Helene whispered, looking at Elizabeth Fairfaxx, “but she didn’t. She—”
“Shut up,” Malone said. “You talk too much. Just answer a few questions for me. When Elizabeth Fairfaxx dragged me around the room, meeting people, I got a lot of names, but not any details.”
He glanced around the pleasant room, and noticed that Violet was standing near the tea table, like a slightly disapproving spectre, her thin, pale hands folded in front of her, her shadowy eyes watching Elizabeth Fairfaxx. Her hands, Malone suddenly realized, were graceful and beautiful. They looked strong, too. Again he was puzzled by the feeling that he’d seen her before. Nonsense? Since she’d been the Fairfaxx housekeeper for years and years, as Elizabeth had said, is was impossible that he could have seen her before. He put her out of his mind and began looking around at a few of the others.
Elizabeth Fairfaxx was offering a cup of tea to Mrs. Abby Lacy. A cup of tea, a cigarette, a well-bred smile. Mrs. Lacy accepted all three, without a change of expression.
She was a short, spare woman, with a Persian lamb coat and an expensive hat. Meticulous and determined, Malone decided. If the house next door to her burned down, she would be the first to call the fire department and start carrying out rugs and draperies. But if she’d never met the householders socially, she’d be careful to wear a hat and carry gloves while she dragged them out of their inferno.
She had a tight little mouth, shut like a mousetrap, with the mouse inside it, and cold, squinty, weasel-gray eyes.
“She’s very rich,” Helene volunteered. “They’re the railroad Lacys. She’s been a widow for years. And her daughter is devoted to her.”
“That’s nice,” Malone said. “Nice for Mrs. Lacy, I mean.” He tried to imagine being devoted to Mrs. Abby Lacy, gave up and turned his attention to the daughter in question.
“Her name is Gay,” Helene reminded him. “Gay Lacy. Her father had a very romantic nature. All the Lacys did.”
Malone looked thoughtfully at the girl whose name sounded like an 1890 musical comedy star and tried unsuccessfully to imagine her having a romantic nature. Unlike her mother, she was tall, so that sitting beside the older woman she appeared even more gawky than she actually was; and where her mother’s hair was a dull, rather muddy gray, Gay’s was a dull and rather muddy brown. Otherwise they looked very much alike, especially as far as the look of grim determination was concerned.
“They live next door,” Helene added. “They share a garden and the wall. Rodney Fairfaxx and Mr. Lacy were very close friends. That’s why they built their houses this way. Albert Lacy was a sweet person. I was just a kid when he died, but I remember how much I liked him. He used to take me to theaters. Real theaters, not kid stuff.”
Malone relit his cigar and asked, casually, “What did he die of, or do you know?”
“I don’t know,” Helene said. There was an almost acid note in her voice. “I suspect he was just tired to death.”
Malone glanced again at Mrs. Lacy and decided the diagnosis was quite probably correct.
“And I’m sure,” Helene said in a smugly catty voice, “that Gay and Kenneth are going to be very happy together.”
Malone remembered with a start that Elizabeth had explained the homely angular young woman as “Miss Lacy—Kenneth’s fiancée.” The little lawyer sighed. There wasn’t anything so very special about Kenneth, but it seemed like a darn shame anyway.
“And you met Uncle Ernie, of course,” Helene went on. “Ernest Fairfaxx, I mean. Everyone has always called him Uncle Ernie as long as I can remember. He’s Rodney’s half-brother. Something of a problem to the more conservative members of the family.”
Malone gazed at the tall silvery-haired, handsome man leaning gracefully, though a bit unsteadily, against the mantelpiece. “Wife? Children? Home?”
“None of them,” Helene told him. “No money, either. Ernie raised so much hell when he was a young man that his old man decided to leave him in Rodney’s charge. He lives here.” She added, “But I never heard of his having any particular dislike for postmen.”
“Nobody dislikes postmen,” Malone said. “That’s why it’s so extraordinary when somebody murders three of them.”
He looked up at the oil painting over the fireplace and momentarily lost interest in the people in the room. It showed a delicate, pretty girl in the clothes and hair dress of 1910. She had a softly rounded face, a smiling gentle mouth; her wild, lovely eyes matched the blue of her dress. Even in the painting, her yellow hair looked exquisitely soft. Her hands, folded in her lap, were tiny and very pale. For a moment, Malone wondered why the face was so familiar. Then he remembered. He’d seen it looking out at him from the large framed photograph in the library.
“That was Annie,” Helene whispered, seeing Malone’s glance. “Annie Kendall. Uncle Rodney’s sweetheart. There’re pictures of her all over the house.”
The little lawyer nodded slowly. It pleased him that her name should be Annie and not Anne. It seemed proper, somehow. He said, “I can understand any man not wanting to believe that girl was dead, and waiting for a letter from her all these years.”
“You men!” Helene said scornfully. “Annie Kendall was a bitch on wheels. The only thing she liked about Rodney Fairfaxx was his money, and everybody who liked him was greatly relieved when she went down on the Titanic. Maybe it did make him a little cracked, but at least he’s been better off than if she’d come back and married him.”
Malone muttered something in which women and cats were unflatteringly compared.
At this point, Mrs. Abby Lacy turned her small hard eyes on the little lawyer and said, “Well, Mr. Malone. What are you going to do about it?”
“Everything possible,” Malone said. “I assure you everything possible is being done to make Mr. Fairfaxx comfortable.”
She sniffed and said, “I consider Rodney Fairfaxx’ being in jail in the worst possible taste.”
“It’s a damn shame,” Malone said agreeably, “but only a few weeks ago the police department lost their copy of Emily Post.”
Uncle Ernie considered that very funny. Mrs. Lacy considered it to be nothing of the sort. She also considered Uncle Ernie to be a disgrace, and said so. Under cover of the resulting heated conversation, Malone slipped unnoticed across the room to Elizabeth Fairfaxx.
“I hate to abandon such an unusually pleasant gathering,” Malone said, “but it would help me tremendously if you’d show me around the grounds.”
She grinned. “I don’t like it here, either,” she said. “Wait a minute till I get a wrap.”
As they reached the bottom of the front steps, he said, “I really do want to look at the grounds, you know. And,” he added, “it really was a pleasant gathering.”
“I like you much better when you’re telling the truth, Mr. Malone,” she said. Suddenly her hazel eyes flashed. “I can’t bear the thought of Ken marrying that awful woman’s daughter.” She caught her breath and said it over again, “That awful woman’s awful daughter.”
“Maybe it’s love,” Malone said coyly. “Maybe she’s Miss Right.”
Elizabeth Fairfaxx expressed her opinion of that theory with a very unladylike noise.
“Of course,” Malone said, fishing for information, “you’ve probably known her a lot longer than I have.”
“I’ve know her all my life,” Elizabeth Fairfaxx said. “She was a repulsive little girl.”
“Was she on the hockey team at boarding school, too?” Malone asked. If so, he reflected, Helene might be able to provide still more personal information.
“She was,” Elizabeth Fairfaxx snapped. “And by that time,