Free China Jewel by Thomas Hollyday Page A

the person Katy sought. Cutter pressed the doorbell and heard a buzzer sound inside.
    As he waited he studied the neighborhood. Past their car he could only see a little of the beach. He spotted a large red tanker heading in to New York oil terminals.
    The door squeaked open a crack. A thin elderly woman, her glasses down on her nose, peeked out nervously.
    “What you want?” she said in a high pitched voice, her arms poised to slam the door shut.
    “Are you Mary Tolchester?” Cutter asked.
    “I’m her neighbor. She’s down the hall. I heard her buzzer ringing so I came.”
    “Is she here?”
    “I always answer for her. She’s there but she don’t come out. I don’t like to hear the door ring too long. It gives me bad headaches.”
    “Can we come in?”
    She appraised Katy, then Cutter. She relaxed, apparently satisfied they meant her no harm. She said, “You wait now, mister. I’ll go and see.” The woman closed the door, then quickly opened it. “What’s the name? I’ll tell her.”
    Katy told her. The woman snorted, turned and closed the door again. They waited on the porch. A small dog had arrived and nibbled at Cutter’s shoe.
    “You’ve got a friend,” said Katy.
    Cutter smiled. The door opened again. The woman peeked out and asked Katy, “Are you the lady from the museum?”
    “Yes, Ma’am.”
    “Well, she says you can come in. Bring your man with you.”
    “OK,” Katy grinned. “Let’s go, man of mine,” she chuckled and pulled Cutter behind her. The woman closed the door after them. The hall was dark and smelled of burned food.
    “We keep the lights off to hide the roaches,” the woman explained. “Mary’s door is the last one on the left. You just walk toward her light coming under the door. She don’t ever turn off her light. Says she’ll die when it goes off.”
    Katy reached the Tolchester apartment and knocked quickly. A rasping voice answered, “That you, Doctor Marbury?”
    “Yes, it is.”
    A big woman, the fat folds of her body overflowing a corroded and worn wheelchair in which she sat, pulled the door open slightly. She asked, “Who’s the man with you?”
    “I’m Jim Cutter. I’m helping Doctor Marbury.”
    “Oh,” she peered at him running her eyes up and down both of them.
    “Mary Tolchester?” asked Katy.
    She nodded. “All right. You two can come on in.” She moved her chair back. Cutter followed Katy and was met with a new smell of stale milk, sweat, and cigarettes. Mary’s hair was short and straight like a style of the Roaring Twenties. Her eyes were bright but her teeth dark with age and tobacco. She invited them graciously to the large sofa at the side of the room. She said, her voice hoarse from smoking, “Just move those newspapers. I don’t have the time to clean up everything these days.” Cutter smiled at her as he gathered the large pile of newsprint. He and Katy sat down and the woman wheeled her chair closer.
    She opened a new pack of cigarettes, then lit one. She held the tobacco daintily in her forefingers, and puffed its smoke into the air above her. Mary spoke softly, her eyes constantly inspecting around the room, as if she were afraid someone would overhear them.
    “I’m still not sure I can help you.”
    “We’re interested in the Tolchester family,” said Katy. “We looked in genealogical files. That led us to you as a Tolchester descendant.”
    Katy read from her notes “Mary Tolchester, born Staten Island, 1914.”
    “That’s me,” she coughed.
    “We’re especially tracking the Captain Tolchester who was in the China Trade. He was drowned in a shipwreck in 1840.”
    “My, you are going way back.” Mary wheeled towards a tall sideboard, its center leg missing, and unpacked blue china cups and saucers. “He was a cousin. My part of the family never knew him. He commanded ships for a New York firm.”
    She placed the cups on the top of the sideboard on a small tray. “A later Captain Tolchester lived right in