Bodies from the Library 5, page 8
A bespectacled, studious-looking young man at the next table rose. started out of the room, but detoured to halt beside them.
‘Felicity!’ The man was Roger Garvey, Graffer’s secretary. He grinned. ‘Headed home? Oh, hello, Latimer.’
‘Hi, Garvey,’ Ben grunted.
Liz smiled at the difference between the two men. They were equally tall, equally well-built, but made from different moulds. Ben’s suit looked rather sloppy beside the sleek perfection of Roger Garvey’s well-tailored grey. Then, again, the detective’s broken nose—which had healed remarkably well from a wound inflicted by a three-time murderer—served to emphasize the pleasing profile of her grandfather’s handsome secretary. Even Ben’s easy casualness seemed rather crude when contrasted with Roger’s graceful suavity.
‘Roger’s right, Ben,’ she said. ‘I should be headed home. Mother’s got so much to do.’
‘I’ll squire you on the cable car, Felicity,’ Roger Garvey suggested. ‘Ridiculous nuisance, this having to leave one’s car at home. And I’ve no doubt the street-car will be full of filthy workmen in oil-stained overalls. Oh, well! The Japanese war’ll be over soon. Until then, I suppose we have to put up with these things.’
Ben’s face turned brick red. He opened his mouth to make an angry retort, but Liz gave him a warning glance so he only said, ‘Take good care of her, Garvey.’
‘That’s something I like to do, Latimer. I’ll never forgive you for getting the inside track. I suppose we’ll be seeing you at the great family dinner tonight?’
‘Sorry. I’m on duty.’
The secretary looked wise. ‘Oh, you remember that Sherry’s to be there?’
Ben didn’t answer for a minute. There was no sound but the clinking of glasses and the babble of voices.
‘Yes, I remember,’ Ben said at last. ‘Tell her I’ll try and get around tomorrow.’
‘I’m sure that even in her present state she’ll be anxious to see you, Latimer. Don’t you think so, Felicity?’
Liz said, ‘Come on. You can’t tempt Ben when he’s on duty. The only way we could inveigle him to the house tonight would be to stage a murder for him.’
After they had left, Detective-Lieutenant Ben Latimer sat alone at the table for some minutes. He frowned, and his finger outlined a pointing fist on the damp surface Then his frown deepened and he murmured, ‘Sherry!’
He was unreasonably annoyed when the waiter brought him a glass of light brown wine.
II
Mrs Vicky Cain’s hair was red, too, and people used to think that Liz had inherited hers from her mother. If so, it would have been a striking example of the transmission of acquired characteristics, and worthy of note in learned journals.
Usually Mrs Cain’s face was as skilfully made up as her hennaed hair, and she never looked old enough to have a famous aviatrix for a daughter. But now, as she greeted Liz, her face was hot and dripping, and her charmingly decorative apron had failed to protect her best tea-gown from unidentifiable stains.
As for the house, it was old-fashioned but wonderfully kept up. There were deep-piled rugs, waxed hardwood floors, panelled walls and tapestries, Chippendale cabinets, urns and Oriental vases, and overstuffed furniture, all blending into the colour scheme with excellent taste. At one side of the great front hall was the massive staircase, with its heavy newel-post and bronze figures, leading up to the second floor.
‘Mother!’ Liz gasped. ‘What have you been doing?’
Mrs Cain sighed. ‘It isn’t what I’ve been doing, it’s what other people have been doing. It’s all because Mary wanted to bend wires.’
‘To bend wires?’
Roger Garvey apparently foresaw trouble. He said, ‘Good evening, Mrs Cain,’ and vanished upstairs unobtrusively, to his secretarial duties.
‘Yes, she took a course at night school, and now she’s gone into your Uncle Brian’s factory.’ Mrs Cain sighed deeply. ‘What’s the good of my hiring good cooks if your Uncle Brian keeps stealing them away?’
Liz smiled and nodded. ‘Oh. The way you spoke it sounded as if she’d gone into an institution to cut out paper dolls. Well, aeroplanes are important to the progress of our country. Remember that.’
‘But why did your Uncle Brian need Mary to build aeroplanes?’ Mrs Vicky Cain persisted. ‘She’s better off in the kitchen.’
Liz patted her arm. ‘Don’t worry, Mother. The agency will find us another cook. They always do.’
‘But that isn’t the worst of it,’ went on Mrs Cain, smoothing her stained apron. ‘Today your grandfather decided to move into the west bedroom because he says he wants to be facing the sea when he dies. Which isn’t very cheerful, you’ll admit. As if we didn’t have trouble enough being without servants. How the nurse, Miss Kramer, and I ever got him moved there, I’m sure I don’t know!’
‘When did the cook leave?’ Liz asked.
‘This morning. I had to go out and do the marketing myself and the butcher was short of meat, and there are so many guests coming, I guess we’ll have to eat out of cans. When there was enough food, they wouldn’t let us buy it because that was hoarding, and now there isn’t any left. And if there was, we couldn’t get it anyway. So I don’t know where we are. Do you? It’s completely beyond me.’
Liz laughed. ‘I certainly can’t answer that one. Now I’m going upstairs, darling, and change into slacks, and be useful. Mother, haven’t you anything but gold lamé to wear in the kitchen?’
Mrs Cain gave a hasty glance downward and a look of surprise spread over her face.
‘Certainly, Liz. But I forgot. You know, I’m used to wearing something nice in the afternoon.’
Liz shook her head reproachfully and began to climb the broad staircase. This had been San Francisco’s showplace once, she reflected—the Cain Mansion. Now all its grand old neighbouring houses, on top of the hill, had been converted into three- or four-flat dwellings, housing families whom the Cains did not know. The one time ‘mansion’ had become just a funny old building. Her mother’s ideas were like that, too—all very well for a life of privilege, but hopeless in these changed times. Nothing that might happen in the way of new ideas, new modes of living, could ever have demolished her mother’s concept of the world and her place in it.
Liz paused in front of the room to which her grandfather had been moved. She was about to knock when Roger Garvey came out.
‘Miss Kramer says he’s asleep,’ the secretary told her.
‘All right,’ Liz said. ‘He needs all the sleep he can get, poor man.’ She smiled at Roger. ‘Miss Kramer knows her business. I believe she’s the most efficient nurse Graffer has had.’
The natty secretary lingered. ‘Had you anything important you wanted to say to your grandfather? I might be able to help you.’
Liz shook her head. ‘No. I just wanted to find out how he was.’
Garvey betrayed curiosity. ‘I thought perhaps you had some message for him?’
‘No, nothing. I’ve got to go change now, Roger.’
But he stood blocking her way in the hall. ‘Felicity, won’t you listen?’ he pleaded. Behind his gold-rimmed glasses his eyes had begun to glow.
‘I’m sorry, Roger. Let’s not go all over that again.’
‘Tell me, Felicity. What do you suppose your detective-lieutenant thinks of your cousin Sherry now?’
‘I’m damned if I know,’ Liz said truthfully, and pushed her way past him to her room.
Sleek Roger! It was like him to remind her. If she could only forget that she’d caught Ben Latimer on the rebound from Sherry, forget it as completely as she was sure that Ben himself had forgotten it by now. But with Sherry coming here today to see her dying grandfather, Liz’s mind was upset, anyway. And Roger’s question hadn’t helped her.
She changed as rapidly as one can with a bad arm. The doorbell rang as she started downstairs, and she finished the flight at top speed. She was careful to use the banister, however, as she was taking no chances on being grounded for a longer time. Notwithstanding her worry about Sherry and Ben, she still retained all her childhood friendship for her pretty cousin. It would be good to see Sherry again, in spite of the fact that Ben had once cared for her so much.
But it was Uncle Brian Cain who was at the front door. And it was Mrs Cain who let him in. When Liz arrived he was removing his gloves in the front hall, with a puzzled expression upon his face.
‘Liz,’ he called to his niece as soon as he saw her, ‘come here and translate. I am trying to persuade your mother that I never stole anybody’s cook in my life.’
At that moment, the doorbell rang again. Liz smiled at her young and distinguished looking uncle and dashed past him to the door. But it was only Dr Frayne, their family physician, complete with the bag and the beard that always reminded Liz of a doctor from some period motion picture.
‘Hi, Frayne!’ Uncle Brian called out. ‘How’s the last bearded medico outside of a museum?’
Dr Frayne grunted. ‘Sir, I retired happily ten years ago, and settled down to cultivating my roses and my beard,’ he said. ‘Just because this war called me back into practice, I don’t intend to relinquish everything. How’s your father?’
Uncle Brian shrugged. ‘I haven’t seen him yet.’
‘Miss Kramer says Graffer’s asleep,’ Liz added.
‘I’ll run up and have a look at him,’ the doctor said. ‘Has the prodigal Sherry returned yet, Vicky?’
Mrs Cain shook her head.
‘Curious to see her, after this great transformation.’ Dr Frayne winked at Liz. ‘Think I’ll invite myself to dinner. Thanks.’
Mrs Cain stared after him as he mounted the stairs, leaving his black bag on the table near the newel-post.
‘Don’t say it, Mother,’ Liz cautioned her. ‘Don’t say anything. One more won’t make it any worse. Oh, Uncle Brian, did you see the News this evening?’
Uncle Brian Cain was lighting a cigar. ‘No. Why?’
‘Your new plane got plenty of space on the front page as a result of that last flight to China,’ Liz said. ‘Isn’t that what’s known as knocking them into the aisles?’
Cain chuckled. ‘Now, Liz, you know I’m not interested in the publicity. The main thing is we’re doing a job—a good job, if I do say it myself. Until the cutbacks come, we’ll manage to keep up production and turn out the latest quirks in aircraft.’
The doorbell rang again. Liz flung the door open, and threw both arms around her cousin Sherry’s neck, without any thought of the bad arm.
It wasn’t the twinge of pain that made her draw back. It was the feel of the heavy white wool and the scent of starchy cleanness. But the young woman she had embraced wasn’t Sherry. It was a stranger—a nun in a hood, stiff linen and robes, with a rosary at her waist. Sherry was the girl standing beside her.
Liz gasped, drew back, and remained very still while her mother and her uncle uttered loud greetings. It is a strange thing to look at your closest girlhood friend and see her in the convent garb of a novice.
‘Sister Ursula, I want you to meet my cousin, Felicity Cain,’ Sherry was saying. Her voice was still low and rich and warm. ‘This is Sister Ursula who came up with me.’
‘Oh, there are two of you!’ Mrs Cain exclaimed in surprise. ‘I should have known nuns always travel in pairs, but I just can’t get used to thinking of you as a nun, Sherry. I fixed up the north room for you. Luckily we have another spare bedroom, so we can manage to take care of you both splendidly.’
The doorbell rang again. Mrs Cain gave a start and turned.
‘Now who can that be?’
The latest ringer of the front doorbell was a small, middle-aged man in dingy overalls. He was waiting on the porch, carrying a battered suitcase. He had a grimy, good-natured face and sharp restless little eyes. ‘Is this the Cain place?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Liz answered.
‘Some hills you got here in San Francisco, lady.’ He set down his suitcase with a sigh of relief. ‘I’m Homer Hatch, from the shipyards. Would you mind showing me to my room?’
III
It was Liz’s uncle, Brian Cain, who broke the amazed silence.
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand, my friend,’ he said. ‘Does this look like a rooming house?’
‘The City Housing Bureau sent me,’ the man explained. ‘This address is listed there as being open for tenants.’
‘The Housing Bureau?’
‘Look,’ the man said. ‘If anything’s gone haywire, it ain’t me. I’ve got credentials.’ He pulled a sheaf of papers and cards out of his pocket and began thumbing through them. ‘See—here’s my union card—Homer Hatch. I’ve been a top-hand welder for years. I work at Marinship. Take a gander at my gate pass and my button. All right, so far?’
‘All right.’ Uncle Brian nodded. ‘So you’re Homer Hatch, a shipyard worker. But who sent you to this address?’
‘I’m coming to that. Now have a squint at this letter from the Housing Bureau. It says: “Report to home of Mrs Michael Cain.”’ He held up the letter for them to read. ‘You can see for yourselves.’
Liz glanced at her mother. Her married name was Mrs Michael Cain. Liz saw memory dawning in her mother’s eyes and with it a trace of guilt.
‘Mother!’ Liz cried.
Suddenly Mrs Cain was all the gracious hostess. ‘I remember!’ she cried. ‘You’re the man I’m taking in for Mrs Vansittart! Do come right on in!’
It was Homer Hatch’s turn to look puzzled.
‘Lady, I don’t know no Mrs Vansittart,’ he said. ‘But I want a room and a clean bed so bad that I ain’t arguing. Not even if Mrs Vansittart’s in it.’ He saw the nuns and hastily added, ‘Meaning no offence, y’understand, Sisters.’
‘Now, let me see!’ Mrs Cain began to calculate aloud. ‘You’re going to remain over until tomorrow, Brian, because this is a family gathering. You can use the small room downstairs near the kitchen just for tonight, and I’ll put Mr Hatch in Graffer’s old room. There! That’s settled.’
‘How about grandfather?’ Mr Hatch asked. ‘Maybe I ought to tell you—I snore some.’
‘Oh, so does Graffer. But I meant the room he just left, which is vacant. Now, Brian, will you show Mr Hatch upstairs while Liz and I look after Sherry and Sister Veronica?’
‘Ursula,’ the nun said quietly. Her face was calm, beautiful, serene.
Hatch reached down and picked up his suitcase. ‘Let’s go. Lead the way, Mister.’ He walked into the house.
‘My name is Cain,’ said Uncle Brian, closing the door after him. ‘Come on, Hatch. We’ll see how you like the room.’
‘If it’s got four walls and a bed, I’ll like it,’ said Hatch.
Liz watched the two men ascend the big staircase and disappear at the top.
‘Now, Mother,’ she said.
With Mrs Cain leading, and Liz, Sister Ursula and Sherry following, the four women started upstairs. The two nuns quietly but firmly had insisted on carrying their own bags. All the way up to the second floor, Mrs Cain kept chattering away steadily.
‘It was Mrs Vansittart’s idea,’ Mrs Cain explained. ‘At the Tuesday Morning club she told me all about the housing shortage and I foolishly expressed sympathy for the poor shipyard workers. Then she told me everybody with spare rooms should register with the Housing Bureau and I let her call up and put in my name. That was a month ago. I never dreamed your grandfather would be so ill, and I thought you, Liz, would be off somewhere, ferrying aeroplanes.’
They had reached the second floor now and were moving along the hall. Mrs Cain was trotting ahead, brisk and chipper. From behind, Liz could hear the soft sound of Sherry’s laughter. Sherry’s laugh had always been low and musical, but now Liz thought she had never heard anything sound so soft and contented.
‘You haven’t changed a bit, Aunt Vicky,’ Sherry called out. ‘You don’t know how nice it is to hear you all muddled, after the sensible women I have recently met.’ Liz glanced back over her shoulder and saw Sherry exchanging a smile with Sister Ursula.
‘Sherry, here’s a real muddle for you,’ said Liz. ‘First we’ll show you to your rooms. Then, believe it or not, Mother and I are going to get dinner, and not out of cans either. Can you put up with what two amateurs can dredge out of the pantry, Sherry?’ Liz had dropped back beside them.
‘If a cook is all you need, may I offer to help?’ suggested Sister Ursula.
‘Can you cook?’ Liz faltered, glancing at the long draped sleeves of the nun’s habit. It was very strange. She had never thought of a nun standing before a stove.
Sister Ursula laughed. ‘Oh, these roll back easily. Housework is our speciality, you know. We are the Sisters of Martha of Bethany. And Martha, you remember, was the one who did all the housework.’
‘Then Sherry is going to do housework?’ Liz stared at her cousin in surprise. ‘I didn’t understand. I thought she would turn to other things.’
‘Spending a life of cloistered contemplation behind an iron grille?’ Sister Ursula was smiling broadly. ‘I’m afraid we’re not that kind of nuns. Not good enough, perhaps. I doubt if Sherry here could ever measure up to such a life. I’m sure I couldn’t.’
‘But I thought nuns were devoted to prayer, and acts of charity and mercy.’
‘There are nuns and nuns,’ Sister Ursula said. ‘Brother Gregory used to say, ‘There are three things known only to God in his infinite wisdom. One is how much a Dominican knows. Another is what a Jesuit is thinking about. And the third is how many Orders of Sisterhoods there are.’ Ours—well, we’re the etceteras who do the work. And now about dinner. How many do you expect?’
Later, as Liz set the table—making an awkward job of it with her one arm—she was more puzzled than ever. The other nun—was her name Ursula? She was a surprising person. She was so quiet you didn’t know she was there, at first—just a funny habit with a round face looking out. Until she spoke. Then, in a few sentences, she had become a clear and definite person—efficient, administrative, capable, wise, and even humorous. If that was what the Sisters of Martha of Bethany did to you, maybe Sherry’s choice made sense after all.
