The Gladstone Bag (21 page)

Ted swallowed. “What was I supposed to do?”

“You might have stayed where you were supposed to be and got a job there.”

“Like how? Who’s going to hire a con?”

“The labor situation being what it is, I should think you could have found something.”

“Yeah. Minimum wage for cleaning out sewers.”

“Sewers would have been better than violating your parole and risking more time, Ted. But that’s your mess, not mine. All I want to know is whom Jimmy was working with. Not you, surely. Even Jimmy would know enough not to pick an accomplice who can’t control his temper. Come on, Ted, what did he tell you? And do get away from that saw. You might cut yourself with it.”

“I might do something else with it,” he blustered.

Theonia shook her head. “Not you, Ted. You’ve been acting like a fool, but I don’t think you’re quite a damned fool. What did Jimmy say?”

“He said I’d better go along with his act or he’d blow the whistle about my breaking parole. My folks think I’ve been released early for good behavior. Which is true, sort of.”

“Or was, till you fouled up. So that’s why they asked Dr. Franklin for help and why he put in a word for you with Vincent. What would Vincent do if he found out the truth?”

“Ship me back to Boston in handcuffs, I guess. He’s so law-abiding it’s pathetic.”

Theonia remained serene. “I shan’t comment on that. Did Neil overhear what Jimmy said to you?”

“No. See, Jimmy came dragging himself ashore in this old torn wet suit. He acted as if he was all in and claimed not to know his own name or how he got here. As soon as I realized who he was, I figured it must be a put-on, so I sent Neil back to the house for a blanket and some hot coffee. So then Jimmy told me what I had to do and I did it.”

“He didn’t say what he was here for?”

“No.”

“Or whom he’d come to see?”

“He didn’t have time, for God’s sake! Neil came running back with the stuff as if the devil was after him. That kid can move! Then we got Jimmy out of the wet suit and up to the kitchen, and that’s all I know. Honest to God!”

He was probably telling the truth, Emma thought. Too bad. “Were you the one who let Jimmy out of the storeroom?” she asked him.

“No, I wasn’t.” He was sulkier with her than he’d dared to be with Theonia. “Once I’m in my bedroom, I stay there.”

“Why? Is Neil a light sleeper?”

“Neil sleeps in his father’s room. Do you think Vincent would trust his son with a great big nasty criminal like me? He doesn’t trust me with his daughter either, which is why I damned well stay put even if it means I have to pee out the window in the middle of the night. Look, I’ve got work to do if it’s okay with you. Vincent’ll be wondering why he isn’t hearing my chain saw. I’ve caught enough hell already.”

“Then we must make very sure you don’t catch any more,” said Theonia sweetly. “Don’t you want to change your mind about how Jimmy escaped from the storeroom? You wouldn’t, for instance, have palmed the key after Vincent locked him in, then gone for a bedtime stroll and chucked it in through one of the ventilating slits with a note telling Jimmy to hang the key back in the pantry after he was through with it? You may think that’s not the same thing as letting him out, but I doubt whether either Vincent or a judge would agree with you. You’d better go straight from now on, Ted. You just haven’t the brains to be a successful crook.”

“Y
OU KNOW, THEONIA, YOU
can be a trifle spooky sometimes. How in the world did you learn all that?”

“Elementary, my dear Emma. Any good tea-leaf reader learns to size up her customers at a glance. Ted’s the absolute prototype of the arrogant young troublemaker who swaggers around drinking in sleazy bars and looking for a punch-up. They’re apt to get picked up by the police for being drunk and disorderly or driving under the influence, if not something worse. Some of them are decent enough otherwise, I suppose, but Ted struck me as being completely self-centered. I couldn’t see him performing a Good Samaritan act unless he was forced into it, so I deduced that Jimmy must have had a handle on him. The only places he’d have been likely to meet Jimmy would have been at a bar or in jail. I plumped for the latter and made a leading remark. Ted gave the response I was looking for, and it went along quite smoothly from there. Standard fortune-telling technique. I’m sure you could have done as well if you hadn’t led such a respectable life.”

“Don’t be a snob, Theonia. If you don’t mind, I prefer to go on thinking of you as omniscient. It makes me feel somewhat less uncomfortable about the spot I’m in.”

“Then by all means revere me as much as you like. I don’t mind a bit.”

“Do you think Ted knew what Jimmy came for?”

“The necklace? That’s a ticklish question, Emma. We have to assume your bag was stolen on the ferryboat for the express purpose of getting the necklace to Pocapuk. The man who hid it might even have gone ashore at the next-to-last stop, assuming that whoever picked it up would be staying aboard till the end of the run.”

“Wouldn’t that have been an awfully chancy way to treat an object of such value?” Emma argued. “What if nobody used the rest room before they docked? What if the person who found the bag was also going ashore at that stop? What if he was a crew member instead of a passenger?”

“The crew probably have their own rest room. Anyway, I expect whoever stole your bag would have hidden in one of the cubicles until he’d made sure the right person got hold of it.”

“But how would he know?”

“Because he’d watched when the passengers went aboard to see what color tickets they were holding. Tweeters and I checked with the ferryboat office on the way up and found they give out different colors for the various stops because they charge different fares depending on how far you go. You show your ticket when you get on and turn it in when you get off to prove you haven’t gone farther than you paid for. Isn’t that what you did?”

“Yes, that’s right,” said Emma. “Mine was a garish salmon color, as I recall.”

Theonia nodded. “Easy to spot, you see. And there weren’t that many going to Pocapuk, so you’d have been easy to remember. But I’ll grant your point that it would have been chancy. The more probable alternative, as I see it, is that the person who was carrying the necklace to Pocapuk got nervous about having it on his person and chose you as an errand girl because your bagful of junk jewelry provided an excellent camouflage.”

“Why do you say the ‘person’?” Emma argued. “It must have been a man if he went to the men’s room.”

“We mustn’t be too sure. Blue jeans, running shoes, and a baggy sweatshirt sometimes make it hard to tell whether the person inside is a he or a she. And of course hair styles are no help whatever nowadays.”

“All right, I’ll grant you the ambiguity. But why should he or she have been nervous?”

“Well, my dear, if it’s one of Dr. Wont’s crowd, I should say the reason might be Alding Fath. Tell me a little more about her, can you?”

Emma told Theonia as much as she could remember. Her long experience at memorizing Gilbert and Sullivan roles had made her a quick study; she was able to quote verbatim a good deal of the conversation they’d had on the ferry and at the dinner table. She even managed a fair imitation of the country woman’s delivery.

Theonia didn’t miss a syllable or an inflection. “And you say you liked her the best of the lot even though you were sure she must be faking?”

“She had to be, didn’t she?”

“Not on the strength of your evidence, Emma. I don’t say she mightn’t have romanced it a bit in spots, even the best of them do that when it’s a case of not disappointing a patron. Quite frankly, if I were carrying a hot diamond necklace and found myself in the company of somebody like her, I’d want to ditch the thing as fast as I possibly could. You may find this hard to believe, but if those stones are as big as you describe, they must carry some awfully strong vibrations. A real psychic couldn’t help picking up something.”

“Could you?”

“Possibly, though I don’t consider myself a real psychic. It wouldn’t be just the necklace itself, you know. There’d be little clues from the carrier himself, no matter how good an actor he was: signs of unusual tension, fear, suspicion. I might not understand what I was picking up, but I’d sense things were happening so I’d start feeling around, the way I did with Ted. I might not be able to identify the object itself, but I’d come up with something. Alding Fath sounds to me like a really gifted lady. She’d quite possibly have been able to get a clairvoyant picture of the necklace and would have blurted out what she was seeing because she’s obviously proud of her talent and likes to show it off. That could be a real disaster for the one holding the necklace.”

“But if it was Alding Fath who alarmed the carrier, then it must have been one of the other cottagers who drugged me and took the bag,” said Emma. “Mrs. Fath told me Wont had paid her way, and his group appeared to be the only ones she was talking to.”

Theonia shrugged. “We mustn’t jump to conclusions. Shall we stroll back and see whether I can pick up anything from the treasure hunters?”

“By all means. What did you sense about Dr. Franklin, by the way?”

“That he probably has to beat off his women patients with a stick.”

Emma laughed. “Even I could have deduced that. I wonder whether he might even have been a tad put out because neither you nor I leaped to the attack? Though of course that would have been a totally ridiculous thing for a woman of my age to do.”

“Humbug, Emma! You’re charming, intelligent, quite indecently attractive, and have pots of money. Don’t try to tell me you couldn’t still draw the men like flies if you cared to flash the green light.”

“Well,” Emma admitted, “there have been a few overtures since Bed died, but I’ve always assumed it was not so much my charm as Bed’s money.”

“Very well, then, let’s put you in a room with Cousin Mabel and six eligible men and see which of you two all six of them go for.”

Emma was amused. “Mabel isn’t exactly stiff competition.”

“Why shouldn’t she be?” Theonia argued. “She’s no uglier than some of the other Kelling women and a great deal richer than most.”

“A great deal richer than I, certainly. All right, Theonia, I’ll concede you, Mabel. Though I’m not sure Count Radunov might not find her a temptation.”

“I can’t imagine he’s that hard up for a meal ticket, but one never knows. Invite them both to one of your musical evenings when you get back to Pleasaunce and see what happens. Isn’t it funny how one’s tastes in men can change, Emma? Radunov is the perfect picture of the man I once dreamed of being swept off my feet by. Now that I’ve met him, he doesn’t budge me an inch.”

“You certainly budged him, though.” Emma spoke a trifle more tartly than she’d meant to.’

“Hardly a budge,” Theonia replied modestly. “I’d call it merely an involuntary reflex. Radunov’s much too sharp to let himself be swept off his feet by a superannuated adventuress, which is what I suspect he thinks I am.”

“Then he can’t be clever, after all.”

“Don’t judge him so harshly, Emma. After all, I’m not your typical Boston matron, no matter how hard I try to make people think I am.”

“If you were, Brooks would have shunned you like the plague.”

“What would have happened to me then, I wonder? Do people actually die of broken hearts?”

Brooks Kelling, it might be said, was several inches shorter than his statuesque wife, somewhat older, and a good deal plainer. He reminded some people of a chipmunk and others of former Massachusetts governor (and later president) Calvin Coolidge, more remembered for his Puritan rectitude than for his charisma. It may also be noted that Coolidge himself married a tall, beautiful, and charming woman.

“What I’m wondering is which of our guests or staff could have been heartless enough to bash poor little Sandy,” said Emma. “I’d prefer to think Jimmy had another accomplice somewhere on the island, but I can’t think where the person could be hiding. I’ve been over most of the place myself, except for the servants’ wing and the cottages. Good heavens, Theonia! You don’t think that’s why Mrs. Fath is staging her lie-in, because she’s got somebody hiding under her bed and doesn’t want us in there poking around?”

“Anything’s possible, I suppose. That would be one way of keeping the person fed. He or she could share the meals Bubbles takes out there. It would mean rather slim pickings for two of them, though.”

“Not if Mrs. Fath’s asleep all the time,” Emma insisted. “Even if she’s only pretending to sleep, she can’t get very hungry. She’s not doing anything to work up an appetite. Or maybe the rest of Wont’s crowd are in on it, too, and donating food out of their picnic lunches. The men all eat huge breakfasts, so one might think they could each spare a sandwich. Or Lisbet Quainley might be giving up hers, she only eats about enough to sustain a good-sized sparrow.”

“A fox sparrow, that would be,” said Theonia. “They’re the biggest.”

“So they are, now that you mention it. And Lisbet Quainley is a foxy doxy if ever I’ve seen one. If she’s a genuine artist, I’m Whistler’s mother, though of course she may fancy she is. Apparently she’s managed to make Dr. Wont think so.”

“That’s common enough,” said Theonia. “I can understand the self-delusion of some artists; what beats me is how they manage to persuade others to share their fantasies. But then I’m a fusty old traditionalist myself.”

“That’s because you’re a living Titian,” said Emma.

“Ah, but you should have seen me when I was a Boucher!”

The two of them were still laughing when they got to the beach. By now the men had managed to cobble together a ramshackle assortment of logs and timbers. If they were lucky it might hold together long enough to maroon Dr. Wont on Shag Rock, Emma thought.

The moment he caught sight of Theonia, Joris Groot dropped the hammer with which he’d begun pounding nails into the logs for no apparent purpose and reached for his sketchpad. Black John Sendick took time enough to finish whatever it was he thought he was accomplishing, then snapped to attention.

Everard Wont had evidently been dictating to Lisbet Quainley. She must be acting as his secretary, Emma decided, along with whatever other services she might be providing. He stopped talking and gave the two Kelling women an oddly furtive look. Miss Quainley stopped scribbling on the pad of yellow paper resting against her sketching block and gave them a look, too.