The Palace Guard (14 page)

If the killer was somebody Witherspoon didn’t know, he or she could have posed as a casual visitor, perhaps call the guard over to ask a question or start to do a spot of damage so that Witherspoon would rush out from the Titian Room to stop him. But if it was somebody who knew Joe Witherspoon and wasn’t supposed to be in the palazzo at that time, such as Mr. Fitzroy, the superintendent, who was supposed to be taking the day off—she realized she’d forgotten to nod at the right time and Mr. Porter-Smith was looking put out.

“Do go on,” she begged. “You have such a graphic way of explaining things.” Actually she hadn’t the least notion what he’d been talking about but Mr. Porter-Smith was quite ready to take her urging at face value and let her get back to her ponderings.

Who else might have turned up when he shouldn’t have? Dolores Tawne? No, she appeared to have carte blanche to come and go as she pleased. Dolores’s brother Jimmy? He was said to have been sick, but was he? Might he have pretended to stay away in order to give himself an alibi? Then how would he have got up that all too open Grand Staircase without being seen?

Unless he’d stayed inside the museum all the previous night. But he couldn’t have stayed the following night, too, because the museum was searched. Had he gone back inside the chair and trusted to luck he’d be overlooked in the confusion that was sure to follow Witherspoon’s death? Disguised himself as an Indian? Sarah thought she’d better not think too much about disguises.

That act of Brown’s with the chapel silver might well have been prearranged to draw attention away from the Grand Salon so that somebody who was in fact hidden in the sedan chair so conveniently near the stairway would have a chance to get away while Brown was pretending to revive and drawing attention to the imaginary assault.

Brown’s being murdered afterward would make sense in that context. If you’d played a part in somebody’s murder plot, that somebody might decide you weren’t safe to be left alive, especially if you were lazy, untrustworthy, and inclined to nip on the job. Unlikely as he sounded from the little she’d heard of him, Sarah thought Jimmy Agnew couldn’t be counted out, if only because his station was so convenient to Witherspoon’s and because he was used to doing what he was told to do by his sister, the ubiquitous handy woman.

And who else? Nick Fieringer? Sarah caught her breath. Theoretically Nick should have been down on the second floor in the Tintoretto Room during the concert, waiting there alone until the performers had finished their playing and taken their bows and gone back there for the modest reception that would follow. But had he? Nobody was apt to have been checking on him, and even during the aftermath of the concert he could have absented himself and not been greatly missed.

She’d noticed on the one or two other occasions when she’d been to performances Fieringer arranged that he had a trick of self-effacement he could turn on and off. It was part of his “good old Nick, always ready to take a backseat and let his performers have all the credit” routine. He could have nipped down that one flight of stairs even while she and Max were talking to Brooks over under the Romney, where their view of the stairs would have been obscured by those sedan chairs scattered about the balcony. Then he’d simply have mingled with the guests, pretending he’d been in the Tintoretto Room all the time.

If anybody had happened to see him coming from the third floor, he could have used that obscene excuse of having gone up to the source of the fountain to relieve himself. Since the top basin was on the far side of the courtyard from the staircase, almost directly opposite where Joe Witherspoon had gone over the balustrade, he could even have claimed he’d seen the guard throw himself over, only he hadn’t had to perjure himself because he’d got away with it. Assuming of course that she wasn’t maligning an innocent man.

The performers themselves were assuredly innocent. They’d been on public view all the time. But what about those tacky friends of Bernie the pianist? According to Lydia Ouspenska they were all petty thieves to begin with. Bengo painted genuine old masterpieces, Lupe was an operator; there was no telling what the rest might be up to. Sarah could believe almost anything of that lot but why should they have hidden in the sedan chair? It was unlikely Witherspoon would have known any of them, and they all looked much alike anyway.

Except Lydia Ouspenska. The countess would stand out anywhere. Since she knew Dolores Tawne and had been Palmerston’s mistress it was more than likely she’d visited the palazzo on various occasions, and Witherspoon had been there since the beginning of time. He’d surely have recognized Lydia if she’d let him see her, and that sedan chair was precisely the sort of exotic hiding place that would appeal to her sense of drama.

Sarah didn’t want it to be Lydia. Enough of this. She gave Mr. Porter-Smith a final nod, turned him over to Miss LaValliere, and started talking to Mrs. Gates about Seiji Ozawa.

T
HIS HAPPENED TO BE
one of those evenings when everybody was going somewhere. Mrs. Gates had a spare ticket to Symphony and asked Mrs. Sorpende to go with her. Professor Ormsby had a faculty meeting. Miss LaValliere’s grandmother on Mount Vernon Street was giving a reception and had commanded Jennifer to show up with a few presentable young men, so Mr. Porter-Smith was obliging with his august self and a couple of his underlings from the accounting office. Mariposa and Charles had plans of their own, no doubt.

That left Sarah alone with Max Bittersohn. She was wondering if it would be madness to invite him up to her private sitting room and he was no doubt wondering whether she’d be mad enough to ask him, when the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” Sarah said, rather glad of an excuse to break the tension.

“No, I will. I don’t want you answering doors after dark.” The dominant male strode to the hallway. A moment later Sarah heard him say, “Advance and give the password.”

“Wilkins, I expect,” came Brooks Kelling’s voice. “Are you receiving tonight?”

“Sure. My esteemed landlady and I were just wondering where we could find a third for pinochle. What’s up?”

“First, I thought you’d be interested to know that Palmerston called a meeting of the guards this morning, myself included, and informed us he’s arranged with an outside expert to make an appraisal of the paintings in the museum.”

“I was wondering when he’d think of that. Who’s he getting, do you know?”

“A Spaniard connected with the Prado, I believe. His name is Dr. Aguinaldo Ruy Lopez.”

“Do tell. When’s he supposed to be coming?”

“Tomorrow no less. Palmerston says he’s flying Ruy Lopez in from Barcelona at his own expense.”

“I thought the Prado was in Madrid,” said Sarah.

“It is. Please don’t inject trivia. As I was about to say, Palmerston told us that after the recent disturbing events, as he so genteelly alluded to them, he’d decided on the appraisal as a routine formality. He said it was a decision of the board of trustees, which is a lot of rot. They haven’t held a meeting in fifteen years.”

“Was Mrs. Tawne at your meeting?”

“Of course.”

“What did she think of Palmerston’s idea?”

“She was all for it. Afterward she tried to make us believe she was the one who’d suggested it in the first place.”

“After the meeting?”

“No, later. After he’d flaunted his conquest.”

“Brooks, do quit curling your lip like that,” cried Sarah. “Surely you can’t think an intelligent woman like Mrs. Sorpende could have been taken in by that old gasbag? She was only being civil to him because she didn’t want to embarrass me. Since he made the offer in my house, she thought it her duty to be gracious and accept.”

“Oh? Does she look upon me as a duty, too?”

“Don’t be silly. She considers you a pleasure and a privilege. And for your information she’s gone to Symphony with Mrs. Gates tonight, so you needn’t flash those big green eyes. She’ll be desolate when she finds she’s missed you. She was asking me at dinner if I thought she could get you to explain some things about the Madam’s because Palmerston’s such an idiot she couldn’t understand what he was trying to say half the time.”

“Was she indeed?”

“Well, she’s too much of a lady to come straight out and say so, but that was the clear implication. Wasn’t it, M-Mr. Bittersohn?”

“I never heard anything more clearly not said. Getting back to this Ruy Lopez, Kelling, have you any idea when he’s due to arrive?”

“Nine o’clock in the morning. Time and a half for the extra hour since we don’t usually open to the public till ten. We were all pathetically grateful for this unexpected largesse.”

“No doubt. How might one get a look at Ruy Lopez?”

“One might lurk in the shrubbery.”

“One might get run in as a suspicious character. Any more bright ideas?”

“Would you be content with a photograph?”

“Sure, but what makes you think he’d pose for you?”

“Naturally he wouldn’t know the pictures were being taken.”

“I see. You’d have a miniature camera concealed in your tiepin.”

“No, my belt buckle. I got the idea from a Dick Tracy cartoon and worked out the details myself. I use it mostly for photographing ospreys’ nests and so forth. It leaves both hands free to hang on with when I’m in a high tree or dangling on a rope over a precipice. After all, I’m not so young as I used to be.”

Bittersohn grinned. “You’ll never get me to believe that. Are you sure he won’t spot the camera?”

“You didn’t.” Brooks produced two tiny but embarrassingly good prints. One showed Bittersohn in his turban gazing at Mrs. Sorpende’s rear elevation with a disgusting leer on his temporarily swarthy face. The second was of Sarah clutching her disintegrating sari with one hand and rubbing a blistered foot with the other.

“My God! Do you think Palmerston recognized us, too?”

“I’m sure he didn’t. You have to remember, Bittersohn, that I’m a highly trained observer. Once you’ve learned to identify thirty or forty different warblers on the wing you’re unlikely to be put off by a dot of lipstick on the forehead of your own fourth cousin twice removed. Actually your disguises were very good, although I think Sarah would have been more comfortable in a looser bodice. As a matter of academic curiosity, Sarah, how did you ever get in and out of that garment?”

“With great difficulty,” she replied demurely. “What else did you have to tell us, Brooks?”

“Well, for another thing, the natives are restless. None of the guards believes Brown killed himself and they’re beginning to wonder about Witherspoon. There’s a lot of talk. Not to Dolores, of course.”

“Because she carries tales to Palmerston?”

“Mainly because they don’t like her. I’ve always considered Dolores the salt of the earth, but now that I’m in close daily contact with her I find she tends to be something of a bully, if one can apply that epithet to a woman, as I suppose one can nowadays. For instance, she laid Melanson out this morning for being a rabbit, which was both unkind and zoologically inaccurate.”

“Has she expressed any theories about Brown and Witherspoon?” asked Bittersohn.

“She’s convinced that both deaths were accidental, or says she is. She claims Brown tried to fake a suicide for the same reason he rigged that stupid robbery scene in the chapel, as a childish bid for attention. She claims a man who drank things like bay rum and vanilla extract probably figured a little paint remover wouldn’t hurt him. One has to admit that’s a credible hypothesis. She also claims Brown led Jimmy astray, however, and that’s arrant hogwash.”

“What does Jimmy himself say?”

“Nothing worth repeating. Jimmy never has a thought in his head that isn’t directly concerned with getting a drink.”

“Was he really sick last Sunday?” Sarah asked.

“I presume so because he had to pay me to substitute for him out of his own pocket, or his sister’s more likely. Jimmy had already used up his annual sick leave nursing hangovers. What makes you think he wasn’t?”

“I was just thinking.” She explained what she’d been thinking. “Does that make any sense to you? Would it be possible, for instance, for Jimmy Agnew to have reached the third floor and got out again without being spotted on a day when he was supposed to be absent?”

Brooks thought the matter over. “I can’t say it’s impossible,” he said at last. “For one thing, one gets so used to seeing a guard in uniform that even his ordinary outdoor clothing might constitute a sufficient disguise. Then you have to consider the small number of guards on duty in relation to the amount of clutter we’re supposed to be able to see around. It would not be hard for a person to get into that sedan chair without being seen, just as you did this afternoon even though a considerable number of people were standing not far away. As to what might have drawn Joe Witherspoon away from the Titian Room, I’m afraid the crass suggestion made by Mr. Fieringer is not wholly unreasonable. Joe’s kidneys were a source of vulgar ribaldry around the locker room. The person in the sedan chair would only have to lie low and wait for the opportune moment, dump Joe as he was going along the balcony, then jump back in again and choose an opportune moment to escape. Brown’s trick in the chapel, as you suggest, might have been deliberately planned to provide that moment. Alternatively, the murderer might have stayed in the chair till everybody else had cleared out, then simply left at his leisure. There’s only one watchman at night. Anybody with even a vague knowledge of the layout would be able to dodge him easily enough. I don’t know about those other people you mention, but surely anybody who has access to the palazzo during the off hours, such as Dolores or Mr. Fitzroy, or Mr. Palmerston—”

“I’d root for Mr. Palmerston on general principles,” said Sarah, “except that he’s far more interested in avoiding scandals at the Madam’s than causing them. Besides—”

“Besides what?”

“I’m afraid Mr. Bittersohn isn’t going to like this idea.”

Mr. Bittersohn didn’t. When she mentioned Nick Fieringer, he shook his handsome head. “I can’t buy that. Nick was with the musicians. Ask Bernie. Ask that kid who thinks she’s a cellist. Both of whom would lie their heads off for the great impresario, no doubt. Why did you have to think of Nick?”