Family Vault (3 page)

Dolph was off and running. Sarah managed to slip away from the newshounds and check on what was happening at the vault. Somebody had asked why she thought the Kelling vault had been selected as the hiding place, and she’d said she had no idea. It wasn’t the biggest or the best-hidden from the street. It wasn’t the easiest to get at, being close to the church and far from the gate. She supposed it just happened to be the one somebody was able to open. No, the caretaker hadn’t had any particular difficulty unlocking the door. Yes, those primitive old locks would probably be simple enough to jimmy if one knew how. She wouldn’t have the faintest idea, herself. One would have to ask—she’d stopped herself just in time from saying, “my husband.” This was not the time or place to advertise that Alexander had also taken a course in locksmithing.

The Homicide people worked as meticulously as archaeologists, photographing the skeleton from various angles, packing up as much of the moldering costume as they could salvage, making especially sure not to overlook any ruby chips that might have fallen out of the teeth. It was a long time before they completed their task. Sarah was chilled to the bone, half-starved, and desperate for a ladies’ room before the police showed any inclination to let the Kellings go on with their personal business.

“This old man who said he knew the woman,” somebody asked her for about the sixth time, “where did you say he went?”

“I didn’t say because I don’t know,” she replied somewhat waspishly. “He was with me when I went out to call for help, and he wasn’t when I got back. I don’t remember seeing him go off because I was talking to the policeman.”

“How long was he here?”

“I couldn’t tell you. He was in the cemetery when I got here, that’s all I can say.”

“Did he say why he was in the cemetery?”

“Oh, I doubt if he had any particular reason…”

“How did you happen to start a conversation with him?”

“As I recall, he made some remark about the weather, then asked me if I was a tourist. I thought he might be hoping to get a tip for showing me around, so I explained about having to meet my cousin. Then we chatted a bit, to kill the time. I’d got the impression my cousin wanted me to meet him right away, but as it turned out, I had quite a wait because he stopped to do some other business first.”

Dolph had taken it for granted, of course, that Alex’s wife had nothing better to do than hang around a chilly graveyard waiting on his convenience.

“Did this old guy know the vault was going to be opened?”

“Not until I told him, if that’s what you mean. Even then, I’m not sure he grasped what it was all about. He kept asking me whom we were going to dig up. I didn’t know what was happening myself, until my cousin phoned this morning, and I don’t believe he did, either, till shortly before he called us.”

The man from Homicide turned to Dolph. “Is that right, Mr. Kelling?”

“It is correct,” Dolph replied sourly. “As to whether it’s right, I leave you to decide. I’d naturally assumed Uncle Fred would want to be buried at Mount Auburn with the rest of us. I made all the arrangements, put the notice in the papers, called the relatives, went over to see Uncle Fred’s lawyers first thing this morning, and got hit straight between the eyes with this outrageous codicil. That gave me roughly twenty-four hours to undo everything I’d done and do it over, and now this infernal trollop has to get herself planted in our vault! Hardly seems decent to go on with it now.”

Dolph sputtered awhile longer, then sighed, “Well, it’s what Uncle Fred wanted, so I suppose we’ll have to go ahead with it come hell or high water. Haul away the bricks and sweep up the rubies, eh? Gad, what a situation! Sarah, do you think Alex is back yet?”

“No, I don’t,” she replied, “and there’s not a thing he could do if he were. Officer, if you don’t need us any more, could we please get on with what we came to do?”

“I guess so.”

The police lieutenant gave Sarah a remarkably human smile which, for some reason, made her want to burst into tears. “You folks go ahead with your funeral. We’ll see that everything’s in order for tomorrow. Right, Ralph?”

“Right,” sighed the foreman. “Mind if I grab a bite to eat first?”

Adolphus Kelling brightened. “Now, there’s an excellent idea. Come on, Sarah, I’ll buy you a drink.”

Though a bore and a bully, Dolph was no mingy host. Fortified with two cocktails and a great deal of excellent food, Sarah decided she didn’t particularly mind going back with him to the cemetery.

Spectators were still clustered around the fence, but there wasn’t much to see. The door of the vault was closed and one of Ralph’s helpers was carrying away the last of the bricks in a wheelbarrow. The policeman on guard told Sarah and her cousin they couldn’t go in.

“But I’m Adolphus Kelling, blast it! That’s my vault.”

“Sorry, Mr. Kelling.”

“Come on, Dolph,” Sarah coaxed. “We have to see the minister anyway, and he’ll probably let us go out through the church. Anyway, it looks as though they’re doing what they said they would.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Dolph snorted. However, he had sense enough not to pick a fight with the law. There were still the minister and the organist to hector.

While her cousin spent upward of an hour discussing a service that was going to take perhaps twelve minutes from start to finish, Sarah rested in the family pew, trying to draw strength from the lovely old sanctuary and wondering how she was going to cope with the multitudes tomorrow afternoon. She ought to be shopping or cleaning or at least letting her own family know about the bizarre discovery in the vault. Nevertheless, she stayed until Dolph had got things squared away to his and presumably Uncle Fred’s satisfaction. By the time they went out it was almost dark.

“Dolph,” she said, I’ll have to leave you now. Alexander must have got home ages ago. He’ll be wondering where I am.”

“Alex? Forgot about him. Managed pretty well by myself after all, didn’t I? Maybe we’d better just take one last look at that vault. Don’t want any more chorus girls slipping in unbeknownst, eh? Come on back, we’ll get the Rev to open the side door for us.”

Reluctantly, Sarah obeyed. The minister, kind as ever though no doubt wishing by now that he were burying the whole Kelling tribe, led them through the vestry and out to the ancient burying ground.

“I’m sure you’ll find everything in order,” he said hopefully.

They did, except for one brick that had somehow got left behind. Dolph picked it up and began to fume.

“Oh, stop fussing and give it to me,” Sarah told him. “I’ll drop it in a trash basket on my way home.”

It was rather a nice little brick, actually, small enough to fit inside her leather shoulder bag. She dropped it in, thanked the minister, took grateful leave of Cousin Dolph, and started across the hill toward Tulip Street.

A
LEXANDER HAD THE FRONT
door open before she was halfway up the steps. “Sarah, I’ve been watching out the window for you. Where have you been?”

“With Cousin Dolph. He called right after you left for the hospital.”

“In a flap about Uncle Fred’s funeral, I suppose. Too bad he wasted your whole day. Harry’s home, and they want us for dinner.”

“Oh, dear!” If there was anything Sarah didn’t need at this point, it was one of the Lackridges’ spur-of-the-moment dinner parties. “Alexander, the most utterly incredible thing happened!”

“Tell me later. You’ve about five minutes to change.”

Furious, she rushed up the stairs to the third floor, the brick she’d forgotten to take out of her handbag thumping against her hip at every step. Trust Alexander to put Harry Lackridge before anyone else. He was wearing his dinner jacket, not because the occasion was going to be all that elegant, but because he’d been forced to buy one ages ago for some function or other and felt duty bound to get his money’s worth out of the investment. It would hardly do for his wife to appear at his side in a ratty plaid skirt and stretched-out oatmeal-colored pullover.

At least she’d be going fed this time, which was a blessing. She was going warm too. Knowing Leila Lackridge’s disdain for creature comforts, Sarah had devised herself a garment especially for these affairs, long-sleeved, long skirted, cut simply as a paper doll’s dress from thick, soft blanket material in a blue the exact shade of Alexander’s eyes. She needed something more dramatic to set it off than her grandmother’s amethyst brooch and the little string of pearls Alexander had given her when they were married, but those were all she had, so she put them on.

Some day, she’d possess more jewels than any one woman could possibly wear. It was ridiculous that she mightn’t be allowed to enjoy a few of the pieces now. What a ghastly life, hanging around waiting for Aunt Caroline to die!

Was that what they were doing? Startled by a thought she had never allowed to enter her head before, Sarah stared, with no sense of identification, at the face reflected in the greenish, speckled mirror. It was only some young woman with light brown hair and gray brown eyes, one set a tiny bit higher than the other in a pale, square face. She dabbed a little color on the lips, grabbed up the amethyst eardrops that went with the brooch, and ran downstairs, fastening them in her ears as she went.

Alexander was still waiting. He had the shiny, balding muskrat cape that had been her mother’s ready to throw over her shoulders.

“You mustn’t hurry so in that long skirt,” he chided gently. “You might trip and fall.”

“But you said to rush,” she snapped back. “Where’s Aunt Caroline?”

“Out on the front steps. Mother likes to take her time going down, you know.”

Of course Sarah knew. There was not one quirk or whim of her mother-in-law’s that she hadn’t had drilled into her during the past seven years. This was still Caroline Kelling’s house, and around Caroline it still revolved. Who could object to that, when common sense dictated that everything be left where it always had been so that a blind woman could find her way about the rooms without having to be guided, and common decency decreed that somebody doubly afflicted be given every consideration? Could a wife begrudge her husband’s spending most of his waking hours with his mother, when it was only through Alexander that Caroline was able to lead anything like a normal life?

Not even if helping Caroline live as she wished meant that Sarah and Alexander had no life at all? They hardly even talked to each other any more. They’d had a more satisfying relationship back when Sarah was six years old and Cousin Alexander a godlike young man in Brooks Brothers flannels who took her for walks in the Public Garden on Sunday afternoons while his mother played chess with Sarah’s father. She’d adored him then. She supposed she still did. Anyway, there wasn’t much she could do about it now.

Hugging the inadequate wrap around her shoulders, Sarah tagged after her husband and the white-haired woman who was almost as tall as he. Caroline Kelling kept one hand on her son’s arm because the sidewalk had an almost precipitous pitch, but she held her back straight as the white cane she carried, and never once stumbled on the uneven bricks.

The Lackridges lived on the water side of Beacon Hill, in a smart town house converted from what had once been Leila’s grandparents’ carriage house. What was originally the family mansion now housed a prestigious but not always lucrative publishing business that Leila’s family had established and Harry Lackridge had married his way into.

When Leila and Harry were married, they’d scouted their respective families’ attics and storerooms for whatever oddments of furniture they could lay their hands on. Leila had then called in an interior decorator and bullied her into making visual sense of the hodgepodge. Now she had a cleaning service in once a week, and every six or eight years she had the place repainted and papered in much the same patterns and colors as before. Over the years, the rooms had taken on a curious quality of being embalmed. Leila never noticed. She had other things to do.

It was in good part because of Leila Lackridge that Caroline Kelling led such a busy life. The pair of them were among the movers and shakers in local civic affairs, Leila doing most of the moving and shaking, while Mrs. Kelling gained sympathizers by her mere presence on any platform, her sightless eyes hidden by tinted glasses, her beautiful face attentive to the message that her friend or her son spelled out into the palm of her hand.

Not all people who lose both sight and hearing in adult life succeed in learning alternate methods of communication. Caroline had mastered Braille and also a shorthand system of hand signals that only Leila and Alexander could transcribe fast enough to keep up with her quick mind and sometimes biting tongue. Sarah had tried hand-talking, but the impatient crisping of Aunt Caroline’s fingers discouraged her from plodding on. Now she poked out notes in Braille with a stencil and stylus, or let Alexander translate when she had anything special to say to her mother-in-law. She seldom did nowadays, since she’d taken over most of the housekeeping and no longer had to be coached about what to do.

These dinners of the Lackridges’ were always last-minute affairs because both Harry and Leila were on the go so much that it was hard to schedule them in advance. As a rule, Sarah could have done nicely without them. The cocktail hour dragged on and on, with Leila and Aunt Caroline holding forth about their latest cause and the two men reminiscing about their days at prep school and college, years before Sarah was ever born. The house was always cold, even in summer, and the food was abominable.

Tonight perhaps it wouldn’t be quite so bad. They might let her tell her amazing story. If not, she could curl up in her wool cocoon and sneak a nap. She was drowsy from hanging around in the cold air, and sated with her late, heavy lunch. At least being with Leila and Harry was better than having to spend the evening in an undertaker’s rooms listening to Cousin Dolph pontificate. There were to be no visiting hours. Great-uncle Frederick’s codicil had also been explicit about letting relatives gloat over his remains.

Sarah had always thought Leila and Harry rather resented her marriage to Alexander. The Lackridges had made such a cozy foursome with him and Caroline for so many years that they tended to shunt the young bride into the background whenever possible. Tonight, however, she was the guest of honor. To her astonishment, Harry swooped her into his arms even before he gave Caroline her ritual kiss.