A Room to Die In (11 page)

Ann was tapping
her fingers to the music from the ballroom. She drank some more, feeling a
little giddy. Another drink, and she would become reckless, perhaps flirt with
one of the men at the bar. Wiser to go home and to bed . . . But she found
herself in no hurry to leave. Here were color and shimmer and music, all to the
tinkle of ice. The apartment was lonely.

Suddenly Ann
recalled something Tarr had said about danger, danger to herself. Presumably he
had not been talking idly. Ann considered the questions she had noted on the
back of the envelope. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that she chanced upon
a clue that would lead to the identity of the blackmailer. Then there might be
danger indeed.

A frightening
possibility existed that she was already in possession of the clue, and that
the blackmailer knew it. The apartment seemed lonelier than ever. . . . She
didn’t have to go home. She could take a room for the night here at the
Fairmont. But no, she told herself in a sudden reversal of mood, it was
ridiculous; why should anyone want to injure her? She paid her check and left.

She drove out
Geary Boulevard toward the Pacific.

Fog
drifted across the street lamps. Ann
began to wish that she had given in to her fears and remained at the Fairmont.

She crossed
Golden Gate Park, turned right into Judah Street, then left into Granada
Avenue. She drove slowly past her apartment building. She saw nothing unusual.
Making a U-turn at the corner, she returned, parked, locked her car, then gave
way to nervousness and ran at full speed up to her apartment. Looking over her
shoulder, she fumbled with the key, unlocked the door, snapped on the light,
and slipped inside, with panting relief. The apartment was exactly as she had
left it.

Nevertheless,
she checked bedroom and bathroom, and tested the lock of the service door,
angry at herself for her childishness.

She hurried into
the bedroom and could hardly shed her clothes fast enough and dive into her
bed.

She awoke to
find sunlight streaming into the room. Her fears of the night before seemed
absurd. How could she ever have got herself into such a state?

It was almost
nine o’clock; she would have to hurry. She dressed in blue jeans, a yellow polo
shirt, and sneakers; scrambled an egg, made toast and a cup of instant coffee;
and, taking an orange to eat on the way, Ann ran down to her car.

She was in the
best of moods. On this sparkling day the job ahead of her seemed not too
formidable. Martin Jones? More bark than bite, no doubt highly sensitive
underneath his glowering facade. She’d be especially nice to him. And she’d let
Edgar Maudley have his darned old books . . . maybe.

She laughed.

Ann did not
arrive at the house on Neville Road until twenty minutes past ten. Martin Jones
was already here, raking the area he had cultivated the previous week. In his
pickup lay flats of dichondra. He greeted her almost with civility. “I see you’ve
come to work. What are you going to do with the stuff?”

“Sort everything
into three piles. For myself, for the Salvation Army, and for Edgar Maudley.”

“Maudley?” Jones
gave a contemptuous snort. “Why Maudley?”

“Oh, he has an
understandable desire to retrieve a few odds and ends. After all, he was my
father’s wife’s cousin.”

“Your father
told him to go to hell.”

Ann changed the
subject. “How much garden are you going to put in?”

“Not much, just
enough to make the place look nice. Your father wasn’t much of a gardener . . .
Who’s this?”

“It looks like
Edgar Maudley,” said Ann.

“He’s sure come
prepared,” Martin Jones observed.

Into the
driveway swung a glossy station wagon, towing a trailer in which were nested a
number of cardboard boxes.

Maudley climbed
down from the car. He was dressed informally, in tweed trousers and an old
tweed jacket. “Good morning, good morning,” he called cheerfully. “I see you’re
here.”

Ann eyed him
coldly. “I thought I’d made it clear . . .” Then she shrugged. It was too nice
a day to wrangle.

“I decided I
could be of help,” said Maudley, “so I came along. Clear the whole thing up in
one fell swoop, you know.”

Ann turned
toward the house. “Is it open?” she asked Martin Jones.

Jones nodded
and, going to the front door, threw it open. “The desk in the study goes, also
the two big bookcases. The rest of the furniture belongs to the house.”

The house
smelled warm, dusty, and stale. Ann left the front door open and slid back the
living-room door that opened to the patio. A pleasant current of air flowed
through the room.

Edgar Maudley
looked frowningly around the room. “Yes, there are the books. Some of them. I
wonder what happened to the rugs.”

“They’re in
storage.”

“Indeed. Just as
well. Certain of them are quite good, notably the two Kashans.” He surveyed the
walls, and said gloomily, “There’s the Monet.”

Ann had not
previously noticed the painting, a little confection of pink, blue, and green. “A
real Monet?” She went over to look at it.

Maudley seemed
to regret having spoken. “You hadn’t known of it?”

“No.”

“Uncle Dan
bought it in Paris in 1923.”

“Your family
seems to have run to collecting.”

“I’m afraid so.
Shall we start? I’ll bring in boxes, then I can point out the books not
specifically part of the Maudley collection . . .”

Ann decided to
establish a position immediately. “You certainly may bring in the boxes,” she
said. “Then I’d like you to sit down somewhere while I sort through things.
That way there’ll be no confusion.”

Maudley assumed
a stiff stance. “I can’t see how confusion can result—”

“Also, I want to
work at my own speed—which I’m afraid means slowly.”

Maudley glanced
at his watch. “The more reason for us both to pitch in and separate the Maudley
books from Rex Orr’s, which I don’t care about.”

“Please, Mr.
Maudley, bring in the boxes. We’ll do this my way. If any of your father’s
books are among those I don’t care to keep, I’ll be happy to let you take them.”

Pearl’s cousin
swung on his heel and went out to his car, exuding unhappiness. Ann resolved
not to let his avarice influence her decisions, though it was impossible not to
sympathize with him. In his place, she supposed, she’d feel the same way.

The books, she
found, could be divided into five general categories. First, children’s books,
for the most part with Christmas and birthday inscriptions:
To
little Pearl, on her
fifth
birthday; may she learn to be as brave and pure as the little girl whom this
book is about. Love, Aunt Mary.
Second, volumes
dealing with metaphysical subjects: mysticism, Oriental philosophy,
spiritualism, the Bahai and the Rosicrucian doctrines, telepathy, clairvoyance,
even hypnotism. These books apparently had been the property of Rex Orr. Third,
luxuriously bound and illustrated uniform editions: Shakespeare, Robert Louis
Stevenson, Alexandre Dumas, Goethe, Balzac, Flaubert, many others. Fourth, a
potpourri of books printed by The Pandora Press of San Francisco: genteel
erotica, flamboyant works by obscure authors, volumes of poetry, collections of
graphic art,
belles-lettres
of various lands. Fifth, standard modern works, those normally
accumulated by the literate upper-and upper-middle-class families: Proust,
Joyce, Mann, Cary, assorted best sellers of the past two or three decades.

The entire group
seemed to include no volumes of extraordinary value or even special antiquarian
interest. The children’s books Ann decided not to keep; they exhaled memories
of a childhood of happier times. They were keepsakes that meant nothing to Ann.
She packed them for Maudley in a box.

The second
category, expounding the occult and the doctrines of the Orient, Ann likewise
put aside for him. She had no interest in yoga or the powers conferred by hypnotism.
A thought wandered through her head: Could chess-playing ability be enhanced by
hypnosis? From somewhere her father had dug up the resources to beat Alexander
Cypriano. Had he been benefiting from a study of Rex Orr’s books?

The third
category, the uniform editions, she decided to keep. Maudley, who with saintly
patience had composed himself on the couch, uttered a feeble bleat when he saw
Ann’s intention. Ann ignored him.

The books from
The Pandora Press posed the most serious problem. Some of them she wanted to
keep, and Maudley was watching like a distraught mother. Ann could not restrain
her guilt pangs. To him these books represented irreplaceable treasures. An
unpleasant dilemma. Ann wondered, were their positions reversed, how generously
Maudley would have dealt with her. But this was a sterile line of thought.

The front door
opened and Martin Jones peered in. He clumped into the living room, staring
first at Edgar—composed with glacial self-discipline on the couch—then at Ann.
His grin comprehended everything. He asked Ann, “What are you planning to do
with the bookcases?”

Ann inspected
the living-room bookcase dubiously. Like its twin in the study, it was a
massive mahogany piece resting on six short legs. Two beautiful pieces of
furniture, but far too big for her apartment. “I don’t have any particular use
for them.”

“I’ll take them
off your hands,” said Jones, “provided the price is right. The fact is, I don’t
want them very much.”

Ann shrugged. “Twenty
dollars apiece?”

“That’s high.”

“Oh, hell, I’m
not going to haggle with you. They’re worth lots more. You keep them. They’re
yours. No charge.”

“That’s all they’re
worth to me. I own three books,” Jones said calmly, “the telephone directory, a
Sears-Roebuck catalogue, and the Marin County Building Code”

“You must plan
to acquire a lot more directories and catalogues.”

He inspected the
bookcases sourly. “I don’t intend to use them for books.”

“What else can
you use them for?”

“Storage. Tools,
nails, hardware, things like that.”

Behind them, Maudley
shuddered. Ann stared in horror. “I won’t let you have them. It’s
desecration.”

Martin Jones was
not abashed. “To put something to honest use? Look at those books. Do you
suppose Nelson read them? Do you think
anybody
ever read them? I’ll bet a hundred dollars most of them weren’t
opened more than once. If at all.”

Ann was
momentarily silenced. She probably would have lost the bet, she thought.

“Books,” intoned
Edgar Maudley, “are a repository of knowledge, of ideas, of inspiration, which
otherwise would be lost.”

Jones grinned.
He picked up one of the books, turned to the title page.
“Stones of Venice,
by John Ruskin.” He flipped
some pages, and read a passage aloud in a nasal, mincing voice:

And
well may they fall back, for beyond those troops of ordered arches there rises
a vision out of the earth, and all the great square seems to have opened from
it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far away; —a multitude of pillars and
white domes, clustered into a long low pyramid of Colored light; a treasure heap,
it seems, partly of gold and partly of opal and mother-of-pearl, hollowed
beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic and beset with
sculpture of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory, —sculpture
fantastic and involved, of palm leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegranates,
and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined together into
an endless network of buds and plumes; and in the midst of it the solemn forms
of angels, sceptered and robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across
the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground—

He broke off. “Doesn’t
this guy ever run out of breath? He must have written when ink was a penny a
quart.”

After a pause,
Ann said, “You might use the cases to hold your collection of comic books and
TV Guides.”

And Edgar
Maudley said, “Ruskin wrote to a cultured and discriminating audience who,
whether they agreed with his ideas or not—and most of them did not—at least had
the grace to recognize the felicity of his style.”

Jones angrily
tossed the book down. “What burns me about you people is that first you invent
a club, then you pull the plug on anybody who doesn’t want to join. I’m not
interested in walking around with a lily in my hand, or sobbing over a dead
mouse.”

“Neither were
the Neanderthals,” retorted Ann. “All they cared about was cramming food into
their gullets and bashing other people with clubs.”

“Not entirely
apropos,” said Maudley primly. “You probably mean Zinjanthropus or Eanthropus.”

“What it boils
down to,” growled the contractor, “is that you’re calling me an ignorant
peasant—which bothers me not one bit, coming as it does from a schoolmarm whose
biggest decision is whether to play blind-man’s-bluff or tic-tac-toe with the
kiddies. But—”

“My word, you’re
an offensive man,” declared Maudley. “I think you should apologize to Miss
Nelson.”

Martin Jones
laughed. “Sure. If she apologizes for calling me an ignorant peasant.”

“First convince
me otherwise,” said Ann, tossing her head.

“That would
involve reading a lot of stupid books about pomegranates and angels’ wings. I’d
rather remain ignorant.”

Ann took up
The Stones of Venice.
“Read this book, and I’ll
give you the bookcases.”

Jones’s flat
cheeks twitched sardonically. “You already gave them to me.”

“I took them
back, Mr. Jones.”

“It would be
nice,” said Jones. “But I don’t have the time.”

“Just turn your
TV set off two hours early tonight,” suggested Ann. “That should get you well
started.”

“TV? I don’t
have one.”

“What do you do
with your spare time?”

“Lady, I don’t
have any spare time. I’m running a big construction job. I have thirty-eight
men on my payroll. I’m fighting architects, building inspectors,
subcontractors, the bank, four unions, the planning commission, and the customers.
When I have a minute I figure new jobs. And now you want me to recline in a
hammock reading about angel wings?”

“You’ve got time
to come over here and putter around the garden.”

Jones chuckled.
He hefted the book. “It’s a lot to ask for two beat-up old bookcases. Still . .
. why not? Maybe you’ll make a cookie-pusher out of me yet.”

Ann often amused
herself by imagining an adult as he must have been as a child. She now saw
Martin Jones as a handsome, rebellious little boy, perhaps in fear of a heavy-handed
father, but stubbornly defiant, who grew up to remain defiant of authority, in
much the way Roland Nelson had defied social dicta. Then his abortive love
affair. She wondered what the girl was like. A tramp, probably. Oh, well, it
was no affair of hers.

She went into
the study to the companion bookcase and emerged with several dozen chess
manuals, texts, compendia—her father’s own books, which she would keep. Edgar
Maudley no longer occupied the couch. Ann assumed that he was visiting the
bathroom and continued with her work. . . . Edgar came out of the hall leading
from the bedrooms, and stalked out to his car. He walked, so it seemed to Ann,
rather stiffly.

He returned and
resumed his seat on the couch.

With both cases
empty, Ann considered the Pandora Press Books. Maudley frowned as Ann sorted
through the books, putting to one side those that attracted her, perhaps one in
three. He could no longer restrain himself. “May I ask what you are doing?”

“Picking out the
books I want from the ones I don’t.”

Maudley became
almost tearful. “Do you realize that The Pandora Press was my grandfather’s
creation? That these books are extremely rare, that with them I would have a
complete file of Pandora publications?”

Ann nodded. “I
won’t give them to you outright, but I’ll sell them to you. This pile goes for,
say, five dollars a book.
This
pile, the books I’d like to keep, I’ll let you have for twenty dollars a book.”

Martin Jones had
returned. “You’re letting him off cheap,” he told Ann. “Those books ought to go
for three times that.”

“No such thing!”
exclaimed Maudley. “Merely because they’re rare doesn’t automatically make them
valuable.”

“Some
of these books are valuable,” said Ann. “And you’re getting them
cheap. Do you want them?”

“Oh, I want
them, all right.”

“All of them?”

“Yes.”

“Very well, you
can take them out to your car, and I’ll figure out what you owe me.”

To Ann’s
surprise, Martin Jones assisted. While the two men carried out books, Ann
calculated. There were forty-six books at $5 each and nineteen books at $20
each—a total of $610. Not bad, thought Ann spitefully.

The two
bookcases were now empty. They were really handsome pieces of furniture. What a
shame if Martin Jones did use them to store tools and hardware. He could not
have been serious. . . . She wondered about him. Perhaps he had been teasing
her— perhaps he occupied his spare time reading. His vocabulary was good; his
outlook seemed broad. He was an interesting man, she thought—a tough,
uncompromising fighter. Roland Nelson had been tough and uncompromising, too.