Family Vault (17 page)

“Sarah, why would the man do a thing like that?”

“Because of the jewelry, was all I could think of. I thought he might have got it into his head I was sneaking off to meet a—a boy friend, and that he could blackmail me into letting him get at the collection.”

“How could you? The box is in Mother’s name. You wouldn’t be allowed to open it without her authorization.”

“He wouldn’t necessarily be aware of that, would he? I know we told him I’d never seen the things, but that was in deference to Aunt Caroline’s wishes. He may think I could if I chose to. You must admit it’s unusual for a person in her condition to have had complete control over such a valuable family property all these years. Now that I’ve met him again, though, I honestly don’t think he’s that sort of man.”

Alexander shook his head. “We mustn’t be too sure of anything. It does seem too much of a coincidence, his coming upon you like that, and the Studebaker would certainly be an easy car to follow anywhere. What did he say when he came to the table?”

“The sort of thing one might expect. Acted surprised to see me so far from Boston and asked what I was doing out by myself on such a miserable night. I told him you weren’t feeling well and I had to attend to something out here. I mentioned our having two places, and said we were always tootling back and forth. Then I asked him the same question, and he didn’t really answer, but started talking about my doing the drawings for his book.”

“How did he know you can draw?”

“He said Harry told him. I’m afraid he, or whoever it was on the path, may also have got hold of a sample. Like a fool, I tore up that sketch I’d made of the wall, and simply threw the pieces away. He could have picked them up and stuck them back together.”

Alexander was looking gray again.

“I’ve landed you in a fine kettle of fish, haven’t I?”

“No, I don’t think you’re responsible, Alexander,” Sarah replied, “and I’m not saying this simply to make you feel better. I’m beginning to suspect there’s something that’s been going on for a long time without your knowing anything about it.”

“What makes you say that?”

“For one thing, this business of Ruby Redd. I cannot believe your mother killed her.”

“But she must have!”

“She never said so, did she?”

“Of course she didn’t. Would you?”

“Probably, if I was asking my own son to help me get rid of the body. I’d feel I owed you some kind of explanation.”

“Sarah, she was trying to pretend I’d done it. I told you what she said.”

“Yes, and it seems to me that those words were carefully chosen for their ambiguity. They might also be interpreted to mean she knew who’d done it but didn’t dare say. That would explain why she’s never been willing to talk about it. There’s no earthly reason why you and she should never have discussed the matter, unless she was shielding somebody. Then I keep getting back to the method of killing. Can you honestly see Aunt Caroline sneaking up behind another woman and bashing her over the head?”

“How can one say what another person will do in time of stress?”

“You know what she did to your father, and you have a pretty shrewd idea of what she did to mine. I can believe the poisoned mushroom theory because it’s basically the same as the first murder—setting up a situation that’s going to result in death without arousing suspicion. I’ve been thinking she might have got Edith to pick the mushrooms for her, but she mightn’t even have had to do that. Couldn’t she just have dumped her eyedrops or something into the pan?”

Her husband thought a moment, then nodded. “Yes, that’s entirely possible. Atropine is a vegetable alkaloid, too, if I’m not mistaken, and the symptoms might not be dissimilar. The doctor would be apt not to doubt the mushroom story because people who gather wild mushrooms so often do poison themselves by accident, and those who don’t sometimes have an almost superstitious dread of the things—like thinking all snakes are dangerous.”

“And Aunt Caroline would be ready with a plausible story about how Daddy was always so cocksure of what was edible and what wasn’t that he never bothered to check them against the reference books. She’d claim that was why she never dared eat what he picked, which would explain why she didn’t get poisoned, too. You see, we can both accept that idea because it’s so typical of the way she operates. Ruby Redd’s murder was entirely different. Your theory is that your mother killed your girl friend because she didn’t want to lose you, but I can’t buy that. You were still under age and Aunt Caroline had control of the finances. All she had to do was cut off your allowance and ship you off with her on a trip somewhere. She’d be taking a fairly safe gamble that Ruby wouldn’t be the sort of girl to sit chewing her fingernails till you got back, wouldn’t she?”

“I suppose so,” Alexander admitted, “but if she didn’t kill Ruby, who did?”

“I’d say, off-hand, it was most likely the person to whom she gave the money.”

“Gave the money? You mean Father’s money? Good God, Sarah, why would Mother do a thing like that?”

“How should I know?” said his wife. “But if she didn’t give it away, what did she spend it on? A person couldn’t fling huge sums about and have nothing left to show for it unless she bought phoney stocks or bet on horse races—”

“Not Mother.”

“—Or had to pay blackmail to somebody who knew she’d killed your father.”

Alexander licked salt off his lips.

“How could anybody know?”

“What if she confessed? She was in a really bad way when they found her, wasn’t she? Maybe she thought she was going to die. To ease her conscience, she told a minister or someone at the hospital. Then when she got better and turned out to be a wealthy woman, that person threatened to expose her.”

“That doesn’t hold water, Sarah. Mother could say she’d been raving, delirious, that it simply wasn’t true. She’d count on my backing her up because she never did know I’d seen her get rid of the medicine. I suppose there’s always the chance that some fisherman or someone happened to come alongside the Caroline in the fog at the precise moment she emptied the bottle over the rail, but if he was close enough to see her, then she’d also have seen him. Anyway, why should a blackmailer find it necessary to kill Ruby? They’d have no possible connection with one another.”

“Are we safe in assuming that? I don’t want to undermine your ego, darling, but you did say that you were one of a crowd of fans and couldn’t think why Ruby singled you out as her favorite. I’m sure you were the best looking of the lot, but you probably weren’t the richest or the most sophisticated.”

“Sarah, are you implying that her getting friendly with me was part of a scheme to fleece Mother? What could she get out of me?”

“The jewels, silly. Aunt Caroline would have had to tell whoever was getting the money that she couldn’t give them up because they didn’t belong to her, so they intended to use Ruby to wheedle them out of you. Then Ruby heard about that ruby parure and decided to double cross them because it would go so nicely with her teeth.”

“Darling, you’re seeing mermaids again.”

“All right, I’m only guessing about that, but I do have one solid piece of information. Do you remember Tim O’Ghee?”

“The bartender from Danny Rate’s? How could I forget? His being there when you opened the vault was like a judgment. Frankly, I’ve been wondering why he hasn’t come around trying to blackmail me.”

“Because he’s dead,” said Sarah.

“How do you know?”

“I found him.”

“Sarah!”

“Darling, don’t look so aghast. Let me tell you how it happened. First, you must realize that by Tuesday morning, I was in what you might call a state.”

“You had every reason to be.”

“At any rate, I felt I simply couldn’t endure sitting around waiting for the next awful thing to happen. It occurred to me that if I could find that old bartender, he might be able to answer some of my questions.”

She explained how she’d tracked O’Ghee to his rooming house, and how the landlady had sent her upstairs alone to discover his body.

“Oh, my God!” Alexander gasped. “How did he die?”

“Some kind of poison injected by the needle he took his insulin with, I should think. It had been faked up to look like suicide by Milky Ways.”

He stared at her. “Sarah, whatever are you talking about?”

“Milky Ways,” she repeated. “You know, those candy bars I used to be so crazy about.”

“I thought you still were.”

“I’m afraid I’ve rather lost my taste for them.”

She told him why. “You see, I was supposed to believe he’d stopped his medication and stuffed himself with candy so that he’d go into a coma and die.”

“And mightn’t he have done just that? It doesn’t seem such a bad way for an old man to go, my dear.”

“Of course he didn’t. Why should he? He was chipper as a bee the day before. That landlady of his tried to pretend Mr. O’Ghee was shattered by finding Ruby Redd’s body in the vault because they’d been sweethearts, which was utter nonsense. You should have heard the earful he gave us about what an awful person she was! He wasn’t the least bit sorry, only excited at being on the spot when she turned up and pleased with himself for being able to tell us who she was. Anyway, he couldn’t eat Milky Ways because his teeth were no good. He told me so himself.”

Alexander pondered, his magnificent head bowed into the upturned collar of his threadbare pea jacket. “Then you honestly believe that the landlady staged this whole performance?”

“She and that so-called doctor together, I should say. They were feeding each other lines like a couple of professional actors. Oh, and as a grand finale, they reached into the wastebasket and pulled out a copy of Monday night’s paper that had the story about Ruby Redd and that awful picture of me and Dolph right on the front page. They recognized me from the photograph, accused me of coming there to—to make trouble for my family, and practically threw me out by the scruff of the neck.”

“Sarah, this is unbelievable!”

“I know. It was as though they knew I was coming and set the stage in advance. I suppose what actually happened was that they saw me dithering around outside, wondering if I’d got the right house, and recognized me from the news broadcast Harry and Leila saw. I was wearing the same old brown coat and no doubt looking just as idiotic. The man must have rushed upstairs and planted the things under the bed, then sneaked around back and waited till the landlady signaled for him to make his appearance as the doctor.”

“Would they have time for all that?”

“Easily. The woman kept me talking at the door for a few minutes before she let me in, and then after I found Mr. O’Ghee dead, I stayed upstairs with the body while she telephoned—or pretended to. The man did drive up in a car, but he might have had it parked just around the corner somewhere.”

“Didn’t he have a stethoscope or anything?”

“I don’t know. He never opened that little bag he was carrying, and he kept his overcoat on so I’ve no idea what he was wearing underneath. We were only in the room together for a few minutes before they raised that big hullabaloo and forced me to leave, with dire threats of what they’d do if I ever came back.”

“What puzzles me is why the woman ever let you see the body in the first place,” said Alexander. “Why didn’t she simply tell you Mr. O’Ghee wasn’t around?”

“I suppose because they were afraid I’d keep coming and pestering them if they didn’t scare me off good and proper. Or they may have wondered if Mr. O’Ghee told me something they didn’t want me to know, and thought they’d better take the chance to sound me out.”

“My God, Sarah! What if he had, and you’d let them know?”

“Obviously he didn’t since I got out alive,” she replied with a shiver. She hadn’t thought of that before. “Anyway, don’t you think this opens up some new possibilities?”

“Yes, I expect it does.”

There was a curious hesitation in his voice. Sarah caught the nuance.

“Alexander, don’t you want it to be somebody else?”

“Darling, how can you ask that? Of course I’d rather not have to think of my own mother as a red-handed murderess, but what a terrible injustice I’ve done her all these years if she isn’t guilty.”

“She is guilty of your father’s death, you’re positive of that.”

“Yes, but that’s—not quite the same. The plain fact is that Father could be absolute hell to live with. There were times when I felt like doing something drastic, myself.”

“Not murder!”

“No, I don’t think my destructive fantasies got any further than a punch in the mouth. What I actually planned to do was clear out of Boston as soon as I got my degree and find a job somewhere. I think Mother knew what I had in mind, although we never talked about it.”

“Leaving the family nest would be the normal and reasonable thing for any young man to do.”

“I’ve never been much good at doing the normal and reasonable thing, have I?”

Alexander slid off the wishing rock. “Shall we walk on a bit? I’m getting stiff with sitting, and it looks as if the fog’s beginning to lift.”

“Don’t you think we ought to start back?” said Sarah. “Aunt Caroline’s fire must be almost out by now, and I should get going on that chowder if we’re to have it for supper. It’s always better if it stands awhile.”

“You’ll need me to open the clams, I suppose?”

“No, I bought them already shucked. And frozen, unfortunately, since those were all they had.”

“They’ll taste just as good. You make a marvelous chowder, Sadiebelle.”

“Are you trying to butter me up?”

He smiled a little. “Well, I was rather thinking that if you don’t want my help, I might nip down and have a look at the Milburn.”

“I thought you’d got the old girl all tucked up in her winter nightie.”

“I have,” he answered eagerly, “but it wouldn’t take me ten minutes to untuck her if you’d care for a little spin.”

“Why don’t you take your mother while I’m chopping the onions?” Sarah suggested instead. Jogging along at ten miles an hour in an antique electric car was not her favorite pastime, but Aunt Caroline loved the Milburn almost as much as her son did. “Give her a nice ride, and then she won’t feel quite so abused and neglected if we go off again by ourselves this afternoon. I do believe you’re right about the weather. Look, there’s the patch of blue big enough to make a Dutchman’s breeches.”