9

As usual when she was trying to solve a possible crime, Alvirah did not sleep the sleep of the just. From the time she and Willy turned out the light following the eleven o’clock news, which they had watched in bed, Alvirah was restless. She spent the next six hours dozing, her light sleep filled with vague, unsettling dreams; then she woke with a start.

Finally at five-thirty, deciding to take pity on Willy, who had frequently mumbled in his sleep, “Are you all right, honey?” she got up, put on her favorite old chenille robe, fastened on her sunburst pin with its tiny concealed recording microphone, got her pen and the tabbed notebook in which she kept the record of her ongoing investigations, made herself a cup of tea, settled down at the small dining table overlooking Central Park, turned on the microphone in her pin and began to think out loud.

“It’s not beyond Bessie, who was always a true stickler and pain in the neck about her house, to leave it to people who she thought would keep it up a certain way. I mean, it’s not as though she was throwing her sister out. After all, she did make sure that Kate would have the upstairs apartment, which is where she had planned to live anyway when she donated the ownership of the house to Home Base.”

Alvirah’s jaw jutted out unconsciously as she went on. “Bessie was never one to fall all over children, as I recall. In fact, I remember when someone asked her if she was sorry she hadn’t had a family, she said, ‘People with children and people without them feel sorry for each other.’

For a moment Alvirah paused, thinking how much she and Willy would have loved to have had a family. By now her grandchildren would probably be the age of the kids she’d seen yesterday at Home Base. She shook her head. Well, never mind. It wasn’t to be, she reminded herself briskly.

“So let’s assume,” she went on, “that Bessie really did get upset at the prospect of kids running around her precious house and getting finger marks on the walls and scratches on the woodwork, and, of course, by knowing that the furniture she’d been polishing since she went to work for the judge and his wife fifty years ago would be replaced by kids’ paraphernalia.”

Remembering to check the microphone, Alvirah pushed the STOP, REWIND and PLAY buttons, and listened for a moment to the tape.

It’s working, she told herself gratefully, and I sound as if I’m working up a head of steam. Well, Jam! she decided.

Clearing her throat, she resumed her indignant recital. “So the only real clue we have so far to show that this new will might be false is that Bessie was never known to use the word ‘pristine.’

She picked up her pen and turned to the next unused section of her loose-leaf notebook, the one that followed “The case of the death of Trinky Callahan.” At the top of the page, she wrote “The case of Bessie’s will,” then entered the first item in her investigation: “Use of the word ‘pristine.’

Now Alvirah began to write quickly. Witnesses to the will: Who were they? What were their backgrounds? Time: The will was signed November 30th. Did Kate meet the witnesses? What did she think was going on if she was there and they asked to see Bessie?

Now I’m using the old gray matter, Alvirah thought. She had recently been rereading Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot books. While working on the crimes she had helped to solve, she had tried to follow his method of deductive reasoning.

As she made the last entry in her plan of action, Alvirah looked at the clock: seven-thirty-time to close the notebook and turn off the microphone, she decided. Willy would be awake soon, and she wanted to have breakfast ready for him.

Then, sometime today, I have to sit down alone with Kate and go over these questions with her, she thought.

Suddenly another idea came to her, and she snapped the microphone on again. Since she had written that first article for the New York Globe about visiting Cypress Point Spa after winning the lottery, she and the editor there, Charley Evans, had become fast friends. He could get the lowdown on Vic and Linda Baker for her right away. “The little gray cells are really waking up,” she announced. “It’s time to get the Globe researchers to dig up the dirt on the Bakers. Dollars to donuts, this isn’t the first time that pair of phonies pulled a fast one.”

The 7:00 A.M. Mass at St. Clement’s usually had an attendance of about thirty people, mostly the older, retired parishioners. But now that it was the season of Advent, the number attending was at least double that. In his brief homily, Monsignor Ferris spoke about Advent as the season of waiting. “We are in the time when we anticipate the birth of the Savior,” he said. “We anticipate the moment in Bethlehem when Mary gazed for the first time at her infant Son.”

A faint sob from the congregation riveted his attention on the pew near the painting of Bishop Santori. The pretty young woman whom he had noticed earlier, standing across the street from the rectory, sat there. Her face was buried in her hands, and her shoulders were shaking. I have got to make her talk to me, he thought, but then he saw her reach into her purse, put on dark glasses and slip down the aisle and out the door.

At nine-thirty, Kate Durkin began going through everything left in her late sister’s room. It would be a crying shame just to leave Bessie’s clothes hanging in the closet when so many people need something to wear, she decided.

The four-poster bed which for eight years Bessie had shared with Judge Aloysius Maher, and from which she had gone to her Maker, seemed somehow to stand in silent reproach as Kate took dresses and jackets from the closet. Some of the items she recognized as being at least twenty years old. Bessie was always telling me that there was no point in giving them away, because maybe I could use them someday, Kate thought. What she didn’t seem to realize is that I’d have had to grow five inches for any of them to fit. It’s a wonder she didn’t leave them to Linda Baker too, she thought bitterly.

The memory of yesterday’s sudden revelations, and the surprise will, made Kate’s eyes fill. As she impatiently brushed away a tear and glanced at Bessie’s desk, the typewriter caught her eye. It seemed to her that there was something she should remember, but what was it?

She did not have time to think about what could have triggered her subconscious, however; having heard a sound behind her, she turned to find Vic and Linda standing in the doorway.

“Oh, Kate,” Linda said sweetly. “I’m so glad you’re clearing Bessie’s things out of the room for us.”

The downstairs bell rang. “I’ll get it,” Vic Baker announced.

You’re not taking over yet, Kate said to herself as she quickly followed him down the stairs.

A moment later, Kate saw the welcome sight of Alvirah on the front steps and heard her ask, “Is Kate Durkin, the lady of the house, on these pristine premises?”