Death in lilac time, p.10
Death in Lilac Time, page 10
Uncle Victor gave a gracious bow.
“You are too beautiful to bother with my hobby, my dear. Imagine, two beautiful women in the same small room! Extraordinary. Denise Clarke is winsome and sweet, but she hasn’t true beauty like you, my dear, and dear Jane here.” His eyes danced in their pale brightness. “Three times I married women like Denise. They were all children, like Denise. Such women never grow up.”
“Where are they now?” I asked, trying to keep my growing suspicion out of the question.
“Gone,” Uncle Victor said. He waved his little white hands. He looked elegant as alabaster and his voice had never been so hypnotic. “I’m old, child. They would be old too. It is just as well that all of them have gone.”
“Gone where?” I asked, with great vulgarity.
“Where everyone goes in time.” Uncle Victor deposited the last ash and rubbed out the fire of his cigarette. Everything he did had elegance. “I was fortunate to have Jane and Dick here together for a time. Jane went away but Dick and I were real friends. I could talk with Dick and we would laugh together over my past. That was because we were both weak. I never drank too much but I had other weaknesses, too numerous to mention.” He laughed suddenly as if with pure delight. “Dick and I plotted the most hair-raising plots. They were all in fun, but we planned to do away with anybody who dominated us. Mother must go, Dick would say, and in her hearing. ‘Go where?’ she would ask, and Dick would wink at me and we would be solemn as crows and she would say, ‘What is amusing? What are you two talking about? Victor, I think you should leave the room. Richard needs sleep and you have a way of exciting him.’ I would go, of course, and next time we would plot things again. And laugh and laugh. I suppose it sounds foolish but anything to lighten his hours and mine a little was worth-while.”
“You did worlds for him, Uncle Victor,” Jane said.
“I’m afraid I have a macabre sense of humor,” Uncle Victor said. “Poor Dick’s affliction was tragic for him, Jane. God rest him now.” He glanced at us and said, “Forgive me. I must sound very tiresome. Tragedies take the mind to other tragedies. I adored my last wife. Adored her. She killed herself. Threw herself off the cliffs in Monte Carlo.” The hands waved. “I shouldn’t speak of these things. Never, never think on death, young people. But Denise, that lovely child, reminds me of my own Madeleine, and it’s hard not to think back, to remember.”
All this sounds like patter as I set it down now, but the old man’s wonderful voice, and the occasion, made it seem vital at the time. I suppose that Denise, in her thirties, would be a lovely child to one his age, too. In any case, all talk was stopped dead by the arrival of Sarah Mallory.
She stepped inside the room, stopped near the door, white-haired and handsome in her lilac taffeta outfit. A teagown it would be called, in her day.
Her eyes fastened on us, on all of us. We had been entertained by Uncle Victor’s talk and it must still have showed in our faces. We all became grim as owls under her gaze. We looked away.
“Who are these people, Victor?”
The men had popped to their feet. Victor’s white hair was on a level with Patrick’s elbow.
“Ah, Sarah, how beautiful you are in that gown!”
“Fiddlesticks. I asked you a question. You heard me, Victor.”
“Of course. They are friends of Seth’s, I believe, May I introduce …”
“Why did they come here at this time?”
“I think I heard that they came at Seth’s request.”
“I don’t believe you. Seth is not a vulgarian. He would not ask strangers to come to a house in mourning. Ask these people to leave this house immediately, Victor.”
“We don’t have to be asked,” I said. I was furious. I had bounced to my feet. She was right, of course. But to be ordered out, in the third person, as if we were dirt, was too much.
“Do as I say, Victor!”
Patrick said, “If Seth Godwin asks us to leave, we’ll go. Otherwise, we’ll stay.”
She never looked at either of us.
“What presumption, Victor. How gauche can people be? Get rid of them. We have policemen on the premises. If they won’t go willingly they can be forced.”
Bart Wayne came in.
“Cousin Sarah, I couldn’t help but hear you. Don’t upset yourself like this. Seth would never invite anyone …”
“Invite? What do you think this is, Barton? A cocktail party? I’m constantly ashamed of you. You’re a Wayne, remember. You don’t always behave like a Wayne, Barton.”
“We’re going.” I started towards the door. The fierce blue eyes in the patrician face never glanced my way. “Come on, Pat. Good night, Jane. Bart. Mr. Mallory.”
Jane had remained seated. She was smoking, in complete disrespect. She had said nothing.
Patrick stood near the fireplace. Uncle Victor stood beside him. Bart Wayne had taken up his stand behind Jane, as if to protect her. His tall body was bent because he rested his hands on the back of the sofa.
Jane’s voice was low, under perfect control. Her glance was unafraid.
“Mrs. Mallory, I have retained Patrick Abbott.”
“Retained?” For a fleet second Sarah Mallory looked at Pat. She addressed Uncle Victor. “Is he a lawyer?”
Uncle Victor’s cough was modesty itself.
“A detective, I believe.”
“A detective?” Sarah’s strong voice was hoarse with repulsion. “In my house? I’ll have you know that this is my house. I’ll find Seth. Come with me, Victor. You, too, Barton.”
She sailed out. The men went along obediently.
“It’s her house,” I said.
“And how,” Jane said. She was suddenly a little shaky. “Don’t leave me,” she said, to me. “Stand by,” she said to Patrick.
“Certainly,” Patrick replied.
13
“Accept my sympathy.”
Cyrus X. Curtis, the lawyer, was addressing Sarah Mallory, looking up, because he was six inches shorter than she. Curtis was a very plump man with light brown eyes and a pink-domed head circled with thin blond-gray hair. There was a perpetual dew of sweat on his pink head, on his short upper lip and his tall forehead. He burst into a special sweat as Sarah Mallory eyed him from her physical and social eminence. In her opinion he was a crook, a dishonest lawyer. She told him so and he shrank as if made of tallow and exposed to sudden heat. Sarah never had any truck with such as Curtis, whom she addressed as Mister Curtis out of her repugnance and suspicion. A decent firm of attorneys, like her own, would never have officiated in making a will for her son. It was just one more insult that this fat puddinghead had complicated her life more.
She jerked her handsome white head toward the parlor.
“Go in there.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Curtis took out a colored handkerchief as he walked on short fat feet. He mopped his head without unfolding it. He entered the room timidly and spoke more eagerly to Jane than he intended because of his embarrassment.
“Accept my sympathy.”
“Thank you, Cy. How are you?”
“Fine. This is a very sad occasion. I can’t tell you how shocked and all … very sad, very sad. Death comes to all.”
He mopped his damp head, turned to Amelia Mallory, to Uncle Victor and then in general. Accept my sympathy. Accept my sympathy. Accept my sympathy. Mop. Mop. Mop. To us. Accept my sympathy. We accepted it, needing it more than some of the others, perhaps.
“For heaven’s sake.” Sarah Mallory spoke from her place on one of the sofas. “You ought to carry a box of Kleenex, Mister Curtis. Sit at that table. We’re waiting. There is no time.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”
Curtis moved with the rolling walk of a fat man. He rolled to the table where Lieutenant Rex King had sat during the interrupted inquiry. He nodded to Dr. Seth Godwin, who had taken the chair where the police sergeant had sat, and mopping his head, he laid a long folded document on the table in front of him. He unfolded it, looked all around, squirmed, and mopped. His handkerchief was already saturated. He jammed it into his coat pocket, took out another gaudy square, unfolded it and said,
“This is most unusual.”
“The circumstances are unusual, Mister Curtis. Do get on with that thing.”
“Yes, ma’am. I mean, usually it’s after the funeral …”
“You’re being tiresome.” The blunt voice was a whip. “Get on with the will, if it is one.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Curtis squirmed again, sweated, mopped. “Is everybody present, Mrs. Mallory?”
“I suppose so.”
Patrick was standing with Rex King just inside the parlor door. I sat between Jane Mallory and the elegant white marble fireplace. Everybody faced the lawyer, and by everybody I include Denise Clarke, who had come back and was sitting between Bart Wayne and Sarah Mallory. On the other sofa were Uncle Victor, Amelia Mallory, and Ada Rollo. The timid deputy sheriff was outside in the hall. Jane Mallory sat in perfect quiet.
“I, Richard Wayne Mallory, of the county of Fayette in the State of Kentucky, being of sound mind and disposing memory, do make, publish and declare this to be my last will and testament, hereby revoking all former wills or codicils to wills by me made.”
“Oh-oh,” Denise Clarke wept aloud. “Oh …”
Nobody else wept. All others sat in a decorous silence while Curtis continued to read about just debts and funeral expenses and in the same paragraph a request for cremation, the ashes to be scattered on the Kentucky River just above the Lilac Hill Distillery. Eyes went down. Sarah Mallory leaned forward and then sat back. The Lilac Hill Distillery was the most lucrative of the Mallory holdings. It was like Dick’s wicked humor to ask for such a thing.
Curtis was reading in his mild voice, “… to my beloved Uncle Victor Mallory, in token of his love and companionship, the sum of one thousand dollars a month as long as he lives, this money to be spent exactly as he pleases.”
Uncle Victor’s eyes shone like tourmalines. He tugged at his tiny chin whiskers and ran his tongue over his full pale green lips.
“But how handsome of the dear boy …” he began.
“Absurd. Read on, Mister Curtis.”
“Yes, ma’am. To my sister Amelia five hundred dollars a month to set her free … to my dear friend Ada Rollo three hundred dollars a month for life … to my cousin Barton Wayne five thousand dollars … to my friend and physician Seth Godwin twenty-five thousand dollars … to my eternally young friend Denise Clarke …”
Denise sat up, her china eyes round and now tearless.
“… my college pennants, my fraternity pins and rings. To my dearly beloved mother, mentor, and guide, one silver dollar … to my dearly beloved wife Jane Mallory the residue of my estate including the Lilac Hill Distillery and all my holdings in land, cash, stocks, bonds, debentures … last, I nominate and appoint my wife Jane Mallory sole Executrix of this my last Will and Testament, to serve without bond …”
“Stop it!” Sarah Mallory ejected. “What’s the date on that thing?”
“March 15th, 1954, ma’am. The witnesses were the two maids who …”
“How dared you?” Sarah demanded of Mrs. Rollo.
Mrs. Rollo looked grim and dazed.
“But I didn’t know what it was, ma’am. The lawyer came here to the house and after he was with Mr. Dick for a while he asked me to send the maids upstairs. They said that all he asked was whether Mr. Dick was in his right mind and he signed a paper and so did they.”
“The thing isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. It will not stand up in court. Seth Godwin, did you know about this will?”
Seth shook his red head.
“No, Mrs. Mallory. Dick quizzed me about my new clinic and the sum mentioned in the will is approximately the amount of my indebtedness. But I assure you …”
“His fraternity pins. Oh, oh!” Denise wept. Whether from grief or chagrin I would not know.
“Of course,” Uncle Victor said in his suave deep voice, and now even his pale green skin glistened, “I cannot accept the generous sum my nephew chose to leave me. I am deeply touched. But I can’t accept …”
“You’ll be out of this place on your ear if you attempt to collect it,” Sarah Mallory declared. “You and your spiders. Ugh! The will is no good. It was made one week after I revoked my power of attorney and gave my son full control of his estate on condition that he divorce that woman and marry Denise Clarke. He agreed. But he didn’t do as he promised so the will is no good.”
Curtis sputtered, sweated, and said, “I think I should tell you that at Dick’s request we had the properties inventoried. When taxes are paid the residue will amount to something over two million dollars.”
“What?” Jane Mallory cried.
Curtis nodded importantly.
“Dick died a very rich man, Jane.”
“But—I don’t want all that money,” Jane said, upset at last. “Look, what does an executrix do?”
“Sees that the provisions of the will are carried out,” Curtis said.
“A murderess,” Sarah Mallory proclaimed. “All right, Mister Curtis. You may go. We are very busy, as you see.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Give me that thing.”
“No, please, ma’am. It’s recorded, ma’am. This is only a copy, ma’am.”
Curtis popped up, mopped his head, seemed to want to say more, gave up the idea and rolled as fast as he could out of the room. In the hall Ada Rollo gave him his hat and Bart Wayne held the door for him to leave. Sarah Mallory went to her room without further comment and Ada Rollo went upstairs with Amelia Mallory. Jane Mallory sat without moving. Denise had followed Sarah Mallory and she came back at once to say that Bart Wayne was wanted in Sarah’s room. Seth left us. In the parlor were Pat and I and Rex King, Uncle Victor, Jane Mallory, and Deputy Hollister.
King walked over to the table and sat where Curtis had read the will. As he spoke to Uncle Victor, his eyes were hard and angry.
“Mr. Mallory, you knew about this will?”
“My nephew told me about it, Lieutenant.”
“You knew he was leaving you a large sum of money?”
“Not exactly. He said he was going to provide for me in a fashion more suited to my station in life. I had no idea that he would be so generous. It’s most kind.”
“What will you do with the money?”
“My dear sir, I don’t think I’ll ever get it. My sister-in-law will never allow that will to stand.”
“It’s a legitimate will. She’ll have a hard time breaking it, in my opinion. I don’t know the ins and outs, of course. Jane Mallory, you knew about this will?”
“Oh, no. And I’d no idea Dick was so rich.”
“Why not? You were married for some time, weren’t you?”
“Yes. But his mother kept hold of the purse strings. Please believe me, I don’t want the Mallory money, Lieutenant King. Specially that Lilac Hill Distillery. That is Mrs. Mallory’s proudest possession. I can’t think how Dick managed to acquire it, if he did. I mean, she must have deeded the distillery to him because he agreed to marry Denise. She loves Denise. To have Dick and Denise marry was her obsession.”
King watched her, his suspicion acute.
“What about those fraternity pins and stuff? What’s that for?”
Jane hesitated before saying, “Dick called Denise in the will eternally young. I think he was annoyed by her childish ways, perhaps. They got on his nerves. I mean, she’s too old to put so much stock in things like college pins and pennants and that was his way of saying what he always said about her to his mother. It was unkind.”
“Are those things valuable?”
“No. But Denise is rich in her own right. Dick wouldn’t leave her money, I think. And, do believe me, I shall refuse the Mallory money. I don’t want it.”
“What do you want, then?”
Jane’s face was quivering with fatigue and pain.
“To be free. To be free.”
King’s voice was rich with sarcasm. His thin-lipped mouth was hard.
“You can be pretty free with two million dollars.”
“Not when the money is really Mrs. Mallory’s. She built up the family estate. Her business sense is wonderful. I don’t know how rich she is, but two million dollars would certainly be a terrible loss, and to lose the distillery would certainly be a blow to her own income. It can be put right, can’t it?”
“Depends on what put right means.”
Jane spoke with spirit.
“Well, the other bequests are all right. Uncle Victor should have his own money.”
“Thank you, my dear,” Uncle Victor said.
“And so should Amelia. And Mrs. Rollo. And it’s wonderful that Seth Godwin can pay for his new clinic. Wonderful.”
“Very wonderful,” King grunted.
“And the five thousand will clear the mortgage on Bart Wayne’s old house.”
Bart Wayne entered, after knocking on the open door.
“May I interrupt you, Lieutenant?”
“Why not?” King barked. “Everybody does.”
“I’m sorry. It’s about the funeral. Cousin Sarah refuses to have the body cremated. She’s quite broken up. She can’t bear the thought of not having Dick with the family, she says.”
“Did she ask you to consult me, Bart?” Jane asked.
“No. But it’s for you to decide. Dick puts it up to you, as executrix, Jane.”
“That’s very difficult for me, Bart.”
“It seems that the … procedure, preparation, whatever … is somewhat different in case of cremation. I mean …”
Seth Godwin came in.
“Don’t oppose Mrs. Mallory in this case, Jane. She’s heading for a crackup. Maybe the body can be put in the family tomb and cremated later on. Or maybe she herself will decide to honor Dick’s wishes. Let it ride.”
“All right.” Jane agreed, listless now.
Bart and Seth went out of the room. Jane asked Lieutenant King, “Do you think I might go to the hotel? I’m very tired after the day on the plane and all.”
