“Good afternoon, General,” I clowned, making a mock bow before the picture of an ancient warlord. “What a scowling old fellow you are! The Conrad temperament, no doubt. Would his generalship like to have his face wiped?”
As I dusted the paintings, I wondered how Mr. and Mrs. Conrad had come have so many. If the portraits had been done by worthwhile artists, they would have been worth a pretty penny, but, although the frames were high-quality, they housed the most hideously amateurish collection of oil portraiture I’d ever seen.
The Conrads had not impressed me as patrons of the arts. I decided that the pictures must be the work of a dear departed family member with more enthusiasm than talent and that the massive furniture must have been handed down by more prosperous relatives.
I dusted the lower floor, then went back to the kitchen where I dried the dishes while Florence washed. Emma worked doggedly at the ironing, but the pile of clothes in the basket melted slowly.
“I’ll never get through before dinner time,” she said, glancing at the clock. “Mrs. Conrad is due back here any minute.”
“Why kill yourself trying?” I said. “The more I see of this place, the less I like it.”
“I’d like to make a good impression, but these clothes are so hard to iron. They are wrinkled and dry.”
Emma reached up to the shelf above the ironing board for a sprinkling glass which stood there. Her arm brushed against a bottle of bluing left uncorked by Mrs. Conrad.
Before Emma could prevent the disaster, the bottle upset and tumbled down on the ironing board. An ugly blue stain spread slowly over a white shirt.
“Oh, what have I done now!” Emma cried in dismay. “I’ve ruined one of Mr. Conrad’s shirts! Now I’m certain to lose my job!”
CHAPTER 4
While I ran for a cloth to wipe up the spot on the floor boards, Emma plunged the shirt into a pan of cold water under the spigot at the sink.
“Only part of the stain is coming out!” she wailed. “What shall I do?”
“Let it soak for a while,” Florence suggested.
“Perhaps, Mrs. Conrad has some stain remover fluid in the house,” I said.
I searched through the cupboards and the shelves by the cellarway but could find nothing which would serve the purpose. Emma continued to scrub at the shirt.
“Well, it’s not coming out,” Emma said. “I may as well start packing my things.”
“Mrs. Conrad might not say anything about it,” Florence ventured.
“She’ll say plenty,” Emma replied grimly. “Oh, why must I be so awkward? It seems luck is just against me.”
“I have an idea!” I said. “There’s a laundry next door. We’ll take the shirt over there and see if they can remove the stain!”
“You’ll never get it back in time,” Emma protested.
“Maybe we will,” I insisted. “Anyway, there’s nothing to lose by trying. You keep on with that stupid ironing, Emma, while Florence and I see what we can do. If Mrs. Conrad returns ahead of us, we’ll try to smuggle the shirt into the basket without her seeing it.”
I wrapped the stained garment in an old newspaper, and Flo and I went next door. The laundry—which proclaimed itself to be the establishment of one Sing Lee— looked fairly new. It was a two-story building which stood so close to Old Mansion that the walls touched.
We entered the laundry and were immediately greeted by a young blond woman who would have looked more at home in a cabaret. She wore a long string of pearls over her silk dress. Her bright-red hair was bobbed, and she’d rimmed her eyes in kohl. I couldn’t imagine her doing any washing or ironing.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“Bluing was spilled on this garment,” I said, unwrapping the shirt. “Can you remove the stain?”
The girl looked at the shirt.
“Ralph?” She yelled toward the back room.
“What do ya want now, Violet?” Ralph grumbled as he emerged.
Ralph looked even less like he belonged in a laundry than Violet. He was a large, well-built man, dressed in a blue pinstriped suit. I had never before seen a man keep his hat on indoors.
If I’d been forced to guess Ralph’s profession based purely on appearance, I’d have gone for a bouncer at a better class of speakeasy. I wondered how the apparently absent Mr. Lee had come to entrust his establishment to the care of these two.
“It’s a very bad stain,” Ralph said, turning the garment over in his hands, but barely looking at it. He seemed far more interested in examining Flo and me.
Flo was drinking him in, her mouth gapping open. I gave her what I hoped was a surreptitious jab to the ribcage. Flo can be a bit man-crazy, and even I had to admit that Ralph was quite a fine specimen of manhood.
“Can you get the stain out?” I asked.
“I can get it out,” said Ralph. “Can you come back for it tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow! We need it done right away. Say in fifteen minutes.”
Ralph shook his head and thrust the shirt back into my hands.
“You wouldn’t need to iron it,” I urged. “Just remove the stain for us. That shouldn’t take long.”
“Fifty cents, cash up front,” Ralph said.
I was pretty sure that was many times the going rate for laundering shirts, but I handed him the money, trying not to think how many gallons of gas I could put in Bouncing Betsy for that princely sum.
Flo and I sat down on a hard, wooden bench to wait.
“He’s a Sheik,” Flo whispered as Ralph vanished into the rear room and closed the door behind him. I heard a key turn in the lock after he entered the room, then, behind the locked door, I heard him carrying on an indistinct conversation with some other person who spoke so low I could not even tell if it was a man or a woman.
The girl, Violet—and ostensibly, Ralph’s Sheba—remained at the counter, examining her manicure and keeping watch on us out of the corner of her eye. Ralph returned shortly and announced to the girl that he was going out. He didn’t say where. Violet just nodded and went back to examining her manicure.
“I hope whoever they’ve got back there does a good job on that shirt,” Flo whispered.
I tilted my head backwards to look at the ceiling.
“Did you notice what you’re sitting under, Flo?”
Florence glanced up, and with a little cry of alarm, sprang to her feet. A heavy silver sword with an intricately molded handle and a wicked looking blade had been suspended over her head.
“Oh, it won’t bite you,” I said. ‘It looks quite secure.”
“I might be decapitated if it should fall from its support! You don’t catch me sitting under that thing!”
Flo got up and moved to the other side of the room, and I followed.
I looked over at the girl loitering behind the counter. Violet was smiling to herself but continued to look down at her fingernails.
A bell tinkled, and the girl went to the door leading into the back room. She took out a key from her pocket, opened the door a crack, and reached inside. An unseen person inside deposited the laundered shirt into her hands.
Violet returned to the counter with the shirt and spread it out for our inspection. Whoever did the actual washing had done a beautiful job. There was no trace of a stain, and the shirt had been starched and pressed. There was even a piece of stiff paper placed inside the collar to keep it in shape.
“You’re not from White Falls, are you?” Violet asked as she wrapped up the shirt in brown paper.
“We’re from Greenville,” Flo said. “We’re staying next door.”
“Are you staying at Old Mansion tonight?”
“No, we’re merely here with a friend,” I said.
We carried the shirt back to the house next door, taking care to enter the kitchen quietly. There was no sign of Mrs. Conrad, or, for that matter, of Emma. The ironing had been stacked neatly on the kitchen table.
“I suppose she’s working upstairs,” Florence said.
I unwrapped the shirt and removed the stiff paper ring from the collar. I stuffed the paper ring into the pocket of my dress and rumpled the freshly laundered shirt up a bit before inserting it near the bottom of the pile that Emma had finished ironing.
Flo and I were just leaving the kitchen when there was a piercing scream from one of the upstairs rooms.
“That was Emma’s voice!”
We darted up the circular stairway two at a time, wondering what latest misfortune had come upon our friend. Emma’s room was empty.
We were still standing in the hallway in front of Emma’s room when the door of room seven opened, and Emma burst out into the hall. Her face was white, and the pupils of her eyes were dilated with fear.
“What is the matter, Emma?” I asked.
“That room—” Emma whispered. “Those paintings!”
We stepped into room seven. It was a large chamber with a massive fourposter walnut bed, dresser, and the usual chairs. Heavy draperies in a dark brown velvet hung at the windows, one of which overlooked the river, directly beneath. On the east wall were four portraits done in oil and hung in massive gilt frames. The figures were very nearly life-size, the faces depressing.
“It is in pretty awful taste,” I said. “Rather an assault on the eyes, but what on earth made you scream like that, Emma?”
“That painting on the wall,” Emma whispered. “The portrait of the man with the red velvet hat—I was dusting—”
She broke off suddenly as we heard a door slam downstairs.
“Mrs. Conrad!” Emma said. “She mustn’t find us here!”
We fled from the room, closing the door after us. Emma busied herself dusting the balusters on the stair railing just as Mrs. Conrad appeared.
“Humph!” the woman commented. “I must say you’ve done better than I expected. Never mind the rest of the dusting. Get downstairs and start dinner.”
“Yes, Mrs. Conrad,” Emma said.
I watched as Emma descended the stairs. Her hands were still shaking, and she gripped the railing for support.
“I suppose we should be starting for home, Flo,” I said, loud enough for Emma to hear. “We have a long drive ahead of us.”
Emma halted and turned around.
“Can’t you wait just a little longer?” she pleaded.
I looked at Flo. Flo looked back at me and nodded her head.
“Of course, we will,” I said.
I could see that our decision to stay displeased Mrs. Conrad, who obviously considered us as intruders in the house. However, she merely pressed her lips together and refrained from comment.
“Glen and I shall expect dinner promptly at six-thirty,” she told Emma. “You’ll find the makings of a hash in the ice chest. There are turnips to be cooked, and you might make a rice pudding for dessert.”
Taking the evening paper, she disappeared into the parlor, and we were left alone. We three crept into the kitchen, carefully closing the door.
“She didn’t notice the shirt!” Emma exclaimed in relief.
“The laundry next door did a good job of removing the stain. But Emma, I think you shouldn’t stay here. Come back to Greenville with us.”
“I’d like to,” said Emma, sinking down in a chair. She was wavering, but then she bucked herself up and continued, “No, I’ll not be so silly—I’ll stick it out even after what happened up there in room seven.”
“What did you start to tell us just as Mrs. Conrad appeared?” I asked.
“It sounds rather ridiculous now,” Emma whispered. “But it’s true—I swear it is!”
“Something about the paintings?” Flo asked.
“I was dusting the bed,” Emma said. “All the time I felt so uncomfortable—I can’t explain the sensation.”
“That room is enough to give me any sane person the heebie-jeebies,” I said.
“Well, I certainly had them, right from the second I stepped into that room, but I stayed and did the dusting. I was on the other side of the room when I glanced toward that painting—the man with the red velvet cap. I nearly jumped out of my skin. His eyes were looking straight at me.”
“And was that when you screamed?”
“No, I screamed when I saw those terrible eyes move!”
CHAPTER 5
I did not believe Emma’s story. It was not that I thought she was lying, but she was exhausted and nervous. In her overwrought condition, it would be easy for her to imagine she had seen the eyes of the painting move.
“I can tell you don’t believe me,” Emma. “But I swear it’s true!”
“The bedroom was quite dark when you were there,” I said. “You probably were mistaken, Emma.”
“Then I must be losing my mind! Those horrible eyes blinked and moved sideways in their sockets! I—I saw it!”
“Emma,” said Florence. “Whether the eyes of the painting moved or not, this is no place for you. Come on back to Greenville with us.”
“No, I have to stay. Perhaps I did get excited.” Emma averted her face.
“The paintings in this house are the ghastliest things I’ve ever seen,” I said. “But I imagine one could get used to them after a few days. Emma, would it make you feel more comfortable if Florence and I stayed with you tonight?”
“Yes, of course, only I’d not ask you to do it. And Mrs. Conrad might object.”
“We could pay for our room. Since she takes tourists, I don’t see why she should object to us. If we’re staying though, we’d better phone home.”
Flo and I went out into the hall, intending to speak with the mistress of the house about getting a room for the night and using her telephone, but when we neared the open door of the parlor, we heard voices within. I motioned to Flo to keep quiet and listen. We lingered in the hallway, eavesdropping.
“I tell you, I’ll not send the girl away,” Mrs. Conrad was saying. “She’s a good worker, and I’m tuckered out trying to keep up this big place and take in tourists.”
“It’s dangerous to have anyone here, and you know it, Earnestine,” Mr. Conrad retorted. “Do you want us to get into trouble?”
He broke off abruptly. “There’s someone in the hall.”
Mrs. Conrad came out, looking even more frazzled and run-down than before. Flo apologized for the intrusion and said we’d like a room for the night. Mrs. Conrad frowned and started to refuse, but I interrupted her.
“We expect to pay for our room, of course,” I said.
“What do you think, Glen?” the woman asked, turning to her husband.
“Might as well pick up a bit wherever we can,” he muttered. “I’ll get the register and you girls better sign it like regular over-night guests. There’s state regulations, you know. It will be a dollar in advance.”
Between us, Flo and I paid the fee. When I signed the register, I noticed that the last guest who had spent a night at the Old Mansion had been a man by the name of J. D. Merriweather from Chicago, assigned to room seven.
“Where’s your luggage?” asked Mr. Conrad.
“We brought none with us,” Florence explained. “We just brought Emma down and had no thought of remaining.”
“Well, I guess it will be all right, though we don’t usually take folks without luggage,” the man said. “I’ll let you have room seven!”
“No, Glen! Not that room!”
Mr. Conrad glanced angrily at his wife.
“Room seven hasn’t been dusted,” Mrs. Conrad said. “Put them in number ten. They’ll like that much better.”
Odd, I thought. Emma had just dusted room seven.
“Why can’t we share Emma’s room?” Florence asked. “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”
“It would save bed linen,” Mrs. Conrad agreed. “Will you take dinner here? That will be twenty-five cents apiece.”
“No, we thought we’d go next door to the café,” I said, without consulting Florence.
The prospect of hash and rice pudding held no allure, and besides, I did not wish
to make Emma extra work.
“Thom Vhorst keeps a mighty poor table,” Mr. Conrad said. “You won’t like it, in my opinion.”
“Well, we’ll see,” I said, unmoved.
We returned to the kitchen to tell Emma that the Conrads had agreed we might stay the night. Emma was toiling over the hot stove.
“I’m glad you have decided to stay,” Emma said. “Of course, you may share my room. I’ll not feel so lonesome with company.”
We left Emma to serve supper and went next door to the café. I paused for a moment to stare at the dark river which flowed in a swift, steady stream close to the door.
“I can’t imagine who would lay out a street in such fashion,” Florence said. “All these buildings are dangerously near the water.”
“I imagine they were built farther back. Probably the river has cut into the bank as the years went by. Didn’t your father mention something about that, when we told him we were visiting White Falls?”
“One of these days I imagine everything will topple into the water.”
“It wouldn’t be a very great loss,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Glen Conrad and wife can be perched on the roof when Old Mansion swims off!”
“They are an unpleasant pair. Did you hear what they were saying, Jane, when we came into the parlor?”
“Yes, it puzzled me. Why should Mr. Conrad consider it dangerous for Emma to remain here? And he acted so oddly about that room. I was tempted to insist upon sleeping there, despite Mrs. Conrad’s protests.”
“I’m glad you didn’t, Jane. I haven’t any overpowering desire to spend a night with portraits which roll their eyes and cut capers.”
“Oh, that part must be nonsense, Flo.”
“Yes, Emma was excited,” Florence agreed. “So many things happened to her today she didn’t know what she was doing.”
“Still, it’s very strange Mrs. Conrad was so set against us having that room. She seems afraid of something.”
“She said it hadn’t been dusted, only Emma had just finished it.”
“That was definitely just an excuse. Mr. Conrad seemed to understand what his wife meant because he let the matter drop. Another odd thing, you remember the café owner dropped a hint about Old Mansion. He said to take his advice and not spend a night here.”
Sinister Goings-on in Room Seven: A Jane Carter Historical Cozy (Book Two) (Jane Carter Historical Cozy Mysteries 2) Page 3