King Devil Page 6

  Lavinia was suddenly reminded of similar scenes back at the Academy. Two or more girls would often develop mad crushes on the same mistress or fellow student. Adoration led inevitably to jealousy. Name-calling and hair-pulling could erupt over the most trivial cause, such as who got to pass the butter to their idol at breakfast.

  Situations like these were normally a source of burning embarrassment to the crushee, but some young ladies seemed to welcome the languishing glances, the poetic effusions, the bunches of violets, and especially the eager slavery. Sometimes a favorite would be selected from among the ladies-in-waiting. There would be secret smiles, strolls with arms entwined, exchanges of much-folded notes, and possibly furtive meetings behind closed doors that might lead to a teacher’s being discharged or a pupil’s being sent home in tears, nobody ever quite knowing why.

  Lavinia couldn’t help thinking of that French mistress they’d had at school, the one who was dismissed for what was whispered of as her unhealthy influence on Willamette Boag.

  Willamette was a burly hulk of a girl who captained the field hockey team and bragged about riding in steeplechases with her brothers. She’d been the last person one would ever expect to be influenced by anyone at all, let alone a fragile fleur-de-lis like Mam’selle. Once smitten, however, she become so obsessed that her classmates hardly dared give a right answer in French lest they be accused of trying to cut her out. Willamette was expert at inflicting pain without leaving tattletale bruises on her victims.

  The horsy young girl and the fluttery, over-rouged older woman had made a strange couple, but no stranger than Zilpha and Tetsy. Lavinia supposed their association had started in much the same way. The only real difference was that one twosome had been broken up and the other pair had stayed together.

  Lavinia decided she ought to have realized long ago that what went on between Miss Tabard and Miss Mull was far more than the long-time friendship of like-minded spinsters. She supposed she had known, actually, she’d simply never before been forced to face up to the facts.

  Tetsy was not her personal enemy, she was the enemy of anybody who threatened to come between herself and Zilpha. And if Willamette Boag was any example, the nasty tricks she’d already pulled were only a foretaste of what was going to happen if Lavinia didn’t find some way to break free of this plush-lined prison.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Somebody, probably Mrs. Smith, had hung a cross-stitched splasher behind the washbowl in the downstairs bathroom, with an embroidered motto that read, “Count your blessings.” Perhaps she thought the message a suitable one for a poor relation.

  Lavinia noticed it the next morning as she brushed her teeth. Not having to share a bathroom was a real blessing. At least she could avoid certain intimacies that would be revolting to herself and no doubt infuriating to Tetsy. She wished she dared go out for another early walk, to get away from that seething resentment, but Zilpha had cautioned her to stay close at hand. They’d be down any minute now, because this was the day they did the wash.

  Abigail and Maude would no doubt be charmed to see how their acquaintance interpreted her self-imposed task. Zilpha might claim to do her own laundry, but she’d never in her life leaned over a washboard or stirred a boiled copper. She wouldn’t know a fluting iron from a cake of lye soap. Nevertheless, this was a major weekly production on the summer schedule.

  First a mammoth breakfast of waffles and sausage had to be cooked and eaten, not because the ladies needed all that heavy food but because this was what one did on washing-day. Then all three must buckle down to work, counting and listing the sheets and tablecloths and napkins, the shirtwaists and petticoats and handkerchiefs, sorting them into hampers and finally loading the hampers this year, she supposed, into the Packard to be personally delivered by Miss Tabard and her entourage to a laundress in the village.

  Notwithstanding an elaborate system of baskets and collar bags, the collecting and tabulating took them most of the morning. Tetsy fetched and carried. Zilpha, consulting a chart she’d got from her housekeeper in Boston, made weighty decisions as to heavy starch, light starch, or no starch. Lavinia was appointed clerk. She must make up the lists, alter them as the ladies changed their minds about what should go where, copy them over when they became totally unreadable from all the crossings-out and markings-over.

  She also had to write little notes at Zilpha’s dictation as to how each separate stain should be treated, and pin them over the spots. She wondered how many of them would ever get read, and how much less time the laundress would spend doing the wash than they were taking to get it ready, but she sensibly kept her thoughts to herself.

  “Now, my dears,” said Miss Tabard when the last handkerchief was counted, listed, and stowed away, “I call that an excellent morning’s work. What would you say to lunch?”

  Nobody said very much, they were still too full of breakfast. Nevertheless, they went through the accustomed ritual. Then began the discussion of who should accompany the wash to Dalby.

  “Tetsy must go, of course, since she’s the only one who knows how to drive the automobile.”

  “And you, too, Zilpha, to show the woman what you mean about those embroidered flounces.”

  “But where will Lavvy sit? Those hampers take up such a dreadful lot of space.”

  Lavinia saw a chance and grabbed it. “Wouldn’t this be a good time for me to walk up to the burying ground and do that rubbing you want for the front hall?”

  “A perfect time! Then we’ll leave you to your artistry, my dear.”

  At long last, they did. Lavinia waved them off, then went to get her paper and crayon. She’d put on an old gym middy and skirt to do the wash, and she might as well not bother to change. Nobody, except possibly Peter Smith, was likely to meet her on the road, and she’d already thrown the laundry squad into a tizzy by covering one perfectly good shirtwaist with lampblack.

  It might be a good idea to take that first rubbing along, just so that she wouldn’t make the same mistake again. Where on earth had it got to? She distinctly remembered sticking the rolled-up paper into a brass umbrella stand that was occupying space in her room for some unknown reason. Lavinia was not the sort of person who mislaid things, much less an article upward of two feet long. She pawed around inside the umbrella stand, poked under her bed, searched the dresser drawers, although she couldn’t possibly have been so absent-minded as to put that filthy thing in with clean clothes.

  She even went back to the parlor and looked behind the sofa cushions, knowing perfectly well she wouldn’t find the rubbing. She was never going to find it, and the reason wasn’t far to seek. Tetsy had no doubt used it to start the fire.

  There was no sense in stewing about something that was no good anyway. Still it made her sick to think of those gross hands rooting among her possessions. Would it do any good whatever to talk to Tetsy, to explain that she had no wish to stay where she wasn’t wanted? Miss Mull had money, might she not even be willing to lend some, for the sake of getting Lavinia out of the way?

  No, of course she wouldn’t. She’d march straight to Zilpha and report that Lav was scheming to disgrace the Tabard name as her mother had done before her. The only safe way to handle Tetsy was to keep out of her reach.

  Deciding she might as well enjoy her few hours of freedom, Lavinia bundled her things into a canvas carryall and trudged up the hill to the burying-ground. This time she’d had presence of mind enough to bring along a scrap of cocoa matting. Some of the king devils were showing frazzled yellow blooms today, but she still didn’t think much of them. For Peter’s sake, however, she tried not to break too many stems when she spread her matting in front of the gravestone.

  Since this rubbing was for Zilpha, it must be without flaw. She spent a good deal of time before she started to rub laying her paper die-straight over the face of the stone and taping the edges to prevent any disastrous shifting.

  She worked slowly, painstakingly, striving to keep her strokes absolutely uniform in pre
ssure. After a while, she began to wonder why some people found gravestone-rubbing a pleasant pastime. Her arms ached. Gnats and mosquitos came to investigate. She flapped them away and kept on rubbing.

  Peter Smith did not appear. Lavinia rather wished he would. She’d almost be glad to see the Packard come over the rise with Tetsy at the wheel, it was so lonely here. She flexed her cramped fingers and rubbed some more.

  At least the work was coming out right this time, the inscription standing out crisply against a smooth black background. She was almost down to the mutilated date, wondering how to handle that awkward bit. Would it be better to pretend the inscription had worn off and fill in the spot with solid black, or might it be possible to complete the rubbing, then work over the paper to restore the original date? If the defacement wasn’t cut too deep—she ran exploring fingertips under the paper.

  How very odd! The stone that had been flat enough yesterday now felt rough and pitted. Gingerly, Lavinia loosened the tapes from the lower left-hand corner and raised the paper.

  “I don’t believe it,” she gasped aloud.

  Sometime since yesterday afternoon, the altered date had been chipped clean away.

  Could Tetsy Mull have done this? When would she have found the time? Not last evening, because she’d been in the house when Lavinia got home and hadn’t stirred out until bedtime. Not this morning, because they’d been all together, busy with the wash. She had passed this way earlier in the afternoon, but she couldn’t have stopped then because she had Zilpha in the automobile with her.

  Was it possible that a heavy-set, middle-aged woman had risen in the middle of the night from the bed she shared with Zilpha, walked a mile or more in pitch darkness, attacked the gravestone with hammer and chisel, then got back to bed without being caught out?

  She wouldn’t need a hammer and chisel. Slate had been used for these early grave markers simply because it was soft enough to carve easily. A strong kitchen knife and a rock to pound it with would do the job. Much as she wanted to blame Tetsy, though, Lavinia couldn’t quite picture the woman out in a graveyard in her flannel nightgown, defacing a tombstone by lantern light just to spite a girl she resented.

  It must have been Peter Smith, but where had he gotten the tool to do the job? Remembering that bladeless scythe, Lavinia thought Mrs. Smith was probably careful to keep anything sharp out of her son’s way.

  She was still wondering when a chugging noise and a cloud of dust told her an automobile was coming up the rise. Could Zilpha and Tetsy be returning already? No, the vehicle was a Ford truck, and she was soon able to identify the driver, despite his peaked cap and motoring goggles, as the attractive Mr. Athelney. It was too much to hope that he’d stop.

  No, it wasn’t. He not only pulled up beside the stone wall, he got out and walked over to where she was working.

  “Do you mind if I watch, Miss Tabard?”

  “Not at all,” she replied warmly.

  Then it occurred to her that maybe Athelney wasn’t just being sociable. She hadn’t mentioned the altered date on the headstone yesterday. Did he think she hadn’t noticed? Could he or his bristly partner have chipped it off last night after they’d left the Hollow?

  There was no getting around the fact that Jenks’s disappearance was a piece of luck for them. They’d had a free hand to run the business as they pleased. Now they were the legal owners. Perhaps they’d been afraid that having attention drawn to the critical date in such a bizarre manner might give the city ladies strange ideas about how the old architect came to vanish.

  Then could they also have taken her rubbing? Why not? She’d been out of her bedroom all morning. Its windows were low to the ground and the drafting shop wasn’t far from the house. An agile young man could slip through the shrubberies, climb in and collar that roll of paper she’d so conveniently left sticking up out of the umbrella stand and get back to his stool while the ladies were bickering over the laundry lists. If any workmen saw him, they’d assume he was doing some plans for Miss Tabard, and if Zilpha or Tetsy or herself had happened to notice, he could have pretended he was there to see the carpenters about some other project.

  Whatever his reason for being here, he was laying himself out to be agreeable. Lavinia waited until he’d praised her work out of all proportion to its merit, then she said, “Thank you, but I’m afraid it won’t turn out as well as I hoped. The stone seems to have been defaced down at the bottom, where the date of death ought to be.”

  She lifted a corner of her paper to show him the flaked-off patch of raw slate. “Don’t you think that looks as though it’s been done quite recently?”

  “Yes, isn’t that a shame?”

  His voice sounded quite natural. “Maybe somebody whacked it with a shovel while they were digging around the graves looking for Mr. Jenks.”

  “But that was seven years ago.”

  He only looked puzzled, and Lavinia went back to her rubbing. There wasn’t much left to do. She finished it off as best she could and was about to loosen the tapes when Athelney whipped out his pocket knife.

  “Let me do that for you.”

  “No, please,” she objected. “It smudges terribly, and you’ll get your hands dirty. I don’t think I got the wax and lampblack mixed right.”

  “We have some fixatif in the shop that might help. If you don’t mind riding in the truck, I could give you a lift back and spray it for you.”

  “Would you really? The rubbing is for Miss Tabard, you see.”

  “So of course it’s got to be just perfect.”

  Athelney’s voice rose in exaltation. “What wonderful taste she has! I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the place last night. You’d never know it was the same house.”

  “It’s taken a lot of doing, they tell me. Mr. Jenks must have paid more attention to his clients’ houses than he did to his own. Was he not a married man?”

  “A widower. His wife died a long time ago. He wouldn’t even have a hired girl after that. His niece used to go in and cook for him, but he got cross if she tidied things away. It was the same around the shop, plans and specifications piled every which way. You could never find anything. Hay used to get furious about the clutter.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “Well, it was Mr. Jenks’s business.”

  “And now it’s yours. You must be glad.”

  “I suppose so. It’s a lot of responsibility. Here, let me carry that mat for you.”

  He put her small armload of paraphernalia into the back of the truck, assisted her into the cab, and took his place behind the wheel.

  “I’m sorry I have no veil or duster to offer you. I should have asked if you’d like to wear my coat.”

  “Not for such a short way. I have nothing on worth bothering about.”

  Even Roland couldn’t find anything flattering to say about her faded middy blouse. He concentrated on steering around the ruts and potholes, to avoid as many jolts as possible. His driving was an agreeable change from Tetsy’s. Lavinia was sorry they hadn’t farther to go. She was still expressing her thanks when they entered the drafting room to find Hayward Clinton hunched over a typewriting machine, jabbing at the keys with one finger.

  “Hay, guess who I found in the graveyard,” said Athelney.

  “I hope it was Adenoid Annie killing herself.”

  Clinton ripped out the paper at which he had been laboring and jammed it furiously into a wastebasket. “I fired the blasted idiot while you were out.”

  “What for?”

  “Among other things, she sent Lepreaux’s estimate to MacDougall.”

  “Oh, no! What are we going to do?”

  “Hire another idiot, I suppose. No typewriter worth a hoot is going to come way out here.”

  “I meant about MacDougall?”

  “That’s taken care of for the moment, I hope.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Managed to get him on the telephone and lied my teeth out. He knew I was lying and I knew
he knew, so he laughed and said I owed him a drink. But I’ve got to get the straight figures to him by tomorrow morning, or it won’t be so funny.”

  Clinton threaded a fresh letterhead into the machine wrong end up and said a terrible word. Athelney glanced apologetically at Lavinia.

  “He isn’t always like this, Miss Tabard. Sometimes he’s much worse.”

  The handsome partner spread Lavinia’s rubbing out on a table and secured the edges with pushpins. “Hay, come and have a look at this.”

  The ginger cat pecked, muttered something, tore out the paper, and shoved himself away from the desk. “What is it?”

  Athelney was spraying fixatif, blowing gently through a tiny L-shaped metal pipette inserted in a tin container, moving it back and forth with deft, thoughtful turns of his shapely wrist to distribute a fine, even mist over the surface. Lavinia had begun to feel rather proud of having her artwork treated so professionally, but when Clinton slouched over to inspect it, she turned hot.

  “Very pretty,” he grunted.

  “Miss Tabard’s aunt is going to have it framed,” said Athelney, obviously trying to coax a civil response.

  “That’s nice. Are you joining the ladies for tea, Ath?”

  Lavinia decided it was high time this cat had its ears pinned back.

  “Yes, Mr. Athelney,” she said sweetly, “why don’t you? They must be home by now. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to take the rubbing down to the house and explain that I’ve stayed behind to help Mr. Clinton with his letter.”

  She sat down and twirled a fresh letterhead into the typewriting machine. “Now, what was it you were trying to say?”

  The architect opened and shut his mouth once or twice, then began to dictate. Lavinia rattled off the words, then sat waiting with an air of girlish expectancy while he struggled to decipher his own scrawled memoranda. This was the most fun she’d had in ages.

  By a happy accident, she was an excellent typewriter. A parent whose business was manufacturing the machines, which were just becoming popular for office use, had donated one to the Academy. Miss Plomm was quite willing to let Lavinia, who by then had completed every possible course of study and was becoming something of a problem, spend hours picking away at the intriguing device. By midterm, she had become so proficient that she’d been put to work as a sort of unpaid secretary to the headmistress. After Miss Plomm’s convoluted prose, Lavinia found Clinton’s terse, matter-of-fact style no trouble at all.