The Gladstone Bag (2 page)

“Then you won’t be lonesome.” Mrs. Sabine took another nibble of her tart. Emma ate a shrimp sandwich and sighed.

“No, I’m not wanting for company. Young Wally and Little Em have scads of friends, and of course their cousins adore having them so near. Dearly as I love them all, I’m thinking seriously of booking a cruise to the Galápagos Islands. Or possibly Antarctica. I’d hoped to bag my niece Sarah’s guest house, but—Adelaide, I’ve just had a glorious thought! Why don’t I go to your island?”

“Emma, surely you don’t mean that?”

“Why not? It would be a change. Unless of course you’d rather I didn’t?”

Mrs. Sabine put down her fork and reached across the table for Mrs. Kelling’s hand. “Emma, my dear, how could I not want you to go? It would be the answer to everything. But are you quite sure?”

“Adelaide, consider my position. My daughter-in-law Kippy, Kristina, you know, went to school in Switzerland. I think it’s charming that Kippy learned to yodel there; she yodels rather sweetly. I found it perfectly natural that she taught Walter to yodel, too. When their children came along, I could hardly wait to hear the little dears chirping their first o-le-ay-hoos. But nowadays when the lot of them get to yodeling back and forth at each other before I’ve even had my morning coffee, I have to say I find it a bit much.”

“Good heavens! Do they really?”

“That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Emma replied grimly. “Their four pet cockatoos yodel, too. Their bloodhound keeps trying to and can’t. Shall I go on?”

“No, please, I can’t stand it!” Mrs. Sabine was already having to dab at her eyes with a beautiful, white cambric handkerchief that smelled faintly of lavender. “I can see that your need is even greater than mine. Oh, listen, they’re singing again.”

The fire truck was parked directly outside the refreshment tent. The Pirates of Pleasaunce were all aboard, singing a last chorus about the fireman’s bride who wouldn’t stay home by her fireside.

“Bed used to insist that song was written about me,” Emma admitted. “I can imagine what he’d say if he’d watched me jumping out that window today. But she came to no good end, as I recall.”

Mrs. Sabine was still smiling. “You’re never naughty, Emma.”

“At my age, when would I get the chance?” Emma stood up and put on her jacket. “Then I’d better go home and pack, hadn’t I? When will it be convenient for me to stop by and pick up your keys?”

W
ITH THE YODELERS ALREADY
in residence, getting away had been no great problem. Household arrangements could be left to Kippy and the cockatoos. Packing for so extended a stay had been easy enough; Emma was well organized and knew pretty much what sort of weather she could expect on the island, even in high summer. Warm cardigans, loose skirts of velour or corduroy, practical long-sleeved shirts went in with the summery cottons. No dinner dresses, she wouldn’t need them. Her jewels could stay in the safe. Those clunky, arty pieces Emma’s namesake granddaughter liked to pick out for her at craft shows would be just right for a congeries of artists.

Artists in the general sense, she meant; in fact, only two of them were involved with the visual arts, according to the list Adelaide Sabine had given her. Lisbet Quainley painted and Joris Groot illustrated. That probably meant Emma would be able to see what Groot’s work was getting at and would have to guess about Miss Quainley. Then again, it might be the other way around. One never knew, these days.

It was the historian who’d organized Adelaide’s guest list for her. He was supposed to be doing research, though Emma couldn’t think why he’d chosen Pocapuk Island to do it on. Everard Wont, his name was; he sounded like a character out of Barbara Pym. There was also a mystery writer who’d sit and look inscrutable, she supposed, while Wont did the talking. Historians always talked; Emma had known lots of them, both professional and amateur. She’d never met a mystery writer before, though. She’d assumed they were all middle-aged women who wore odd clothes and lived in out-of-the-way places with a great many cats, but Black John Sendick sounded male as anything.

Wont was also bringing a psychologist with him, at least Adelaide thought a psychologist. She’d been even vaguer on this one than she was about the others. Either male or female or perhaps a bit of each, the name Alding Fath didn’t help a whit.

And finally, Count Alexei Vassilovich Radunov, no less. He was indeed down on the list as a poet. Adelaide might have known better. The count would almost certainly be bogus, impecunious, and concerned less with poetry than with freeloading on a wealthy old widow for as long as could be managed. He might be fun, though. Rogues often were.

So that meant four men and two women, counting herself, with one iffy. Emma did hope Alding would turn out to be either female or not noticeably otherwise. If not, the dinner table would never come out right, though she couldn’t think why it would matter.

When it came to passing away the idle hours, assuming she ever got any, Adelaide had told her not to worry. “You’ll find the island itself an endless entertainment. There are pleasant walks, if you care for them, and wonderful bird-watching and botanizing. And of course the sea is always changing. I never tire of watching it myself. And we don’t have bugs, which is a great blessing. No nasty ones, anyway.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Emma had replied; “my bites always swell up and itch. What about books? Do you keep a library of any sort out there?”

“My dear, with so many writers coming and going, how could we have avoided it? You’ll find plenty to read, never fear. And there’s a phonograph, and radios in all the bedrooms, and television, if you care for it. There’s also a piano if you care to take your music along. Vincent will make sure it’s in tune.”

Vincent would see to everything. He always did. Emma would hardly have to give an order; Vincent knew how things were done. Vincent always knew.

It wouldn’t be that easy, Emma was sure. Now that Adelaide had got out of having to cope, she was indulging an old person’s privilege, fantasizing about the halcyon summers that ought to have been but never actually were because life wasn’t like that. One of the unknowns would show up with an autocratic mother, a whiny teenage mistress, or a child who’d been dumped on him at the last minute by a vindictive ex-wife for the express purpose of stifling his creativity. One would be a drunk or a drug addict; one would come down with acute appendicitis at the first clap of a raging thunderstorm and have to be rushed to the mainland under incredible difficulties. One would be allergic to everything Vincent’s friend cooked, and Vincent’s friend would quit in a huff.

Emma entertained herself on the flight from Massachusetts to Maine exploring the direful possibilities and thinking up interesting ways to cope with them. It always helped to expect the worst, then one could be agreeably surprised when nothing catastrophic happened.

Most of her luggage had been shipped ahead by truck. All she carried on the plane with her—besides the tapestry tote containing her wallet, keys, cosmetics, a spare wig, a change of underwear just in case, and the photograph of her late husband with his fireman’s helmet on that she always took everywhere—was a battered Gladstone bag filled with the Fairy Queen’s crown and all the court jewels.

The jewels had been an afterthought. Emma had officially turned over management of The Pirates of Pleasaunce to Parker III and Jenicot Tippleton. They’d elected to do
Iolanthe
next season, with Parker as Strephon and Jenicot as Phyllis. A singer who could possibly replace Emma Kelling as the Fairy Queen had yet to be discovered.

There were always plaintive murmurs of “Couldn’t you manage one more time?” but Emma was adamant. Her voice was worn out, her performing days were through. Like an old fire horse hearing the siren, though, she couldn’t resist going along for the gallop. There were lots of little backstage chores she could handle better than anyone else; the jewels were one of them.

They’d been bought at Woolworth’s back when glamour and glitter were interchangeable words, when rhinestones were fashionable and cheap. Since then, they’d been through a lot of performances. Settings were tarnished and bent; stones were dirty or missing. The bracelets, necklaces, tiaras, and brooches were worthless, but at today’s prices they’d be expensive to replace, even if comparable pieces could be found.

Emma had dragged the dejected bagful out of her attic, looked them over, shaken her head, and stopped in at the hobby shop for glue, silver paint, a small brush, a pair of needle-nosed pliers, and several packets of fake diamonds. These were now in the scruffy black leather satchel that had always held the fairy baubles, though Emma couldn’t have said why.

That a turn-of-the-century Gladstone bag was an ugly old thing for an otherwise impeccably turned-out woman to be lugging around had not occurred to her, nor would she have given a rap if it had. She unfastened her seat belt, picked up her tote and her satchel, peeked in to make sure her wallet and the jewels were safe, carried her belongings off the plane, and found herself a taxi.

“I want the Pocapuk Ferry,” she told the driver.

“Dunno’s they’ll let you have ’er,” the driver drawled. “But I guess likely they’ll let you ride ’er, long as you can pay your fare. That all the luggage you got?”

He reached to take the Gladstone bag from her; the ancient clasp gave way, and the bag popped open. “Gorry! What you got in here, the crown jewels?”

“That’s right,” said Emma. “I’ll have it back here with me, please.”

“Sure thing. What’d you do, find the treasure already?”

“What treasure is that?”

“The Pocapuk treasure. Mean to say you never heard? They run a piece in the paper about it every so often when they got nothing better to print.”

“Evidently I’ve missed the stories. Whose treasure is it?”

“Anybody’s that manages to get hold of it, I guess. It used to be Pocapuk’s, which is how come they named the island after him. I dunno what Pocapuk’s real name was, if he had one. Some claim he was Blackbeard’s cousin or else one o’ Captain Kidd’s crew that struck out for himself after Kidd got hung. I think they’re all full o’ hogwash, but that’s nuther here nor there. Anyways, Pocapuk Island’s where Pocapuk used to careen his sloop.”

“Careen?”

“Beach her an’ scrape the seaweed off so’s she’d sail faster. Some say she was a pinnace or a barkentine. I dunno. It was all a long time ago an’ don’t make no never mind nohow.”

“And how did he get the treasure?” Emma prompted.

“Overhauled one o’ them Spanish galleons somewheres down around the Bermuda Triangle, so-called, which is another pack o’ foolishness if you want my opinion. Don’t anything happen there that wouldn’t o’ happened someplace else if it was going to happen at all, which it probably didn’t, is the way I look at it. Some bird named Aint or somethin’ was spoutin’ off about it on the TV a while back. What Pocapuk done was upped with his guns an’ raked her fore an’ aft, then boarded with drawn cutlasses an’ chopped down the crew one after another like sheep in a slaughterhouse. Them galleons was no more maneuverable than a bathtub on roller skates, you know. Cripes, they could o’ took her with a whaleboat an’ a good harpooneer, like as not.”

Emma was a little lost between the Bermuda Triangle and the sloop, pinnace, or barkentine. “Pocapuk did in fact capture the galleon?” This ride wasn’t going to be long, and she was interested. Adelaide hadn’t said anything about buried treasure.

“Well, sure. Ain’t that what I was just sayin’? He made any Spaniards they had left over walk the plank, plugged up the holes in her hull, an’ sailed that galleon all the way back to the island, him an’ the ship’s cat an’ two Spanish deckhands he kept alive to work the sails.”

“Are you quite sure about the ship’s cat?”

“Stands to reason, don’t it? Pocapuk wouldn’t o’ killed no cat; he wasn’t a bad pirate, as pirates went in them days. Anyways, it’s bad luck to kill a ship’s cat. His men was s’posed to follow in the sloop, but be danged if they didn’t take off on their own an’ was never seen again. So Pocapuk buried the treasure an’ murdered the two Spaniards so’s their ghosts would guard the buryin’ place forever-more, which was the standard custom in those days. He blew up the galleon with her own powder magazine and rowed to the mainland in her jolly boat with the cat an’ a big sack o’ doubloons.”

“What happened to him and the cat?”

“Nobody knows. Some say he changed his name, dressed hisself up in some o’ the Spanish captain’s fancy clothes, went to Boston, an’ got hisself elected mayor. Wouldn’t surprise me none.”

“But he never came back for the rest of his treasure?”

“Wouldn’t o’ needed to, would he, once he’d got his hand in the till?”

Emma had been warned about the tendency of some Mainers to regard Massachusetts as the Evil Empire to the South; she didn’t try to argue the point. She was somewhat preoccupied in wondering whether that bird Aint he’d alluded to a while back could in fact have been Everard Wont. “But Pocapuk Island isn’t all that big,” she said. “Why hasn’t somebody found the treasure by now? Haven’t people gone looking?”

“Gorry, yes. That whole island got dug over so many times it’s a wonder there’s anything left of it. But them Spaniards was still on the job. Diggers got kilt in so-called accidents, or scared off, or didn’t find nothin’. Finally, everybody got disgusted an’ quit. Then some big millionaire from Boston way took it over an’ built hisself a mansion out there an’ posted a bunch o’ No Trespassin’ signs an’ greased the harbor master pretty good, so you couldn’t dig there now if you was o’ mind to. That where you’re goin’?”

“Yes, it is. I’m the new housekeeper,” Emma added on a whim.

“That so? Make you dress up pretty fancy, will they?”

“Why no, I don’t expect so.” Then Emma realized what he must be driving at. “My goodness, you don’t think this is real jewelry I have with me? It’s just stage costume stuff I’m planning to repair.”

The driver didn’t say anything in reply. They were close to the dock now and the traffic situation was getting tricky. He pulled up at last as close to the ramp as he could manage but didn’t get out this time to help her with the Gladstone bag. “Got your ticket?”