Family Vault (31 page)

“Oh, no! I meant to burn those ghastly things before anybody else could read them.”

“Good thing you didn’t, otherwise you might be liable to a charge of obstructing justice. The draperies have already been impounded. You’ll be getting a receipt, no doubt. A Braille expert will be called in to prepare a transcript of Mrs. Kelling’s fancywork, but you’ll be asked to identify the actual embroidery and testify that you saw her doing it.”

“That’s no problem. I’ve watched her making those zillions of French knots any number of times. So has Edith, and Leila, and Harry himself, for that matter. Won’t he be livid! After he’d gone through that performance of sneaking in and throwing things around, in the hope of scaring me away from the house so that he’d have a clear field to hunt for the diary, when it was hanging right there in plain sight all the time. I’ll bet the reason he didn’t kill me right away was that he had some scheme in mind to get himself appointed my trustee and scoop up Father’s money along with everything else.”

“That’s entirely possible. People like Lackridge always think they can have anything they want for the taking. He still doesn’t believe we’re going to nail him, you know. Don’t be surprised if he puts on quite a show in court.”

“The relatives are going to love the trial, all those passionate outpourings of Aunt Caroline’s getting into the papers.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“You’ll never convince my Cousin Mabel of that. She’ll be telling everybody I need a keeper instead of a trustee.”

“I think Redfern’s being an old woman about that trusteeship,” Bittersohn grunted. “Maybe we’ll have to get Uncle Jake to drop in for a talk with him. Care for some dessert?”

“My financial position being what it is,” Sarah tried to joke, “I’d better take all the free food I can get hadn’t I? Mousse au chocolat would be lovely. Mr. Bittersohn, do you honestly think I’ll ever get back any part of what Harry stole?”

“I hope so. Hey, that reminds me, we’ve traced that wiretap. The wires ran over to a one-room basement apartment that’s supposed to have been rented for the past several years as a pied-à-terre by a nice lady from Shrewsbury.”

“Madeleine in yet another wig?”

“You called it. Her fingerprints were all over the place, along with Abelard’s, Lackridge’s, and even a few of Bob Dee’s. I expect whichever of them happened to be available would drop in and monitor the tapes. The recorder ran on a timer from four to six in the afternoon and eight to ten in the evening.”

“That would be when we were most apt to be sitting in the library,” said Sarah. “Harry knew our habits so well. I don’t suppose you happened to find any tapes with Alexander’s voice on them?” she added wistfully.

Bittersohn shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Mrs. Kelling. There’d be no point in keeping the tapes around once they’d been checked. We did find a box under a loose floorboard that held some diagrams of what could be jewels from the Kelling collection. Madeleine and Abelard were probably the go-betweens in getting the duplicates made. Lackridge wouldn’t be apt to trust them with the originals, so they’d have worked from notes and drawings.”

“I wonder whom Harry got to do the artwork,” Sarah mused. “Too bad I wasn’t born a little sooner, I might have got the job. But you didn’t find any of the actual pieces?”

“Only a couple of Victorian trinkets that wouldn’t be valuable enough to copy. One is a gold ring in the shape of a pair of clasped hands that pull apart to reveal a heart. The other is a brooch, a blue-enameled bird with a baroque pearl dangling from its beak.”

“The bluebird that carries the sky on its back,” Sarah cried. “That must be Granny Kay’s pin. She was Alexander’s grandmother, not mine. I never knew her, but she must have been a darling. He adored her and was fascinated by that brooch she always used to wear, ever since he was a tiny boy. Once when he was about four, she quoted that line of Thoreau’s about the bluebird carrying the sky on its back. Being too young to understand the metaphor, he took her literally and assumed Thoreau was talking about the brooch. He told me it seemed perfectly reasonable to him that Granny Kay’s bird should be the one that got to hold up the sky. He often wondered what had become of the bluebird after she died, but nobody seemed to know.”

She wiped her eyes. “I don’t know anything about the ring. It may have been another of her keepsakes. Aunt Appie said once that Granny Kay had been in love with somebody else when she was young, but her parents forced her to marry Alexander’s grandfather because he was a better match. Girls were brought up to be dutiful in those days. I’m afraid it wasn’t a happy marriage. He was another cold fish like Uncle Gilbert. Anyway, I hope I get to keep the bluebird. Alexander would like me to have Granny Kay’s brooch.”

“You’ll get it if I have to steal it for you myself,” Bittersohn promised, “although I expect the jewelry, as well as the sketches, will have to be presented as evidence at the trial. Some of your older aunts could identify the pieces, couldn’t they?”

“Oh, yes. Aunt Appie could, and Aunt Emma and several others. I can give you a list of names and addresses if you want. Will the sketches help us to get back any of the more valuable pieces, do you think?”

“They may, but I shouldn’t count on it too much if I were you. We know some of Lackridge’s victims, but we don’t know who got to keep the genuine stuff, except for that parure we’ve already discussed. It would be nice to think he still has a cache somewhere, but the odds are he’s lost the other pieces one by one as he did the parure. He wouldn’t always find it easy to make the switch after the sale, and Lackridge was never one to push his luck too far. That’s why he managed to keep ahead of the police as long as he did. You may be in better shape with the real estate. I should think those mortgages could be declared invalid by reason of fraud, although you can be sure the bank won’t give up without a struggle. Verplanck has to answer to his shareholders, after all. He may take the position that Mrs. Kelling was acting within her rights as executrix, regardless of how she went about it. You could wind up in a court fight before you’re through.”

“I’ll fight if I have to,” said Sarah. “I can’t honestly say I’m all that keen to be stuck with two white elephants, but I’m not going to be done out of them by Harry Lackridge. He’s taken everything—” she thought of Alexander and the bluebird, and drank some coffee to steady herself.

“I was never fond of Harry, but who could have dreamed he’d turn out to be such a—a vampire? And for what? He came from a decent family, went to the right schools, married into a flourishing business, although I suppose he’s run it into the ground by now. There was no earthly reason for him to become a thief and a murderer.”

“He didn’t become crooked, Mrs. Kelling, he was born that way. If Lackridge had been the richest kid in the world, he’d still be a crook. He does what he does because he enjoys it.”

“Then he’s insane,” said Sarah. “How did you ever come to suspect him in the first place? Harry’s always so ultra-respectable.”

“I know. That’s what tipped me off. Let me tell you another little bit of my life’s history. Back when I was a freshman at college, I worked part-time in a drugstore over on Commonwealth Avenue. One night a guy driving a brand-new Mercedes double-parked outside the store and ran in for a pack of cigarettes. He was in a great flap, poking bills at me and wanting change for the phone, claiming I’d given him too much, then too little, switching the money back and forth till I didn’t know where I was at. It didn’t dawn on me till he’d gone out that I’d been victimized by a quick-change artist. As he drove off, I managed to catch the number of his car, and tracked him through the registry.”

“And it was Harry.”

“To make a long story short. You know, Mrs. Kelling, that shocked me as much as anything that’s ever happened to me. I simply could not figure out why a man in his position would bother to stick a kid like me for six dollars and twenty-seven cents. I never forgot it. After I went into business for myself, I ran into a couple of odd little incidents where Lackridge seemed to be hovering vaguely in the background. I could never get anything on him, but I kept hoping. Then I got put on this insurance case, learned that the Kellings, who supposedly owned the ruby parure, were bosom buddies of Lackridge and his wife, and figured I was in business at last.”

“You were clever to think of writing that book.”

“Not really. It was such an obvious ploy that I couldn’t believe Lackridge would fall for it, until he did. What hooked him was the size of the grant I claimed to be getting from my backers to underwrite the publication. He couldn’t resist the chance to chisel off a wad for himself by cheating on the production costs. Besides, a flashy book like the one I was proposing would be good cover. He had to publish something occasionally to protect his reputation. I only hoped I could nail him before I actually had to sit down and write the damn thing. Thanks to you, I did.”

“No thanks to me.”

Sarah put down her spoon, unable to finish her mousse. “I can’t help wondering how much of what happened was my fault. If I hadn’t mentioned old Mr. O’Ghee that night at the Lackridges’, he mightn’t have been dead in the morning. If I hadn’t talked Alexander into spending the weekend at Ireson’s Landing—”

“Mrs. Kelling, you know better than that. If O’Ghee was living with Madeleine, you can be sure it wasn’t because she made good coffee. An old man like him must have come in handy lots of times. He’d never be noticed hanging around waiting to pass on a message or pick up a package. But he must have known all about Lackridge’s tie-up with Ruby Redd, so once her body turned up he’d be too dangerous to keep alive. As for your husband and his mother, I’d say Lackridge had written them off the day he quit keeping up the mortgage payments, and you know how long ago that was. My guess is that he had the scheme with the Milburn all worked out some time ago, and if you hadn’t given him a chance to put it into action, he’d have made one for himself.”

“How?”

“Easily enough, I should think. Couldn’t he pull his old buddies act and suggest that you all go down to your summer place with him and his wife? Wouldn’t your mother-in-law have gone big for that?”

“Yes,” Sarah admitted, “she’d have jumped at it with both feet.”

“Then when the rest of you were nicely on the spot, Lackridge could have been held up at the office or something and had himself an alibi until after Abelard managed the accident with the Milburn. Once your husband was dead, the state of the family finances would have to come out. Lackridge would then start a rumor that Kelling had actually committed suicide in remorse for having mismanaged his father’s estate, and taken his mother with him so she wouldn’t have to suffer.”

“Which is exactly the sort of garbage some people would believe,” said Sarah bitterly.

“Lackridge is a clever man, Mrs. Kelling. There’s no way you could have kept him from doing what he did because you had no idea what sort of person you were up against. Neither did I, if you want the truth. Until you told me your story, I had no reason to think of Lackridge as anything but a first-class society con artist, and it’s always been my experience before that swindlers of his caliber avoid any kind of violence. Now it looks as if we may be able to tie him to at least six murders besides the ones you know about, and you can bet he’d have gone right on killing if you hadn’t helped to stop him.”

“But it’s so totally insane! You say he likes to do it. How can he?”

“How can a hunter enjoy slaughtering some beautiful wild animal that’s never done him or anybody else any harm? It’s his way of showing what a great big he-man he is. Gives him the means to stroll into a casino and throw a wad of G-notes on the blackjack table, makes him feel important.”

“That’s what he did with Alexander’s money?”

“That and other things. He owns a big spread outside Fort Worth, a villa on the Côte d’Azur, has his twin-engine Cessna and his unpretentious little forty-foot yacht—all under assumed names, of course. He doesn’t get to use them much because he has to keep coming back to Boston and being respectable Harry Lackridge, putting up a noble fight to keep the fine old family business afloat, but what the heck? They don’t cost him anything. He runs them on other people’s money.”

“Do you think Leila knows?”

“Offhand, I’d say she hasn’t a clue. As far as he’s concerned, Mrs. Lackridge is probably just part of the window dressing, although she must have come in handy as Mrs. Kelling’s watchdog. I’m afraid this is going to put a crimp in her political activities.”

“Poor Leila,” Sarah sighed. “I suppose I ought to go and see her, though I dread the thought.”

“Finish your coffee. Right now she’s probably down at Station One getting the third degree. You’d better be thinking about what you’re going to do for yourself.”

“Uncle Jem has that all arranged. He called his sister Emma and she’s invited me to stay with her till my arm is better. She lives out near Springfield, which is far enough from Boston so people won’t be pestering me all the time. Also, Aunt Emma has maids who can help me dress and so forth while I’m stuck in this ridiculous cast.”

“What about your own place?”

“Mariposa, my guardian angel, is moving in to keep an eye on things till I get back. I asked if she’d be seared staying alone, but it turns out she’s bringing her dog and her boy friend, and she says they both turn pretty mean if anybody tries messing around with her. So everything’s under control but me. I really must go home and pack a few things.”

“Look, if you need a ride out to Springfield—”

“Thank you, but Aunt Emma is sending her chauffeur. You’ve been absolutely wonderful, Mr. Bittersohn. I only wish there were something I could do for you in return.”

Bittersohn took the hand she held out to him. “I wish so, too, Mrs. Kelling. But I guess there isn’t, is there? Come on, I’ll walk you up the Hill.”

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