Rose's Last Summer [= The Lively Corpse]

8

Rose’s funeral — paid for not by Willett or the County Administrator, but by Dalloway — was held in Malgradi’s chapel on Friday afternoon. The solemnity of the occasion was marred by several small incidents which Rose herself might have thoroughly enjoyed.

In the first place no one knew what minister to ask to conduct the services, since Rose’s attendance at church had been limited to getting married, and she had left no will containing funeral instructions. Still no decision had been reached by noon, so Malgradi called a conference in his office. Malgradi liked conferences and he invited everyone he could think of who might be concerned with Rose’s send-off: Greer, who declined without reason; the County Administrator, who said the estate was now out of his hands and he had no jurisdiction or interest; and Frank and Dalloway, who accepted the invitation.

Dalloway was in a difficult mood. He said that he thought a religious service was unnecessary, inasmuch as Rose had been an atheist when he knew her and probably still was when she died.

Malgradi made protesting little noises, like an alarmed rabbit. “If she was an atheist, all the more reason why we should give her a boost.”

“You asked my opinion. I gave it.”

“Perhaps, as a girl, she was baptized? Or confirmed?”

“Never.”

It was finally decided, under Frank’s guidance, that they choose the minister in a fair and impartial way, by looking through the yellow pages of the phone book until they found a likely-sounding name. The Reverend Pickering was selected because Pickering was the name of Malgradi’s mother-in-law.

Pickering was sent for in a hurry and given a brief resumé of Rose’s career and character. The choice turned out to be somewhat unfortunate. The Reverend was quite elderly, his eyesight was poor and the lights in Malgradi’s chapel where Rose was resting were dim and flattering. Through this combination of circumstances, Pickering got the impression that Rose was a young woman, and having no time to prepare anything new, he fell back on his cut-off-in-the-flower-of-her-youth eulogy.

Sensing disaster, Malgradi immediately stepped up the volume of the organ music to drown Pickering out, or at least soften the discrepancies. Pickering was a hard man to drown. He had competed during his lifetime with epidemics of coughs and whispers, squalls of babies, giggles of choir boys, and even personal attacks in the form of spitballs from the gallery and peashooters from the vestry. He had no intention of giving ground to a mere organ.

By shouts and pantomime he indicated to the rather dazed audience that Rose was a flower and only the fairest flowers were plucked to grace the garden of the infinite.

Hearing this, Mrs. Cushman, who had arrived late and taken a seat in the back row, assumed that she had somehow come to the wrong funeral and she immediately rustled out again to look for the right one.

“Let us pray,” Pickering said, and pray he did, for the soul of this lovely young woman to enter the eternal glory and eternal youth.

Malgradi did his best. He coughed, shuffled his feet, and under cover of his hand, made faces at a small boy on the aisle in the faint hope that the boy would become frightened and start screaming and all hell would break loose. The boy merely stuck out his tongue at Malgradi in a friendly way and refocused his attention on Pickering.

Malgradi could stand the agony no longer. He slipped out into the corridor. Here he met Mrs. Cushman who had been wandering in and out of rooms finding out a good deal about the embalming business. The experience had unnerved her and left her quite unprepared to cope with this sudden meeting.

“Eeeee,” Mrs. Cushman said, and made a frantic beeline for the nearest door, which happened to be that of the chapel. So she didn’t miss Rose’s funeral after all.

It was, on the whole, exactly the kind of funeral Rose would have liked, since it left everyone in a state of confusion. Pickering finally exhausted himself and sat down; Malgradi locked himself in his office and took two stiff drinks of the sherry he kept to revive female mourners attacked by fainting spells; and Dalloway remarked sourly to the man sitting next to him that the whole thing had been a farce.

The man next to him happened to be Willett. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said it was a farce.”

Willett’s eyes were rimmed with pink and a little swollen. Willett often cried on melancholy occasions and at sad movies while Ethel chewed gum.

He gave Dalloway a cold look. “A farce, sir? I don’t agree.”

“You’re Mr. Goodfield, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“My name is Haley Dalloway. I was hoping I might meet you here today.”

“You were? Well... that is... this is my wife, Ethel. Ethel, Mr. Dalloway.”

Ethel parked her gum deftly beside a molar and acknowledged the introduction with a dreamy smile. She knew who Dalloway was and she tried to warn Willett by kicking him quite smartly on the left shinbone, a gesture that produced no reaction from Willett except pain.

“The fact is,” Dalloway said, “I’m not satisfied with the results of the inquest. Are you?”

“I... well, I haven’t thought about it. I mean to say, it’s not my business.”

“Justice is everybody’s business.”

“Oh, quite, quite. But—”

“I have a strong suspicion that there’s foul play involved and that it’s being hushed up.”

“Do you really think so?” Ethel murmured. “Isn’t that interesting.”

“It’s more than interesting. I think something should be done about it.”

“Willett would be just thrilled to do something, wouldn’t you, Willett?”

Willett denied this with some vigor. “I would not. For heaven’s sake, Ethel, I’m not a policeman, I’m a businessman.”

“So am I,” Dalloway said. “My business is lumber. What’s yours, Mr. Goodfield?”

“Dolls. That is, we manufacture dolls. The Horace Goodfield Doll Corporation of California.”

“Let me explain my interest. You see, Rose French was my first wife and the mother of my daughter. I came here looking for them.” Dalloway paused a moment. “Do you know a young man called Frank Clyde?”

“I believe I... yes, yes, he was one of the witnesses yesterday.”

“He has a curious story to tell. Would you like to hear it?”

“No,” Willett said decisively. “I mean to say, this isn’t the time or place—”

“Clyde claims he talked to Rose on the telephone a couple of hours after she died. Now Clyde seems to me to be a very sensible young fellow. It isn’t likely that he was mistaken about the time, no matter what the jury decided. But it’s quite possible that he was mistaken about the voice.”

“Voice?”

“On the telephone. It’s my conviction that he didn’t talk to Rose at all, but to an impostor. Someone, for reasons I can’t fathom, imitated Rose on the telephone.”

“Isn’t that interesting,” Ethel said. “Well, we’d better be leaving now, everybody else is. It’s been so nice meeting you, Mr. Dalloway, and we hope you’ll come out to the house and see us sometime, don’t we, Willett?”

Willett didn’t answer.

“Don’t we, Willett?”

“Oh, certainly, by all means.” Willett reached underneath the folding chair for his hat. “Be delighted.”

People had started to file out, talking quietly among themselves. In five minutes they were all gone. Malgradi cut the organ music, paid the Reverend Pickering off in cash and harsh words, and went in to see Rose. He stood beside the casket with his hands clasped and his head bowed.

“Please excuse the bungling, dear Lord, and accept this woman into your heavenly kingdom where she may see the light that she did not see on earth. Thank you. Amen.”