Маргарет Миллар - Rose's Last Summer [= The Lively Corpse]

“You told me. What’s the job?”

“Nothing much really, but it should be fun. And I get paid with money . God, was the old bat surprised when I handed her the back rent. She damn near cried.”

“You were paid in advance?”

“Some. I’m going to be a sort of housekeeper.”

Frank laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Rose said suspiciously. “I suppose you think I can’t keep house. I’ve kept a dozen houses. All you’ve got to do is order the servants around.”

“Are there servants?”

“Of course there are servants,” Rose said, as if she would never have demeaned herself by accepting a job in a house without them. “Well, anyway, I just thought I’d phone you and say goodbye and thank you. I guess I owe you something. The old bat says I owe you something, damned if I know what.”

“You don’t owe me a thing,” Frank said. “Just let us hear from you once in a while.”

There was a minute’s silence before Rose spoke again. “Well, I’m not much for writing letters and stuff like that.”

“Just write your name on a postcard so we’ll know you’re all right.”

“Sure. Sure, I guess I can do that.”

“Goodbye, Rose, and good luck.”

“Goodbye, Frank.” Another silence. “You want to know something? Now that I won’t have to put up with you anymore, I think you’re a pretty nice egg.”

She hung up before he could answer.

The postcard arrived in the next morning’s mail. The message side contained nothing but a crude pencil sketch of a rose.

The postcard pleased him. He thought of it off and on all day, and kept it in his pocket to show to Miriam when he got home for dinner that night.

Miriam met him at the door. She had the evening newspaper in her hand and her face looked pale and stony as it always did when she was trying not to show her emotions in front of the children.

“Rose is dead,” she said, and pressed her forehead tight against his shoulder.

She was found by Ortega, the young gardener on the Pearce estate that had been rented to some summer people from San Francisco. Ortega went out early Tuesday morning to set out a flat of larkspur in the bare patch of ground between the patio and the garage. Rose was lying on her face beside the lily pool. A small, white canvas garden chair was overturned behind her, and just out of reach of her hand was a battered rawhide suitcase covered with scraps of labels.

That was all Ortega stayed to see. He dropped the flat of larkspur and ran toward the house, making little grunting noises of distress.

Willett Goodfield was at the table in the dinette whose windows faced eastward to the mountains. The morning paper was open in front of him, though he wasn’t reading it. It was his habit to keep the paper there in case Ethel, his wife, should unexpectedly show up for breakfast; then, by staring at it, he could subtly show her that he preferred to be alone first thing in the morning until he became adjusted to the new day. This business of adjusting wasn’t getting any easier. There were money difficulties, there was worry over his mother and the recurring pain in his back which Willett diagnosed as kidney stones if he was depressed, and imagination, if he wasn’t. There was inflation, his new bridge which didn’t fit properly, the exorbitant rent on this house he’d been forced to take for the summer, and the battery on the Lincoln which kept going dead.

Willett was pink and portly. He looked like a banker or a lawyer. In actual fact, he had never done anything in his thirty-five years except pay occasional and ineffectual visits to the doll factory which his father had built and which had supported the entire family ever since. At his father’s death all the stock had gone to his mother, Olive. Olive had had a brief and glorious fling at being a business woman and then lost interest and went back to her hobby of raising begonias. Willett adored his mother and personally escorted her begonias to all the flower shows when Olive was unable to do it herself. For the past several years Olive had been very ill. She frequently discussed her approaching death, not in an effort to get attention or pity, but to accustom her children to the cold fact.

Mother, Willett thought, and had to blink his eyes to keep back the tears.

Ortega blew into the room, his heavy work boots crashing over the waxed concrete floors.

“Sir, sir,” Ortega said. “A lady lying down dead, sir, oh my golly.”

“You should learn to knock before—”

“A poor old lady — my golly, sir, come quick.”

Ortega was grinning broadly, out of nervousness, and his face was the color of ripe limes.

Ortega went with the house — his services were included in the rent — and Willett had never spoken to him before or even noticed him particularly.

“A dead woman, you say? Well.” Willett cleared his throat. “Well, I’ll tend to the matter immediately.”

He got up, glanced at the hall door in the faint hope that Ethel would appear so that she could accompany Ortega while he, Willett, phoned for the police. More authoritative that way.

Ethel did not appear. Breathing hard from annoyance, not exertion, Willett followed Ortega around the side of the house to the lily pool and Rose.

Narrowing his eyes so as not to get too clear or vivid a picture of anything, Willett glanced briefly at the woman’s body and returned to the house to call the police. He was trembling all over and the pain in his back was intense.

After a while Ethel floated downstairs in a long silk robe.

“I was watching from my window,” she said.

“That was a big help.”

“What could I do?”

She sat down at the glass-topped iron table and gazed, chin in hands, at the blue ridge of mountains. She had a wide, milk-white forehead and dark, deep-set eyes so that she always looked as if she were thinking great thoughts. The truth was that she rarely thought at all; she was afraid to. When she spoke she spoke softly, and when she asked a question she lowered her voice at the end of it as if she didn’t expect or deserve an answer. “Aren’t the mountains pretty in the morning.”

“Mountains. I’ve got more on my mind than mountains.”

“Why get excited?” She reached slowly for the cigarette box in the center of the table. All of her motions were very slow and graceful; she seemed to move underwater. Ethel floated in and out of rooms, and up and down stairs; her hand floated out for a cigarette and floated back to her pale, full mouth. She was pale all over as if the water had washed out all her color. “Why get excited? Everything’s going to be all right, isn’t it?”

“You haven’t any feelings.”

“Well, isn’t it.”

“Everything’s going to be fine!” Willett shouted.

“You’ll wake your mother ,” Ethel said, very softly.

Willett’s face purpled like a ripening plum and his chubby little hands curled into fists. “You’d better watch your tongue.”

“What did I say?”

The front doorbell rang and Ethel made a slight move as if she intended to answer it.

“I’ll get it,” Willett said. “You go upstairs and see if she’s all right.”

“She’s sleeping. I looked in on my way down. She had all that sleeping stuff last night, didn’t she?”

“Go upstairs and stay with her.”

“I can’t just sit there and watch her sleep, can I.”

“You can stay out of sight, can’t you?”

The doorbell rang again. “They might want to ask me some questions.”

“Ethel.”

“Well, all right, only it won’t be much fun watching somebody sleep. I wouldn’t mind answering questions.”

“There’s no reason why they should want to see you at all.”