Authors: Stefanie Matteson
“He didn’t have no chance, did he?”
12
After lunch, Charlotte and Tom headed out toward the Donahue cottage. Once past the wooded Ledge House property, the rutted track of Broadway opened onto barren headlands whose bold, bare granite cliffs rose steeply from the waters of the bay. From this site more than from any other, one had a sense of the island’s vulnerability to the elements. The sea breeze carried the chill of icebergs and arctic wastes, and the waves crashed against the stony flanks of the rocks with a fury that sent plumes of salt spray skyward. On the bay, the pale gray mass of a fog bank hovered threateningly over the outer islands, waiting for a northeasterly wind to push it inland. The minute world of pure perfection had been besmirched, and the island itself now seemed in some way menacing. Even the sky and air, which had once seemed to expand in widening circles of time and space, now carried a stony, heavy malevolence.
Charlotte’s thoughts were interrupted by a shout from Tom, who had wandered over to the cliff’s edge. “Seals,” he said, pointing to the water below, where three shiny black heads bobbed in the heavy swells.
They appeared to be playing a game of hide-and-seek in the waters of a channel created by a fissure in the granite bluffs. Their white-whiskered faces with their glistening, puppylike eyes disappeared underwater, only to pop up minutes later in another spot. On a rocky ledge at water level, the porcine form of a large seal—the mother, perhaps—kept a lazy watch, until, alarmed at their presence, she awkwardly wriggled her ungainly torso into the water, where she was transformed into a creature of grace and agility. On the rocks on the opposite side of the channel, a group of large, long-necked cormorants stood with their wings outstretched. Popular wisdom had it that the hapless water bird would sink unless it dried out its wings, for its dense feathers lacked the protective oils to keep them from becoming waterlogged.
The scene was primeval in its beauty: just so must the Red Paint People have found the coast on their summer visits thousands of years ago. What would happen to the seals if the condos were built? Charlotte wondered. Would they stay to entertain the occupants with their play, or would they flee to the peace and quiet of a more remote island? She thought of the great auk—the giant, flightless, gooselike creature that had once been the most powerful water bird in North America. Hunted at first for its eggs, then for its flesh, and finally for its feathers, which were used for comforters and pillows, it was driven to take refuge on ever more remote islands. Finally it made its last stand on a remote island off the coast of Newfoundland before succumbing to extinction early in the nineteenth century.
As they resumed walking their conversation turned back to the murder. It had been almost a week since Thornhill was poisoned, but they had no leads. All they had was a plethora of suspects, each with reason to want Thornhill dead, and each with means and opportunity. But if Charlotte and Tom were frustrated at their lack of progress, Tracey was even more so. His many hours of tedious labor hadn’t yielded a single clue.
They had just rounded a bend in the road when Daria and John came into view at the cliff’s edge. After scrambling up the scree, they ascended the last few feet to the top. John was carrying a picnic basket, and Daria her sketch pad. Spotting Charlotte and Tom, they waited for them at the roadside.
Daria was certainly taking care to portion out her company evenly, Charlotte thought. She had picnicked yesterday afternoon with John, dined last night with Tom at the Saunders, and was now out with John again. She supposed it would be Tom’s turn again tonight. At least Tom got the evening hours.
Charlotte and Tom caught up with them a few minutes later. Daria explained that John had been taking photographs of waves for Stan and she had been sketching waves—her homework for Stan’s class.
“John’s just been telling me about the wildflowers of New England,” she continued. “He says that every species we can see from here has a significant medical or nutritional use. I’m testing his knowledge,” she added with a dazzling smile. “He’s going to tell me of what use these wildflowers are.” She held out the bouquet she had gathered from the roadside.
“Well?” said Charlotte, smiling at John and raising her signature eyebrow.
“Anyone have hemorrhoids?” asked John with his lopsided smile. “An ointment made from fresh buttercup leaves is very effective.” He studied the bouquet. “How about bloating? Yarrow tea is a strong diuretic. Nervous? Try valerian, the nineteenth-century answer to Valium.”
“And the lupine?” asked Charlotte, gazing across the road at the field blanketed with the tall white, pink, and lavender spikes of one of New England’s most beloved wild-flowers.
“Aha! It used to be grown in Europe for fodder, but isn’t much anymore. Too many accidents. The mature seed of certain species is poisonous. A lot of common flowers are poisonous, but I don’t want to get into that for fear of incriminating myself. Speaking of which, how’s the investigation going?”
They chatted for a moment more and then separated: Daria and John were headed back to Ledge House.
“Stalking the healthful herb, or maybe the not-so-healthful herb,” said Tom as they resumed their walk. “So … what do you think of our plant hunter?”
“A wonderful photographer,” replied Charlotte. That morning, John had dropped off the photos that he had shot in the parlor at Ledge House. The close-ups of her face against the background of the elegant Chinese screen were among the best that had been taken of her in recent years.
“I’m surprised you let him take them,” replied Tom. “Didn’t you tell him that it might be hazardous to his health?”
Charlotte smiled. “Why are you asking about him?” she teased. “Jealous?”
“Maybe.”
“An ideologue, but with a certain amount of charm,” she replied. “He didn’t like Thornhill, which he freely admits. But I don’t think that’s motive enough for murder, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Not even if you view it psychoanalytically? Thornhill could represent the father—you know: authority, power, privilege. By killing Thornhill he could be setting the world aright, patricide as a political act.”
“Plummer, the wild man,” she said. In Mack Sennett days every Keystone Kops story conference had had its wild man, whose function it was to toss out outrageous ideas. The idea was to get the juices of creativity flowing. Tom’s being her wild man was their private joke. But maybe John could have killed Thornhill out of some twisted desire to get even with the system. “Why is it that I have this funny feeling you’ve been out turning over rocks again?” she asked. “What have you found out this time?”
“Nothing terribly revealing,” Tom replied. “He has an up-and-coming reputation. He won the Asa Gray award when he was in graduate school—it’s a prestigious award for the best doctoral dissertation in botany—and he’s been awarded a couple of grants to study the herbals in European libraries. But things haven’t been going too well for him lately. A couple of research grant applications were recently turned down, and his latest book was just turned down by the outfit that published his earlier books. I guess times are tough in the ivory tower.”
Charlotte remembered Thornhill’s allusion at the herb luncheon to the difficulty John was having in getting his work published.
“Apparently there’s even some question whether he’ll be granted tenure,” Tom continued. “In some universities these days being granted tenure is the equivalent of being awarded the Nobel Prize, and Lewis’s politics aren’t the sort to earn him points with his older colleagues.”
The Donahue house was now in sight, a shingled cottage with a glass-enclosed porch of the type found at seaside resorts up and down the East Coast. It perched forlornly on a grassy shelf near the end of a jagged, rocky point that sloped steeply down to the shoreline.
“Here we are,” she said.
A few minutes later they had come to the opening in the cedar hedge that set off the house’s apron of lawn from its rocky surroundings.
The door was answered by a bewildered Marion, who seemed unaccustomed to having guests. She ushered them through the hallway into a living room that had the musty odor of vacation homes that are closed up for much of the year. Charlotte sat on a couch opposite her, while Tom sat at a desk on the other side of the room where he could unobtrusively take notes.
Charlotte noticed that Marion’s face was deeply etched with lines; worry and suffering had left their mark. She also seemed strangely impassive. Charlotte wondered if she was on tranquilizers. They were chatting about the fog when they heard the sound of a trail bike in the driveway.
“My son Kevin,” explained Marion.
In a minute Kevin entered the hallway. He was dressed in the same outfit he’d worn the other day: a studded leather jacket and a knapsack emblazoned with the name of a rock group. He carried his motorcycle helmet under one arm. He had his mother’s fair skin, and thick dark hair, which reached to his shoulders.
“Kevin,” said Marion, “we have some guests. Would you like to meet them?”
Tossing his helmet and knapsack onto a chair, he glanced curiously into the living room, and then walked defiantly up the stairs. If Charlotte had been the mother of such an ill-mannered child, she would have knocked some sense into him, but Marion seemed inured to his insolence.
“Is Kevin your only child?” Charlotte asked. She immediately regretted her words, remembering something Tracey had said about another son.
“Yes,” she replied. “I had another son, Patrick. But he was killed in an accident last year. He was on his bicycle. A hit-and-run driver.”
“I’m sorry,” replied Charlotte, genuinely. She glanced around the room, waiting for the awkward moment to pass.
The room was tastefully decorated with an eclectic mix of country and modern furniture. Although it was designed for beauty and comfort, its air of neglect made it seem dreary. The surfaces of the furniture were coated with a fine layer of dust, and the carpet was littered with the dried-up leaves of dead plants. The draperies were drawn over all but one window, obscuring what must have been a magnificent ocean view. Like its occupant, the room seemed sapped of its vitality. The exception was the baby grand piano that stood in a position of prominence at one end of the room. Charlotte remembered the piano lessons—what a comedown for someone who’d once aspired to be a concert pianist. The sun that streamed in through the one unshielded window warmed the piano’s walnut surface to a honey glow, and a crystal vase of fresh flowers graced it like the flowers on an altar.
“Do you play?” asked Charlotte, nodding at the piano.
“Not so much anymore. I used to perform professionally, but I haven’t in years.” She lowered her head, touching her hand to her brow.
“Chief Tracey has asked us to …”
“Yes,” she replied simply.
“Do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill your father?”
“No,” she said, hesitatingly. And then more firmly: “No, I don’t.”
“You’re aware that one of the suspects is your husband.”
She nodded.
“Did you know that he quarreled with your father just before your father drank the poisoned tea?” asked Charlotte softly.
She looked up, her eyes welling with tears. Returning her hand to her brow, she cast down her gaze. “No, I didn’t,” she said quietly, pulling out a tissue to wipe the tears that were slipping down her cheeks.
She gave the impression of being overwhelmed—by her father’s death, but also by lost opportunity and dashed dreams. Her sadness bespoke a career that had been sacrificed to marriage and children. And now the marriage had gone sour, and one child was dead and the other was out of control, leaving her nothing to fall back on in her grief. How difficult it was for women to find the middle ground that most men took for granted, Charlotte thought. The popular view was that times had changed, but Charlotte suspected there was still a heavy price to pay for trying to have it all. For Charlotte, it had been the other way around: the marriage and children had been sacrificed to her career. She had survived and prospered, but Marion reminded her of the long-necked cormorants who didn’t have enough oil in their plumage to keep them from sinking. For Charlotte, the antidote to the disappointments in her personal life had always been her work, and she suspected, seeing the piano graced with its vase of flowers, that the same might be true for Marion. Like the cormorant, all she needed was some time and sunshine to dry out her wings.
“Do you think it was about the property?” she asked gently.
“Probably,” Marion said with a sigh. “They didn’t see eye to eye.” She paused, and then continued: “Chuck says that the pressures for development are such that the island will be developed eventually anyway. He thinks it’s better for us to be involved ourselves, so we can retain some control.”
“It must not have been easy, being caught in the middle.”
“No, it wasn’t,” she murmured, casting Charlotte a rueful smile.
“I don’t understand one thing. Why was it so important to your husband to develop the property now? Your father wasn’t young, and he wasn’t healthy. If your husband had waited until your father’s death, he would have had the land to do with as he pleased, without your father’s opposition.”
Marion shrugged. Her hands fingered the tissue in her lap, quietly tearing it to shreds. She sighed, and then reached for a pack of cigarettes. “I think he may have needed the money,” she said finally. “I’m not privy to his financial affairs, so I can’t say for certain.”
Charlotte wondered why Marion was confiding in her, and decided that it was because she suspected her husband. By unburdening herself, she was putting the responsibility for determining his guilt in someone else’s hands. No wonder she was a mess—the strain of the suspicion must have been unbearable.
“What makes you think that?” she asked.
“In recent years, he’s become involved in horse racing,” Marion said, adding, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
“Because you need to confide in someone,” said Charlotte. “His financial situation probably has nothing to do with what’s happened. But the thought that it might is a terrible thing to have to keep to oneself.”