Puzzle for Fiends (13 page)

She started pushing my wheel chair down the terrace, chattering blandly. My nerves were strung very high then. It was almost unendurable having her invisible behind me. I think I half expected her to plunge the scissors into my neck.

“Here we are, dear. So charming here.”

We had entered a little walled patio. Poinsettias and climbing roses in white tubs were massed along the walls. White and green porch chairs were arranged under the shade of a drooping pepper tree. Mrs. Friend maneuvered my chair close to one of the others and sat down. She produced knitting from her garden basket, and her white fingers started a flow of wool across the needles. Everything Mrs. Friend did was so unswervingly maternal. That was the most frightening thing about her.

“Well, dear”—she smiled up from the knitting—“how does it feel in the wheel chair? Overtiring yourself?”

The incidents of the past half-hour had left me limp as a grass stalk. Of all the conspirators, I was sure now that Mrs. Friend was the most formidable. If only I could break her down, the whole edifice here might collapse. But how? She was so sublimely sure of herself and I had nothing—nothing except Mr. Petherbridge.

Calmly I said: “Mr. Petherbridge just called.”

“He did, dear?”

“My father’s lawyer?”

“Yes, Gordy. I know that, of course. What did dear Mr. Petherbridge want?”

“He said to tell you he was coming tomorrow afternoon with Mr. Moffat as arranged unless he hears from you.”

She smiled. “Oh, good. Then I won’t have to telephone him.” Her monumental placidity was exasperating beyond words.

“Why’s Mr. Petherbridge coming tomorrow?” I asked.

“For the meeting, dear,” she said gently. “The Clean Living League. He’s a member, you know. Your father insisted that he join and your father was a very lucrative client. I’m afraid, as a Clean Living Leaguer, Mr. Petherbridge’s tongue is a little in his cheek.”

I said: “Then there’s going to be a meeting of the whole league here tomorrow? I thought you said it was just Mr. Moffat.”

“Oh, no, dear, the whole league.” Mrs. Friend had come to the end of one ball of wool. She took its tail and started to weave it onto the next ball. “Didn’t I make that clear? It’s to be a memorial service for your father with Mr. Moffat presiding, of course. I suppose service isn’t quite the right word. They’re not exactly a religious institution. More of a ceremony. Perhaps that’s what we should call it.”

“Mr. Petherbridge called it an ordeal,” I said.

“And so it is, my dear. You wait and see. So terribly, terribly good we have to be. No liquor, no cigarettes, of course. Not even an ashtray visible. All of us in black. No make-up. And a sort of dismal holy expression. You know, dear. Like this.” She put the knitting down and twisted her face into an expression of the most lugubrious piety.

“I do hope you’ll be able to put on the right face, dear. You must practice. Think of something that smells particularly unattractive, like a dead mouse. That’s how I do.” She sighed, “This is the very last time, Gordy. I’ve promised myself that. After tomorrow, we’re going to eschew the Aurora Clean Living League forever. My dear, if you knew how I suffered from it. Because they’re not good people. You’ll realize that when you see them. They’re disgusting, revolting hypocrites. Their whole life is one big, fat, smug sham. The times in St. Paul when I’d have given my soul to lift my skirt up over my knees and plunge into a can-can in the middle of one of Mr. Heber’s harangues! I never did, of course,” she added sadly. “I was always too scared of your dear father.”

Mrs. Friend was being charming. I was beginning to learn that she used her charm as a decoy whenever I got near a danger spot. Pulling the conversation back into the path I wanted it to take, I asked:

“And just what am I expected to do tomorrow?”

“You, dear?” A little tawny butterfly settled on Mrs. Friend’s satiny white bosom. She brushed it off tranquilly, “Why, nothing, Gordy. Just look respectable and be polite and try to pretend you’re not bored. Oh yes, and you can recite the
Ode to Aurora
too.” She glanced at me under her lids. “Have you learned it all yet?”

“Not all of it.”

“Then we’ll all help you tonight. Mr. Moffat would love that so because—well, dear, you were always thought of as the damned one of the family, you know. It would give him enormous satisfaction to feel you had been reformed.” She put the knitting down on her comfortable lap. “You never know, dear. Perhaps the meeting will bring your memory back. Of course you never met Mr. Moffat and you never attended one of these California meetings. But you had so much of the same thing in St. Paul. Perhaps it’ll strike a chord.”

It was a terrific strain never taking what they said at its face value, trying to catch a hint of the truth from an inflexion or an overtone. Now I was thinking: Gordy was the damned one of the family, the one with the bad reputation. If Mr. Friend had been murdered and the fact was discovered, Gordy would therefore be the most obvious suspect. And Mr. Moffat and Mr. Petherbridge had never seen Gordy. Gordy then was the only member of the family who could be represented by a substitute without the ruse being immediately obvious.

Yes, the Friends could have a sporting chance of getting away with the incredible scheme of which I suspected them—if they were daring enough.

And, heaven knew, they were daring.

Fiends.
Was that what Marny had meant when she called them
fiends
?

Mrs. Friend’s sweetness had the effect of scented pillows smothering me. An overwhelming desire to push my way out into the open rose up in me. Surely, whatever resulted, I could be in no worse a situation than I was right now.

“You want a chord struck?” I asked, deliberately challenging her. “You do want me to get my memory back?”

“Gordy, what a weird thing to say.” She put the knitting down on her lap and made a weary grimace. “Oh, dear, you’re still suspicious of us. I thought so when Selena told me how you’d ferreted that photograph of your Cousin Benjy out of the drawer.”

Selena had already passed on the news. They had a superefficient organization all right.

“Cousin Benjy?” I said. “Oh, you mean the whiz from Harvard who’s being a botanist in India.” I paused. “It is India, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Friend went on knitting serenely. “Yes, dear.”

I could hardly believe it. At last I had tripped her up. Staring straight at her, I said: “You didn’t get that story quite straight with Selena, did you?”

“Gordy, dear, what do you mean?”

“Selena said this mythical cousin Benjy went to Yale, was a meteorologist and lived in China. You should tell her not to make her lies so elaborate. With four of you working together it must be hard enough keeping the pretense going without having to memorize a lot of odd detail.”

“Really, darling. “Mrs. Friend put down her knitting again. She seemed faintly aggrieved. “What do you mean about lies? Is your Cousin Benjy a meteorologist in China? I’m sure I don’t know. He’s on your father’s side. I’ve never even met him. Selena’s much more apt to be right about it than I.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “By and large you’re much more effective than Selena. Her lie about the old woman, last night, for example. You could have done better than that.”

Whatever the consequences, it was a terrific relief to come out with that at last.

Mrs. Friend was staring at me with a surprise that seemed devoid of any alarm.

“The old woman, dear?”

“It’s not worth pretending you don’t know about her. Selena woke you up last night especially to tell you what happened.”

“My dear Gordy, please tell me what you mean or I’ll go mildly crazy.”

“It’ll save a lot of time if you get a few simple facts into your head. Selena never fooled me about the old woman, not even after the handkerchief was stolen from me. Netti told me, anyway. I was able to get that much information out of her before you fired her.”

“Gordy, you’re insinuating that I fired Netti because...”

“I’m not insinuating any more. I’m bored with insinuating. I’m telling you that all four of you—Selena, Marny, Dr. Croft and you—have been feeding me a pack of lies from the very beginning. I’m perfectly conscious of the fact and I’m not going to be lied to any more.”

“Darling, thank heavens!” Mrs. Friend caught up my hand and squeezed it. “At last you’re being frank with me. You can’t know how grateful I am. What exactly do you think we’re lying about?”

“I don’t think. I know.” I wasn’t going to mention my suspicions about old Mr. Friend’s death, of course. That was far too dangerous. “You’re lying about that old woman.”

A sweetly patient smile played around her lips. “If I knew what you meant about the old woman, dear, perhaps I could explain.”

“The old woman who came into my room last night.” I was smart enough not to add that the old woman had said I wasn’t Gordy Friend. “The old woman Selena said was just a figment of my imagination.”

I glared at her, thinking:
She'll have to break now.
But Mrs. Friend had never looked less like breaking.

“Selena said there wasn’t an old woman living in the house?” she repeated. “My dear, how strange. Of course there’s an old woman living here.”

I had expected almost anything but that. I said: “Then why did Selena lie about her?”

“My dear, I can’t imagine.” Mrs. Friend’s voice was soothing. “Of course I don’t know the circumstances. You are still an invalid. Perhaps whatever happened flustered you and Selena thought you’d sleep better if she pretended it was all a dream. But then, you can’t expect me to explain Selena’s mental processes. Sometimes I wonder whether she has any.”

Once again Mrs. Friend had managed to make me feel like a fool. Weakly, I said: “Who is she then, this old woman?”

“Your grandmother, dear. The poor darling, she’s my mother. She’s been living with us ever since we came to California. She’s quite ancient and rather frail, but she’s certainly not a dream.”

“I can see her then?”

“See her?” Mrs. Friend’s face lit up with a smile of incredulous gratitude. “My dear, could you really be bothered to? She’s always been so devoted to you. And, I’m afraid, you’ve rather neglected her. Dear, if only you would have a little visit with her, it would make me so happy.”

That was typical of Mrs. Friend. You shot an arrow at her and she caught it and then started to croon over it as if it were a beautiful flower you’d presented to her.

But this time, surely, she’d over-reached herself. She thought she was being smart by pretending she wanted me to meet the old woman. But neither she nor anyone else knew that last night the old woman had admitted I wasn’t Gordy Friend. With any luck I could turn her latest scheme into a boomerang.

I said: “How about going to see her right now?”

“That would be lovely.” Mrs. Friend stuffed her knitting back into the garden basket and, rising, kissed me sweetly on the cheek. “Dear, you
are
being a darling boy.”

She started to wheel my chair into the house.

“It’s only this, dear, that you’re suspicious about?”

“Yes,” I said, lying.

We went down a sunny corridor into a wing I had not explored. We stopped before a closed door. The little contented smile curling her lips, Mrs. Friend tapped and called: “Mother? Mother, dear?”

My fingers, gripping the arms of the wheel chair, were quivering.

“Mother, sweet?” called Mrs. Friend again.

“Martha, is that you?” An old, querulous voice sounded scratchily through the door.

“Yes, dear. Can I come in?”

“Come in. Come in.”

Mrs. Friend opened the door and pushed my chair into a beautiful lavender and grey bedroom. In a chair by the window, an ancient woman, with a shawl arranged untidily over her shoulders, was sitting looking out at the garden. As Mrs. Friend wheeled me nearer, the old woman did not turn. But I could see her profile clearly. I studied the lined, parchment skin, the large eye, sunken in its socket. There was no doubt about it at all.

My “grandmother”, sitting there in the wheel chair by the window, was definitely the old woman who had stood over my bed the night before.

“Mother, dear,” said Mrs. Friend. “Look. I’ve brought you a surprise.”

“What? A surprise, eh?”

The old woman shifted laboriously in her chair so that she could look at us.

This was the moment.

The old woman peered at the wheel chair and then at me. Slowly the wrinkles around her mouth stretched into a smile of quavering delight.

“Gordy,” she said.

She held out both her thin hands to me. The knotted fingers made greedy clutching motions in the air as if she could not wait to embrace me.

“Gordy,” she cried. “It’s my Gordy. My darling Gordy’s come to see his old grandmother.”

Mrs. Friend brought the two chairs together. The old fingers were running up my arms. The old lips, dry and parched, nuzzled affectionately against my cheek.

Marny’s voice, broken and wild with weeping, seemed to be right there in the room.

I can't bear watching what they're doing to you. They’re fiends—all of them... fiends...

Mrs. Friend
controlled that “little visit” with the firm hand of a stage director. She introduced small, safe topics of conversation, sprinkled the old lady and me with smiles and, after five minutes or so, submitted me to another old kiss from “grandmother” and wheeled me out of the room.

In the sunny corridor, she beamed at me. “There, darling boy, she’s not particularly frightening, is she?”

I could have said:
She isn’t, but you are.
I didn’t. I didn’t say anything. Through her extraordinary talent for intrigue, Mrs. Friend had somehow managed to woo the old lady over to her side. She had me trapped now. Saying things couldn’t help.

She wheeled me out onto the terrace. Sunshine was good for me, she said. She suggested taking me down to the pool, but at that moment Selena, Nate, and Marny trooped up the grass path through the flower-beds. They crowded around us in their swimming suits, young, handsome, friendly. I looked at Marny mostly. I had no one now except possibly Marny. But there was no sign in her face of her strange breakdown. She was as masked and specious as the others.