The Withdrawing Room Page 12

  “So glad to hear you are comfortably settled with dear little Sarah Kelling, though that leaves ME out in the cold! Anyway, perhaps she will have a SPARE CORNER I can crawl into until I can find a place to stay. I will come DIRECTLY THERE from the airport so that we can talk over what to do. Sarah will pardon the liberty, I’m sure. Such a sweetly pretty little thing, I always thought, and such NICE MANNERS. Give her my best regards. Hope to see you SOON!!!! Hastily, Bumps.”

  “Well, that’s better news than we’d bargained for,” said Sarah. “It’s dated over a week ago so she may even be on her way here by now. Poor soul, it’s going to be a dreadful homecoming for her. They always appeared to be so very devoted.”

  “Bumps and Wumps,” mused the sergeant. “Were they twins?”

  “I don’t believe so,” Sarah replied. “I’m quite sure Miss Hartler is several years the younger. I don’t honestly remember her very well.”

  “Here’s a picture,” said Mariposa, who’d been running a stern housewifely eye over the dresser. “Maybe it’s her.”

  Sarah took the pretty silver frame out of Mariposa’s hand. “Oh yes, now I recall the hat. She always wore the same one, or else she kept buying them all alike. Apparently she still does, because this picture must have been taken quite recently. That reminds me, Mariposa, we’d better get in some cranberry juice. That’s all she ever drinks, because it’s good for the kidneys, or the liver, or something. She got me off in a corner once and told me all about it, but I’m afraid I wasn’t paying much attention. She really is the mousiest creature! I can’t imagine why this Dorothea person invited her in the first place.”

  “There doesn’t seem to be a picture of the brother,” said McNaughton. “Would you say they looked alike?”

  “But you saw his face.”

  “Well, no. You see—”

  “Shut up, Mac,” snapped Bittersohn. He took a firm grip on Sarah’s arm, and she was grateful for his support.

  They searched among the rubble awhile longer, but found no address book, and nothing to indicate the presence of a more accessible relative. It appeared they would have to wait for Bumps to make the formal identification of Wumps.

  Chapter 15

  “THERE’S SOMETHING I HAVE to tell you.”

  Sarah was in her place behind the coffee urn, trying to be poised and collected although her hands were rattling every cup she touched. Professor Ormsby, Miss LaValliere, and Mr. Porter-Smith were in their places. Mr. Bittersohn and Mrs. Sorpende had not appeared. That was not surprising, considering what time they’d got back to bed. Sarah herself would rather have kept on sleeping forever, but that ingrained sense of duty had compelled her to come and break the news before her boarders got it somewhere else.

  “Tell us what?” yawned Miss LaValliere. Then she smirked. “I know. Mr. Hartler’s eloped with Mrs. Sorpende. That’s why he’s not here.”

  “I wish you were right,” Sarah answered. “Last night, we had the police in. They’d found a man we’re quite sure was Mr. Hartler near the birdhouse in the Public Garden. He’d evidently been beaten and robbed on his way back from seeing those chairs he was so thrilled—”

  Sarah steadied herself with a sip of hot coffee. “The last I knew, he hadn’t been officially identified, but since they found his name on his clothes and in his wallet—”

  “Great Scott!” gasped Mr. Porter-Smith. “You mean he was killed?”

  “I’m afraid I do.”

  “But that’s awful! I mean, two in a row! I mean—” Miss LaValliere didn’t seem to know quite what she did mean, but there was nothing affected about her agitation.

  “I know how you feel,” said Sarah. “Considering what’s happened during the very short time you people have been living here, I shouldn’t blame you one bit if you packed your bags and left this instant. I must have some magnetic attraction for disaster.”

  “Garbage!” roared Professor Ormsby. “Unscientific swill! What time did this alleged assault take place?”

  “Sometime close to midnight, the police said it must have been.”

  “In the Public Garden? Still wearing his tuxedo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, there you are, aren’t you? Who wears tuxedos these days? Rich old men and waiters. Waiters go off duty with their pockets full of tips. Rich men have gold cuff links, studs, collar buttons, whatnot. Gold worth five hundred dollars an ounce or some such monstrous price. Don’t keep track myself. Don’t walk through the Garden alone at night, either. Perverts. Dope addicts. Hartler was an old fool. Quiffen was a worse fool. Trouble you for the marmalade.”

  “Of course.” Sarah passed the cut-glass jar in its little silver basket. Professor Ormsby was right. Mr. Hartler should have known better than to be wandering around alone at that hour, practically asking to be mugged. Mr. Quiffen should have kept his nose out of other people’s business. Neither death had anything to do with her. If only she were sure of that!

  “I quite agree with Professor Ormsby,” Mr. Porter-Smith pontificated. “Mr. Hartler, having lived away from Boston for a number of years, may not have been aware that an area where he had perhaps been accustomed to wander freely as a younger man was now unsafe for our senior citizens late at night. Mr. Quiffen was an elderly person who indulged, if I may say so, rather freely in the pleasures of the table, and was of an unusually choleric disposition. Therefore, he almost certainly suffered from an elevated blood pressure that might well subject him to occasional fits of dizziness. That both should have met their demise—I mean demises—”

  “How about demeese?” Professor Ormsby suggested helpfully.

  Mr. Porter-Smith flushed, but stuck to his guns. “As I was saying, this is a most unfortunate coincidence, but surely nothing more than that. Professor Ormsby, if you happen to have left any marmalade in the jar, I believe I shall also partake.”

  Miss LaValliere wasn’t quite ready to buy the mere coincidence theory, but neither did she wish to move in with her grandmother, which would be the only way her parents would continue her allowance if she left Mrs. Kelling’s. When Mr. Porter-Smith passed her the marmalade, she took it.

  However, she was almost as silent as Professor Ormsby for the rest of the meal. When Mr. Porter-Smith realized he had the floor to himself, he took full advantage of the circumstance, while Sarah sat and wondered what time they’d all three got in last night and where they’d gone beforehand. And what about Cousin Dolph?

  That was what Professor Ormsby would doubtless call a damn fool question. Dolph hadn’t even met Mr. Hartler yet

  But he had. The very expression, “damn fool,” brought back a far too distinct memory of one of Aunt Marguerite’s more disastrous parties. Aunt Caroline had dragooned Dolph into going with them, and he’d ranted all the way home about which was a bigger damn fool, that babbling jumping-jack Hartler or his damn fool of a cranberry-swilling sister.

  That had been six years ago or more. Sarah couldn’t remember what had set Dolph off about the Hartlers, but she knew from experience that it seldom took much. Furthermore, since the Hartlers were so chummy with Aunt Marguerite, they were more apt than not to have met the Protheroes and therefore to have had at least a passing acquaintance with George’s old buddy Barnwell Quiffen.

  Suppose for instance that Dolph had happened to run into Mr. Hartler last night during their respective wanderings. Considering the circles they both moved in, such a meeting was by no means impossible. The man who owned King Kalakaua’s chairs, assuming they were indeed genuine, might well have been one of the old guard and a friend of Dolph’s. Or both might have taken the same notion to stop in at the Harvard Club or the Ritz for a nightcap. The club was on Commonwealth Avenue, only a few blocks from where the body had been found, and the hotel was on the corner of Arlington and Newbury, directly across the street from the Garden.

  No matter what he thought of the Hartlers, Dolph wouldn’t snub a man he’d met in the home of a family member, especially if Mr. Hartler offered to pay fo
r the drinks. Suppose he misunderstood something the older man said. That wouldn’t be unlikely. Mr. Hartler’s speech had been so rapid and so prolix that he’d often been hard to follow, and Dolph’s was not the swiftest brain in town. What if Dolph had jumped to the conclusion that in taking over Mr. Quiffen’s room, Mr. Hartler had got hold of some evidence that private detective had turned up? What if he’d thought Mr. Hartler was seeing himself as the man to whom from failing hands Mr. Quiffen had thrown the torch?

  Well, what if he had? Sarah could see Dolph yelling the place down and maybe getting them both thrown out. She could not see him deliberately beating an older, smaller man’s face to an unrecognizable pulp. Could she?

  If Dolph had deliberately shoved Barnwell Quiffen under a moving subway train, then Dolph was a homicidal maniac and there was no telling what he might do. But surely that was ridiculous. Anyway, Dolph wouldn’t have faked a robbery. He couldn’t think that fast, for one thing. He could very quickly have made himself scarce, however. The Arlington Street subway entrance was only a short sprint from where the body had been found, and who was to say more than one person hadn’t been involved in the crime? Suppose that after he’d been killed, one of those drug addicts or perverts Professor Ormsby was so vehement about might have come along, taken advantage of the chance to rob a prosperous-looking corpse, and kicked Mr. Hartler’s face in just for the fun of it. That was sickening even to think of, but such things did happen.

  Sarah didn’t think she could sit there any longer watching Professor Ormsby mop up egg yolk with his toast. She was trying to think of a plausible reason to leave the table, when Mariposa handed her the most cogent one possible.

  “Mrs. Kelling, she’s here!” Sarah blinked. “Who’s here?”

  “She says she’s Mr. Hartler’s sister and she wants to know if her brother’s up yet.”

  “Show her into the library. Excuse me, please, everyone.”

  Sarah remembered Miss Hartler the moment she laid eyes on her. As far as she could recall, the woman was wearing the identical outfit in which she’d appeared some four years ago at Aunt Marguerite’s, totally without style or color interest. The same might have been said of the wearer. Miss Hartler bore a family resemblance of sorts to her brother and had his abundant white hair, which could have been her redeeming feature if she hadn’t got it cropped far too short by some dropout from barber college and hidden most of what was left under a truly awful hat. At the moment, she was showing an unaccustomed spark of something that could almost be taken for animation.

  “Dear little Sarah!”

  To Sarah’s secret horror, Miss Hartler insisted on planting a dry-lipped kiss on her cheek. “I was so sorry to hear of the terrible, terrible deaths of your dear Aunt Caroline and her devoted son! And of course Mr. Frederick Kelling, too. Such a tragic loss to the city! I hope you got my little note?”

  “Why, I—yes, of course. You were so kind to write.”

  Sarah hadn’t the slightest recollection as to whether she’d heard from the Hartlers or not, there had been so many condolences. But she’d diligently acknowledged them all, or thought she had, with Aunt Emma’s help. “I’m sure I sent a reply. But if you were in the process of going abroad—”

  “Oh, I expect William opened the envelope and tossed away your message without bothering to show me. That would be just like him. Big brother still doesn’t quite believe little sister’s learned to read yet, you know. Where is old Wumps? I can’t wait to surprise him! He’ll never dream I could be here so soon, but I simply camped at that airport until they found me a seat. Did he tell you I was coming?”

  “He told me how much he missed you,” Sarah temporized.

  “I can well imagine! Wumps and I have always been very close, you know. It was quite an adventure for me to leave him as I did, and as things turned out, a dreadful, dreadful mistake. But I shan’t bore you with my sordid history! Which is Wump’s room? Isn’t he up yet, the lazy thing? Perhaps I might just tiptoe in. I can’t wait another second to see him!”

  She rose and started for the door. Sarah took her arm.

  “Miss Hartler, you—you’d better sit down again. There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “About Wumps? What is it? Is he ill? In the hospital?”

  Sarah shook her head. “I’m afraid it’s a great deal worse than that, Miss Hartler. He was—assaulted last night in the Public Garden.”

  “Oh no! Not Wumps!” Miss Hartler stared at Sarah, then buried her face in the dun-colored silk scarf she had twisted around her wizened throat.

  “No positive identification has been made yet, but his name was on his things, and he never came back last night. We found your letter on his desk, and I’m supposed to let the police know when you arrive so that you can—I’d better get you some brandy.”

  “No, please, I couldn’t touch it. Just—just let me be alone in his room for a little while. Wumps dead? You do mean dead, Sarah?”.

  “I’m afraid I do. Here, let me help you.”

  Miss Hartler sorely needed help. Her legs could barely support her. She wobbled across the hall and collapsed on the bed, her face pressed into the clean sheet Charles had so neatly turned down for the old man who’d never come back. Sarah decided the kindest thing was to slip out and leave her there by herself until those thin old shoulders stopped heaving so convulsively.

  Mariposa met her when she stepped back out into the hall. “Did you tell her?”

  “I had to, didn’t I? She wants to be alone in his room, so I came away. I didn’t know what else to do. She looks so frail, and she’s taking it awfully hard, as I knew she would. We ought to call a doctor, but we’d never get one to come.”

  “You go on back and have yourself a cup of hot coffee, honey. She’ll get over it pretty soon. Old folks don’t mind death the way young ones do. That’s what my grandma says, and she ought to know by now. Come on, honey, you got to take care of yourself first, else you’ll be no good to nobody.”

  “I know. Thank goodness one of us manages to stay sane around here.”

  Sarah gave Mariposa a hug and kiss, greatly shocking Mr. Porter-Smith, who was emerging from the dining room correct in what the well-dressed accountant’s assistant should wear and making a beeline for the gold-initialed attaché case he had left prominently displayed in the front hall.

  By now Professor Ormsby had finished ravening over the eggs and gone off to his classes. Miss LaValliere was still at the table nibbling at a piece of toast and muttering over a book she ought no doubt to have stayed home and studied the night before. Sarah took some scrambled eggs she didn’t particularly want, and sat down to eat. When she and Miss LaValliere had finished and the two remaining boarders showed no sign of appearing, Sarah took the used dishes out to the kitchen, where Mariposa was already busy at the dishpan.

  “I wonder if I should take Miss Hartler in a cup of tea or. something?” she remarked. “She’s just off the plane from Italy and goodness knows how long it’s been since she had anything to eat. That reminds me, there’s a stack of her luggage in the vestibule we’ll have to do something about.”

  “No sense bringing it in, till we find out where she intends to go,” said Mariposa. “Only have to lug it out again.”

  “That’s true, and it’ll be safe enough with the outer door locked. At least we shan’t be getting any more of King Kalakaua’s whatnots dragged through the hall. That’s not very kind of me, is it? Poor old Wumps, what an awful way to go!”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Mariposa lifted a soap bubble on her shapely fingers, and blew it away. “He was prob’ly dancing along like he always did, thinking about them chairs, and then, whammo! Quick and easy. I wouldn’t mind something like that for myself. Live it up till I’m ninety-five, then get shot by a jealous wife.”

  Sarah wouldn’t have believed she could laugh that morning, but she did. By the time they’d finished the dishes, she felt up to facing Miss Hartler again. She went and tapped on the drawing room d
oor.

  “Miss Hartler? It’s Sarah. May I come in?”

  “Yes, dear.” The voice seemed to come from very far away.

  “I was wondering if I might get you something? Tea and toast, perhaps?”

  Miss Hartler struggled to raise herself from the pillows into which she’d been weeping. Her eyes were red, her hair disheveled, her clothes a mess. She wiped a sodden handkerchief across her blotched, terribly aged face.

  “Thank you, dear. Perhaps a cup of very weak tea? I never touch stimulants as a. rule, but this—this—I knew I should never have left him. It’s all my fault!”

  Her shoulders began to heave again. Sarah said, “I’ll get the tea,” and fled.

  As she was fixing a tray, Mr. Bittersohn came up the stairs from the basement “What’s happening?” was his greeting.

  “The sister has arrived,” Sarah told him. “She’s in his room crying her eyes out, poor soul. I’m trying to get her to drink a cup of tea. Would you mind terribly just going into the dining room and helping yourself? There’s coffee in the urn and things on the sideboard. Mrs. Sorpende should be down soon.”

  “So?”

  “Oh, don’t argue!” Sarah picked up the tray and left. He wasn’t arguing, but she had to take it out on somebody. Strange that she should pick Mr. Bittersohn.

  Miss Hartler was up off the bed, at any rate. She’d evidently been to the bathroom and tried to do something about her face and hair. Though her eyes were still very red, she was a little more composed. She seated herself at the desk and pushed some of the litter aside.

  “Dear Sarah, how kind! But really I don’t think I—”

  “Now, Miss Hartler, you mustn’t give way. Your brother wouldn’t have wanted that.” Sarah was dragging out all the clichés she could recall that had been visited upon her during her own recent bereavement. “He was such a cheerful person. We must try to remember him as we knew him.”

  “Ah, but nobody knew Wumps as I did.” Miss Hartler poured an inch or so of tea from the pot and added a great deal of milk. She peered at the arrow root biscuits Sarah had put on the tray, then slowly picked one up and took an apologetic nibble. “We were so close, you know, so very close. Not that we lived in each other’s pockets, of course. I had my church work, and Wumps had his own enthusiasms.”