The Palace Guard (13 page)

Luckily all eyes in the vicinity were still on Mrs. Sorpende and there was refuge at hand. It was fortunate that Madam Wilkins had gone in so heavily for sedan chairs. Clutching the elusive silky folds as best she could, Sarah streaked for the nearest, and shut herself inside.

The last occupant of this tiny box on poles might have been some wigged, powdered, and unbathed beauty of Louis XV’s reign. The chair smelled as if it hadn’t been aired since then. Its small oval windows were green with age and veiled by dust. Sarah crouched gratefully on the narrow seat, as far as she could get from the windows, and undertook repairs.

Desperately she searched the purse she’d remembered to bring with her and produced, wonder of wonders, a small safety pin. After some intricate contortions she managed to get her treacherous draperies fairly smooth and secure. She could leave now. But she didn’t. For one thing, her feet were hurting because the nylons she couldn’t have borne to take off were making the floppy old sandals skid around. For another, it was rather fun to peek from this secret vantage point at Mrs. Sorpende and her admirers.

Bittersohn was ogling with the best of them and Sarah felt a twinge of annoyance. Ah, now he’d missed his little Indian. He was looking all over the Grand Salon and wasn’t seeing her. Yet she herself had a clear view of the entire area, while remaining hidden.

He was getting really puzzled, and beginning to look worried. While the rest drifted on into the Titian Room he began to retrace his steps, walking straight past the sedan chair. Sarah let herself out, noting that the door moved readily without a squeak, and tiptoed up behind him.

“Looking for someone?”

He leaped. If he’d been closer to the balustrade and taken by surprise like this, it might have been possible to shove him over. Especially if he’d been an old man who wasn’t too well. Joe Witherspoon must have fallen from just about here.

“For God’s sake, where were you?” he whispered fiercely.

All at once Sarah knew exactly where she’d been. She pointed at the sedan chair. “In there. Where the murderer hid before he killed Joe Witherspoon.”

Bittersohn walked over, opened the door, stuck his head inside, then ran his forefinger over one of the hinges and held it up filmed with fresh oil. He nodded, wiped his hand on his handkerchief, then hurried Sarah along to rejoin Palmerston’s guided tour.

Now came the moment Sarah dreaded most. She stood face to face with her fourth cousin twice removed. Brooks didn’t so much as glance at her. He manned his post like a soldier, though the fox of jealousy obviously gnawed at his vitals. Every time Palmerston patted Mrs. Sorpende’s white glove, he winced. Every time Palmerston said, “Dear lady,” his own lips writhed in silent protest. And every time C. Edwald imparted a nugget of information, Brooks contradicted him
sotto voce,
e.g.: “This, dear lady [snarl], is a unique [commonplace] example of fourteenth- [seventeenth-] century French [Flemish] embroidery [tapestry]. It depicts Cupid languishing for Psyche [St. Gambrinus with a hangover].”

As snickers broke out among the group, Palmerston glared at the temporary guard and steered Mrs. Sorpende across to the chapel. But by escaping the knowledgeable Scylla he ran into a glowering Charybdis in the uninspired shape of Dolores Tawne. For once Mrs. Tawne did not appear overjoyed to see Mr. Palmerston. The gentleman himself turned red as a withered beet, hastily dropped Mrs. Sorpende’s arm, and performed an awkward introduction.

“We’ve met,” said Dolores, and went on polishing silver.

“Mrs. Tawne is a veritable bulwark of our museum,” Palmerston stammered.

Mrs. Sorpende smiled inscrutably and said she’d been given to understand so. Mrs. Tawne ignored them both. After an uncomfortable moment, the sight-seeing party surged on. But the zest had gone out of the day for Palmerston. His gallantries became furtive and far between. He would have hurried his guest along had Mrs. Sorpende been the kind of lady who allowed herself to be hurried. She continued to move with serene deliberation from one fraudulent work of art to the next.

Sarah was freezing, the sandals were raising blisters on the soles of her feet. That too-tight blouse was a constant misery. Her sari felt loose again and there were no more sedan chairs. She tugged at Bittersohn’s elbow from time to time but he sauntered on ogling the imitation Donatellos and the star of the show with impartial admiration. Only after he had watched the gracious lady’s ceremonial departure in Palmerston’s limousine did he consent to leave.

“If that old letch stays to tea I’ll die,” Sarah groaned as they were waving with faint hopes at taxis on the Fenway.

“He won’t,” Bittersohn assured her. “He’ll rush straight back to make his peace with Mrs. Tawne. He’s scared to death of her, did you notice?”

“Perhaps she reminds him of his mother. Oh, dear, now we have to go back to that office of yours and change again, don’t we? And it’s getting awfully late. Mariposa will be wondering where I am. I hope to goodness you’ve accomplished whatever you set out to do.”

“I think we learned one or two things, though I’m not altogether sure what. Anyway, I had a feeling it mightn’t be too swift to let Mrs. Sorpende go through the palazzo without a bodyguard. And furthermore”—he set his turban at a rakish angle as they at last managed to flag a Checker taxi—“I’ve always had a hankering to wear one of these things.”

T
RAFFIC WAS EVEN WORSE
than they’d expected. By the time they passed the clock on the Arlington Street Church, Sarah was aghast to see that it was almost a quarter to five.

“Mariposa will be having kitten fits!”

“There’s a phone in the office. If we ever get there, call her and tell her you’ve been unavoidably detained. Can’t she start dinner without you?”

“Yes, I left everything ready, but what am I going to say? She won’t settle for unavoidably detained.”

“Then tell her you got caught in a revolving door and have been going around in circles ever since.”

“That’s exactly how I feel. I hope there’s lots of cold cream in that makeup kit you got with the costumes.”

“What for?”

“To get this silly greasepaint off with, of course.”

“What’s wrong with soap and water?”

“Nothing except that it won’t work.”

“Oh, Jesus!”

Luckily they got to the Little Building soon afterward. It was in the theatrical district, and a nearby drugstore had what they needed. Sarah bought a box of tissues, too, and took a grim satisfaction in making Bittersohn pay for them. Then they went up to the small, depressing office, where their clothes lay sprawled across the desk and chair.

Sarah made her call, told Mariposa she’d been held up at the lawyer’s and please to start without her. “I’ll be along as soon as I possibly can,” she added before Mariposa could express her feelings, and hung up.

Bittersohn was taking an experimental poke at the cold cream and not liking it. “What are we supposed to do with this stuff?”

“Smear it on your face, then wipe it off with tissues. With any luck the makeup will come, too.”

“Show me.”

Sarah plastered her own cheeks with the white grease, then in exasperation did his, too. They scrubbed and smeared until both were more or less back to their normal hues.

“Now we must change. Will you go first, or shall I?”

“Why don’t we just turn our backs and be ladies and gentlemen?”

“All right, it is getting awfully late.” And Cousin Mabel was quite some distance away. Sarah flipped the dirty Venetian blinds shut, retreated behind the desk to give some semblance of privacy, and unwrapped her sari. Then came the problem of getting out of that blouse, and there she stuck, literally. She managed to get the bottom up just far enough to immobilize her shoulder joints. Her arms were useless. She squirmed, she struggled. Nothing would budge. At last she gasped, “You’ll have to help me.”

“My God, how did you ever get into this thing in the first place?” Bittersohn tugged with all his might. The blouse came off, and there was Sarah.

That did it, of course. She’d known this was going to happen sooner or later. She hadn’t expected it to happen in a grimy office on the Windy Corner with Bittersohn in his undershirt and herself in nothing but a pair of panty hose and both their faces greasy with cheap cold cream. And Mr. Porter-Smith, like as not, already on his way to the library in his wine-colored tuxedo with the burgundy satin lapels expecting her to be there to pour his sherry. It shouldn’t be happening like this. It shouldn’t be happening at all with dear, darling Alexander only five months dead. Yet she’d wanted it to happen. She wanted it to go on happening until everything had happened that could happen, but she mustn’t let it. She pulled away and began putting on her clothes.

“I’m sorry,” said Bittersohn huskily. “That was unpardonable of me.”

“I know,” she answered with her head turned away. “That’s why I kept slapping your face and telling you to stop. Oh, Max, I—” She had her blouse and skirt on now. Maybe it would be all right to go back into his arms, just for a moment. “Could you—bear with me a little while? Give me a chance to get my feet under me?”

“Then what?” he murmured into the back of her neck.

“Then we’ll have to see what develops, won’t we?” She could hear her voice shaking. So was her body. “You may decide you’d rather not be bothered.”

“Sarah, for God’s sake! Do you know what it’s like for me, lying alone down there in the basement and knowing you’re upstairs in that double bed by yourself? It’s getting so I have to chain myself to the bedposts.”

“Well, it’s no picnic for me either, if you want to know. Furthermore, you don’t have any bedposts, so don’t be melodramatic. Come on, get dressed and let’s go home before Charles evicts us both for lack of couth.”

“Jesus, you’re a hard woman.” Yet Bittersohn was smiling as they left the office.

They walked back across the Common. It was silly to take a cab for so short a distance, and pleasant for a weary young woman to hang on the arm of a gallant gentleman who kept assisting her over the curbstones and potholes even when there weren’t any. They went in the back way because it would have been silly to risk Mrs. Sorpende’s seeing them together and perhaps remembering something they didn’t want her to know. The little dark entry where the trash cans were kept happened to be a safe though unromantic nook for a landlady to get kissed in by a boarder without being caught. It would have been silly to pass up the chance.

What with avoiding all that silliness, it was perilously close to dinnertime when Sarah rushed into the kitchen panting, “Mariposa, I’m so sorry. Is everything all right?”

“Comin’ along just fine, honey. Where you been all this time?”

“I told you, at the lawyer’s office.”

“Yeah, that’s what you told me. El señor Max, he been at the lawyer’s office, too?”

“Of course not! We simply happened to run into one another.”

“Must have been some collision!”

“I’ve got to change.”

Sarah might have known Mariposa would see them coming in the back way together and draw the obvious conclusion as to why it took her so long to get upstairs. When she’d got to her room and caught a glimpse of her smudged face and disordered garments in the mirror, she decided she wouldn’t have believed the story about the lawyer, either. Well, Mariposa was a fine one to talk.

She did a fast clean-up and threw on an indestructible dinner dress of black crepe that had seen her mother through many a season before Sarah fell heir to it. If she was subconsciously trying to remind herself that she was still a widow mourning her beloved husband she couldn’t be succeeding any too well. She’d no sooner got down to the library than Mrs. Gates commented, “Mrs. Kelling, you look positively radiant tonight. May one hope that your meeting was successful?”

“We’ve made some progress, at any rate,” said Sarah, trying not to look at Mr. Bittersohn and sensing that he was trying not to look at her. “Mrs. Sorpende, thank you so much for taking my place. You do it so much better than I. Charles, have I time for a quick sherry before dinner?”

“You have five minutes, madam.” Charles was clearly miffed at not having been able to play to a full house during the past hour.

Sarah took the drink anyway. She felt the need. “How was your trip to the Madam’s, Mrs. Sorpende?”

“Highly educational.” Mrs. Sorpende appeared radiant, too. Surely she hadn’t fallen for C. Edwald? How could she even tolerate the man, unless she was taking into consideration his wealth, social position, and availability? Mrs. Palmerston had died ages ago of sheer exasperation, or so Anora Protheroe claimed. “To be sure,” Mrs. Sorpende went on, “there were many points on which I should require a great deal of instruction. Do you think it would be in order for me to ask your cousin Mr. Brooks Kelling to elucidate?”

“I think it would be quite in order. I’m sure Brooks knows lots more than Mr. Palmerston.” Sarah caught Charles’s eye and nodded. “Shall we go in?”

She didn’t dare let Mr. Bittersohn sit beside her tonight, so she used Mrs. Gates and Mr. Porter-Smith for buffers. He in retaliation turned his attention to Miss LaValliere. Mrs. Sorpende got into a conversation about Madam Wilkins with Mrs. Gates, who could well remember the eccentric millionairess. Professor Ormsby, as usual, concentrated on eating everything within sight. That left Sarah to Eugene Porter-Smith and she was content that it should be so. One didn’t have to converse with Mr. Porter-Smith, one had only to nod at regular intervals and let one’s mind wander whither it listed. Sarah didn’t dare let hers wander to what had happened in Bittersohn’s office, so she concentrated on the sedan chair.

Why would Witherspoon’s killer have had to hide in it? If he was one of the other guards, he could have strolled over pretending to look at the clock as Dolores Tawne suggested, commit a minor offense in the fountain as Nick Fieringer claimed they did, or simply to stretch his legs and chat a moment. Sarah didn’t believe for a moment that every single one of the guards, except probably the timid Melanson, was all that punctilious about never leaving his station when there was a lull in the flow of visitors.