The Gladstone Bag (22 page)

Miss Quainley’s was not the sort of look Emma was accustomed to receive from a reasonably personable woman many years her junior; she naturally assumed it was directed at Theonia. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t. Did that skinny snip actually imagine that the widow of Beddoes Kelling might conceivably be interested in attaching to herself a boorish poseur like Everard Wont? It was to laugh, as Emma’s long-ago French governess would have been apt to say.

However, Emma had had her laugh for today. She’d have to tell them. They’d know anyway, as soon as the police arrived. Black John gave her the opening.

“Come to see how we’re making out, Mrs. Kelling?”

“No,” Emma replied. “We’ve come to give you a report on what’s been happening at the house. I’m sure you’re anxious to know.”

Wont naturally took the remark to himself. “Why should I be? It has nothing to do with me.”

“I sincerely hope it has nothing to do with any of us, Dr. Wont. However, it appears we’re all going to have to prove that as soon as the police get here.”

That started a babble which Emma quickly overrode. “Listen to me, please. Dr. Franklin, who’s the medical examiner for this area, has been here and gone back with the body of our mysterious stranger. He expects to have the autopsy report back to us one way or another this evening. We may also have an identification by then. What’s more upsetting is that he’s examined Sandy. I’ve told you how Mrs. Brooks and I found her upstairs in the main house, sitting on the floor in a dazed condition. Dr. Franklin’s determined that Sandy hadn’t accidentally hit her head on a closet door as we’d assumed but had been struck from behind. The blow nearly fractured her skull and did in fact knock her unconscious for some time.”

“My gosh!” cried Sendick. “Is she going to be okay?”

“We don’t know yet. Sandy’s conscious and rational but doesn’t remember how she got hurt. As of now, all the doctor can do is keep her in bed and hope for the best.”

“Can you beat that?” Joris Groot managed to divert his attention from drawing Theonia’s feet. “She has no idea why it happened?”

“No, but the reason is perfectly obvious,” Emma replied. “Whoever hit her was trying to rob a small wall safe hidden inside the closet where we found her. It’s in the bedroom where Mrs. Brooks was planning to sleep tonight.”

“And still am, if you’ll let me,” Theonia put in. “You might mention, Emma, that the safe has been very carefully examined and found to contain nothing except for a few empty boxes and some diagrams of the septic system. Which can’t possibly be pirates’ treasure maps in disguise, in case any of you may start wondering,” she added with an arch sidelong glance at Dr. Wont.

“I might also mention that I’d already opened the wall safe yesterday evening out of curiosity and found nothing else in it then, either,” Emma added. That was true. She hadn’t found, she’d put.

“So the poor kid got bopped for nothing.” Black John was really taking the news to heart. “Gosh, I don’t know. It’s one thing to write about some character in a book getting conked on the head but when it happens to a cute kid in a Smurf suit who brings you a hot muffin at breakfast, it’s enough to make a guy switch to writing Westerns.”

“But then you’d have to brand the poor little dogies, and I’m sure you’d hate that, even on paper,” Theonia cooed sympathetically. “One does have to suffer for one’s art, Mr. Sendick.”

“And a bookmaker should stick to his … oh dear, that’s not coming out the way I meant it to,” said Emma. “I just hope that, regardless of what we feel, we can all prove where we were during the time Sandy was attacked. I’m sure whoever questions us will want to know.”

“But it can’t have been any of us,” cried Black John.

“It has to have been somebody, Mr. Sendick. And there aren’t that many people here on Pocapuk.”

“But why couldn’t that guy who got drowned have had an accomplice hiding under the dock or someplace?”

“Good thinking, John,” said Lisbet Quainley. “Would you care to go and look?”

“Well, sure, I guess I could. If Mrs. Kelling really wants me to.”

“I want you to do no such thing,” Emma protested. “We’ve had one death and a potentially deadly assault here already; this is no time to go playing hero. I want you all to keep your heads, stay together, and not try anything that might get you or anybody else in trouble. Vincent is going to organize a search. If he wants your help, he’ll ask for it and tell you precisely what he wants you to do.”

Everard Wont exploded. “Mrs. Kelling, do you seriously believe I came here to be ordered around by your hired help? Since you’re so obviously intent on sabotaging my entire project, it looks to me as if I may as well give up in despair right now. If I may be allowed one last request, would you kindly summon a boat by whatever arcane method may be available and get me out of here as soon as possible?”

“I’d be more than happy to oblige you, Dr. Wont,” Emma replied in all sincerity, “but I very much doubt whether we could get the ferry here on short notice, and I’m absolutely certain you wouldn’t be allowed to leave in any event without official permission. When that will come depends, I suppose, mainly on what the autopsy reveals.”

“The autopsy will show that the man drowned. What else could it show?”

“I have no idea. After that brutal attack on Sandy, we can’t be sure of anything. Of course we might be able to oblige Dr. Wont by speeding up his departure if one of you would care to confess right now.”

She hadn’t expected any takers and she didn’t get one. Wont’s face was bright purple by now, Groot’s an absolute blank. Black John appeared more interested than alarmed. Lisbet Quainley began to giggle. “You three look like a bowl of goldfish. Mrs. Kelling, you can’t really believe one of us slugged that kid.”

“I should certainly prefer not to,” Emma told her. “I understand you and Dr. Wont were the last to finish breakfast this morning, Miss Quainley. Could you tell us what you did after you left the dining room?”

“Me? I went back to my cottage and brushed my teeth. Then I came over here with the others and haven’t left since. Have I, anybody?”

It had been a mistake for her to start asking questions, Emma realized. Naturally this lot would back each other up. Wont was revving up for another blast, which she didn’t want to hear. She glanced at Theonia. Theonia shrugged. Emma back-pedaled.

“What a shame. I suppose I was hoping you might tell me you ran into another mysterious stranger slinking up the stairs as you left the house. But since none of you has anything helpful to offer, I believe I’ll go back to my room and lie down for a while. I don’t know whether it’s from the sun or the suspense, but I seem to be developing a ferocious headache.”

T
HEONIA DIDN’T WANT EMMA
to walk back alone. Joris Groot didn’t want to lose sight of his model. Black John wanted to find Vincent and volunteer for the search party. Everard Wont wanted to stand there and fulminate, but nobody wanted to listen, not even Lisbet Quainley.

“Oh, shut up, Ev,” Emma heard her snarl. “Can’t you see what an advantage you’ve got here? Those dead Spanish sailors have put a curse on the expedition and made it impossible for us to go on. Write your book from that angle. That’ll be a damned sight less work than digging around in the mud.”

“And anybody dumb enough to read you would swallow one bunch of garbage as well as another,” Black John added, mainly for Emma’s benefit. She gave him a grateful look and wondered briefly whether he’d care to be adopted.

Her head was really splitting; the men had to help her over the path. Theonia led her upstairs, bathed her face, took off her shoes, and got her tucked up on the chaise. Emma fell asleep almost at once and didn’t wake up until Theonia came to ask whether she felt well enough to go down and meet Tweeters Arbuthnot. She took inventory and decided she did.

“My headache’s quite gone, thank goodness. Is Mr. Arbuthnot here?”

“Not quite, he’s circling for a landing, and do call him Tweeters or you’ll scare him to death. See the plane out there?”

“Then you’d better go down. I’ll be along as soon as I can pull myself together. Did you find something to wear? Oh, you did. Good.”

Theonia had changed into one of Emma’s long skirts, deep eggplant color, with a mauve silk blouse. The colors were a bit subdued for Theonia, but perhaps she’d felt some atavistic urge to put on mourning of a sort for her former nephew-in-law. Or stepson, as the case might have been. Emma decided on gray as being equally suitable under the circumstances. She dashed cold water over her face, did a quick makeup, put on her spare wig and pearls, and picked up an amethyst satin stole. She didn’t feel chilly as yet, but she might later on. Besides, the rich purple did more for her complexion than the dove gray silk shirt that went with the skirt.

“Vanity of vanities,” she murmured, “all is vanity. Silly old woman!” She stuck out her tongue at the mirror, fluffed her wig, swept the flattering strip of shimmery amethyst around her shoulders cowl-wise, with the ends falling behind her back like folded wings, and went to play hostess to Tweeters Arbuthnot.

Starting the cocktails an hour early was no doubt a break in precedent, but Bubbles had risen to the challenge with salmon-roe canapés and a plate of the cheese they’d cut into last night. Joris Groot had evidently taken it for granted he was a member of the party and started the fire. Groot was the only cottager present; Black John must be out volunteering and Wont and Miss Quainley off revising their literary game plan. Radunov was apparently getting on better than he’d expected with Rasputin and Queen Victoria.

Wherever they were, Emma hoped they’d stay there. Tweeters was already in the room; Theonia had offered him a chair. He was settling himself into it, hiking up his pant legs and arranging the tail of his old gray-green corduroy jacket with the same fussy twitchings and flutterings she’d observed on hens going to roost. Emma had the impression that too many people arriving at once might scare him into flight. That would be a shame; she did want to meet this unlikely bird of passage.

Tweeters wanted to meet Emma, too. That was clear from the way he burst out of the chair like a flushed pheasant, wings outstretched and beak agape. Not to compare him to a bird was impossible. His nose was long and thin and set close to his mouth, which was also long and thin. His chin receded into a longer, thinner neck hitched to a gangling body that spread out at the waist and sloped quickly down to legs as long and spindly as a whooping crane’s.

His eyebrows were the birdman’s best feature: a luxuriant mix of stiff black and white hairs, jutting boldly out and up over eyes as sharp and beady as a heron’s. His forehead sloped all the way to the crown of his head, until it met another great crest of hair thrusting straight back. Definitely a heron, Emma thought; she’d never been this close to one before.

She was going to be given every opportunity to examine this particular specimen as closely as she liked, Tweeters made that evident without delay. Emma hadn’t been so expertly backed into a sofa corner since her debutante days. Once he’d got her on the nest, Tweeters folded up those incredible legs and went to roost as close beside her as decorum allowed. With both long, bony-fingered hands resting on his knees, he sat beaming at her through his eyebrows as though he were in fact a heron and she a particularly plump and succulent lady frog.

“Mrs. Kelling, this is indeed a pleasure,” he chirped. “I’ve been longing to meet you ever since Theonia told me about your volunteer work with the Pleasaunce Fire Department. Jumping into nets was quite an enthusiasm of mine at one time. I trained on a trampoline. Do you?”

“Why, no, that never occurred to me,” said Emma. “The firemen showed me the rudiments, then I simply began on the first floor and worked up. I’m quite an amateur, really. How did you make out today with the puffins?”

“Ah, my friends the puffins. Fascinating creatures! You know, of course, that they’re actually relatives of the great auk? Collateral descendants, I suppose I ought to have said. The Alcidae are a fairly large family, the razor-billed auk being no doubt the closest descendant in the direct line at this time. Then there are murres. You’ve met the murres?”

Really, Emma thought, this encounter was shaping up just like one of Appie Kelling’s family tea parties. She regretted aloud that she had not the pleasure of the murres’ acquaintance; nor yet, when pressed further, of the guillemots’. Tweeters seemed particularly distressed that she didn’t know the guillemots.

“They nest in rock crannies or burrows in striking contrast to the auks and murres, which don’t really nest at all but simply lay their eggs on open cliff ledges facing the sea.”

“That would seem a somewhat irresponsible thing to do,” Emma replied rather severely. “Don’t the eggs keep rolling off?”

Tweeters raised a clawlike finger and waggled it playfully under her nose. “You underestimate the wily alcids. They lay pear-shaped eggs. The advantage of the pear shape, you see, is that when the egg rolls, as indeed it must on occasion, it merely revolves in a circle and winds up pretty much where it had been in the first place. If I had a pear and an apple, I could demonstrate the difference.”

“That’s quite all right,” said Emma. “I can visualize.”

“I’m sure you can, you clever lady!” Tweeters nudged himself a trifle closer. “The great auk’s calamity was that it couldn’t fly. Or wouldn’t. It had wing feathers but apparently never got around to developing them properly.”

For a moment he seemed quite put out with the great auk but soon recovered his spirits. “All the Alcidae today fly quite capably. In fact, they even fly under water, using their wings to speed them along when they’re after a fish, as they so often are.”

Tweeters beamed like a proud father relating his toddler’s latest escapade. “The puffins are much more domestically minded than the auks and murres. They dig themselves deep burrows and both parents take turns incubating the egg, though I have to admit the female’s turn is always much longer than the male’s.”

“That doesn’t surprise me a bit,” said Emma.