The Bilbao Looking Glass Read online

  “The Larrington boys, to be sure. How delightful to see you together. Now I shall have the visual stimulus of trying to tell you apart. No, you mustn’t tell me. I’ll have you sorted out in a moment.”

  Since Don was wearing his Porcellian tie over a paint-stained old sweatshirt, the sorting should not have been difficult; but Ganlors were not apt to be aware of sartorial details unless Thomas Carlyle had mentioned them first.

  “And Lassie. I could never mistake you, my dear.”

  It was unthinkable that Mrs. Ganlor had ever watched an episode of that television program, but barely possible she might have dipped into Albert Payson Terhune during her frivolous infancy. Lassie did look much like her canine namesake with her long, pointed nose and mop of tawny hair. The hair was now streaked almost white around the face, either from exposure to sun and wind or because Lassie, like the rest of the crowd, wasn’t getting any younger.

  Alice B. had remarked only hours before her death that young pups tended to turn into old bitches and she’d been looking across the room at Lassie when she’d said it. They hadn’t got around to discussing Alice B. yet, but they would, no doubt. Lassie hadn’t talked much at all on the way over, but she’d chatter a blue streak all the way back. She always did. Even Alexander, who’d never been given to rude remarks, had observed the last time they’d been out in Perdita with Lassie and Don that he did wish Bradley had let sleeping dogs lie, Sarah remembered.

  Mrs. Ganlor was remembering Alexander, too. She’d taken Sarah’s hand in both of hers, a compassionate intimacy she’d never shown before. There might even have been a tear or two behind those kelp-clouded spectacles.

  “Little Sarah. So young to have experienced such a loss. You will feel it less as you grow older, you know. One does. ‘Time, like an everrolling stream, bears all its sons away.’ Isaac Watts. Dear me, now where have I put down my reading glasses? There’s a passage in Emerson—”

  They knew better than to let Mrs. Ganlor get started on Emerson. Both Larrington brothers began talking at once. Lassie emitted a few preliminary yelps before Sarah, to her own surprise, captured the conversation. She began telling Mrs. Ganlor her adventures as a widow, eliminating the major troubles and making an amusing tale of her minor calamities; giving particular greetings from several aunts and imparting the interesting news that those two supposedly hopeless bachelors Dolph and Brooks were both happily married.

  “Astonishing! ‘The day shall not be up so soon as I, to try the fair adventure of tomorrow.’ King John, Act Five, Scene One. One always does wonder whether it was really Shakespeare or Bartlett who wrote the plays, doesn’t one? The best bits are all in the Quotations, and the rest is such a bore. But do come up and say hello to Josephus. He and I are the only ones around at the moment. Charlie and Willie have gone off to Lesser Nibble to look at a rock they’re passionately excited about, though I’m afraid I can’t remember why. It will come to me, sooner or later. Nobody else is on the island yet, though I expect the clan will start flocking any day now.”

  She was striding up the path as she talked, refusing to let anybody else carry her Emerson although she did entrust Don with the crabbing net and Fren with the bucket. Mrs. Ganlor must be eighty-five at least, Sarah thought, and her husband Josephus perhaps eight or nine years older. They found him mending a stone wall.

  “ ‘Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,’ ” was his predictable greeting. “In this case it was Grandfather Frost, I expect. Not related to Robert, so far as I know. In any event, one must get on with the job. ‘For winter’s rains and ruins are over.’ ”

  “My dear, not Swinburne,” his wife protested with a girlish laugh. “I’m sure you all remember that delicious passage in Penrod where the new minister is being entertained by the ladies of the neighborhood. ‘A book of verse held lightly between the fingers.’ Was that before or after Penrod poured glue into his hat? We thought we might use Tarkington for some of our reading aloud when the young people come out,” she explained to her guests. “Sheer fluff, I know, but such fun. What do you think, Fren? You see I have you now.”

  The Fren she’d so confidently picked out happened to be Don, who couldn’t recall any Tarkington except some chap who played football but wasn’t about to confess that fact to Mrs. Ganlor. He said he thought Tarkington would be just the ticket.

  Sarah, who knew her Tarkington back and forth from having spent so much time alone in her various relatives’ libraries while her parents were visiting, put in a pitch for Gentle Julia.

  “I adore that part where Julia lounges around eating candied violets and reading poetry about herself from a slim volume bound in limp purple suede,” she sighed. “I always thought it would be lovely to have someone come courting me like that, but nobody ever did. I don’t think I’ve even tasted a candied violet.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to buy them now that the S. S. Pierce stores are out of business,” mourned Lassie, pronouncing it “Purse” so that the Ganlors would know what firm she was talking about.

  “Sage’s Market in Harvard Square might have them,” said Bradley. “I’ll get my cook to call and find out. If they don’t, I’ll scour the seven seas to bring you some, Lady Sarah.”

  “And what about the book of poetry bound in limp purple suede?” Lassie inquired more cattily than doggily.

  “As to that, she’ll have to take the wish for the deed, I fear. What does rhyme with Sarah?”

  Nobody could think of anything offhand, though Josephus gave it as his considered opinion that rhymes such as fairer and squarer might be allowable. “Especially since we in these parts do have that odd habit of omitting final ‘r’ except in words where it does not orthographically exist.”

  He hefted the large rock he’d been holding while they chatted and his wife took the hint.

  “Come along, everyone. Let’s go look for the goats and let this lazy man get back to his wall. Something there is that doesn’t love a laggard and Josephus, poor dear, happens to be married to her. You must all be feeling cooped up after your sail. Nothing like a brisk canter over the moors to perk you up for the return voyage.”

  Fren and Don looked as if they could do without perking, but Lassie put her sharp nose to the trail and bounded off. Sarah was no less eager. She loved the moors and even liked the goats.

  Years ago, the Ganlors had brought over a billy and a nanny with the idea of establishing thereby a ready source of milk and cheese. None of the family knew how to milk a goat, much less make cheese, but they’d had books along to teach them. The books, however, had not explained how one persuaded a goat to stand still long enough for one to practice on, and the animals themselves had not cooperated. They’d been too busy begetting more goats.

  By now a sizable number of their descendants roamed Little Nibble. A walk on the moors was never less than a challenging experience. One might be tripped up by a group of frolicking kids, or knocked down by a charging billy goat. But, as Mrs. Ganlor always reminded their victims, they did keep down the poison ivy.

  Sarah hoped they’d come upon one soon. She went hopping over the hummocks and boulders as though she’d been a kid again herself. Bradley Rovedock kept close to her the way Alexander used to do. She half expected to hear, “Watch out for a sudden charge, Sadie-belle,” but Bradley wasn’t saying anything. It occurred to her after a while that he might be having trouble catching his breath. She slowed her pace and Lassie forged ahead. A couple of minutes later, Lassie came running back.

  “Mrs. Ganlor, I think one of your goats is in trouble. It’s making an awful racket.”

  They all rushed after her as she led them to the source of the frenzied bleats. The goat was indeed in a bad way. A young male, it had somehow got its head and horns tangled in a roll of old barbed wire. In trying to pull free, it had gouged itself on the barbs. Blood was dripping down its front, staining the grass the goat must have been trying to reach when it was trapped.

  Fren took one look, grunted, picked up one of
the big lumps of granite that dotted the moor, and bashed the wretched beast’s head in.

  “Only thing to do,” he told Mrs. Ganlor. “Might as well save the skin and meat. Tell Charlie and Willie to come out here and butcher it when they get back.”

  “Oh—yes, of course. One must be practical.”

  Mrs. Ganlor was too much a philosopher to show how rattled she was, but Sarah felt sick to her stomach. Couldn’t they at least have gone back for some wire cutters and freed the goat so they could make sure its wounds were really as bad as they looked? Did it have to be slaughtered so offhandedly as that?

  Lassie didn’t appear to mind, and Don was in full agreement with his brother, especially about leaving the corpse for the Ganlor sons to cope with. Bradley must have taken a good look at Sarah’s face, though.

  “Speaking of getting back,” he said, “I’ve been wondering whether those clouds mightn’t mean we’re in for a tossing-around if we don’t head for home port fairly soon. What do you think, everyone?”

  “Tide and wind stay no man’s pleasure,” Mrs. Ganlor agreed. “Otherwise, we should be delighted to have you join us in partaking of the cup that cheers.”

  But does not inebriate. Even the Larringtons knew how that one came out. They agreed unanimously that it was surely coming on to blow and all hands ought to be on deck forthwith. The embarkation was speedy and efficient.

  As soon as they’d worked Perdita clear of Little Nibble Cove. Fren remarked, “Phew! I could use a stiff one after that.”

  “I should think you might,” Sarah answered none too amiably. “That poor goat!”

  “What goat?” he grunted. “I meant the poetry.”

  “Lassie,” said Bradley, “why don’t you nip down to the galley, if you’ll be so good, and bring up that smaller wicker hamper we left stowed in the starboard locker? There ought to be a thermos of hot rum toddy in it. One tends to feel a tad chilly after one’s descent from the Elysian fields. At least I do. They are marvelous people though, aren’t they?”

  Everybody agreed the Ganlors were marvelous and the prospect of a hot rum toddy even more so. Lassie had an attentive audience as she unpacked the thermos jug along with a virgin tin of Bremner wafers, an assortment of cheeses ready sliced, a nest of plastic tumblers, and even a little pile of cocktail napkins with Perdita’s quarterboard silk-screened on them, no doubt a gift from someone or other to the man who had everything.

  Sarah took a rather skimpy tot of the rum. She’d have been content with the Ganlor’s herb tea, but didn’t say so because they must be thinking her pretty eccentric already. All except Bradley, bless him. He’d come over to sit with her again, now they were safely away from the island and Fren back at the helm with a drink in his spare hand.

  “Happy, Sarah?”

  “It’s been a wonderful day.”

  “Then we must do it again soon. All but the goat, eh?”

  Don reached across to see if there was anything left in the toddy jug. “Hell, is she being squeamish about that? What’s another corpse or two in her young life?”

  “You always were the soul of tact, Don,” said his wife not very chidingly. “By the way, I wonder if they’ve come up with any word on Alice B. yet. You know, there was something awfully funny about that robbery.”

  “What’s so funny about robbery, for God’s sake? You want a little more of this before Fren swills it all?”

  Lassie held out her glass. “I don’t mean that kind of funny, idiot. I mean funny-peculiar. The sort of thing they took. I don’t know if the rest of you happened to notice, but it was all paintings, that sort of thing. I mean, what thief would take a silly old etching and leave a diamond necklace?”

  “What diamond necklace?”

  “The one Miffy was wearing that afternoon, silly. That thing of her Great-aunt Maud’s. You know what I mean, she always puts it on when she has company. It’s her notion of dressing up, like you and your stupid tie. She inherited the necklace, so she might as well get the good out of it, I suppose.”

  “So?”

  “So Miffy told me yesterday she remembers taking the necklace off because it was pinching her neck or something, and putting it in that little crystal bowl on the table by the fireplace. She went to bed without remembering to take it out, for reasons I’m sure I don’t have to explain, though of course she didn’t go into that part. Anyway, when she started checking around after the robbery, there was the necklace right where she’d left it, but a watercolor that had been hanging over the table was gone.”

  “Who was the painter?” asked Sarah.

  “Somebody named Millard Sheets, whoever he may be.”

  “An American painter of this century. Mrs. Jack Gardner collected some of his early work, as I recall.”

  “Worth much?” Don barked.

  “Worth stealing, certainly. I can’t imagine one watercolor would have anything approaching the resale value of Miffy’s necklace, though.”

  Sarah knew what Lassie was talking about: a choker fully an inch wide, paved solid with diamonds, having a front clasp set with stones the size of peas and one rather staggering ruby in the middle. The thing was hideous to look at and must have been agony to wear, but she couldn’t picture any thief passing up such a chance to get his hands on it.

  “Unless they thought it was costume jewelry,” she said. “Still—”

  “What the hell, you’d stick it in your pocket just in case, wouldn’t you?” said Don. “Lot easier than lifting a damn watercolor, I should think. What’s the current market value of a what’s-his-name?”

  “I couldn’t say offhand. Max will know.”

  “That’s your boyfriend from the filling station?”

  Even Lassie appeared to realize Don had gone too far this time. “At least he’s heard of Millard Sheets,” she snapped.

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Fren took his eyes off the jib long enough to glance over at Sarah. “He’s some kind of art dealer, isn’t he? It is funny, now you mention it, that the pictures got pinched right after he’d been there to look ’em over.”

  “Fren,” Bradley Rovedock was angry. “I’ll take the helm now. How about getting the fenders overside?”

  “Already? We’re still quite a way from the mooring. Oh, I get it. You’re being tactful. Sorry if I hurt your feelings, Sarah. But damn it, you hurt mine last night. I thought we were going to have a fun evening and you stood me up for a—okay, Brad, I’ll get the fenders.”

  After that, the sail couldn’t be over fast enough for Sarah. Bradley tried to keep the party alive and she did her best to respond out of politeness, but it had to be a brave effort. Fren wouldn’t have thought of that business about Max himself. He must be repeating what others had been saying last night at the club.

  And the more they said it, the more they’d believe it. Don’s eyes were already narrowed, perhaps in speculation, perhaps in drowsiness. It didn’t matter which. Don would side with his brother on general principles. Even Lassie, who’d been one of those clustered nearest to Max at Miffy’s party, would be hissing like a teakettle about this latest tidbit when she got together with Pussy Beaxitt and the rest of the crowd tomorrow at the funeral.

  Sarah told herself it didn’t matter. She wasn’t one of them any more. But as Max himself had said, she was. How could she give up the Ganlors, for instance? Insofar as tastes and manners went, they were as antithetic to the Larringtons as possible, but they were of the same breed. It was no use trying to pretend she could drop one without antagonizing the other. Anyway, there were kind people like Bradley Rovedock to bridge the gaps. When he asked if she’d like to take the helm for a minute, she smiled up at him.

  “I’d love to. Remember how you always used to let me when I was a little girl?”

  “Ouch! I remember all too well. I hoped you’d forgotten.”

  “How could I? That was always the most glorious part of going sailing with you. Oh dear, I’m getting a wrinkle in the jib.”

  “Ease her off
a point. No, the other way or we’ll jibe.”

  Sarah hastily corrected her error. “Dare I remind you about the time I did jibe and Mother spilled the tea basket right into Cousin Mabel’s lap? How did you ever let Cousin Mabel aboard, anyway?”

  Bradley was laughing now. “I believe she was visiting your people and I couldn’t get out of it. You never did hit it off with that worthy lady, did you? I still have a hunch you dunked her on purpose.”

  “I’m sure I should have, if I’d been a good enough sailor.”

  “Now that you’ve got your hands on Walter’s money, you ought to get yourself a nice little sixteen-foot sloop to learn on,” said Fren, trying no doubt to make amends for his gaffe in the only way that came naturally to him.

  Sarah wasn’t buying either the apology or the sloop. “You’re the one who was wailing to me about how much it costs to keep a boat.”

  “What doesn’t cost these days?” growled Don. “Tell me that.”

  They finished the cruise convincing each other they’d all wind up in the poorhouse together and should they have dinner at the club or run up to Marblehead in Bradley’s Rolls.

  “I honestly can’t,” Sarah insisted. “After the flap I caused last night, I don’t dare not go straight home. I’ve no idea whether Aunt Appie is still at Miffy’s or waiting for me back at the house with a nice tuna fish casserole in the oven.”

  “But last night was different,” Fren argued. “We expected you, damn it.”

  Bradley shook his head. “We’d better let Sarah decide what’s best for her. Poor Appie does take her responsibilities seriously, doesn’t she?”

  “Hers and everybody else’s,” yipped Lassie.

  “Whatever happened to Lionel and his four friends, Sarah?” asked Don, who must not have been asleep after all. “Understand you pitched them out bag and baggage after they burned down your boathouse.”

  “Wouldn’t you? I wasn’t about to have them roaming loose after that fiasco. Anyway, all their gear got wet from the fire hoses and they had nothing left to camp with. The last I saw of them, they were heading for the village laundromat to dry out.”