Come Hell or Highball (25 page)

“Okay. Remember my buddy I told you about, who owns the junk shop? Prince?”

“The one who identified the fleur-de-lis symbol. Sure.” Prince was, as far as I was concerned, a name for a borzoi.

We stopped at the corner. Ralph whistled for a cab.

My eardrum was quite possibly shattered.

“Prince might be able to rig together some kind of film projector,” Ralph said. “That is, if he doesn't already have one. Prince loves that kind of thing. He's real good with his hands, and he knows doohickeys like most people know their own belly buttons.”

“A mechanical genius?” I asked.

“Kinda. Yeah, he is.”

“Can we trust him?”

“With your life. When I met him, he was in the Army Signal Corps. Over in France. It was his job to lay telephone lines between the trenches. Every time the Jerries hit the lines with fire, Prince had to run out and lay new ones. He kept the telephones in the trenches working, too. Kept a lot of us alive that way.”

Then Ralph, just like that, went quiet. His hands were stuffed in his trouser pockets. He gazed out into the river of traffic with eyes that were watching memories.

I'd met shell-shocked men. The bombs and tanks and machine guns over in Europe would keep nerve specialists like the Prig in business for years to come. But Ralph didn't seem shell-shocked, exactly. He was simply a man who'd seen too much.

I knew that Ralph's Too Much was probably terrible, but I wished he'd tell me about it, anyway. I wasn't sure why. He was on my X-List, after all.

Ralph did his taxi whistle again.

This time, a taxicab veered to stop in front of us.

“Whereyawant?” the driver said.

“Orchard Street,” Ralph said. “Lower East Side.”

*   *   *

Inside the taxi, I hugged the film canister tight. “Sadie might've shot Horace,” I said softly—I didn't want the cabbie to overhear. “Maybe whatever is on the film could ruin her career, the way Ruby says it'll ruin
hers
. Sadie shot Horace, and then grabbed the reel and brought it back to her suite at the Plaza for safekeeping.”

“The reel wasn't exactly safe in that weekend bag,” Ralph said. “Looked like she hadn't even noticed it in there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, if I murdered a guy over something, like this reel, I'd sure as heck lock it up tight after all was said and done. In a safe deposit box, maybe. Come to think of it, I'd want to destroy it. I wouldn't leave it lying around in a bag.”

“You're suggesting Sadie wasn't the one who put the reel in her bag?”

“It's possible. Maybe someone
else
stole the reel—maybe Vera Potter, because don't forget she's the one who overheard you saying the safe combination out loud. When the cops started crawling all over the Arbuckles' place, maybe she panicked and dropped it into Sadie's bag. Heck, she might've thought she was dumping it into Eloise Wright's weekend bag, since hers looked just like Sadie's.”

“This is giving me a headache.” I slumped against the seat. “What about the lipstick? The lipstick on her vanity table matched the one I found by Vera Potter's body.”

“Oh yeah? You didn't tell me that.”

“They matched
perfectly
.”

“Okay. Maybe too perfectly. Think about it. We went to the Plaza looking for two things—the reel, and lipstick matching the one you found by Vera Potter's body. And, as luck would have it, we found exactly those two things.”

“Well, you said it yourself—it's lucky.”

“Something's fishy. Things get planted. Anyone who had access to Sadie's makeup could've stolen her lipstick and left it by the body. And since Sadie's an actress, that's a lot of people.”

“Hold on,” I said when we were halfway to Orchard Street. “What about Berta? She's been looking high and low for this film, too. She and I are partners in this. If we view it without her, she'll be awfully upset.”
Upset
wasn't quite the word. She'd be white-lipped with fury. She might even cut off my cinnamon roll supply.

“All right,” Ralph said. “Let's stop and get her, then. I'll tell the driver.”

A few minutes later, the taxi stopped in Longfellow Street. I dashed upstairs.

Except, Berta wasn't there.

Only Cedric was home. He was too lazy to get up from his pouf in the corner of the kitchen.

“Are you all right, peanut?” I said to him.

He closed his eyes for a snooze.

I went back down to the taxi. I told Ralph that Berta was missing.

“She might have gone down to the corner store,” Ralph said.

“That must be it,” I said. But I still felt uneasy.

*   *   *

Presently, we lurched to a stop in front of a row of brick apartment blocks. Fire escapes crisscrossed the walls like bad sutures. Laundry flapped between open windows. Laughter, cooking onion odors, and warbling gramophone music wafted through the night. At street level, tattered awnings stretched over shops. Folding grilles protected a hardware store, a tobacconist's, and a bakery. One restaurant was open. Light and a piano waltz spilled out.

Ralph paid the driver, and we climbed out.

“That joint is delicious,” Ralph said as we passed the restaurant. “The cook is French. I fought in his village, it turns out. He always gives me a dessert on the house.”

“Dessert?” I craned my neck.

“This here's Prince's place.”

Prince's shop was next door to the French restaurant. The grimy display window read
PRINCE KNIGHTLEY, ESQ. CURIOS ETC.
in crackled gold lettering. The window was lit by a single, dangling lightbulb, which illuminated, well, junk—a row of porcelain doll's heads, three dusty gramophone horns, mismatched china chargers, grubby brass lamps, bicycle gears, dingy little watercolors.

“Prince Knightley, Esquire?” I said. “How very grand.” My mental picture of the borzoi was replaced with an image of a tweedy English lord with a pince-nez.

“Prince
is
grand, in his own way. You'll see.” Ralph pushed the doorbell.

The scent of steak and
pommes frites
floated over from next door. My belly rumbled.

Ralph pretended not to notice. I supposed he was gentlemanly, in his swaggery, shabby kind of way.

Not, mind you, that I'd forgiven him for being a sneaky cad.

Bolts and chains rattled, and the door cracked.

“Ralph!”

“Prince, brother. Wondering if you could be of some help.”

“Come in, come in. Always glad to help you with one of your cases.” The door swung wide.

So did my eyelids. Prince Knightley, Esq. was a corpulent man. He wore a stained undershirt that didn't fully conceal the curving flesh of his ponderous belly, and patched dungarees. He was perhaps thirty-five years old, although he was so baggy-eyed, he might've been decades older. I couldn't picture him dashing about from trench to trench amid explosions, laying telephone wire.

“Who's this?” Prince asked, smiling at me. He was missing a tooth in the upper right-hand corner.

Ralph tugged me forward. “Mrs. Woodby.”

“Nice meeting you, Mrs. Woodby.” Prince led us inside. “I was just settling down to a tinker with an old music box I found in the alley. Someone took it for rubbish. Can you imagine?”

“No sirree,” Ralph said. “But folks don't know their et ceteras like you do, Prince.”

The shop was dim. I made out lampshades, springs, the silhouette of a dressmaker's dummy. We passed through a fusty curtain into a rear room.

A downy white cat hovered over a plate on a table and glared at us with defiant yellow eyes.

“Persephone!” Prince said to the cat. “Scram, you little villainess.”

Persephone thunked to the floor on tiny paws and swished off into the shadows.

“Drink?” Prince said. He went to a shelf crammed with old books. He slid a huge atlas aside, revealing a half-filled bottle of clear liquor.

“Sure,” Ralph said.

We sat. I laid the film canister on the table. Prince poured gin into chipped teacups with—ugh—brown rings inside. We drank to Persephone's health. Then Prince went over to a gramophone and selected a record. I waited for jazz.

Instead, the cushiony sounds of an orchestra blossomed, and then, gliding above the cellos and harpsichord, a soprano.

I hadn't pegged Prince as an opera-goer. Although he
did
have that Carnegie Hall voice and the proportions of a tenor.

Prince closed his eyelids and appeared to liquefy in ecstasy.

I wondered which opera it was. Something baroque, maybe. I opened my mouth to ask.

Ralph's finger flew to his lips, and he gave me a warning look.

I clamped my teeth.

Prince kept swooning.

I sipped more gin. I noticed a row of mismatched cameras on a mantelpiece. Surely Berta would approve of me purchasing a camera, as a business expense. If we were really going to give that retrieval agency notion a go, we'd need a camera, right?

After a bit, the aria ended.

“Still stuck on ‘Dido's Lament,' brother?” Ralph said. “I was sure you'd be over it and turning to some of those Schumann art songs.”

“How do you know so much about opera?” I asked Ralph.

“Took me for a philistine, did you?”

“No,” I lied.

“Schumann art songs aren't opera,” Prince said to me.

“Oh.”

Prince turned to Ralph. “I shall never get over ‘Dido's Lament.' Never.”

“Suit yourself,” Ralph said.

“Mr. Knightley,” I said, “would you sell me a camera?” I gestured to those on the mantelpiece.

“They aren't new,” Prince said. “I rebuilt them with bits and bobs that I salvaged.”

“Do they work?”

“Of course.”

“How much for the small brown one?”

“That's an Eastman Kodak Brownie. Simple to use. About ten years old, but I fixed it up myself. Good as new. On the house.”

“Really?”

“Any friend of Ralph's is a friend of mine.”

“Thanks!”

“Say, Prince,” Ralph said, “you don't think you could do us a favor, do you?”

Finally.

“Depends,” Prince said.

“We've got this reel of film, here—” He gestured to the canister on the table. “—and we want to view it.”

“May I?” Prince said.

I slid the reel over. Prince pried the canister open and inspected the reel. “Yes,” he said. “I have a projector—I cobbled it together myself—that will run this.”

Inside of ten minutes, Prince had rearranged the back room into a cramped movie palace. He'd gone upstairs—there was a stair through a doorway at the back—and brought down a wrinkled bedsheet. He hung it over the bookcase, making a screen. Then he set up a film projector on the opposite side of the room. He spooled the film onto the projector and flicked on a light. A yellow beam shot across the room, over the table, onto the bedsheet.

“Ready?” Prince said.

“Yes,” I said. My palms sweated.

“Ready,” Ralph said, and finished off his gin in one gulp.

We'd never talked it over, but there was a pretty decent chance that the film contained things that were, well, a bit, shall we say,
French
in nature. You know. Racy. Or worse.

 

28

Prince flipped a switch.

First, crackly black, and then the film flickered into motion. Glowing white words on a black background:
EVERYONE LOVES AUNTIE ARBUCKLE'S PORK AND BEANS!

“What?” I said.

Next, two women smiling and waving at the camera. They wore white factory workers' uniforms—smocks and caps. They stood in front of a big pale building without windows, beneath a spacious sky. The cogs of the Manhattan skyline rose in the background.

Ralph leaned forward on his chair.

“That's Ruby Simpkin, on the left,” I said. “And … and oh my word, that's Vera Potter!”

More words:
COME ALONG AND JOIN US! IF THIS TOUR DOESN'T WHET YOUR APPETITE FOR DELICIOUS AUNTIE ARBUCKLE'S PORK AND BEANS, NOTHING WILL!

Ruby and Vera traipsed up a ramp and through the factory doors.

Shots of whirring, whizzing factory machinery. Conveyor belts and cans and crates. The two actresses pointed and gestured at it all with enthusiasm.

More words:
BUT WHAT'S THE DELICIOUS SECRET OF THIS HOMEMADE FAVORITE, JUST LIKE AUNTIE MAKES?

A shot of a gleaming white industrial kitchen, with a large cookstove beside a counter. Ruby and Vera stood behind the counter. They took turns measuring ingredients and dumping them into a big pot. Vera stirred the pot and smiled coyly. Ruby stuck a spoon in and gave Vera a taste. Ruby winked hugely at the camera.

Words:
SCRUMPTIOUS! SHHH! DON'T GIVE AWAY THE SECRET RECIPE!

Then, a shot of them going out the factory doors, smiling and waving at the camera.

Words:
THE END.

The film whapped off the reel. The entire film had lasted less than two minutes.

*   *   *

Ralph spoke first. “Not exactly what I expected.”

“I can't believe that Vera and Ruby knew each other,” I said.

“Well, they are—or, I ought to say,
were
—both actresses,” Ralph said. “It's interesting—by the position of the city skyline in the background, I can tell the factory is over in Brooklyn.”

“But it's just a
factory,
” I said. “Yet now Arbuckle's dead, and one of the actresses on the film is dead, too. It's all tangled up together, but I don't see how. The film seems so innocent. Although, Auntie Arbuckle did mention a recipe to me.”

“Oh yeah?”

I nodded. “Last weekend. She hinted that Dune House's butler had been fired over it.”