Death of an Old Sinner (The Mrs. Norris Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  “An old man’s tumbles, as you call them, are news—a young man’s are maybe gossip. But in a man your age, they’re dangerous.”

  In a man my age they are inevitable, Jimmie thought, but he put on a long face and said: “Yes, sir.”

  “Now answer my question,” said Bulldog Mike.

  Jimmie drew a deep breath. “I have been as honest as any man, Mike, and more discreet than most.” To tell a lie as though it were the truth, he thought. But it was not a lie the way he had said it. Once only he had been less than cautious, and at a time in the world’s history when caution was labeled the worth of fool’s gold. And even in that instant, the cloak fate put about him and the lady resembled honor: she belonged to that noble race of people, who, if they were not proud of their sins, at least did not stoop to call them folly.

  “That’s good enough for me,” said Mike, referring to Jimmie’s avowal of honor and discretion.

  With old Mike satisfied, no other delegate present dared complain. The meeting adjourned in good spirits. His enemies would not bare their fangs until he showed some weakness, and that was not to be at this, the king-making caucus. The Buffalo and New York timetables were already passing from hand to hand. Jimmie was bade by several gentlemen to give his father, the General, their warmest regards. He was asked if the old man would take to the stump on his behalf when the time came, and it was said that many an aging heart would flutter if the old boy strode out again.

  Jimmie held Judge Turner’s coat for him. He shrugged himself into it like a tired bear. The Judge, actually retired from the Appeals bench and a friend of his father’s, would take upon himself more than ordinary arrangements in the forthcoming elections. He would try to arrange as well Jimmie’s life for him. The Judge belonged to the Morals Squad of his party. He took Jimmie’s arm. “It would be a fine thing to see your father in the reviewing stand for the St. Patrick’s Day parade, a general in all his decorations.”

  “Better certainly than a mere major,” said Jimmie, referring to his own rank in World War II.

  “Is that as far as you got?” said the Judge as though a major were a very minor thing indeed.

  Jimmie nodded.

  “Didn’t you go overseas?”

  “Oh, yes. That I managed.”

  “Where?”

  “I was stationed outside London,” Jimmie said, wishing the Judge would get off the subject.

  “Oh yes, yes. I remember. Well, just let your father stand in for you in matters military,” he counseled. “I’ll arrange it.” Then as an afterthought: “How is he with the bottle these days?”

  “Moderate,” Jimmie said.

  “And with the automobile?”

  “More cautious than he used to be.”

  The Judge leaned closer to Jimmie after a glimpse around. One of the lady delegates stood nearby, her back to them. “And with the ladies?”

  “More cautious than he used to be.”

  The Judge chuckled, forgetting then the temperate tune he sang himself these days. “I remember him on our first leave after the Battle of the Marne. We were in France together, you know.” He pulled himself up to a creaking attention. “Oh, by God, he was a man!”

  As soon as Judge Turner marched off, Madeline Barker swung around and laid her fingers on Jimmie’s arm. She had been a woman of great beauty, Jimmie thought. Much of it was there still as she ran on for fifty, but it was shadowed with bitterness, and more deeply now for her smile.

  “I was outside London, too, during the war, Mr. Jarvis. I wonder if we do not have some friends in common.”

  Jimmie could feel a prickle at the back of his neck: a legitimate danger signal or merely his own conscience? It was a difficult distinction. “No doubt we call all Englishmen our friends,” he said smiling and taking her hand. “Who could fail to, having lived with them?”

  “And English women?” said Miss Barker.

  Surely she was not that gauche! “What they lack in beauty, they atone in fervor,” he said, tacking into the weather to test it for storm.

  “And what they lack in fervor they atone in discretion,” she said.

  “I admire that quality in all people,” Jimmie said with all the considerable suavity he could muster. He pressed her fingers slightly before releasing them. “I expect I shall lean a great deal on your support, Madeline.”

  She gave his fingers a little squeeze in return. “I am but a fragile Barker on the sea of politics,” she said.

  There was something ludicrous in the bad pun as well as in the notion of her fragility. Miss Barker had run twice for Congress, unsuccessfully. She was all but resigned now to the making and breaking of other candidates, sitting on the State policy committee, and apparently she was not above a bit of intimidation after the candidate was made.

  “Forgive me for running off,” Jimmie said, “but I want very much to catch this train. Call me in New York? I promise an excellent lunch?” He put it all like a question which she must answer for him. If necessary, he could have caught a later train, but he felt it imperative to put Miss Barker congenially in her place. To stay and court her company, even to buy her a drink would, he thought, show alarm at her suggestion of intimacy with his affairs.

  “Thank you, Mr. Jarvis.”

  “Jimmie?” he prompted.

  “Jimmie,” she repeated, “good luck!”

  It was said with such conviction, he once more doubted everything save his conscience. As he got into his coat, he wondered if he was as much a hypocrite as he felt at that moment. The possibility depressed him.

  3

  IT WAS THREE DAYS before Jimmie got home to Nyack, what with several things in a personal and business way to be put in quick order before the rumor of his candidacy got too far ahead of him. He talked to Mrs. Norris on the telephone, however, and confided that he was bringing home some rather extraordinary news.

  Consequently the house was aglow with lights when he turned into the driveway, and as soon as he put his foot on the step, he could see the housekeeper bounce across the living room like a robin, pushing her bosom ahead of her. If this was not what some men would call home, Jimmie mused, many a man would settle for it as a better than fair substitute.

  “Was it a provident trip, Mr. James?” the housekeeper inquired, taking his coat.

  “In a way you might say it was, Mrs. Norris. And in another way, you might say it was expensive. Where’s the old fellow?”

  She threw up her hands. “He’s been flying round like a bat in the attic for days. One minute he’s sour as a quince, and the next he’s skipping with glee. I’m very glad you’re home, sir.”

  “Call him down,” said Jimmie, “and I’ll tell you the news…but in the strictest of confidence.”

  “I’m not in the habit of spouting, Mr. James. I leave that to your father.”

  “And bring some ice when you come,” said Jimmie.

  Just how the General would take the news, Jimmie didn’t know. There was no doubt about it, the old boy liked things happening, and while he liked fame in the family, he preferred it to be his own. Now that he was retired he was touchier than ever about Jimmie’s success. And sure enough, after making a few congratulatory remarks, he said, “I suppose having me for your father was something of a handicap?”

  “Judge Turner helped me overcome that,” Jimmie said.

  “Did he?” the General snapped. “I thought I was making a joke.”

  “So did I, father. Actually, Judge Turner suggests that you might be willing to help me.”

  “In what way, may I ask?”

  To tell him anything specific when he was in this mood, Jimmie thought was to get “no” for an answer. “Oh, a few personal appearances.”

  “At the old peoples’ homes, I suppose.”

  Jimmie merely sighed.

  So did Mrs. Norris, who, invited to have a drink on the occasion, sat now with her empty glass cupped in her hands like a votive offering. “Think of it: Master Jamie the Honorable James Jarvis, G
overnor of the Sovereign State…”

  Jimmie shuddered as though she were casting a charm on him. “Have another drink, Mrs. Norris.”

  “The Honorable James Ransom Jarvis,” the General corrected. “I suppose the campaign will cost a great deal of money?”

  But of course, Jimmie thought, that was the burr now rubbing the old man. “I expect the party will make available enough money.”

  “Will it?” said the General, on the verge of sudden good humor.

  “When the time comes I expect so. Are you broke, father?”

  “Smashed.”

  “Well, that makes a pair of us. I’ve drawn all I can from the firm for the present.” Jimmie turned to Mrs. Norris. “I suppose we’d better have dinner soon.”

  “Within the hour,” she said, getting up. She gave Jimmie a great wink, always the mark of the “wee sup” in her. “And don’t you worry about a thing, Mr. James.”

  The old man stomped out of the room ahead of her. “I’ll be in my study when you’re ready,” he said.

  “It’s not as bad as I made it sound, Mrs. Norris,” Jimmie confided when the General was gone. “But I can’t have him making a touch this early in the month. What do you suppose he does with his money?”

  “Fancy cars…and things,” she said with Presbyterian ferocity.

  Jimmie poured himself another drink, a long one, and took it up to his room. There he showered and changed into slacks and a wool shirt. Without a doubt, the old fellow needed something to occupy him, or better, a trip around the world. No, that was worse. He was quite capable of kicking up an international incident, of embarrassing the State Department as well as an ambitious son. There was a considerable file somewhere in the Pentagon on a roaring contest between Major General Jarvis and his Russian counterpart—the Russian drinking martinis, the General vodka. “You might say we got him home by an underground air-lift,” a State Department wag had put it. Oh yes, quite capable of mischief was the General, and the hell of it was, the older he got, the greater his capabilities.

  4

  THE GENERAL WAS SURE he smelt the reek of conspiracy as he left the room ahead of Mrs. Norris. Caution. Every move weighted with caution. There was no gamble in the younger generation—all of them huddled behind the inevitability of the atom. Nothing to be ventured, no frontiers, no enterprise. Only caution. No wonder the boy had still, by report, the bulk of his inheritance from his mother.

  The General slammed the door of his study and looked up at his unsung relative. “Catch hold of a star, old boy! You and I are going for a spin.”

  He kicked up the fire; then, taking an ashtray and his pen knife, he scraped some carbon from a burnt log. This he diluted with a drop of water, added a drop of iodine and finally some black ink. It would not do for the finished product—if there was going to be a finished product—but for the first experiment, it might do very well.

  He had brought from the attic a fine red leather notebook, a diary, the binding scarcely faded by time. Inside, the excellent paper was yellowed ever so slightly, and the ink was fading through the years to a lighter brown. The diary he was by no means ready to touch—if ever he was going to touch it. He opened it to a half-empty page: the temptation was delicious. He put it by for the moment, locking the diary in the bottom drawer of his desk. He put the key beneath the frame of the President’s picture.

  He locked himself in his study then and took from a folder an old letter of his ancestor’s; it had been written from England in his own hand, the subject a routine matter of diplomacy. The General, with military precision, took a nibbed pen in hand, dipped it into the concoction in the ashtray, exercised his arm on the desk, a circular motion, and added a postscript to the letter. “And Sylvia sends deep love,” he wrote, adding a replica of the President’s signature. He counted to five and blotted it, securing thereby a paleness to his taste. The ink, he thought, surveying the whole, was almost as good an imitation as his handwriting. Ah, but that was incomparable! Not for naught now, had he been stood long hours at the law clerk’s desk as a boy, and made to imitate the briefs of the family firm, even as in his day, his father before him, and his grandfather, and likely, even granduncle. That he had deserted the law for the military was directly attributable to the distaste his clerking days gave him for the law.

  He washed out the ashtray in the sink and then dabbed his finger with a bit of iodine to account for the smell of it, although in truth the smell was much like that of the diary itself. Well, he must look up the formula for ink in those days…if he was to need the ink. He had but turned the key in his door and sat down again at his desk when Jimmie knocked.

  “Come in, come in, lad,” he said, as though the key were never turned against a soul.

  Jimmie looked down at the folder of old papers. “Don’t tell me somebody’s interested in them?”

  “Oh, I’m sure the Library of Congress would house them if they were offered.”

  “I suppose we should do that,” Jimmie said. “After all, they are state papers.”

  “For the most part they’re rubbish, like all state papers,” the old man said. “But look at this.” Without a tremble of his hand, though his heart gave a sudden pounce, he pointed to the line he had forged a few minutes before.

  Jimmie read it and lifted his eyebrows. “Who was Sylvia?”

  “My very question,” the old man said. “I’ve been three days searching for her in that trunk up there. Read that again.”

  Jimmie read it aloud this time: “And Sylvia sends deep love.” He picked up the letter then and read it through. He gave it back. “Think you’ll find her, father?”

  His son’s absolute and doubtless assumption of the letter’s having been written, postscript and all, a hundred years before, tickled the old man almost to ecstasy. He needed now to guard himself carefully. “If I find her, Jimmie, it might make a different man of our—forebear.”

  “I don’t think a change could hurt him, do you, father?”

  “I do not. Nor do I think it would hurt you, his coming into the news again.”

  “Take it easy on that, father.”

  “I shall but tell the truth as I find it,” the old man said piously.

  “I think it’s a fine undertaking, father. Really, in view of the work to be done on your own memoirs, this is very generous of you.”

  “I hope to be paid for it if they’re published, you know. This is not altogether altruism.”

  Jimmie grinned. As though he had not known this to be back of the old boy’s housekeeping. “Every cent he earns is yours, father. By the way, was Judge Turner in touch with you in the last day or so?” This was the question he had not dared ask downstairs.

  “Uh-huh.” The old man put away the folder.

  “Well?” said Jimmie.

  “Something about the Irish parade on St. Patrick’s Day. I think he wanted me in the stands. I’m too busy now for that nonsense.”

  Well, Jimmie thought, going to the door without a word, if he was not going to help him, at least, involved in the family papers, neither would he hurt him. “As you like, father, as you like.”

  The old man cocked his head round at him. “Are you disappointed?”

  “Of course, I’m disappointed! I’m about to run for governor of the state. My name is Jarvis. I’d like a hundred thousand or so Irishmen to remember it because General Jarvis saluted when they went marching by!”

  “A hundred thousand or so, and every last holler of them with a flag in his hand! It’ll be worse than the queen’s coronation.”

  “All right, father. Thanks just the same.”

  The old man snapped his fingers and then held out his hand, without turning round or rising from his desk. “I’ll need some money to get my decorations.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Eighth Avenue somewhere, I think. I have the ticket.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Jimmie, “they’re in hock!”

  The General swung around. “You would be sur
prised, my boy, at what good company that puts me in.”

  5

  THE NEXT DAY, IT being her afternoon off, Mrs. Norris rode into New York with the General. For all her deprecations of the Jaguar, she was quick enough to leap into it, he thought. She swathed her head—hat and all—in a scarf, locked her hands like a safety belt across her stomach, and gave a nod of her head for him to drive on.

  “I suppose you’re on your way to Brooklyn?” he said.

  “I am, to my sister’s,” Mrs. Norris said. “You can drop me at the subway.”

  The General nodded. “How are the Robinsons?”

  “Well enough for getting on. They always ask after you, sir.”

  “Do they?” said the General, and he wondered just what Mrs. Norris would say if she knew that he too would be seeing at least one of the Robinsons later in the day. Little she knew what a friendship had started on her introduction of Robbie and him the summer before. Robbie was an expert on horses, and therefore had a fair acquaintance with where and when the best of them were running. And that was but one of the Scotsman’s useful hobbies, although it was the only one to date of which the General had taken advantage. “He’s a printer, is he not?” the old man said for the sheer pleasure of deceiving her.

  “Aye, and with his own shop and journeymen under him. Prospered he has with hard work. He came over an immigrant, too.”

  The General squinted round at her. “You look the soul of prosperity, Mrs. Norris.”

  She loosed one hand from the other long enough to show the fingers of the glove. “Darned and stitched, sir, but respectable.”

  “As a lily,” said the General, disgusted with the alarm she took if there was the slightest chance he might refer to the fortune she had tucked away.

  “Put me down at Fifty-ninth Street, sir.”

  The General gave the car a kick into high gear to be the quicker shed of her, and not another word was said between them.

  Mrs. Norris took the BMT, and the moment she descended the subway steps she felt her mood improve. She should not allow the old gentleman to so annoy her. He did it deliberately. She settled in the waiting car and gave herself up to watching all the mad people of New York sprinting from one train across the platform to another. She made bets with herself at every express stop. Once she had so forgot herself as to cry out: “Half a bob on him in the red socks!” It had got her into conversation with a Yorkshireman who was, alas, on his way to Kansas City. She sighed now, remembering him. His last words had been: “I hope we meet again, lass!” Many a long year it had been since anyone called Annie Norris lass, and the truth when she faced it was that except for her squabbles with the General there was very little excitement in her life any more. Ah, but that would change with Master Jamie’s going back into public life. She began to think of ways she could hint at the matter to her sister without violating the confidence.