King Devil Read online

  He got out of the place at last, clutching his precious note like a talisman. Lavinia wondered whom he was going to disappoint in order to bask in Zilpha’s glory. She was beginning to have uneasy feelings about this little game Roland was being sucked into playing. She must put an end to the farce before any real harm was done, but how?

  She had no time to worry about that now. The phone was ringing again, and a desperate voice on the other end of the wire was yelling, “I got to talk to somebody, fast.”

  “Mr. Clinton is downtown, and Mr. Athelney’s gone to the depot,” she told him.

  “I haven’t got time to go traipsing all over hell an’ gone!”

  “Oh, dear!” Lavinia racked her brain. “If you’ll give me your name and number, I’ll try to reach Mr. Clinton at the county surveyor’s office and have him call you from there.”

  “Now, that’s usin’ your head for somethin’ besides a hatrack. Surveyor’s office, you said? Never mind, I’ll catch him myself.”

  The man hung up without saying goodbye. Lavinia went back to her files feeling pleased with herself. She had finished a whole drawer and got thoroughly covered with dust when Clinton rattled up to the turnaround, two lard pails swinging from the handlebars of his bicycle.

  “Oh, good!”

  Lavinia ran out and unhooked the pails. “There must be food enough here to feed an army. Are you trying to fatten me up?”

  “I’ve got a mouth on me, too,” he reminded her. “What possessed you to sic Bob Winger on me at the surveyor’s office?”

  “Was that the man who telephoned? He didn’t say who he was, only that he had to get hold of you right away.”

  “I’ve been ducking that pest for a week.”

  “How was I to know? I thought—”

  “Don’t tell me. You thought it was a good idea. Cripes, either I get a girl who can’t think at all or one who thinks too much. Well, aren’t you going to give me a sandwich?”

  She pried the lids off the lard pails and set out the food. “If you’d explain things to me, perhaps I might function more intelligently.”

  “That’s what we need around here, more intelligent functioning,” he said with his mouth full, “and some mustard for the ham.”

  “I think it tastes wonderful without. I never get food like this. Who makes it?”

  Lavinia suddenly wondered if there might be a Mrs. Clinton down in the village.

  It was a strange relief to hear him reply, “My landlady. Ath and I board with Mrs. Grieder.”

  “Oh? Is she nice?”

  “Not a bad old scout. Kind of stingy with the linen, but she sets a good table. How long did it take Ath to get around to leaving?”

  “Not long. I—I prodded him a little.”

  “Good for you. The only time he’s ever in a hurry is when some dame invites him over for a home-cooked meal and a little you-know-what on the parlor sofa.”

  Lavinia almost choked on her sandwich. “Please, tell me about this job you’re doing. Who’s likely to be asking for you, and what should I tell them?”

  She got pencil and paper, and needed them. Clinton talked fast, mostly with his mouth full. He finished his lunch and put on his cap, practically in one motion. Lavinia was disappointed.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me any more?”

  “Why, don’t tell me you’re interested?”

  “I think it’s perfectly fascinating. I’d adore to get a look at the blueprints sometime.”

  “Sure, if you’d like. Maybe tomorrow, after we get through for the day?”

  “Oh, dear.” She couldn’t help flushing. “I’m afraid my guardian has something planned.”

  “I see. Is that how you got Ath to move so fast?”

  “Without waiting for an answer, he slammed out of the room and mounted his rackety wheel again.”

  “When will you be back?” she called.

  “When I get here.”

  He was gone, leaving her with two empty lard pails and a sinking heart. She might have known it was no use trying to spare his feelings. Now he was going to think all her efforts at being a competent office girl were meant to impress Roland. She tried to tell herself it made no difference, so long as he let her stay.

  File folders didn’t offer much scope for letting off steam. Lavinia found a broom and something that might have been meant for a dust rag, and started to clean. If the partners had a charwoman, she must be a relative of Adenoid Annie.

  Sweeping was soothing to the temper, but hard on white shirtwaists. She ought to bring in an apron of some kind. The frilly white muslins in which they did their pretend-housekeeping were no good for this kind of work. She was wondering whether it might be feasible to convert that old gym suit into some kind of cleaning coverall when a team stopped outside and a workman came in carrying a roll of blueprints.

  “Hay said to leave these here.”

  Lavinia thought she recognized the voice. This must be the man who’d been rude to her on the telephone yesterday. If so, he was construction boss on the one job that was going right, hence a man to be catered to. She greeted him with such a dazzling smile that he actually took off his hard-crowned derby hat.

  “You must be Mr. Thurgood. How kind of you to bring these! I hope it didn’t put you out of your way.”

  “No trouble.”

  Thurgood fiddled with the curly brim of his hat, eyeing the new girl in wonderment. “What happened to the peroxide blonde?”

  “Do you mean the typewriter who was here before me? I’m afraid I can’t tell you. She left before I ever saw her.”

  “Hay fired her, eh? Don’t surprise me none,” the man grunted. “That Jane wasn’t interested in anybody’s figures but her own. Hay said next time he was going to look for the skinniest, homeliest old maid—” he flushed and shut up.

  “And as you see,” said Lavinia calmly, “he found her.”

  Thurwood guffawed. “Say, there ain’t no flies on you. How’d you like a run in the dray? We might even stop at the Busy Bee for a cup o’ coffee if you don’t tell nobody.”

  “Thank you, but I’m afraid I can’t. I live just a short walk from here and my people will be expecting me straight home.”

  It was the right thing for a nice girl to say, but she did feel a slight pang at having to say it. Nobody had ever tried to lure her into a clandestine rendezvous before, not even in a freight wagon behind two mud-covered percherons.

  The construction boss didn’t seem to mind being turned down. He probably hadn’t meant the invitation seriously anyway. He was taking note of her efforts.

  “Say, you’re gettin’ the shop fixed up real handsome. Boys, oh, girls! You should o’ seen it when Old Man Jenks was around.”

  Lavinia pounced. “Oh, then you knew Mr. Jenks?”

  “Cripes, I ought to. I been workin’ for him an’ the boys ever since I got kicked out o’ grammar school for tyin’ a billygoat in the privy. Teacher wore a hoop skirt an’ she had to go in backwards. She had her petticoats already h’isted when he butted her clear across the schoolyard into a clump o’ blackberry vines. Sure, I knew Jenks. I knew Mrs. Jenks an’ Charlie, too.”

  “Did you really? Who was Charlie? Is that Mrs. Smith’s husband?”

  “No, Smith’s first name is Ted. It will be Mud if he ever shows his ugly face around here again, far’s I’m concerned. Charlie was Jenks’s son. Only one he ever had. Tried it once an’ was too dern lazy to do it again, I guess.”

  “What happened to Charlie? You’re the first person I’ve heard mention him.”

  “Don’t s’pose folks remember him much. He took off somewheres, and nobody’s ever seen hide nor hair of him since.”

  “How strange! Like father, like son.”

  “No, this wasn’t the same kind o’ thing. We’d all known Charlie was goin’ to pull up stakes as soon as the old lady died. There was nothin’ to hold him in Dalby. Him an’ the old man never got along.”

  “Then Charlie didn’t have any interest
in the business?”

  “What business? It was the grandfather that got the company goin’. Wasn’t for him, Jenks wouldn’t have had a pot to—” Thurgood stopped himself just in time. “By the time Charlie took off, the old man was hangin’ on by the toenails. He was a good enough architect, but so ornery he couldn’t get along with his clients and so disorganized you never knew where you stood on a job. Finally I told him point blank, he’d either have to get somebody in here that could keep things halfway straight or find himself another construction boss. So what did he do but turn around and hire a fifteen-year-old kid that wasn’t even out o’ short trousers yet. Oh, he was a ring-tailed peeler, old Jonah Josiah!”

  “Was that Hayward Clinton he hired?”

  “Dern tootin’ it was. Hay used to come around summertimes with his father. Timmins Clinton was a fine carpenter, but he was bothered a lot with rheumatism. Finally got so bad he had to quit altogether. Anyway, Hay was helpin’ him one day right after Jenks an’ me had our dust-up. I says, ‘You goin’ to be a carpenter like your Pop when you get through school?’ an’ he says, ‘Nope. I’m goin’ to be an architect.’ Well, Jenks happened to hear him, so he says, ‘All right, kiddo, I’ll take you on as apprentice.’ Figured to shut me up, see? Well, by gorry, that little kid dug in an’ before long he had this place runnin’ like a top, in spite o’ Jenks fightin’ him every step o’ the way.”

  Thurgood grinned. “Couldn’t even afford to buy himself a pair o’ long pants for about a year. Then people started wantin’ indoor plumbin’ and heatin’ built in, so Jenks hired an engineer. Young feller with one year o’ college. That was Ath. Nice boy. They’re both nice boys. They’ve been held back by all this foolishness about not bein’ able to settle the estate, but they’ll go some now, you wait an’ see.”

  “I’m sure they will. But I understand Mrs. Smith thinks the business should have come to her instead of them.”

  Thurgood snorted. “Cripes, if it wasn’t for them two, there’d be nothin’ left for anybody. You can take my word for it, Sister. Hay an’ Ath got no more than what they’d earned. They don’t owe none of the Jenkses one red cent. Hay had to fight that old devil every inch, even after he was gone. There was lots o’ times I could have killed the old buzzard myself.”

  “Mr. Jenks certainly had a knack for getting himself hated, I gather,” said Lavinia.

  “He sure did, an’ it’s kind of a funny thing now that you mention it. Jenks had a nasty tongue on him, but he never done nothing really mean to nobody. He never got drunk an’ vicious like Ted Smith, for instance. There was a prize for you! How Nellie Jenks ever got stuck with that bird was more than I could figure out. You wouldn’t think it to look at her now, but Nellie was a mighty pretty girl.”

  The construction boss stared out the shop window at the lubberly boy across the way, swinging his empty scythe across the unkempt yard. “Yep, I was kind o’ sweet on Nellie there myself, for a while. But I wasn’t good enough for her, so she marries a no-good bum, loses two babies, an’ brings up the third a halfwit. Not but what Peter’s a decent enough kid in his way. I can’t say I blame Nellie for wantin’ to hang on to him. Godfrey mighty, a woman’s got to have somethin’. Ted was always for puttin’ Peter into a home, but Nellie wouldn’t stand for it. She told him if he done that to her, he’d never see one red cent of the old man’s money. So Ted stuck around and kept his dirty fingers in the pie. Now he’s off with the spondulix and a slut from a Portland hashhouse, and here’s Nellie scrubbin’ rich people’s floors to support the kid. Funny the way things turn out, ain’t it?”

  Thurgood stood with his back to the room, looking over toward the Smith place, thinking perhaps of pretty Nellie Jenks. Lavinia felt guilty about breaking into his reverie, but she was not about to be cheated of the first satisfactory gossip she’d found in Dalby.

  “Did Mrs. Smith always expect to inherit her uncle’s property?”

  “Why do you think she kept house for him all those years after his wife died? She never got nothin’ for it, not even a thank you. The day Charlie said he was takin’ off, his father told him he needn’t never try to pull no Prodigal Son stunt because there wasn’t goin’ to be no fatted calf waitin’. No sooner Charlie was on the train than the old sculpin marched hisself down to the lawyer’s office and made out his will in favor of Nellie. Far as I know he never changed one word, except when he got outfoxed into havin’ to make the business over to the boys.”

  “Was it generally known he’d done that?”

  “Nope. Never told a soul, an’ neither did they. Could o’ knocked me over with a feather when I heard about it.”

  “I understand Mrs. Smith was dreadfully upset.”

  “She wa’nt none too pleased, I can tell you that. Ain’t got over it yet, an’ I don’t suppose she ever will.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Lavinia, “but the business couldn’t have been worth much, could it, if Mr. Jenks was doing so badly?”

  “Not when the boys took over, it wasn’t. They’ve had a hard row to hoe, I can tell you, tryin’ to get it up to where it is now. Still an’ all, Hay paid over old Jenks’s wages faithful every week to Nellie for the whole seven years till they could get him declared legally dead, which was when it come out that him and Ath was the lawful owners. Some thought they ought to of paid Nellie a lump settlement then, but Hay said for all he knew Jenks had been dead the whole time and they’d forked over seven years’ wages they didn’t have to as it was. Hay never had no time for Ted Smith, settin’ around rakin’ in a steady livin’ for doin’ nothing while he was over here sweatin’ his guts out.”

  “And trying to make his partner do the same?” Lavinia put in mischievously.

  “Don’t get that boy to sweat no more’n has to,” Thurgood grunted. “Ath’s a nice boy, but he’ll never set the world on fire. Anyhow, along comes some cussed fool of a city woman and gives Nellie fifteen thousand dollars for that old place that wasn’t worth no more than five, so Ted sees his big chance and takes off. He’s got the money, if there’s anything left of it by now, and the boys got the business, and Nellie’s worse off than she was before, after waitin’ on the old devil all those years. After Ted lit out, the boys did try to make her a small allowance, but she riz up on her high horse and said she’d rather go to the poor farm than take blood money. She practically accused ’em to their faces of murderin’ her uncle to get hold of his business.”

  “You don’t—”

  Lavinia wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to say. In any event, she didn’t get to say it. Jim Thurgood seemed to swell until he filled the whole drafting room. His eyes blazed fire, like a raccoon’s in the dark.

  “No, I don’t,” he roared, “an’ you damn well hadn’t better, neither!”

  A second later, he was Sunny Jim again. “Cripes, me standin’ here jawin’ like an old woman an’ the gang back there waitin’ for me to sign ’em out. Nice to have met you, er—”

  “Lavinia,” she told him. “Lavinia Tabard.”

  “Tabard?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “Ain’t that the name of the woman who bought Jenks’s place? Jumpin’ Jehosaphat, don’t tell me you’re her daughter?”

  “No, just a poor relation. I’m glad to have met you, Mr. Thurgood.”

  In a way, she was. This brief chat with the construction boss had told her many of the facts she’d been longing to know about the Jenkses. The trouble was, it also raised fresh doubts.

  She wanted to go on working here in the drafting room, wanted it more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. But did she dare? Could there be any truth behind Nellie Smith’s bitter accusations? Was Thurgood’s denial prompted by anything other than loyalty to his employers? Was she, or was she not, keeping books for a pair of murderers?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “I think a lobster bisque followed by Beef Wellington, don’t you, Tetsy? Or do you think duckling and green peas?”

  “How about fresh-killed fowl?” Lavin
ia put in wickedly. “You should be able to pick one up somewhere along the road. May I please be excused, Zilpha? They’re expecting me in the drafting room.”

  She was more than a bit fed up with this dinner party idea. Did it ever occur to these two middle-aged women that they might be inviting trouble by trying to impose their own way of life on a rural community that was so far from anything they knew and understood?

  Zilpha was like one of those exotic fish people kept in glass bowls, circling around and around in her private element, content to be seen and admired, thinking that because she could see a little of what was happening around her, she was actually in contact with reality. She didn’t even know that there was a glass wall between herself and the rest of the world, nor did she care so long as her bowl was kept exactly the way she wanted it.

  Tetsy was like the snail that crawled along the bottom, keeping the bowl tidy. And Lavinia? She’d been in the bowl, too, she supposed. Now she’d jumped over the rim and was still feeling like a fish out of water. All that she’d learned about the other side so far was that it was a great deal more confusing than she’d expected.

  How many more days would she have in the drafting room? Would she find out something that would force her to leave? Would she be shoved out willy-nilly over this stupid matchmaking scheme? Of course Hayward was hurt at being left out, just as she’d often been at school, even though he’d have loathed the dinner party quite as heartily as she was going to.

  Lavinia walked up to the shop, carrying the apron she’d spent all the previous evening sewing, wondering how many chances she’d get to wear it. She rather dreaded facing the ginger cat, but it turned out that Clinton had already been and gone, leaving a stack of scribbles for her to translate into correspondence.

  Roland was not to be seen, either. He telephoned as she was making paper cuffs to protect the sleeves of her shirtwaist.

  “It looks as if I’ll be tied up here most of the day. We’ve run into some problems with the piping. Will you tell Miss Tabard I sure am looking forward to dinner?”