The Resurrection Man (7 page)

“She’d find somebody.”

Max couldn’t think who’d want the job either, but he was of a sanguine disposition. He deliberately switched the talk to his mother’s latest clash of wills with the gas company, Sarah was laughing by the time they pulled up in front of the Protheroe house.

This was a neighborhood of big old wooden houses with good-sized yards around them. Their architecture varied from the sublime to the near-ridiculous; the Protheroes’ was in the beporched and beturreted style of the late Gothic revival, with a dash of Anglo-Indian bungalow and just a touch of the Taj Mahal. Unity had been attempted by painting all its ins, outs, ups, and downs in the same rich chocolate brown, and all the trimmings in white. To some, the house suggested a giant devil’s-food cake iced by a mad
condittore
; it had always made Sarah think of a Bailey’s hot-fudge sundae with whipped cream, marshmallow, and walnuts. But no cherry on top. Even today she felt a momentary twinge of regret at not being able to spy something shiny, round, and red perched atop the front gable.

Everybody who came to the house, or even walked past, got the feeling that it had been set a little too close to the road. In fact, the road had been brought a little too close to the house after the horse had been totally eclipsed by the small, high-riding horseless carriage; and these in turn by the Packard, the Peerless, the Marmon—great boxes on wheels that needed more room to pass each other going and coming. As a result, the graveled turnaround was not quite so spacious as it ought to be. Sarah decided she’d better leave the driveway free for a possible ambulance, and parked at the curb.

Phyllis must have been waiting with her nose pressed to the window, she’d got the front door open before Sarah and Max were halfway up the front steps. Sarah was about to give the tearful servitor a comforting hug when she caught sight of Anora, huddled on the parquet floor next to the newel post, swathed in a shocking-pink down comforter, immobile as Plymouth Rock. She couldn’t see Anora’s face, it was turned toward a dark-red mound a little bit farther into the hallway.

The mound was George. He was lying face up in a welter of clotted blood, his maroon bathrobe decently pulled down over his fat legs. A pole about the size and length of a garden rake was sticking straight up out of his chest. Max yelped “Police!” and glared around for a telephone.

“Right over there,” said Sarah. “In the corner behind the stairs. Be careful, don’t—”

Step in the blood. She couldn’t say it. She knelt beside Anora, trying not to look at what was beside her, and unwrapped enough of the comforter so that she could get her fingers on the dazed woman’s wrist. Sarah wasn’t much good at pulses, but she could at least tell that Anora’s was beating, not racing, not lagging too far behind where it probably ought to be. The beats were strong enough to count, for whatever good that might have done. Sarah didn’t try, it was enough to know the heart was still on the job. If only her old friend wouldn’t just keep sitting there, staring at that appalling shaft going straight down into her dead husband’s chest.

“Anora,” she pleaded. “Anora, it’s Sarah. Can you hear me? Are you all right? Please say something. Anything.”

“What?”

She had spoken. Thank God.

“Anora, do you know who I am?”

“Sarah. You said Sarah. Sarah, what’s happened to George? I can’t get him up.”

“I know, Anora, you mustn’t try. Max is calling an ambulance. They’ll be along very soon.”

“Call Jim.”

“Jim who?”

“Harnett, of course. Call him. Quick.”

“Oh, Dr. Harnett. Yes, of course. Max, look for Dr. James Harnett. He’s local. The number’s probably in that little book beside the telephone. Ask him to come as fast as he can.”

Max was already dialing the number, Sarah went on talking to keep Anora from drifting off again. “How long have you been sitting here, Anora?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember. Phyllis, quit that disgusting snuffling. Get me some tea. What did you put this stupid blanket around me for? I’m stifling. Don’t just stand there, take it away.”

“Get the tea, Phyllis,” said Sarah. “I’ll tend to her. There you are, Anora, you must be stiff from sitting so long. Can you stand up, do you think?”

“I don’t know. Stop flustering me. You can’t help, I’d fall on you and squash you flat. Max, come here. Help me up. When’s Jim coming?”

“Sure, Anora. The ambulance is on its way.”

“I don’t want the ambulance, I want Jim Harnett.”

“You’ll get him. His wife’s calling the hospital now, he’s on his rounds.”

“Humph! Just like a man, always where you don’t want them to be. Oh, my God, George! George, what’s to become of me now?”

That was when she really fell apart.

N
O DOUBT ABOUT IT
, the Old Guard were tough. Anora’s breakdown lasted all of three minutes, then she was on her feet, letting Max and Sarah lead her away from the dreadful scene. Once in the morning room, with the sun streaming in through the southeast-facing bay, Sarah noticed for the first time how appallingly stained and dabbled her old friend’s robe and nightgown were. She sent Phyllis for hot water and fresh garments and told Max to go out to the kitchen, check on Cook, and not come back till he got the word.

Together, she and Phyllis got Anora cleaned up and decently garbed. By the time Phyllis was sent to make fresh tea and tell Max he was free to return, Anora was respectably settled on the button-tufted red-plush Biedermeier chaise with her feet up, a knitted afghan screening her nether limbs, and four sofa cushions stuffed behind her back.

“Shouldn’t she be lying down?” was Max’s first reaction.

Anora took umbrage. “I’ve never yet taken anything lying down, I’m not about to start now. And if you don’t like watching me cry, you can go peddle your papers. I’ve got a right to do as I please in my own house, even if I am a damned fool for doing it. What’s all that hullabaloo outside?”

“I expect it’s the ambulance I sent for,” Max told her. “And the police.”

“The police? Are you out of your mind? What did you do that for?”

“I had to, Anora. You do realize that George has been murdered?”

“Oh yes, I know he has. I don’t believe it, but I know it. Who did it, Max?”

“That’s what we need the police for, it’s their job to find out. Do you feel up to letting them ask you some questions?”

“No, but I suppose they’ll ask me anyway. For heaven’s sake, Phyllis, quit bleating like a lost sheep and go let them in. And bring me that tea I asked you for half an hour ago. I don’t know what’s got into everybody this morning. Max, maybe you’d better let them in yourself, they were your idea. Just don’t bring them in this room until I’ve had time to drink my tea, assuming I ever get any.”

Anora had plenty of time to drink her tea, the police were stopped cold by what they found in the hall. Sarah had no desire to go out and watch what they were doing, it was bad enough listening to their voices and the sounds of their feet. They’d have to take out the spear, most likely, in order to fit George into the ambulance. Was that what all the scuffling was about?

Perhaps Anora had slipped partially back into her earlier fugue state; she drank a second cup of tea under Phyllis’s pleading that she had to keep up her strength and even managed a bite or two of toast. That small victory attained, Anora allowed herself the grace of a short nap with two of the sofa cushions temporarily laid aside. Once she was settled, Sarah decided this was a good time to slide out to the kitchen and see for herself whether Cook was in any real trouble.

She found her old friend relatively free of palpitations and in a quandary about the luncheon menu. It was a relief to stand there debating whether the consommé ought to be served heated or jellied. The weather forecast was on the jellied side but it could not be gainsaid that, no matter what the temperature, hot foods were more comforting in time of trouble. Unless the trouble happened to be tonsillitis or fever, in which cases Cook pinned her faith to lemon sherbet. Mrs. Protheroe didn’t have fever on top of everything else, did she?

Sarah was able to assure Cook that she didn’t. Anyway, it was too late now to freeze lemon sherbet for lunch; what about a nice baked custard? Foods that slipped down easily stood the best chance of getting past the lump in a new-made widow’s throat, Sarah knew that from past experience. She’d better go back to the morning room and see whether Anora was awake yet.

“Wouldn’t you like to sit down and have a cup of tea first?” It was plain to see that Phyllis, having served her mistress, was now ready for one herself. “Oh, there’s the doorbell. I have to go.”

“I’ll get it,” said Sarah. “Sit down, Phyllis, you’ve earned a rest. That’s either more police or Dr. Harnett.”

It was the doctor. George was having his picture taken now, preparatory to being taken away. The spear was still in his chest, they must be leaving it for the pathologist to cope with. Dr. Harnett was too much a professional not to stop and take a look.

“God! Right through the heart. That thing must be sharp as—it’s a wonder Anora didn’t drop dead too instead of just going into shock. Where is she—ah—Sarah Kelling, isn’t it?”

“Sarah Bittersohn, actually. I’ve remarried.”

Five years ago, but the doctor wouldn’t remember. Dr. Harnett’s wife came to Anora’s parties but he hardly ever did, he always had patients to see. They lived nearby and raised tropical fish, as a child Sarah had been taken to see their aquarium. There’d been one huge gourami who’d had a tank all to himself, Mrs. Harnett had said his name was George. She hadn’t explained whom they’d called him after, but Sarah had noticed a resemblance. Her eyes stung with sudden tears. She hustled Dr. Harnett into the morning room.

“Anora, Dr. Harnett’s here.”

Anora already had a man with her, standing next to the chaise, looking as if he could use a good night’s sleep, wearing a summer-weight tan suit that could have done with a pressing. A plainclothes policeman, Sarah assumed. He scowled as she and the doctor approached.

“Sorry, miss. I’ll have to ask you—”

“Oh, shush.” Sarah wasn’t a bit afraid of policemen; she’d had too many dealings with them, one way and another. “This is Dr. Harnett, he’ll tell you when she’s ready to talk. I’m Max Bittersohn’s wife, Sarah.”

“Oh. Okay, Mrs. Bittersohn. Levitan, Homicide.”

Anora ignored the policeman but managed to raise the ghost of a smile for the doctor. “Hello, Jim. Sarah, you’re getting to be more like your Granny Kay every day of your life.”

“Save it, Anora, I want to take your temperature.” Dr. Harnett stuck a thermometer under her tongue, fitted a blood-pressure cuff around her flaccid, flabby upper arm, took her wrist in one hand and his stethoscope in the other, and listened. He took out the thermometer and shrugged.

“You’ll live.”

“I’d prefer not to.”

“Humbug. So this is Kay’s granddaughter? The little girl who came to see our fish? I thought that was Walter’s daughter.”

“This is Walter’s daughter, Jim. They grow up, you know. Don’t you think she favors Kay?”

“Very much, now that you mention it. Kay was a lovely woman. I never could understand why she married that brother of Theodore’s. Albert, was it?”

“No, Howard, the handsome one. Howard wasn’t such a bad fellow. At least he wasn’t always off chasing after some skirt, like Albert.”

“But he wrote poetry.”

“You can’t hang a man for that, Jim. Though I will say Howard carried it too far. I don’t see why people who insist on reading their own verses out loud every chance they get always have to put on those dying-duck voices. That was the one thing in the world George dreaded, Howard Kelling coming at him with a piece of paper in his hand.”

Anora was talking fast and loud now, working off some of her shock in the way most natural to her. “George wasn’t afraid of anything living or dead, except having to listen to Howard’s poems. Most people didn’t realize that, you know, they thought George was just a dim old stick. But I swear to you, George Protheroe was as brave as any man who ever lived. He’d have outfaced a charging lion. Who did this man say he was?”

The man in the tan suit stepped closer. “Lieutenant Levitan, Mrs. Protheroe. I’m in charge of homicide. So you’re saying your husband wouldn’t have been afraid of somebody coming at him with a spear?”

“Lord, no. Spear or cannon, it wouldn’t have made a particle of difference to George. He’d have walked straight up to that murdering devil and laughed in his face. And I suppose that’s exactly what he did.”

“Who found him, Mrs. Protheroe?”

“I—” Anora choked up. Sarah took her hand.

“It’s all right, Anora. Don’t talk if it hurts.”

“Huh. Do you think anything could hurt worse than I’m hurting already? I found him myself.”

“When was this?” asked Levitan.

“I don’t know. Half-past seven, maybe. Eight o’clock. We’re not an early-rising household. We’re all old, we nap a lot.”

“Pretty bad, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. It wasn’t so much that George was dead, you know. I was prepared for that, as much as one can ever be. I knew something was bound to happen fairly soon. It was the spear I couldn’t stand. And the blood. So horribly much blood.”

Levitan wasn’t letting her drift off again. “What about that spear, Mrs. Protheroe? Where did it come from?”

“I don’t know. There’s so much stuff in this house. I don’t remember any spear, but I’m old. I forget. Anyway, there it was sticking up out of him like a bean pole. From his heart. He had an enlarged heart, didn’t he, Jim?”

“Yes, Anora. George had a big heart in every way, God rest him.”

“I couldn’t have stopped him, Jim. Nobody could. I just wish I’d gone with him.”

“You can’t go yet, Anora,” Sarah protested. “We need you here.”

“Fiddlesticks! George needed me, nobody needs me now. And don’t you go trying to cheer me up, Sarah Kelling. If I want cheering, I’ll hire a band.”

Yet Anora was sounding a shade less desolate. Phyllis came in with tea and a basket of tiny cornmeal gems, hot from the oven. Cook’s palpitations must have subsided. Sarah poured, Anora took a cup, Phyllis pressed her to try the gems.