that right there in Bernius’s office. Remember? She asked how the word servant struck us, and you just shrugged it off.”

  “I know,” Amy said unhappily. “But this is the first time Ma’am ever applied it to me. Or maybe it was because she made me feel like such a frail, useless flowerlike type. Anyhow, I was so shaken up—”

  “And now it’s time to unshake. You’ve passed it along to me, I’ll get it all down on paper, it’s no longer your experience to ponder, it’s mine. The Michael Lloyd therapeutic method. No charge.”

  “Mike, you’re not going to sit down to that typewriter now. With all these evening calls you’re not getting half enough sleep as it is.”

  “Plenty of soothing naps in one of the cars whenever I get clear of Wilson. Or right on our own couch. So I’ll now type myself to sleep and evidently you’ll read yourself to sleep.” He pointed at the encyclopedia-size ring binder she had laid on the bed. “What is that thing?”

  “Oh, that. Kind of interesting really. The building’s inventory. The permanent stuff. The McEye let me borrow it from the office.” She opened it at random and read, “Floor two, room eight C: one Philadelphia Chippendale camelback sofa, canted back, scrolled arms, molded square legs. Designated Marlborough. One Massachusetts block front, kneehole chest—”

  “That’s enough,” Mike said. “Fascinating, but I’ll wait till they make the movie.”

  “Yes, but it lists all the chinaware too. Mabry and Nugent laid some out and explained it to me this afternoon in the staff hall. I know five kinds by sight already. Spode, Royal Doulton, Wedgwood, Haviland, Minton. And formal service, with fish and without.”

  “But fried shrimp is finger food,” Mike said. “Don’t let anybody try to tell me different.”

  “I’m serious. I feel much easier this way about what can happen when the McEye’s off duty. And there’s something else. Your book. It can’t hurt to have this inventory right here as a reference source. With this and the floor charts, it’s all right in front of you.”

  “That’s a fact,” Mike acknowledged. “What’s in the refrigerator?”

  “Seltzer water and ginger ale. Steak sandwiches. A dish of sensational chocolates.”

  “Contraband?” Mike said. “You know, if Mrs. Mac decided to make a tour of inspection here—including that fridge, which for some weird reason is supposed to contain only fresh fruit—”

  “Let her. I’m perfectly willing to make an issue of any such nonsense. But, Mike, there are all those notes you’re accumulating. And the Duries are identifiable in them, aren’t they?”

  “Very clearly. But we now own a shiny new fire-retardant safety box. The writings go into it. It goes into the closet. Both keys will always be in my pocket. I spent about half of my this week’s allowance on that thing, by the way. Any chance of reimbursement?”

  “None. But it is a shame that i
n our own private apartment—”

  “C’est la vie Durie,” Mike said. “Or should that be la vie McEye?”

  It rained through the weekend. It was still raining Tuesday. Ma’am didn’t like it.

  “Too much of a good thing, Lloyd.” She stretched out on the chaise longue, ankles crossed. “That playscript of Camille. We’ll start on it now. It’s suitable for this weather.”

  As Amy arranged herself for the reading, Ma’am addressed the ceiling. “Eva Le Gallienne, Lloyd. Is that name familiar?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “So much for the stars of yesterday. She starred in Camille. She was sufficient. But the next season Lillian Gish—Do you know that name?”

  “Yes, ma’am. From old movies.

  “Let us be grateful for small bounties. But the very next season—my own last season in the sun—Lillian Gish starred in the play. Without the same grasp of technique she was much more than sufficient. Deeply moving. She was the living and dying lady of the camellias. Get on with the reading, Lloyd.”

  It wasn’t all that easy, Amy found, with that my own last season in the sun tightening the throat. She started badly, recovered herself, and was hitting her stride when ma’am abruptly sat up, feet planted on the floor. “That’s enough. Look through the window. Can you see any possible break in this weather?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s hardly your fault. Where would Lloyd be right now?”

  “Back at the garage, ma’am. He takes Mr. Craig and—”

  “Phone him. Tell him I want the car here at noon promptly.”

  This, Amy thought, must be handled with a maximum of tact. “Yes, ma’am. But I think I’d better do it through Mrs. McEye.”

  “Indeed?” The voice was coldly challenging. “Why?”

  “Because the office keeps an ongoing record of where everyone on staff is at all times. That way orders can be carried out so much more efficiently.”

  “I see. It was my impression that procedures here were for my benefit, not Mrs. McEye’s. However, have her attend to it. Who am I to stand against her peculiar concept of efficiency?”