Jane Carter Investigates: Episode Sixty-Nine
“You see, Jane,” my father said,
“wealthy people have a way of being inaccessible to the press. They surround
themselves with servants who have been trained to allow no invasion of their
privacy. They erect barriers which aren’t easily broken down.”
“If only I could have reached
Miss Furstenberg, I feel sure she would have wished to learn about the ring,” I
said. “Oh, well, let Jack cover the story. I’ve lost interest.”
For the rest of the morning, I
felt grummy. I was so completely out of sorts that I would scowl at my
reflection whenever I passed a mirror. Nothing seemed to go right.
I tried to write, but
Evangeline—the heroine of my current serial for Pittman’s All-Story Weekly—had awakened from the dread delirium
she’d been under for the last installment and a half and this was causing me
serious problems.
I’d been informed by Mr.
Pittman—the man who writes the checks financing these little literary efforts
of mine—that the readers of Pittman’s
All-Story Weekly preferred a rather more ladylike heroine than the ones I’d
been producing of late. I was explicitly forbidden to allow Evangeline the
pleasure of inflicting any sort of bodily harm on the villain, regardless of
provocation. Inflicting bodily harm on dastardly villains, I’d been informed by
Mr. Pittman, was the job of the worthy heroes.
I threw a tennis ball against the
wall in my bedroom to aid thought, but to no avail, so I went downstairs,
bouncing the tennis ball on each step as I went. I found Mrs. Timms in the
kitchen making a curry and saffron rice.
“Get another box from your sister?” I asked.
Mrs. Timms nodded. Our
housekeeper’s sister, Henrietta, is married to a diplomat stationed in
Calcutta. Henrietta has made it her mission in life to spice up her sister’s
life—literally. This is how we came to
have curry three times a week.
“Having trouble with your story?”
Mrs. Timms asked, looking pointedly at the tennis ball. When I was younger,
Mrs. Timms had a strict no-balls-of-any-kind in the kitchen rule, but since
I’ve grown to a woman’s estate, she rarely actually says anything anymore.
“So far,” I told Mrs. Timms,
“I’ve written my murderous-horse-thief-masquerading-as-an-upstanding-rancher
villain to his secret cave and back. The villain has plenty to do, and so does
the hero, but I’m afraid that poor Evangeline is going to end up spending the
next thirty-six pages doing nothing but pleading with her pea-brained father
not to marry her off to the dastardly villain.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of
something,” said Mrs. Timms.
“And,” I added, “Jack went back
to the Furstenberg estate this morning without me.”
“I declare, I wish you would
forget that silly wedding,” Mrs. Timms said wearily. “Why don’t you try using a
racket to work out your resentment on that tennis ball?”
“Not a bad idea,” I admitted.
“Only I have no partner, and don’t think of suggesting Albert Layman. I don’t
want to have to listen to that Airedale drone on about how I can make my
fortune in thirty days with super-solid-silver-derivative bonds, or whatever it
is he’s on to these days.”
“Is there such a thing as
super-solid-silver-derivative bonds?” asked Mrs. Timms.
“Alright, I made that part up,” I
admitted. “But whatever he’d have to say would be the same in principle.”
“What about Florence?” Mrs. Timms
suggested. “It’s not her day to work at the library.”
“Florence is going away somewhere
today to a charity bazaar.”
“Here in Greenville?” inquired
Mrs. Timms.
“No, it’s to be held at Andover,
twenty miles from Sunnydale. Florence is going with her mother. She invited me
several days ago, but I didn’t think it would be any fun.”
“You might enjoy it better than
moping around here. Why don’t you go?”
I weighed my options. I could
spend another three hours writing Evangeline into a state of hysterical
compliance to her idiot father’s ill-conceived wishes, or I could go to
Andover. I chose Andover.
“I wonder if it isn’t too late?” I said as I glanced at the clock.
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