The Silver Ghost (14 page)

“No, I believe Lancelot had got his walking papers before Gilbert ever came on the scene. Bodie’s and Caroline’s people belonged to the same set in New York, naturally. Caroline was by some years the elder of the two; she came out while Bodie was still a youngster. Lancelot showed up at the debutante cotillion and as Caroline was no doubt the reigning beauty, he proceeded to give her a big rush. He’d been educated abroad and I expect his continental line was a bit slicker than the New York boys’. Anyway, by the end of the season, they were engaged.”

“Lancelot doesn’t sound much like Aunt Bodie, I must say,” Sarah remarked, thinking of the velvet toque.

“Oh no,” said Jem, “those two were as different as chalk and cheese. However, Bodie adored her big brother, probably because she hadn’t seen much of him growing up. Lancelot had been shipped off to Switzerland after various private schools in the States had chucked him out and the rest had got the word not to take him in. Mabel says Lancelot was the handsomest thing she ever laid eyes on, not that Mabel had much opportunity for comparison. Anyway, needless to say, once Caroline’s father began checking on his prospective son-in-law, the engagement was abruptly terminated.”

“I’m surprised Aunt Caroline let it happen. Being thwarted was never her favorite thing, you know.” Sarah spoke with feeling. For seven long years Caroline Kelling, actually only the wife of her father’s distant cousin, had been her mother-in-law.
*

“I also know Caroline liked her creature comforts,” Jem Kelling reminded his niece. “I shouldn’t be surprised if giving Lancelot the shove had been as much her idea as it was her parents’. In any event, his people accepted the situation more or less philosophically. I daresay they were honest enough to admit they’d have done the same if the shoe had been on the other foot. But Bodie, I understand, was furious. She claimed the wild stories about Lancelot were all a pack of lies put about by jealous rivals.”

“Poor Aunt Bodie! One can hardly blame her for defending her own brother. Is there any chance she may have been right?”

“None whatsoever,” Jem replied. “Lancelot Van Brunt was a man of whom it can truly be said that he was more sinning than sinned against. As a young fellow, he specialized in rubber checks and fraudulent impersonations. When his father got sick of paying his bills and turned off the supplies, Lancelot would pull one of his confidence tricks, usually on some woman who’d be reluctant to prosecute. Eventually he got involved with the mob, I’ve been told. Don’t ask me what mob or why, but it all sounded more than a bit scurrilous.”

“What finally happened to him? Is he still alive?”

“No, he got rubbed out, as the saying goes. At least the New York police dredged up a block of cement from the East River that had a certain indefinable
espièglerie
about it, so they assumed that must have been Lancelot. Bodie always held Caroline responsible. She claimed if Caroline hadn’t broken her brother’s heart by handing him his hat, he wouldn’t have thrown his life away, as she rather melodramatically expressed it.”

“I’ve never heard her express it,” said Sarah.

“No, I don’t suppose you have. This all happened somewhat more than half a century ago, you know. Lancelot’s never been considered a subject for dinner table discussion when Bodie’s around and I don’t suppose anybody ever thinks of him when she isn’t. None of us ever knew him anyway so we’d have to go on hearsay, which is no fun except for Mabel.”

“Whoever would have thought it?” Sarah mused. “Aunt Bodie having a brother who got bumped off by the mob. She’s always been such a pillar of righteousness, herself. Though under these circumstances she’d almost have to be, wouldn’t she? Was there a dreadful scandal?”

“I’m afraid I can’t answer that one. Gangsters had a fad for shooting each other in tastelessly flamboyant ways back during the thirties, but I think Lancelot died quietly. He may have been a scoundrel, but I never heard he stooped to vulgarity. Somebody once told me he’d been killed, that’s all, and I can’t even remember who it was. I hope my brain isn’t starting to curdle.”

“Well, quick, before you fall apart,” Sarah told him practically, “let’s have your rundown on the Morris dancers. Cousin Lionel first, please. He’s not in trouble of any kind, is he?”

“Unless you call being married to that Freud-spouting virago and fathering a troop of baboons trouble,” Jem drawled. “Not to mention having Appie for a mother.”

“But nothing specific that you know of?”

“Lionel does not confide in me. On October 27, 1949, at approximately 5:15 P.M., I yielded to Appie’s importunities and permitted her to place the little blister, as he then was, on my knee. He wiped his jammy hands all over my shirt and tie, drummed his heels on my shins, committed a nuisance in my lap, and bit my finger when I tried to pry him off. Since that time, relations between us have not been warm.”

“But you know all his friends,” Sarah argued. “Don’t they tell you things?”

“More specifically, I know the fathers of his friends. However, I concede that I do get along well enough with the sons. Why don’t you ask Tick Purbody about Lionel? He’s head of the jingle and stomp brigade, isn’t he?”

“He was yesterday. He said that as leader he had to dance every set. Is that what happens?”

“Sarah, I know rather less about Morris dancing than I do about herding buffalo. If Tick says he was dancing—” Jem hesitated in the act of buttering another pilot biscuit. “Anyway, you were watching him the whole time, weren’t you?”

“Well, hardly. I didn’t even know who he was until Max pointed him out to me. The dancers were dressed alike in distractingly busy costumes, so it was easy to mix them up even if I had known them all. Not that it signifies whether he danced all the time or not, because Dorothy Dork says she saw Rufus still alive and on guard after the banquet had started. Is she reliable?”

“Dorothy? Oh yes, I should say so. Yes, Dorothy’s reliable enough.”

“What are you hedging for? What’s the matter with Tick?”

“Sarah, I am not hedging.”

Jem gripped the handle of his butter knife in his fist and held it out at arm’s length, eyed the blade suspiciously, then laid it back on his plate. “There’s nothing the matter with Tick, so far as I know. It’s just that he has a well-deserved reputation as a puller of practical jokes and narrator of wild tales. Tick’s a mere beginner compared to dear old Wouter, I hasten to say, but one does tend to look for the symbolic whoopee cushion under the chair seat before swallowing anything he says.”

“Surely he wouldn’t have joked about what happened yesterday?”

“Dash it, Sarah, how do I know what Tick Purbody would do under stress? It’s not unheard of for a person to take refuge in japery when reality becomes too painful. Anyway, Tick shouldn’t be too hard for you to check up on, should he?”

“Harder than you might think. You’ve been to those revels, you know what they’re like. Everyone kept going up to the buffet and wandering around among the tables to chat with this one and that. And the dancers were bobbing up all over the place. One couldn’t miss seeing them, they were so garishly dressed. For all I know, they were milling around on purpose.”

Jem scowled. “Why should they?”

“To keep the rest of us from realizing Tick wasn’t among them, perhaps? They’re his friends, aren’t they? Wouldn’t they try to cover up for him if they thought he was about to pull one of his practical jokes?”

“What sort of joke?”

“No joke at all. Uncle Jem, you’re just being willfully obtuse. Tick Purbody serves as Bill’s right hand. That means he’s involved with both the radio stations and the meading business. He also is curator of the Rolls Royce collection. Therefore he must spend a fair amount of time in the car shed and could easily have discovered that trick wall Wouter installed. It’s obvious enough if one stops to consider what sort of mind Wouter had. Bill’s too high-minded and Abigail too practical to think in those terms, but you say Tick operates pretty much on Wouter’s wavelength. He’s probably known right along and kept quiet until he could think of a really spectacular way to use the secret door.”

“Namely to steal his in-laws’ cars? Confound it, Sarah, why should he? Tick’s had free use of the entire collection ever since he married Melisande. If he’s pinched the Phantom and the Silver Ghost, he can hardly go swanking around in them any more the way he’s been doing all this time.”

“No, but he can sell them. A 1937 Phantom III went for over a hundred thousand dollars at auction not too long ago.”

“Pah! How could Tick get away with peddling Bill’s cars? They’re always being exhibited here and there. Everybody and his grandfather would recognize at once whose they were.”

“Everybody around here might know,” Sarah conceded, “but what if he had them shipped across country? Tick travels a good deal on business for Bill, doesn’t he? Couldn’t he invent an errand in California?”

Jem snorted. “Not on Bill’s money he couldn’t. The fact that Bill tends to tootle around loving his neighbor as himself doesn’t make him a blithering imbecile, you know. He has some esoteric theory about being a good steward.”

“Does that mean he keeps Tick short of ready cash?”

“Of course it doesn’t. Not short according to Bill’s definition of short, anyway. I don’t know how Tick and Melisande interpret shortness.”

“Did Melisande get a generous marriage settlement from her parents or from anybody else?” Sarah pressed. “And what about Tick? Has he any money of his own?”

“I don’t know whether Melly gets an allowance or not. She does get the profits out of the mead business, I know. And as the only child, she’ll naturally scoop the pot when Bill and Abigail go. As for Tick, he’s no doubt inherited capital but it can’t be much. Old Purbody took a beating on that shrinkage in the wool market before he died. He’d been heavily into noils. The maternal grandmother left a sizeable estate, but with thirty-seven living heirs to divide it among, none of them got rich on her.”

“Does Tick gamble?”

“Not to my knowledge. Bridge at a cent a point or a few hands of poker with the lads like the rest of us, I suppose.”

“Any expensive hobbies?”

“None that Bill and Abigail aren’t ready to finance,” Jem replied somewhat drily. “I grant you Tick’s a logical suspect from the angle of opportunity, Sarah, but when it comes to motive I don’t see how you can make a case.”

“You’d be surprised what I can do. How about other women? He’s awfully good-looking.”

Jem remained unimpressed. “If you can show me how Tick Purbody would conceivably find the time to conduct a clandestine amour, I might be able to give some credence to that suggestion. The Billingsgates keep him in a constant ferment of wholesome activity as far as I can see. Furthermore, Tick simply isn’t the type. If I ever caught him eyeing an attractive woman in a speculative manner, I’d naturally assume his thoughts were bent not on seduction but on the most expeditious way to drop an ice cube down her back. However, I suppose anything’s possible. I’ll nose around a bit, much as I detest prying into other people’s affairs.”

That was nonsense, of course. Jem was about as incurious as Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, and a regular Mrs. Bennett for gossip. Sarah kept her face straight.

“I’d appreciate that, Uncle Jem. Now tell me about Bunny Whet and his son. How old is Erp, and why on earth do they call him that?”

“Erp’s about seventeen and I haven’t the remotest idea why they call him Erp. I don’t know why Bunny’s known as Bunny either, in case you were warming up to ask. Nor do I consider either question germane to the issue at hand.”

Jem puffed out his cheeks and allowed them to deflate slowly. “Let me cogitate. As to profession, Bunny’s a research chemist specializing in environmental problems. Again don’t ask me to elaborate. All I know is that he’s affiliated with M.I.T. in some arcane manner and putters around his father’s bug juice factory in his spare time. As you doubtless know, the Whets manufacture organic insect-control powders and potions and do rather well out of the worms and weevils. Gerry’s always rushing off to Nairobi for another boatload of that ill-smelling weed they powder the beetles with. Not that it would matter much if they ran out; Gerry and Marcia both inherited enough to keep them in modest comfort.”

Sarah knew all about the Whets’ modest comfort; she’d visited both their Beacon Hill town house and their summer place at Seal Harbor. “So Bunny manages to eke out a living?”

“He gets by. Aside from what Gerry pays him, he has his salary from M.I.T. and a house in Milton that his grandparents left him. A good-sized trust fund came with it, but Gerry tells me Bunny’s recently begun donating all the interest from that to some ecological project in which he’s become involved.”

*
The Family Vault

“T
HAT SOUNDS LIKE RATHER
a major involvement,” Sarah observed. “Does he plan to involve himself further?”

Jeremy Kelling’s pink little mouth drew up in a pucker. “He’s been after Gerry to help him break the trust so he can get at the principal.”

“Oh my! Is Gerry helping?”

“No, he thinks it would be unfair to Erp and his sisters. Gerry did give a substantial donation out of his own pocket to show Bunny he’s not taking a wholly negative stand on the project, but evidently it was just a drop in the bucket compared to what Bunny hoped to raise. Elizabeth, Bunny’s wife, is organizing a fund drive. You might like to help, Sarah.”

“Not on your life, and don’t you dare volunteer me. So what it amounts to is that you think Bunny may have tried a different way of raising money.”

“Dash it,” Jem sputtered, “this is turning into a singularly unpleasant conversation.”

“You might bear in mind that your friend Bill isn’t having too pleasant a time right now, either. I do most sincerely hope Bunny Whet hasn’t let his enthusiasm get out of hand, but you know perfectly well these things have to come out if we’re going to get anywhere.”

Sarah didn’t add that Bunny Whet would match Drusilla Gaheris’s description of the Morris dancer as well as any and better than some. She didn’t remind her uncle of certain Kellings who’d allowed their interest in good works to turn into something almost like fanaticism. Almost but never quite. Was that the case with Bunny? Would he rather sell the Billingsgates’ family heirlooms than his own grandparents’ house, for instance? Why not? His wife and children needed a place to live, but nobody really needed ten antique Rolls Royces.