The Gladstone Bag (6 page)

“Oh yes. It doesn’t weigh anything to speak of. Thank you, Vincent.”

Emma climbed the path feeling much happier now that she’d met her major domo. This was a lovely path, edged with old railroad ties, springy with inches of fallen pine needles. Flat stepping stones had been set in wherever they’d be helpful; everything was casual and natural and nicely maintained.

If there was any real treasure on this island, she decided, it must surely be Vincent. Was that his first or his last name? No matter, it was evidently what he was used to being called by the Sabines. Far be it from her to attempt any innovation in what might well be the last season this long-established ménage would ever see. Emma felt a twinge of melancholy at the prospect of its dissolution.

Once she got inside the house, though, she began to change her mind. Everything in the vast living room was in exquisite order, everything was commodious and comfortable, everything was right for its setting and function. Big jars of garden flowers and new light green pine tassels had been placed here and there by somebody with an eye for effect, or somebody who knew where similar arrangements had always gone. But it was old, not antique old or shabby old, just old and tired and ready to go, like its owner. No wonder Adelaide had not been sorry to miss coming again; there’d been too many years of sameness here. If the place were Emma’s, she’d be tempted to tear it down and start again from the beginning.

But here came a youngster, she couldn’t be more than fourteen or so, with a peeling nose and a hairdo inspired by Medusa. She wore a screaming yellow sweatshirt with a Smurf on the front, the inevitable blue jeans, and a smile that was pure glory.

“Hi, Mrs. Kelling, I’m Sandy. Come on up and I’ll show you your room. You’ll love it! This your first time on the island? Can I get you a cup of tea or anything? Want me to help you unpack?”

Emma said no, she’d been here once many years ago; yes, she’d like some tea; and it would be kind of Sandy to help her unpack, not that she couldn’t have managed by herself but because Sandy so obviously burned to be helpful. She let Sandy take the Gladstone bag and followed her upstairs.

E
MMA HAD NO DIFFICULTY
in sharing Sandy’s enthusiasm for the room she’d been allotted. It was exactly the right size, neither barny nor coopy, all white walls, green wicker, and faded chintz. No painted board floors and rag rugs at the Sabines’, of course; a couple of mellow Kirman rugs would do well enough to take the chill off the parquet. Sandy opened the big windows, letting in the smell of the ocean. The old-fashioned, painted wire screens blurred the view a trifle; nonetheless, it was magnificent.

Her window looked out over the path she’d come up, the dock, and the great wide sweep of the Atlantic. Nothing between her and Spain, or was it France? Very nice either way. However, Emma went over and shut the windows all but a crack. The air had a clammy feel, as it always does on small islands. She was relieved to notice an efficient-looking electric radiator strategically placed to the left of a deep-cushioned spring rocker that had a sensible-size lamp table drawn up beside it.

This would be a comfortable refuge from that weary perfection downstairs, she thought. She must sort out some books to bring up here. She was wondering whether a more efficient arrangement of the furniture might be worked out when Sandy bounded back with a charmingly arranged and amply supplied tea tray.

“Ah, good,” she said. “That was quick, my dear.” No earthly use in treating this radiant creature like a servant, she’d simply pretend Sandy was a temporary grandchild.

“Bubbles—he’s the cook—had everything ready for you, Mrs. Kelling. He put the kettle on to boil as soon as he heard the ferry whistle. The sandwiches are from a salmon Bubbles caught yesterday, with cucumber and a little fresh dill he grows in his own greenhouse back home, but he can fix you something else if you’d rather. How about if I set the tray right here and turn the chair so you can look out at the water while you eat? Want me to pour?”

“Thank you, I’ll manage,” Emma said when it became possible to get a word in. “This is lovely, I’m starved. Would you like to open that biggest case for me and start hanging up the dresses?”

She might as well take advantage of this female whirlwind. Emma felt she’d seen almost enough water for one day. Nevertheless she took the seat Sandy had arranged for her, investigated the tea, found it exactly right, as it naturally would be, and started on the sandwiches. Absolute perfection, even Mrs. Heatherstone couldn’t have done better. Hot scones in a napkin, too, with currant jam and real clotted cream to go on them. Wherever did Bubbles get clotted cream out here?

Kept a sea cow in the cove and milked her himself, perhaps. That was the sort of thing Emma’s granddaughter would think of. What a pity Little Em couldn’t have come, she and Sandy would get on like a house afire. And disrupt Vincent’s domestic arrangements, no doubt, and get the poor child fired. Sandy was having a good-enough time now, at any rate, gurgling over the embroidered silk blouses Emma had brought along for evening wear, being ever so careful to set them just right on their padded hangers. Emma rather wished she’d put in one or two really elegant dinner frocks, if only for the fun of watching Sandy unpack them. But how could she have known she’d be assigned a personal maid? Really, this was an incredibly well-run household, even without its mistress.

By the time Emma had done with her tea, Sandy had all the suitcases emptied. Nightgowns, underthings, and stockings were folded in the drawers; shoes in the closet; Emma’s toiletries on the dressing table in a commodious bathroom she wouldn’t, thank goodness, have to share with anybody.

“Anything else I can do for you, Mrs. Kelling?” Sandy was by no means ready to quit.

Emma was. “Just take the tray with you, please. I’m going to lie down for a while before it’s time to dress.”

“Sure thing! Want your negligee?”

If Sandy got pleasure from thinking of sensible tailored robes as negligees, Emma was not about to contradict her. “Yes, the fleecy blue one. I’m beginning to feel a wee bit chilly.”

“I can switch on the radiator.”

“No, don’t bother. A hot bath will warm me up.”

“Want me to start it for you?”

“Not just now.”

Even Sandy knew when she’d been dismissed. “Okay, then. Holler if you want me.”

With obvious regret, the youngster took the tray and left Emma to herself. Emma slipped out of her traveling clothes, put on the blue robe, and stretched out on a chaise longue under the window. She oughtn’t to be sleepy after that unfortunate nap in her deck chair, but her head still ached from whatever it was that had knocked her out and she was weary from the alternate bustle and tedium of getting here. She’d feel better after a good soak. It was unthinkable that Vincent wouldn’t have plenty of hot water for her, but if by any chance he hadn’t, Bubbles would no doubt boil some on the kitchen stove and Sandy would be only too pleased to lug it up in jugs, like the overworked housemaids of yesteryear.

Emma supposed she ought to have a chat with Bubbles about tomorrow’s menus. Then again, perhaps she oughtn’t. The odds were that he had a regular schedule to work from, laid down over years of experience. There’d be lobster in some form tonight; arriving guests always expected lobster at their first meal in a place like this. Not plain boiled, surely, that would show up at a picnic down on the beach some warmer evening than this one promised to be.

Lobster thermidor, perhaps, or a creamy lobster bisque followed by something simple but good, like chicken cordon bleu and fresh asparagus. The latter would be Emma’s choice, not that she felt particularly hungry after Bubbles’s elegant tea. Still, the salt air did tend to give one an appetite. She meditated a moment on her waistline, decided she was old enough not to care, pulled a lilac plaid mohair throw up over her ankles, and lay there wondering what sort of summer she was going to have.

It was too early to begin forming opinions about Adelaide’s guests. Emma’s guests, as she might as well learn to think of them. Whatever had possessed Adelaide to let that meretricious scribbler Wont have his own way with the invitations? Obviously she couldn’t have read his latest book.

One ought at least to phone and let Adelaide know everybody arrived safely, Emma thought. She’d do that when she went down to dinner. She saw no telephone in her room; she hadn’t expected one. Perhaps it was some kind of ship-to-shore radio thing such as she and Bed had had on their boat. Vincent would show her. Maybe he’d already talked with his employer; Emma wouldn’t be a whit surprised.

She hoped the cottagers weren’t giving him too much trouble. Wont had the makings of a first-class pest, but no doubt Vincent had run into his ilk before. Mrs. Fath was the real conundrum.

Emma knew, of course, how so-called psychics worked. They had accomplices who scouted out tidbits of personal information that could be dropped with supposedly electrifying effect at the psychological moment. Mrs. Fath must have sent someone to nose around after Adelaide Sabine in preparation for this visit. The spy would have followed Adelaide to the firemen’s benefit and eavesdropped on her conversation with Emma in the tent. It wouldn’t have been hard to do in such a crowd as they’d had. Once Emma had volunteered to fill in for Adelaide, she’d have become the target instead.

Maybe it had been Mrs. Fath who’d snitched Emma’s satchel on the ferry, hoping to find more grist for her little mill inside. As to knowing about Bed’s picture, she might even have dared to take a peek inside Emma’s tote bag. That would have taken some deft burglarizing, but weren’t mediums required to be experts at legerdemain? Blowing trumpets with their noses and writing on slates by means of hooks made from wire coat hangers hidden under their sleeves, that sort of thing?

Mrs. Fath didn’t look like the sort of person who’d go around with a coat hanger lashed to her elbow, but wasn’t protective coloration part of the deception? It was going to take more than a denim two-piece, a silly cotton hat, and a few oracular remarks to convince Emma Kelling that Alding Fath was all she cracked herself up to be.

Which was a pity, actually. Much as one enjoyed the conversation of interesting men, one did find women more serviceable companions. So far, Emma hadn’t seen anything potentially congenial about Lisbet Quainley. Mrs. Fath, on the other hand, had struck her as the sort with whom one might not actually have a great deal in common, but in whose company one might pleasurably share an occasional pot of tea and an agreeable rambling chat about nothing in particular. One could hardly relax with a person who was storing up one’s every inconsequentiality for possible future reference.

If one should happen to be an unprincipled rogue like Jem Kelling and his pals, one might feed that self-styled sibyl a few nuggets of outrageous misinformation, just for the fun of seeing where they turned up next. Emma tried to think up some picturesque untruths, but she’d never been any good at that sort of thing. One might as well just lie here and let one’s mind drift as it would. If it happened to drift off to the Land of Nod for a few minutes, who cared?

Emma became vaguely aware that she was having a fascinating dream. She was in a strange house on a little island, lying on an old-fashioned wicker chaise longue painted green and covered in faded lilac chintz. Through the windows beside her she could see a pier that stretched out into the ocean. At the far end of the pier stood a pirate. She knew he was a pirate because he had on skintight black boots and breeches, a heavy belt of some kind around his waist—to hold his pistols and cutlass, no doubt—and a red bandanna around his head.

Emma would have preferred a bicorne to the bandanna, optimally with a skull and crossbones on its upturned brim, but one couldn’t always arrange one’s dreams precisely as one chose. He did at least have a bushy black beard, like that odious man she’d met on the boat. There were no burning candles stuck in it, so he couldn’t be Blackbeard. Or was it Bluebeard? No, Bluebeard had been the one who kept murdering his wives. Definitely Blackbeard. Rather, not Blackbeard. This was an awfully confusing dream. She could smell salt water, she could sense the smoothness of the chintz under her, she could feel herself sitting up.

She was sitting up, she wasn’t sleeping. The pirate was gone; he’d merely lowered himself off the pier into the water, and she hoped he froze his—Emma was too much of a gentlewoman to express such a hope, even to herself. It was that ridiculous Everard Wont, of course, practicing up to be a pirate ghost and scare the old woman silly because she’d laughed at his asinine book.

Emma brought herself up short. Wont might only have been posing for sketches so that Mr. Groot could get to work right away on illustrations. That would be entirely reasonable and even laudable. One must not make snap judgments based on personal antipathies. The fact that Wont had let himself be hoodwinked by the Codfish crowd didn’t necessarily prove him a fool and a knave.

Not necessarily, just probably. Emma went into the bathroom and began drawing herself a tub, locking the door behind her lest young Sandy come bounding in and offer to scrub her back. She entirely approved of the late Ralph Bergengren’s axiom: “Dine and the world dines with you. Bathe and you bathe alone.”

She had her bath, fixed her face, and dressed herself in one of the long velour skirts she’d brought, a strange, dull old-rose shade that reminded her of the dried flower petals one might find in a bowl of potpourri. This would, she thought, nicely echo the general feeling of mild decay that the Sabine place evoked.

With the skirt, she wore one of her embroidered silk blouses, also in old rose but not too rosy. Emma liked soft, muted tints. Camouflage, Cousin Fred Kelling called them, like the stripes of a Bengal tiger. Fred was an odd old stick, she thought fondly, playing the crusty bachelor for upward of seventy years, then suddenly carrying off Jenicot Tippleton’s beautiful mother because he’d decided Jack Tippleton didn’t deserve her, which Jack certainly didn’t. Jack was still being snippy about the divorce, so Fred and Martha were living happily the old-fashioned way, and more power to them. Emma gave herself an approving nod in the wicker-framed mirror and fastened pearl studs in her ears. She didn’t feel quite up to her granddaughter’s arty baubles tonight.