The Gladstone Bag (17 page)

Theonia didn’t try to hold back her laughter this time. “What a typical Emma Kelling remark! I think I’d content myself with painting the outside screaming chartreuse and setting plastic gnomes under all the pine trees. I can see why Vincent felt the need to bring his children with him; he’s trying to persuade himself that the place is still alive. That’s a badly shaken man, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Do you honestly think so? He seems to me such a Rock of Gibraltar.”

“Even a rock may crumble, my dear, if the pressure’s kept up too long. Or crack, if it gets a hard-enough jolt.”

Emma thought this over a moment, then nodded. “You’re more perceptive than I, Theonia. I suppose Vincent’s worried about what’s going to happen when Adelaide Sabine dies. And we already have an unknown dead man in the pony stable. Did Max tell you that?”

“Yes, and I shouldn’t mind getting a look at him, if it can be done without making waves. But why hasn’t he been taken away? Max was under the impression the body was to be picked up first thing this morning.”

“So was I, but Vincent’s brother’s boat was damaged in the storm last night, so he couldn’t come.”

“Vincent’s brother?”

“Lowell. He’s the harbor master. Brother Franklin is the medical examiner or whatever they call him up here. Vincent has given me to understand that Franklin will be cooperative about the verdict.”

“Has he indeed? Quite a local dynasty. What size are your feet, Emma?”

Taking the hint, Emma gave Theonia the run of her wardrobe. By the time Sandy came back with fresh coffee, a cranberry muffin the size of a soccer ball, homemade jam, and a little pat of butter formed in a mold that had a cow on top, Theonia had changed into one of Emma’s full skirts, a blue cotton blouse, and low-heeled sandals with crepe soles.

“You’ll want something around you,” said Emma. “The air’s really nippy. Here, take this.”

On impulse she handed Theonia the wool challis shawl with the giant peonies on it. With the long, full skirt and her black hair in its heavy chignon, the shawl suited her almost too well. Theonia looked at the half-gypsy woman in the cheval mirror and chuckled.

“All I need are a pair of hoop earrings and a dancing bear. Perhaps I’ll be able to pick up a little extra money dukkering.”

“I daresay you could, if you really felt the urge,” said Emma.” The expedition’s official seeress is feeling poorly. Max did tell you about Alding Fath?”

“Yes, but I want you to tell me. What do you really think of the woman, Emma?”

“I know she must be a fake, but I think she’s a dear.”

Emma explained what had happened on the first night while Theonia drank her coffee and worked her way through Bubbles’s giant muffin. “So what do you make of that?”

“I shall know better after I’ve met her.” Theonia set down her empty cup and made careful dabs with her napkin. “Now, just give me a moment to wash the jam off my face, and we’ll make a quick dash to the barn before Vincent finishes putting the dock back together. Which way?”

“Out the side, I think. We can slip around behind the house. It’s not far.”

“I need a walk anyway, after having been folded up inside that puddle-jumper all the way from Lake Cochituate. Tweeters practically had to butter my hips to squeeze me in.”

Discussing the state of Max Bittersohn’s multiple fractures for the benefit of anyone who might be listening, the two majestic ladies strolled down through the house and out across the spongy pine-needled path. That stiff breeze was still blowing off the water, so their choosing to walk in the lee of the house was a perfectly natural thing to do. To their relief they saw nobody around the old pony shed. The door was padlocked, but Theonia had a feeling Vincent would keep the key hidden up under the eaves and of course she was right.

The dead man was still there, stretched out on the planks, covered by the clean horse blanket, just as Emma had last seen him. She’d read somewhere that gypsies have religious scruples against touching corpses; she’d never thought of her cousin Brooks’s wife as a gypsy before, but that shawl was just a tad too appropriate. She stepped forward and turned back the blanket just enough to reveal the wax-white face. The beard was still damp from the seawater. The effect was not lovely, but Theonia did not flinch.

“So that’s what became of him,” she said. “I can’t say I’m greatly surprised.”

“D
O YOU ACTUALLY KNOW
who he was?” Emma exclaimed.

“Yes.” Theonia caught a sound of footsteps on the little patch of gravel that had been laid down outside the barn door, presumably for better drainage. She tossed Emma a look that from a less stately dame might have been called impish and raised her voice a decibel or two.

“I see a definite look of the Pences about the ears. You know that knack of mine about spotting resemblances, and ears are so distinctive, don’t you think? I have a strong hunch this might be that third cousin of Peter’s, the one dear Adelaide was telling us about.”

Theonia’s total acquaintance with dear Adelaide had run to a chat of perhaps six minutes’ duration a couple of years ago at one of Emma’s lawn parties. Dear Adelaide, moreover, would have been the last person in the world to gossip about her son-in-law’s relative to a casual acquaintance, even one bearing the Kelling name. These minor details were beside the point. That footstep was most likely either Vincent’s or one of his helpers’, and now was an excellent chance to straighten him out on that matter of the autopsy. Emma understood perfectly and couldn’t have agreed more.

“Theonia, how perceptive of you! I’d quite forgotten about Polydore Spence. Such a gifted young man, Adelaide said, till he had that terrible encounter with the giant clam while diving off—Osaka, was it? Anyway, I understand that ever since then he’d had delusions of being a seal.”

“A walrus, I believe,” Theonia contradicted. Boston ladies liked to get their facts straight, even when they were making them up as they went along. “It’s the walruses that have those big mustaches.”

“But not beards,” Emma argued back.

“I expect the beard was intended to hide his lack of tusks. Or else Polydore simply forgot to trim the mustache and it got out of hand. He became dreadfully forgetful, Adelaide said.”

“Subject to fits of total amnesia,” Emma shoved in promptly. “The walrus delusion was only a part-time occupation, so to speak. He’d put on a black wet suit and lounge around on beaches slapping his swim fins against the rocks. I don’t believe he ever went so far as to eat raw fish.”

“But he practically lived on sardines,” said Theonia. “And sometimes Polydore would get to thinking he was a merman. On the whole, I gathered the Pences wished he’d stick to being a walrus. He’d slap around in nothing but his swim fins, looking in the unlikeliest places for treasure. Polydore didn’t realize the effect this had on people. He was visualizing himself with scales from the waist down, you know. Still, it could be terribly embarrassing when he showed up around two
A.M.
in some woman’s bedroom, as he was apt to do.”

“Really?” said Emma. “Then that would account for his having taken my bagful of junk jewelry. I’m glad I didn’t wake up. A merman in one’s bedroom would be a somewhat unnerving spectacle, shouldn’t you think?”

“Ghastly,” Theonia agreed. “And what if the poor man came out of his merman phase just at the wrong time? Was that when he’d have amnesia attacks, do you suppose?”

“I think it was mostly when he’d been a walrus. He’d suddenly realize he wasn’t amphibious and be all at sea. Theonia, this is dreadful. One gathers Polydore’s been quite a pet among the Pences. Not everybody has an aquatic mammal showing up at the family birthday parties. Do you think I should let Adelaide know?”

“Heavens, no! Not in her fragile condition. We mustn’t breathe a word to anyone until we find out whether this is really Polydore. I don’t wish to be an alarmist, but it seems most unlikely he’d have died by accident. According to Adelaide, Polydore was surefooted and totally at home in the water, no matter how cold it got. Just pushed aside the ice cakes and plunged right in.”

“I do think I’d better drop a word to Vincent,” said Emma. “You know how litigious some of those Pences are. They’re sure to insist on a second opinion, no matter who does the autopsy. One little slip and Brother Franklin could get slapped with a malpractice suit.”

It was about time to discover they were being overheard. Emma stepped to the door.

“Oh, Vincent, come in. Mrs. Brooks thinks we may have a new problem here.”

“I was listenin’. I’ll tell my brothers.” He appeared strangely uninterested in the mythical Polydore. “You happen to know where Sandy went to? Bernice’s been lookin’ for ’er all over the place an’ can’t find hide nor hair.”

“Did Bernice check the upstairs bedrooms?” Emma asked him. “The last we’ve seen of Sandy was when she took Mrs. Brooks up some coffee. She may have gone back for the tray and stayed to tidy around.”

To try on Theonia’s hat, more likely. “Or perhaps she’s gone to the cabins.”

Vincent shook his head. “Bernice looked upstairs. An’ Sandy ain’t in the cabins, leastways she better not be. Them two girls have strict orders never to go into any of the cabins without each other an’ never while anybody’s inside. Not that I don’t trust ’em, but there’s too damn many nuts around these days.” He rubbed his chin and glanced down at the man under the blanket. “So you think this might be one o’ the Pences, Miz Brooks?”

“We have to consider every possibility,” Theonia replied. “I hope I’m wrong, but since we’re all in the dark, it behooves us to take every precaution. I don’t suppose either you or Cousin Emma will care to approach the Pences on the question of Polydore until an effort’s been made to find out whether this might, as I’m sure we all hope, be somebody else. I assume the police will know how to arrange for an identity check. Doesn’t the FBI have some kind of computerized fingerprint file?”

Emma half expected Vincent to say he had another brother in the FBI, but he didn’t. Perhaps he’d been as badly shaken earlier as Theonia thought; he was visibly upset now, and she couldn’t say she blamed him.

“I’ll go and check the house again,” she said. If the minx had gone so far as to try on Emma’s clothing, she might have got scared and popped into a closet when she heard Bernice coming. “What about you, Theonia?”

“Well, I can’t say I care for staying here with poor Polydore, if in fact it is Polydore. Of course I’ll help you hunt for the child. Please don’t worry, Vincent. I expect she’s just mooning about somewhere, as youngsters are so apt to do.”

“Sandy don’t moon.”

Vincent was already out the door as he spoke. The two women left him to relock the shed and walked back to the house.

“My guess is that Sandy’s shut in your bathroom sniffing your perfume and trying on your makeup,” said Emma. “Still, one can’t blame a father for being concerned.”

“She wouldn’t have gone off somewhere with her brother?” Theonia suggested.

“I shouldn’t think so, but one never knows.” Telling herself she wasn’t worried, Emma was nevertheless walking faster.

She took Theonia in through the kitchen door because it was nearest. Bubbles wasn’t there; maybe he was out carrying a custard to Mrs. Fath. Or checking the servants’ wing to see whether Sandy was in her room, though surely Vincent would have done that himself. The work hadn’t been slacked, anyway; the dishes were out of the way, the dining room cleared, the big living room back to its petrified elegance. She led the way upstairs. The door to Theonia’s room was open. They walked in. Over behind the bed that had been made up for Theonia, in front of the closet that held the hidden safe, Sandy was sitting on the floor, the overturned breakfast tray beside her.

“Sandy!” cried Emma. “Your father’s having fits. Why aren’t you with Bernice?”

“I don’t know.”

Sandy wasn’t effervescing now, she sounded dazed. “Why am I sitting here?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.” Emma knelt and slipped her fingers through the spiky mess on Sandy’s head. “Does it hurt when I press?”

“Ouch! Yes, right beside my ear. Maybe I’ve got amnesia.”

“What’s your name?”

“Sandy. Alexandria, I mean.”

“And what’s mine?”

“Mrs. Kelling.”

“You don’t have amnesia. It’s possible you have a mild concussion. Do you remember banging your head on anything?”

“Such as this closet door,” Theonia suggested. The door was open now, she didn’t add that it had been shut when she left the room. Her traveling dress, the sailor hat, an opulent mauve satin negligee dripping with lace, and an equally sumptuous nightgown were hanging inside. “Sandy, do you remember Bernice coming to look for you?”

“No.”

The two women exchanged shrugs. “I suppose if Bernice merely poked her head in, she wouldn’t have seen Sandy because the bed was in the way,” said Emma.

The antique four-poster sat high and its voluminous counterpane swept the floor, an effective screen for a young girl sitting or, more probably, lying on the floor. Sandy might, then, have been unconscious for some little while. How could she have given herself such a whack?

Anyway, the important thing now was to let Vincent know his daughter had been found. Together, Emma and Theonia boosted Sandy up on the bed, took off her sneakers, and pulled a comforter over her.

“Now, Sandy,” Emma told her, “I want you to lie still till we say you can get up. You’re probably going to be dizzy for a while yet, and you surely don’t want to fall and bang your head again. I’m going to find your father and let him know where you are. In the meantime, you mustn’t be left alone. Theonia, would you mind staying with her?”

“Not a bit. Go right along.”

Theonia pulled up a chair to the bedside and settled herself to be temporary ministering angel. Emma wished she’d thought to ask whether Max had told Theonia about the wall safe in the closet. She didn’t want to be an alarmist, but this was rather too much of a coincidence. Maybe it would have been possible in that rather unlikely spot for Sandy to whack her head hard enough to knock herself out, but Emma couldn’t quite see how.