The Palace Guard (16 page)

“And Mr. Bittersohn and that curator from the Metropolitan made a mistake, too? A mistake that must run into heaven knows how many million dollars? That was some mistake, wasn’t it?”

“Exactly.” Fieringer smiled broadly and wiped his forehead. “Is too big a problem to trust to one expert. Better we get somebody international is what Palmerston says.”

“I’d like to know who’s more international than Mr. Bittersohn. We never know whether he’s going to call up from Brussels or Bangkok to say he’ll be late for dinner.”

Fieringer perspired yet more freely. “Beautiful lady, all I know is Palmerston is my boss. He asks me who in the world is best. I tell him after Bittersohn, Ruy Lopez is best. ‘So we get Ruy Lopez,’ he says. Believe me, I had nothing more to do with it than that.”

“How did you happen to know about Dr. Ruy Lopez?”

“I hear the name from somebody. Everybody tells old Nick everything. I tell Palmerston, he takes it from there.”

“Oh, then you didn’t make the contact yourself?”

“Me? If it’s a bassoon player maybe Palmerston lets me make the contact. In so important a matter you think he trusts only the word of old Nick Fieringer? He checks with the Art Museum naturally, he checks maybe at the Fogg, the Busch-Reisinger, how do I know where else? They say get Ruy Lopez, he gets Ruy Lopez.”

“Oh, then quite a number of people would have known what he was intending to do?”

“But of course. With Palmerston is always the fanfare of trumpets, the beating of drums.”

And after all that trouble, he’d come up with a Lupe. “How remarkable,” said Sarah.

W
HAT WAS ALSO REMARKABLE
was the way Fieringer was sweating. His yellowish fat face shone like a full moon. A wet ball of handkerchief was clenched in his fist. Immense dark crescents were spreading under the armpits of his gray suit coat. In this prim little room with its white paint and figured chintz he was monstrous. Sarah wished desperately that he’d leave, yet she knew she would have to keep him there until Max Bittersohn returned.

“Do let me offer you something to drink,” she urged. “Would you care for coffee? A liqueur? Cold beer?”

“Beer would be fine.” He licked his lips. It was obvious that old Nick wasn’t enjoying this visit any more than Sarah was, but had no intention of leaving without seeing Bittersohn. Why? Did he know who the alleged Ruy Lopez who’d appeared at the Madam’s really was, and did he want to find out if Bittersohn knew, too? Had Palmerston sent him to make sure the case would really be dropped? Was it simply that this fat old man felt a need to make peace? Could he not bear to have anybody angry with him?

As this musical Falstaff pulled noisily at the beer Charles brought, Sarah thought what a remarkable unsavory person he was to be near. He was clean enough as far as that went, but he was so appallingly gross! And there was that overdone effusiveness, with the tension rasping underneath enough to set one’s teeth on edge. She began to wonder if all those people really liked Nick all that much. Everyone’s pal might be nobody’s friend. And he’d know. What a ghastly life it must be for a sensitive man.

“Let me have Charles bring up some fresh beer for you.”

Now she was doing what others must do. People would always be overly affable with Nick Fieringer because they’d always be ashamed of what they were feeling toward him. They’d know it was unfair to loathe a man just because he was such a mess but how did one control an instinctive revulsion?

Didn’t he ever want to hit back? Was that what he’d done at the Madam’s?

If Nicholas Fieringer’s revenge on Boston had taken the form of a multimillion-dollar art robbery, what had he done with the proceeds? He was perpetually, notoriously hard up. Was the poverty a bluff, like his hearty good-fellowship? Had he got the money salted away somewhere ready for him to go off and enjoy while he had his private laugh at the fools who’d despised him and let him rob them blind? Or had he spent it on buying a reputation for being a good guy? Sponges like Bernie, leeches like that Lupe creature could get through fortunes in no time flat, as Sarah knew to her sorrow. They’d throw it away on drugs or gambling or whatever caught their fancies and come dancing back to good old Nick for more. To her surprise, Sarah felt tears rolling down her cheeks.

Fieringer could hardly have helped noticing. “What’s wrong, beautiful lady? Tell old Nick. Everybody brings their troubles to Nick.”

She brushed a hand over her face. “It’s just that you reminded me for a moment of my husband. I suppose you know what happened to him. It wasn’t very long ago, you know, and I still haven’t quite—”

Whatever was possessing her to go on like that? How could any two people on earth have been less alike than this fat, sweating, vulgar hulk and the incredibly handsome, fastidious aristocrat she’d loved and lost? Yet there had been the same tension under Alexander’s eternal self-possession, that same need to be the kind father figure on whom the whole Kelling clan dumped their problems, and that same cruel exploitation, although thank God he never found it out. She had often resented him for being the way he was, and felt ashamed of herself and tried to make up for it by being extra sweet just as she was doing now with Nick Fieringer. And Nick was taking it in the way most dreadful to her, as she ought to have known he would.

“Believe me, it is a great honor what you say. I will cherish always in my heart the memory. Only when I die will be no beautiful woman to weep for me.” He was grimacing like somebody in an ad for denture cleaners. It was obscene.

“I’m sure that isn’t so,” she replied lamely. How in God’s name did one talk to a man like this without vomiting? One might at least try to get away from personalities. “I’ve often wondered,” she ventured, “exactly what an impresario does.”

Fieringer told her. It took forever. In the midst of his monologue he excused himself with a mixture of playfulness and embarrassment to go to the bathroom. Was there nothing the man could do without giving it the flavor of a dirty joke? She longed for him to go away, for Bittersohn to come back, for the house to catch fire, for anything at all that would get her out of this. She’d given Charles pointed orders to show Mr. Bittersohn up here the second he set foot in the house. At last, at very long last, he came.

“How are you, Nick? Sorry to keep you waiting so long. Did Mrs. Kelling offer you anything to drink?” His heartiness was as false as Fieringer’s although he was managing it more gracefully.

Sarah was frantic to get him alone and find out what had happened at Lupe’s but no relief was in sight. First the impresario had to tell his dear friend Maxie what a wonderful time he’d been having with the beautiful landlady in a way that made Sarah want to go and take a long, hot shower. Then he had to make his speech about Palmerston and Ruy Lopez. The version he gave Max didn’t jibe any too well with the story he’d told her, Sarah noted. How could the man succeed at grand larceny over a long span of years if he couldn’t manage to keep his lies straight for a single evening? Sarah heaved a silent sigh and rang for more beer.

“By the way, Nick,” said Bittersohn a bottle or so later, “have you run into Lydia lately?”

Fieringer burped and excused himself too elaborately. “Lydia who?” He was slightly owlish by now.

“Countess Ouspenska. Palmerston’s old girl friend.”

“Was she? I never knew that. I don’t believe it.” Nick’s voice was uninterested but he slopped a little of his beer on the nice old Chinese oriental Anora Protheroe had given Sarah during her renovations.

“She says she was,” Bittersohn insisted.

“She says she’s a countess.”

“She calls him Chuckie,” Sarah interjected.

“When does she call him Chuckie?” All of a sudden Fieringer was cold sober.

“Last night when they were both visiting here.”

The impresario slopped more beer. “What was Lydia doing here?”

“She didn’t say. I assumed she merely happened to be in the neighborhood and stopped by to say hello.”

“But how could a woman like her know a woman like you?”

Sarah gave him a dose of his own medicine. “Oh, I know everybody. I think the countess is delightful.”

“I haven’t seen her lately,” he answered hollowly. “I haven’t seen her for a long time.” A few minutes later, Fieringer got up and left.

“Now what the flaming hell,” said Bittersohn, “is eating him?”

“He’s afraid you don’t love him any more.”

“I don’t think I do. I’m not sure I ever did.”

“I’ve been wondering whether anybody does.”

“Oh, sure, Nick has lots of—I see what you mean.”

“It’s tragic, isn’t it? One shouldn’t blame him for being what he is.”

“I can blame him,” Bittersohn replied grimly. “My great old pal, knifing me in the back to keep on the right side of that bastard Palmerston.”

“Has it occurred to you that it wasn’t on account of Palmerston he wanted the hunt called off?”

“If you really think he’s the man behind the robberies, you should have had sense enough not to stay up here alone with him.”

“He wouldn’t have dared try anything. He knew I’d only to touch the bell and Charles would come rushing up, because I kept ringing for more beer. I knew I had to keep him here till you got back. Believe me, it wasn’t a job I’d have taken on for the fun of it.”

“Greater love hath no woman.” Bittersohn put out a tentative hand toward her, then decided he hadn’t better. “Thanks, Sarah, but for God’s sake be careful.”

“I am, don’t worry. Tell me, how did you make out in Brookline?”

“I learned one thing: whoever’s doing those copies for the Madam’s, it sure as hell isn’t Lupe’s friend Bengo.”

“It wasn’t Rembrandt’s cat?”

“It wasn’t Rembrandt’s anything. That jerk must have been stoned to the eyeballs. He got hold of the wrong postcard and copied a Botticelli.”

“Was it a good Botticelli?”

“There’s no such thing as a good Botticelli.” Bittersohn had violent personal opinions about the field he worked in, though he seldom expressed them to his clients.

“Don’t be so superior. You know what I mean.”

“I suppose with enough dirty varnish and a beat-up gold frame it might fool a blind man in a bad light. At least he saved me from having to buy the picture. I got sore and said it was Rembrandt’s cat or nothing, and flounced off in a huff.”

“Didn’t Lupe promise to have the cat ready for you in a few days?”

“No, he seemed fairly indifferent about the whole deal. I suppose he didn’t care because he’d already collected a wad from Palmerston. And an extra commission from my old buddy Nick, no doubt. I wish I knew who actually engineered the Ruy Lopez deal and whether or not Palmerston knew he had a ringer slipped in. Does he have a secretary?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised, though I can’t say for sure. He does have his odd-job lady Dolores Tawne, and he had Lydia Ouspenska last night.”

“How do you know?”

“Don’t be salacious. I’ve had all the bawdry I can take for one evening. Anyway, you know as well as I do that they left here together. And he was surprised and angry to see her here and got her away as fast as he could, and it might have been because he didn’t want her to start talking about transatlantic phone calls before he was ready to spring Ruy Lopez on you.”

“Why would he get Lydia to make the calls?”

“I don’t know. Because he’s the sort of person who always orders other people to do things he could perfectly well do for himself, I suppose.”

“He’d have to be an awful idiot to entrust any sort of responsibility to Lydia.”

“But he is an awful idiot. At least Aunt Caroline and Leila Lackridge always said he was. And look what a fool he made of himself with Mrs. Sorpende at the Madam’s yesterday. Maybe he was used to relying on Lydia’s opinions about art back in their courting days. She is a really good painter in her way, and perhaps she does know something about art in general. He did say he’d discussed the choosing of an expert with various people whose opinions he values, and she might have been one of them. If he did, couldn’t she and Mr. Fieringer have cooked up the Ruy Lopez thing between them? She wouldn’t see the implications for you, she’d just think it was a jolly bohemian joke to play on the old goat who jilted her. Maybe that’s why Mr. Fieringer denied that she’d been Palmerston’s girl friend when he claims to know all about everybody, and why he left in such a hurry after the subject came up.”

“You’re full of ideas lately aren’t you, madam?”

“Why have you started calling me madam all of a sudden?”

“Hell, I can’t say Sarah in front of the troops, and surely you don’t expect me to say Mrs. Kelling any more. Sarah, did you honestly mean what you told me last night?”

“Yes, Max. All of it.”

“Then I guess I’d better go take another cold shower. In case you don’t realize it, all this noble high-mindedness is doing one hell of a job on your water bill.”

T
HE LATE BREAKFASTERS WERE
sitting around the table the following morning when who should come along, chirpy as a chickadee, but Brooks Kelling. “Thought I’d pay a morning call while I’m out for my constitutional,” he explained. “Where’s Porter-Smith?”

“Gone to work.” Sarah handed him a cup of coffee. “We don’t all keep bankers’ hours, you know.”

“I thought accountants might. Why, thank you, Theonia, those muffins look delicious. I meant to show Porter-Smith a few of the pictures I’ve taken with my miniature camera under varying conditions. We were discussing photography last night.”

“Perhaps you would show the pictures to us,” Mrs. Sorpende suggested.

“Delighted.” With a conjurer’s flourish, he plucked them out of her hair and passed them around.

“What’s this?” asked Max Bittersohn, who was seldom at his best so early in the day. “A sack of marbles?”

“You’re holding it upside down. That’s a nest of turtle eggs.”

“But where is the mother turtle?” asked Mrs. Sorpende.

“Off doing her thing somewhere. Turtles are lousy mothers. She just lays ’em and leaves ’em.”

“Sounds like Lydia Ouspenska,” said Bittersohn.