“The Misses Warshed should be good enough for anyone here, shouldn’t they?” he said blandly, and she would have sworn that he struggled to hide his malicious enjoyment of a private joke.
However, she now had an unimpeachable reason for re-opening the subject with Aunt Flo.
“We were mistaken,” Aunt Flo said with tight lips. “It’s terribly easy to forget things after twenty years, especially when you get to be my age. But of course we knew Mr Powls back in Kansas City. I hope you’ll be able to put out of your mind the things I said about him the other day, because it’s most embarrassing to me to think that I could have been so wrong.”
She was very gallant, very much the grande dame. Beside her, the sisters nodded in docile corroboration.
“Then I can take it that he’s all right — I mean, he’ll be good for the rent, and all that sort of thing?”
“Yes, dear, he will be.”
“What kind of business was he in, in Kansas City?”
Violet and Ida looked at each other, and then mutely at Aunt Flo, leaving her to answer.
“He was a general business man,” Aunt Flo said firmly. “He was mixed up in lots of big deals. I don’t profess to understand these things that men get involved in. But he was very successful.”
“He was a big spender, too,” Ida put in.
Violet nodded. And that was all they had to say. Which in itself was strange enough, for normally they loved to gossip about people — of course in the nicest way.
Mr Powls himself was no more communicative when Kathleen tried to question him.
“I’ve been in and out of so many things,” he said, with a carefully impressive air of modesty in his vagueness. “Buying and selling — importing and exporting — stocks and bonds. But I’m retired now. So it would bore me as much to tell you my life story as you’d be bored listening to it. And it doesn’t really matter, does it? You only want to be sure that I won’t have wild parties or move out with the landlord’s furniture, and I know the Misses Warshed have vouched for that.”
She did not know how to press the question further without seeming gratuitously impertinent.
“So,” she told the Saint, “he’s been here ever since. He pays his rent on the dot, and he takes good care of the place. He asked me to get him a cleaning woman to come in once a week, so I was able to check on that through her. Sometimes I see him around town, and he’s always perfectly at ease and polite. Perhaps he is just a retired business man leading a quiet bachelor life, but—”
Simon drew another circle on his card.
“Presumably he pays the rent by check — you wouldn’t have thought of making any inquiries at his bank?”
She actually giggled.
“Touché. That’s how horribly inquisitive I can be when I start. I told them I’d been asked to get a bank reference on him, but between what they didn’t know and what they weren’t allowed to say I didn’t get very much. But his account is quite small, and he mostly deposits cash.”
The Saint’s brows suddenly drew together.
“Cash? You have an item there.”
“That’s what I thought. He isn’t working in any job that I know of.”
“Does he see much of the Warsheds, since they’ve decided they know him?”
“I’ve seen, him at their house twice,” Kathleen said. “They invite me sometimes, when they have a little party. You wouldn’t think they’d want an extra girl, but they’re very considerate about things like that, and if for any reason they’ve got a man coming who’s younger than any of them, they beg me to come and prove that they aren’t ganging up on him themselves. Well, each time, it was obvious that the idea was to help Mr Powls meet some local people. And yet I just knew that they weren’t a bit happy about it. Not that they didn’t try to do it well. In fact, they were trying too hard — they were much too busy and eager and chattery, even for them. As if they were under a frightful strain and trying to cover up. And yet he wasn’t pointing a gun at them, like the gangsters did at the family in that movie.”
“There are metaphorical guns, too,” Simon said. “How did the Creep behave?”
“Just like anybody else. Only he kept making me think of a cat watching a cage of birds, I suppose by this time you’re convinced that I’m thoroughly neurotic and—”
The Saint said, abruptly, “Bingo!”
He stood up, waving his card.
“Would you bring your card up here, please,” said Aunt Flo.
Kathleen recovered from her momentary blankness and went to the dais with him to introduce him.
“A friend of yours? How nice, dear,” said Aunt Flo, nevertheless checking the numbers which the Saint had ringed with the emotionless efficiency of a seasoned cashier. “Yes, this is right.” She said into her microphone, “We have a winner, girls. Pick up the old cards, and we’ll start a new game.” She counted out fifty dollars from a partitioned tray in front of her, and gave them to the Saint, and said, “Congratulations, Mr Templeton. Are you having a good time?”
“So good that it doesn’t seem right to make a profit of it.” Simon shuffled the prize money, put half of it in his pocket, refolded the rest, and held it out to the old lady. “May I put this back in the fund, as a donation?”
“You’re very generous. That’s the kind of man to look for, Kathleen, dear — one who has fun with his money.” She looked at the Saint again with her keen bright eyes, for the first time as if she were seeing him personally. “And this is a real man, too. I can tell. If I were forty years younger, I’d be after him myself.”
“You don’t have to be a day younger, Aunt Flo,” said the Saint genially. “I’m a charter member of the Chesterfield Club.”
The little color that was in Miss Warshed’s face drained out, leaving it a white mask in which the discreetly applied rouge over her cheeks stood out like patches of raw paint. Her lips quivered, and she held on to the table, as if to steady herself in her chair, so tightly that even her knuckles and fingertips blanched under the pressure.
“I don’t think I quite follow that,” she said.
“Oh, hadn’t you heard of it?” said the Saint innocently, apparently unaware even of the bewildered way that Kathleen looked from Aunt Flo to him. “Lord Chesterfield was an English pundit who was rated pretty hippy a hundred or two years ago. He gave his name to the sofa but not to the cigarette, He also wrote a series of letters to his son, full of profound advice and wisdom, which were published in book form and bestowed by doting parents on Heaven knows how many other equally bored young men. One of his best remembered tips was that older ladies were the best ones to fall in love with, because they appreciated it so much more. I’ve always been a rooter for his club for that.”
Aunt Flo relaxed quite slowly.
“Indeed.” Her lips cracked in a smile, but her eyes were still haunted. “For a moment I simply couldn’t imagine what you were talking about. That’s very charming. And so true. But I’m sure the young ones already appreciate you more than it’s good for you. Are you staying here long?”
“Only a day or two.”
“I’m sorry — it was nice meeting you.”
She gave him her hand, all graciousness and poise again, and by then it was hard to believe that only a few seconds ago she had seemed to be transfixed with stark terror.
“What on earth is this Chesterfield Club business?” Kathleen demanded as soon as they were at a safe distance.
“You heard me,” Simon said. “As a student of all the great philosophers and bores—”
“Don’t give me that,” she said. “I saw what it did to her when you first mentioned it.”
Simon handed over a dollar in exchange for two ice-cream cones which were being practically forced into their hands. He gave his to the first infant that passed, who promptly squashed it on its mother’s best afternoon dress.