Terrible Tide Page 17

  “Roger must be having fits because you haven’t shown up for work this morning, Sam,” Holly remarked.

  “Nuts to Roger,” said Sam, helping himself to another pancake. “Has it ever occurred to you that my future brother-in-law may have one foot an inch or two around the bend?”

  “Often,” Holly answered frankly. “I think Fan knows it, too. That could be why she was willing to get him out of New York.”

  “Well, she came to the right place,” Claudine said. “Jugtown’s got its share of oddballs, all right.” Unconsciously she looked upward, toward Alice Parlett’s bedroom.

  “It’s Alzheimer’s disease, isn’t it?” Holly asked her gently.

  Claudine nodded. “Dr. Walker told me ages ago there wasn’t anything we could do except keep her as comfortable as possible till she had to be put away. I wasn’t going to let her die in an asylum. I wanted her to have the best, all the things she’d have had if Uncle Jonathan—”

  She started to cry. “I begged Dr. Walker never to tell anybody. We both knew what people would say. They’d never heard of anybody her age having such an ailment. They’d claim we were just trying to cover up because Daddy’d given her a—a disease.”

  Claudine went to pieces then. Holly sat stroking her head, not trying to stop her. Right now, tears were the best medicine. Sam got embarrassed, as men do when women cry, and tried to cope by being brusquely matter-of-fact “What’s Alzheimer’s disease?”

  “It’s a progressive, irreversible, and as far as I know incurable disease that affects the cerebral cortex,” Holly told him. “What happens is that the victim becomes forgetful and disoriented, and begins acting strangely. Picking fights for no reason, that sort of thing. As the disease progresses, it affects the parts of the brain that control the organic system. The body is less and less able to function. The victim deteriorates physically and finally dies of what looks like old age, even though he or she may be relatively young. That’s why—”

  “Why I was able to fool people into thinking Mother was Great-aunt Mathilde,” sniffled Claudine. “She’s only sixty, but she looks a hundred. Dr. Walker didn’t think she’d last long. It’s only because Annie took such wonderful care of her. I don’t know why. Annie never bothered much about Mother while she was all right.”

  She sat up and blew her nose on a paper napkin. “Nobody did. Mother was always pretty tough to get along with, I have to admit. But she’s still my mother.”

  “Not many mothers have a daughter like you,” said Holly.

  “You’re right. There aren’t that many fools in the world.”

  “Knock it off,” Sam growled. “Listen, Claudine, I know what you went through as a kid. You were brainwashed from the day you were born. Your father was always spouting off about what a great man he’d have been if he hadn’t been cheated out of his so-called rights, and your mother backed him up because she couldn’t admit she’d been dumb enough to cut her own throat by tying up with a no-good drunk. Maybe that’s not very tactful but it’s the truth, and you might as well face it.”

  “I know now, but I had to believe them then. How else could I have stood being the worst-dressed girl in school and having a father who spent half his time in jail?”

  “Sam isn’t judging you, Claudine,” said Holly. “He’s just trying to say he understands why you put your mother in Mathilde Parlett’s place.”

  “I didn’t murder another old woman to get my mother a bed, if that’s what you’re thinking. Great-aunt Mathilde died peacefully of old age right after Dr. Walker left, just as he’d said she would. Annie knew we were on the outs, but we were the only Parletts left, so she called us first. She was terribly upset about losing Great-aunt Mathilde and scared stiff about what would happen to her. She was sure Earl Stoodley was going to put her straight out into the snow without a shirt to her back.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him,” Sam grunted. “Go on, Claudine. What did you do?”

  “I told her to stay there and keep her mouth shut. Then I got Ellis to help me bundle Mother up and sneak her into that old truck of his, that used to be Daddy’s. I’d already gone into the antique business by then, selling off whatever we had of our grandparents’ that was worth anything, and picking up the odd piece here and there. We had to live somehow, and I couldn’t go out to work on account of Mother. Anyway, we made believe we were setting off on a business trip, or would have if anyone’d asked us, but luckily nobody did. Once we’d got clear of town, Ellis swung around by the back road and made a beeline for Parlett’s Point. Annie let us in. We carried Mother up to the bedroom and took Great-aunt Mathilde’s body back home with us.

  “The next morning I called Dr. Nicholson and told him Mother had died in her sleep. He was brand-new in town, of course, and had never laid eyes on her. He knew from Dr. Walker’s records that she had Alzheimer’s disease, so he didn’t make any trouble about signing the death certificate. He did want to do an autopsy, but I cried and carried on about not wanting poor, dear Mummy cut up, so he backed off. Then we had the best funeral I could afford and buried Great-aunt Mathilde in the family plot, right next to Great-uncle Jonathan. I suppose some people thought we did it for spite, but I didn’t care. I’d done what I thought was right. Only it didn’t stop there.”

  Claudine began drawing patterns on the tablecloth with her spoon handle. “You see, what I did gave Ellis the notion that it was all right for him to—well, he started bringing home some pretty good antique pieces and telling me he’d found them at the dump, or out back in those old deserted houses left over from when they had the pottery works. I believed him at first because I wanted to, I suppose. I sold off the pieces to pay our back bills and fix up the shop the way I wanted it. Then I told him he’d better quit finding things because by that time I had a pretty strong hunch where they were coming from. But he did it once more and that time, Geoffrey caught him.”

  She took a sip of cold coffee and wiped her lips with infinite care. “Geoffrey had just moved to Jugtown. I’d never met him before, though of course I’d heard some of the gossip. He was supposed to be quite famous, though nobody could say exactly why. Anyway, he collared Ellis with a nice cranberry glass compote, and brought him back to the shop. Then we all three sat down for a quiet little talk.

  “I thought he was going to lecture Ellis about stealing from Cliff House, and I hoped he’d lay it on good and thick. Instead, he started asking a lot of kind, understanding questions about ourselves, our parents, and our connection with Cliff House.”

  Claudine shrugged. “I’d only been there the one time we took Mother, and naturally I couldn’t admit to that, but I knew enough to keep him interested. Mother used to go on by the hour about the porcelains and the furniture and the twelve nightgowns Great-aunt Mathilde had brought back from Paris while we had nothing to sleep in but one old flannel rag apiece. I guess I gave him quite an earful. Anyway, the next day he was back here looking for things to put in his new house. What he was really looking for, he said, was a pair of wall sconces like the ones I’d described at Cliff House.

  “To make a long story short, he politely suggested Ellis should go and steal them for him. He didn’t say it in so many words, of course. He’s much too clever for that. But I got the message all right. He also dropped a gentle hint that if we didn’t get them, he’d have Ellis arrested for stealing the compote.”

  “That figures,” said Holly. “What did you do?”

  “Well, I told him no. Then he made believe he was only joking and trying to make me blush because I looked so—I ought to have known he was—but how could I? Nobody’d ever paid me a compliment before.”

  Claudine spread her hands in a gesture of self-deprecation. “So that was the molasses that caught the fly. After that Geoffrey came in pretty often, and we started having soulful chats about what a rotten deal Ellis and I had got from the Parletts. Of course that was what Mama and Daddy had always claimed. Needless to say, I was happy to hear the same thing from a fine, upsta
nding gentleman like Professor Cawne.

  “Then he started making shy, genteel passes at me and by that time I’d have robbed the Royal Bank of Canada if he’d asked me to. But I still wasn’t about to involve Ellis, so Geoffrey and I started a little game of our own. We were terribly clever about it. I’d get my hands on some piece that wasn’t worth much but resembled one Mother had described. Then Geoffrey would take it out to Cliff House and substitute it for the real thing, which he’d sell to somebody he knew—he’d never tell me who it was—and bring me the money. He said it was his way of making up to me for all I’d been deprived of as a child.”

  “How touching,” said Holly. “Just like Robin Hood.”

  “As I recall, Robin Hood always managed to keep a healthy slice of the loot for himself,” Sam added.

  “Roughly eighty percent in my case,” Claudine admitted, “though I didn’t realize that for quite a while. After I’d learned enough about the antique business to realize how little I was clearing in proportion to what the pieces were really worth, I tried to convince Geoffrey his dear friend was stealing us blind. He was grieved and wounded at my lack of trust. Anyway, it was all clear profit and more money than I’d ever handled before, so I didn’t complain too hard. It became easier and easier to believe I was only taking what I was entitled to, especially with Earl Stoodley yammering at me about when was the old woman going to die and let him get his greasy meathooks into the pie? If Earl ever finds out how I tricked him for five whole years, he’ll kill me.”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised,” Holly agreed. “Earl must be out of his mind, having his dreams of glory go up in smoke. If he only knew the man he helped get away was the one who set the fire!”

  “Will you quit harping on Stoodley?” said Sam. “Go on, Claudine. What about Cawne’s operation?”

  “Where was I? Oh, about Cliff House. Once he started going in there, of course, Geoffrey knew a lot more than I did about what to steal. Instead of my having to wait for a usable piece to come in, he’d give me a list and send me out hunting. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t love that. I’d go to Toronto or Montreal, maybe, and sometimes Geoffrey would meet me. We’d have dinner in fancy restaurants, see the ballet or a play, do things I’d only dreamed about. We had to be terribly careful about not acting too friendly in Jugtown, though. That’s why I got active in the Women’s Circle and—”

  “Took long walks in the woods?” Holly put in slyly.

  Claudine flushed. “Well, that’s over now. At least I’ve got Mother back, though not for long, I don’t suppose. I wonder if Dr. Walker will know who she is?”

  “Uncle Ben’s pretty hard to fool,” said Sam, “but he’ll understand. If you want, I’ll tell him the story myself.”

  “Oh Sam, would you?” Claudine started to cry again. “I didn’t think I had a friend in the world, except maybe Annie Blodgett. And what’s to become of her now?”

  “Don’t fret yourself about Annie,” said Sam. “She’s all set.”

  “How?”

  “You’ll know soon enough.”

  That was a load off Holly’s mind, but she still had her own problems to settle. “Claudine, whose idea was it to rope in my brother on the racket?”

  “Geoffrey’s, of course. I wasn’t supposed to have ideas, just carry out orders. After your sister-in-law showed up at the Women’s Circle and told us what your brother did, I passed on the information, that’s all. Geoffrey checked him out and got excited. You see, we’d had to leave the furniture alone until then. Vases and things were easy enough. Annie’s eyesight isn’t what it was and I gather that neither is her housekeeping. Besides, she was busy with Mother. So long as we put something more or less the right size and shape in the place she was used to seeing something, she’d never notice the difference. Earl Stoodley was our big problem.”

  Claudine sighed. “He used to come and blether to me about how many hours he was putting in at Cliff House, planning and measuring and making a general nuisance of himself, no doubt. Earl doesn’t know beans about antiques, but he’s sharp as a tack in some ways and he was always messing around with the furniture, making little sketches and haranguing me about where the different pieces should go when it came time to set up the museum. That meant we didn’t dare take away the originals until we had copies that matched his sketches. And here was Roger Howe, able to turn them out. His being in Jugtown made it harder for us, in a way.”

  “I can imagine,” said Sam. “I mean, you couldn’t exactly waltz up to him and say, ‘Please make a Sheraton highboy and deliver it to Cliff House,’ could you?”

  “Hardly. That’s why Geoffrey invented Mrs. Brown.”

  “Who was she?” Holly asked. “Not you, surely?”

  “No, Geoffrey himself. He loves disguises. He even fooled me one day when he’d been out to see Roger and walked in here wearing some outlandish New Yorky getup. Green stockings, I remember. How ever did you catch on to his tricks so fast, Holly?”

  “How could I miss? The first copy I came across had a stain of my own blood on it.”

  Holly told them about the Bible box. “After that, it wasn’t hard to pick out others, and to find the little holes underneath where Roger’s nameplate had been taken off. I’d seen a scrapbook Fan kept with photographs and notes about all Roger’s different pieces before I went to Cliff House. Come to think of it, Fan showed the scrapbook to Geoffrey that night he came to dinner at Howe Hill.”

  “Yes, and he had a fit,” said Claudine. “All those notes in his own handwriting, that he thought he’d got back safely! It never occurred to him she might have had them copied.”

  “So that’s why Fan acted so strange about the scrapbook that day Geoffrey drove me back to Howe Hill. I asked to see it and she made a ridiculous excuse not to bring it out. I suppose Geoffrey’d stolen it by then and she didn’t dare let Roger know it was missing.”

  “I’m sure he had. He was cocky enough a day or so later, bragging to me about how he’d had so much fun making you help him take pictures of a piece he was going to get Roger to copy. I warned him you’re no fool and I—I’m afraid he did listen to me for once. He said he’d give you a test. I don’t know what he meant.”

  “I do,” said Holly. “Sunday morning he came to Cliff House with Earl and set up a group shot using a pair of piecrust tables Roger had made. When I saw what he’d done, I panicked. By then, you see, I’d made up my mind it must be Fan who was working the swindle. I had visions of all us Howes winding up in jail together if the photo ever got published. I thought I was terribly clever about working a razzle-dazzle switch to get the tables out of the shot.”

  “You were,” said Claudine. “That’s what bothered Geoffrey. He came in here last night while I was talking on the phone to you. He said you were too bright and would have to go. I asked what he planned to do and he said not to worry, it was already done. Then he left and I remembered about those pills. I grabbed the keys to Ellis’s truck and headed for Cliff House as fast as I could. But he beat me.”

  Claudine buried her face in her hands. “I suppose I’d known for a long time that Geoffrey was only using me. But when you’ve lived with dreams and illusions all your life, it’s hard to face the truth. Oh, God, how I want to be honest! I swear I shan’t mind going to jail. At least I’ll know where I am.”

  Chapter 29

  “WHAT MAKES YOU THINK we’re going to turn you in?” Sam asked her.

  Claudine stared at him from under swollen eyelids. “Why shouldn’t you? If I hadn’t pulled that awful trick with Mother and Great-aunt Mathilde, none of this would have happened. And if it hadn’t been for Holly, she and Annie and Mother and Bert Walker would all be dead by now, and it would be my fault.”

  “Did you know Cawne intended to fire-bomb Cliff House?”

  “Of course not! What do you think I am?”

  “Did you know what was in that bottle of rum you sent up Saturday?”

  “Some kind of mild sedative was what Geoffrey told
me. You see, back when Annie was there alone, Geoffrey and his helper would just lock her in her bedroom when they were—working. They moaned around a little, I guess, and made her think it was ghosts. I hated having Annie scared like that, but—”

  Claudine swallowed hard. “Anyway, with Holly around, Geoffrey said we’d have to step up our security measures. The sedative was supposed to be an experiment.”

  “Some experiment!” snorted Neill. “Who put it in the bottle? You?”

  “Oh, no. I wouldn’t have dared, for fear of poisoning somebody. My part was simply to send the rum on up with the groceries when Bert came. That’s why Geoffrey was here in the shop that day, Holly. He had the bottle under his jacket and dropped it in my basket while he was pretending to look at the stock. What a fool I’ve been!”

  She looked ready to burst into tears again. Sam hastily asked her, “Who was the helper? Ellis?”

  “Not Ellis. That was part of our bargain from the very beginning. I told Geoffrey I wouldn’t go along with him unless we kept Ellis clear out of it. I don’t know who helped him. I couldn’t go near the place, myself. I’d made that silly remark ages ago that I’d never set foot in Cliff House till we got our rights, and Geoffrey decided I’d better stick with it. Then if the thefts should ever be discovered, nobody would think to suspect me. Besides, it kept Ellis from having any more notions about Cliff House. I kept harping on our having too much pride to go back on our word and that sort of foolishness till he honestly believed we were involved in a big family feud. Ellis is easily led in some ways.”

  “Then you don’t actually know how the furniture was got in and out?” said Holly.