The Silver Ghost
Page 9
Then where had Boadicea come from and why couldn’t Sarah remember? Her own father had been almost obsessively involved with the family history. She’d had it served up to her three meals a day and often at afternoon tea as well, for the first eighteen years of her life. She cast her mind back among the gnarled and intertwined branches of her family tree.
Boadicea had been married to Uncle Morgan Kelling who wasn’t Sarah’s uncle at all but Cousin Percy’s; and Percy was only her second cousin once removed. Uncle Morgan had been in wool and noils, an entirely suitable career for a Bostonian of his background; his father had been in wool and noils before him. Sarah couldn’t recall much about Uncle Morgan except that she’d been taken to his funeral when she was ten as a special grown-up treat. He’d commuted from Wenham on the train every day, she remembered that.
That must be why she really knew so little about the Morgan Kellings, not because Aunt Bodie made any great secret of her doings but because they mostly took place outside the particular orbit within which Sarah had grown up. Aunt Bodie didn’t like a good many of her in-laws, but that didn’t make her any less a member of the family. Kellings often didn’t get along with other Kellings, usually for good and sufficient reason.
Bodie had thought Great-uncle Frederick was insane, which he probably had been, and Great-aunt Matilda a menace. She’d been right on that count, too. She still considered Cousin Dolph a bore, Aunt Appie a scatterbrain, and Uncle Jem a wastrel. She’d liked Sarah’s parents well enough while they were alive because they’d been sensible people. She hadn’t visited them because they were too close to Aunt Caroline, whom she absolutely loathed.
Why had she been so utterly down on Aunt Caroline? Sarah was getting sleepy again. She felt like Alice falling down the hole into Wonderland, wondering whether cats ate bats or if bats ate cats. Had Boadicea rubbed Caroline the wrong way? Had Caroline antagonized Bodie? Or was it just a case of two iron wills clashing? What could it matter now that Aunt Caroline was dead and gone?
10
BUT IT DID MATTER. Sarah dropped off, still wondering why. She woke with the sun blazing in through the opened curtains and Max entertaining his son with an imitation of Boris Chaliapin and John McCormack singing “The Three Little Pigs” in concert.
“I know,” she exclaimed for what must have seemed like no good reason. “They both came from New York.”
Max finished on a high C and a low D. “Who did?”
“Aunt Bodie and Aunt Caroline, of course. Did you change him?”
“Look, that’s man-to-man stuff. We don’t ask you intimate personal questions, do we? Were you planning to get up today, or shall Dave and I just open a can of beans and flip a steak on the grill?”
“Why don’t you both clear out of here and let me get dressed in peace? What time is it, anyway?”
“Almost eight o’clock. I’ve got to call Birmingham before the rates change.”
“Birmingham, England, or Birmingham, Alabama?”
“Both, come to think of it. Come on, Dave. You might as well start learning the business.”
Left to herself, Sarah showered and put on a fleecy blue jogging suit. She had no intention of committing athletic excesses, but the outfit was comfortable to work in and could be tossed into the washer when Davy made a mess of it as he was bound to do one way or another. She didn’t bother to make the bed. Mrs. Blufert would be arriving at half-past nine on the dot.
Neither Sarah nor Max had wanted live-in help, but their strange business had made it imperative that they have a reliable person to cope with the housekeeping and, when necessary, with Davy. Mr. Lomax, who’d been caretaker at Ireson’s Landing ever since Sarah could remember, had solved their problem as he did most others. His widowed niece lived just up the road a piece, liked housework and babies, and wouldn’t mind earning a little something extra.
That meant she was hard up and needed a job. The Bittersohns had checked out Mrs. Blufert through Miriam’s grapevine, interviewed her and liked her, and offered a generous wage to compensate for sometimes irregular hours. So far, the arrangement was working beautifully. Sarah would have liked more time for cossetting her new house, but cleaning had never been her favorite pastime and at least she got to spend plenty of time with Davy.
She’d had to curtail her long-distance traveling with Max but she was able to manage a good deal of the contact work by phone from the house, along with much of the research she loved and the paperwork Max loathed. Sarah herself rather enjoyed writing letters and keeping accounts. She’d had plenty of experience handling club reports and committee budgets during her first marriage. The late Caroline Kelling had been a tireless joiner of worthy organizations and a still more zealous delegator of the dog work.
Why did she keep thinking about the mother-in-law whom she’d always called Aunt Caroline, Sarah wondered? What was that niggling bit of family gossip she couldn’t pin down about Caroline and Aunt Bodie? Instead of sitting here with one shoe on and one off, puzzling over something that probably didn’t matter a rap anyway, why didn’t she go down and see whether Max and Davy had managed to demolish the kitchen?
She’d misjudged her menfolk. Davy was in his high chair, gloriously happy with a spoon and a bowl of cereal. He’d got a little inside him, more on his chin, a good deal on the tray, and a few blobs on the dark red clay floor tiles. Max was talking into the wall phone, reaching over from time to time to steer his son’s spoon mouth ward. Sarah wiped up some of the overspill with a paper towel and measured coffee into the elegant brewing machine that had been a housewarming present from Miriam and Ira.
This house was set closer to the ocean than the old Kelling summer place had been. The North Shore offered granite ledges to build on, so they hadn’t needed to worry much about erosion. From the upstairs windows, they could see all the way to Little Nibble Island and beyond to infinity. Even here in the kitchen, Sarah caught glimpses of the Atlantic as she toasted muffins and sectioned grapefruit.
The old place had been all dark corners, drafts, and mildew; this was all light and air. They’d saved none of the furnishings; Sarah had looted the old place of everything worth taking when she’d refurbished the Beacon Hill brownstone that, with the Ireson’s Landing property, had been all her inheritance from her first husband. The leftovers had gone to the Goodwill before the wreckers came in. Now she had pale wood, bright colors, natural textures, the wondrous Burchfield landscape that had been Max’s wedding present, and immense views of cliff and moor and forest and sea through snug-fitting, draft-free, triple-glazed windows.
The Bittersohn’s usual morning’s entertainment at this time of year, aside from Davy, was watching for migrating birds through the two pairs of binoculars they kept right next to the toaster. Today, they didn’t have a thought for birds.
“What’s on your mind?” Max asked when Sarah started to butter her muffin with her coffee spoon.
“H’m? Oh yes, I see what you mean.” She put the spoon down. “It’s just some probably irrelevant little thing I ought to know about Aunt Bodie and can’t for the life of me remember. If Aunt Emma can’t help, I may have to make the supreme sacrifice and call Cousin Mabel. And I thought I could do some discreet nosing among the Whets and Tolbathys. If only Uncle Jem hadn’t gone off on that stupid yachting party! He knows all that stuff.”
“Send the coast guard after him.”
“I’d love to, if I thought they’d go. You’re going back to the Billingsgates’, I suppose?”
“I want to check on whether Wouter installed a secret underground garage while he was about it.” Max reached down to retrieve the spoon Davy had dropped and was working up to be cross about. “Here you are, tiger.”
“You know, that’s not such a wild idea,” Sarah replied. “I wonder if the Billingsgates ever built themselves a fallout shelter. Wasn’t there a craze for them back in the late forties or fifties?”
“Before people realized there wouldn’t be anything left to crawl out for. Christ, D
avy, I wonder what we’ve let you in for.”
“Darling, there’s always something,” Sarah reminded him. “Years ago he could have died from blood poisoning, Whooping cough, scarlet fever, pneumonia, or goodness knows what else, if he’d lived long enough to catch them. And he might have been motherless if he did. Do you realize it wasn’t until 1843 that Oliver Wendell Holmes published his paper on the contagiousness of puerperal fever? He spent years trying to convince the eminent physicians of his day that they were killing off new mothers by not washing their hands or changing those filthy old frock coats they wore to deliver the babies. The dirtier your coat, the more successful you were supposed to be. They’d go from one patient to the next in a cloud of germs, wipe out a hundred women in a row, and put it down to the will of God. And they tore Dr. Holmes to pieces for trying to make them clean themselves up. Old poops!”
Davy babbled something that sounded very much like what Sarah had just called the eminent doctors. Max chuckled. “There, see. Teaching the kid rude language.”
“Well, there are some things that can only be expressed in rude language. More coffee?”
“Just half, thanks. I’ve got to get rolling.”
“Do give Abigail my best when you see her. Poor woman, having to clean up after a party that ended in disaster.”
“It could have been worse,” said Max. “None of the guests got hurt and most of them never knew anything had happened. There’d have been no point in holding them all for questioning even if that jackass Grimpen had happened to think of it. We’ll know better when we get the result of the autopsy, but I’m fairly sure Rufus had been dead for at least an hour by the time I got to him. Whoever’s responsible had plenty of time to cover his tracks. You probably accomplished as much as anybody could have by collecting information from the group without getting anybody stirred up.”
“I can do better. We still don’t know anything about that Morris dancer Mrs. Gaheris described to us. Have you any ideas as to which it could have been?”
“She said he was too short to be Tick and too tall for Young Dork.”
“What would you expect her to say? Young Dork’s her first cousin once removed and Tick’s her old school chum’s son-in-law. She didn’t mention Lionel, and he’s at least an inch taller than Tick. I say we should check out the whole pack of them. No, Davy.”
Sarah took away the empty bowl her son was trying to use for a helmet and pacified him with a big wooden spoon from the rack on the counter behind her. “If you want to know, I can’t give Lionel clearance for the early part of the banquet. He didn’t show up in the pavilion for almost half an hour after we went in, as far as I can make out. Aunt Appie was burbling around looking for him, and he sidestepped when I tried to find out later on where he’d been.”
“I wish Mrs. Gaheris had been able to tell us exactly when she looked out the window,” Max fretted.
“I know, it was terribly inconsiderate of her not to check. But why should she have?”
“To see if it was time to take her pills?”
“No, they’re stomach pills. She said she takes them with meals. Oh dear, Aunt Appie will die if it turns out Lionel’s done something stupid.”
“Something stupid’s a pretty thin definition for killing a man and hanging his body in a tree, my love.”
“Lionel might have stolen the car, but he’d never have done the actual killing. He’s much too squeamish. Those brats of his must get their bloodthirsty streak from Vare’s side of the family.”
“So what about her?”
“She and the boys were all off rock climbing for the weekend.”
“Says who?”
“Says Lionel,” Sarah answered unhappily. “Darling, you don’t actually believe Vare organized this outrage to give her children a richer experience of Hill Street Blues?”
“You know them better than I do, kid.”
“That’s right, throw it up to me. Can I help whom I’m related to? All right, you dreadful man, I freely concede that Vare and her hyena pack might do something really outrageous if the boys happened to think of it and Vare managed to convince herself the project would be educational. And I don’t have to tell you that Vare can pressure Lionel into doing whatever she wants, except spend money recklessly.”
No Kelling could do that. Even Great-uncle Serapis had died with his capital intact, although he’d managed to establish an international reputation as a millionaire playboy mainly through bluff and good management. There was something in the family genes that kept their revels from turning into routs. No matter how great their urge to chuck the dollars around, Kellings always had to stop and count their pennies first.
Another thing most of Sarah’s relatives and in-laws couldn’t do, though, was to refrain from airing their woes to other members of the family. She’d heard through the grapevine that Lionel’s tightfistedness with his mother’s money had been annoying Vare a good deal. He’d been perfectly willing to wheedle Aunt Appie into paying for the ski lodge and the thirty-eight foot auxiliary ketch. Aside from the fact that Lionel himself liked to ski and sail, these expenditures could be justified as investments. He might, should he choose, rent the lodge for income and put the yacht out to charter. Both could be sold, hypothetically at a profit, if the family tired of them.
When it came to Vare’s yen for an expedition in the Andes Mountains, though, Lionel had been adamant. They might have got their money back on the llamas afterward, but overall they’d have had to operate at a substantial loss, and that was not the Kelling way. Lionel had also shot down Vare’s project for sailing the ketch up the Amazon, having no faith in his boys’ scheme to shoot boa constrictors along the way and smuggle the skins back into the United States for sale to handbag manufacturers. All in all, Lionel had been a sad disappointment to his wife and children of late. Would he have had the face to refuse his cooperation in what might have appeared to be an all-profit venture?
Vare and Lorista had never got along remarkably well but they were, after all, sisters. If the Dorks happened to have found out about Wouter Tolbathy’s big joke in the car shed, then it was entirely possible Vare had been let in on the secret even if Lionel hadn’t.
There was no real reason why Vare should have picked this particular weekend to go rock climbing with her sons. The spring semester at that glorified detention center they attended was not yet over and according to family scuttlebutt the boys themselves had been none too keen on being taken out. Jesse was in the midst of a complicated chemical experiment: preparing to blow up the lab, probably. Woody had been honing up his arithmetical skills by making book on the upcoming interscholastic soccer match. James and dear little Frank had spent most of the past week excavating a tiger pit into which they hoped to lure the headmaster as an experiment in psychology. Why hadn’t Vare left her hellhounds to pursue their instructive courses and accompanied Lionel to the Renaissance Revel?
There she could have danced the volta and the gigue with Vercingetorix Ufford, eaten authentic fourteenth-century frumenty, and hobnobbed with her long-unseen Aunt Drusilla. Had she not liked the idea of being just another guest while her sister queened it on the bandstand? But Vare could have brought along her sackbut and climbed on the bandstand, too. Or she could have stood around looking sympathetic and understanding whenever Lorista hit a wrong note. It was most unlike Vare to pass up the chance.
“Right, dear,” said Sarah. “I’ll check out Vare as well as Lionel, or would you rather do it yourself? Lorista might have some information on where they’re supposed to have gone. Will you be talking to her?”
“Not if I can help it.” Lorista was high on Max’s list of people he could do nicely without. “Fare thee well, mine own, I’d better get cracking. Call me at the Billingsgates’ if anything develops. I may not be there, but they’ll know where I am.”
“Is there any chance you may be in to dinner?”
“I hope so, I’ll call you later on. See you later, Dave. Have a good day.”
In fact it was overcast and blustery out. At least the Billingsgates had got the best of the fickle May weather yesterday. Sarah put the breakfast dishes in the sink for Mrs. Blufert to deal with, and flipped up the high-chair tray.
“Come on, Davy, we’d better quit lollygagging and get to work.”
By the time the housekeeper arrived, Davy was cleaned up, dressed in a striped jersey and red corduroy overalls, and happy to entertain Mrs. Blufert from his playpen while she worked. Sarah said, “Let me know if he starts to fuss,” and went into the office she and Max had planned for themselves. Here were three telephones: the green one they called the family phone, the white one used for business calls, and the red one that was their private hotline with a number known only to themselves and Cousin Brooks.
Cousin Brooks was in charge of the Boston office. For years, Max had rented a dingy cubbyhole in the by now somewhat venerable Little Building on Boston’s Windy Corner of Boylston and Tremont streets. He’d used it only occasionally as a mailing address or a neutral ground on which to hold interviews he preferred for one reason or another not to hold elsewhere. With typical Kelling penny-wisdom, Sarah had suggested a while back that since he was paying rent for the place anyway, he might as well get some good out of it. They’d spruced up the office with a few second-hand oddments so it wouldn’t look vulgarly nouveau and installed Cousin Brooks as manager.
Brooks Kelling had been working with Max and Sarah in an unofficial capacity ever since before they were married. The keenness, daring, and almost wizardry resourcefulness which the sixtyish little man had developed during his lifetime as an ornithologist had proved equally valuable in detection. Nowadays he and Sarah handled a good deal of the local work by themselves while Max tackled the more far-flung assignments.