The Late Clara Beame Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t want to commit a sin, filling you with superstitions, Mrs. Frazier. There! Evelyn’s just turning out of the garage! Snow’s hubcap deep. Good thing he put on the chains or he’d never make it to the dee-pot.”
    “Mrs. Daley, I forgot to tell you and Edith, that there’s a gentleman coming for Christmas too. John Carr. A client of Mr. Frazier’s.” She paused. “You don’t suppose, do you, that there’s something — well, wrong — with Mr. Carr?”
    “Oh, I’ve got you all worried.” Mrs. Daley’s plump face flushed with embarrassment. “You mustn’t listen to me. Honest.” She struggled with herself, but lost. “It was the day before you fell off that broken swing, Mrs. Frazier. I’d gone into the living room to check up on that girl’s dusting, and I just felt Miss Beame there. I turned around and said right out loud: ‘Yes, ma’am?’ It was like she’d called me. And I got so blue and frightened that I couldn’t sleep that night. And the next day you had that accident.”
    Laura was suddenly apprehensive. “You don’t suppose, with this storm, that Mr. Frazier might have an accident, driving home from the station tonight, and Aunt Clara — I mean, could she be warning me?”
    “Miss Beame never cared for nobody but you and your mother,” Mrs. Daley pointed out in a dry tone. “She never met Mr. Frazier now, did she?”
    Laura was relieved. So long as nothing threatened Henry all would be well. She went back to the living room, where firelight and lamplight waited for her. Her eyes were suddenly drawn to her aunt’s chair. “Aunt Clara?” she whispered. “Are you here?”
    The sense of someone being in the room with her increased, and she shivered. “I wish you could tell me and I could hear,” she said, aloud. Then she started violently. Edith, Mrs. Daley’s niece, smiled at her a trifle derisively from the doorway. “You want the tea when the guests come, ma’am?” she asked.
    “Yes.” Laura was annoyed at the girl’s smile. What a fool she must think I am. “That is, for me. Mrs. Bulowe likes very dry martinis. And Mr. Gates always prefers bourbon. They don’t care for tea.”
    “Maybe sherry for you, ma’am?” Edith asked demurely. She was a tall, thin girl, and very plain.
    “I don’t like sherry,” Laura told her, annoyed. “And I’ll wait for martinis, myself, until Mr. Frazier gets home.” Laura rarely used a peremptory tone with servants, as she respected them too much. Edith inclined her head with exaggeration and mock humility, and disappeared. Oh dear, Laura thought, I wonder what I’ve done to make that girl despise me so?
    In the kitchen, Edith said to Mrs. Daley: “I told you she was crazy. I caught her talking to an empty chair, and asking it to tell her something.”
    “You’re crazy, yourself!” Mrs. Daley said angrily. She shivered. If Edith had not been in the room she would have crossed herself. “Get out the glasses they’ll need, and keep your mouth shut. What you’ve got against Mrs. Frazier, and she always so good and kind to everybody, I don’t know.”
    “She’s dumb,” Edith said.
    “What do you mean?”
    Edith giggled. “Oh, I got my way of finding out things. She couldn’t see anything if it came up and hit her in the face.” She refused to explain. If she weren’t kin, Mrs. Daley told herself, I’d discharge her on the spot.
    Laura watched lights flicker ominously in the living room. She hoped Evelyn had stacked the woodshed high with logs, and not left the wood outside in the snow. There was no sound from the kitchen. The sky darkened steadily as the storm grew worse. Then the telephone rang, and Laura ran to it gratefully. She heard her husband’s cheerful voice.
    “Darling, the storm’s bad in New York, and I can imagine what it’s doing up there. So, I’m taking the 3:30 home. You’d better send Evelyn with your car, with chains on it. I know I won’t be able to move mine from the