Great Tales of Crime & Detection (1991) Anthology by Charles Ardai

Author:Charles Ardai [Ardai, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

IV

Max put in a dutiful appearance at the Michigan Avenue Presbyterian Church Monday afternoon for Lewis Caudwell’s funeral. The surgeon’s former wife came, flanked by her children and her husband’s brother Griffen. Even after three decades in America Max found himself puzzled sometimes by the natives’ behavior: since she and Caudwell were divorced, why had his ex-wife draped herself in black? She was even wearing a veiled hat reminiscent of Queen Victoria.

The children behaved in a moderately subdued fashion, but the girl was wearing a white dress shot with black lightning forks which looked as though it belonged at a disco or a resort. Maybe it was her only dress or her only dress with black in it, Max thought, trying hard to look charitably at the blonde Amazon—after all, she had been suddenly and horribly orphaned.

Even though she was a stranger both in the city and the church, Deborah had hired one of the church parlors and managed to find someone to cater coffee and light snacks. Max joined the rest of the congregation there after the service.

He felt absurd as he offered condolences to the divorced widow: did she really miss the dead man so much? She accepted his conventional words with graceful melancholy and leaned slightly against her son and daughter. They hovered near her with what struck Max as a stagey solicitude. Seen next to her daughter, Mrs. Caudwell looked so frail and undernourished that she seemed like a ghost. Or maybe it was just that her children had a hearty vitality that even a funeral couldn’t quench.

Caudwell’s brother Griffen stayed as close to the widow as the children would permit. The man was totally unlike the hearty seadog surgeon. Max thought if he’d met the brothers standing side by side he would never have guessed their relationship. He was tall, like his niece and nephew, but without their robustness. Caudwell had had a thick mop of yellow-white hair; Griffen’s domed head was covered by thin wisps of grey. He seemed weak and nervous, and lacked Caudwell’s outgoing bonhomie; no wonder the surgeon had found it easy to decide the disposition of their father’s estate in his favor. Max wondered what Griffen had gotten in return.

Mrs. Caudwell’s vague, disoriented conversation indicated that she was heavily sedated. That, too, seemed strange. A man she hadn’t lived with for four years and she was so upset at his death that she could only manage the funeral on drugs? Or maybe it was the shame of coming as the divorced woman, not a true widow? But then why come at all?

To his annoyance, Max found himself wishing he could ask Victoria about it. She would have some cynical explanation—Caudwell’s death meant the end of the widow’s alimony and she knew she wasn’t remembered in the will. Or she was having an affair with Griffen and was afraid she would betray herself without tranquilizers. Although it was hard to imagine the uncertain Griffen as the object of a strong passion.

Since

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