Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 1. Whole No. 767, July 2005
- Автор: Купер Наташа, Майерс Эми
- Год: 2005
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 1054-8122
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 1. Whole No. 767, July 2005». Краткое содержание книги:
Not until he was back at his room at the Delahoy Street rooming house where he lodged and changing from his dark work pants into the jeans he habitually wore did he realize what he had done, or forgotten to do. He would turn the wallet in next day. Still, he was not without curiosity. In the blue leather wallet he found forty-seven dollars in bills and a card identifying the owner as a Ramona Lerch with a phone number and address, 24 Stoneham Avenue Villas, and a dog-eared snapshot of a thin-faced man with fair hair.
Would it not be proper, he reasoned, to phone the owner and let her know her wallet had been found? Which is what he did from the pay phone downstairs in the hall.
The phone rang at least ten times before a woman, sounding out of breath, answered. Tyler asked for Ramona Lerch.
“This is Ramona. Who is this?”
“My name is Tyler Berlinghoff, ma’am.” He was always politely spoken. “Did you lose a wallet? A blue leather wallet?”
“Not that I’m aware — hold on a sec.” Another lengthy delay. “Mercy, yes. I didn’t even know it. Where did you find it?”
“In the Golden Griddle Café where I work. I was going to turn it in but thought maybe I’d better give you a call.”
“How awfully sweet. Listen, dear. I’m a virtual cripple. Would it be terribly inconvenient for you to bring it to me? Of course I’d give you something for your trouble.”
“That’s okay, ma’am. No trouble.”
After a light supper Tyler mounted his Harley and followed the woman’s directions on how to reach Stoneham Avenue Villas, which turned out to be a development of large Spanish-style houses perhaps forty or more years old on the western fringe of Unionville. Seen up close, Number 24 showed signs of long neglect, peeling stucco and paint and untrimmed shrubbery, mostly rhododendron and hydrangea.
Tyler knocked at the door and waited, waited so long he began to wonder if Ramona Lerch might not be home. But finally the door opened.
“Do forgive me, dear,” the woman said. “I’m not so quick on my pins since my accident.” She supported herself on two canes. “You must be Mr. Berlinghoff.”
“I brought your wallet, ma’am.”
Ramona Lerch told him to go through into the living room, not to wait for her. Tyler looked about him with interest. Chairs and a massive sofa cushioned in worn brown mohair. Tables loaded with knickknacks of no more value than carnival prizes. A row of china dolls in soiled lace garments lined the fireplace mantel. A faded Axminster carpet showed spots of damp where the black-beamed ceiling might have leaked. Once-white plaster walls were threaded with fine lines of cobweb.
Tyler was aware of a faint smell, a mixture of scents: dead lilies, stale incense, the mustiness of long-unventilated space. Streaks of dust coated the pleats of moss-green velvet curtains closed as if to conceal the overall dinginess.
Ramona Lerch herself projected a similar impression of careless disregard for appearances. The once-red wig she wore looked as faded as the dolls’ hair, her dress might have been the same vintage as the doll clothes, her puffy face above double chins might have been painted by the same brush as the garishly colored doll faces.
Tyler handed her the wallet. “Everything’s there,” he said.
“Of course it is,” she replied with the same candor, “or you wouldn’t have returned it. Few young men would be as honest. You’re a sweetheart.” With that she opened the wallet and extracted a twenty-dollar bill. “For your trouble, dear, with my gratitude.”
Tyler protested. Ramona Lerch insisted. Tyler pocketed the bill, happy now that he hadn’t turned the wallet in at the café. “Thanks a lot, Mrs. Lerch.”
“Miss Lerch, actually. Ramona to my friends — and chance acquaintances as sweet as you, dear. Now sit you down and tell me all about yourself.”
There was little to tell, but Ramona Lerch listened to the scant details with rapt attention, studying Tyler’s face as if it could tell her more than his few stumbling words. When he finished, she continued to contemplate him with frank approval.
“Now let me ask you something, Tyler. I won’t be at all put out if you say no, truly I won’t. There’s a sad task I must have done, and as you can see, I’m in no shape to do it myself. It’s Pussky, you see. My darling cat. My sole companion, aside from Mr. Chambers, a dear departed friend.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Long departed, not dead. But that’s another story. Pussky died a week ago, from some feline complaint. She must be buried. Would you do me that service, that very great favor?”
“Well...” Tyler was uncertain how to respond. “Where is the cat now? I mean...”
“I removed the silver from Mama’s silver chest. Plush-lined, it is, just the right size for a kitty coffin. I had in mind a grave under the catalpa tree out back, but as it is...”
Never dreaming that his finding the blue leather wallet could lead to such a bizarre request, Tyler asked Ramona Lerch how she had injured herself.
She dabbed at her amber-speckled eyes with a grubby lace handkerchief. “I was fetching something from the kitchen and, clumsy me, didn’t I trip over poor Pussky. Went down like a ton of bricks on both knees. They’re bad enough as it is. Arthritis, osteoporosis, you name it. Somehow I struggled to my feet, but since then I’ve been a virtual cripple. Bless the Lord I had Daddy’s canes or I’d be totally helpless.”
“Was there no one to lend a hand?” Tyler asked.
“Not a soul on God’s green earth. As it is, I’ve been alone and all but housebound for years. I was not about to call Mr. Chambers, thank you very much. He’d probably have thought it was a trick to get him over here. Once upon a time, wild horses couldn’t have kept him away. And then, to add misery to misfortune, poor Pussky passed away on the kitchen floor. She can’t stay in the pantry forever. She must be given a decent burial. My dear boy, I’d be ever so grateful if you’d do me this favor.”
“In the backyard, you said?”
“Under the catalpa tree. There’s all you’d need in the toolshed. Do please say you’ll do it.”
Well, why not? He had all the time in the world and he was feeling genuinely sorry for Ramona Lerch. He promised he would come back next day after work.
“You’re an angel. I shan’t be ungenerous.”
Tyler rode home feeling very pleased with himself. Ordinarily he was less inclined to daydream than most young men of his age and circumstances, yet living as he did on the fringe of poverty, with little to distinguish one day from another, he took it in mind that the finding of the blue leather wallet might have fateful consequences. Suppose Ramona Lerch were to continue to depend on him. She said herself that she was all but helpless. Inside and out, the house was in dire need of attention. Everything appeared to be in a state of rapidly advancing dilapidation. That he might become indispensable to Ramona Lerch was a pleasant prospect to contemplate as he lay in bed in his cramped room at the rooming house.
This fantasy occupied his thoughts as he took off for Stoneham Avenue Villas the following afternoon.
“I was so afraid you wouldn’t come,” exclaimed Ramona Lerch, resting heavily on her two canes. “Then I would have been in a fix.”
“I promised I’d be here, didn’t I?”
Ramona made her way to the back porch where, leaning on the rail, she pointed out the spot under the catalpa tree at the far end of the lawn, unmowed in many a summer from the look of it, where she wanted Tyler to dig Pussky’s grave. With a spade from the toolshed Tyler neatly excavated a site into which to lower the silver-chest coffin, encircled with a pink silk ribbon tied in an elaborate bow.