Thales's Folly Page 7

  "Except that I'm not leaving," protested Andrew.

  Manuel Junior looked at him blankly. "But your car's fixed now."

  "Yes, but didn't Mr. Thale—my father—tell Manuel I'm not returning to New York yet, that I'm—" He stopped, because of course his father would have left in a fury, too angry to do more than pay his bill and drive away.

  "Did anyone follow you?" asked Tarragon.

  "Ho!" said young Manuel. "On that road?"

  "Ho yourself," said Andrew, and shrugged; after all, the horse was out of the barn, and the milk spilled, so to speak. He brought out his checkbook and paid the boy.

  Manuel Junior left, to walk home by the shortcut. Tarragon, Miss L’Hommedieu, and Gussie returned to the house, but Andrew stood looking at the car, so unexpectedly delivered, sleek and shining, a car that purred. His father had recklessly said that it would be sent for, and it could jolly well be sent for, decided Andrew. In the meantime, there it stood.

  Andrew said to Leo, "We could drive this car to Pittsville this afternoon, and you could all go .., all of you. No bus."

  "In a Mercedes?" said Leo, eyeing it suspiciously. "And me a union man. Belong to you?"

  "No, it's a company car."

  "Strictly for the bigwigs, eh?"

  "Yes. We'd borrow it."

  Leo glanced at him with interest. "Borrow it?"

  "I suspect," said Andrew with dignity, "that by now I, too, have been downsized. It wants revenge."

  Leo nodded approvingly. "Brings out the larceny in a man, don't it? By George, you'll be a revolutionary yet, Andrew!"

  6

  [Marigold] must be taken only when the moon is in the Sign of the Virgin . .. And the gatherer, who must be out of deadly sin, must say three Pater Nosters and three Aves. It will give the wearer a vision of anyone who has robbed him.

  —Macer, Floridus, Herbal, 1373

  On the second floor of the house there was suddenly a flurry of activity. Leo could be heard swearing at the disappearance of a bow tie; Miss L'Hommedieu had already been escorted downstairs in rusty black, enlivened by a long pink chiffon scarf that fluttered behind her. Andrew, reviewing his several travel checks, shoved them into the pocket of his tweed jacket along with his wallet, and extracted his raincoat from the closet. The act of tossing it over his arm produced a jingling sound; one hand delved into the left pocket and brought out a pair of keys on a thin silver ring.

  Andrew looked at them blankly, but—time later, he thought, to puzzle out whether they were spare keys to office or apartment, and why they were there at all; he dropped these into the pocket of his jacket, too, and carrying his raincoat emerged from his room just as Gussie came hurrying down the hall.

  "Oh, but you won't need your raincoat," she told him. "Just look outside, sky's clearing!"

  "Good," said Andrew, relieved, and went back and tossed the raincoat across his bed and followed her down the stairs.

  What a motley group, he thought, seeing them waiting beside the car: Gussie, plain and practical in a flowered house-dress; Miss L'Hommedieu towering above her, thin, shabby but somehow elegant; Leo, short, stocky, and bow-tied; and Tanagon in a short white skirt and T-shirt, her eyes shining.

  "Well, Andrew?" said Miss L’Hommedieu, allowing him to bestow her in a rear seat. "You must be very rich, a car like this!"

  "Not mine," said Andrew cheerfully. "And somehow we've got to avoid the potholes, we can't risk another three days in a garage. Tarragon?"

  "I know them," she said, and took command of the passenger seat, leaning forward in anticipation, ready to point and to direct.

  Slowly, carefully, the car made its way successfully to the highway, turned left, away from Manuel's garage and the post office, and headed for Pittsville.

  The grocery store was obviously a treat: Andrew led Miss L’Hommedieu up and down the aisles while Gussie, Leo, and Tarragon fanned out to look for yeast and flour, honey, eggs, and boxes of dried milk, but the thrift shop proved to be the high point of the trip. Andrew had expected the worst, a covey of unwashed Mr. Branowskis, perhaps, a certain disreputable ambience ... He was to be surprised: it occupied a well-lit room, quite large, with long racks of clothes, and an alcove of old books toward which Leo went at once. There was a chair on which Miss L'Hommedieu could sit, and in the rear a number of baby carriages, lamps, and radios.

  A prominently displayed sign read: IF YOU STEAL FROM US, YOU ARE STEALING FROM HOMELESS WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

  Very good, thought Andrew, and after glancing at a shabby, but still-fine tweed jacket with a price tag of thirteen dollars, he experienced the inevitable excitement of capturing a bargain, accompanied by an expanding sense of greed.

  In the end, however, he bought nothing for himself because his eyes had fallen on a long feathered boa in Miss L'Hommedieu's favorite color of pale blue. He touched it, and its feathers stirred under his touch; he looked at the price tag—ten dollars—and he envisioned her sweeping it dramatically across one shoulder. He turned and looked at her, seated primly in her chair, very erect, a little tired, her face composed as she waited for them, and he plucked it from the hanger and carried it to her.

  "If you will allow me, Miss L'Hommedieu," he said politely, and with a flourish he unfurled it around her shoulders. "You simply must—it's you—unless, of course—"

  "Unless?"

  "Unless you don't like it. If you do, it's yours, I insist."

  A wave of pink flooded her cheeks: Miss L'Hommedieu was blushing. She also looked extraordinarily pleased—surely she'd been given gifts before? "This is most gracious of you, Andrew," she said, and reached out and stroked the feathers, watching them stir. "It's beautiful—thank you!"

  "Good, it's yours," he told her, and carried it off to pay for it.

  After that he ran wild. "Everything's my treat," he told them, and insisted that Tarragon try on a black jacket glittering with sequins. "But I'll never wear it," she told him, laughing. "Andrew, truly you've gone mad."

  "I have, yes," he said, grinning. "Time to sober up later, it fits and you look dazzling in it."

  When they returned to the car each of them bore treasures: Gussie, a warm cardigan, a new apron, and two old cookbooks; Leo, paperback copies of Moby-Dick, Montaigne's Essays, Don Quixote, and Plato's Republic; Tarragon, the glittering sequin jacket and half a dozen National Geographies. As for Miss L'Hommedieu she eagerly clutched her long, feathered blue boa, alternately hugging and stroking it.

  For at least an hour or two, thought Andrew, he had given them an antidote for the shock that lay ahead. And for only forty-six dollars and twenty-three cents.

  Possibly, he added ruefully, he had also assuaged some of his guilts at possessing forty-six dollars and twenty-three cents.

  On the way back to Thale's Folly, and after considerable thought, Andrew stopped at the post office; dropping coins into the pay phone he left word with his father's answering service that after ten o'clock the next morning a repaired Mercedes would be at Manuel's garage for someone to pick up and return to Manhattan. He felt only a small twinge of conscience; it was true that it was he who had driven the car to Thale's Folly, but the expedition and the Mercedes had been entirely his father's idea, and Andrew was still unforgiving.

  After this, with Tarragon's help, he again began the slow and precarious drive up Thale Road to the house.

  It was Miss L'Hommedieu who first noticed that something was wrong. From the rear seat, leaning forward, she said indignantly, "My chair's been moved."

  This was true. Her chair had sat like a throne in a commanding position on the porch but it had now been thrust to one side.

  Andrew brought the car to a stop and Tarragon, climbing out, shaded her eyes against the late afternoon sun and said, "The back door's open, Gussie."

  "Nonsense, I locked it," Gussie told her.

  "It's open, Gussie, just look. Wide open."

  Andrew looked at Leo, and Leo looked at him. "Help Miss L’Hommedieu out," he told Tarragon, "we're g
oing in."

  "I insist," said Miss L'Hommedieu firmly, "that you wait for me."

  They waited, and all five entered the house together.

  Nothing had been touched in the kitchen, no one had been interested in the glass jars of herbs or the preserves lined up in the pantry, nor had anything been moved or removed in the living room, dining room, or parlor; they together mounted the stairs, slowing only to help Miss L'Hommedieu.

  It was Andrew's room that appeared to have been swept by a tornado. They stood in the doorway staring aghast at the chaos: the mirror that had once hung over the bureau had been hurled to the floor, its brown paper backing slashed and torn away, leaving paper strewn everywhere. Fragments of glass lay scattered across the floor, and Andrew's bed had been stripped, its mattress slit open, rolled up and reduced to a mass of coils and stuffing. His raincoat lay in shreds on the floor.

  "I don't understand this," faltered Gussie.

  "Rage—act of a madman!" said Leo.

  "But why?" demanded Andrew.

  "We need a broom," announced Miss L'Hommedieu.

  Andrew stepped carefully over the glass to the mirror and picked it up, fragments of glass dropping from it like slivers of silver rain. "Tarragon, watch out for this glass," he said.

  "Fetch the broom, Leo," Gussie told him. "Miss L'Hommedieu, don't come inside, stay in the hall."

  "I am not breakable," said Miss L'Hommedieu calmly. "We must remain calm, very calm."

  Tarragon advanced into the room, picked up the remains of Andrew's raincoat, shook it free of glass, and tossed it onto the skeletal frame of the bed. One sleeve, intact, fell to the floor. Picking it up she looked at it and frowned. "Andrew, there's something funny about this."

  "Funny! It's a disaster!"

  "I mean the sleeve. Andrew, look at this sleeve."

  "Later." He was returning the frame of the mirror to the bureau.

  'Andrew, look at it. Please."

  She held up the sleeve, and he glanced at it. "I'm looking .. .so?"

  "It's too big. It's much longer than your arm, it belongs to a giant."

  Leo, returning, said, "I've got the broom. What's going on?"

  Tarragon had picked up the remains of the coat and was examining its collar. "Very well, then, Andrew," she said sternly, "what size coat or jacket do you wear?"

  He decided that obviously, in a crisis, she had to find security in details; he would have to remember this in the future. "Forty long," he said.

  "The label on this raincoat says it's forty-eight regular."

  She had captured his attention at last. "Impossible, let me look at it—what's left of it."

  She stepped over the broken glass and pressed the sleeve against Andrew's shoulder. "Drop your arm."

  He obeyed; the sleeve ran from his shoulder to his wrist and dangled several inches beyond it. He said in a shocked voice, "This isn't my coat! Is there a label?"

  "Here," she told him. "It says Christian Dior."

  "I've never worn a Christian Dior in my life!" He stared at it, dumbfounded. "But where—oh God," he said as memory surfaced to surprise him. "The restaurant)"

  "What restaurant?" asked Gussie.

  "On my way here from New York. The coats hung on pegs in the hall. I drove away without mine—forgot it—and then drove back, rushed into the restaurant, and picked up my coat and—"

  He stopped.

  "And?"

  He looked stricken. "As I drove away a man ran out of the restaurant waving frantically. I saw him in my rearview mirror and assumed he thought I'd left without paying my bill." He sat down suddenly on the rolled-up mattress. "Good Lord, he wanted my raincoat? I mean his raincoat?"

  Miss L'Hommedieu said disapprovingly, "And for this he broke into the house and ruined Andrew's and Miss Thale's bed and mirror? The world has come to this?"

  Frowning, Tarragon said, "He knew we'd all left the house and it was empty, but how?"

  "Manuel Junior," said Andrew grimly. "Of course Manuel Junior. Our burglar must have been the man that Manuel told me kept hanging around his garage, asking who belonged to the Mercedes, and when Manuel made the mistake of delivering the car here, the man followed it."

  "Then why the hell didn't he take his damned raincoat? " demanded Leo. "Look at it—he found it, sliced it up and left it. Doesn't make a particle of sense."

  Andrew whistled softly through his teeth. "Unless .. , unless ..." He reached into the pocket of his jacket and extracted the two keys on their ring. "Could he have been after these?"

  Startled, Tarragon said, "Where did you find those?"

  "In the pocket of my raincoat—I mean his raincoat. Just before we left for town. I thought it was going to rain, I picked up the coat to carry on my arm, heard them jingle, so I took them out and shoved them into the pocket of this jacket. I assumed they were mine. After all, it was my coat, or so I thought. And then—you remember, Gussie—you said I wouldn't need a raincoat so I put it back. But not the keys."

  "Artemus," said Leo.

  Gussie nodded. "Definitely Artemus."

  "Artemus?" said Andrew blankly.

  "He's the sheriff here."

  "He did mention that, yes." Andrew sighed. "It's nearly dark, I don't dare drive the Mercedes again, it's not mine."

  "I'll go," Tarragon said. "By the shortcut, walking. The post office is closed, he'll be at his house. Save my dinner, I'll run." And she was gone before Andrew could volunteer either his company or his flashlight.

  "I suppose we should save the evidence for him?" he said doubtfully. "It's not the same as a murder scene, not exactly, but will he want to see the room as we found it?"

  "Not if he cuts a foot on the glass and gets blood poisoning," Gussie said tartly. "Leo, after you've swept up the glass fetch the spare mattress in the attic for Andrew." With a nod at the yellowed papers strewn among the splinters of glass she added, "And don't throw them away. Good for kindling and the mulch pile. I'll heat up dinner."

  Artemus arrived in Manuel's tow truck, red and blue lights flashing, a spotlight trained on the hazardous pitfalls of Thale's Road. Manuel was driving. "Because," explained Tarragon as the two men vanished upstairs, "Manuel can describe the man who was so interested in finding you."

  Artemus was not long upstairs. "Snapped a few photos," he said, "and I'll take those keys with me, Andrew, and give you a receipt for them. Lock them up in my safe."

  "Any clues?" asked Andrew, feeling absurdly like a character in one of his novels. "You think that's what he was after?"

  "He certainly wasn't after his raincoat," said Artemus. "Good night, Gussie ... Tarragon ... Leo... Miss L’Hommedieu."

  It had been a busy day. There had been no story from Miss L'Hommedieu, the sunset had not been observed, nor had Gussie had time to visit the woods to call on the powers of earth, fire, sun, and moon. Nevertheless, various stars had begun crossing and events set in motion, unrecognized or noticed as yet. At least not until night, when a sleepless Andrew looked for reading material.

  Wednesday

  7

  As for Rosmarine, I lett it runne all over my garden walls, not onlie because my bees love it, but because it is the herb sacred to remembrance, and, therefore, to friendship....

  —Sir Thomas More

  It was an hour past midnight when Andrew, shouting, ran down the hall with his flashlight. Until then the night had been so quiet one could hear the frogs croaking in the marsh near the pond, and that was a far distance.

  "Wake up, wake up, I've news," he shouted.

  When doors were slow to open he stood in the hall waving two sheets of paper and shouted, " 'I, Harriet Maria Thale, being of sound mind and body, and cognizant of the fact that a handwritten will is acceptable, legal, and binding in this state, do hereby—' "

  Doors flew open, and Andrew stopped, triumphant.

  Leo gasped, "You found a will?"

  Andrew beamed at him. "I found a will."

  Tarragon cried, "Miss Thale's will? But where
, Andrew? How?"

  "On the floor. In the pile set aside for mulch. Come see."

  Candles were lighted and Andrew led a procession in nightgowns and pajamas back to his room. Walking over to the mirror he turned its empty face to the wall and pointed to the remaining strips of brown paper and newspapers that had lined the back of it. "I think it must have been taped or thumbtacked behind the mirror for safekeeping, and when the burglar slashed the backing—"

  "The mirror!" said Gussie wonderingly. "We never thought of that, did we? You remember, Leo—Miss L'Hommedieu— Tarragon—we looked everywhere."

  "Or thought we did," said Tarragon.

  Leo nodded. "She did squirrel things away, we knew that, but—"

  "But what does it say?" asked Tarragon.

  Gussie looked at her reproachfully. "Isn't it enough that she cared and made a will?"

  Andrew gave her a sharp glance, suddenly understanding that a stoic Gussie had nursed deep hurt over Miss Thale's omission, even though she had died without any warning on a sunny day among the chives. He said gently, "It's for you to read, not me. Why don't we go down to the kitchen, light the big kerosene lamp, brew some tea, and read it?"

  They did not hurry. Once in the kitchen it seemed to Andrew as if it was enough for them to know that his great-aunt Harriet had made an attempt to protect her ménage after all, and that presently they would hear her long-gone voice through the words that she had written. The kerosene lamp was carefully lighted, the wick turned up and placed in the center of the worn kitchen table, where it shone softly gold on the weathered oak. There was a silence invaded only by the murmur of water coming to boil on the stove.

  Tarragon thoughtfully selected herbs from the shelf. "Rosemary and mint," she told them, smiling.

  And then they sat down around the table—it was like having a family, thought Andrew, feeling warmly included—and Gussie turned to the will.