The Resurrection Man (4 page)

Brooks bounded off, brisk as a squirrel. He was back in a wink or two with liquid refreshments and a bowl of salted peanuts, to which latter he and Max were both addicted. They were just nicely settled when Theonia made a regal entrance in a sumptuous new tea gown she’d put together out of oddments picked up at various thrift shops. Theonia loved elegant gowns almost as much as Brooks loved peanuts, but she would never have been so extravagant as simply to go out and buy one. Besides, it was more fun to improvise. She accepted white wine and soda from the hand of her loving spouse, cooed an endearment by way of thanks, and raised her glass.

“Here’s to our dear Max, long may he walk! We’re so proud of you, Max darling. Sarah tells me you went out by yourself today.”

“Just to the office,” Max replied modestly. “Bill Jones dropped in to say hello. In sign language, of course. And I ran into Lydia Ouspenska on the way over.”

“Really? That must have been a nice surprise for you. Is she well and happy?”

“Oddly enough, yes. How did you know?”

Theonia shrugged, she was always slightly embarrassed by her strange way of knowing things without being told. “I merely assumed she would be. Lydia’s a survivor. What’s she doing these days?”

“Guilding the lily.”

Max passed on Lydia’s description of the Arbalest setup. Theonia’s large, dark eyes widened in surprise.

“And you say she actually lives there in that—
cloister
almost seems the appropriate word, doesn’t it? How very interesting. One might have thought so effervescent a person as the dear countess would find such a life somewhat too confining.”

“I suppose one might,” Sarah replied, “but when one’s down to the nubbins, there’s a good deal to be said for a warm bed and three meals a day. Lydia certainly didn’t show any reluctance about going back.”

Sarah gave the others a brief rundown of her own part in the encounter, such as it had been. Conversation had progressed rapidly from how much Davy resembled his father to that marvelous outfit Lydia had been wearing, thence to vintage clothing in general. Sarah knew quite a lot about outmoded styles, partly because she’d inherited so many of her mother’s. The Kellings and their circle had always believed in getting full value out of their garments; it took a long time to wear out a Mainbocher or a custom-tailored British tweed.

“Maybe Arbalest has her hypnotized.” Brooks didn’t mean it, he was merely offering the hypothesis as a mild joke.

Theonia, however, took him seriously. “I should think, dear, that Lydia Ouspenska would be awfully hard to hypnotize. Getting her to stop talking and concentrate would be the main problem. Unless of course the hypnotist was an unusually attractive man. You could manage her, Max.”

“Why not me?” Brooks asked rather petulantly.

“Because, my darling, Lydia wouldn’t dare let you try. She’d know she’d have me to contend with if she did.” Theonia was the unlikely result of an encounter between an Ivy League anthropology student and a young Gypsy girl; the Romany did tend to work its way to the fore now and then, notwithstanding the Wasp half’s penchant for fin-de-siècle tea gowns and the high standards of etiquette promulgated by the late Emily Post. “Sarah would find the situation mildly amusing.”

“Only mildly,” said Sarah. “Perhaps I’d better just slip up and see if Davy’s all right.”

“No, I’ll go,” said Max. “I promised him a bedtime story. Don’t wait dinner for me.”

“It’s quite all right, take your time. Nobody’s in a hurry tonight.”

It wasn’t every evening that the family had a chance to dawdle. The three in the library lingered over their drinks, talking shop until Max came back downstairs. Then Charles announced dinner, Theonia said “Shall we?” and they did.

They lingered over their meal, they lingered longer over dessert, they drifted back to the library still talking shop. As Sarah poured coffee into her first husband’s great-grandmother’s demitasse cups, it occurred to her that she and her loved ones were a guild too, though not always a commune. It was pleasant, in a way, being back in the old house she’d moved into as a bride not yet out of her teens and left ten years later as a widow about to marry again. Still, she’d be glad when she and Max and Davy could get back to the all-new house at Ireson’s Landing.

It wouldn’t be long, now that Max was walking so well. They might go home for the weekend and see how it worked. Max’s nephew and his girl friend were house-sitting; they’d have to be warned in advance, though the place couldn’t be in that much of a mess with Mr. Lomax taking care of the grounds, his niece coming in twice a week to clean as usual, and Max’s sister Miriam just down the road a piece. Sarah was making mental lists of things to buy and do for their homecoming, when the doorbell rang.

Three quick, efficient rings; Brooks bounded off the sofa. “I’ll get it. No sense in bothering Charles.”

Answering the door late in the evening at the Tulip Street house was always a chancy business. This could be anybody from Sarah’s Uncle Jem on his way back from a bibulous evening with some of his many cronies to a jewel thief just out of jail, craving revenge on the meddlers who’d put him there. They never locked the street door until bedtime, but the inner door was secure as a bank safe. Nor was it any idle whim that had caused Brooks Kelling to replace the purple windowpanes with bullet-proof glass.

The visitor must have passed inspection, Brooks was showing him in: a tallish, middle-aged man with suede-leather patches on the elbows of his shabby but well-cut tweed jacket. For the rest, he was wearing well-aged but likewise well-cut flannels, a pale-blue cotton shirt, and an apologetic little bow tie of no particular color or pattern. He was the sort who tended to remind everyone of someone else, possibly the late Leverett Saltonstall, more likely somebody’s relative who taught something dull at one of Boston’s many schools or colleges and showed up at funerals talking about other dead relatives whom nobody else among those present had ever met and wouldn’t have cared to know. After a moment’s thought, Sarah remembered who he really was. His name was Carnaby Goudge, his appearance was his stock-in-trade.

People who hire professional bodyguards often do not want them to look or act like bodyguards. A man who vaguely resembled a lot of other people, who spoke with the right accent when he spoke at all, who could pass as a valet, a brother-in-law, or some indispensable member of one’s clerical staff, and still be quick enough on the draw to prevent anything unpleasant from happening to his current employer, seldom had to worry about his next assignment.

Carnaby Goudge was not an intimate of the Kelling-Bittersohn household, but they’d all run across him at various times in sundry places, usually posing as the most inconspicuous member of some tycoon’s entourage. The omniscient Bill Jones had mentioned not long ago that the bodyguard was in the Boston area, though Bill had not as yet been able to find out what he was doing here. Affable greetings were exchanged. Sarah offered coffee, Theonia suggested brandy. Goudge opted for the latter.

“Just a spot, thank you. I suppose I ought to apologize for dropping in on you unannounced at so late an hour, but this is the first chance I’ve had and I thought you might like a piece of information. In view of this afternoon’s little contretemps,” he added with the slight twitch of the lips that was as close as he ever got to a smile. “I must say I was favorably impressed by your expeditious handling of the situation, even though the effort was quite unnecessary.”

“You mean Lydia Ouspenska?” said Sarah. “You were tailing her? I never spotted you. But then I wouldn’t, would I?”

“I should hope not, Mrs. Bittersohn. Madame Ouspenska’s meeting with Mr. Bittersohn was no doubt serendipitous, but having his wife show up just as madame came out of the grocery store did give me pause to wonder. Once that other pair picked up her trail, I knew for sure. Not a bad job, I must say, for a couple of amateurs. Have you used them before?”

“Actually they’re our maid and butler, at least they like to pretend they are. They live here and help out in various ways. Charles is a professional actor when he gets the chance, he’s marvelous at disguises. Today’s wasn’t one of Charles’s better efforts, but he only had a couple of minutes to work himself into the role. Are we to understand that you’ve become Lydia’s official bodyguard?”

“Hers, among others. Mr. Arbalest takes great care of his artisans. And of himself, needless to say. They do have to get out of the house now and then, much as he’d rather they didn’t. It’s a full-time job looking out for them. I’m sure you realize that all this is highly confidential.”

“And that your real purpose in coming is to warn us the hell off your territory,” Max added with no rancor.

“It’s merely that I see no sense in duplicating effort. And of course my job will be made more difficult if you come nosing around. Sorry, that did sound rude, but you surely realize the problems that could arise in maintaining clandestine surveillance if the Keystone Kops were to come chasing after one’s clients. Oh dear, I’m being gauche again.”

“Don’t sweat it, Goudge, we can take a hint. But why the secret-agent act? Since when did Lydia Ouspenska pass up the chance of a male companion?”

Goudge cleared his throat, ever so delicately. “Such as the beautiful Max? The lady did mention at dinnertime that she’d run into a very dear friend whom she hadn’t seen for quite some time. She hinted somewhat unsubtly that you and she, Bittersohn, had been—ah—but I’ve noticed before that Madame Ouspenska has a penchant for what one might call creative conversation. I quite understand your pausing to chat, and please feel quite free to do so again should the occasion arise. I do hope you weren’t thinking of inviting her to visit, however; that could result in some awkward logistics. You see, I’m supposed to be nothing more than Mr. Arbalest’s personal chauffeur and errand boy. He doesn’t want the artisans to know I’m guarding them also.”

“But why, Mr. Goudge?” said Theonia. “Doesn’t he trust his employees?”

“Oh, it’s not that at all, Mrs. Brooks, it’s purely for their own safety. Mr. Arbalest worries, you know. As well he might, all things considered.”

“What sort of things were these?” asked Brooks. “I might mention that Arbalest once asked me to work for him, when he had his shop in New York. I knew he’d had problems getting help, but I couldn’t think why he wanted me. Antique-restoring is really not my field.”

“Mr. Arbalest may have been getting desperate by then. He’d lost one assistant to some strange variety of food poisoning. Another apparently jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge. A third made some dreadful mistake in the chemicals he was working with and got a noseful of cyanide. The word got around that Bartolo Arbalest was an unhealthy man to work for. He finally had to shut up shop and relocate.”

“Where did he go?”

“First Los Angeles, which didn’t work out, then that place in Texas, where they have all the pink and blue skyscrapers. Houston, I believe it’s called. For quite some time, Mr. Arbalest was doing quite well out of the oil barons, but he hated the climate, then things began happening again. One poor lady illuminator’s car went out of control for no apparent reason and slammed into an abutment, killing her instantly. Another was strangled with a rope of Spanish moss during an apparent mugging. Finally the rest of his artisans got wind somehow of what had happened in New York and L.A., saw the handwriting on the wall, and quit in a body while they still had bodies left to quit in.”

“So the sensible course for Arbalest then was to come back east,” said Max, “but not to New York. This time I gather he’s playing it smart.”

“Yes, indeed. Very smart, considering. Mr. Arbalest got the really clever idea of keeping his artisans in what actually amounts to protective custody. So far, the arrangement seems to be working quite well. He’s contrived a sort of Knights of the Grail atmosphere, with them all wearing green plush smocks and black velvet berets and floppy great ties. He presides over meaningful discussions on the mystical inner significance of sticking things back together after they’ve fallen apart. Too bad their tricks don’t work on humans. And he cooks them—us, I should say, since he’s got me living there too—sumptuous meals, with decorous allowances of the finest aperitifs and table wines, which we’re also expected to discuss at incredible length. It’s all very elevating.”

“One can see where it might be,” Brooks sympathized. “Do you have to wear a smock and beret like the rest?”

“Heavens to Betsy, no. I’m only the chauffeur. I do have a natty livery in shades of brown and russet to harmonize with the colors of Mr. Arbalest’s third-hand Rolls-Royce. Jodhpurs and boots are included, presumably in case Mr. Arbalest decides to trade in the Rolls against a coach and pair. Around the house I dress quite simply in a sack coat, black waistcoat, and striped trousers, and answer the telephone in a manner neatly combining hauteur with affability. If the caller’s a particularly lucrative client, I’m allowed to inject an extra smidgin or two of affability. I assume you know how Mr. Arbalest is handling his contacts.”

Max nodded. “According to Lydia, he accepts only referrals from the better galleries and auction houses and won’t even tell prospects where his studio is, much less let them into it. He makes appointments by phone or mail, then visits the clients with fanfare of trumpets and beating of drums. And you standing by in your jodhpurs, I suppose?”

“Oh yes,” said Goudge. “I enter a respectful three paces behind the master, wearing white gloves and carrying a briefcase, a portfolio, or a leather carrying case, depending upon the size, shape, and condition of the article to be resurrected. Should the client be gauche enough to offer me a seat, I respond only with a pitying glance and remain standing vigilantly at attention behind the chair Mr. Arbalest is by then occupying.”

“What if the chair’s up against a wall or something?”

“Then I do the best I can. Aside from the security factor, Mr. Arbalest feels that seeing me standing there tends to put a psychological brake on the prospective client’s loquacity. He prefers to do the lion’s share of the talking himself. Once the interview is completed and the contract signed as it invariably is, for Mr. Arbalest is a most persuasive man with a sales pitch, I open the receptacle I’ve been guarding and continue to maintain vigilance while he, with his own hands now encased in white gloves which I have produced from the receptacle and assisted him to put on, places the ailing object inside. I then get to zip, snap, or strap, as the case may be, and pick up the briefcase, portfolio, or carrying case. After the ceremony of leave-taking, which generally goes on a shade too long for my taste, I precede Mr. Arbalest back to the car so that I can hold the door for him with my free hand. I place the object reverently on the front passenger seat, take my place behind the wheel, and drive off. We are, if I may say so without braggadocio, a class act.”