Gin and Panic Read online

  I could only nod. I slid my left hand onto the tabletop so it would be ready.

  Ralph pulled out the box from his jacket and set it on the table.

  “Goodness, that’s a big box,” I said with a nervous giggle.

  Ralph slid it over. “Go on. Open it.”

  I took a big breath and lifted the box’s hinged lid. I stared blankly down. “A gun?” I looked at Ralph. “You’re giving me a gun?”

  “I thought you would’ve already guessed what it was.”

  “A GUN?” The gents at the next table looked over. I snapped the box shut and shoved it back to Ralph. “There isn’t room for it in my handbag.”

  “Tuck it in your garter like all the other ladies do.”

  “I don’t need it.”

  “It’s for your own safety. Do you know how much sleep I’ve lost since I met you, knowing you’re out on cases without any protection?”

  “I have Berta, and she has a gun.”

  “You’re not always with Berta.”

  “I manage.” I snatched up Cedric and plunked him on my lap, even though he clearly would have preferred to grovel at Ralph’s feet. My eyeballs grew hot.

  “Hold it.” Ralph scratched his eyebrow. “Why are you—? Are you going to cry?”

  “No.”

  “Sure looks like it.”

  “I hate the sight of guns.”

  “Don’t try to fool me, kid. Were you—? Were you expecting something else in that box?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah. Was it—?” He tipped his head. “Was it a piece of jewelry?”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “A ring?”

  “No!”

  Ralph looked around uneasily. “Say, why don’t we go for a walk?”

  “It’s raining.” Danged Prohibition! At that moment, I would’ve traded my soul for a highball. I summoned the waiter and he came over. “Cake, please,” I said to him.

  “What kind, madam?”

  “The first slice you clap eyes on.”

  Once the waiter had left, Ralph leaned over the table and spoke softly. “I’m crazy about you, Lola, and you know it, but we can’t … we can’t get married.”

  “Married? Us? Hah!” Why wasn’t the waiter sprinting to the kitchen?

  “Because us, married? That’s crazy talk. Me with my work and you with yours? It would never work.”

  “Then what are we doing?”

  Ralph looked confused. “Having fun. Dancing. Drinking.” The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Other stuff.”

  “I thought we were headed somewhere.”

  “Can’t we just sit back and enjoy the ride?”

  “Indefinitely?”

  “Nothing lasts forever.”

  “This isn’t how it’s done.”

  Ralph leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding,” he said.

  And just like that, Ralph was no longer mine. Pain clumped in my chest. “I need someone to take care of me,” I blurted. Wait. Where had that come from?

  “No, you don’t. You can take care of yourself.”

  “Ralph Oliver, that is the—the most horrid thing anyone has ever said to me!”

  “Really? Then you’ve been living pretty soft. Say, is that some kind of bug crawling around in your fur thingamajig?”

  I slapped my collar. A moth flew out. “I never want to see you again, Mr. Oliver. You misled me and I—I hate you.”

  Ralph’s jaw flexed. He shoved the gun box back across the table to me and stood. “Listen, there are a couple bullets in the bottom of the box—that’s how thoughtful I am. If you care to send me a thank-you note, well, you know my address.” He stalked out of the Bombay Room. I watched him go. So did all the other ladies in the room.

  I was sitting there fluttering back tears and robotically petting Cedric when Berta arrived at my table. “Lord Sudley has gone,” she said, sitting. “The advance check and the directions to Mr. Montgomery’s house are in my handbag.” She cleared her throat. “I happened to notice Mr. Oliver leaving in a huff.”

  “I don’t wish to discuss it.”

  The waiter slid a slab of chocolate layer cake in front of me and arranged a fork and napkin beside it. I forked a hunk of cake into my mouth. Cedric tipped his head to watch.

  “Regarding the job,” Berta said, “I could easily telephone Lord Sudley and tell him you will be able to accompany me after all.”

  “You mean to rob the place?”

  “Mrs. Woodby, we have gone over this matter a dozen times at least. When one runs a retrieval agency, one must at times venture into somewhat gray moral realms.”

  Alas, Berta was correct. Although we endeavored to take cases only from the rightful owners of whatever it was we were retrieving, we hadn’t always gotten it right.

  “Yes, okay.” I wagged my fork. “Fine.” Ralph was gone, so if I didn’t have my work, that meant I had … zip. “We’re going to Connecticut to retrieve that bally rhino’s head. It’s not as though I have anything better to do.”

  * * *

  The next day—an insulting day of marble skies and intermittent splats of rain—Berta and I motored up the Connecticut coast to Carvington. We made excellent time; silently fuming about rakish ex-fellows adds ten pounds to one’s gas pedal foot.

  Again and again, I thought of the words that had tumbled from my lips yesterday. I need someone to take care of me. Why had I said that? I was thirty-one years old. I had a job (of sorts), I’d figured out how to boil an egg and how to buy postage stamps and pay the electric bill, and anyway, lots of women didn’t have husbands for one reason or another. Clearly, I could fend for myself so long as, say, Al Capone was out of the picture.

  Yet every time I thought about Ralph, I ran up against this brick wall: If he truly loved me, he’d want to marry me.

  The revolting thing was, that was something my mother would say. Which simply did not bear analysis. So instead of analyzing, I went right on fuming.

  Carvington was a picture-postcard Yankee seacoast town of a few thousand inhabitants. EST. 1665, a weather-beaten sign apprised us as we rolled in. The road meandered around a brown-grassed salt marsh, past the ivied brick walls of Carvington College, and through a scattering of boxy colonial houses.

  Church Street was two blocks of clapboard and shingled buildings. Flintock’s Groceries, the Red Rooster Café, the Old Whaler’s Inn, Sewant River Bank, Wolcott Tobacco & Stationery, and Carvington Congregational Church faced a village green. Behind Church Street, a few cobbled streets sloped down to a stone seawall. In the cold afternoon light, the ocean was matte gray and the horizon was a smudge rather than a line.

  After a bracing greasy lunch at the Red Rooster Café, Berta and I motored the final mile to the open gates of Montgomery Hall. We traversed a gravel drive and acres of rolling parkland. The trees opened out onto formal lawns and hedges, and then the house came into view. It sprawled on a rise overlooking the ocean, a rambling red stone Gothic mansion with arches on the porch, a slate roof, pointy stained glass windows, and one crenellated battlement.

  I parked in the driveway behind several swanky motorcars and switched off the engine of my sporty Duesenberg Model A. The Duesy used to be swanky, too, but in my reduced circumstances, its whitewall tires had gotten grimy and the spare tire on the back resembled a pretzel.

  “Good heavens, a castle in Connecticut?” Berta said. “Do they expect marauders with cannons?”

  “I’d bet they’re more worried about the damp salt air,” I said. “Piles like this cost a fortune to keep up.”

  No one greeted us in the drive, so Berta and I gathered up our luggage. The clasps of my hefty suitcase strained; not only had I packed clothes and toiletries for three days, but I’d also brought a hunt-themed costume for the fancy dress party Lord Sudley had warned us about. How Berta had packed all she required in one small suitcase was anyone’s guess.

  I had left that dratted gun Ralph
gave me at home.

  With Cedric sniffing around behind us, we went to the churchlike oak door and buzzed the bell. Presently, a rather short, very round woman in a black dress and an iron gray bun cracked the door. The housekeeper, I supposed. She didn’t seem to notice me, but instead scowled at Berta, who was the exact same height as she. In fact, Berta and the woman possessed nearly identical proportions. Face-to-face like that, they made me think of a squat set of salt and pepper shakers.

  “Yes?” the housekeeper said in a humorless contralto.

  “Hello,” I said. “We are friends of Lord Sudley’s—we’re here for the hunting party. I believe we’re expected.”

  “You’re late.” The housekeeper turned.

  I scooped up Cedric. We followed the housekeeper inside.

  “Most everyone has already gone out shooting,” the housekeeper said, “so you’ll just have to wait until they return.” We left our suitcases, coats, and hats in the entry hall, and the housekeeper led us through dim, wood-paneled corridors to a drawing room. “Wait here. The manservant will take your luggage up later.” She left us.

  Berta and I went into the drawing room. With its vaulted ceiling, leaded windows, and heavy dark beams, the style was that of a rustic European hunting lodge. It was so large, binoculars might’ve come in handy. The walls bristled with antlers, and you could’ve parked a Rolls-Royce in the stone fireplace.

  I didn’t notice anyone else in the room. However, I did see herds of taxidermied animal heads mounted to the walls. Tiger, bear, elephant, several deer-ish things, a kangaroo, and about, oh, six or seven rhinoceros heads.

  “Oh, dear,” Berta murmured, eyeing the rhinoceroses. “I wonder if Lord Sudley knows about all of those?”

  I spied a drinks cabinet, so I set Cedric loose and made a beeline over. A restorative tipple was what I required before inspecting rhino ears for bullet nicks.

  “Drink?” I called to Berta.

  “I’d adore a G and T,” someone—not Berta—said.

  And someone else said, “Dear me, no, I never drink. Well, perhaps you could bring me a small portion of mineral water.”

  I spun around. Berta had seated herself in a grouping of high-backed chairs before the fire with two other people: a young man and a middle-aged woman.

  Berta said, “And I will have brandy, please. Your driving, Mrs. Woodby, has quite frazzled my nerves.”

  We did a quick round of introductions. Berta and I used our real names for the sake of simplicity. Fingers crossed that no one had heard of us. We claimed that Berta was my aunt, and suggested that I was Lord Sudley’s newest lady friend.

  The middle-aged lady introduced herself as Isobel Bradford. “You know,” she said with a flare of the nostrils, “Winslow Bradford’s widow.”

  “Oh yes,” I said. “I believe Lord Sudley mentioned Mr. Bradford. One of the trio of safari-goers?”

  “That’s correct. Dear Winslow adored the hunt, and since he has passed on into the next world, I am attending the party in his stead. It is what he would have wished.” She adjusted her half-glasses, which had long gold chains drooping from either side. In fact, quite a lot of Isobel could be described as droopy: her mouth, eye bags, and hairstyle; her cardigan, ruffled blouse, and tweed skirt, which were clearly of the best quality but not designed to flatter.

  The young man, lounging sideways on a chair with his legs draped over the armrest, said his name was Glenn Monroe. Then he waited expectantly, eyebrows lifted.

  “Are you … famous?” I asked.

  Glenn cleared his throat and said in a theatrical voice, “Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado—The Filmore Vacuette Hour!”

  “Oh!” Berta chirruped, clapping her hands. “That Glenn Monroe! I never miss The Filmore Vacuette Hour. The ‘Ghoulish Yarns’ segment is most thrilling.”

  I never missed The Filmore Vacuette Hour either, since Berta kept the volume dial on our kitchen radio set as high as it would go.

  The radio variety program, sponsored by the Filmore Vacuum Cleaner Company, featured music, radio dramas, jokes, and monologues, all hosted by Glenn Monroe. He looked much as I’d pictured him: twenty-five or so, bonelessly slim, with honey-brown waves swept fashionably from a high pale forehead and impeccable, costly-looking country clothes of tweed and cashmere argyle. His hand-stitched hunting boots didn’t have a single fleck of dirt on them.

  I made two gin and tonics, poured a brandy for Berta, a mineral water for Isobel, and another mineral water for Cedric, passed them around, and settled into a tall-backed chair by the fire. On the hearthrug, Cedric lapped messily from his glass.

  “There is the hunting party,” Isobel said, peering toward the windows. “I would have thought they would be farther afield. They’ve been out for half an hour at least.”

  “You know how it is,” Glenn said with a yawn. “They must stalk those stupid birds slowly.”

  “Here comes dear Rudy,” Isobel said.

  A barrel-chested man was indeed striding across the park toward the house. It was difficult to see through the leaded windows with all their little panes, but he appeared to have a shotgun under his arm.

  “Coral, too,” Glenn said. He took a languid sip of his drink. “On the warpath, as usual.”

  Many paces behind Rudy, a woman in a hunting costume followed, swinging her arms.

  Glenn turned to Berta and me. “Brace yourselves. When Coral’s in a snit, everyone suffers.”

  I didn’t give a bunny’s carrot about Coral and her snits; all I desired was to retrieve Lord Sudley’s rhinoceros trophy, get paid, and go back to New York City to lick my wounds. I’d slept fitfully the night before, half hoping Ralph would telephone or, better yet, knock on my door, enfold me in his arms, and murmur he’d made a mistake, that he couldn’t live without me, and that of course I needed a man to take care of me forever and ever.

  No call. No visit. No dice. All I’d gotten were circles under my eyes and a vague hankering for cake.

  3

  I gazed around at all the mournful, glass-eyed rhino heads in the Montgomery drawing room. No ear nicks detectable. “Swell trophies,” I said to Glenn Monroe and Isobel Bradford. “They certainly spruce up the place. Lord Sudley told me Mr. Montgomery is a crack shot.”

  Berta, catching on, added, “And what a lot of rhinoceroses in particular! Why, I have only ever killed one myself, and it was an elderly one and, in the end, not very smart-looking once mounted above my fireplace.”

  “Ghastly things, I think.” Glenn’s eyelids drooped as he sipped his drink. “They’re just one more way for Rudy to prove he’s the manliest man around.”

  Isobel said, “My poor dear Winslow felled seven rhinoceroses during his lifetime. Their heads are mounted still in our library in Boston. Oh, there is Rudy passing just by the windows—and here comes Coral. Rudy appears ever so overheated.”

  We watched Rudy and Coral pass the drawing room windows. Before they disappeared, I got an impression of Rudy as swarthily handsome, and Coral as tall, lithe, and redheaded.

  I wheeled out a different tactic. “I wonder which of these rhinoceroses was killed most recently.”

  “Yes,” Berta added, “for none of them look particularly fresh.”

  “No idea,” Glenn said, yawning again.

  “Why do you wish to know?” Isobel asked.

  “We are thinking of going on safari in the spring,” Berta said.

  “Ah.”

  It went on like that for a few minutes, with Berta and me attempting to wring out some sort of information about the rhinoceros trophies and Glenn and Isobel responding in a bored fashion.

  There was a piercing pop! Glenn, Isobel, Berta, and I all started. Cedric’s ears twitched.

  “That was a gunshot,” Berta whispered.

  “Wasn’t that inside the house?” Glenn said. “It sounded like a champagne cork, or—yes—like the housekeeper banging a meat mallet. That woman does everything with unnecessary violence.”

  “No,�
�� Isobel said, “that was a gunshot, and it came from outside, where the hunting party is loitering. Perhaps one of their guns was fired by mistake.” She peered over the tops of her eyeglasses out the window. “I do hope everyone is all right. Dear Winslow once shot his own foot by mistake.”

  I wasn’t certain where the pop had originated. “Should we go investigate?” I said.

  “Surely there is nothing to investigate,” Isobel said.

  Arguing voices, a man’s and a woman’s, erupted somewhere upstairs.

  “That’s Coral and Rudy,” Glenn said, rolling his eyes. “Quite the passionate affair. One minute they’re at each other’s throats, and the next they’re stuffing themselves into broom closets for a quick neck.”

  “Mr. Monroe!” Isobel cried.

  “If you’re so offended by that idea, Mrs. Bradford,” Glenn said, “why don’t you just tootle on back to your Boston brownstone? For the life of me, I can’t figure why you’re hanging around in this house of sin, where the master is living with his girl without the benefit of marriage, because you’re just about the wettest blanket I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.”

  Isobel flushed. She got up, went to the windows, and pushed one open. Cold, wet air blew in. She squinted toward the hunting party, which I could just make out. “Everyone seems to be all right,” she said over her shoulder. “They’re all loitering about. The dogs look quite low. Fat things. Surely they can’t flush pheasants.”

  Now that the windows were open, we could make out snippets of Rudy and Coral’s argument.

  “… and frankly you’re driving me mad!” Rudy bellowed. “… jealous on purpose…”

  “YOU mad? Hah!” Coral shrilled. “… know you’ll never marry me … expect me to be your concubine forever…”

  “Oh dear.” Berta sipped brandy. “Perhaps we have come on the wrong day.”

  Glenn waved a hand. “They’re always like this. It’s a game they play. Rudy refuses to marry Coral, and so she gets back at him by flirting like mad with other men until he’s in a towering rage, then they argue, kiss, and make up.”