Family Vault (8 page)

She touched her eyes very carefully with a tissue. “So last night he sat there at the kitchen table talking my ear off about this broad with the rubies in her teeth till I couldn’t take no more. Made me sick to think of her laying there all this time. Anyhow, I had a date with my friend from over the Avenue, so I made him a cup of soup and told him he better go to bed.”

“You never saw him after that?”

“Nope. I was kind of late getting in and I figured he must be asleep. His door was shut.”

“Anybody else in the house?”

“Not last night. My husband’s away. On business,” she added with a glare at Sarah.

“I see.”

The doctor put down the paper and knelt to peer under the bed. “Ah, here we are.”

He reached in and scooped out a handful of dust fluffs and a stray sock. With the debris came two small plastic vials and some scraps of paper.

“Here’s the insulin he didn’t take, and here, I’d say, is what finished him off.” He spread out the scraps so the printing on them was visible. They were all alike.

“He’s been into my candy! Tim knows better than that. It could kill him.” Mrs. Wandelowski began to laugh hysterically. “What a way to go.”

“But those are all Milky Way wrappers,” Sarah protested.

“So what? They been having a special.”

“I know, we bought some too. I offered one to Mr. O’Ghee yesterday, and he refused. He said he couldn’t eat them.”

“Look, Miss whoever-the-hell-you-are,” said the doctor wearily, “if a despondent old man decides to kill himself, he’ll take any means that comes handy. You ought to be able to figure out what happened as well as I can. It must have been one hell of a shock when they knocked down that wall and he saw his old girl friend lying there like something left over from a horror movie. Maybe he’d been daydreaming all these years she’d come back to him some day. Maybe it just started him thinking about the past and what he had to look forward to, and he decided what was the sense in going on any longer?”

“But she wasn’t his old sweetheart,” Sarah protested.

“He didn’t even like her. He said Ruby Redd was the meanest woman he’d ever known. He was not upset, he was excited.”

“Look, sister, what a person says and what he feels can be two very different things. Who the hell knows why people kill themselves? It happens a damn sight oftener than you might think. Being a nice old guy, he fixes it up to look like a natural death instead of jumping in front of a subway train and messing up the tracks. And for your information, I’m still going to put heart failure on the death certificate. If you want to report me to the medical association, please feel free. Say, don’t I know you from somewhere?”

As she had feared, his eye lit on the newspaper. “So that’s the little game, is it? You’re the Kelling girl.”

Mrs. Wandelowski snatched the paper away from him. “You mean that’s her, the one in the picture? Sure, look, she’s even wearing the same clothes. What gall! Weaseling her way in here, making out she’s a friend of Tim’s. What’s she after, anyways?”

“Good question.”

The doctor took a step that brought him nose to nose with Sarah. “What’s the big idea, kid? Figured you’d get O’Ghee to tell you which of your rich uncles was the stripper’s boy friend so you could blackmail him into buying you a mink coat or a trip to Europe?”

“That’s ridiculous,” cried Sarah. “I—”

“Don’t you believe one word she says,” Mrs. Wandelowski broke in. “After the way she lied to me, I wouldn’t trust her one inch. Now you listen to me, toots. I don’t care who you are or where you came from, you’re nothing but a little tramp, and I won’t have you in my house. Get out and don’t never show your face around here again or you’ll damn soon wish you hadn’t.”

“Take it easy, Mrs. Wandelowski,” said the doctor. “Don’t get your blood pressure up. Come on, Miss Kelling, whatever you’re after, you came too late. Sorry I can’t give you taxi service back to the family mansion, but you’ve wasted too much of my time already.”

He was herding Sarah down the stairs as he spoke, and out on the porch. Mrs. Wandelowski slammed the door behind them. There was nothing Sarah could do except walk back to the subway station and catch a train to Park Street.

She was much later getting home than she’d meant to be. Edith was in a tizzy, messing around the kitchen, doing her best to ruin the refreshments.

“Leave that alone and go put on your afternoon uniform,” Sarah ordered. “I told you I’d be here in time to do the food.”

“Don’t see how,” the maid retorted. “They’ll be here in half an hour.”

Sarah wasted no breath arguing. She had more time than that, but she was going to need every minute of it. She welcomed the rush, it kept her from brooding on that neatly timed suicide of Tim O’Ghee. By the time she’d arranged her trays of savories and crudités, and got sheets of cheese puffs chilling in the fridge, ready to pop into a hot oven at the first sound of the doorbell, she’d worked herself into a reasonable frame of mind. She even managed to change her dress and be downstairs pouring sherry when Edith, elegant in black sateen, white organdy apron, and perhaps the last frilled lace cap extant on the Hill, opened the door to the first lot of friends and relatives.

Fortunately, Alexander and Aunt Caroline were in the group. Sarah left them to do the honors, got Edith started passing drinks and food, and bolted for the kitchen. From then on it was back and forth, lugging trays and boiling kettles, gathering up used dishes and fetching clean ones, Edith having provided about half the required number.

The old retainer might have known there’d be a record turnout. The Kellings, one and all, adored a funeral, and with the disagreeable publicity this one had evoked they’d rallied in droves to prove they had nothing to hide. She caught a sputter here and there about not knowing better than to talk to reporters, but didn’t stop to listen.

Thank goodness the Lackridges had come. Harry was making himself agreeable and Leila was interpreting for Aunt Caroline. That was a blessing, since Alexander would hardly have been up to it. He looked even grayer around the mouth than he had the night before. Some of the relatives were noticing.

“Alex is taking it hard. Didn’t realize he was so fond of old Fred. Edith, these cheese puffs are marvelous. I cannot see how you do it all by yourself.”

At last the tea, the sherry, the food, and the family were gone. Only Harry and Leila stayed on, she still talking and he still drinking, though by now Harry had switched to scotch out of his friend’s private stock. Sarah lit the library fire and shooed them toward it.

“Go warm yourselves while I straighten up the drawing room.”

Alexander roused himself to say, “You’ve been working all afternoon, Sarah. Can’t Edith do that?”

“She’s washing dishes,” said Leila.

“She is not,” Sarah retorted. “She’s downstairs soaking her corns and watching television. She’s furious with me because I wouldn’t let her go to the funeral.”

“People were wondering why you both stayed away.”

“Pity the obvious answer never occurred to them. Harry, before you quite finish that bottle, why don’t you fix my husband a drink of his own whiskey? Perhaps Leila and Aunt Caroline would like one, too.”

“What about yourself?”

“Not if anybody expects supper. It won’t be much, I warn you.”

In fact, Sarah hadn’t the faintest idea what she was going to serve, but nobody seemed to care. She went back to picking up cups and glasses. As a rule, Alexander would have helped, but tonight he sat hunched in the vast leather armchair that was once Uncle Gilbert’s special place, nursing his drink and letting the others talk around him. Sarah looked in once or twice to take them ice or a few leftover canapes, and it seemed to her that he hadn’t moved a muscle during the intervals.

She opened a tin of paté they’d got in a Christmas box and were saving for some grand occasion, and took a great deal of care making dainty sandwiches. Alexander had finicky tastes for a man. Those and a cup of soup, along with what had been served earlier, ought to suffice. They were none of them big eaters.

When the food was ready she went downstairs and told Edith, “I’ve fixed us a tray so you can forget about supper. There’s soup on the stove. If that’s not enough, boil yourself a couple of eggs.”

“They had the funeral on the news,” said the maid without moving her eyes from the flickering screen. “You wasn’t in it. They said you was home, prostrated with shock.”

“I’ll be prostrated all right, before this day is over.”

Sarah climbed the stairs one at a time with a rest in between, and picked up the last, heavy tray.

“A
LEX! ALEX, WHERE ARE
you? It’s almost eight o’clock.”

Caroline Kelling’s strident call woke Sarah from the soundest sleep she’d had in ages. Eight o’clock? They never slept that late. Could her husband—she froze, recalling old Tim O’Ghee sprawled half out of that sleazy boardinghouse cot.

But no, Alexander was getting up. She could hear a muffled groan, the squeak of bedsprings, then water running in the bathroom between their bedrooms. Sarah jumped out of bed, called down the stairs, “Edith, tell her we’ll be down in a minute,” and snatched her oldest slacks and a bedraggled jersey out of her closet.

Mariposa would be here on the dot of nine. Three minutes later, the cleaning woman would have tied up her elaborate hairdo in a flamboyant scarf, changed from street clothes to a cotton wrapper, put on a pair of holey sneakers in place of her chic high-heeled pumps, and be making the dust fly. They could afford this paragon only once a week, and nobody, not even Mariposa, could get through the whole house in a single day, so Sarah and Edith were supposed to help.

Sarah generally enjoyed tagging along with this human whirlwind, dusting and polishing and listening to a steady run of piquant gossip about life as it was lived at the other end of the city. Edith would spend the entire time puttering around Aunt Caroline’s bedroom and bath, and the adjoining room that Mrs. Kelling called her boudoir. Admittedly, this was no small responsibility since everything had to be kept in meticulous order, even the blind woman’s embroidery silks laid out strand by strand. It was to Edith’s credit that she never slacked her duties in this area.

By the time they got settled around the breakfast table, Aunt Caroline was in no sweet humor.

“I particularly wanted an early start this morning. You know it’s a two-hour drive to Marguerite’s, and she wants us there well in advance of the others so that you’ll have time to read me her latest chapter. She’s anxious to get my opinion before she goes any further.”

“Well, that’s just too bad,” Sarah snapped. “Alexander, why don’t you tell your mother you’re not going? You know you hate these ladies’ luncheons, and that book of hers is a total farce. Why should you drive seventy-five miles and back again for the sake of hearing Aunt Marguerite spout drivel?”

“Why not?” he said wearily.

“Because you look like death warmed over, for one thing. Won’t you please go back to bed and stay there till you’ve got rid of whatever is ailing you?”

His exquisite lips curved in a wry smile. “That might be rather a long stay. Don’t worry about me, Sadiebelle. Actually, I’ll be glad to get out of Boston for a few hours. I only wish you were coming, too.”

“What I wish,” she sighed, “is that the two of us could go off by ourselves for once in our lives. Can’t your mother understand that you’re a human being instead of a seeing-eye dog?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Alexander pushed back his chair and leaned down to kiss his wife. “Don’t work too hard. You look washed-out, yourself. I’m afraid you did too much yesterday.”

Sarah grabbed him by the necktie and pulled him closer. “Nonsense, Edith managed everything single-handed. Didn’t you notice the becoming modesty with which she was accepting all those compliments?”

“You’re a nasty little girl, Sadiebelle.”

He was going to kiss her again but his mother demanded, “Aren’t we ever going to get started?” and Edith came to announce that Mariposa was starting to wash dishes and weren’t they finished yet?

“In a minute,” said Sarah. “Alexander, don’t let them wear you to shreds. Tell Aunt Marguerite your wife has turned into a shrew and will hit the ceiling if you’re not back in time to rest before dinner. And don’t think I’m joking, because I’m not. Edith, help Mrs. Kelling on with her things and go get whatever she claims she doesn’t intend to take with her because you know she’ll change her mind at the last minute and want it, after all. I’ll clear the table, unless you’d like me to get the car. Alexander?”

“No, my dear, I’m not that far gone.”

Parking around the Hill was impossible. They had to garage their 1950 Studebaker down on Charles Street at a rate that would have bought them a new car every few years, fees being what they were in the area. They’d have been better off not to keep a car at all and rent one when they needed to, but Aunt Caroline wouldn’t hear of giving up the vehicle she’d once been able to drive herself.

Thanks to Alexander’s skill as a mechanic, the Studebaker continued to run like a charm and was no doubt a fairly valuable antique by now. Some day, perhaps, they’d relegate it to the shed at Ireson’s Landing with the Milburn, and get themselves something to ride in that wasn’t a collector’s item.

Some day, maybe, Sarah would pry Alexander loose from this ruinously expensive, hard-to-maintain town house and move into a place of her own. She was sick of Beacon Hill, sick of never being able to get her hands on a little spending money, sick to death of being married to Aunt Caroline. That day, the sofa cushions got the beating of their lives.

Work, as always, was therapy. It wasn’t until Mariposa was gone, the mops and brooms put away for another week, and Sarah soaking off the dust in a hot tub, that she had time to start worrying again. Alexander and his mother ought to be back any minute now, provided he hadn’t fallen into another of those frozen trances and cracked up the Studebaker. She ought to have left Mariposa to cope and gone with him. He wasn’t fond of driving long distances at any time, and in his present state the trip must have been sheer murder.