Murder Comes First (2 page)

“Thirty cents was quite enough,” Aunt Thelma said firmly from behind him. “There is no reason to spoil people.”

“I—” Jerry began.

“Tell us about Cleveland,” Pam North said quickly.

“What?” Aunt Thelma said.…

Three cats greeted them just inside the door of the Norths' apartment. They sat in a semi-circle, the two flankers sitting taller than Martini in the middle. Martini looked up at humans from round blue eyes. Her daughters, Gin and Sherry, looked up from crossed blue eyes. Sherry, who was a soft blue-gray on face and legs and tail, where the others were a rich brown, tilted her head to one side. She appeared to be, with some apprehension, regarding Aunt Lucinda's hat.

“Oh,” Aunt Pennina said, “the beautiful kitties. The
sweets!
”

“Cats,” Aunt Thelma said. “Hmm.”

“I always think of T. S. Eliot,” said Aunt Lucinda. “‘Growltiger's Last Stand' you know. As the Siamese something or other something or other. Such a wonderful poet.”

“Yah,” said Gin, the junior seal point, drawing it out. “Yah-ow.” Then, resonantly, she began to purr.

“I suppose,” Aunt Thelma said, “you haven't
any
kind of a dog?”

Martini turned deliberately and walked away. The other two looked at her in surprise and then, obediently, followed her.

“It's one of the words she knows,” Pam said.

“Nonsense,” said Aunt Thelma. “Cats! Where's the bathroom, Pamela?”

In order, the aunts “freshened up.” In order they returned to the living room, to iced-tea and cookies. The aunts removed their hats; Aunt Thelma removed the jacket of her tweed suit. They talked to Pam about relatives, to whom, so far as Jerry—relaxed in a deep chair, not with iced-tea—could determine, nothing of great moment had happened. He considered the aunts and discovered that, now that they were, in a sense, landed, he rather enjoyed them.

They were, he thought, all in their sixties, and perhaps Aunt Thelma was the eldest, although perhaps she was merely aged by authority. Otherwise, they could not easily have differed more.

Aunt Thelma was not actually tall, except by comparison and, perhaps, by carriage. She was wiry under the tweed suit, her face had been left out in the weather and her hands were brown and vigorous. Her gray hair, worn short, was vigorous too; she regarded the world, commandingly, through light blue eyes. It occurred to Jerry that she probably wore tweeds, in part at least, because a rough gray tweed, while it collects dog hairs, does not show them. Gin came into the room, walked directly to Aunt Thelma, and began to smell her shoes. Gin's nostrils vibrated slightly and she laid her ears back. She looked up at Aunt Thelma, perhaps to see if she were what she smelled like, and said “Yow-ah!” in a rather puzzled tone. Dogs beyond a doubt, Jerry realized. Dogs and horses. It takes all kinds, he thought drowsily.

“All right,” Aunt Thelma said to Gin, firmly but without unkindness. “That's enough of that.” Gin sat down and began to look at her.

“—as for Flora,” Aunt Thelma said, continuing.

It was the little thin one who was the literary one, Jerry remembered—Aunt Lucy. She had been pretty, in a way still was pretty. Her small face was bright with interest in things; she looked quickly from one to another of the people and the cats, as if she did not want to miss anything and, somehow, as if she were hurrying to catch up, and as if to hurry so was somehow bewildering. She saw Jerry when he looked at her, and a smile ran to her lips, as if late for an appointment.

“Old maids' gossip,” she said. “What you must think!” She stopped, still smiling. “The world of books,” she said, happily.

“Oh yes,” Jerry said. “Yes.” Then he felt as if too quickly he had accepted the triviality of gossip. “Not at all,” he said, wondering what he meant.

She weighed about a hundred, Jerry thought of Aunt Lucinda; she had given thought to the black dress and something, probably from the subconscious, to the pink hat. (She had taken it off, now, but Jerry still could see it on her curled, gray-blond hair. He thought, drowsy again in the warmth of the living room, that he would always see it.)

Aunt Lucy nodded, her bright eyes, her eager face, waiting—waiting, Jerry thought, for talk of books. He could not think of anything to say about books, except that they weren't, currently, selling as well as one might wish. He doubted if that would serve, so he merely smiled. Aunt Lucy smiled back and nodded, as if he had in fact said something, and then, quickly, began to listen to Pam, who was talking about someone named Felix, of whom Jerry had never heard, but of whom Pam spoke with evident interest and apparent familiarity.

Martini returned to the room, looked around it with the air of a cat who finds a room infested with people, and jumped on Jerry's lap, making a sharp comment which Jerry hoped he misinterpreted. She put claws, but only the tips of claws, into his knee for traction, and gave everyone slow, complete scrutiny through unwinking blue eyes. Jerry put a hand on her back and she swished her tail.

Aunt Pennina was about as tall as Aunt Lucy and must weigh fifty, perhaps sixty, pounds more. She had round pink cheeks; the skin of her face was like very soft tissue paper, very gently crumpled. Her small, plump hands, were prettily white; her hair was white and soft around her face. That she was not a grandmother was almost inconceivable. She should be pampering grandchildren and dispensing from a cookie jar. And she looked as if she had been in the Norths' living room for weeks, almost as if she had been there always. She ate another cookie, and this interested Sherry, whose interest in food was unfailing. Sherry walked over, loose-jointed, at the downhill slant of a long-legged Siamese.

“Nice kitty,” Aunt Pennina said comfortably. “Want a cookie?”

Sherry, thus addressed, said, at rather too great length, that she would try, once, anything she could chew. Aunt Pennina held down part of a cookie and Sherry smelled it carefully. She smelled Aunt Pennina's hand carefully. She licked the cookie. Then, briefly, as if for politeness' sake, she nibbled at it.

“Pennina!” Aunt Thelma said. “What
are
you doing?”

“Feeding the kitty,” Aunt Pennina said. “Such a sweet kitty.” She was entirely unperturbed; she was unsurprised that Aunt Thelma should have asked to have described an action so obvious.

“Crumbs,” Aunt Thelma said. “On Pamela's rug.”

Pam said it didn't matter. She said you had to expect things with cats.

“Pete used to tear them up in handfuls,” Pam added. “Rugs, that is. Is there any talk of their getting divorced?”

There was, it appeared. Jerry half listened, half dozed. Sherry left the cookie, went to lick Martini. Martini, abstractedly, licked her in return. Then Martini jumped down, turned over on her back and pawed at Sherry. Sherry leaped over her and went off down a corridor, her hind legs appearing to run faster than her fore. Martini took after her blond daughter. Gin turned and, for no reason apparent to humans, began furiously to wash her tail.

“—not that we
know
of,” Aunt Thelma said. “Of course, one can't help—”

“—such a beautiful, strange story,” Aunt Lucinda said. “He kills this senator. So full of
meaning
—”

“—you
must
have made them yourself,” Aunt Pennina said. “I know in Cleveland we can't buy—”

“Jerry,” Pam said. “Jerry, dear.” Jerry woke up to realize he had been asleep. “He works so hard,” Pam said. “Don't you, darling? All last night.”

Jerry looked at her in surprise.

“The manuscript, dear,” Pam told him. “It must have been three when you—”

“Oh yes,” Jerry said. “Of course. The manuscript.”

It must, Aunt Lucinda told him, be wonderful to be a publisher.

“Well,” Jerry said, “yes and—”

“So many books,” Aunt Lucinda said, her face bright at the thought.

There was, Jerry agreed, always that.

“In any event,” Aunt Thelma said, “we must go. Pennina. Lucinda.”

The aunts would not have any more iced-tea. Only Aunt Pennina would have another cookie. In the cab going toward the Hotel Welby, Pam suggested dinner later. Aunt Pennina nodded contentedly; Aunt Lucinda smiled brightly; Aunt Thelma told them they would be too tired.

“Tomorrow, then,” Pam North said.

“Tomorrow,” Aunt Thelma agreed.

“Except,” Aunt Lucinda said, “there's dear Grace, Thelma.”

“Plenty of time for both,” Aunt Thelma said.

“Grace Logan,” Aunt Pennina said, in her relaxed, contented voice. “You remember, Pam. Such an old friend, from the old days, you know. We always call on our way through. So lonely, poor dear Grace.”

“Nonsense,” Aunt Thelma said. “Her son's there, isn't he? To say nothing of that Mrs. Hickey. And the servants.”

“It's not the same, dear,” Aunt Lucinda said. “And it isn't as if she had ever read much.”

“I—” Aunt Thelma began, but the cab stopped at the Hotel Welby and the driver knocked his flag down. He told them that here they were, folks. Jerry got out and handed down aunts. The doorman collected luggage. In the lobby, Jerry waited while Pam took the aunts aloft, feeling that it would be unsuitable for him to go where he might see beds in which maiden aunts would sleep. He waited ten minutes and Pam rejoined him.

Pam patted her husband's arm and said he had been very nice to the aunts. Jerry said he was sorry he had gone to sleep.

“It didn't matter,” she said. “It was hardly noticeable.”

Jerry thought momentarily about this and decided not to disturb it. Instead, he asked who Felix might be.

“Felix?” Pam repeated. “Oh—
Felix
.”

“Yes,” Jerry said.

“Some sort of a second cousin or something,” Pam said. “Why?”

Jerry didn't know why. He said he had never heard her speak of him before and wondered.

“For heaven's sake,” Pam said. “I haven't thought of him in years. I wouldn't know him if I saw him.” She paused. “He's just a relative,” she said. “Everybody has them. Let's go to the Plaza. To celebrate.”

“What?” Jerry asked.

“Jerry!” Pam said. “There doesn't have to
be
anything.” Then she paused. “I guess,” she said, “just not being a maiden aunt. Because, it would be so dull, wouldn't it?”

They went to the Plaza's Oak Room bar. It made, as Pam observed, a nice start.

The next morning, the Norths slept late. It was after three when Pam telephoned the aunts at the Welby to make definite the arrangements for dinner. But the aunts were not in their rooms.

“Of course,” Pam said, hanging up. “I'd forgotten. Calling on Mrs.—what was her name, Jerry? The old friend?”

Jerry didn't remember it either. He didn't try. Pam said it didn't matter; that, indeed, it couldn't matter less.

2

Sunday, 2:40
P.M.
to 7:10
P.M.

Grace Logan said, “But of course. You must” in cordial tones, listened a moment, said, “The sooner the better, dear” and replaced the receiver. She sat for a moment in the ivory and white room and looked at the ivory telephone. She rubbed her forehead gently with slender fingers in a gesture so familiar that its purpose no longer existed, although once it might have been, only half hopefully, massage to erase the lines that form on foreheads as, through years, one raises eyebrows in astonishment at the world, knits brows in puzzlement at it, laughs at it and laughs with it. When one has, within months, to expect a sixty-third birthday, one has had time to make many faces at the world.

Grace Logan did not, by some years, look so old as, during recent weeks, she had begun to feel. She was a slender woman of medium height; her body had almost the graceful roundness of youth, and the black dress she wore was artfully contrived; skilled hands had arranged the white hair which was so cleanly white, which contrasted so effectively with the darkness of her tailored eyebrows; practiced hands—in this case her own—had applied lipstick to lips which were still soft, not yet tightened by age. Grace Logan might easily have been thought a dozen years younger than she was, as at fifty she might have been thought a youthful forty. Paul had often told her that.

He had said, when he was very ill, when they both knew he was dying, that he had had the best of her, and that was true—was true for both of them. She thought of Paul now, with Thelma Whitsett's authoritative voice still in her ears; she thought of Paul, dead five years now, and thought “Poor Thelma” and then that it had been nobody's fault—not Paul's, not hers, not Thelma's either. She thought “I'm lonely” and then that Paul should be here now she needed him. Then Grace Logan, with many things to consider, pulled herself together and considered the most immediate. She went down two flights of stairs and told Hilda that there would be three guests for early tea. “The Misses Whitsett,” she told Hilda, who said that she hadn't realized it was time for them.

“October,” Grace Logan told her cook, who agreed that, sure enough, it was October.

“Regular,” Hilda said and then, after a moment, “Almost like birds, aren't they now?”

Grace Logan smiled and nodded, and thought of the Misses Whitsett migrating like birds, passing through New York in mid- or late October on their way south, passing through again in late March on their way to Cleveland. Lucy would enjoy the idea, Grace thought; Penny might. It would not appeal to Thelma. Going up a flight from the ground floor of her immaculate, narrow house to the front living room on the second floor, she wondered, as twice a year she wondered, what she and the Misses Whitsett would find to talk about. The old days, probably—the days they had grown up together, played together on the broad, unseparated lawns of two sprawling houses, gone to school together. So long ago, Grace Logan thought; so dreadfully long ago. Then, as she moved about the room, caressing it as women do the rooms they love, the lines of worry formed again between her eyebrows and again, not knowing she did it, she tried to smooth them away with the tips of her fingers. So much is wrong, she thought; so much worries me. And people are so—so thoughtless. They help so little, try so little to help. Like Rose that morning, after four years.