Away with the Fishes (23 page)

Over five years had passed since then and, despite the fact that tragedy had yet to disrupt the Captain’s plans or to waylay a single visit, Mrs. Jaymes never ignored the intuitive twitches that told her it was coming any day. The passage of time hadn’t dulled her instincts; it had sharpened them. Her initial fears, she realized, had been misplaced. The visitors were not to be the cause of the problem—not exactly. Although with their talk of taxation and Timbuktu they had inched the Captain’s thoughts from sunny picnics and lucky stars, the desertion was his alone, and jealous Oh would exact a mile of revenge. Mrs. Jaymes’s only worries now, where the houseguests were concerned, was what misfortune would befall them when it did.

30

A
fter leaving the house of Mrs. Jaymes (where, along with Hammer, he was treated to one of her scrumptious Sunday lunches), Raoul returned to work. He accomplished little, for his mind raced with thoughts of Captain Dagmore and the misfortune the island was about to unleash on him and his visitors. Though Raoul was normally intolerant of tales about island mischief, the story of Dagmore Bowles exerted an almost hypnotic effect on him. Whether this was attributable to Mrs. Jaymes’s telling of it, or to the fact that the dead man’s name had turned up on his house, he couldn’t say. So enthralled was he with Dagmore, in fact, that the buzz about Madison Fuller and his upcoming murder trial flew right through Raoul’s head without stopping. Let the islanders deal with islander nonsense! Raoul was too old to be bothered. He had his job and his wife and his house still to paint, and his private Dagmore mystery to solve. He decided Ms. Lila had gotten it wrong: it was
a
baker that the graffiti had told him to find, not Rena, and it had done so as a prank and nothing more.

He really should have known better. On Oh it’s not as easy as that! Such simple solutions were rare, especially for Raoul, who,
without knowing, was lining up a few clouds of his own. His wife, for one. She was none too pleased with the state of her cottage. She could almost live with its untouched front, faded and yellow, yes, but no worse than it had looked for months. The other sides, though, were an incongruous combination of colors and letters. The first, on the left, was covered in a first coat of pink; the second, in back, boasted a rosy blob that covered the mysterious BAKER; and the third, on the right, said DAGMORE in pink on yellow. When Raoul got home from the office, Ms. Lila gave him a piece of her mind.

Before he could cross the threshold and say “good evening, dear,” she had pushed him back outside for a tour of the house. She started with the wall that said DAGMORE and worked her way round, complaining as she went. Raoul’s day-off Tuesday was coming and she expected him to make some much-delayed headway.

“The day after tomorrow? Do you hear?” she insisted.

“I had planned on spending my day off with Mrs. Jaymes,” Raoul objected. “She still hasn’t told me anything to explain why Dagmore’s name was so important that someone should paint it on our wall.”

“I couldn’t care one ripe fig about Dagmore, and neither should you!” she shouted. You don’t care about Rena Baker anymore.
Her
name showed up on the side of the house, too. You’re not bothered by a missing girl, but you’re bothered by a ghost? Since when do
you
, Raoul Orlean, even entertain the notion of a ghost? ‘Ghosts are no different than magic.’ I’ve heard you say it a thousand times!”

Raoul tried to interject some sort of explanation, but Ms. Lila was on a roll. He wanted to tell her that this Rena had probably just run off, that there was no evidence whatsoever that a crime had been committed. His research on Dagmore, well, that wasn’t ghostly.
That was philosophical curiosity, along the lines of Mr. Stan, and she, as a librarian and a woman of books, ought to understand as much! Had she stopped yelling at him for even a moment he would have told her so, but the best he could do right then was try to keep up with her as she stomped along the perimeter of the cottage. Past Dagmore, past the pink blob, carping all the way.

As Ms. Lila rounded the corner of the only wall that had an even coat of paint, she looked at it and stopped dead in her tracks. Raoul, who had been following close behind, ran right into her and knocked her down. The two of them lay on the grass looking up at the once pink wall that now appeared splotchy and faded, dotted with small and angry white-ish ghosts.

“What did you do here?” Raoul asked her.

“Me?! Not a thing! I looked at this wall a few minutes ago and it was solid Playful Rose, just like you left it.”

“What the devil?” Raoul said, trying to decipher the splotches. He stood up and distanced himself, and, oh, dear. Not again. The angry splotches that marred the pink wall clearly told him to FIND R. BAKER. Raoul sat back down on the grass and emitted a long, sorry sigh. He should have known better, indeed. He had turned his back on a mystery—Stan Kalpi would have been vexed—and now the mystery had come back with a vengeance. Raoul could sense the rage in the dull, eerie letters where the pink paint had been removed.

“Are you sure you didn’t hear anything?” he asked his wife. “Is it possible someone sneaked inside for some paint thinner?”

“Well of course it isn’t! I’m not daft! I should know if someone came into my own house, shouldn’t I? It’s not as huge as all that—though you’d never know it to judge by how slowly you’re getting it painted.”

Suddenly, Raoul jumped up. Perhaps the person who had removed his pink paint was still hiding in the bush. Raoul crept stealthily (as stealthily as he still could, at his age) around the house again and into the woods that bordered his yard.

“Well?” Ms. Lila asked when he turned up a few minutes later.

Raoul shrugged. Nothing. No footprint, no clue, no sign that any human had passed within feet of the cottage. The wind picked up just then and he got a spooky chill. Ms. Lila felt it, too, and her eyes met his. Raoul might not entertain the notion of a ghost, but Ms. Lila was not so discerning.

“One thing’s for sure,” she said, her arms folded to keep herself warm. “We won’t have a moment’s peace around here—or a properly painted home—until you find out what happened to that girl.” She looked up at the air around her, to determine if some specter or spirit were looming, but there was none that she could see. “I’m going inside.”

Raoul stayed out on the grass, alone in the dusk, taking stock of the week he had had. A girl was missing, a man was in jail, and Raoul’s house had been marked up three times. Twice with the name of the missing girl, and once with that of a dead man. A dead man with a story that Mrs. Jaymes was taking a terribly long time to tell. Raoul stilled his mind and let the flies in his head flutter freely. There was one whose hum out-hummed the others,’ and that one told him that the mysteries of Rena Baker and Dagmore Bowles were intertwined. Raoul didn’t believe in ghosts, but he believed his eyes and his ears. The humming hunch in his head was not to be ignored, nor was the fact that both Rena’s name and Dagmore’s had appeared plain as day on his walls. Very well then, he told himself. He would take up his Rena Baker business again, but he would not forgo Captain Bowles. He would see
Mrs. Jaymes the very next day. Then, on his day off, the day after, he would do some old-fashioned snooping for plain-as-noses-on-faces clues.

Pleased with his plan of action, Raoul joined Ms. Lila inside, had his dinner, and went to bed. He dreamed about storm clouds and notebooks that filled themselves up with writhing, wriggling letters that started out pink and turned blood red. When he woke up, his head hurt. He skipped his breakfast and rushed to headquarters, where he made his now routine excuses and headed to Ladywood Road. He accepted Mrs. Jaymes’s tea today, for his empty stomach was grumpy and grumbling.

Opening a fresh notebook that he had brought with him from work, he readied himself to listen to her tale.

“Now, then, Mrs. Jaymes,” he pleaded. “Let’s get straight to the ‘downpour’ part, shall we?
Please
.”

The trouble at Captain Dagmore’s house began with a handful of birds.

The guests at the time were a violist from Spain, named Juan, who spoke little English; his translator, Daphne, a famed linguist with whom he had fallen madly in love; a pair of geologists, named Peters and Stewart, back from gathering rocks in Africa; and an Irish doctor versed in liver disease, whose nickname was Ruck. The afternoon they arrived, the weather was sunny, as it always was on Oh when it wasn’t raining, and Mrs. Jaymes’s pots were astir with swordfish, dumplings, callaloo, carrots, and coconut milk.

While the dinner cooked, she served local beer on the verandah, where Dagmore and his company waited to admire the sun
that was about to set. The conversation progressed somewhat bumpily, despite the illustrious minds and talents present, owing to Juan’s lack of vocabulary (Daphne was too tired from the trip to translate) and the doctor’s accent, which posed a bigger problem with each beer that he downed. The geologists were distracted by Dagmore’s mountain perch and his rocky path, and leaned dangerously to get a better look at both, speculating between themselves as to the composition and age of each.

It didn’t worry Dagmore much that the guests weren’t immediately hitting it off. He had entertained enough to know that a houseful of strangers was like one of Mrs. Jaymes’s stews. It would take some time for each component to soften and relax and mix with the others; but once they did, what a rich and nuanced treat everyone was in for! In the meantime, they would enjoy the sunset, then sit down to eat, and if after that they were so inclined, Dagmore would play his piano an hour or two before sending them off to bed.

The island cooperated nicely, unveiling for the newly arrived a spectacular sunset in bloody red, brassy orange-yellow, and, as the sun dropped out of sight, a flash of vibrant bluish green that amazed and startled even the tired translator.

“What was that?” she asked, and all five looked to Dagmore in alarm.

Dagmore was thrilled. He told them not to worry, that green flashes were rare but not unheard of at sundown, not on islands in general, and especially not on Oh, where—as they could see for themselves—rainbows staggered across the sky even in the near-dark, and without a drop of rain required. He beamed, prouder of his island than he could remember in a long time, and felt certain that the flash boded well for the group’s sojourn. Dagmore was
excited to see what the week would bring, and he made a toast in honor of the five travelers who had come so far to see him.

In her kitchen, Mrs. Jaymes was excited, too. Through the window she had witnessed the flash and, like Dagmore, didn’t doubt its significance on this very evening, with its visiting violinist and geometrists. Unlike Dagmore, who raised a glass in celebration, the abstemious Mrs. Jaymes downed one for courage. Her twitching instincts told her that the nay-saying Captain would soon be put in his place.

When her pots were done stewing, she announced that dinner was served, and Captain Dagmore and company took their places at the table. The meal was enjoyed but uneventful, as was Dagmore’s concert (Beethoven, Sonata n. 14) and the dessert (carrot cake with nutmeg ice cream) served in the sitting room. Finally, after midnight, the guests were shown to their rooms, amidst a chorus of “good nights” and “
buenas nocheses
.” Their bellies were full, their eyelids heavy, and the night lay promisingly ahead.

Mrs. Jaymes saw to their last wishes (towels, extra pillows, glasses of water), then set off to bed herself. She had taken up residency at the Captain’s house some year or two before, unable to keep up with the comings and goings of his visitors if she came and went herself every day. Besides which, she couldn’t be sure that whatever malicious wind was headed for the villa wouldn’t blow through it in the middle of the night.

She said her prayers and rolled her hair in curlers, wrapped her head in a scarf, and fell asleep almost instantly. A few doors down in either direction, her houseguests were not so lucky. Though each had fallen wearily into bed, once there, they were suddenly wide awake. Whether the ill effect of the tropical clime or of the
sugary nutmeg ice cream, they tossed and turned, unable to shut an eye. They felt every bump in their unfamiliar mattresses, heard the strange, unsettled rustling of the island’s nocturnal animals, grew anxious and hot, and sweated in their sheets. The strangers to Oh would have welcomed even an ill wind on that night, so long as it kissed and cooled their clammy skin.

While Dagmore and Mrs. Jaymes snored unencumbered by heat or nutmeg, the tucks and grooves of their respective mattresses suitably snug, Juan and Daphne bickered
en español
, Peters and Stewart knocked and pinged on the common wall between their rooms to calculate its thickness, and Ruck tapped Irish folk songs with his fingers on his chest. It took over two hours before they were bickered-, knocked-, tapped- and tuckered-out, and went to sleep.

Then—oh!—just two hours more before they were—again!—wide awake.

The sun had decided that its climb required music on that particular morn and so it had enlisted more than a few of Oh’s finest chirpers. Well before dawn they took to their task with gusto, their little chests plump and proud, their beaks pointed heavenward. Because Dagmore’s house was the highest around, they situated themselves on its windowsills and sang their feathered hearts out. Any other time of day, the birds would have been quite a treat, for their music was masterful. It had melody, harmony, duets and quartets, choruses, verses, and rounds in every key. At scarcely five o’clock in the morning, however, as they lined up on the sills of the open windows and tweeted
en masse
their first notes in the predawn dark, “treat” was not the word that burst from the sleepy, uncensored lips of the Captain’s guests, who fell out of their beds, alarmed.