Death on the Aisle (29 page)

“Well,” Pam told Toughy, her mind reeling a little, “Auntie got around, when you come to remember it. And now back here, with somebody trying to kill her.”

The old house was too dignified for such absurdities as Aunt Flora and attempted murder. Even now, when it had been hemmed in and, seemingly, pushed back, it was too dignified. It went up five stories and had a bow window on the second floor—the second floor if you counted the anomalous layer which was half under the earth and half above it as the first. Once it had been one of a row of dignified houses, all very like it in essentials, all representing good addresses for the right people. It had stood after most of the others had come down. Because Aunt Flora had been stubborn, it now stood in retreat, with a mountain of an apartment house on each shoulder.

It would once have been easy for Aunt Flora to sell it. The company collecting land parcels for the building on the Fifth Avenue corner had been willing to buy first, and after that the company building the apartment next door to the east had made an offer. But Aunt Flora had refused both, and the companies had shrugged corporate shoulders and gone on about their building. They had used all the ground the law allowed, coming flush to the building lines along the sidewalk, so that the Buddie house, which had once withdrawn genteelly from passersby and only licked at them with the tongue of its brown front steps, now looked merely sunken in.

“And,” Jerry had once told Pam as they stood in front looking at it, preparing to confront Aunt Flora and pay their somewhat awed respects, “and now it's merely something called ‘permanent light and air.' Which means that nobody will ever make another offer.”

The permanent light and air did not, however, belong to the house itself. In the house itself you looked on the outer world as through a key-hole.

Pam's room was in front, two flights up from the entrance foyer. It was wider and deeper and higher than was altogether convenient in a bedroom. Its windows were so tall and wide that it was impossible to open them for merely a little air, so that one had to choose between the resident air and a chilling hurricane. It was at a fine level to collect street noises and street dust and it had only one smallish closet, opening in the wall opposite the windows and next the door leading to the bathroom, which had a ventilator down which a peculiar, oily dust descended, when the wind was wrong, and from which the dust fell into the bathtub. But the room had dignity.

“Of course,” Pam said, in a rather lonely voice, since Toughy had now joined his sister in smelling the room, “you can't have everything.”

At the moment, she thought again, it would be nice to have Jerry. She had read his most recent letter hurriedly when she left the apartment to spend a dutiful few days with Aunt Flora—and to avoid looking at Jerry's empty bed at nights—and now she took it out of her purse to read again. Jerry said it was cold in Texas. He said it in an aggrieved tone since, being a New Yorker, he had supposed that Texas was warm, even in January. He was about a third of the way through the book, and was afraid that it was
very
like “Gone With the Wind.” He missed her.

Pam curled up at one end of the big bed when she reached this part and read it carefully. He missed her very much. He was explicit to a degree and in terms which made Pam feel deliciously unlike an accepted and familiar wife.

“Wow!” Pam said, softly, and read part of the letter again. It would be
very
nice to have Jerry home. It would also be nice to find a secure place in which to sequester the letter. Pam looked around, shook her head and put the letter back in her purse. She looked at the little ball watch dangling from a chain around her neck. She dismissed Jerry from her thoughts, went to the bathroom, wiped part of the oily dust from the tub and turned on the hot water. It ran slowly, but it ran hot. The cats followed her into the bathroom and Ruffy put forepaws on the edge of the tub and peered at the water. She was about to get in to investigate when Pam caught her.

The tub was full, finally, and the cats shut out. Pam ignored their protests at this arrangement and relaxed. She wiggled her toes and regarded them. She really should, she decided, have polish put on again. But then, in the winter, what was really the point? Jerry hadn't mentioned her toes.

“Now,” Pam told herself, “to get to Aunt Flora and arsenic.” To start somewhere, you could start with the people in the house. So—. She went over what Aunt Flora had told her while they finished their second cocktail in front of the fire. Take the servants. Sand, the butler; the new maid, Alice Something; the cook, not new, Something Jensen—Clara, that was it. Mrs. Clara Jensen. There must be a lot of work for Alice Something in a house as big as this if Sand only butlered and Mrs. Jensen only cooked. And then there was Harry.

Where you put Harry, Pam found it hard to say. He was not a servant, certainly, although often he puttered around the house, putting in fuses, pasting down loose flaps of wall-paper, putting knobs back on drawers. It had never been easy to place Harry—Harry Jenkins, that was it. He lived on the top floor, and he was almost as old as Aunt Flora and much thinner and it had always been a question in Pam's mind whether he went with the house or with Aunt Flora. Probably, she decided, squeezing water out of a sponge and letting it flow in again, he went with Aunt Flora. Probably he was something out of Aunt Flora's past. If things were really to be investigated, that would have to be found out.

Now you came to family. And things became complicated because Aunt Flora's family was apt to prove intricate.

“I'm the simplest,” Pam thought. “Just a niece, child of a sister. After that—.” Pam sighed and washed her face, absently.

It was a little simpler if you started with the Buddies, since Aunt Flora had now formally declared herself again a Buddie and since, after all, the Buddies represented the senior branch. Flora Pickering had started with the Buddies when she was a rounded, pretty girl and was visiting relatives in the Indian Territory long before it became Oklahoma. Then she had met Major Alden Buddie, of the New York Buddies, on post in country still not tame, and married him quickly and lived with him very happily until he died when they were both still young. And he had left her what must then have seemed all the money in the world and was still, Pam suspected, a good deal of it.

Of the Buddies, extant and in the house, there was first a second Alden, now also a major, and his daughters, Clem who was eighteen and Judy who was two years older. Clem and Judy, Pam gathered, were staying with their grandmother during an undetermined interim, its length eventually to be decided by the final army assignment of their father, who was now majoring at a nearby army post. In New Jersey, that was it. It was a bad time to predict the future of an army major and his daughters. The major himself stayed at Aunt Flora's when he was in the city, which apparently was often.

That evening, at any rate, there would be a fourth Buddie—Christopher. He was another grandchild, the son of Dr. Wesley Buddie, who was the second son of the first Major Buddie and Aunt Flora. All that Pam could remember about him was that he was going to be a playwright.

“If it kills him,” Pam added to herself, swabbing.

That did for the Buddies immediately under foot.

“I can widen it later if I have to,” Pam thought, and sighed.

After Major Buddie, Aunt Flora had married Robert McClelland, who later became a chief of police, and was now happily divorced. By him, Aunt Flora had one son named Something or Other McClelland and Something or Other had had, in turn, a son named Bruce, whom Pam knew rather well and liked, and who was reporting on a morning newspaper.

“And who isn't around,” she said to herself, thankfully. “Not tonight, anyway. But I don't know about arsenic day.”

After Mr. McClelland there came, surprisingly, a baseball player, named Craig and from him another son to Aunt Flora. She ran to sons, Pam decided. This son was Benjamin Craig, who lived staidly at home with his mother and who staidly managed a branch bank. He was vague in Pam's mind, but he would be there at dinner time. There would be a good many to dinner. Reluctantly, Pam emerged from warm water and towelled. Remembering Jerry's letter briefly, she regarded herself in the long mirror set into the door. She surprised herself by blushing slightly and went into the bedroom, which was chilly enough to make her dress quickly.

In a long, dark-blue dinner dress, Pam sat in front of the dressing table mirror and regarded herself. She nodded to herself, in reasonable contentment and again wished Jerry were there.

“Particularly,” she thought, “if there are going to be murders. But I don't suppose there are, really. It wouldn't be like Aunt Flora to be poisoned.”

She slipped through the door carefully, but Toughy was too quick for her. He bounced past her into the hall, galloped to the head of the stairflight, and stared down. Then he bristled, and the hall—the hall and the whole stair well and probably the whole house—was filled with indignant barking. Toughy snarled and bristled and a young voice said, indignantly, “Oh!”

A brown cocker was pulling up the stairs, restrained by a green leather leash. At the other end of the leash was a slender girl. She was hatless and her black hair swept down to her shoulders. She pushed it back, looked up indignantly through dark blue eyes and said, in an indignant voice, “A Cat!” The brown cocker, his suspicions thus countenanced, bounced at the end of the green leash and barked with every bounce.

Pam moved quickly. She swept Toughy into her arms and was rewarded by scratches which Toughy had been intending for the cocker. Toughy wriggled and stared back, still hissing. But Pam opened her bedroom door enough to push him through, closed it quickly enough to thwart the emerging Ruffy, and turned to face the cocker and the girl. The cocker was allowed to bounce on to the landing, and the girl followed him. She said, “Pam! Hullo darling. Is it yours?”

“Yes, Judy,” Pam said. “Sorry if we frightened Nemo.”

Judy Buddie shrugged it off.

“Although,” she said, “we'll have to keep them apart. It's nice to see you, Pam. Did you just come?”

Pam told her when she had come. Judy was interested, but abstracted. She had, she explained, to rush.

“Grandma wants everybody to dress,” she said. “I expect it's for you, Pam—although Grandma always likes it. She says she likes people to look pretty. Can you picture Uncle Ben looking pretty? But the cocktails will be better. They always are when we dress. Did you ever notice?”

“Cocktails always are,” Pam told her. “It's because we're always more dignified and—formal. Or so Jerry always says.”

“Where is Jerry?” Judy wanted to know. “Grandma didn't say anything about him.”

Pam told her. Judy hesitated a moment, said “Oh” in a certain tone, seemed uncertain whether to go on or stay, and then went on rather abruptly. Judy was very young, really, Pam realized. It was hard at twenty to know when and how to end a conversation. Judy, followed reluctantly by Nemo, who wanted to investigate the door which sheltered the cat, went on up the stairs. Then she paused, leaned rather perilously over the balustrade—with casual disregard of a possible drop of better than fifty feet down the stair well—and called back, “Cocktails in the library. Be seeing you.” Then, evidently conscious of social duty smoothly performed, she went on up the stairs, slim legs flickering behind the iron balusters.

Not Judy, Pam decided; it couldn't be Judy. The administration of arsenic to a wealthy grandmother, and particularly to one so unexpectedly perspicacious as Aunt Flora often proved herself, would be an undertaking requiring poise. Aside from everything else, attempted murder would embarrass Judy. She wouldn't, Pam decided, know which way to turn.

“And poisoners have to,” Pam decided, going down a flight to the library. The door leading from the hall to the library, which stretched across the front of the house and was under Pam's bedroom, was open and when she entered Pam thought for a moment she was the first. But Benjamin Craig arose with dignity from a low chair by the fire and advanced toward her, a plump hand extended and a plump face smiling carefully.

“Cousin Pamela!” Benjamin Craig reported, with an air of pleased surprise, although it was improbable that he was really surprised. “How delightful!”

“Hullo, Ben,” Pam said. Of course, she thought, he really is my cousin, but why make an issue of it. She looked at him. “You're looking well,” she told him. Benjamin always liked, she knew, to be told how he looked. Now he nodded.

“Fine,” he said. “Never better. And where's that young man of yours?”

Jerry would appreciate that, Pam thought, allowing her hand to be enfolded by Benjamin Craig's plump, warm hand. Because after all Ben couldn't be over fifty—couldn't even be fifty—and Jerry wasn't so young as all that. However—

“Texas,” Pam told Cousin Benjamin. “Reading a book.”

Which is strictly true, she added to herself, waiting with anticipation for Cousin Benjamin to be confused. He merely blinked and continued to regard her as if she were a long lost depositor.

“How's the bank?” Pam enquired, one thought leading to another.

The bank was doing well enough, it appeared. But Benjamin Craig permitted an expression of concern to cross his soft features, indicating that the bank was still much on his mind, however he might unbend. He was about, Pam suspected, to go into the bank in detail, but Aunt Flora intervened. Aunt Flora came briskly through the door from the hall, looking very much like a red top except that she was not spinning. She said “Oh, here you are,” to Ben and, “Have a nice rest, dearie?” to Pamela. Neither remark seemed to need, or to expect, an answer.

“My feet,” said Aunt Flora with feeling. “And why don't you ring for Sand, Ben? It's time for a drink.” She thought this over sternly as she deposited herself in the most comfortable chair. “Past time,” she added, nodding vigorously from the waist. Her wig slipped a little, Pam thought. Ben rang. Flora looked at Ben and Pam affectionately. She looked at Ben a second time and said, with a maternal note which came a little unexpectedly, that he looked tired. Ben accepted this comment much as he had Pam's assurance that he was looking in the pink. He nodded, appreciatively.