Very Old Money

by Stanley Ellin

  He had no chance to gather with his co-conspirator wife over this confessional stuff until late that night. After fetching the brothers Durie home from the office he had dinner in the staff hall with a few of the help while Amy was holding down the desk in the office. An hour later, with Craig, Jocelyn, and Camilla in the rear seat and Walter, hands clasped on belly, peacefully dozing beside him, he was on the way to the Laura Sandoval estate in Locust Valley, wait and return. From the desultory conversation behind him, he surmised that Camilla had delivered the goods, the Sandoval portfolio was still right where it belonged, under Durie management. The one interesting passage came when Jocelyn remarked that Camilla’s designated partner at dinner would be a young man high up in the State Department and rapidly rising higher.

  Camilla summed up her reaction to this with admirable brevity. “Washington, D.C.?” she said. “Forgive the language, but dear Laura gives me a stiff pain where I sit.”

  There were moments, Mike thought in the ear-ringing silence that followed, when Camilla did offer more than mere lusciousness.

  Realization that the wait at dear Laura’s would likely be a long one was signaled when, after discharging his passengers, he was directed to park on the apron of the estate’s multicar garage and found a host of visiting limousines already gathered there. Considering the options then offered—a crap game in the Sandoval chauffeur’s quarters above the garage or TV shoot-’em-ups in the garage workshop—he settled for solitude behind the wheel of the car and some reflection on Margaret Durie’s confessional. He closed his eyes, the better to reflect, and somewhat after midnight had to be roused from a bone-stiffening sleep by a fellow chauffeur.

  It was one-thirty when he tiptoed into his sitting room, a wasted consideration, he found, because a light showed under the bedroom door.

  Amy in pajamas was stretched out on the coverlet of the bed surrounded by a host of typed pages that he recognized as his Durie notes. What she had been poring over, however, was an unrecognizable set of pink papers.

  “Instructions,” she explained. “Big doings tomorrow. I mean today. Starting at noon when you pick up la Principessa di Sgarlati at Kennedy. She is, said the McEye tenderly, a bit flamboyant in her ways but utterly charming.”

  “Hey, hey. Rich, flamboyant, and charming.”

  “She is also eight years Miss Margaret’s junior, which makes her sixty-two. My advice is to angle for an adoption, not a seduction.”

  “Will do. And those pink sheets are instructions on what?”

  “How to handle a dinner party tomorrow evening at eight for all the family and a few superguests. Since it’s the McEye’s day off, I am in complete charge. My first solo, though she was obviously itching to give up the day off and stand over my shoulder. It took some convincing to persuade her otherwise.”

  “Cool, man,” Mike commented admiringly. “Do you really feel that way? No churning of the innards?”

  “Nope. I’ve got four top hands from Domestique Plus for the dining room, and Peters will supervise them. And two more Plussers for the kitchen and Mabry himself to back up Golightly. And O’Dowd and blessed Nugent and I will see to the service from the staff hall end.”

  “And to open the front door to our guests?”

  “The other houseman. Brooks. A sound man, Brooks.”

  “And the wine? Let us not forget the wine.”

  “No chance. Walter’s already uncorked the bottles he picked out this morning, and they’re lined up on the sideboard, breathing. Superior wines,” said Amy magisterially, “must be allowed to breath for some time before being served.”

  “Do tell,” Mike said. “Matter of fact, I can hear it now from the dining room. Slow, expensive, vinous breathing. But I must admit I admire your style, Mrs. Lloyd. Facing the fire on one day’s notice and not a visible qualm.”

  “Deliberately. From watching the McEye and being the opposite. She’s great on every little detail, but she frets herself sick over them. Communicate that to staff, and that’s when accidents can happen. Cool it, and the staff cools it.”

  “How about a sampler with that on it for her office? Meanwhile, this food talk reminds me that while I did sleep the evening away, I didn’t eat. Anything worthwhile in our refrigerator?”

  “Everything, and a little more. Take a look.”

  He did, and found that the everything was a platter of meat sandwiches and a bowl of salad. The little more, to his surprise, was a half carafe of red wine.

  “Alcohol?” he said. “In the servants’ quarters?”

  “Well, I told the McEye we were used to a little wine with our dinner, that neither of us ever—”

  “We? Us?”

  “I felt it sounded better that way. And that neither of us ever overindulged, so it was unreasonable not to trust us in this.”

  “The language,” Mike said. “That’s what did it. You just dazzled her into surrender.”

  “Maybe a little. But mostly,” said Amy wisely, “I think it’s because when she ducks out of the office to her apartment now and then, she always comes back in a cloud of peppermint. She is tippling in there, and she suspects I know it.”

  “My lovely blackmailer,” Mike said through a mouthful of sandwich. He arranged his dinner on the night table and seated himself on the edge of the bed before it. “More to the point, baby, you really were something during Ma’am’s confessional in the car. Let me confide the sweaty truth. I was all ready to start packing when you opened up.”

  “Perhaps I was, too, but I’m not sure. What I was wondering about—honestly, Mike, what could the family do about it if they did learn what she’s up to? What would they do?”

  “I don’t know. Raise hell in a genteel way, I suppose.” He regarded his wife’s position, rear-end high as she gathered together the notes. “Which leads me to remark that with the way you look right now—”

  “Mike, it’s almost two in the morning. You may have slept away the evening, but I didn’t.”

  “—the way you look and with me full of vigor and partly full of wine—”

  “Tempting, but by the time you finish eating and undressing and all, I’ll be sound asleep.”

  Mike laid down the remainder of the sandwich and stood up to pull off his jacket. “No you won’t,” he assured her.

  Amy, a phone locked against each ear, pencil in hand and charts before her, mouthed a hell and damnation at the wall.

  “In addition,” Jocelyn Durie told her on one phone, “the centerpiece is wrong. Absolutely wrong. There were to be no substitutions. Make that plain to the florist at once. I want a proper centerpiece here within the hour.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Durie.”

  “—the breakdown, the breakdown,” pleaded the accountant on the other phone.

  “Yes, I understand,” Amy said. “May I put you on hold for just a moment?”

  “No, you may not. What you may do—”

  “And,” said Jocelyn Durie, “the room for Mrs. di Sgarlati’s maid was not provided with fresh linen.”

  “—is dig that third-quarter breakdown of maintenance and repair costs out of your files and get them over here pronto. By messenger.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll take care of it.” Amy shifted to the other phone. “Yes, ma’am, I’ll take care of it.”

  She put down both phones and was flipping through the services index—messenger first, then florist—when the house phone rang.

  “Mrs. McEye?” said Camilla Durie.

  “Her day off, Miss Durie. This is Mrs. Lloyd.”

  “Oh, is it? Well, Mrs. Lloyd, in case you haven’t noticed, this place is freezing. Let us not be so goddam thrifty that the blood congeals. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, Miss Durie. I’ll attend to it at once.”

  “Or sooner,” said Camilla in farewell.

  To do her justice, Amy thought, getting a grip on her temper, the place while not freezing was mid-autumnal cool. She phoned Borglund in his den down in Xanadu, and he sounded rather pleas
ed to get the complaint.

  “I told Mrs. Mac last week,” he said. “I told her whenever she wants the heat turned on just send me the extra man for a couple hours. I turn it on any time I get the extra man. She watches the oil bills too close, that one. You got a man for me?”

  “I’ll get one,” said Amy.

  “Oh, yah,” said Borglund. It was plain from his tone that he’d be waiting for someone not to show up.

  Amy scouted through the charts of staff availability. Ridiculous, she thought, not to have a butler bearing half this workload because the McEye would not entertain thoughts of any contender for her high office. Would settle instead for those cartons of cigarettes in her desk drawer and an occasional sip of high octane restorative in her apartment. Work this job singlehanded long enough and it was just a case of which came first, cancer of the lungs or the DT’s.

  Get stuck with a formal dinner on practically no notice, and it simply speeded up the process. Even the McEye had been taken aback by word of the dinner and had obviously kept her irritation within bounds only because it was the principessa’s hitherto unannounced arrival that called for the dinner. She definitely had a soft spot for the principessa. Snob appeal? From the way she savored the title when she pronounced it, oh, yes.

  Houseman Brooks, said the chart, was now in the staff hall and available to Borglund. Good. Brooks was not only the more capable of the housemen but had a distinctly cordial regard for Mrs. Lloyd. Amy picked up the house phone, then was struck by inspiration. The blessed Nugent had been filling in for her at the desk when needs be, but always in a state of near panic. It was hard to see Brooks—fiftyish, professionally competent, breathing self-confidence—panicking at anything. A potential ace up the sleeve that the McEye never played, most likely because it was an ace. Perhaps someone who might catch the family’s eye as a butler in the making. He had come from service with an eccentric high-society Toronto family, and from the tales he told he did know his way around.

  Amy dialed the garage where Mike would be stationed after an earlier than usual return trip from the office with Craig and Walter. When her husband was called to the phone she said, “Mike, darling—”

  “Something wrong? You sound all wound up.”

  “Not really. Well, maybe a little. You know, when you reported you’d delivered the principessa here you didn’t tell me she had a maid with her.”

  “Was I supposed to?”

  “It would have been helpful. Anyhow, what I really need for you now is to lend Borglund a hand. Start up the heat here. Right now.”

  “You mean after all these years he and Swanson can’t handle that themselves?”

  “Mike, darling—”

  “Be there in ten minutes,” Mike said. “No, make it five.”

  “Bless you,” Amy said fervently. “And just head straight for Borglund. Don’t stop off here. I’m doing fine.”

  The instant she put down the phone it rang. “Miss Margaret wants that you come here,” said Hegnauer.

  “Oh, God.”

  “She says at once, at once,” Hegnauer reported.

  “Of course. But I must get a replacement first. As soon as I get one I’ll be there. Tell her that.”

  This time when she replaced the phone it didn’t ring. And, Amy thought, it might not even ring again for ten seconds. She shifted Mike’s name on the chart from garage to Borglund, then looked at the scrawls on the memo pad.

  Breakdown of building’s third-quarter maintenance and repair costs. Messenger service. Florist. Maid’s room linens. Brooks.

  Brooks it would be. Never mind the McEye’s designation of Nugent as permanent relief, rules were made to be bent, or so one could only hope. The thought of the easily panicked Nugent on the firing line right now was gruesome. Brooks, at least, always did come on imperturbable, and that was what was needed at this moment, plenty of imperturbable.

  She phoned Brooks in the staff hall, ordered him to report to headquarters on the double and to bring one of the junior maids with him. Then she sprinted for the filing cabinet, located the financial reports demanded by that asinine accountant with his scrambled priorities, and thrust it into an envelope addressed to him at the Broad Street office. The call to the messenger service took no time, but the florist in his turn was a hard case.

  “I realize there were to be no substitutions, Mrs. Lloyd, but there was certain stock we did not have on hand.”

  “Look—” Amy said, and heard her voice rising. Emulating the McEye technique she lowered it. “There are other florists in the neighborhood. Call on them for help if you have to. Under any conditions, the centerpiece as specified is to be here within one hour.”

  “Two hours, if I’m lucky, Mrs. Lloyd. And the price will be more than Mrs. McEye agreed on.”

  “I am not arguing price. I just want that delivery here within the hour. Or must I call directly on one of those other florists whose help you may be asking?”

  “No, no, we’ll see to it, Mrs. Lloyd. Perhaps a bit more than an hour, but all will be well I assure you.”

  It works, Amy thought. Not only was the awesome name Durie magical, but it was clear to that floral gent that this icy-toned female attending to the Durie affairs wasn’t bluffing. And if there was a showdown with the penny-pinching McEye about the bill, let Jocelyn Durie be referee.

  She looked up and saw Brooks in the doorway, the junior maid Walsh peering wide-eyed behind him. She waved them in and handed Walsh the envelope.

  “Are you listening closely, Walsh?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. You’re to hold this tight in your hand and wait inside the service entrance door. A messenger will come for it, and you will give it to him. Then you will remain there until a delivery man comes with a floral arrangement. Take it from him and give it to Nugent. Tell her it’s to replace the centerpiece in the dining room. Replace it, not add to it. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And Walsh,” said Amy, “I do thank you for being so helpful.”

  Walsh gaped at her.

  “That’s it, dear,” said Amy. “On your way now.”

  When Walsh was gone, still gaping, Brooks raised an eyebrow. “You don’t mind me saying it, Mrs. Lloyd, you have the touch, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do. But she is a good kid, and I know just how she feels.”

  “All in your favor,” said Brooks. “Although you have to be careful how far you go in that direction. You wanted me?”

  “Yes. As relief here. Just to handle the phone calls. Pull that chair up and I’ll show you what it’s about.”

  No sooner was the chair pulled up than the phone rang. “Miss Margaret says now,” announced Hegnauer, and it came out like a Wagnerian baritone announcing the Götterdämmerung.

  “Tell her I’ll be there right away,” Amy said. The one bright spot in this darkness, she discovered as she explained procedure to Brooks in telegraphic style, was that he came on as quick-minded as she had suspected he would. It couldn’t have taken longer than two minutes before he said, “No problem at all. Now you go attend to the queen, Mrs. Lloyd, and I’ll see to the rest of the deck.”

  Not only that, Amy thought as she clattered down the iron staircase to the second floor, but he actually seemed to relish the prospect.

  She knocked on Ma’am’s door, and it was instantly flung open by a red-faced Hegnauer who, breathing outrage, marched off down the corridor, clenched fists held high. Amy closed the door. “I’m sorry about the delay, ma’am,” she said to Medusa in her armchair, and waited to be struck to stone.

  Stone? “You’re all out of breath, Lloyd,” Ma’am said sympathetically.

  “I’m afraid I am,” Amy admitted warily.

  “And you sound so tense. Well, you know my infallible treatment for that.” Ma’am rose from the chair. “Come here instantly and sit down.”

  Infallible massage, Amy thought with distaste. Still, anything to maintain this tender mood. She tried to
relax under the prodding of those fingers into the base of her neck.

  “What I wanted to speak to you about,” Ma’am said behind her, “was something not to be discussed over the telephone. Head back now.” She reinforced the request by pulling Amy’s chin up. The cool fingers rested lightly and unpleasantly on the exposed throat. “Kim Lowry. Her feelings about the situation I’ve placed her in. Could she be seriously disturbed by my remaining at a distance and unknown? A mysterious presence in one’s life, however well intentioned, can be disturbing. Don’t you agree, Lloyd?”

  Amy found herself even more acutely aware of those fingers on her throat when she spoke. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But if I were to make myself known to the girl, could she be trusted to keep this to herself? Not reveal it to another soul? You’ve come to know her, Lloyd. What would your opinion be?”

  Oh, no, Amy thought. “Ma’am,” she said, “I don’t really feel that I’m the one—”

  “Obviously you are the one, Lloyd. Who else could I—?” Deliverance, Amy thought gratefully, at least temporary deliverance was provided by a sharp rat-tatting on the door. The fingers released her throat. “Oh,” said Ma’am in a long drawn breath of what seemed to be recognition.

  Amy hastily got to her feet as the door was thrust open. The principessa, she knew at first sight of that figure light-footedly crossing the expanse of carpet. No, better keep the Mrs. di Sgarlati in mind, especially in present company. Almost as small and slight as Ma’am and with those Durie features, she was, Amy thought, an astonishingly well-preserved sixty-two. Part of that, it became evident on her closer approach, was certainly due to a rigorous face job, going by the almost unlined skin and total absence of wattles under the jaw, and part of it would be due to that coiffure of subtly dyed blond ringlets, but the largest part, no question, stemmed from the woman’s vivacity.

  Bright-eyed and bouncy, she announced herself with a “Margaret, darling,” and Amy made way as she moved by to embrace her sister. She stepped back to make a proper appraisal. “And you do look marvelous. Absolutely marvelous.” She smiled at Amy. “And this young lady is the secretary who’s been so helpful?”