The Odd Job (9 page)

The umbrella accommodated them both without crowding, they could have taken in one or two more. The police station was not far away. Sarah only wished she’d put on more suitable footwear, preferably a pair of Wellingtons. Except for her feet and thanks to Charles’s deft manipulation of the family heirloom, she was still respectably dry when they entered the red brick building with the blue lights in front.

The sergeant at the desk was an old acquaintance; Sarah had expected to be greeted affably, but not with cries of joy. “Mrs. Bittersohn! Am I glad to see you! Lieutenant Harris has had us burning the wires. Wait a second, I’ll tell him you’re here.”

The words were barely out of the sergeant’s mouth when a tall, tired-looking man in civilian clothes came out to greet her. “Well, Mrs. Bittersohn, that was quick. We just put a call on your office machine. You must have been—uh—down the hall or something. Come back here, will you? We need to talk.”

He ushered her and Charles into a small, shabby room with nothing much in it except a battered wooden table and a few straight chairs. Charles stood at attention until Sarah had introduced him, then pulled out a chair for Sarah and stood behind her with the umbrella furled but ready, Sarah couldn’t imagine what for.

“Do sit down, Charles, I hate to be loomed over. Lieutenant, I don’t understand why you were looking for me. Didn’t the sergeant tell you I’d already phoned to say we were coming? All I want is to deliver some evidence.”

“What evidence?”

“A mixture of plaster dust, steel shavings, and shredded paper from an old telephone directory that we swept up in the office next to Max’s after somebody tried to drill a hole through the wall. It didn’t work because your friend Brooks had lined up our filing cabinets along that wall and stuffed the backs of the drawers with outdated telephone directories. I explained all that over the phone.”

Harris shook his head. “I guess we’ve got our wires crossed here. Would you mind telling me why it’s such a big deal that somebody drilled a hole through the wrong wall? Couldn’t it be an electrician trying to run a wire or something? Did you go in and speak to him?”

“I did not,” Sarah answered. “I stayed in our office with the door locked and telephoned down to the receptionist, who told me no work was scheduled to be done on our floor until next month. So I sent for Charles here, who’s our butler and general factotum at Tulip Street, and told reception to send up somebody with him because I was not about to leave the office until they came. When Charles and a woman from maintenance showed up, we all went into the empty office and found the hole, the dust under it, and the bit from the drill lying on the floor, clogged with paper from the phone book. Charles, would you show Lieutenant Harris the evidence?”

The lieutenant turned the plastic bag over in his hands. “Huh. Good thing you kept your head. How come you were alone, Mrs. Bittersohn?”

“The office is closed this week because everybody’s somewhere else,” she told him. “I thought this would be a good time to catch up on some bookwork but now I’m not so sure. What was it you wanted to see me about?”

“It’s about Mrs. Dolores Agnew Tawne, Jim Agnew’s sister from the Wilkins Museum. You knew she’d died there Sunday afternoon, I expect.”

“Yes, but that’s all I do know. Charles has been trying to find out about the funeral, assuming there’s going to be one.”

Harris shrugged. “I guess that will be for you to say, Mrs. Bittersohn. Weren’t you aware that Mrs. Tawne had named you her executrix?”

“What?” Sarah was thunderstruck. “Surely you can’t mean that. Why me?”

“Who knows? Maybe she didn’t have anybody else, with Jim gone.”

That was all too probable. Sarah didn’t know what to say. Lieutenant Harris hadn’t time for poignant pauses.

“One of the museum guards turned over her handbag to us. According to the address book we found inside, she lived at the Fenway Studio Building. Is that right?”

“Yes,” Sarah answered, not wanting to talk but knowing she must. “She’d been there for ages. But how did you find out about her will? Don’t tell me Dolores carried it around in her handbag.”

“No, but her lawyer’s name and phone number were in the book. We called his office a while ago and the secretary or whatever she is referred us to you. Redfern and Redfern on Milk Street. Would you know anything about them?”

“I ought to. Redferns have been handling legal business for various Kellings since long before I was born. There’s only one Redfern left now. Come to think of it, I was the one who recommended him to Dolores Tawne. This was after the big blowup at the museum, before her brother died. I gave her Mr. Redfern’s name because he was the only lawyer I knew. Funny, I’d forgotten all about that.”

“Seems to me it’s pretty strange that she’d go ahead and put you down as executrix without bothering to ask you first,” said Harris.

“It seems strange to me also,” Sarah replied with asperity. “But that’s typical of Dolores. She never could see any point of view but her own. It was quite in character for her to take it for granted that I’d do whatever she wanted done and no questions asked. As I will, I suppose, but I do wish she’d landed somebody else with the job.”

“So you didn’t like her.”

“No, Lieutenant, that’s not true. I did like her. But there are different ways and degrees of liking, you know. It might be nearer the mark to say that I respected her. Dolores was not a comfortable person to know; she was too bristly, too bossy, too quick to take umbrage if one ventured to express an opinion that ran contrary to her own. On the other hand, she was loyal, useful, even kind in a gruff sort of way, and so thoroughly honest, as you well know, that she was an easy target for a plausible crook.”

“I still can’t get over it,” Harris confessed. “That one woman copying all those paintings so perfectly that even the experts didn’t catch on, and that other one pirating the originals as fast as she knocked out the fakes. Twenty years of it. God! And she never got a cent of the money?”

“She wouldn’t have taken it. She honestly believed she was performing a grand and noble work for the museum. When the bottom fell out, she could have got herself plastered all over the newspapers and television screens. She was all set to mount the stage and receive the accolades when she was faced with the reality of the situation. Two people were dead, and a third close to it. She was an art forger. If her name had been made public, she’d have had to choose between going to jail as an accomplice to theft and murder or being branded a gullible old fool, which would have been even worse. So she kept mum and went on dusting the majolica and doctoring the peacocks, never once uttering even the hint of a complaint about how unmercifully she’d been deceived and exploited.”

By this time, Sarah was pretty well choked up. Heaven only knew how many tears must have been shed across this banged up old table; Harris passed an open box of tissues and waited while she blew her nose and repaired her lipstick.

“Thank you, Lieutenant. So what I’m supposed to do now is claim the body and arrange the funeral. Is that right?”

Harris made a noise in his throat. “Er—there’s more to it than that. The medical examiner’s not ready to release the body because he’s still not sure how she died. She was found in the courtyard, but there’s some evidence that she might have spent some time in one of those sedan chairs on the first balcony. Know what I mean?”

“Oh yes.” Sarah was making her voice sound brisk and businesslike to keep the tears from coming back. “I fell asleep in one when I was supposed to be lookout the night Max and Cousin Brooks caught two overage hippies trying to steal the big Titian, not realizing it wasn’t a Titian but a Tawne. Poor Dolores always considered that painting her chef d’oeuvre, and well she might. It really is a remarkable piece of work.”

“You never got back the original, though.”

“We never say ‘never.’ The Titian was almost the last to be lifted, as Dolores used to put it. After the bomb went off, so to speak, she became a real help in providing information as to when certain paintings were taken from the museum, which has been a great help in tracking them down. I simply can’t think of her as being dead. Doesn’t the medical examiner have any idea at all as to what killed her?”

“He did say something about possible brain damage, but that’s as far as—”

“Brain damage?” Sarah felt an ugly prickling of her own scalp. “Did he happen to notice a tiny wound, not much bigger than a pinhole, at the base of her skull?”

“Wait a minute! What are you getting at?”

“This.” Sarah reached into Theonia’s tote bag and pulled out the plastic bag that contained the hatpin and its envelope. “It was left at the reception desk while I was out to lunch. As you see, the envelope’s sketchily addressed, but we’re used to getting odd communications.” She shook the hatpin out of the torn envelope. “What do you think?”

Harris was unimpressed. “All I’m seeing is a piece of wire.”

“Look again, but don’t touch the point.” Sarah gave Harris a brief rundown on Theonia Kelling’s quest for the perfect hatpin. He remained unstirred.

“So she wanted one, now she’s got it. Offhand, I’d say one of Mrs. Kelling’s friends was trying to do her a favor.”

After the day she’d put in, Sarah was not to be talked down. “I do not believe this pin was sent as a goodwill gesture, Lieutenant. To begin with, it’s unattractive and in poor condition. Second, what’s left of those tiny black beads suggests that the hatpin was meant for a widow in mourning, which isn’t something to joke about. Third, that stuff smeared on the shank of the pin looks to me like—I thought at first it might be ketchup or something, but—ugh!”

Harris knew an “ugh!” when he heard one, he got out of the way in a hurry. “To your right and around the corner.”

Sarah made it to the washroom, but not by much. She emerged seven or eight minutes later, trembly and still a trifle green around the mouth. Charles was ready and waiting, a paper cup in one hand and an opened can of cola in the other.

“You’d better sit down, moddom. I know you hate this stuff, but it does help to settle the stomach.”

Sarah eyed the cupful he’d poured out for her, shuddered, and turned her head away. Charles persisted. She finally steeled herself to take a sip, then another. The men watched, anxious as two father hens; she managed to keep the cola down and drank a little more.

“Thank you, Charles, I’m all right now. The thing of it is, I’ve been reading the published diaries of Amelia Peabody Emerson, a truly remarkable woman archaeologist of the late-Victorian and Edwardian periods. She led an amazingly venturesome life and was known as the
Sitt Hakim,
or woman doctor, although she’d had no formal training in medicine. At one point in her narrative she mentioned quite offhandedly that it was easy to get away with murder, simply by driving a hatpin, which would have been as essential to a woman’s wardrobe then as her buttonhook or her glove stretcher, into the base of the skull. The victim’s hair would cover the tiny wound, and thrusting the pin directly into the spinal cord would instantly—”

Sarah had to pause and drink more cola. “You see, few people nowadays would even think of a strong hatpin like this, much less own one. You might want to mention this to the medical examiner and have the wire tested for—”

Harris made a quick grab for the cola can. “Steady, Mrs. Bittersohn! Want some more?”

“No, thank you.” Sarah heaved a sigh that came all the way from her wet feet. “All I want is just to go home and lie down.”

“Y
OU’RE SURE YOU FEEL
well enough to go out?”

Harris was overdoing the solicitude, and Sarah knew why. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant, I’ll get hold of Mr. Redfern first thing tomorrow morning. As soon as he fills me in on what an executrix is supposed to do, I’ll start things moving. No doubt the building manager will be anxious to have Mrs. Tawne’s studio cleaned out, there’s probably a waiting list already.”

“Fenway Studio Building, right? Do you know where it is?”

“Oh yes, I’ve been there a few times. Did you find the keys in her handbag?”

“There’s a big bunch of them, I’ll get somebody to sort them out. Just let me know when you’re squared away with the lawyer.”

“If it’s too much bother, I expect the building manager would let me in, provided the studio isn’t sealed and I have written authorization from you and Mr. Redfern. We can see about that tomorrow. You have our office number; I probably won’t be there but Charles will be able to pick up your message at the house. Are we ready to go, Charles?”

“Ready and waiting. This way out, right?”

Sarah was relieved to get out in the air, even though the ozone level must be bad enough to kill a canary. Rush hour had begun, the streets were jammed with cars trying to fight their way to Storrow Drive or the turnpike. The rain was making a bad situation worse, as it always did. Home-going office workers were scuttling toward the subway entrances, choking the sidewalks, jaywalking through the crawling traffic without regard to others just as wet, tired, hungry, and ruthless as themselves.

Trying to hail a taxi would have been an exercise in futility. Sarah and Charles joined the scuttlers and headed back toward the Common, Charles still managing somehow to keep the umbrella over himself and the lady he served without poking out somebody else’s eye in the process. Some hopeful souls were standing in doorways, waiting for the rain to let up, which it obviously was not about to do. This was going to be an all-nighter. Sarah could have told them that, she’d grown to be weather-wise living so close to the sea. There was not a blessed thing anybody could do in the circumstances except grin and bear it or else scowl and utter the sort of imprecation that would impel Aunt Appollonia Kelling, were she here, to address the cussers with gentle suggestions that there were many beautiful words in the English language and it would be a far, far better thing were they to learn some.

The result of Appie’s ministry was that Appie had got to learn some new words herself, which she didn’t know the meanings of but feared they were not quite nice. Nevertheless, her determination to brighten whichever corner she happened to be in never flagged. Sarah felt some small relief in the fact that her aunt wasn’t there now; she herself was in no mood to brighten anybody’s corner. Particularly that idiot’s who came flying out of a doorway just as she was passing and jostled her so hard that she bumped into Charles, almost making him lose both his aplomb and his grip on the Kelling umbrella.