Free The Withdrawing Room by Charlotte MacLeod

on the first floor. He’s not supposed to climb stairs, you see, and he wants to be back on the Hill. I believe he and his sister used to live around here somewhere before they moved to Newport. Then they decided they wanted to come back here, but she was invited to visit an old friend in Italy for the winter so they broke up their other place and put everything in storage. He’s tried a hotel and the regular sort of rooming house and hates them both. I told him I’d let him know when a vacancy came up because I already had a hunch Mr. Quiffen and I were going to part company before long. But of course I never dreamed it would happen like this.”
    “What’s this other man’s name?”
    “Hartler. William Hartler. You may possibly know him, since he’s more or less in your field.”
    “Is he? don’t think I’ve ever heard of him.”
    “Well, actually he’s not a professional like you. He’s simply trying to track down some things for the Friends of the Iolani Palace.”
    “The Hawaiian royal treasures? They’ve got some very good people working on that project. This chicken is excellent, by the way. Ever see the Iolani Palace yourself?”
    “No, I’ve never been to Honolulu. Or anywhere else, for that matter. My father always took the ‘Why should we travel? We’re already here’ line, and Alexander and I never could afford to travel even if we’d been able to leave Aunt Caroline. You’ve been there, I suppose?”
    “Once, on business. I was tracking a guy who’d stolen a nice Degas from some people in Brookline. Also a Puvis de Chavannes, though why they wanted that one back is beyond me.” Bittersohn was a one-man detective agency specializing in the recovery of stolen art objects and jewelry, either for the desolated owners or for insurance companies that suspected the desolated owners might have arranged their own burglaries in order to collect on the policies.
    “How did the palace come into it?”
    “Oh, that was a stroke of luck. When the guy found out I was on his tail, he panicked and tried to get rid of the paintings by peddling them to the curator, making believe King Kalakaua had presented them to a great-aunt of his. Unluckily for him, the curator’s an acquaintance of mine and knew what I was there for. Also, the Degas happened to be a late one, painted in 1899. Kalakaua died in 1891 and his sister Liliuokalani, who succeeded him, reigned for only three years, until the revolution of 1893.”
    “What a lot you have to know!”
    “Knowing is what I get paid for. Want to come to the art museum with me sometime? I could bore you stiff with my profound erudition.”
    “I’m sure you wouldn’t,” said Sarah, and, for some reason, blushed. “But imagine anyone’s getting a Degas and a Puvis de Chavannes for a present. Did King Kalakaua actually do things like that?”
    “Oh yes, he was no piker. I wish you could see that palace. It has a hundred and four rooms.”
    “So Mr. Hartler was telling me. He’s promised to show me photographs, though I hope not of all the hundred and four. He seems tremendously caught up with this project. That’s the main reason he wanted to come back to Boston, where he thought the pickings would be better. You know, I expect, that Queen Liliuokalani married into a Boston family. Mr. Hartler claims to be connected with the Dominises through his mother, though he didn’t explain how. Anyway, when she was still a princess, Liliuokalani and Queen Kapiolani, who was Kalakaua’s wife, visited Boston. That was in 1887, when they were on their way to Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. Everybody wanted to entertain them and they gave the most marvelous presents in return. When I told Mr. Hartler they’d actually been to tea in the very room he could have had if Mr. Quiffen hadn’t already taken it, I thought he was going to break down and cry.”
    “Maybe we’d better find out where this Hartler was when Quiffen got the push,” said Bittersohn, only