Working Murder (14 page)

“I gathered so from what she'd said in her pitiful letter to me.”

I thought—if he produces it, I'll scream. I can't look at another one. But he went on:

“Poor Mrs. Dawson. She mentioned you'd warned her it might prove painful—and futile. But
apparently she was fond of you both, and trusted you, and was determined to go ahead.”

Ruth said: “Not another word till we've ordered drinks.” We got through that and then she
said: “Here's where I'd give one thousand dollars for a cigarette.”

We all commiserated and Peter said: “I'm proud of Ruth. It's been almost a year. In fact,
I'm all-around proud of this lady. Did you know she was a distinguished journalist?”

Another chorus of admiration from the Gamadge gallery, and Ruth laughed and said: “Once
you quit, who remembers? But I was fascinated by the Ellen Dawson story for years. I did
an article on the fortieth anniversary of her disappearance in—let's see—that would have
been in 1979. That's how Peter and I met. I interviewed him.”

Our drinks arrived and I picked mine up eagerly. Henry said:

“It's easier to theorize about the case than it was to work on it. Given Mrs. Dawson's
state of mind, we dreaded progress and dreaded nonprogress. Now we can go back to
theory. What's yours, Mrs. Angier? Is Ellen dead?”

She smiled her nice smile. “I never had a theory. At least, I tried not to form one when
I was writing the article. I wanted it to be a teaser: What do you think became of Ellen
Dawson? It always seemed to me that the more interesting question was, why was she never
found—dead
or
alive? Peter has a theory about that.”

He picked up a menu. “For what it's worth. I think that in another time, even a decade
before or after, Ellen's case would have been solved. God knows the Dawsons spent a
fortune. But 1939 was a year with just one concern—war was coming, and Ellen got
swallowed up in a great big priority.” He handed me the menu. “What will it be, Mrs.
Gamadge?”

“The scampi. I've heard its praises. Do you think Ellen is dead, Mr. Angier?”

“Of course she is. She was too fine a person to let those she loved suffer.” He looked
into space. “Ellen Dawson was one of those special women.... But, of course, you know
this from Sadd. Oh my, oh my, I've never seen anybody so in love as he was.”

Nothing could cover for us now. We simply stared at him, then at each other, speechless.
Ruth said quickly:

“Peter, this isn't fair. They didn't know.”

He looked from one to the other of us in dismay. “My God, I'm sorry. You didn't know that
Sadd and Ellen were engaged? Secretly, of course.”

Ruth said: “We're a pair of tactless boors. Let's drop the subject right now.”

We all said no, please go on, in various dazed ways, and Peter said: “Well, we're going
to get something inside us first,” and the waiter took over.

Of course, of course, of course. Oh, my poor Sadd, how old would you have been when Ellen
was eighteen? Twenty-five or -six and a cousin; was that why “secretly"? Oh, my dear,
good friend ... Peter had never seen anybody so in love as you....

Peter was saying: “The summer before Ellen graduated, Sadd took a job in Boston to be
near her, so her parents shipped her down to Patchogue to visit the Cavanaughs. He and
Ellen were cousins and that seems to have been the principal objection, although Sadd
felt that Mrs. Dawson had more exalted plans for her daughter. He had told me, just a
few days before the prom, that he and Ellen were going to elope as soon as she
graduated. So naturally my first thought when she disappeared that night was that they
had. Eloped, I mean.”

And had they? I wondered dimly.

WE WALKED HOME IN ALMOST COMPLETE silence.

At one point Tina said “NO!”

“No, what?” said Henry. “No, Sadd didn't kill her, no, he doesn't know what happened to
her, or no, they didn't elope?”

“All three.”

“The first two anyway,” I said.

“You'd think he'd have leveled with us before this.” Henry took one of my arms and Tina
took the other and we high-stepped through the slush at the corner of Willow Street. The
light in the vestibule of Nice Ugly went on as we mounted the steps. The door opened and
Sadd stood there, barefooted, bathrobe half on.

He said: “Tully's collapsed.”

I thought—I may do the same. We stood in the hall listening. Just a few minutes ago a
call had come from Paula in Boston. She'd said there was bad news —

“Stop right there,” said Henry. He turned on a light in the living room. “Sit down, Mom.
I'm going to get you a nightcap. Can't the details wait till morning, Sadd?”

“I suppose so,” said Sadd huffily, “especially if Tully is already dead, in which case
there's no—”

“In which case,” said Tina, “that makes four: Lloyd, May, Martin, and Tully. Where are
your slippers, Sadd? Do you want to make five?”

He looked down at his feet. “I guess they're next to my bed. I didn't bother with them
when I answered the phone.”

“I'll get them.” Tina went out, and I sat down on the sofa and accepted a cognac from
Henry.

“Don't I get any?” Sadd said wistfully.

I felt a pang as Henry poured another. I'd known Sadd only slightly in our youth. He'd
been brilliant and funny, sturdy though not athletic, a little shorter than I. He'd
married Harriet in his late thirties. She was chic, pleasant, colorless, and rich. I
tried to imagine his young face alight with love. It was easy.

I said: “I wonder who up there in Gloucester knew to call Paula.”

“Nobody. She called Tully. It seems you suggested she go visit him. When she phoned, a
nurse answered. Tully had been poorly since his return from New York and had been seen
in the garden in his shirtsleeves. The temperature up there being about thirty degrees,
this was doing him no good. The neighbors decided to keep an eye on him. Thank you,
Tina.” She'd returned with the slippers.

I said: “Thank God for neighbors.”

“This morning one of them knocked on his door and, receiving no answer, went in and found
Tully in bed with a high fever. By the way, I think mine's down. I feel much—”

“Did they take him to the hospital?” asked Henry.

“They wanted to, but Tully put up such a fight they simply called a doctor who sent in a
nurse, and now Tully is somewhat worse and raving about having to tend his garden.
Rather poignant, considering it's under two feet of snow.”

Tina said: “I guess that garden is his pride and joy. May said it was gorgeous.”

“Oh, yes, that damn garden”—Sadd yawned—"one heard about it morning, noon, and night. You
couldn't go there but he'd drag you around spouting the Latin name for everything. I
remember once when I was visiting there in my youth—”

Sadd stopped, looking at us. Then he said:

“How was the dinner?”

“Super,” said Tina.

“Great,” said Henry.

“Full of surprises,” said I.

“Such as?” said Sadd.

“Well, for one thing”—Henry poured himself a drink—"we learned that Peter's wife is an
authority on Ellen's case. She was a journalist and met him when she was doing research
on it.”

Sadd looked genuinely astonished, then laughed. “And we were trying to think of tactful
ways to broach the subject!” His face changed as we sat looking at him. “You said
‘surprises.' Was there another?”

I said: “Yes, there was. The biggest one of all—for us.”

Sadd pulled on his slippers and stood up reaching for the dangling cord of his bathrobe.
He said:

“Now you know why I didn't join the party. May I have another cognac, Henry?”

I said: “Sadd, why didn't you tell us?”

“Because I couldn't bear to. Because it was all so long ago. Because it never had any
bearing on the case. Peter was the only one I ever told. May knew Ellen and I loved each
other, but she would have none of it. She claimed her objection was our being cousins,
but I knew she wanted her daughter to make that brilliant match, somebody rich and
distinguished. As if ‘rich and distinguished' meant anything to my precious girl.”

Can I bear this? I wondered. We sat like statues.

“We were going to be married in New York. Ellen said there would probably be a beach
party after the dance, and she'd make some excuse to leave and walk back to the club—it
wasn't far. I was waiting there in the car. Needless to say, I waited all night. End of
story.” He drained his cognac. “You may believe it or not as you please.”

Tina was the first to move. She went to Sadd and kissed him.

I said: “That goes for me, too.”

Henry said: “Now the problem is what to do about Tully. Should somebody go up there?”

“I will,” I said.

“We will,” said Sadd.

“No, Sadd,”—I stood up—"you're going home.”

Rather to my surprise, he didn't object. We dispersed in silence, unusual for such a
talky foursome.

I spent a completely wakeful night, grateful that I'd relegated myself to the divan in
the dining room, for I wandered the first floor of the house for hours. Never had I
understood so well the meaning of “mixed emotions.” I was filled with excitement at the
thought of standing in the house where Ellen Dawson was last seen; I felt inexpressible
pity for Sadd. I was exasperated with Tully—why couldn't he just go to a hospital and
get himself taken care of—but I was grateful to him for this break. I sat at the living
room window enjoying the sight of the dim, snowy street and the sound of the infrequent
cars crunching by, but dreading the thought of more nights on a divan in a strange
house. I sat in the kitchen doting on Hen's crayoned evocations of the Three Billy
Goats, but was dismayed to think I'd probably have to spell Tully's nurse with trays.
That sent me to the phone. I called the Parker House in Boston, an easy trip for Paula
from her home in the South End. Tully would get me only as a commuter.

What time was it? Two-thirty and I hadn't closed my eyes. As I put the kettle on the
stove, Loki woke sleepily out of the pantry. I made tea and sat holding him as I drank
it. How wonderful that May had remembered Henry and Tina. I admitted to feeling a little
jealous of her generosity to Jon and had secretly hoped ... secretly engaged ... Had May
ever regretted her rejection of Sadd? Had she ever wondered if perhaps she'd have her
daughter still if only —

I jumped—spilled tea on Loki's back—and he slid indignantly to the floor.

I hadn't asked Peter Angier if he'd been to see May. He'd spoken of “visiting her often
over the years.” When was his last visit? His wife's? How could he be so sure Ellen was
dead? That she was “too fine a girl to cause her family suffering” was simplistic and it
dismissed—perhaps intentionally—other appalling possibilities. Her case would have been
solved, he'd said, in “another time.”

I put out the kitchen light and went to bed, terribly wanting this to be Ellen's other
time.

Tina woke me with the always ludicrous “Are you awake?” and I replied the always corny
“No.” She said:

“May's lawyer just called. He wants us to go to her apartment and get her clothes.”

I'd been dreading this. “Why can't they just be sent to some thrift shop?”

“I told him you might want to do something like that, but he wants us to come and ‘make a
selection.' It seems there's a mink coat and you might want it.”

“I don't. Do you?”

“No. He said he'd meet us there at ten.”

I slumped dejectedly back on the rumpled bedclothes. Tina looked at me. She said: “I
could go alone.”

“Of course not.” I staggered up. “Let me call Paula. What time is it? How's Sadd?”

“About nine. He's better but he still has a cold. There's Teresita.”

The kitchen door had opened, and Tina departed. I dressed and piled the bedclothes on a
chair. I longed for my own bed, my own home. It was there waiting for me across the
bridge. Perhaps Tina and I would walk past it after we left May's. I went to the phone
and called Paula; I'd be on an afternoon shuttle to Boston and would go straight to the
Parker House. Her joy warmed me.

And now, this was going to be the fastest sweep of a closet since Raffles.

I went into the kitchen and said: “Let's do the job in ten minutes and have lunch at the
Colony.”

Tina said: “Yippee!”

We elected for the subway and a cab to “Seven-Forty” as May always called it. An
impeccably dressed, elderly gentleman was waiting for us in the lobby. He introduced
himself as George Lighter, and we rode up in the elevator, Mr. Lighter telling us about
the estate sale that would transpire after “things were settled.” As we walked into
May's apartment, Tina said: “The picture's gone.”

Mr. Lighter said yes, it was being crated to be shipped to Mr. Hewitt in Massachusetts
and did we know the sad story of the girl, and we said yes. He pulled open draperies,
and I looked around the living room at the old, valuable—most of it—furniture, and the
old, valuable—all of it—pictures and ornaments. I remembered the last time we had sat
there, Henry Gamadge and I, talking to May. He had brought her a cribbage board for her
birthday, and he said he'd teach her how to play and that would give him an excuse to
visit her. Was there ever a kinder man—and Clara, if you dissolve once more you'll be
the bore of the world.

Tina said: “Let's hit the closets.”

We went into the bedroom. Mr. Lighter looked as if he thought it might be indelicate to
follow, so I said:

“Won't you help us, please, Mr. Lighter? It's all just going to be piled into a cab and
sent to the Salvation Army—unless you can suggest another place.”