Closer than the Bones (3 page)

I moved to close it, then came back and sat down across from Miss McElroy in a large armchair. She contemplated me in silence, and I wondered whether I had annoyed her by my clumsy attempt at eavesdropping. Would she fire me? I hoped not, because I was increasingly intrigued by the setup at Idlewild, and leaving now would disappoint my sizable bump of curiosity.

I’m a voracious and eclectic reader, and one of the reasons I had decided to take on Miss McElroy’s job was the chance to meet several writers whose work I had enjoyed. Spending time in close proximity with the likes of Russell Bertram, Brett Doran, and Lurleen Landry was enough to get me to take the job, though unless you charge a healthy fee, people don’t always take you seriously.

Lurleen had, in our initial meeting, surprised me. She seemed nothing like the glamorous author portrayed in the media, more like a dowdy Southern grandmother. Would the others be completely different from their public personas as well?

“I do understand your need to gather information,” Miss McElroy spoke at last, “but if you feel compelled to listen in on conversations, you might do well to remember that this is an old house with floorboards that creak. Not to mention the fact that, tall as you are, you do cast rather a long shadow.”

And, with chagrin, I remembered that the mid-morning sun had shone through the front windows of the hallway toward me as I stood in front of that cursed door. I managed a smile. “Thanks for the reminders. I won’t make those mistakes again.”

“Very well.” Miss McElroy allowed a small smile in return, and I relaxed a fraction. “My remaining guests will be arriving throughout the day, and I would like you to be on hand as they do. Russell Bertram will be accompanied by his wife, Alice.” Her voice allowed the slightest inflection of distaste to surface as she pronounced the final three words of the sentence.

“One thing you should know in advance. Alice has for some years been reduced to walking with the aid of a walker, due to problems with her hips and lower back. She will ask you to fetch and carry for her, and you may decline as you see fit. You are not here as a personal servant, but as my guest—but that will not matter to her.” She sniffed.

“I believe I know the type,” I said, and indeed I did. I had once had a principal who was inclined to think that her teachers—in particular the unmarried female ones—existed solely to cater to her whims, like buying her groceries, picking up her dry cleaning, and so on. She had lasted at our school less than three months.

Russell Bertram, unlike Lurleen Landiy, seemed to shun the spotlight. His last novel had been published nearly ten years ago, and since that time his name had seldom surfaced in the news. I had supposed he had retired from writing, but Miss McElroy informed me three days ago that he at last had a novel nearly ready for publication and that he would have a manuscript with him when he came to Idlewild.

According to Miss McElroy, the new book would carry on the story of his classic,
The Philosophy of Love
, an international bestseller of thirty years ago. The earlier book told the story of a man torn between his love for two women, one of them exotic and erotic, who brought out his sensual side, the other staid and prim, but his intellectual match and the one who encouraged his art. His solution was to bring the two women together under one roof, not unlike the way the late Georges Simenon had kept his mistress in the same house with his long-suffering wife. I had found the book provocative upon a first reading; but reading it again some years later, I found myself irritated by the main character’s boorish self-indulgence and his whining about society’s disapproval of his dubious sexual ethics.

Would I read the sequel to
The Philosophy of Love
? I had to admit that I would, in the hopes that the author and his creation would have learned something valuable over the last three decades.

Miss McElroy broke in on my reverie. “Brett Doran will no doubt be late, as usual, so I do not expect to see him before this evening. He might be bringing with him the final member of the group, a man named Hamilton Packer, a literary agent and advisor. Until a few years ago, Hamilton was dear Russ’s agent. They did not part amicably, but they seem to have smoothed over their difficulties recently.”

Brett Doran was something of an enfant terrible on the literary scene. His debut novel,
Music to Slaughter By
, had aroused a storm of controversy because of its graphic violence against women. Many critics had castigated the book for the perverse glee with which the author had described the torture and murder of several victims, at the hands of the novel’s main character, a sociopathic professor of musicology. I had abhorred the gratuitous violence, but what most critics seem to have neglected was the book’s stinging criticism of the way our society glorifies violence in all its forms, but particularly violence against women and children, for the titillation of the masses.

The author had something important to say, but the message seemed to have been lost because of the way in which he tried to say it. Since the book’s publication six years earlier, he had not yet published another novel, only a handful of stories and a couple of screenplays.

“I’m very much looking forward to meeting Mr. Doran,” I said. “I wonder if he can possibly be as provocative in person as his work.”

One eyebrow arched as Miss McElroy regarded me. “I think you will find Brett most interesting, Miss Carpenter. As I think he will also find you most interesting.” She again permitted herself a small smile, and I wondered, just for a moment, if I had gotten myself in over my head without realizing it.

“That brings us,” she resumed, her tone brisk, “to the final member of this gathering.” I gave her a blank look, because I couldn’t remember her mentioning another guest. Miss McElroy frowned. “The final member is not someone who will be with us in the physical sense, Miss Carpenter. I refer, of course, to the reason you are here. Sukey Lytton.”

Ah, yes,
I thought.
The accident victim.

“Though Sukey will not be with us in body, she will most certainly be with us in spirit,” she said. A shadow—of pain? of regret?—passed across her face. “Every one of us here in this house will be thinking of her, and of the last time we were all together here. I will be regretting the waste of a young talent of great promise. But one of us will be gloating over the satisfaction of having her dead and out of the way. I want you to discover which one of my guests brought about her death. And why.”

“If one of these people truly is a murderer,” I said slowly, “then I’ll do my best to help you figure out which one of them did it.” I paused for a moment. “But we need to tread carefully. If someone killed once, he or she might not hesitate to do it again.”

“What? Are you afraid someone will harm you?” Miss McElroy glared at me as if I had just announced my intention to quit.

“Or you,” I pointed out equably. “Either one of us could be at risk.”

“Do you want to quit, before you’ve barely started?” The disgust in her voice stung me.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” I responded with as much patience as I could muster. “But we both have to be prepared to face the risks.”

Miss McElroy sat and stared at me for what seemed a long time. Finally she spoke. “I have to know. No matter what happens.”

Chapter Three

I cleared my throat. “In that case, let’s get on with it.” There seemed no reason to belabor the point any further. Miss McElroy had chosen her course, and we’d both stick to it. “I found one of Sukey Lytton’s short stories in an anthology I have,” I said. “Very much influenced by Eudora Welty, I thought. She had a lot of promise.”

“Yes,” Miss McElroy said. “Sukey had so much left to write, so much to say. Her death was a great loss to the future of American letters.”

“Most likely,” I said. “Right now I need to know more about Sukey Lytton and the circumstances surrounding her death. I’ll reserve judgment on the others until I’ve had a chance to meet them all. Now, the account I found in the local paper, and even the ones in the Jackson and Memphis papers, weren’t much help.”

Miss McElroy sat back in her chair, hands clasped together. “Sukey was a bundle of contradictions. Mercurial, insecure, overbearing, endearing. Exasperating. Yes, that’s a good word for her. Exasperating. Just when you thought you’d want to wash your hands of her, because she was so obstinate and irritating, she’d do something unexpected, something tender and thoughtful, and you’d realize all over again what a dear child she was.”

The unfortunate girl had aroused Miss McElroy’s protective instincts, that was certain.
Frustrated maternal love?
I speculated. Perhaps.

“But she wasn’t all that young, was she?” I asked. “I believe the newspaper stated her age as thirty-three.”

“That’s correct,” Miss McElroy said. “Chronologically, at least, she was thirty-three when she died. Intellectually, she was more sophisticated, but emotionally, well...” She sighed. “Emotionally, she was still a bruised adolescent, hungry for approval and unconditional love. I tried to give her what I could, we all did, but that was sometimes difficult.”

“Tell me more about what happened when she died,” I said. “I need to know what wasn’t in the newspaper.”

She regarded some spot on the wall behind me. “It was Christmas. A time of joy and celebration. Yet it turned to ashes for me. Sukey had come to visit, for the first time in a year and a half. She seemed a bit more like her old self. But still a bit distant.” Miss McElroy shook her head. “Something was clearly on Sukey’s mind, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell me.” Her hands moved restlessly in her lap. “Something that the papers didn’t know,” she continued, her tone taking on an edge, “which in fact only a few people knew. Sukey had been working on a novel—had actually finished it, I believe—and she was on the verge of a contract with one of the major publishers. Hamilton Packer had been negotiating it for her, but of course that all evaporated when she died and we couldn’t find a completed manuscript among her things.”

My nose almost quivered at the scent of a possible motive for murder. “You mean the manuscript just disappeared? Didn’t this agent of hers have a copy of what she had already written?”

“He had only the first three chapters, and that’s what he was using to sell the book. Which is rather odd, of course, for someone like Sukey who was not known as a novelist. She had a good reputation, however, for her short fiction, and sometimes that’s enough to sell an editor who likes the partial.”

“It’s odd, though, that the manuscript didn’t turn up.”

Miss McElroy shrugged. “Sukey was very secretive about her work, at least about any work-in-progress. I thought she had completed the book before she arrived here at Christmas, and I expected her to show it to me. But she didn’t. So I don’t know what could have happened to it.”

Another lead to investigate,
I thought, though it could prove to be nothing but a tantalizing red herring. “What about the circumstances surrounding her death?” I asked. “Was there anything about it that made you think it was murder?”

“If you’ll remember,” she said, “the weather was unseasonably warm at Christmas. We had the windows open, and everyone was wearing clothing more suitable for summer than for December. Sukey was restless that morning. It was Christmas Eve, and I saw her briefly at breakfast, when she said she was going out for a walk. To me she seemed much the same as usual, though afterwards the others claimed that she had acted despondent, depressed.” Miss McElroy fell silent.

“What happened then?” I prompted.

“Sukey never came back from her walk.” Miss McElroy laid her head back against the chair and closed her eyes. “When she didn’t appear for lunch, I sent Morwell out to look for her. Sometimes she would fall asleep outside somewhere, or else sit and scribble under a tree, losing all track of time. I thought that was all that had happened, as it had happened many times in the past.”

“But this time was different,” I said, regarding her obvious distress with sympathy.

“Yes. Morwell soon came back, very shaken, to say that he had found her in the pond, in the woods beyond the back of the garden. Behind the house. She was floating facedown in the water.” Miss McElroy paused for a deep, steadying breath. “Sukey often went there to sit and think—she said she found staring at the water very soothing. She seemed to have a fascination for it, which in retrospect made the place seem like an obvious choice if she really intended to kill herself.”

I pictured the scene all too easily, and though I was impatient to know more, I did not prompt Miss McElroy when she fell silent this time.

“Morwell had waded into the pond to try to help her,” she finally said, “but he realized, despite his deep distress, that she was beyond his help. He laid her body on the ground, then came back to the house. But before that, he found something.” She paused, then went on as if forcing herself to speak. “On the ground near the edge of the pond, he found a piece of paper, containing one of her poems. A short poem about despair and a longing for release from it.”

How appallingly sad,
I thought. And how appallingly cliched. Whether it was suicide or murder, it was an unoriginal way of accomplishing either. Simple and effective, but predictable.

“Why don’t you think it was suicide or just a dumb accident?” I asked. “And if it wasn’t suicide or an accident, why wasn’t it investigated as murder?”

“At first I was too deeply distressed by it all to think clearly,” Miss McElroy said, her voice tired. “It was entirely in character for Sukey to have done something so spiteful, so selfish, I’m afraid. One line in that poem was directed at me, and it upset me so badly that I simply couldn’t cope with any of it. I retreated, mentally and physically.”

I wanted to ask, but the pain was obvious on her too expressive face. I waited in silence, deciding to let her continue at her own pace.

She drew a ragged breath, then quoted from the poem. ‘“Mothered by Medea, I long for death...’” Her eyes closed, she turned a blind face toward the wall. “She once called me Medea. It was one of the worst moments in our relationship. So, you see, I thought the note was left there specifically for me.”