Better to Eat You (3 page)

“Grandfather?” said David. “I thought you said …”

“Lupino, I meant. Although she is Fox's
adopted
granddaughter, I believe, at that. Relict of his beloved partner. I guess he fished her out of the blitz to be his handmaiden. She acts like the Duchess of Orange. Orange County, that is.”

David laughed. “Bitter,” he teased.

Consuelo's big handsome face was perfectly cheerful. “The worse thing is, I never did give a darn whether I saw the old man. I wanted to see the house. That house …”

“Never mind the house for now. Tell me who Sarah Shepherd is.”

“Shepherd. Oh yes. That's his real granddaughter.”

“That's her married name?”

“I dunno, Davey. Shepherd could be the name of the man that Foxey's daughter ran off with, for all I remember. Was it now?” Consuelo's tongue licked her upper plate thoughtfully.

“You've seen her down there?”

“I can't say as I have. Heard of her. I'm on the community grapevine.”

“Naturally. Who is Dr. Perrott?”

“I've seen him, all right. He's on view in any of the better bars.”

“Much of a practice, has he?”

“None at all. He is just Fox's tame doctor, as far as I know. Big chap with a pinhead?”

“That's the one.”

“Are you working around to telling me why all these questions?”

“Soon,” said David, cautiously. “But give me more of the background. Clowns, you say?”

“Oh Lord, yes. The beloved clown, which is a folk figure I can't abide. I'll tell you what kind of people they were.” Consuelo bounced on the sofa. “I'll give you a for-instance. This house party. Fox and Lupino and assorted members of their families had been asked. Country doctor with a rich wife, friends of mine.” Consuelo went off on a sudden tangent. “I may have met Fox's daughter, Davey. If so, she didn't made a very vivid impression. What did is the scene we had. Oh me! It seems that dear Fox and Lupino had promised themselves for some big charity do. I want you to get the picture. There were lots of other acts. The town was crammed with visiting talent. Got that?”

“I've got it.”

“Now, in the afternoon before this performance there was an accident. Lupino was struck in the chest by an arrow. A child's arrow. A pure accident. But oh what a lot of blood and commotion! It's the commotion that I remember. The swooning and wailing. ‘The show must go on.' For the life of me, I can't see why. Who says so? If it had been a question of a great star around whom many other people had their economic being … then I might concede that the show must go on,” blustered Consuelo. “But not when it was the kind of thing it actually was. Nothing would have happened … nothing, believe me … if Lupino had quietly gone to bed on doctor's orders like any other human being. People understand these things. No one would have held it against him. It wasn't worth any commotion. But do you know what that old man … he was sixty, if he was a day … actually did? Had himself plastered up and went on and did his ridiculous pratt falls and all the rest of it. And everyone carried on as if he were a hero of the greatest proportions. I was disgusted. Nobody gave a second thought to the child. Except me. I remember laying down the law to her father, I think it was, and finally persuading him to take the child out of all the commotion, at least, so she'd not get the idea she'd as good as assassinated the King. Do you get the picture, Davey? Small, narrow little men engrossed with reputation, swollen with self-importance. That Lupino! Although he was no worse than Fox. There wasn't a pennyworth of difference between them.”

“And he won't let you in, either,” said David, dead pan.

“Exactly,” said Consuelo. “Now then, what's all this?”

“I wanted your biased opinion before I told you.”

“You got it. For heaven's
sakes
…”

He began, rather soberly, with Sarah Shepherd and the strange sequence of events she had recounted.

“Hm,” said Consuelo when he came to a stopping place. “But you know, Davey, granted that guilt-thing she had about the man who crashed, and then the blow when her bridegroom died … don't you suppose there could be some distortion in that story?”

“Possibly,” he agreed, watching her.

“All of us know people who have had bad luck. We don't relate it to ourselves. Maybe she leaves out certain friends who haven't had bad luck at all. Just as nobody ever tells you when a white cat crosses his path.”

“Possibly,” admitted David. “I don't know. Don't know
her.
But I told you she wrote such a fine paper …”

“Oh come now, Davey. Surely you know intelligence hasn't got a lot to do with emotional stability.” He cocked his brow at her. “Well, sometimes not,” said Consuelo.
‘
‘Mad genius, and all that.”

David said grimly, “Then you would take it all with a grain of salt?”

“I would. I surely would,” said Consuelo comfortably.

“Let me continue. The next day she wasn't in class. Didn't come back at all. Well, that seemed too bad. So I began to hunt around for her. Friday I found her, having lunch with this Dr. Perrott. Nothing daunted, I barged in on them. I can be stubborn …”

“Oh yes, you can. Spitting image of your Grandmother James and a more stubborn old …”

“Don't get off the track. Listen. She tried to brush me off, of course. But the doctor sat tight and I didn't brush. Had quite a talk.”

“You and Dr. Perrott and the girl, eh?” Consuelo blinked. “What did you talk about,
à trois?
”

“My book,” said David promptly.

Consuelo rolled her eyes. “You mean,
you
talked. And your own shop, at that. I bet they got to say goodbye, maybe.”

“About all she said was goodbye, again,” David admitted. “The doctor said little or nothing. However, she was fascinated by my project. She sparked right up, as I knew she would. When I got to telling her some of the fabulous goings-on in those early days …”

“Everything about California is fabulous, as everybody knows. Don't you get off the track. Tell me, is she pretty, Davey?”

“No,” said David impatiently. “Yes. Maybe. I don't know. She's just a little blonde girl. I'm not … What I wanted more than ever on Friday was to get her to work with me. And it looked as if the only thing standing in the way was this …”

“Superstition? Obsession?”

“… thing,” said David. Consuelo looked sharply at him.

“Now it comes out,” she pounced.

“Yes. Now, I'll tell you. Last night I parked my car on the hill, as I have to do. I turned the wheels into the curb. I set the brake. I was taking a bath when the car shook loose and rolled down and smashed itself up.”

“Oh, Davey! Too bad!”

“I'm afraid that's not the worst of it,” David said gently. “I can't make this easy. It killed a woman, Consuelo.”

“
Oh!
” She held her powdered cheeks.

“Somebody's maid. Just an innocent woman, going home in the early evening. She must have frozen. She just didn't get out of the way in time. Now, Consuelo, will you consider, with me, the peculiar fact that this accident happens to me right after I try to take up with a girl who thinks she is a Jonah? Now that's odd, surely.”

“Odd!” said Consuelo. Now she touched his hand and found it tense. “Davey, you are good and mad, aren't you?”

“I am,” said David. “I am good and mad.
I'm
no scared girl with a foolish feeling of guilt on my mind or a shock of sorrow riding
me.
I
know
I set that brake, I cramped those wheels. I won't, for the rest of my life, wonder whether I did or not. I won't carry that burden.”

“But if you did?”

“Uh huh,” said David. “In the light of the fact that I
did
park my car correctly, now look back on the stuff she told me. What if somebody is fixing these disasters?” Consuelo stared at him. “I'd say,” he went on, “that the man crashing, her husband dying … all the deaths were … well, call them real accidents. But when her lunch date's mother died, too … a pure coincidence … and Sarah Shepherd went into a tailspin, as who could blame her, suppose
at that point
somebody saw how this notion of hers could be encouraged and … well … validated? Since then, look. A fire. A disease. Well, there's such a thing as a germ, you know. Then a dog dies. A landlady lost her house. No deaths in that lot. Just disaster. So murder they don't do. They could have done everything else.”

“Who could?”

“I don't know.”

“Why would they?”

“I don't know. Going to see if I can find out.”

Consuelo's girdle creaked and she sighed.

“Because, my sainted courtesy-aunt Consuelo, murder they don't set out to do. But whoever released the brakes on my car last night and swung the wheels so that the car could roll, must have known the risk but didn't mind very much. And
my car
murdered that poor woman. Let me tell you, if it happened because somebody is having fun-and-games with Miss Sarah Shepherd, somebody is going to be sorry.”

“Oh dear,” said Consuelo. “Oh dear, Davey. Will you be in trouble about the car?”

“I don't think so. And since Prexy pulled all the wires he could, the school isn't mentioned, and my name is misspelled in the papers. So far. But the point is, no one was seen, no evidence was found, and although I am honest and of good repute and they don't doubt my word, the implication remains.
Maybe
I just absent-mindedly, this one time, did not park my car as I thought I had.” David had on his rocklike look. “Consuelo,
I
know I did.
So … well, there's that poor kid …”

“But Davey, you know you haven't checked any of her story. Suppose she is in an unhealthy emotional state?”

“Doesn't matter.” David looked stubborn. Either way, that girl's in a spot. If she's imagining … or if there is some kind of plot going on around her.”

“So?” said Consuelo with foreboding.

“She's hasn't got anybody …”

“Got her own people.”

“Ah … has she?” David quoted softly. “‘I do not like thee, Dr.'… Perrott. Consuelo, be the good scout you always are. Lend me a car. And you're going down there to your beach house soon. Invite me.”

“Take the Ford. You're invited.”

“That's my darlin'. Meantime, I am going to call on Foxey Grandpa.”

“You won't get in,” she said, rather alarmed.

“I'll get in,” said David. “I want to see those people. I want to know their version of Sarah's story. And if
they
are fixing this jinx to work the way it seems to.”

“But Davey, why would they?”

“Don't see why. What I do see is this. Sarah Shepherd doesn't know anyone else. Who else could care? Believe me, Consuelo, if they are behind it and think they can cast me as a minor victim in their little series …”

“It's not pretty, what you're thinking.”

“It's as vicious an idea as I ever had.” David sounded cheerful.

But Consuelo said, “Davey, you are awful mad?”

He nodded.

Consuelo was silent. Finally she roused and said, “There's a lot of money some place, and money, you know, is a gladsome thing. I know a lawyer …”

“I knew you'd spark up on this,” said David gratefully.

Consuelo said, “I never thought I was a vindictive woman, but he should have let me in.”

Chapter 3

As Consuelo had predicted, the guard at the Colony gates knew her smart red Ford and made no question when David drove through. Around the Colony Cove the houses were heaped, clinging and jutting from the slopes, each beautifully designed and stunningly executed. Life within the Colony and on its private crescent of sand must, he thought, be golden altogether. But he wound to his right, all through this to the other side of the cove, and ascended along a switchback road toward the shelf cut into the hill.

Opposite a three-car garage there was a wide paved apron and he parked there. The shelf itself was above him still, by a few feet, and he could not see the house. An iron fence crossed between the corner of the large garage and the high bluff of the hill. The place was quite a fortress. David thought to himself of knights and dragons and imprisoned maidens and was somewhat amused. He strode to the gate, which was locked, saw the telephone in its box. A female voice answered, “Yes?”

“I'm calling on Miss Shepherd,” said he crisply. “David Wakeley.”

“A moment, sir.” The voice reacted to his assurance with respect.

But it was a long moment. David stood by the gate and he could hear the surf on the rocks at the foot of the headland. He was not high, perhaps no more than fifty feet, but by turning his head over his left shoulder he received a stunning panorama of coast and ocean. Staring back entranced, he heard no one approaching until a woman said softly, “Mr. Wakeley?”

Startled, he looked around. “I am Malvina Lupino. You came to see Sarah? Did she make the appointment?”

“How do?” said David, cheerful and assured. “Surely Miss Shepherd is here?”

“She's on the beach. I'm sorry.”

“Then how do I get to the beach?” David smiled at her.

“But you can't get to our beach,” the woman said. “I can't really … If you would call on the telephone perhaps a little later …?”

This woman, standing the other side of the patterned iron, was tall. David was a tall man but she made him assert his size. He fixed his feet and became immovable and persistent. “I teach at Lowell College,” he said rather bluntly as if he felt it high time she realized who he was. “As a matter of fact, I'd like very much to talk to Mr. Fox, or perhaps to you, about Miss Shepherd.”