Skulldoggery (2 page)

A
S IT HAPPENED
, old Brewster was directly outside in the hall, and he came in immediately as if on cue. In his case, the apparition tag was not altogether inappropriate. He was tall and incredibly thin with a big bald head and a long cadaverous face with eyes sunk deep in purple pockets. His gait when moving normally was not so much a walk as a kind of fast lope, as if at any moment he might break into a gallop, and his arms and legs seemed to fly in all directions in a multiplicity of acute and obtuse angles. Hester had once remarked, in a flash of inspiration, that he looked as if he were constantly in a rush to get to an anatomy lecture on the human skeletal structure. Not as a student or the lecturer, she said, but as a speciman.

“Well, here you are, here you are,” he said. “Ready and waiting, I see. How are you, Madge? Flo? Junior? Hester and Lester? Where’s Homer?”

“He’s out in the kitchen mixing up a batch of martinis,” Junior said.

“Hardly necessary,
I
should say. Hardly appropriate. It could have waited, I should say, until after the conclusion of our business. I greatly fear, Junior, that your father is an addict.”

“What he is,” said Junior, “is a lush.”

“Perhaps he would have waited,” Hester said, “if you hadn’t been so late. You can hardly expect a person to sit around forever as dry as pop corn. Especially Uncle Homer.”

“Late? Who was late?” Willis Brewster consulted a huge pocket watch and waved it indignantly at the end of its long chain. “Young lady, I was precisely on time. I am always precisely on time. I make a point of it. A point.”

“Well, you needn’t make it over and over. You have come to read Grandfather’s will, if I understand the occasion correctly, and I suggest you get on with it.”

Brewster had appropriated the library table, depositing a worn brief case upon it and himself behind it. Now, before answering, he loosened the straps of the case and removed from it a sheaf of legal-sized sheets. He placed the sheaf beside the case and patted it as gently as if it were the Chihuahua’s head.

“In good time. Good time. As it is, I declare that we are rushing things a bit, I was against it from the beginning. From the beginning. I said so to Homer. Also to you, Flo, if you will be so kind as to remember. I was for a decent interval. A few days, at least. At least. It would have shown proper respect for the late Artemus Hunter.”

“As for me,” said Lester, “I am trying not to lose proper respect for the late Willis Brewster.”

“Late? Never. Not I, young man. Not I. I repeat that I was precisely on time.”

“For God’s sake, Lester,” said Hester, “will you please stop making him repeat things? At this rate, we’ll never know what’s in the will.”

“You mustn’t be so impatient, darling,” Flo said. “Father assured me that we were all remembered generously.”

“It is well known that Grandfather’s idea of generosity was not quite the same as mine. I for one would appreciate being reassured as quickly as possible.”

“We must wait for Homer,” Brewster said. “What the devil is keeping Homer? It strikes me that he is taking an inordinate time. Inordinate.”

“That’s because you are a teetotaler and have no understanding of Uncle Homer’s position,” Hester said. “Making a batch of martinis is a sensitive operation. It requires time and precision.”

“Thank you, my dear, for that perceptive comment,” said Uncle Homer, appearing all at once with a tray bearing a pitcher and six glasses and a small bowl of olives. “Brewster, what’s kept you? We’ve been waiting and waiting for you.”

“He was on time,” Hester said. “Precisely. For God’s sake, don’t get him started on that again.”

“No matter, no matter. Brewster, if you were a little late, no harm has been done.” Uncle Homer set his tray on the table and began to pour martinis around. “There are only six glasses, Brewster, but I seem to remember that you don’t indulge. Will you have a glass of orange juice or something?”

“Nothing to drink. Nothing. I will, however, if you don’t mind, just have one or two of those olives.”

Uncle Homer stared at him for a moment with his little mouth gaping.

“Olives? Did you say
olives?
“

“Exactly. One or two of them, if you don’t mind.”

“Do you mean that you take olives
straight?
“

“Certainly. How else would I take them?”

“Surely you realize that olives are deadly poison unless purified in a strong solution of gin and vermouth? I’d just as soon eat a spoonful of cyanide.”

“You’ll change your tune, Homer, when your kidneys fetch you.”

“Oh, well.” Uncle Homer shook his head a few times, as though to clear it, and shrugged his shoulders. “Help yourself, Brewster. Take all you want. I suppose you have the right to jeopardize your own health if you choose.”

He was clearly not, however, going to be a party to a poisoning, even of a lawyer, and he cast an uneasy glance or two at Brewster while he was distributing glasses. He kept the sixth one for himself, draining it quickly and refilling it from the pitcher before finding a chair near Aunt Madge.

“All right, Brewster,” he said. “I see you have Father’s will there. Go ahead and read it.”

“Not quite yet. Not quite.” Brewster spit an olive seed into the palm of his right hand and placed it neatly beside another on the tray. He removed a handkerchief from his coat pocket and patted his lips. “It will be necessary, I’m afraid, to wait for Mr. and Mrs. Crump.”

“Why?” said Flo. “I simply can’t see why Father’s servants are essential.”

“Because they participate in the will in a modest way. A modest way. It was to be expected, of course. Expected. After all, they served your father well for more than thirty years. Naturally, he remembered them. Naturally.”

“Naturally or unnaturally,” Lester said, “I agree with Mother in being unable to see why they have to be here for the reading.”

“You will see in good time. In good time. In the meanwhile, I must insist that we wait for them. I must insist.”

“Well,” said Hester, “where in hell are they? Why haven’t they been around acting like servants? Someone go find them.”

“That will not be necessary,” Brewster said. “They have retired to their quarters briefly, but I have already taken the liberty of requesting their attendance at this gathering. Taken the liberty. It chanced that they returned from the funeral at the same time as I, and I met them at the front door. The front door.”

“Wherever they are, they are not here,” said Aunt Madge, “and I consider it intolerable to say the least. Waiting and waiting for a lawyer is bad enough, but waiting for servants is even worse.”

“My advice is to have patience,” Brewster said. “Patience.”

This would have been difficult advice to follow if much more patience had been required, but fortunately much more wasn’t. In fact, the advice had hardly been offered before there was a deferential knock at the door, and Mr. and Mrs. Crump, in response to Brewster’s bellowed invitation, slipped into the library and stood side by side, as if for their mutual comfort, if not for their mutual defense, against the wall. Mr. Crump was a dehydrated type, withered and tough as a dried apricot, and somehow gave the impression that he would, if soaked in a tub of water, blossom into full form and be filled with juices. Mrs. Crump, on the other hand, was ample and oily and sometimes amiable. At present, however, she folded her arms upon her impressive bosom and looked stern, apparently anticipating and reproving some piece of inappropriate levity. The Crumps constituted the entire staff of household servants, for Grandfather Hunter had lived alone and had long ago closed all his house except the ground floor.

“Ah, there,” Brewster said. “Crump. Mrs. Crump. Be comfortable, please. Sit down if you wish.”

The Crumps did not wish, and Uncle Homer, once these brief amenities were concluded, erupted in a minor frenzy of irritability.

“Damn it, Brewster,” he said, “will you please,
please,
get on with reading the damn will!”

“As to that,” said Brewster, “I am coming to it. I may say, indeed, that I have come to it. Come to it. First, however, I should like to offer a suggestion which you may or may not, of course, go along with. Artemus Hunter, as any fair-minded person will concede, was a man of both sterling virtue and egregious faults. He was, I may say, flawed. Flawed. Among his faults, the most trying, perhaps, was a tendency toward excessive gaseousness. He was, in brief, windy. As a talker, he was bad enough, but as a writer, he was even worse. Turn him loose with a pen, and he engaged immediately in a veritable orgy of verbosity. A veritable orgy.”

“If you want my opinion,” said Lester, “you are no slouch yourself when it comes to verbosity.”

“Yes,” Hester said. “If you have a suggestion to make, as you said, I would appreciate your making it immediately if not sooner.”

Brewster, impervious to insult and cognizant of his legal position, laid a hand on the thick sheaf of papers on the table before him.

“This,” he said, “is the last will and testament of Artemus Hunter. It is written by his hand.
His
hand. It contains, I should guess, at least ten thousand unnecessary words. To spare you the ordeal of hearing it through, I suggest that I simply extract the meat of it. Extract the meat. Any or all of you will, of course, be at liberty to read the document in detail later if you choose.”

“For my part,” Uncle Homer said, “I have no desire to listen to ten thousand unnecessary words by Father post mortem. Having already listened to some ten million during his lifetime, I’ve had enough.”

“I am in agreement,” Flo said. “Homer and I are experts on this question, having suffered the longest, and I am ready to testify that listening to ten thousand unnecessary words from Father, or even ten, is no pleasant experience.”

“I have no objection to extracting the meat,” said Hester, “but I want to be sure that it’s
all
the meat.”

“That worries me a little, too,” Junior said. “Brewster, are you sure you’re not up to some kind of trick?”

“Young man,” said Brewster, “I do not engage in trickery. I am an attorney of the highest repute. The highest repute. I have already assured you that you have the right to read the document yourself if you are not satisfied. I shall, indeed, be happy to read it aloud. Aloud.”

“I’m against that,” said Uncle Homer. “Damn it, Junior, you don’t realize what kind of torture you’re inviting.”

“Oh, go ahead and extract the meat,” Hester said.

“Yes, Brewster,” Uncle Homer said, “extract it, please.”

“And try,” said Lester, “not to repeat yourself seventeen times in extracting it.”

Given license to extract, Brewster abandoned the document on the desk and consulted a sheet of paper that he took from a pocket of his coat.

“To settle the major matter at once,” he said, “Artemus Hunter has left his entire estate, divided into five parts, to his son Homer in the amount of thirty percent, his daughter Flo in the amount of twenty-five percent, and his grand-children, Junior, Lester and Hester, in the amount of fifteen percent each.”

“Dear old Father,” Uncle Homer said.

“Rest his soul,” said Flo.

“There must be a joker,” said Junior.

“The same notion has struck me,” said Lester.

“What I would like to know,” said Hester, “is how much the estate is.”

“According to my best estimate,” Brewster said, “it amounts, in round figures, to ten million dollars.”

“An appreciable amount,” Uncle Homer said.

“In my opinion,” said Flo, “there is nothing lovelier than round figures.”

“Especially,” said Lester, “when they have been extracted.”

“Wait a minute,” Hester said. “What happened to the Crumps?”

“That’s right,” Uncle Homer said. “Brewster, you said specifically that old Crump and his wife were remembered. What kind of hellish deception are you up to?”

“So they were,” Brewster said. “That brings us to a certain condition. A proviso, so to speak.”

“What the devil do you mean, proviso? Brewster, I become damn uneasy when you start talking like a shyster. Permit me to remind you that you have already said that the family will inherit the entire estate.”

“So you will. In good time.”

“In good time? What do you mean by good time? By God, Brewster, you are driving me to distraction. Explain yourself immediately.”

“If not sooner,” said Hester.

“Yes.” Lester said. “Time is a proviso that my creditors have not counted on and may not be willing to wait for.”

“It is quite clear and quite legal. Oh, legal, I assure you. Quite.” Brewster waved his extraction with one hand and patted the document with the other. “It is provided that the family shall inherit the estate after, I repeat
after,
it has been held intact during the lifetime of Senorita Fogarty, and that during her lifetime it shall be used solely to provide for her comfort and welfare. The Crumps are appointed guardians. They are specifically admonished to spare no expense and to take all necessary precautions to assure Senorita Fogarty a long life and a happy one. They will, of course, remain in residence in this house.”

“Are you saying,” said Flo, “that Father was keeping a woman? At his age?”

“Not only a woman,” Hester said, “but apparently a half-breed. Spanish and Irish, from the sound of it They’re the very worst kind.”

“I’ve always contended,” said Aunt Madge, “that he was a wicked old man.”

“Who precisely,” said Lester, “is Senorita Fogarty?”

The answer to this question was clearly the joker that Junior and Lester had suspected, and that Brewster had deliberately kept buried in the deck. Or buried, rather, in his extraction.

“Senorita Fogarty,” he said with an angular gesture, “is there. On Madge’s lap. Fogarty is, it seems, Senorita’s surname. Apparently you were not aware of it.”

Six pairs of eyes turned in various directions to stare at Grandfather’s Chihuahua with unanimous horror.

“Are we seriously to understand,” said Uncle Homer, “that Father left an estate worth ten million dollars in trust for
that?
For a
dog?
“