Blanche on the Lam: A Blanche White Mystery (25 page)

She sank heavily onto a kitchen chair, propped her elbows on the table, and buried her face in her hands. She needed to think. She felt as though pieces of her were scattered around the place. She wished Mumsfield would go away, but she sensed that he needed her company. She closed her eyes and heard rather than saw Mumsfield fetching glasses and the pitcher of lemonade. He sat in the chair directly across from her. They were both quiet for a moment.

“Is Aunt Emmeline dead, Blanche?” Mumsfield's voice was low and exceedingly calm. Blanche wondered what it was costing him to keep it that way. She'd hoped to avoid this. She'd hoped Archibald would be the one to break the news.

“Is she, Blanche? Please tell me. I trust you, Blanche.”

“Yes, baby. She's dead.” Blanche looked into his face and saw new lines. It was no longer a boy's face. He lowered his head as he began to sob. When he was calm enough, he wiped his face and surprised her by asking for details of his aunt's death.

Blanche gave him a simplified version of what Grace had told her—how she and Everett had set out to get control of Emmeline's money by having someone sign her name to a new will, a will everyone approved of and, therefore, no one would question, a will that made Grace and Everett Mumsfield's financial guardians
and put Emmeline's money under their control. She didn't add what she suspected Grace had planned for him.

“I don't know who that other woman was, exactly, but I'm sure she's kin to you,” she responded to Mumsfield's question. She couldn't bring herself to mention Emmeline's being tied to a cot, or the air bubble Grace had injected into his probably struggling aunt. “Your cousins locked your Aunt Emmeline in the basement and she died there,” she told him. This was the second time in less than an hour that she'd gone out of her way to protect him.

FOURTEEN

A
rchibald came directly to the kitchen when he returned. He found Blanche and Mumsfield still sitting at the table sipping lemonade. A slight tremor shook Archibald's hand as he reached for a kitchen chair. He leaned heavily, wearily, on the back of the chair before slowly seating himself. He tried to form a smile for Mumsfield, but his lips failed in their attempt to turn upward and his eyes were too bewildered to participate. After a few moments, he asked Mumsfield to please leave the room so that he could talk privately with Blanche. Blanche noted Mumsfield's struggle to defy Archibald. In the end, he lost. “You won't leave, will you, Blanche?” he asked before stepping out the back door.

“No one's leaving this house. You can be sure of that,” Archibald cut in before Blanche could speak. He took an immaculate handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed at his brow. “I simply can't believe it. Poor Cousin Emmeline. To die like that!”

But his grief wasn't such that he couldn't attend to the necessary details. He made Blanche repeat everything she'd already told him about what Everett and Grace had done—with his unwitting help. He had the good grace to blush during the telling of that part of the story.

“Who is she, anyway?” Blanche asked him, referring to Emmeline's imposter.

Archibald bristled. “I don't believe...at is to say, I'm not at liberty to discuss family...”

“Look,” Blanche interrupted, “I could have been killed by a member of this family. I got a right to know!”

Archibald relented. “I'd never seen her before that night I mistook her for Cousin Emmeline. Of course, I didn't realize... I'd heard of her...Family gossip...really remarkable resemblance. She would have fooled anyone who knew Emmeline. Anyone. And she seemed ill. I'm very susceptible to germs, and my eyes... I'm not attempting to exonerate myself, but...” He took his glassesfrom his breast pocket, polished them, and set them gently on his nose. “I should wear them all the time.” He blinked at Blanche, who said nothing. She folded her arms and prepared to repeather question, but he went on without prodding.

“She's the daughter of Great-uncle Robert, Cousin Emmeline's father. Her mother was their house maid. They say that as a child she looked so much like Aunt Emmeline—who looked exactly like her daddy—that Aunt Clarissa, who was Aunt Emmeline's mother, made Great-uncle Robert get mother and child out of the county. She married a local sharecropper. I don't recall hearing what happened to her after that. I think the child's name was Lucille or Lucinda, or something of that sort.” Archibald's lips formed a straight, taut line, like a pale, thin, tightly interlocked zipper he had no intention of opening again on this matter.

“Look,” Blanche told him, “I want to know what all this business is about. I could have gone to the police. By now it might be spread all over the newspapers.”

Blanche hadn't expected Archibald to take kindly to her tone or the content of her message. His sharp intake of breath and the rising color in his cheeks confirmed her perception. She turned from Archibald toward the kitchen door.

“Where is Aunt Emmeline?” Mumsfield closed the door firmly behind him and looked from Blanche to Archibald and back at Blanche.

Blanche had been so concentrated on Archibald and what she wanted and needed to know from him that she'd literally
forgotten Mumsfield was outside. She wondered if he'd been listening at the window. Archibald cleared his throat in what Blanche suspected was a play for time. “Brace yourself, my boy,” he began.

“I know she's dead. I know that,” Mumsfield interrupted. There was an impatience in his voice Blanche had never heard before. “Did you take her out of the cellar?” He didn't bother to wipe at his tears. “She shouldn't be down there. She...”

“Her body has been seen to. Been taken to.. .” Archibald sank deeper into his chair. “It's so hard to take in, to understand...” He shook his head like a man who'd just been punched.

Blanche understood Archibald's shock, but she was much more interested in Mumsfield. She hated the way misery and pain seemed to make people stronger in ways that good fortune rarely appeared to do, but she was glad for Mumsfield's sake. No matter how all of this turned out, she was sure he'd survive. Mumsfield caught her eye and gave her a grave half-smile.

“Now tell us the rest,” she said, turning to Archibald. “Tell us about Grace.” Archibald looked at Mumsfield. Blanche could see that he wanted to tell Mumsfield to leave the room again. But anyone looking at Mumsfield could see that would be of no use. Mumsfield sat down and reached for Blanche's hand across the table.

“There was always talk in the family,” Archibald began. “Since she was a child...a cat mangled, the drowning of our cousin Lorisa in the pond out front, accidents to the servants' children.” He looked like a man poring over photos of the past, trying to understand their relationship to one another. “But her parents and grandparents would hear nothing against her. Said she was high-strung, artistic. When she took up with Everett there was no one to stop her. Her parents were both dead. She was an only child. The fact that Everett was already married...” Archibald shrugged. “At any rate, they married, and...”

“What about Everett's first wife?” Mumsfield's grip on Blanche's hand became nearly crippling. She grimaced in pain.

“How do you know about these things?” Archibald looked as though he suspected her of having supernatural powers.

“Anyone could see she wasn't sane.” Blanche stretched the truth just a bit. “And it's a small county,” she added with a smile. “There ain't a lot of secrets.”

“Why did she, Blanche? Why?” Mumsfield demanded to know.

“Because she's sick, Mumsfield, honey. In her mind. Very sick,” she told him without hesitation. Mumsfield's grip loosened a bit.

Blanche was aware of Archibald's attentiveness to her response to Mumsfield. She felt the older man relax. She understood the relief he must have felt that Mumsfield's question was directed at her instead of himself. She also realized that the lack of hostility she saw on Archibald's face when she now looked fully at him was related to more than her answer to Mumsfield's question.

She and Archibald were going through a very speededup version of the de-jackassing process. While he might have defended blacks in court, it didn't mean he considered her his equal, any more than her employers did generally. Usually it took three to five cleaning sessions for a new employer of the racist jackass variety to stop speaking to her in loud, simple sentences. It took an additional fifteen to fifty substantive contacts before she was acknowledged as a bona fide member of the human race. Now here was Archibald already past the testing-your-intelligence phase, being mindful and grateful that she'd been smart enough and quick enough to help him out of a difficult situation with Mumsfield, one he clearly hadn't been prepared to handle. It gave Blanche an idea.

A burly, red-faced man knocked on the back door and asked for Archibald. Blanche went to fetch him and listened from behind the door while the man told Archibald that “the boys” had searched all the obvious places, like the quarry and the
woods, but had found no trace of anything unusual—otherwise known as Everett, Blanche thought. Archibald told the man to bring the boys back in the morning and cautioned them to speak to no one.

When Archibald returned to the kitchen, Blanche was at the kitchen table with her head resting on her arms. The day had lasted too long and the numbness that had protected her from the shock of having her life threatened by a madwoman was wearing off.

“I believe there's just a bit more business to which we need attend, and then you can rest.” Archibald spoke gently but firmly, as though he had some inkling that he wasn't going to have her attention much longer.

Despite her shock and fatigue, Blanche was quite attentive to Archibald's long, drawn-out speech about how grateful the family was for her good sense in contacting him instead of the authorities. As if he isn't one of them, she thought. He worked his way up to hoping she'd stay on as housekeeper and companion to Mumsfield at a salary that made her eyes sparkle. Blanche thanked him for the job offer and launched into the story of how she had come to be in the house.

Archibald looked shocked and then amused by Blanche's story. Apparently, the local justice system was not an object of his respect, either. He assured her that he could and would straighten out her difficulties first thing in the morning and once again offered her a job. Blanche rose from the table and walked to the window, where her Nate rock sat on its paper towel. She reached out and touched it, letting her fingers feel its cool, rough texture. She could hear Nate's sharp, dry voice reminding her of the number of chances for security a woman like her was likely to get in life.

“I got kids,” she told Archibald. “They need health insurance and good schooling. And I want a ten-year contract. In writing. And a pension plan.” Archibald merely nodded.

But still she couldn't agree. “Please, Blanche,” Mumsfield said.

Blanche stared at Nate's rock and remembered how she'd gotten it. She thought how comfortable, how simple and safe her life could be working for Mumsfield—summer days of bird song and country peace, her kids digging in Nate's garden. But it was Nate's garden. He was supposed to be scooping up handfuls of loamy soil, filling his nose with its rich aroma, caking his fingernails with it while the sun crisped the back of his neck.

If Lucille showed up, she'd be paid off also, as would Everett—if he was alive. If he was dead, some convenient accident would be invented to explain his death, too. But what about Grace? What happened when she was let out, or the wily bitch escaped?

Blanche spun around and looked from one to the other of the two white men waiting for her to make up her mind to serve them, to preserve their secrets and their way of life by throwing herself like a big black blanket over what had happened here. But what about Nate? And even the sheriff? Wasn't somebody supposed to do something about their deaths beside cart the killer off to a cushy asylum and hire a housekeeper with hush money?

“Please, Blanche,” Mumsfield repeated.

Blanche picked up her Nate rock and cradled it in both hands. “Let me think about it, Mumsfield, honey. Let me think about it.” She tucked the rock in her pocket and went off to bed.

EPILOGUE