Very Old Money

by Stanley Ellin

  Before Amy could open her mouth Ma’am said, “Yes. Lloyd, there’s that accumulation of mail on the desk. Attend to it.”

  Amy hesitated. Since Mrs. Upshur was no longer sending coded messages, this mail had come to be the lowest-priority obligation on the list, a matter of extracting an occasoinal personal note from the bundle. To waste time on this while Brooks was still new to his office duties …

  “Ma’am, if you wouldn’t mind—”

  “The mail, Lloyd.” The stick pointed. “But first place a chair there for Mrs. di Sgarlati.”

  Amy placed the small twin armchair into position facing its mate, saw the guest seated in it, then seated herself at the desk across the room. On the other hand, she advised herself, as she unsnapped the rubber band from the packet of mail, there was a sisterly confrontation in the air and this did offer her a front-row seat at it.

  “I have something to settle with you, Enid,” Ma’am said coldly.

  “And I with you, darling,” said her sister with all good cheer.

  “Your foibles and fancies,” Ma’am said. “Arriving out of the blue and requesting a formal dinner the same evening. Is that your Italianate concept of manners?”

  “No, darling. Jocelyn’s. When I phoned from London yesterday I told her I’d be here for only a couple of days and incidentally mentioned that it would be nice to see some old friends at the table as well as the family. I had no idea she’d then arrange for a full-scale spectacle.”

  “Knowing her, you should have. And why are you here at all? You weren’t expected until the Thanksgiving week.”

  “What a clear mind you have for dates, darling. As it happens, I was in London on an important mission and, using Gwen’s return ticket, I’m here to complete it. But I really do have something to settle with you. I was given the impression by Jocelyn that you were positively thriving and that, contrary to ancient tradition, you’d join us at the table tonight. The first thing I learned when I walked in was that you would not. Now why, darling? What made you change your mind?”

  “I did not change my mind, Enid. Jocelyn surmises, God disposes.”

  “God?” The principessa, Amy saw, looked disapproving. “Darling, there is a tender spirit in God which you—”

  “No, Enid, I won’t listen to any such nattering. Just get to the point.”

  “Very well, the point is that from all accounts you are now emotionally unburdened enough to join the company of your brothers and be pleasant to them. After all those bad years, nothing could make us happier.”

  “Excluding me,” said Ma’am in a brittle voice.

  “Darling, you’re being just plain damn stubborn for the pleasure of it. Whatever strange animus you developed to Craig—well, it’s time to put it aside. Or at least explain it to him if you can. Come to some sort of rapprochement that way. There’s no reason that—”

  “Çela suffit,” Ma’am rapped out. “Or for your benefit, Enid, basta. You mentioned an important mission. What mission?”

  “Darling, for my sake—”

  “What mission?”

  The principessa gave up with a sigh. “To have a serious talk with Craig and Jocelyn about what’s going on in London.”

  “Yes?”

  “I was suddenly called there from Bologna this past weekend by Gwen’s husband, dear boy. I don’t have to tell you she’s with him there, insisting on a divorce by mutual agreement. He’s absolutely distraught and wanted me to serve as intermediary. He feels that she doesn’t know her mind at all, but he knows his. I believe he’s absolutely infatuated with her.”

  “With Gwen? I don’t believe it.”

  Amy cocked an ear as the principessa leaned forward and lowered her voice: “I know. I didn’t myself at first, but now I do. What I finally extracted from him—”

  “Yes? Enid, you know how I detest your conversational theatrics.”

  As the principessa’s head turned her way Amy concentrated on the mail. From the corner of her eye she saw the principessa lean still farther forward to address her sister: “Don’t you think, darling, there are some matters that require a bit more privacy than this?”

  “Lloyd has my entire confidence, Enid.”

  “She does? Well then, it seems that on their wedding night he, poor lamb, was as inexperienced as she was. Can you picture what happened? Now she’s convinced she was the victim of rape, and he can’t persuade her that it was just ignorance on his part and that he desperately wants to make amends any way he can.”

  “Dear God,” Ma’am said. “Craig’s choice of suitor. Inevitably the only one of his kind. It’s all too ridiculous.”

  “Not altogether. Because he’s found that she’s saturating herself with tranquillizers and that you, an innocent in your own way, darling, seem to be the one who—”

  “Lloyd,” Ma’am said sharply, “you may go now.”

  Regretfully, Amy went. Outside in the corridor she pressed an ear against the door, but not a sound penetrated. Hell and damnation, she thought. On the other hand, it was comforting to know that the door to the Lloyds’ apartment was probably just as invulnerable to eavesdropping, no matter how sharp the McEye’s finely tuned ear.

  She found Brooks making a note on the desk pad, a cigarette dangling from his lip. He looked placid as ever. “All up to date and in order,” he assured her. He held up the cigarette. “You don’t mind?”

  “No.” Standing there, she looked over the notes on the pad and the entries in the schedule chart. Indeed, everything did look up to date and in order. “You’ve been very helpful, Brooks.”

  “My job, Mrs. Lloyd. You’ll also note that I’m off until six, when I vet Mr. Craig for the dinner. Could I be of further help here?”

  Amy had the automatic no on the tip of her tongue, then thought better of it. “As a matter of fact, I would like to go down to the dining room and check out the dusting up and seating arrangements.”

  “Especially the seating arrangements, Mrs. Lloyd. Don’t leave that to anyone else or strange things can happen. Meanwhile, I’ll just record you here as in the dining room in case you’re personally wanted.” Brooks held up a finger. “Music,” he said. “Listen.”

  Amy listened and heard a clicking and hissing, the familiar, comfortable, comforting sound of a radiator starting to function.

  Blessed Mike. Blessed Borglund. Blessed Brooks. Blessed everybody, with the possible exception of Ma’am and her notion of revealing herself to Kim Lowry. The unpredictable confronting the unpredictable.

  Well, sufficient unto the day …

  Old age, Mike thought, very old age can be saddest when you try to deny it. Those deep seams in Borglund’s face, the bleary eyes, that arthritic hitch and wince when he walked were saddening in a way. But saddest was the small, steady tremor of the gnarled hands, not only in itself, but because Borglund, standing there at the worktable, must have become aware of it and had planted both hands flat on the table, resting his weight on them in an obvious attempt to conceal their trembling. He motioned with his chin at the paraphernalia on the table.

  “You know what this is about?” he asked.

  Mike looked at the display. One plastic bucket containing a few shiny new radiator valves, one plastic bucket with rags in it, one flashlight, one pair of canvas work gloves.

  “Sure,” he said. “You just started up the heat and want some radiators here checked for leaks. Where there are any we replace the valves.” He had a sudden alarming picture of what he might be getting into. “Say, how many radiators does that mean?”

  “All. But the top floor we worry about tomorrow. Swanson does the middle floor now, you do the bottom floor. They use the dining room for a party tonight, so that is first. When the people come for the party you don’t show yourself, you’re done, wherever you are, and tomorrow you finish. You start right now.”

  Mike looked down at his custom-made demilivery. “Not in these clothes, Borglund. First I change into something suitable.”

  “No. Ther
e is coveralls on the shelf there. They fit Swanson, they will be plenty big enough for you.”

  More than plenty, Mike found when he had donned them, all he needed to complete the ensemble was a clown’s rubber nose. On the other hand, he told himself, he’d finally get a view of the ground floor. Putting together his studies of the floor plan and Amy’s descriptions, he had an idea of what it was like, but, he suspected, reality was likely to exceed expectation.

  It did. Walking out of the East Wing staircase foyer on the ground floor he was momentarily stunned by the dimensions of everything around him, the height of that ceiling, the amount of gleaming marble everywhere, pillars, walls, and floors. A scenic ramble to the dining room seemed called for, and, he assured himself, if he did find family behind any of these doors after the required two knocks, at least he had the authority to knock. Besides, sweet thought, Mrs. Mac was nowhere on the premises.

  Thus, with never any response to his knock, he surveyed the vast ballroom with its handsomely draped French windows overlooking the street; the East Gallery, a fair-size concert hall with its rows of gilt chairs; the card room—enough room here to run a bridge tournament; and the library, filled floor to ceiling with leatherbound editions that appeared—unlike the books in Craig Durie’s sitting room—not to have gotten much wear.

  The West Gallery far more than met expectation. Not only did the paintings around its walls look like prime stuff—except for bulk, the statuary didn’t compare—but that Sargent portrait of James Hamilton Durie and wife—Amy had provided a vivid description of it—was both a pleasure for the eye and a remarkably telling examination of its male subject. Awesome, Amy had pronounced him, and Mike, viewing the James Hamilton visage, had to acknowledge that this was the word.

  When he entered the dining room from the West Gallery he found that here he was not alone. His wife was standing at the long table, its damask cloth already laid, and with furrowed brow was studying a paper in her hand. Without looking up she said, “Right there on the table, Nugent.” Then she did look up. “Oh, hell,” she said.

  “Some greeting.”

  “I’m sorry, darling. There’s supposed to be a floral arrangement. You didn’t see Nugent wandering around with one, did you?”

  “Nope. Besides, there’s a crock of flowers right there on that sideboard in case you haven’t noticed. Right next to those hard-breathing wine bottles.”

  “Wrong flowers.” Amy glanced at her watch. “Anyhow, there’s time. It’s just that time seems to be getting compressed for me.”

  “Party nerves. And if there is time, why the dark expression?”

  “A problem. What are you doing here anyhow? Aren’t you supposed to be helping Borglund with the furnace or whatever?”

  “This is the whatever. Checking out radiators. What’s your problem?”

  Amy made a despairing gesture. “Place cards, all diagrammed here by Jocelyn. Somehow she got it into her head that Ma’am would be at the dinner, but she won’t. So now it’s eleven instead of twelve. And obviously from this diagram it’s supposed to be boy-girl-boy-girl. What do I do about that?”

  “Try Domestique Plus, of course. It probably provides emergency guests along with everything else.”

  “I’m serious,” Amy hissed fiercely.

  “All right, all right, but let’s not get morbid.” He set his equipment down and surveyed the table. “Where was Ma’am’s place?”

  “Foot of the table, right there. Craig’s at the head.”

  “Then here goes the Gordian knot.” He removed the chair from the foot of the table and planted it againt the wall. “Voila!”

  “With nobody at the foot of the table?” Amy said.

  “Nobody. Just Ma’am’s invisible presence. Which mystically maintains the boy-girl circuit. Trust me.”

  “I don’t see what else I can do,” Amy said resignedly. “And you’d better get on those radiators before I add a wet floor to my problems. They’re behind those grilles. And I have a lot to tell you. I wish I could do it before I forget any of it.”

  “Then just follow along and keep the voice down,” Mike said.

  She did, while he removed the wire grille and turned the flashlight on the floor beneath the sizzling radiator looking for damp spots.

  “Well,” she said, “the principessa dropped in on Ma’am while I was there—What was she like in the car anyhow?”

  “Nice. Full of sunshiny prattle about wonderful New York.”

  “She does seem nice. And from what was said I gather Ma’am’s been hostile to Craig for all these years. The principessa was pushing hard for reconciliation and got nowhere.”

  “Figures.” Mike replaced the grille and went to work on the one across the room, Amy hovering over him.

  “Then,” she said, “there’s this thing between Gwen and her husband. She does want a divorce. The reason is that they were both virgins on the wedding night and the experience was traumatic for her.”

  “Go on,” Mike said with disbelief.

  “It’s true. And he’s refusing any polite divorce because he’s infatuated with her.”

  “If so, he’s feebleminded. Or is it a case of like seeking like?”

  “Could be. But the relevant part is the impression I got that Ma’am’s been laying tranquillizers on Gwen. Probably passing along her own supply of whatever Hegnauer hands her.”

  Mike set the grille back in place. “It would explain much about Gwen,” he acknowledged. “And Ma’am. But impression?”

  “I was ordered out of the room when the subject came up. Which only made the impression that much stronger.”

  “Ma’am, the party pooper,” Mike said. He stood up and nodded at the life-size portrait of the youthful Margaret Durie, all aglow. “She’s changed all right. Gone, gone are the days.”

  “Well, considering her present age and condition. But she was lovely, wasn’t she? And she’s still what I want to look like at seventy. Would you say that’s a good painting?”

  “About technique I’m no expert. But I’d say the artist and subject certainly had a strong feeling for each other. It reminds me of those Renaissance madonnas where the old master and the madonna took time out between poses to commit delicious sins. That’s something my art teacher in college once—Unsigned, you said? Except possibly in back?”

  “Yes. Hey,” Amy said in alarm, “if you try to move that thing—”

  “No big deal.” The ornate gilded frame, he judged, would be a dead weight, but it was suspended by a single heavy wire from a fixture in the molding and would probably allow easy leverage from the bottom. “I’ll pull it away from the wall a little, and you’ll get down and crowd in behind it with the flashlight. If it’s signed at all, it would most likely be at the bottom.”

  “Mike, if anyone walks in here—”

  “There was a damp spot on the floor, and I’m trying to see if there’s any wall leak.”

  “You mean I am.”

  “Yep. The ever-helpful Mrs. Lloyd.”

  When he gripped the base of the frame and carefully pulled it forward he found that it was indeed a dead weight and that the leverage came hard. Looking up, he could imagine the tension on the wall fixture. “Move, baby,” he ordered, “before the cops break in.”

  Using a rag from his bucket, Amy dusted the floor under the portrait. Then she sat down, ducked her head and shoulders under the base of the frame, and pressed her back against the wall. The painted canvas, Mike realized, wasn’t translucent, but from the reflection of the beam on the polished hardwood of the floor he could track the course of the flashlight.

  “Nothing on this side,” Amy reported, the light still in motion. “Wait.” The light became stationary. She slid down until she was resting on her shoulderblades. “Right here in the middle. Real sloppy. Looks like it was smeared on with a house brush.”

  “Can you make it out?”

  “One letter at a time.” Then explosively: “Hell and damnation!”

  “Tell
me why out here, baby. This thing is heavy.”

  Amy leggily slid out from under, and Mike gratefully let the frame ride back against the wall. He gave his wife a hand up and saw her expression was that of someone who had just been vouchsafed a glimpse of the burning bush.

  “Rembrandt?” he offered.

  “Mike, it’s Ross Taliaferro!”

  “Ah, yes, the immortal Ross Taliaferro. But why that name should make you apoplectic—”

  “Taliaferro,” Amy said between her teeth. “Taliaferro. Doesn’t it mean anything to you?”

  Suddenly, unbelievingly, it did. “Taliaferro. Adela Taliaferro. Kim Lowry’s grandma.”

  “Of course. So he would have been her grandpa. And you look pretty apoplectic yourself right now.”

  “Because I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. The implications are positively dizzying, baby. The one that stands out sharpest is that our Margaret, for all that touching scene in the car, was still not telling the whole story. Just enough to be captivating. And what a performance.”

  “But still touching,” Amy said stoutly. “Because I was right when I told you she must have been coming from the artist’s room when she went down those stairs. Ross Taliaferro was the artist, and you yourself just said there could be something between them.”

  “Hold on, darling. I merely quoted my art teacher about Renaissance artists and their tempting madonnas. And from the way Margaret looks in this portrait—”

  “That’s right,” Amy said. “Tempting. And vulnerable. And alone in the house with him. I’m telling you they had an affair—most likely the one affair in her life—and she’s never gotten over it. That’s why this whole plot to help Kim, because Kim is his granddaughter. Be honest, Mike. Admit it does make sense this way.”

  “Theoretically.”

  “Realistically. Because it also explains why Ma’am is now ready to let Kim know who she is.”

  “Let Kim know? I don’t recall one word during that confessional in the car where—”

  “Not then,” Amy said impatiently. “Just this afternoon. She was telling me about it when the principessa showed up. Watch it,” she said in a lowered voice: “Company.” She smiled into the distance. “All right, Nugent, come right in.”