Rose's Last Summer [= The Lively Corpse]

7

Over a cup of hot, strong tea in Mrs. Cushman’s front parlor, Frank heard considerably more about Mrs. Cushman’s trials and tribulations with life in general and Rose in particular.

It appeared that, for the entire week before her death, Rose had been acting secrety.

“Now if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s secrety people,” Mrs. Cushman explained, “people that go around all the time without telling other people what they’re thinking or doing. To give credit where credit is due, Rose wasn’t always secrety.”

“Just for that one week,” Frank prompted.

“Well, no. It began quite a while ago but the past week especially, I knew something was on her mind besides men and liquor. Men and liquor I could understand, knowing Rose, but this going out all the time and not telling a soul where she’d been, that worried me. And always dressed up, too, fit to kill.”

“She might have had a date with a man.”

“I thought of that, first thing. Only can you imagine a woman like Rose having a date and not bragging about it all over the place? Bragging was Rose’s worst fault, God rest her soul, except for vanity. Rose was vain as they come. Why, many’s the time she’s taken up the whole supper hour telling about how this man ogled her on the street and that man tried to pick her up at a bus stop. It was disgusting, at her age. And speaking of age, did you hear what that Dr. Severn said at the inquest? He said Rose was between 60 and 65. She claimed she was only 52. That goes to show, don’t it?”

Frank wasn’t sure what it went to show, but he nodded.

Mrs. Cushman took the nod as a sign of approval and encouragement. The fact was that, while Rose was alive, Mrs. Cushman had always been a little afraid of her. She had thought many nasty thoughts about Rose which she couldn’t put into words because Rose was armed against attack not only by past prestige but by a present tongue as sharp as a razor. Now that Rose had no chance for a rebuttal or a return match, Mrs. Cushman for the first time felt free to speak her mind. Frank was the perfect audience, quiet, interested, and of the opposite sex.

“I’m not bitter, never’ve been bitter but when she started going out all the time and wouldn’t play canasta anymore — not that she could play canasta any better than a six-year-old child, she had no head for figures. I often had to let her win just so’s she’d keep her temper and wouldn’t walk out on the game.”

Frank covered his amusement with a little cough. He had heard a good deal about these canasta games from Rose. In Rose’s version Mrs. Cushman was an unmitigated cheat who would stop at nothing to win a paltry game of cards.

“I could beat her with my eyes closed and my hands tied behind my back,” Mrs. Cushman said briskly. “More tea?”

“No thanks.”

“I’ll take a drop more myself. Rose couldn’t stand tea. One of her husbands was an Englishman and after that she couldn’t stand tea.”

“About these excursions of hers—”

“Well, like I said, she went out every morning after breakfast all dressed up. A couple of times I asked her, I said, Rose, are you going shopping? She said yes, she was, but when she came home she didn’t have any parcels so I knew she hadn’t been shopping. Besides, there was nothing new in her room when I went to clean it up.” Mrs. Cushman flushed, but only slightly and momentarily. “Maybe you think I oughtn’t to of gone through her things, but if I didn’t clean up once in a while, who would? And anyway she was behind in her rent and I thought, well, if she’s got enough money to go shopping she’s got enough money to pay her rent. So I just checked to make sure. She had no new clothes, no new anything except a lipstick from the dime store and a whole bunch of maps.”

“Maps?”

“Yes, maps, and I don’t wonder you’re flabbergasted. So was I. It was the first notion I had that she was planning a trip somewhere. There must of been twenty maps altogether, of different parts of the country and of different cities.”

“Were they new?”

“Brand new, like she’d just suddenly decided to go away someplace and got a whole bunch of maps from a travel agency.”

“Did you ask her about them?”

“In a sort of way, I did. I said, Rose, are you thinking of going on a trip? And she gave me one of those sly secrety looks and said, my dear Blanche, one never knows what the future holds in store for one.”

“Did she seem pleased?”

“Pleased as punch, but trying not to show it. The thing is, where would she get the money for a trip?”

That was the thing all right, but as yet it had no shape, size or identity. Frank said, “Rose was an impulsive creature. If she did decide to take a trip, I can’t picture her planning it carefully with a lot of maps.”

“Impulsive, that’s the word all right. Whatever Rose wanted to do she did, and it always seemed right to her at the time she was doing it. Later when it was all over she could look back and see her mistakes and admit them. But at the time she always thought she was right.”

“That’s a good analysis.”

Mrs. Cushman flushed and said shortly, “It’s not mine. Rose said it about herself.”

Frank was not surprised. Rose had admitted her faults with the cheerful unconcern of someone who has no intention of trying to change them. This is me, Rose said, in effect. This is what I did and why I did it and tomorrow I may do it again.

He said, “What did she do on Sunday after I left?”

“Stayed in her room for a while. About two o’clock she had a phone call and right after that off she went, looking kind of worried.”

“Who took the call?”

“She did. When the phone rang, she came running down the steps like a bat out of hell, shouting, it’s for me, I’ll get it. That’s not the first time it happened, either. You see now what I mean about her acting secrety?”

“Yes.”

“There’s more, too. Last week — Wednesday it was, I remember distinctly — Wednesday night Miss Henderson came home from work and said she’d seen Rose walking by herself out on the breakwater. Now you know Rose, she just hated the ocean, never had a good word to say for it. What was she doing out there?”

“Meeting someone, perhaps.”

“Exactly what I thought. Exactly. So the next morning at breakfast I said to her, meaning to be funny, I said, well, I didn’t know you was so fond of physical culture, Miss French, that you go prancing up and down the breakwater of an evening. You know what she did then? — told me to mind my own business. And that’s not all. She said if a lot more people did a lot more walking, they wouldn’t get fat as pigs. Meaning me. Real venomous she said it.” Mrs. Cushman reached for her tea as an antidote. “I’ve taken a lot of things from that woman, but that was the unkindliest blow of all because it so happens that I’ve lost two pounds in the last month. If you’re born skinny the way Rose was, it’s no credit to stay skinny.”

Frank, who was born skinny, agreed. He ate like a horse and Miriam gained weight.

“Well, I oughtn’t to take up your time like this,” Mrs. Cushman said. “But I just felt I had to tell somebody about how peculiar she was acting.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“I didn’t want to go to the police, it’s no place for a respectable woman.”

“I suppose they came here to look at her room?”

“They did, Tuesday afternoon before supper. Rose had left a lot of stuff behind and they went through it. But it was all just junk that she was too lazy to throw away, left it for me to clean up.”

“Did you clean it up?”

“No, they wouldn’t let me. They said I had to wait till after the inquest. Well, the inquest’s over.” Mrs. Cushman rose, giving her skirt a decisive little tug. “I might as well get at it.”

“Perhaps I could be of some help.”

“You? Well, I don’t know. It’s real nice of you to offer.”

“I didn’t offer out of niceness. I’m more curious about Rose than you are.”

“It’s funny how she had that effect on people. You sort of couldn’t believe she was real, and then she turned out to be realer than anybody, you know?”

“Yes, I know.” It was the same conclusion he and Miriam had reached, put into different words. Frank preferred Mrs. Cushman’s: Rose was realer than anybody.

He followed Mrs. Cushman up the stairs. She paused at the top and glanced uneasily over her shoulder, as if she half-suspected that the footsteps behind her were not Frank’s.

“I don’t relish the thought of going through her things,” she said in a whisper. “It was all right when she was alive. But a dead person’s things are creepy, they make you wonder what it’s all about.”

Mrs. Cushman didn’t get her chance to wonder. Rose’s room was locked, and the door was triple-sealed, across the keyhole and at the top and bottom, with identical printed notices: Sealed by order of the County Administrator.