The Late Clara Beame

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  The old stone house was still warm. Tomorrow it would begin to chill rapidly. The oil lamps were being reserved for downstairs, as long as there was kerosene, and Laura was creaming her pretty face by the soft candlelight. Her bright hair curled about her head like a halo, and her lovely figure was swathed in yards of filmy material. Henry put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her reflection in the mirror. “You look like a Christmas angel.”

  “Not tomorrow night,” she laughed, her dark eyes full of love. “I’ll be wearing flannel pajamas, and so will you.”

  There had been such a scarcity of love in her life, she mused. There had been gruff old Aunt Clara, and finally Henry. One at a time. Never two or three together. Only one at a time. Perhaps, if God were good to her, there would be children, several of them, a ring of tenderness about her, protecting her.

  “Henry, don’t ever leave me,” she murmured, with an intensity that surprised her husband.

  “Why should I?” he asked indulgently. “I’m strong and healthy. I’ll be here for days, never out of your sight. You mustn’t get morbid.” He sat on the edge of the double bed, lit a cigarette, and then asked: “Are you sure it was at that cocktail party that we met Carr? I know you pride yourself on your photographic memory. But I was watching you. You looked as if you were about to burst out in recognition. Were you introduced to him? I can’t remember any formal introductions at all.”

  Laura frowned in the mirror. “Everybody introduced himself to everybody else, if there was time. He probably did, too. Hundreds of people.”

  “But he didn’t remember you, himself. And nobody could forget you, darling.”

  “Oh, you,” Laura said fondly. “But there were scores of other pretty women there; Alice, for instance. Yet he’d never seen her before, according to them both.”

  But Henry was not satisfied. When Laura was asleep beside him, and all was silence except for the creaking of the old house and the moaning of the wind, he went over his own knowledge of John Carr. He had had lunch over two weeks before, in a restaurant he very seldom patronized, but which was a favorite of old Bancroft’s. Mr. Bancroft was sitting at his usual table, talking seriously with a man whom Henry had never seen before. Henry merely glanced at them both; as a junior partner, he had no intention of intruding on a senior partner who was never very cordial with his juniors at the best of times. The two men glanced at the menu tacked to the wall. In the mirror above it, Mr. Bancroft noticed Henry waiting for a table. Henry saw the old man hesitate, and politely looked away. He was just about to leave when the headwaiter came to tell him that Mr. Bancroft had suggested he join him at his table. Henry went at once.

  “Henry,” Mr. Bancroft said in his powerful voice, “this is a new client of ours, John Carr. At least, I hope he’ll be. What will you have to drink?”

  Henry, ever tactful, saw that the others were not ordering a second drink, so he refused, and noted that Mr. Bancroft was pleased. “We’re having the lentil soup and sauerbraten. How about you, Henry?” Henry hated sauerbraten, but as a junior in the firm he ordered heartily, “Same here.”

  During the meal Mr. Bancroft explained that John Carr wanted the firm to look over proposed partnership papers. “I’m not satisfied with the fourth page and its provisions,” he said. His pale eyes suddenly became intent. “Henry, you handle that sort of thing well. How about you taking over? John, Henry’s up to all the tricks of other lawyers. I’m not. Want Henry to handle it?”

  John Carr hesitated. He studied Henry, a man of his own age. “Well, if you’d rather have it that way, Mr. Bancroft.”

  Mr. Bancroft’s wrinkled cheeks had colored slightly. “I’ve merely suggested it. If you’d rather I did — after all, you came to me, yourself, on recommendation — I’ll go ahead.”

  John Carr had said nothing; he had looked offended, Henry remembered, and Mr. Bancroft changed the subject.

  A few days later Mr. Bancroft had come down with influenza, and John Carr was assigned to young Hunt, Henry’s junior. Hunt had come to Henry. “I’m not familiar with all this about partnerships,” he had confessed. “I’m just creeping around in the dark. How about your taking over that guy Carr?”

  “I don’t think he likes me,” Henry told him.

  Young Hunt had grinned. “So I heard. Carr wants the papers rushed through before the end of the year. Probably a tax matter, too. At this rate, I won’t be finished for another year. How about it?”

  “Why don’t you ask Carr?”

  “I wanted to get your reaction first.”

  “All right. If he agrees.”

  Apparently he had not agreed immediately. It was two days before Henry saw him again, and he seemed to think Bancroft’s illness had been specially designed to thwart him. “If you don’t have confidence in my ability, you can go somewhere else,” Henry had pointed out, annoyed. “There are other concerns.”

  Then John Carr had smiled. “I’m sorry. Old Bancroft knew my father, and I don’t know any other lawyers in New York. Let’s get to work, shall we?”

  It had been as simple as that. Henry recalled every incident. Nothing at all out of the way. But why should there have been? He wouldn’t have given it another thought if Laura hadn’t been so insistent tonight, plus his own feeling that he had seen the man before.

  Henry leaned on his elbow and looked at his sleeping wife.

  Laura was dreaming. Her first sensation was of overwhelming fear. She dreamed she was standing on the threshold of the house in the dark winter night. Suddenly she heard Aunt Clara crying, “Run, run! Run as fast as you can, lovey! Hurry!”

  The door was open behind her, and she saw someone standing there, someone who wanted to kill her. She couldn’t move. She screamed again and again in horror.

  “Laura! Wake up, wake up!” Henry was shaking her, and she could hear his voice. But she could not drag herself immediately out of the dream world. She woke to find her husband standing over her, his hand on her mouth.

  “You’ll wake up the whole house, Laura. You’ve had a nightmare! My God, your screams!”

  She clung to him, shivering, unable to control herself. “I thought someone was in the house, trying to kill me! I dreamed Aunt Clara was telling me to run away! It was so real!”

  “Hush, hush.” Henry held her tightly in his arms. “I’m here, darling. It was just a dream.”

  But she had aroused at least part of the household. Alice had opened her door and crept into the hall to listen at the Fraziers’ door. There was silence again after Henry had calmed his wife, but Alice had heard every word. As she turned to go back to her room, she saw the door to John Carr’s room closing slowly.

  She frowned, and then quickly ran to her brother as David’s door opened, pushing him forcibly into his room. “No. No light,” she whispered. “I’ve got to tell you something. Laura feels something. You were right, after all. You know, I never believed in that extrasensory perception thing, but I’ve got to admit that if there is such a thing, our little Laura has it. She always had. She used to make me creepy at times.”

  “She just feels it,” David said, “she doesn’t know it. I’m sure of that. Have a cigarette.” They smoked for a moment.

  Alice broke the silence. “I’m going to ask a few questions.”

  “Don’t!” David told her sharply. “This is too ticklish. We don’t want Hank to have any more suspicions than he already has.”

  ‘There’s another thing,” Alice said. “That horse seller, John Carr. He heard Laura scream too. He saw me. Yet he tried to shut his door so I wouldn’t know he’d been listening too. Why should he have been so stealthy about it?”

  “Easy,” David smiled. “He knew you were eavesdropping, and he’s a tactful sort of guy. Never embarrasses a lady when she’s sticking her ears out. So our Laura feels someone is out to kill her.”

&n
bsp; Alice went on: “There’s still another thing. You know Carr, don’t you? I saw the way you two looked at each other.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” David told her. “I never saw him before tonight, not even at that party.”

  “Uh-uh,” his sister said. “I know you too well. That casual air doesn’t fool me.”

  Her brother seized her wrist and twisted it painfully. “Don’t ever say that again. I tell you I never saw him before until tonight. Is that clear?”

  Alice replied coldly, “Very well. You never met him before. Now let go of my wrist.”

  She stood up and with a faint sound of contempt left the room. David waited until he heard her door close, then let himself out into the hall and knocked lightly at John Carr’s door. It opened immediately. There was a candle burning in the room, and Carr was in pajamas, but it was obvious that he had not yet gone to bed. On a chair near the door lay a gun. The two men exchanged glances.

  “You heard?” David whispered.

  “How could I help it?”

  “She’s afraid.”

  “Well, she has reason to be, hasn’t she?” Carr asked.

  Chapter 5

  By sunrise the snow had stopped falling. The sky was a silvery gray and the drifts in some places were almost six feet high.

  “Don’t let this fool you,” Alice told John Carr and her brother as they ate breakfast in the dining room. “The blizzard is just catching its breath for more mischief. I know these storms.”

  “I’ve never been isolated before,” John Carr remarked as he began putting away three eggs and several strips of bacon. “There aren’t any neighbors?”

  “The nearest, the Ulbrichs, are over half a mile away,” Alice answered. “And they had the sense to leave for Florida the first of December. The village is over three miles away.”

  She looked at him and grudgingly admitted to herself that he had a great deal of charm and magnetism, though he was not especially handsome. I could like him, Alice thought, if only I knew more about him. She held out her chilled hands to the small oil stove. “I’ve heard cranky sounds in the kitchen. The help doesn’t like being cut off from radio and TV. They think it’s all the fault of some amorphous collection of human beings they call ‘the powers-that-be’.”

  “They’re not the only ones,” John commented. “I heard a Princeton graduate call another equally amorphous collection of human beings ‘the vested interests’. I’m a vest man, myself. But I do know what they call us — I mean, me.”

  “What?” Alice asked.

  Edith burst into the dining room. “I suppose you want more coffee?” she asked in a belligerent tone.

  “We all want more,” Alice told her. “Have you taken a tray up to Mrs. Frazier yet?”

  “Mister Frazier said she wasn’t to be disturbed,” Edith stated. “He said to let her be until she yelled. She had a bad night. But it’s almost ten-thirty, and we gotta clean up the kitchen sometime!”

  The three in the dining room looked at each other. “Get a tray ready, please. I’ll take it up to Mrs. Frazier,” Alice volunteered. “You and Mrs. Daley have enough to do as it is with the five of us.”

  “You can say that again,” Edith agreed.

  They laughed. “Everybody in the world thinks that there is ‘some group’ after him,” John said, drinking his third cup of coffee. “We’ve become a paranoid society.”

  “ ‘Sick, sick, sick’,” David quoted.

  “I prefer ‘sin, sin, sin’,” John amended. “What does a paranoid world do, eventually? It starts murdering ‘in defense’. Then it blows its head off. It’s happened before.”

  “You were about to tell us what they call you, John, when Edith came in,” Alice reminded him.

  He seemed baffled. “Was I? I don’t remember.”

  David was amused. His black eyes sparkled. “They call you the ‘wastemakers’,” he said. “Or a subsidiary of the wastemakers. I agree.”

  “I wonder where Henry is?” Alice said.

  “He’s hauling up the blocks of frozen meat from the basement to the frozen woodshed with the handyman,” her brother answered. “Remember? Electricity’s off. To save the meat and other edibles our host is imitating the Eskimos.”

  “So that’s all the jolly calling back and forth I hear. Aren’t you boys going to help?”

  “Let Hank get the heart attack,” David retorted. “He’s the athletic type. I’m the doctor. If I collapse, who is going to take care of this little arctic colony?”

  A pale gilt sun suddenly shone through the leaded windows and turned the walnut paneling over the buffet to a dark burnished gold. Alice looked at the loveliness about her and thought, once more: this should all be mine.

  She suddenly remembered her childhood here, and how she had loved every old room, every corridor, and stairway, especially the broad oaken one that rose from the hall. She was familiar with every passageway, the attic, cellars and barns, every tree and stream. While she had been exploring as a child, Laura had spent her time with Aunt Clara sitting in the ‘morning room’. Or following the lumbering old woman during inspection of the linen closets. “No wonder this all came to her,” Alice thought bitterly. “And I, who loved it all as it should be loved, received nothing.”

  She felt the hatred in her heart, and when John leaned towards her over the stiff, white damask of the tablecloth to light her cigarette, she was aware that he was watching her covertly. Edith arrived at that moment with Laura’s tray.

  John looked at it critically. “Two soft-boiled eggs, one soft piece of toast, one pot of chocolate, and orange sections,” he announced.

  “Typical of Laura,” Alice said. She put down her cigarette, picked up the tray and left the room, her slim back straight and stiff.

  “I gather that Alice doesn’t like our hostess,” John remarked.

  “You gather right. And with good reason, too,” David told him. “Laura calls this place ‘our little home in the country’. You know, rustic. Alice always thought she would have it; this house, its grounds, are part of her, though she was born in New York. She came home again, when sweet Aunt Clara invited her to live here.”

  “Why did sweet Aunt Clara do that? You never told me.”

  “Well, she had all that money and property, and Laura and Alice were the only two girls of the family, if you overlook Bertram Beame’s first daughter, whom Aunt Clara resolutely did. Aunt Clara didn’t care for boys. So, the idea was to see which of the girls she wanted to leave her money to, and Laura was the one who hit the jackpot. Alice never got over it.”

  John stood up abruptly, adjusting his tweed jacket, and strolled out into the kitchen. It was suffocatingly hot, with the ovens going, and the windows were streaming with moisture. “Well, it’s comfortable.” He smiled at Mrs. Daley, who, after a moment, returned his smile. “Came out to get warm.” He held his hands over a gas jet.

  “You got the oil stove in there,” Edith reminded him sullenly.

  “And we’ve got the other oil stove up in our rooms.” Mrs. Daley glared angrily at her niece.

  “And we’ve got log fires in the living room and morning room,” John replied amiably. “We won’t freeze. The point is, will the plumbing?”

  “No. All protected, Mr. Carr,” Mrs. Daley said, studying him thoughtfully.

  “When did Mr. Frazier have his breakfast?” he asked. “He hasn’t been in here this morning?”

  “Oh, he had his breakfast right at the kitchen table, long before you got up,” Mrs. Daley told him. “He’s a hearty eater, not like Dr. David, who doesn’t like big breakfasts. That’s why he’s so thin.”

  “One of these mornings I’ll have some chocolate, myself,” John said. “It smells good. I drink too much coffee.”

  He became aware, after a moment or two, that the women wer
e watching him curiously. He turned to them, smiling, and then returned to the dining room, where he and David began a serious conversation.

  “Nice gentleman,” Mrs. Daley commented to her niece.

  “I don’t think so,” Edith said. “One of those smart alecks. Watching everything. He doesn’t miss nothing.”

  “You watch that toast!” Mrs. Daley warned her.

  Laura was still sleeping when Alice placed the steaming tray on a small table near the bed in the handsomely decorated bedroom. Once, long ago, this had been her room. Laura awakened abruptly, sat up and looked around in confusion.

  “The help is going to quit, drifts or no drifts, if you add invalidism to the problems of this house,” Alice told her disagreeably. “Here’s your breakfast.”

  Laura shivered in her silk nightgown, hugging herself, and Alice took an afghan from the chaise longue and threw it over her shoulders. Laura murmured her thanks. It was very cold in the room.

  Alice sat down and lit a cigarette. “Why don’t you drink your chocolate while it’s still warm? You never liked the stuff. You just drank it to please dear old Aunt Clara.”

  Laura’s mouth trembled. “Alice, please,” she said in a small voice. “I can’t ever seem to make you understand. I did try to please Aunt Clara. Because she loved me. I had no one. So, when Aunt Clara showed she really wanted me — I was so grateful I’d have killed myself for her if she’d wanted it.”

  Abruptly Alice changed the subject. “Why were you screaming bloody murder last night?”

  “I — I had a terrible dream.” Laura did not elaborate.

  “There is something I want to ask you.” Again the change of subject was abrupt. “And I want an answer.” Alice’s voice was almost threatening.

  Laura’s dark eyes regarded the other woman intently.

  “Yes?”

  “What were you doing in Sam’s room the night he died?”