Murder Under the Palms (2 page)

“The pleasure is all mine, monsieur,” she replied.

“What brings you to our island paradise?” he asked. “Apart from your visit with Connie and Spalding, that is.”

“A New York winter,” Connie answered in her friend’s behalf.

Charlotte nodded in agreement. “I got tired of maneuvering around snowbanks and chipping the ice off my front steps. Actually, I like shoveling snow. But the pleasure wears pretty thin after the twelfth snowstorm.”

“We’ve been trying to get her down here, but it’s been years since she’s graced us with her presence,” Connie explained. “Though we see her in Newport often enough,” she added, gazing fondly at Charlotte. “She arrived three days ago for an indefinite stay.”

Charlotte and Connie had met years ago when they both were starting out in Hollywood. But while Charlotte stayed on, Connie had left to marry her first husband and have a family. Apart from a few old movie buffs, few would remember her now. Spalding was her third husband, the scion of a conservative old Rhode Island family. The Smiths divided their time between their oceanfront house in Newport, where Charlotte was a frequent guest, their home in Greenwich, Connecticut, and their place in Palm Beach, where they spent the “season,” which ran roughly from New Year’s Day to Easter.

“It took the worst winter in twenty years to finally get Charlotte down here,” said Spalding as he shook Paul’s hand. A big man himself, Spalding was nevertheless forced to look up to their host.

After a few more moments of conversation, Paul ushered them into the foyer, with its beamed ceiling and cool floor of black Spanish tile, and then into the living room. At one end, French doors gave onto a walled swimming pool surrounded by tropical plantings, whose brightness contrasted with the somber, meditative air of the room.

As she took a seat on the sofa, Charlotte found herself being seduced by the magical atmosphere of the house. The room seemed subterranean, surrounded as it was by the dense vegetation that pushed up against the windows. It was cool and dark, and furnished very simply and sparingly with heavy Spanish-colonial-style furniture.

Most of all, it was serene. It had the feeling of a medieval cloister. A place of refuge. It was a place where she could easily imagine spending the rest of her days.

Once everyone was seated, their host poured rum cocktails from a silver pitcher into gleaming antique silver mint julep cups, which were perfectly suited to the mood of the house, and placed them on a tray that he brought around to each of his guests.

After serving the cocktails, Paul took a seat next to Marianne on a sofa facing the pale stone medieval-style fireplace. Then he removed a cigarette case from his pocket and held it out to Charlotte. “Do you smoke, Miss Graham?” he asked. “I know my other guests don’t.”

Spalding and Connie shook their heads in acknowledgment, and Marianne looked mildly put out at the attention Paul was playing to Charlotte.

“Yes, thank you,” Charlotte said, taking a cigarette from the magnificent gold case, which was inlaid with diamonds and enameled with a multicolored art deco sunburst design. She wondered if it was part of the new collection.

Reaching over, Paul lit her cigarette with his lighter.

“I’m charmed by your house,” Charlotte said, savoring the smell of the tobacco. Since she smoked only a couple of cigarettes a day, she made the most of them. “What is the significance of the name Château en Espagne? I was puzzled that it was in French, rather than Spanish.”

Paul nodded as he fitted a cigarette in an ivory holder and placed it between his lips. “It’s a passage from a rondeau written by Charles d’Orleans when he was imprisoned in England,” he explained. “In the fifteenth century.”

After lighting his cigarette, he proceeded to quote the passage in perfect French, and then in English: “‘All by myself, wrapped in my thoughts. And building castles in Spain and in France.’”

“In other words, castles in the air,” Charlotte said.

Paul nodded again. “In fact, the translation in English for ‘Château en Espagne’ is ‘Castle in the Air.’ I don’t know for certain why the person who built the house chose that quote, but I suspect it’s a reference to Mizner.”

“Mizner?” said Charlotte.

“Obviously, you haven’t spent much time in Palm Beach.”

“Addison Mizner,” Connie explained. “Palm Beach’s founding father.”

“You might call him that,” Paul agreed. “He was the architect who designed this house. He came here in 1918, completely broke, supposedly to die. He struck up a friendship with Paris Singer, the heir to the sewing machine fortune, who had also come here to spend his final days.”

“He was exhausted by his romance with Isadora Duncan,” offered Marianne, for whom the dancer’s countless love affairs had been a lifelong inspiration.

“Yes,” said Spalding. “He called her Isa-bore-a-Drunken.” He took a sip of his drink and smiled at Marianne.

She shot him a dirty look.

Though Spalding affected a limited tolerance for Marianne’s sexual escapades, Charlotte suspected that this strait-laced, old-fashioned man harbored a secret fascination for his stepdaughter’s antics.

“Anyway,” Paul continued, “the story goes that, as they sat in their rockers on the porch of the Royal Poinciana Hotel, fanning themselves and waiting to die, they started buiding castles in the air.”

“In what way?” asked Charlotte.

“They were seduced by the climate. The climate here is as close to perfection as you can get. It’s moderated by the Gulf Stream, which flows closer to land here than anywhere else on the East Coast. They dreamed of a playground devoted to the pleasures of affluent northerners on their winter holiday.”

“Let me guess the end of the story,” Charlotte said. “As a result of their dreams, their spirits revived and their health improved and they went on to realize the winter playground that they had envisioned.”

“Exactly. Hence the name Château en Espagne. With Mizner’s artistic talent and Singer’s money, they created a building boom that didn’t let up until the hurricane of 1926.”

“What do you call this style, exactly?” asked Charlotte as she looked around the room. She had noticed what seemed to be Spanish, Moorish, and Mediterranean elements.

“You could just call it Mizneresque. Or you could call it—as they did then—bastard Spanish, Moorish, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, bull market, damn-the-expense style.” Paul smiled.

“I like that,” said Charlotte.

“Mizner’s aim was to create the air of antiquity,” Paul went on. “He didn’t really care what brand of antiquity it was, as long as it was antiquity. He liked the sense that a building had been added onto over the centuries by waves of conquerors. He even built factories in West Palm Beach where he manufactured antique reproduction furniture, roof tiles, and iron work.”

“Is this Mizner furniture?” Charlotte asked, running her hand over the rich, heavy wood of the coffee table. Like the rest of the furniture, it looked as if it had been found in a crumbling European villa.

Paul nodded. “Beaten with chains to give it that antique look. All of the furniture on the first floor was designed by Mizner specifically for the house. He insisted on it.” He pointed to the vaulted ceiling. “The native cypress ceiling is a Mizner trademark.”

“It’s called pecky cypress,” Spalding added. “It’s very rare now.”

Charlotte leaned back to look up at the hand-painted ceiling, and smoked the last of her cigarette. She had the feeling that she too, having come here to escape, was starting to spin dreams. She wondered if other houses like this were available. If she could afford it. If she would be happy here.

Most of all, she wondered if this feeling would last. It was a lot like a love affair. The question was, would she feel the same in the morning, or was it “just one of those fabulous flings,” to quote a line from one of her favorite Cole Porter songs.

She almost hoped it was just one of those flings. It would make life easier. Castles in the air took a lot of energy. They were expensive to build, and even more expensive to keep up.

But then, maybe she was ready for a castle in her life.

2

They were discussing Mizner—Paul was saying that his house was unusual in that it was a small Mizner house—when they were interrupted by the arrival of Marianne’s daughter, Dede, who entered through the door from the kitchen in the company of a large German shepherd on a leash, which she stooped down to unhook. Marianne had sometimes been called the ugly daughter of a beautiful mother. With her black hair styled in a severe Cleopatra cut and her geisha-white skin, she was striking, but at the expense of slavish hours to her appearance at the beauty salon. By contrast, her daughter, Dede, was a natural beauty, a throwback to her lovely grandmother, who, with her pale blue eyes and delicate skin, had been considered one of the great beauties of her day.

Dede stood now in the arched doorway to the kitchen, a tall, tawny beauty with mysterious yellow-blue eyes—the color of sunlight shining through a wave—and long, curly, golden-brown hair that flowed over her bare shoulders. She had a perfect smile that was made all the more charming by the presence of a slight gap between her two front teeth. She was wearing a sarong-style dress in a black and gold batik pattern that emphasized the exotic, almost feline, quality of her loveliness.

The last time Charlotte had seen Dede she had been an awkward, long-limbed teenager, and now, within the space of only a few short years, she had been transformed into this exotic swan.

“I took her for a walk down to the beach,” Dede said, looking up at Paul. When she had finished unleashing the dog, she stood up and crossed the room to kiss first her mother and then her grandmother. Then she poured herself a cocktail from the pitcher on the tray.

“Shall I get more ice?” she asked, and when Paul nodded, she disappeared through the door to the kitchen with the ice bucket, reappearing with it a moment later.

Charlotte noticed Dede’s easy familiarity with the house. She also noticed Marianne noticing the same thing. Her sharp, dark eyes followed Dede’s every move with the intensity of a bird dog stalking its prey. Did Dede have a thing going with Paul, or did Marianne just think she did? Charlotte wondered.

If she did, it would be a case of the apple falling not far from the tree. Charlotte remembered the way in which Marianne as a young woman had flirted with Connie’s second husband, Count Brandolini, who had probably been as old as Paul at the time. In fact, it was probably on account of competition with her mother that Marianne had been prompted to marry her own Italian count.

If Dede did have a thing going with Paul, her motives were probably the same as Marianne’s had been before her: to rankle her mother.

“You seem to know your way around here pretty well,” Marianne said icily, as Dede set the ice bucket on the tray. Marianne was not one to disguise her feelings. She sat next to Paul, wearing a chic black and white cocktail dress with a square neckline from her recent collection.

“Mother, I live here,” Dede protested.

“Not here, I hope,” Marianne said.

“You know what I mean, Mother,” Dede responded, her low voice tense. “I mean that I live out in back.”

“Dede lives in the guest cottage at the rear of the house,” Connie broke in, in an attempt to thaw the icy atmosphere. “Maybe you’ll take Aunt Charlotte out there later on and give her a little tour.”

“I’d be happy to, Nana,” Dede said. She gave her mother a daggered look and then bent down to kiss her step-grandfather, who sat next to Connie on the tapestry-upholstered couch.

As she did so, Paul introduced the dog, who sat at his feet, as Lady Astor. “There was a time when I would have described her as my dog,” he said as he scratched the animal’s neck. “But I’m not sure that I can make that claim anymore. Dede seems to have replaced me in her affections.”

“That’s only because I’m around more than you are,” Dede said. “If you’ll pardon my saying so, someone who travels as much as you do shouldn’t even have a dog,” she chided.

“That’s why I had the good sense to rent my guest house to you,” was Paul’s good-natured retort.

“What do you think of my granddaughter, Charlotte?” asked Connie proudly, as she patted Dede’s hand.

Seen beside Connie, Dede’s resemblance to her grandmother was striking. Their coloring was different—Connie had blue eyes, and, as a young woman, had had a peaches and cream complexion—but the features were virtually identical.

“She’s exquisite, and a dead ringer for her beautiful grandmother.”

“Let’s all compliment Dede,” Marianne said acidly, provoking an angry stare from her own mother.

Charlotte remembered Dede once describing her mother as “toxic,” and she could now see why. She recalled how shocked she had been by Marianne’s apparent indifference to Dede as a child. Now that Dede was an adult that indifference seemed to have hardened into outright animosity.

But Dede seemed oblivious to her mother’s barbs.

“Hello, Aunt Charlotte,” Dede said, leaning over for a kiss. Then, embarrassed by the attention, she swayed across the room in her graceful sarong to a chair by the fireplace and took a seat, crossing one long, tanned, lovely leg over the other. Every eye in the room was upon her.

With Dede’s entrance, the energy in the room had undergone a subtle shift. She had that magnetic quality that would have made her a natural in front of the camera, but her interests lay in another direction.

Because of her grandparents’ residence in Newport, which could boast some of the country’s finest architecture, Dede had developed an interest in historic preservation, and after studying that subject in college, she had landed an enviable job—with the help of Spalding’s connections—at the Historic Preservation Association of Palm Beach.

In fact, it was because of Dede that they had gathered at Paul’s. Dede’s boss at the preservation association, a Palm Beach socialite named Lydia Collins, was a collector of Normandiana, art deco mementoes and artworks from the French ocean liner, the
Normandie
. She displayed her collection in an art deco house that had been built in the same period as the ship itself.