The Bilbao Looking Glass (7 page)

“Good heavens, so it was. I’d completely forgotten Alice B. wasn’t just a nickname. She was related somehow or other to Biff Beaxitt, Pussy’s husband. That’s why Pussy could never stand her. When Biff’s mother died, she left Alice B. some hideous garnet jewelry Pussy had set her heart on, though I’ll never understand why. Of course Biff’s mother loathed Pussy and just did it to spite her. She loathed Alice B., too, I believe, but anyway that’s what happened.”

“Who gets the jewelry now?”

“If Alice B. ever got around to making a will, I expect it might go to Miffy. If she didn’t, I suppose whatever she left would be divided up among the relatives. There are scads of Beaxitts.”

“Did this Alice B. have much to leave?”

Sarah paused in the act of cutting more coffee cake. “You know, Max, that’s not a bad question. Being a Beaxitt, Alice B. must have had something of her own. They always do. She’d lived off Miffy for years and years, so whatever money she did have must simply have been lying around piling up interest. There could turn out to be a good deal more than one might expect from someone who lived like a sort of poor relation.”

“The Tergoyne woman’s loaded, right? Suppose she’d been the one murdered instead of the companion. Where would her money go?”

“That’s another good question. Miffy’s the last of the Tergoynes and she’s not into endowing hospitals or that sort of thing. I suppose she’d have left the bulk of it to Alice B. and perhaps some small bequests to old friends. Why? You don’t think the killer hacked up Alice B. by mistake? Even in the dark you couldn’t get them mixed. Miffy’s at least a head taller, and thin as a stick. Alice was a dumpy little thing—you saw her—and those peasant getups she affected made her look even fatter than she was. It couldn’t have been all that dark anyway, or whoever swung the axe couldn’t have seen where to hit. Have some more prune cake?”

“I’ll split a slice with you. On the surface, it appears to have been a rather odd sort of burglary. Jofferty showed me a partial list of the things Miss Tergoyne claims were taken. They’re still checking the place over from some kind of inventory list she’d made up for insurance purposes.”

Max fished a scrap of paper out of his pocket. “She says she’s lost a Fantin-Latour. Where was it? I don’t recall seeing one yesterday.”

“That’s a big house and you were only in the living room. Miffy tends to keep things in unlikely places. If it was a still life, they might have hung it in the kitchen so Alice B. could enjoy it while she chopped the onions.”

“And the murderer took it to enjoy while he chopped up Alice?”

“Max, I don’t really find that awfully amusing. What else does Miffy say was stolen?”

“This will interest you.” Max held out his scribbled list, a fingertip marking the third item down.

“A Bilbao looking glass? Max, you don’t think—”

“Jofferty says he asked Miss Tergoyne about that particularly, without explaining why he was so curious. She swears her glass was hanging in the dining room yesterday morning when she and Miss Beaxitt took inventory. He says she told him they went around and checked the entire list every single day. Could she possibly be telling the truth?”

“Knowing Miffy, I shouldn’t doubt it for a second,” Sarah replied. “She’s paranoid about anything that belongs to her, especially since we’ve had so many robberies around here. She hardly ever leaves her house, except to go south for a month or so during the worst of the winter. When she does, she hires a bonded watchman to stay there, and heaven help the poor soul if there’s so much as a box of crackers unaccounted for when she gets back. If Miffy says her Bilbao looking glass was there in the morning, you’d better believe it was. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been entertaining guests in the afternoon. She’d have been calling out the National Guard and sending telegrams to the Republican party chairman demanding somebody’s head on a pike for not having got it back yet. I can’t see how the one we found could possibly be hers. But what an odd coincidence.”

“Too damned odd,” Bittersohn grunted. “I shouldn’t have thought Bilbao looking glasses could be that thick on the ground, though I suppose an old seaport like Ireson Town would be as good a place to find them as anywhere. Anything else about that list strike you as peculiar?”

“Well, it’s awfully récherché for ordinary burglars, wouldn’t you say? They appear to have taken only paintings and objets d’art. No silver, for example, and Miffy has tons of it. And none of the larger pieces like that horsehair sofa they took from Pussy Beaxitt.”

She wrinkled her nose in thought. “It seems as if the burglar must have known in advance what was worth stealing and also where to find it, because Miffy kept things in such a jumble. Is that what you wanted me to say?”

“Right on the button. Who in her crowd would have that kind of expertise?”

“Max, surely you don’t—but it would almost have to be, wouldn’t it? Unless it was the window cleaner or the rug washer or someone like that. We do get lots of college students doing odd jobs around here during the summer season. Some of them are fairly erudite.”

“Do you hire them to help out at parties?”

“Some people do. Miffy doesn’t bother since she never serves anything but martinis she makes herself and has Alice B. to take care of the food and the washing-up. Had, I should say. As for her friends—” Sarah hesitated.

“It’s hard to say, really. They’ve all been to private schools and I suppose they got force-fed a certain amount of art history. But they’re an awfully dim lot, by and large. Why, Fren,” Sarah added unkindly as a gangling form in shorts and sweatshirt manifested itself in her kitchen, “we were just talking about you. I didn’t hear you knock. Do you know Max Bittersohn?”

Fren Larrington did not know Max Bittersohn and clearly didn’t intend to. He stared straight through the man at the table, turned to the open pantry shelves, found a mug, and helped himself from the coffeepot.

“Where do you keep the sugar, Sarah? Not a very shipshape galley, I must say.”

“Must you? It’s none of your business, you know. The sugar’s in that canister marked ‘Sugar.’ Take a clean spoon and don’t spill any or we’ll have the place overrun with ants. Why aren’t you down at the boatyard?”

“Good question.”

Fren gulped half the coffee scalding hot and whacked off a hunk of prune cake. “I know I came here for some damn reason or other. Oh yes, dinner at the yacht club. Half-past seven. You’ll have to bum a ride from one of the gang. I shan’t have time to pick you up. Can’t rely on the old Milburn any more, eh?”

It seemed not to occur to Fren that he’d just said something unpardonable. He snatched the last piece of coffee cake from the plate, gulped down the dregs of his coffee, and left without waiting for Sarah to answer.

S
ARAH GOT UP AND
hooked the screen door after Fren. She picked up the used mug he’d rudely set on the kitchen table right under Bittersohn’s nose, and carried it over to the sink to wash. Then she changed her mind, unlocked the door again, opened it, and hurled the mug as far as she could into the deep grass.

“Now,” she said, putting up the hook again, “where were we?”

“We were discussing the quaint social customs of the local fauna,” Max replied.

“Oh Christ, here’s another.”

“Miz Alex.” That was Pete Lomax bawling through the screen. “The door’s stuck.”

“No it’s not,” she told him. “The door is locked because I’m sick and tired of having people barge in without knocking. And I’m Mrs. Kelling, since you appear to have forgotten how to address me. Where’s your uncle?”

“He had to go over to Ipswich. Told me to come ahead an’ get started. He’ll be along pretty soon.”

Pete spoke absentmindedly. He was eyeing Max. Sarah decided she might as well explain.

“This is Mr. Bittersohn, who’s renting the carriage house and having his meals up here. I hope one of these days he’ll be allowed to eat in peace. What do you want, Pete?”

Pete wasn’t even listening to her, he was too interested in Max. “Hey, I know you. You used to catch for Saugus High.”

“Yes, and I still have the scars on my left leg where you spiked me on purpose after I’d tagged you out trying to steal home,” Max replied with no particular animosity. “That was the year we licked you nine to nothing. What’s new, Pete?”

“S’pose you heard about Miss Tergoyne’s lady friend gettin’ bumped off last night?”

Pete lounged up against the door jamb and cast an ever so casual glance at the coffeepot. Jed Lomax would have dropped dead on the spot if he’d arrived here to find his nephew sitting down for a cozy chat with one of his customers. How did one handle this? Sarah decided flight was her best solution.

“If you two are going to hash over old times, I’ll get on with my work. Pete, since you’re here you may as well get started cutting that grass in the back yard. I told you to do it last week, and the week before.”

“Don’t you think it looks sort o’ pretty the way it is, Miz Kelling?”

The way Pete drawled out the “Miz Kelling” was more than Sarah cared to take. “There’s nothing pretty about picking up ticks on one’s legs every time one steps outside the door. See that you have it finished by noontime.”

At least being a landlady had taught her how to bully people. Sarah stalked out of the kitchen and went upstairs to make beds, wondering whether Pete had ever tried to steal anything other than home plate.

Max might be wondering the same thing. If so, he’d stand a better chance of getting information out of Pete if Sarah wasn’t around.

It was strange to picture a Lomax doing anything even mildly reprehensible. Most of them were policemen, firemen, or honest fisher folk. One was a Methodist minister, two were security guards at a college somewhere up around Ashby. There was a grandson at Tabor Academy on scholarship and a fair sprinkling of first mates and chief engineers in the merchant marine. Still, any large family was bound to have its black sheep, and Pete looked to Sarah like a plausible candidate.

Maybe she oughtn’t to fault him for helping his uncle instead of painting houses. Lots of men around here would no doubt welcome the chance to put themselves into a position where they might hope to take over Jed’s customers when, if ever, he hung up that old swordfisherman’s cap for the last time. Despite its enclaves of wealth, this part of the North Shore was none too affluent by and large. Nor were some of the allegedly wealthy all that rich, as Sarah herself had reason to know.

It wasn’t what Pete did but what he didn’t do that bothered her, she thought sourly as she glanced out at the back yard where grass still waved knee-high and the ticks, no doubt, were busy proliferating. Furthermore, she didn’t like Pete’s manner. She didn’t expect to be kowtowed to by the hired help, but neither did she care to be leered at.

Also, while she was on the subject, she didn’t go much for being bullied by her old acquaintances. What did Fren Larrington think he was getting at, sailing in and barking orders as though he had some God-given right to take charge now that Alexander wasn’t around? Even Cousin Lionel hadn’t managed to make himself quite so intolerable in so short a space of time, though to give Lionel his due, he’d tried. He’d just better keep that pack of cubs out of her hair or she might start sharpening the axe herself.

Sarah sat down on the bed she’d just finished straightening, and thought about the dead woman over in the village. What did she actually know about Alice Beaxitt? Nothing much, when she came down to facts, except that Alice B. had managed somehow to live with Miffy a good many years in apparent harmony and that she’d had the most vicious tongue in the yacht club crowd, which was saying a good deal. She’d always seemed more or less the same, got up in some outfit she’d picked up at the shops around Bearskin Neck, always trying out some exotic recipe and trying to make you eat more of it than you wanted, always deftly slitting somebody’s throat with her tongue the way she’d done Max’s yesterday.

Could Alice B. have been a happy person? Sarah supposed she must have been reasonably content with the life she’d led. Otherwise, why hadn’t she done something else? If she hadn’t attached herself to Miffy, no doubt she’d have found another patroness. Some people were born hangers-on. Perhaps that was why Alice B. had to dress up in stagey costumes and search out new dishes to surprise Miffy’s guests with and new scandals to titillate them with. Ordinary clothes, ordinary food, and ordinary human courtesy couldn’t have disguised the fact that Alice had no genuine life of her own.

Cutting down other people would have been her revenge against them for being real enough to make mistakes and get into situations. Maybe Alice B. had always yearned to become the center of some great drama herself, and never dared to venture into one. One mustn’t wish for things, or one would be sure to get them.

Well, this wasn’t getting the floor mopped. Even Pete had gone to work finally. She could see him through the window, using the old scythe Alexander had always kept so well sharpened with a whetstone. Pete must be angry about having to mow by hand, from the look on his face. Too bad for him. It was his own fault he’d let the grass grow so high it would have kept binding in the mower. From now on, Sarah decided, she’d funnel all her instructions through old Jed. The less she had to do with Pete Lomax, the better she’d be able to endure having him around.

She still had the apartment over the carriage house to tidy. If Max Bittersohn knew how to make a bed, he’d shown no sign of it since he’d been boarding with her.

They still hadn’t got things settled about Barbara, either. Though what was there to settle, actually? Maybe she’d ask him to take her grocery shopping instead. They could swing by Miffy’s and leave another bagful of clothes for Aunt Appie in the hope that she’d take the hint and stay longer. Now, if Cousin Lionel could only be palmed off on Miffy, too.

No hope of that. In the first place, Miffy hated children. In the second, she had no land fit for camping; only a quarter acre or so of perfect lawn with a rigidly pruned privet hedge around it and some ornamental shrubs clipped into cones and spheres. Miffy had to show even Mother Nature who was boss.