The Withdrawing Room Read online

  “The Iolani Palace,” said Sarah.

  “Ah, yes, that famous Iolani Palace Wumps was a zealot, you know, Sarah. A genuine zealot. I see he’s been collecting again.” She waved the arrowroot biscuit at the bibelots that covered every available space.

  “I’m not too sure how much he’d actually collected,” Sarah replied. “He said most of the things he’d got proved not to be genuine and had to be given back. We’ve had people in and out of here—”

  “Don’t tell me! I’ve been through it all. Tracking up the rugs and letting their wet umbrellas drip on the floor. And the reason Wumps wanted to move back here was that we weren’t getting enough of them. He thought Boston would be his Happy Hunting Ground. I must confess, Sarah dear, that I positively quailed at the mere thought. That was why, when I got this invitation from an old schoolmate to join her in Rome, I packed my bags and fled. But Dorothea has changed. Sadly, sadly changed. I suppose I have, too. Ah, me, time flies.”

  Making a pathetic attempt to put on a brave face, Miss Hartler picked up her teacup. “Sarah, I’ve been trying to think what to do, and it seems the sensible thing—I’m trying so hard to be sensible, you see. Wumps was always the strong one, but I don’t have him to lean on anymore so I must manage as best I can alone. I thought if you’d let me stay here for just a few days, until we can get the dreadful, dreadful funeral over with—our plot is in Mount Auburn, you know, like yours—perhaps you’d know how to go about making the arrangements—I’ve never had to—when dear Mother and Father—”

  She mopped her eyes and took an infinitesimal sip of the cooling tea. “That will give me a chance to find out how I stand and do something about all this stuff Wumps had left. Dear Sarah, you won’t mind, will you? I have nobody else to turn to! If you could just have your man bring in my bags—”

  “He’s—not here just now,” Sarah answered, rather stunned by this sudden turn of affairs.

  Of course it made sense for Miss Hartler to use her brother’s room. His rent was paid till the end of the week, and she had nowhere else to go, except a hotel or the YWCA. Somebody had to sift through this welter and decide what to do with it, and who could be better qualified than his own sister? But to have Miss Hartler around oozing gloom and respectability on top of everything else was going to be plain ghastly.

  Well, it wouldn’t be for long. If Mr. Porter-Smith’s dinner jacket and Miss LaValliere’s hairdo didn’t drive the woman out, Mariposa and Charles, in their own adroit ways, would manage.

  Chapter 16

  NEVERTHELESS, SARAH DIDN’T GIVE in without a struggle. “But—but we’d have to clean the room first. I couldn’t let you move in here with the place in such a state.”

  “Oh, I can do that. Please let me. I’m so used to cleaning up after Wumps, you see. It would be like having him back, just for a little, little, precious while. Just have your maid bring in the vacuum cleaner and a duster, and I’ll have everything spotless in no time. This will be the last chance I’ll ever—” Her voice quavered and she hid her face again.

  What could one say to that? Anyway, there were all those breakable objects belonging to heaven only knew whom, and it would be better for Miss Hartler to undertake the responsibility. Sarah went and got the cleaning materials, and left Miss Hartler to it.

  Or thought she did. Miss Hartler couldn’t figure out how to turn on the vacuum cleaner. Miss Hartler needed a sponge, a scrubbing brush, disinfectant, fresh linens, glass polish, brass polish, silver polish, a mop, a wall brush, a reviving glass of cranberry juice. Miss Hartler, in one way or another, took up Sarah’s entire day.

  There was the dreadful trip to the morgue to make her formal identification of darling Wumps. Luckily he’d had an old triangular scar on his right wrist that made the experience a degree less harrowing than it might have been but still bad enough for Miss Hartler to need another glass of cranberry juice before she felt up to facing the vicar concerning dead Wump’s last rites. She was astonished to learn Sarah wasn’t personally acquainted with the dear vicar. Sarah was rude enough to reply that she at least knew the undertaker.

  “Yes, yes, we must see the undertaker. How terrible! But dear Wumps wouldn’t want old Bumps to let him down, would he? I always called him Wumps because when I was a baby I couldn’t say William. And he retaliated by calling me Bumps because I kept falling down when I tried to walk. I’m afraid a lot of the bumps were Wump’s own doing. He had such an impish sense of humor, even as a little boy. You must have adored having him here.”

  “He was with us such a short time,” Sarah murmured.

  It wasn’t pleasant to recall the blasting-out she’d given him so soon before he’d gone out to his death, even more painful to think that if she’d kept her mouth shut he might have had the chairs brought to him and still be alive. Nevertheless, Sarah couldn’t be hypocritical enough to pretend Mr. Hartler had been an unmixed blessing, and she couldn’t really believe his sister had always found him so, either.

  But she herself had got furious with Alexander sometimes, and that didn’t make the hurt any less when she lost him. She hadn’t ducked the fact that he’d been murdered, though, as Miss Hartler was doing. The police were naturally pressing her to search among the papers for anything that might reveal if he had an enemy, an article of exceptional value, and particularly if there was any information as to whom the man with the chairs had been, if in fact such a person existed. The sister was putting all that out of her mind, not reading the papers but just stacking them neatly and waxing the desk; fussing about the stately high-church service, about whether Wumps would have preferred a gray or a mahogany casket, about what music he would have preferred and what flowers to choose. Sarah thought of suggesting they fly in a ukulele band and a hibiscus lei from Honolulu because by that time she was getting thoroughly fed up with Miss Hartler, but she couldn’t because she was cursed with too decent a nature.

  Late in the afternoon she managed to get Miss Hartler back into the fresh-cleaned drawing room for a rest and herself rushed to the kitchen, trying to cram a day’s work into two hours. Uncle Jem phoned to ask if she wanted him to rally around and she yelped back, “No, for God’s sake, don’t!” Dolph didn’t bother to call, he just came, taking it for granted that his presence would be required on so grave an occasion.

  For that, Sarah was grateful. Miss Hartler knew Dolph, and his pompous solemnity struck just the right note with her when she emerged from her seclusion in a high-necked, long-sleeved gown of some lank material and some dark color, smelling faintly of mold and moth balls. As Dolph mouthed the correct phrases, Sarah couldn’t help thinking that if he had by some wild chance been the instrument of William Hartler’s demise, he was showing either remarkable self-possession or a degree of loopiness to which not even Great-uncle Frederick had ever attained. She found herself eying him as a mouse might watch a crouching cat. Was he dangerous, or was he only asleep. What would she do if she found out her familiar bumbler of a cousin had become a criminal lunatic? Go stark raving herself, most likely.

  The lodgers were gathering. Mrs. Sorpende was first down, and Sarah was interested to see that she had, in respect to the demised, filled in her low-cut dinner gown with an elegant jabot of rich ivory-colored satin that just might, not long before, have been the legs of a pair of Aunt Caroline’s step-ins. However it had been achieved, the effect was so flattering that Dolph suddenly ran out of platitudes on the subject of family bereavement and sidled over toward the sofa on which Mrs. Sorpende liked best to sit.

  Miss Hartler then settled into an attitude of gentle melancholy. Sarah presented each of the others as he or she arrived, each offered condolences, then each settled down to enjoy the customary period of relaxation before dinner. However, it was not so easy to enjoy an innocent glass of preprandial sherry with Miss Hartler recoiling from the tray as from a striking cobra every time Charles passed within recoiling distance.

  Mr. Porter-Smith’s well-meant urging that she take a glass with him as med
ical studies had proven that moderate amounts of alcohol taken before a meal could be a valuable aid to general health and well-being earned him nothing but a stiff-lipped, “Thank you, I never touch spirits.”

  Miss LaValliere’s attempts to cheer Miss Hartler up with an account of the senior Mrs. LaValliere’s most recent attack of shingles did strike a responsive chord since Miss Hartler had once served on the altar guild with Miss LaValliere’s grandmother; but both the granddaughter and her topic were soon exhausted.

  Professor Ormsby didn’t even try. Once he’d been coerced into shaking hands and grunting some obligatory word of sympathy, he took the other end of Mrs. Sorpende’s sofa and glowered across her jabot at Dolph. Mr. Bittersohn, again the last to arrive, was more compassionate. He drew a chair close to Miss Hartler’s, shook his head when Charles offered him a drink, and began talking to her in a low, concerned voice.

  At first, Miss Hartler appeared to respond. Then for no reason that Sarah could see, she became monosyllabic and at last so totally withdrawn that it was a relief when Charles announced dinner and she said piteously that she really didn’t think she could face it and mightn’t she please just have a little something on a tray in her room?

  That meant extra work for the staff and a quick reshuffling of the table, but Sarah couldn’t have cared less. She was so relieved to get out from under this wet blanket that she didn’t even try to change the subject when Mr. Porter-Smith began explaining what the capital gains tax meant to her, although in fact it meant nothing at all since she wasn’t having any gains these days, only losses.

  By degrees, the group relaxed. With Dolph present the atmosphere was bound to be a trifle on the stuffy side anyway; but he, with his duty to Miss Hartler behind him, Mrs. Sorpende beside him, and a good dinner in front of him, waxed as genial as Dolph knew how to wax.

  Mr. Bittersohn’s thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. Surely he couldn’t have taken offense at Miss Hartler’s sudden cooling-off in the library. An elderly woman who’d come straight from an overseas flight to find her beloved brother murdered and herself at the morgue having to identify his battered corpse could hardly be expected to keep a stiff upper lip for any extended length of time. Sarah dropped a gentle hint to that effect, and Bittersohn gave her a look that puzzled her a good deal.

  After dinner, she told Charles to serve the rest of Mr. Hartler’s benedictine. She wasn’t sure why. Was the gesture in tribute to his memory, or was it an expression of a wish to get rid of everything pertaining to the Hartlers as quickly as possible? Anyway, they all had some; then Dolph announced with blowing of horns and fanfare of trumpets that he was late for an important meeting, and took his departure. Mrs. Sorpende went upstairs, perhaps to remodel another item of lingerie. Professor Ormsby had papers to correct. Mr. Bittersohn said he had to work on his book, which was surely a lie. Miss LaValliere, in desperation, asked Mr. Porter-Smith to help her with her bookkeeping homework.

  Sarah watched Charles collect the empty liqueur glasses, then decided she’d better check in on Miss Hartler. She found the sister in her nightgown, which was not to say scantily clad, since Miss Hartler wore the sort of garment R. H. Stearns used to carry for Boston ladies who went in for modesty. Nevertheless, Miss Hartler made a point of covering her yards of cotton with several more yards of flannel wrapper as she came to open the door.

  “I know you’re exhausted,” Sarah told her, “so I shan’t stay. I just wanted to make sure you have everything you need for the night.”

  “Dear little Sarah! You grow more like your Aunt Marguerite every day.”

  Sarah winced. One Marguerite in the world was already one too many for her. However, since there was no blood relationship there was little likelihood of resemblance. Miss Hartler must either be hallucinating or trying to pay a compliment One might as well take the more charitable view.

  “Do sit down and talk to me a moment,” the woman went on. “I feel so—so terribly alone.”

  “Of course you do,” said Sarah. “That’s only natural. One gets over it sooner or later, or so they tell me.”

  “Ah, yes. We must comfort and support one another in our bereavement. I can see how valiantly you’re trying to cope, and I admire your strength. But, Sarah dear, I can’t help wondering—of course it’s not my place to say anything, but—well, quite frankly, dear, I really don’t think that if I’d been in your place I’d have been quite so quick to fill my home with a somewhat peculiar assortment of strangers. I only say this because I’m so much older. We old folks can’t resist spreading our wisdom around where I’m sure it’s not wanted. Personally, I’d be the last to interfere—”

  “And there’s no earthly reason why you should feel any need to do so,” Sarah interrupted, a good deal more briskly than she’d meant to. “I get all the advice I can handle from Cousin Dolph and my uncle, who lives a few streets over, and the rest of my relatives. As to my boarders, I’m chiefly concerned that they pay their rent on time and obey the house rules, of which I’ll give you a copy first thing in the morning. So far the only one who’s given me any serious trouble was your brother. If I’d known what a dreadful nuisance that Iolani Palace project of his would turn out to be, I doubt if I’d have taken him on. However, he was always pleasant in other respects and got along with the rest of the group even though he did manage to keep us in an uproar a good deal of the time.”

  “Oh, Sarah!” Miss Hartler shook her white head sweetly and sadly. “I know Wumps was just a prankish schoolboy at heart and sometimes got a bit overexuberant, but at least he was our own sort. What do you know about those others? Little Jennifer LaValliere is all right, I suppose. Flighty and silly, but I’ve met her grandmother. This Porter-Smith, as he calls himself—”

  “Came highly recommended by my Cousin Percy.”

  “Oh. And that man Ormsby—”

  “Professor Ormsby is a distinguished member of the faculty at MIT.”

  “Ah, these mad scientists! Inventing those dreadful clones and goodness knows what else. Still, I suppose MIT is respectable enough as colleges go these days. However, that rather dangerous-looking young man who runs an art gallery or whatever it is. Bittersohn, he calls himself.”

  Miss Hartler inched closer and lowered her voice to a shocked murmur. “I was trying to make conversation with him before dinner, as one does, and since little Jennifer and I had been talking about her grandmother’s work on the altar guild, I happened to ask if his own mother was involved in any such thing. He made the most incredible reply. He said, ‘No, she doesn’t even get to sit downstairs.’ Now, Sarah dear, of course you’re a young thing and you wouldn’t know, but I’m very much afraid that man is a Jew.”

  For a moment, Sarah was so furious and disgusted she couldn’t even speak. Then she managed to say through stiff lips, “I am perfectly well aware that Mr. Bittersohn is a Jew. His people are neighbors of ours at Ireson’s Landing.”

  “Good heavens! Did your dear Aunt Caroline know his mother?”

  “Mrs. Bittersohn is very selective in the people she chooses to know.” Sarah could be bitchy, too, given the kind of provocation she was getting now. “However, as you learned this evening, the son is not the least bit snobbish provided one doesn’t try to overstep the line. And he doesn’t run an art gallery, he’s an internationally known art expert. His work requires a great deal of travel, so he finds it convenient to have a pied-à-terre here, and I must say I consider myself unusually fortunate to have him as a tenant.”

  “Dear me, I had no—I must—” Miss Hartler floundered a bit, then chose another victim. “Then this Mrs. Sorpende—this femme fatale, who is making such an obvious play for your cousin’s fortune—what’s she an international expert in, or would it be indelicate to ask? May one know where on earth you managed to become associated with a woman like that?”

  Sarah played her trump card. “Through Aunt Marguerite.”

  “Marguerite? But she’s never once mentioned—we were always such great friends�
��how could I have missed—”

  “I believe Mrs. Sorpende is not personally acquainted with Aunt Marguerite.” Few people would be, if they knew what they were getting into when they accepted the introduction, in Sarah’s opinion. “She heard about my venture from a mutual acquaintance of theirs.”

  “Oh? Then I must know that person, at any rate. Who was it?”

  The only way to end this distasteful conversation, Sarah supposed, was to satisfy this nasty old creature’s curiosity once and for all. She racked her brain for the name Mrs. Sorpende had given. “Something with a B, I think. Brown? Baxter? Burns? No, Bodkin, that was it Mrs. G. Thackford Bodkin.”

  Miss Hartler emitted an odd little whinny. “But, my dear Sarah, how could she? Vangie Bodkin has been dead for two years. I’ve never been to a lovelier funeral.”

  Chapter 17

  SARAH PASSED ANOTHER TERRIBLE night. After she’d got Miss Hartler quieted down, she’d taken the almost unprecedented step of phoning Aunt Marguerite on her own initiative. Her ostensible reason was to pass the word about Mr. William Hartler’s impending funeral. In fact, she wanted to make sure Vangie Bodkin’s had already taken place.

  Yes, Mrs. Bodkin was well and truly demised. Yes, Joanna Hartler had been her bosom friend and had wept copiously at the interment. No, Marguerite had never happened to run into a Theonia Sorpende. What was she like, and why didn’t Sarah bring her down sometime?

  That was what had upset Sarah so dreadfully. Aunt Marguerite was not one to forget a name or deny an acquaintance, however slight. She liked to pass herself off as the most sought-after hostess in Newport. Since she was far from being that, she had to do a good deal of seeking on her own hook. If the late Vangie Bodkin had ever so much as mentioned Theonia Sorpende in her hearing, she’d have insisted on Vangie’s bringing the woman to one of her teas, cocktail parties, luncheons, dinners, charity balls, and certainly to what she called her Sunday afternoon salons.