The Bilbao Looking Glass (8 page)

If it had been Miffy instead of Alice B. who’d got brained with the axe, the killing might have made more sense. Alice B. was vicious and sly, but not violent. Miffy was openly brutal. Anybody who objected to getting jumped on became her sworn enemy.

By now, Miffy had running feuds on with any number of people, many of them year-rounders because she always stayed on so long after the yacht club closed down for the winter and her usual drinking buddies dispersed. Was it in fact possible that Alice B. had been killed in mistake for Miffy? Or was Alice B. so closely identified with her patroness that the killer hadn’t cared which one he got? That of course was assuming there’d been anything personal in the killing, which Sarah had no right as yet to assume.

As to that list of stolen items, Sarah didn’t know what to make of it. She herself didn’t claim any great expertise but she was a trained artist, she’d spent a lot of time at museums and picked up a good deal lately from Max. Moreover, she’d inherited some good things herself and read up on them because she’d had to peddle a few to antique dealers during the early days of her sudden penury.

To her, the list seemed almost too good to be true. Surely Miffy must have owned those particular items or she wouldn’t have gone to the expense of insuring them. Miffy couldn’t have had much more good stuff, though, or some of it would have been on view and Sarah would have remembered. She’d spent enough time staring at Miffy’s walls during her younger days. The burglar must have skimmed off the cream and left the less desirable pieces even though many of them were larger and more showy. This was a connoisseur’s crime. How could it fit in with the primitive barbarity of an axe murder?

To believe Alice B. had come downstairs and surprised the robber, then stood patiently waiting in the dining room while he ran around back to the woodpile, fetched the axe, and came back to slaughter her was absurd. To suppose someone intending to steal precious, fragile items like that Bilbao looking glass would encumber himself at the outset with such a heavy, awkward weapon was even sillier.

A knife would have been just as effective and a lot easier to manage. Alice B. had slews of fine French steel knives for her gourmet cooking. She’d kept them razor sharp as a cordon-bleu chef ought to, and ready to hand in wooden racks screwed to the kitchen wall. Anybody who knew the house well enough to ferret out its valuables could surely have laid hands on any knife he wanted, or a cleaver if he’d rather hack than stab.

Was it possible two separate crimes had been committed on the same night? Could Alice B. have heard the first burglar leaving, perhaps, and come downstairs only to run into a second who’d had the same idea but a less polished approach?

More likely, the knowledgeable thief had brought a helper. There’d have been considerable fetching and carrying involved even if the items taken weren’t large. That Bilbao looking glass alone would have been as much as most people would risk trying to handle at one time. What would be the point in stealing a thing like that if you smashed it getting it out to your car?

They must have had a car, Sarah thought. That wouldn’t have presented any great problem. Miffy’s house wasn’t off in the woods like this one, but situated at the intersection of two roads down in the picturesque part of the old village. Cars were more common than not around there, especially now since the tourists had begun to arrive and there was plenty of hedge to hide one behind.

Suppose the person inside, the one who knew his way around, had been handing loot out the dining room window to a confederate who was taking it to a conveniently parked vehicle. Suppose Alice B. had in fact come downstairs and grappled with the thief, who might even have been a woman no bigger than she. Seeing his partner in trouble, the outside man might have run to get the axe from the woodpile, climbed in the window, and struck Alice B.

That could explain why the dining room silver hadn’t been taken. They’d have meant to get the valuable smaller items first, then scoop up the bulky ones on their way out. Once murder had been done, however, they wouldn’t have dared do anything but flee. There must have been a certain amount of noise. Maybe Alice had cried out, and they couldn’t be sure Miffy would still be deep enough in her drunken stupor not to hear.

Would Alice B. have been reckless enough to attack a burglar single-handed, even if it was somebody she knew? She’d have been drinking, of course, but she wouldn’t have been drunk. Perhaps that had been one flaw in what must otherwise have been a well-planned crime. Because Miffy never went to bed sober if she could help it, everybody tended to take it for granted Alice B. didn’t, either.

In fact, however, Alice B. had been clever about pretending to keep up with the rest of the crowd while secretly watering her drinks with innumerable ice cubes so that she’d be able to keep her wits together and not miss anything. Miffy’s brand of hospitality being what it was, most of her guests had probably gone home fairly well anaesthetized last night, but Alice B. ought to have remained sober enough. Early on, she’d been occupied with her clam puffs. After the cocktail party broke up, some of the crowd would surely have stayed for supper. That meant she’d have been doing her thing in the kitchen, flipping crepes or whipping up two perfect omelets at a time with a frying pan in each hand while the rest sat around the big kitchen table swilling wine and cheering her on.

She wouldn’t have drunk the wine herself. Putting on a show for company would have been intoxication enough for Alice B.

When the guests at last cleared off, there’d have been a mess to clean up and Miffy to put to bed because by then the hostess would have been out on her feet. By the time Alice B. got a chance to rest, she’d hardly have required a nightcap to put her to sleep.

Alice B. couldn’t have been any youngster, after all. She must have been at least Appie Kelling’s age, and Sarah herself had baked the cake for Appie’s sixtieth birthday party ages ago, when Uncle Samuel was still able to be up and about. It was surprising Alice B. had been able to manage as well as she had, especially with tasks like getting Miffy undressed and decently tucked into bed.

Aunt Appie would have that honor tonight, no doubt. Sarah folded a nightgown her aunt had left thrown over the foot of the guest room bed and laid it back in the suitcase Appie hadn’t bothered to finish unpacking. Just as well she hadn’t. Now it would be easy to close the case and cart it over to Miffy’s.

As she straightened up, Sarah glanced out the window to see how Pete was getting on with the mowing. Was that a dog sneaking up through the tall grass behind him? No, a dog wouldn’t be wearing a green and purple striped rugby shirt. It had to be one of Lionel’s brats. What was he doing up here? If Pete—good God!

“Hey!”

That was the boy shouting. Alive, thank heaven. He’d leaped straight into the air as Pete whirled around and swung the scythe blade viciously through the weeds where he’d been lurking.

“Pete!” Sarah screamed out the window. “You could have killed that boy.”

“Yeah? Well—” the hired man was shaken, Sarah could see that. Still he couldn’t help twisting his lips in a self-satisfied smirk. “I got fast reflexes.”

“Then you’d better slow them down. Stop crying Woody. I’m coming.”

It was typical of Lionel and Vare that they’d named their first three sons Jesse, Woodson, and James. The fourth and no doubt last now that Vare had switched her sexual proclivities, was Frank, of course.

Max was just finishing a phone call when Sarah got downstairs. “Sorry I couldn’t cut that short,” he apologized. “I was talking to a guy at the Sûreté. Don’t look at me like that. I charged it to my business account. What’s all the hullabaloo out back?”

“Pete Lomax just tried to chop one of Lionel’s boys in two with the scythe.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Woody was playing the fool, sneaking up through the grass. He startled Pete, and Pete swung on him. He claims he has fast reflexes. I’ve got to go out there.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Max. “I know all about Pete’s fast reflexes. Remind me to show you his footprint in spike marks on my thigh, if our acquaintance ever progresses that far.”

When they got out back, Woody was still blubbering from the shock. Pete was unconcernedly cutting grass. Sarah blew up.

“Pete, if you can’t handle tools in a responsible manner, you’d better leave them alone.”

“You told me to cut the grass.”

“I told you three weeks ago. If you’d done it then, this would never have happened. You’ll either learn to take orders or find somewhere else to work. As for you, Woody, what were you doing up here in the first place? I told you to stay away from the main house, didn’t I? Why aren’t you down at the camp where you belong?”

“I want to make a phone call,” he growled.

“Then walk down to the pay phone in the village.”

“Why the hell should I?”

“Because you’re not going to use mine, that’s why. Now get out of here and don’t come back. You’ve caused enough trouble and I shan’t stand for any more.”

“Boy, some summer this is going to be.”

Kicking a stone in front of him, the boy slumped off down the drive. Sarah turned to Max.

“I’m going to clean the carriage house. You may as well come with me and help. The way things are shaping up around here, don’t be surprised if you wind up having to do your own housework.”

That was mostly for Pete’s benefit, since Max would have come anyway. And why should Sarah feel self-conscious about what Pete Lomax was no doubt thinking about her and her handsome tenant? Furious with herself, Sarah strode down over the hill to the carriage house.

“I
SUPPOSE I WAS
rather awful to poor Woody.”

Sarah was fussing around trying to pretend Max’s dresser needed tidying though he’d barely spent enough time in the room to clutter it up and was reasonably neat in his habits anyway.

“The trouble with Lionel’s tribe is that if you try to treat them like human beings, they turn around and stamp all over you. Not that they get it from anybody strange.”

“That mother of theirs must be pretty damn strange, walking out on four young kids to go and shack up with another woman.”

Max came over and put his hands on either side of Sarah’s waist. “I’ve been wondering, Sarah. How do you feel about kids?”

“Kids in general or kids in particular?”

“Our kids, damn it.”

Sarah leaned her head back against his chest. “You know something, Max? You’re just an old-fashioned paterfamilias.”

“Who the hell said I wasn’t? They wouldn’t be Jewish, you know.”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“Because the religion descends through the mother.”

“Does that mean they could never play in the Maccabean Chess Tournament?”

These things have to be faced, my love.

“That’s discriminatory and rotten!” Sarah cried. “I didn’t know Jews were such snobs.”

“You thought your crowd had a monopoly on snobbery?”

“Don’t call them my crowd. You wouldn’t identify me with Fren Larrington and Miffy Tergoyne, I should hope?”

“It’s what you were born into, Sarah. Like it or lump it, you’ll never quite be able to shake them.”

“What are you trying to say, that engraven on my heart are a bean and a cod?”

“And on mine a schmalz herring.” Max rubbed his cheek against her soft, fine hair. “How about it,
fischele?
Do we start our own aquarium?

“Miz Kelling! Miz Kelling!”

Old Jed Lomax was running up the drive, bellowing his lungs out. Sarah sighed.

“Max, do you have the feeling we’re hopelessly outnumbered?”

She ran to the window and stuck her head out. “I’m down here, Mr. Lomax, in the carriage house. What’s the matter?”

“I got to use the phone, quick. Them kids set fire to the boathouse.”

“Oh Lord, what next? I’ll call.”

She grabbed Max’s telephone. “Operator? Get me the Ireson’s Fire Department quickly, please. It’s an emergency. Max, you’d better go down there with Mr. Lomax and see how bad it is. I could slaughter Cousin—hello? Hello, this is Mrs. Kelling over on Wood Lane. My cousin’s children have set fire to our boathouse. Could you come right away, please, before it spreads to the trees?”

If it hadn’t already. Sarah thought she could smell smoke. “Yes, the big place on the hill. Mr. Lomax will be at the end of the drive to show you where to go.”

“Mr. Lomax,” she shouted down, “I said you’d be down by the road to show them the path.”

“Then I better get goin’. Thanks, Miz Kelling.”

“Don’t thank
me
,” she burbled semihysterically, but nobody was left to hear her. Max and old Jed were already on their way. Pete had no doubt heard his uncle shouting and was off to the fire, also. Sarah hoped he’d left the scythe behind him.

But he might at least have taken a broom and a bucket. She’d remembered Alexander’s private fire department. Her late husband had been a great one for preparedness. Both at the main house and down here, he’d gathered together a collection of old brooms, burlap sacks, and galvanized pails in case of such an emergency as this. Sarah had teased him about them, but Alexander had taken his equipment seriously.

“Big fires start from little ones, Sarah. Isolated as we are out here, we can’t afford to take risks. Some day we may be glad we have these things handy.”

For him, that day had never come. It was the least his widow could do to put them to use now. Why hadn’t Mr. Lomax remembered? Probably he had, and realized they’d be futile.

Nevertheless, Sarah grabbed up the brooms and buckets, flung the sacks over her shoulders, and struggled down over the hill with her clattering load. She’d tramped these woods often enough to know every shortcut, so she got to the fire almost as soon as Max, who’d run down the drive and come in by the path.

Cousin Lionel was, she saw, handling the crisis as one might expect: urging his sons to help him strike the tent and rescue their camping equipment, not raising a hand to save the boathouse or keep the fire in the grass from spreading to the woods. She brushed past him and began handing out sacks and brooms.