Gift Shop

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “Oh, Mei,” said Elaine, “here’s Mr. George. This is Mei Fong. Now come, George.”

  Harry could only grimace at the stranger; he went after Elaine into his father’s enormous bedroom.

  Paul Fairchild was sixty-six years old and in the process of skillfully, with expensive advice, surviving a distress of his heart that had given him warning some months ago. He was sitting up in his thronelike bed, an antique piece of furniture with a towering headboard of carved dark wood. His face was pink and his flesh was firm; his white hair was up like a crest. “Harry,” he barked, “what’s been going on? What happened to your friend Beckenhauer? Dick says he’s been knifed.”

  “Dick should know,” said Harry amiably. “Hi, Tom.”

  His brother, the governor, was sitting in a big soft chair beside the fireplace, where lamplight was doing no damage to his handsome face. He was the very image of the noble young statesman. Clean-cut about the nose and mouth, glinting gray at the temples, compassionate and humble about the eyes. “Harry.” He smiled his famous smile. “It seems you know something.”

  “How come Beckenhauer phoned you?” their father cut in. “Why didn’t he phone me? I hired him.”

  “Ah,” said Harry. “You did, did you, Daddy?” He sat down in the chair that was a twin to his brother’s chair. “Tell me about it.”

  Tom said, “Let’s not be coy. We’d better be sure that this man’s injuries are not in any way related to the job—”

  “What’s the job?”

  Paul Fairchild said crossly, “All right, Harry. Come in, Mei. Come in. Now …” He fidgeted. He seemed to pout. He cast a baleful look at his youngest son and said, “I don’t know how you got in on this. I didn’t even tell Tom, until he came by yesterday. Or Dick, until last evening. It’s my business. I don’t know why there should be any of this damn trouble. I don’t want the whole thing spread around either—particularly.” The old man was frowning fiercely.

  Harry thought fondly, the old man’s made a fool of himself, somehow.

  His father said, “You boys! You three big louts! That’s all very well, and I don’t complain. But I always did want a little girl. And I want her now. All I want is my daughter.”

  Harry felt the shock all the way to the soles of his feet.

  His brother Tom said, “We are rumored to have a little sister, you see?” The governor’s head was trembling in a slight negative.

  “A half sister, you see?” said Elaine, as if to enlighten Harry to the fact that his mother was long dead.

  Harry fought away his shock by pretending not to have felt it. “How did we come by this sister?” he drawled. “The usual method, I presume.”

  His father said, “Do you want to hear about it?”

  Harry slouched a little lower in the chair. Elaine had perched near his father. The woman, Mei, had seated herself apart, near the door. Ali of them, even the stranger, seemed to resign themselves to hearing what they already knew told over again.

  His father began, staccato. “Eight years ago. Still had the yacht. Went around the world. Put into a place called Dolabela. Oh, it’s off the tail end of the Philippines, somewhere. Very nice little place, very pleasant. There was a young woman. Well, the upshot of that was—I married her.”

  “According to some local rites,” said Tom, “the legality of which I haven’t yet been able to determine.”

  “If I took them as valid, then they are valid,” snapped the old man.

  “Certainly,” said Harry encouragingly.

  “I rented a house ashore. She … uh … wasn’t so sure she’d like it here. Anyhow, honeymoon.” He glared and Harry took care to move no eyelash. His father looked away, down at his own hands where they trembled slightly upon the bedclothes.

  The woman called Mei spoke softly. “One day soon Miss Marybelle is gone.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the old man. “Mei, here, she … uh … took care of us during that time. But I don’t want to get ahead. All right. One day Marybelle was gone. Didn’t know where she went or how. Did my damndest to find her—until at last, well, finally, I got the message. Marybelle was just plain disappointed in her bargain and that’s the size of it.”

  It was costing him something to tell this story.

  “So I wrote the whole thing off and sailed for home,” Paul Fairchild said, “and when I got back I didn’t think it was necessary to yak about it.”

  “Why should it have been?” said Harry easily.

  “Now you …” said his father in exasperation, as if he had begun to say, “That’s enough sympathetic understanding from you, little boy.” But he caught himself and said, instead, “Well, it was about three weeks ago that Mei showed up. She came to the U.S.A.—looking for the usual milk and honey—and had got herself into a bit of a financial bind. Naturally she thought of me. Looked me up. That’s when Mei tells me that there was a child. A little girl.”

  Harry was forced to blink, whether he wanted to or not, as his father’s face softened to a foolish shy delight.

  “Even if there was a child,” said Tom with an air of quiet wisdom, “you must see that there can be no proof.”

  “Where is she now?” said Harry. “The little girl?” And then he added, partly to tease his brother Tom, “Our little sister?”

  “That’s it,” said his father gruffly. “That’s the problem. Mei says that Marybelle …” He swallowed and then he said it bluntly, “went into hiding to get away from me. She was pretty upset to find out she was pregnant. She didn’t want the child. But she bore it and gave it away. Now Mei got all this from some kind of grapevine, but the tale was that the child was given to a bunch of American missionaries.”

  Harry suppressed a groan. He stopped believing a word of it.

  “Some kind of more or less broken-down group,” said his father, “who were scraping along without money or support, and who finally had to give up. Broke up. Last year. Dispersed. Vanished. And my daughter with them.”

  The old man looked very grim.

  “And it was three weeks ago,” said Harry, “that you asked me if I knew of a good private investigator.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Asked him?” said Tom, with faint surprise.

  “And Bernie went after the child,” said Harry, ignoring this. “Did he find her?”

  “That’s what I want to know. I think he might have.”

  “What makes you think that, Daddy?”

  “You don’t think so?” The old man looked bleak. “He didn’t tell you?”

  “Just go on,” said Harry.

  His father beetled his white brows, glared awhile, and then went on. “Well, he found Marybelle all right. I had his report. It seems …” This was something else hard to swallow, but the old man swallowed it and continued. “Later on, she—uh—married another fellow, who wasn’t exactly starving in this world, and off she went with him to New Zealand. And never had told him a word—either about me or the baby. Fact, she won’t admit it now.”

  “Bernie found her? Bernie talked to her?”

  “Right. And she went into hysterics and this so-called husband put Bernie out of the house. But Bernie thought that Marybelle was scared about the legality of her—uh—present marriage. So she …”

  “… went into hysterics,” said Harry. “Naturally. A pretty woman, Daddy?”

  His father glared at him.

  “What color, by the way?”

  “Damn it,” said his father, and then he howled, “I want my little girl. If I’ve got a little girl in this world and her mother doesn’t want her, then I want her. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Not a thing,” said Harry.

  “If,” said Tom with a sigh.“I’m glad to hear that ‘if,’ Daddy. Even you, Harry, ought to be able to see that someone may have heard about this—uh—marriage of Daddy’s and is trying on a little flimflam of some kind.” The governor flashed his smile. “Of course, Mei is only repeating what she has heard.”

  “
Flimflam?” said Harry thoughtfully. “With what object? Money?”

  “What else?” His brother sighed for the sordid souls of men.

  All the Fairchild boys had always had plenty of money, so that when Tom devoted himself to the service of mankind, via his political career, and Dick devoted himself to service in the field of medicine, they could afford the luxury, just as Harry could afford to do what he called “not a damn thing.”

  Their father said grumpily, “You don’t know beans about money, any of you.”

  “Just a minute,” said Harry. “I may be confused. But how is somebody going to get money out of knifing poor old Bernie?” He was having quite a few second thoughts. Bernie was not an idiot, after all.

  “No way,” said Tom, with his hard head showing. “That’s why I’m inclined to think the knifing is not related.”

  “Of course not,” said Elaine. “It can’t be. This Beckenhauer had an enemy.” She nodded sharply, as if this settled matters.

  Mei said, “But it makes me fear … It makes me fear very much …”

  Harry discovered that he didn’t know what to think about this woman. It occurred to him that she (a former servant) had certainly known all about his father’s wealth because the old man didn’t mind throwing it around when he happened to feel like it. And she was in a position to tell a tale of far away and long ago, with nobody to contradict her. Evidently she had landed herself in this house, well surrounded by milk and honey. Maybe that was all there was to it. Or what about this Marybelle’s new husband? He might have been enraged to the point where some henchman of his had set upon Bernie for having accused and insulted a cherished wife. Was this an operating human motive anymore? Anywhere?

  The old man in the bed said, “Be quiet. Done is done. Harry, I’ve told you, and now you had better tell me. Why did Bernie call you and exactly what did he say?”

  “He was in bad shape, Daddy,” said Harry gently.

  “Then why didn’t you call the police? Get some real help?”

  Harry rode over the implication of incompetence. “Why don’t I call the hospital?” he said and rose.

  “Damn it,” roared his father.

  But Harry went to the phone that was on the table at his father’s bedside. “What’s the use of guessing,” he said soothingly, “when Dick may know all about it?”

  But Harry was more or less stalling, in order to pull his wits together. He didn’t know all about it, but he knew something. He knew that Bernie must have believed in a connection between the attack on him and this quest. Bernie had been roughed up by some “swine,” and “one swine” had been eavesdropping on the phone call. Bernie had used cryptic means to tell Harry how to get the message. If the message had something to do with the dope for Harry’s daddy, then Bernie hadn’t wanted some “swine” to find that message.

  It was not for Harry to undo all Bernie’s pains unless and until he found out for sure that Bernie had been in some way deluded. And if he took Bernie seriously at all, then he took him seriously all the way.

  So there was a rat in this house, and for all Harry could tell the rat might be in this very room. Therefore he could not speak up and say that he, and he alone, had been given a word and would soon have in his hands whatever message Bernie had so desperately wanted delivered.

  “Dick?” he said when he had his brother’s ear. “Harry here. Daddy wants to know …”

  “He didn’t make it,” said his brother, the doctor. “Died on the table. Sorry. Tell Daddy I’ll be right over.”

  “Did he talk?” said Harry with some difficulty.

  “Never came out of it,” Dick said. “Not a word.”

  Harry hung up. He was tingling. He was hearing that fainting voice on the telephone. “I don’t care so much about getting myself dead for nothing.”

  The lobby of St. Bart’s was very quiet and deserted except for the pretty creature in the green brocade and the woman in white who was saying, “They did all they possibly could. It was just too late. I’m very sorry.”

  The girl’s head had bent with the blow. Her dark hair was perfumed. The woman could smell it and it smelled good. “I was at a party,” Dorinda murmured. “I … we kept expecting him. Could I have … do you think … if I had got here sooner?”

  “Oh no, no, no,” said the woman, happy to nip guilt in the bud. “He never did recover consciousness. Nothing you could have done, dear. These things happen.”

  “I wonder … Could I see …” Dorinda looked up as the woman began to shrink away from what was morbid. “… his things?” breathed Dorinda. “Something to keep. Because we …” She put her hands over her mouth.

  “Well, I’m afraid—” said the woman, who hadn’t been young for a long time but who could dimly remember that the young suffered very much. “Of course, later. But right now the police are going to be in charge of everything, you see. So I couldn’t really. But would you like to talk to Dr. Fairchild? I may be able to catch him.”

  “I don’t think …” said Dorinda in a moment, turning away. “No. You are very kind.”

  “Have you a way to get home, dear?”

  “That’s … all right,” said Dorinda wanly. She walked away and the woman in white felt as sorry as (within her professional obligation to detach) she dared to feel for the poor pretty thing, so young and too shocked and upset to have given her name, even.

  Chapter Four

  Dr. Richard Fairchild, lean and fair, his skin tight to the bone, came in a hurry and fell upon the sandwiches and coffee that Elaine had summoned up. Between sip and bite he regaled the assemblage with some gruesome details, mercifully obscured by the jargon of his trade.

  “Oh, he got it in a struggle,” Dick announced finally, “or so I opined to the cops. He must have busted somebody a good one with that left hand.”

  “Could he have been saved had he gone to a doctor at once?” the governor wanted to know.

  “Doubt it,” said Dick. “In my opinion, no. Little surprising that he lasted out the flight. Of course he was immobilized. He loosened trouble when he began to move again.” Dick’s good teeth embraced the bread and chicken. “He was a mess,” the doctor said. “And now what?”

  “I’m sorry the man is dead,” the old man said dully. “I want my daughter.”

  “Hey, Daddy,” Dick said alertly, “You’ve about had it, for one day. Pack it up. Beddy-bye. The cops will find out who done it. How about letting the cops find the kiddie? If that’s what you want.”

  “It may be news to you, Dick,” said Tom, “but the legally constituted law-enforcement bodies are there to deal with law breakers, not to go hunting the world for …”

  “Some old man’s fancy, eh?” Dick said. His jaunty bluntness was not malicious. It never was. “Besides,” he added, “the cops would be sure to leak the whole affair to the papers. I forgot that. Send another private eye, then. Somebody a little brighter, maybe?”

  Harry said, “Yup. Bernie was dumb enough to get on that plane without the benefit of your opinion.”

  Dick stared at him. “Do I follow?” he said, in a minute. “So he was hero? Oh, come on, Harry. He was jumped by some hoodlums and put in such a state as not to be able to think at all. Sure, that passes for heroism, on occasion.”

  “If you want my opinion,” said Tom earnestly, “I say wait. I can’t understand why there should be any connection between this crime and our business. The police will investigate the crime. Since we don’t want … uh … our business kicked around in public … wait awhile.”

  “Sure. Play it cool,” said Dick. “That’s the way. Go to sleep, Daddy. What’s dead is dead.”

  Harry discovered that he had been good and mad for quite a few minutes already. He put on his worried-cherub look and said, “But Daddy only wants his daughter. Why shouldn’t he keep on looking for his daughter? A man is dead. What of it? Or don’t I follow?”

  “Well,” said Dick, “gossip being what it is (and no offense to Mei), I’m not so sure tha
t Daddy’s got a daughter.”

  “In your opinion, Doctor?” said Harry. “Really? He was only fifty-eight.”

  “Boys,” said their father.

  “How did you get into this, Harry?” said Dick. “And what are you so excited about? What did this fellow tell you on the phone, by the way?”

  “Not much,” said Harry, seething.

  His brother, the governor, said severely, “Do you mind, Harry? If you know something, say so. And if you don’t, then have the grace to admit it. This is no time to play on-again-off-again, now-you-do and now-you-don’t.”

  “I have an opinion,” said Harry slowly. “Bernie knows … that is … he knew where to find the little girl.”

  “Do you know?” cried his father.

  “No, sir,” said Harry. “However, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “What is this?” said Dick in a moment. “A caper? Come on, Harry.”

  “I talked to his partner,” said Paul Fairchild with new energy. “Did I tell you? No reports came in from Bernie within the last three days. They knew he was in the Islands, but not where. Or even why. You’re thinking there’ll be some clue in his office?”

  Harry said nothing. He let his father see that this was not what he had in mind. His clever brothers didn’t miss what he was doing.

  Tom said, “Harry, if you take it into your head to bumble around in this affair, you’re going to make an open exhibition … This isn’t a game.”

  “Oh, I’ll play it cool,” said Harry. “Believe me, I’ll remember that somebody on the other side knifed Bernie and got him dead.”

  “You’re saying it is connected,” burst Dick.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He told me.”

  “What else did he tell you?”

  “Not much,” said Harry. He had talked. Well, that came of letting himself get angry when he shouldn’t have. They didn’t know Bernie as he did. He was on his feet. He had better go.

  The woman named Mei said to him, with signs of anger, “You are being very cruel.”

  “Me? I only said I’d see.” He edged to the door. “There may be nothing in it.”