Murder at Rough Point (8 page)

* * *

The evening's entertainment ended around ten o'clock, after several unsuccessful attempts to persuade Miss Marcus to serenade the group.

“I've been experiencing the tiniest discomfort in my throat lately. No more than a tickle,” she assured us with a toss of her curls and a flash of her dimples, “but enough to warrant having a care. It's merely the change in climate from Paris to New England, I'm quite sure.” She snapped open the fan she held and fluttered it in front of her face.

“In that case, I'm going up.” Mrs. Wharton stood and bid the group good night. Her husband nearly tripped in his effort to follow her into the Stair Hall. He called to her but her footsteps didn't slow, prompting him to trot to catch up.

My mother, having witnessed the scene as well, glanced my way with a little roll of her eyes. As the rest of us vacated our chairs and the men began restoring order to the room, Josephine remained in her eagle-crested throne, watching Niccolo intently.

“That was lovely,” she told him.

“You should have accompanied me,” he replied, tersely I thought, and without looking at her. A flick of his fingers loosened the horsehair on his bow, and he stowed it in the slot meant for that purpose in the velvet-lined cello case. With the utmost care he lifted the instrument and also placed it in the case, being sure not only to flip the latches closed, but to spin the little combination lock centered between the latches.

“I'll accompany you now,” she simpered, her eyes narrowing within their lashes and her bosom straining the plunging neckline of her Jacques Doucet evening gown. The dress hailed from the spring collection, if I wasn't mistaken. Apparently her flagging career hadn't yet thwarted her wardrobe.

“I'm tired.” Lionetti grasped the handle of the case in one hand and supported the long, tapering end with his other. He strode by Miss Marcus without another word.

She heaved herself out of her chair. “Well,” she said to no one in particular, and wandered away.

Monsieur Baptiste bowed, encompassing me, Mother, and Father in the gesture. “Good night. Let us hope tomorrow brings more congenial tidings. Vasili?”

“I will have a cigarette first.”

The Frenchman nodded and made his way to the Stair Hall. I hurried to catch up with him. He paused halfway up the lower steps when I spoke his name, stopped, and turned. His eyes were wary, his lips tighter and thinner than usual. Did he believe I'd come to ask him about his argument with Miss Marcus? I longed to know more, but that was not my present intent.

“Monsieur, would you mind very much knocking on Sir Randall's door?”

He studied me a moment in the hall's subdued electric lighting. “How very endearing, Ma'amoiselle Cross. You are worried about him.”

“He is unfamiliar with the terrain here. The Cliff Walk can be dangerous.”

“Do people often plunge from these heights?” Interest ignited in his eyes, and I wondered if he found dramatic potential in the notion. Would a representation of our cliffs appear in his next stage production?

“No, not often,” I said, “but it does happen. Please, would you check to see that he has returned?”

A shrug formed the whole of his answer. I followed him as far as the half landing, where I settled on the velvet sofa to wait. With my chin propped on my hand I gazed out the small squares of the mullioned window. Below me on the circular drive two pinpoints glowed orange in the darkness. At first I thought they were fireflies, but an up and down movement punctuated by intermittent brightening of those tiny lights revealed them to be the burning ends of cigarettes. I pressed my face close to the window, making out the sheen of Miss Marcus's beaded gown reflecting the moonlight. The Russian dancer must have gone out front for his cigarette, and apparently Miss Marcus had joined with him. At least this time I wouldn't have to run after them with a suitable ash receptacle.

The sound of knuckles rapping on a door drew my attention to the second-floor hallway.

“Randall?” The Frenchman pronounced the
R
in the name with a rasp at the back of his throat. “Are you within?” The rapping came again. “Randall?”

After a fourth time I continued up the stairs. The Frenchman stood outside Uncle Frederick's bedroom suite, a fitting room for Sir Randall since he was considering purchasing Rough Point. Monsieur Baptiste saw me and shook his head.

“Perhaps you might try the knob?” I suggested.

He seemed to debate that for an instant before complying. The door opened easily inward. I ventured closer, though not so close that I could see inside. It would be most improper for me to intrude should Sir Randall be sleeping in his bed. I need not have exercised that caution. Presently Monsieur Baptiste backed out of the room and closed the door.

“He is not there.” He frowned, the furrows reaching his receding hairline. “Perhaps you are correct to worry, ma'amoi-selle.”

Twenty minutes later the house had been searched and no Sir Randall found.

“We mustn't panic,” Mother said to the group of us now assembled in the drawing room. My father, Vasili Pavlenko, and Niccolo Lionetti had exchanged their dinner tuxedos for tweeds and walking boots and were preparing a trek across the rear lawns to the Cliff Walk. Mr. Dunn waited outside on the terrace with the lanterns they would need. “Perhaps he began walking, lost track of the time, and turned in at one of the other properties. He might be enjoying a pleasant evening with one of the neighbors.”

“With which neighbor, Mother?” I demanded. I softened my tone. “Why wouldn't he have telephoned?”

“Surely not every house in Newport has been wired for the telephones.” Father attempted a cavalier smile. “And you know how the British are, sweetheart. They don't think of such modern inventions in the course of daily life. Too stuck in the old ways.”

“His host would have suggested it,” I persisted. “But again, which neighbor? Most of the summer set are gone by now and their houses closed up.”

“Don't worry, sweetheart, we'll find him.” Father placed his open palm against my cheek in a tender gesture I had once, a long time ago, been so very accustomed to, but which now felt foreign and awkward. I instinctively took a step backward, then wished I hadn't when I saw the hurt in his eyes. I tried to smile up at him but he had already turned away to address the men. “If we're all ready, let's go.”

“And while you search,” my mother said, “I'll have the night operator connect me to the neighboring homes. Surely someone will have seen him.”

The men filed out of the drawing room onto the veranda. I hesitated for a moment, then started forward.

“Emma, what on earth do you think you're doing?”

I turned to face my mother. “I've grown unused to sitting and waiting for others to act, Mother. I'm going out with them.”

“Oh, no you're not. It's too dangerous.”

Mrs. Wharton came up beside her and placed a hand on Mother's shoulder. “Let her go, Beatrice. She'll be fine. Your daughter is braver and more accomplished than you know.” She aimed a disparaging look at her husband, who showed no intention of accompanying the search party.

Her declaration held me another moment as I wondered how Mrs. Wharton had reached her conclusion. Based only on my articles? Or had she learned things about me from other sources? Could she know of my perils of the past two summers? Funny, I thought, that a complete stranger could know me better than my own parents. But I summoned a reassuring smile for my mother.

“I merely wish to be on hand during the search. I'll keep well away from the edge.”

Mother's hazel eyes, mirroring my own, gleamed with the suggestion of an unshed tear or two. Fear, I wondered, or pride?

I
didn't keep as far away from the edge as I'd promised. While my father and the others paired off and spread out along the Cliff Walk in either direction, I walked onto the footbridge that spanned a deep gorge in the cliff face. The stone half wall rough beneath my fingers, I leaned over, first on the sea-facing side of the bridge, and then the side that faced into the chasm. Moonlight glimmered on the waves, sparking silver as the tide struck the cliffs and thrust into the jagged gap where the promontory had been torn asunder eons ago. The water lunged into the unforgiving crevices, sending up a sand-ridden spray to pelt me where I stood braced on the bridge.

The others repeatedly shouted Sir Randall's name and waved their lanterns to illuminate the treacherous pathway, for their own safety as well as to search for clues as to Sir Randall's whereabouts. The aptly named Rough Point presented some of the most rugged and dangerous terrain found on Aquidneck Island.

Had Sir Randall fallen?

The relentless heave of the ocean wove a knot of tension in my stomach. I sensed a restlessness in the waves, an agitation like that of a growling dog crouched on his haunches. A storm was coming, was surely even now churning the Atlantic waters somewhere far to the east. I didn't need a sailor's report to confirm my suspicions. The Newporter in me knew.

I soon found myself alone, the men having disappeared round the curving walk to either side of the property. Again, I leaned over the wall on the landward side of the bridge. This would not be the first time the tide wedged a body into the chasm. I dreaded seeing one now, yet I could not prevent myself from searching the glistening shadows.

It was too dark, and nothing beyond rock and water revealed itself to me. I don't know how long I stood there as recollections of that day rolled like surf through my mind. In a short time, Sir Randall had somehow endeared himself to me, while Miss Marcus's callous disregard continued to rankle. Yet when I'd last seen the Englishman, he had shown signs of having rallied, of being ready to once again take up his chisel and release his inner vision.

A voice beside me startled me from my thoughts. I flinched and glanced up to see my father looking down at me with concern.

“Have you found him?”

He shook his head. “I'm afraid not. Come, there is nothing more we can do in the dark. We'll have to wait until morning and hope Randall found shelter somewhere. Or perhaps your mother will have located him by telephone.”

The argument that we couldn't simply give up welled inside me, but I tamped it down. My father was right. To continue the search along the treacherous Cliff Walk in the dark would only endanger more lives. I offered another suggestion. “I think we should send for the police, Father.”

He shook his head again. “They'll reach the same conclusion the others and I did: It's too dark for a search. If he hasn't appeared by morning, we'll notify Jesse.” His smile was little more than a twitch of a shadow in the darkness. “How is my old friend? Do you see much of him these days?”

If my father only knew. Jesse Whyte, a detective with the Newport Police Department, was hardly an “old” friend, considering he was only about ten years older than I. But we had lived near him in the Point neighborhood of Newport, and he and my father had forged a fast friendship and had spent many an evening in our little rear garden, debating world events over glasses of wine or snifters of brandy. I had been too young to participate then, but I'd since grown up and established my own friendship with Jesse, especially in the past year. He and I had worked together more than once to solve the most heinous of crimes, my assistance at first taken under protest, but later, after I'd proved my skills of deduction, with a grudging respect in which I took pride.

I merely said, “Jesse and I have become friends in our own right.”

“Good, then he's keeping an eye on you for me, and keeping you out of mischief, I trust.”

I didn't reply to that.

We walked back up to the house, the others converging on us from various directions until we entered the covered veranda in a group—a pensive one. The drawing room doors burst open and Mother and Mrs. Wharton rushed out. Pensiveness became a rush of speculation.

“You didn't find him, then.”

“Poor old Randall, never could distinguish north from south.”

“I'm sure he's just fine.”

“He'll turn up in the morning.”

“He must be enjoying a brandy with one of the neighbors.”

To this my mother adamantly shook her head. “I telephoned quite a number of houses up and down the avenue. Even those closed up for the winter. I spoke with several housekeepers who hadn't seen him either. No, he's almost certainly not with a neighbor.”

“We'll need to keep looking then,” Mrs. Wharton declared, but no one made a move to leave the veranda. In fact, outside, Carl and Mr. Dunn were just then extinguishing the last of the lanterns. “You cannot give up. He's elderly and he might be hurt, might need our assistance.” She whirled about and called into the drawing room. “Teddy, go with them this time. Help them search for our friend.”

Teddy Wharton gathered himself with obvious reluctance, rose from the sofa, and came out to us. “There is no sense in continuing to search the darkness.”

Even standing behind her I saw how Mrs. Wharton seethed, how her right hand stiffened as if in preparation of delivering a bracing blow. Her arm remained at her side, however, and in the next moment she pushed past him into the house and strode away.

* * *

In the morning I awoke to the distant hue and cry of frantic barking and, closer, a persistent knocking at my bedroom door. Halfhearted daylight grazed the window curtains; it could not be much past dawn. Feeling annoyed at the intrusion, I pushed myself up on my pillows, at first bewildered by the lack of my great-aunt Sadie's sturdy oak furniture that should have graced the room. Then I remembered. I was not at home, but at Rough Point, in one of the servants' bedrooms. And Sir Randall . . . we hadn't found him last night. My heart knocked against my ribs and I called out.

“Come in.”

Mother opened the door and poked her head in. “You'll want to get dressed quickly and come outside.”

My throat tightened, and I swallowed almost painfully. Although the look on her face told me what to expect, I asked nonetheless. “Has Sir Randall been found?”

“Your father and some of the others were up before first light. Jesse Whyte and his men are on their way. Get dressed.” Her hair in a hasty twist and wearing a simple shirtwaist and skirt, she came into the room and opened the wardrobe doors. “Anything will do. Here.” She selected a simple muslin that buttoned up the front. “Will you need help?”

“I can manage.” Yet it took me two tries each to roll my stockings on without twisting them, and when it came time to do up the buttons on my dress, my trembling fingers could scarcely grip them.

In the entry foyer I met Jesse and two uniformed policemen. “Emma.” He held out his hands as if groping for something to say. He and I found ourselves in such circumstances so often it defied logic. Our experiences of the past two summers had rendered a change in Jesse, in the youthful features I had always found so endearing. Yet the changes were not physical—he hadn't aged, exactly—but rather subtle alterations in his expressions. His redhead's complexion, prone to freckling, and the mouth that smiled so easily and so boyishly—they were the same. But the keen blue eyes now held knowledge, and with it sorrow, that hadn't been there two years ago.

I went to him and touched his forearm. Through his coat sleeve his muscles twitched beneath my fingers, and I remembered that a measure of that sorrow was on account of me, and a regard I could not return, not as he would have wished. My hand slid back to my side.

“Has Randall Clifford been found?” I asked.

“He has, thanks to Patch.” He hesitated, studying me closely. “According to your father he went loping across the lawn this morning, right to the fissure out there.”

“The fissure,” I repeated, feeling slightly dizzy. I had leaned over the fissure last night, and had seen nothing. Had Sir Randall been there all along? Had he been alive then, when we might have helped him?

“He wouldn't stop barking,” Jesse had gone on to say, oblivious of my thoughts. “I'm surprised you didn't hear him.”

“My room is on the other side of the house,” I murmured. But I realized I had drunk wine with dinner last night, something I was unused to doing at home. The alcohol must have rendered my sleep deeper than usual. Had the wine also played tricks with my vision, or my judgment, when I'd peered down into the frothing waves?

“I need to see him.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

I nodded and steeled myself, knowing that no matter how many times I saw a dead body, I would never grow used to it—
should
never grow used to it.

“Come, then. We'll walk out together.”

I followed him through the drawing room, inhabited only by Miss Marcus clad in a vibrant, frilly dressing gown. She looked up nervously at our approach. An unlit cigarette wavered between two trembling fingers. I nodded a somber greeting and continued outside with Jesse and his men. Mother and Mrs. Wharton stood halfway across the lawn, where the land rose up like a cresting wave. They each held an arm around the other as they gazed out at the cliffs. Several more officers stood on the footbridge, while my father and the other men hovered to one side, Teddy Wharton among them. And there was Patch, trotting back and forth near the precipice and barking madly. The sight of him so close to the brink sent me running. I called to him, and without ceasing his yipping he bounded to me, jumped around my feet, and bolted back to the footbridge. His manner clearly begged me to follow.

A Life-Saving Service cutter floated some twenty yards out, and a sleek little skiff was being maneuvered into the gorge. I stepped up onto the footbridge, took in the solemn faces around me, and leaned to peer over the half wall.

A hand immediately wrapped itself around my upper arm. “Be careful, Emma. I don't need you falling as well.” For an instant Jesse looked angry; then his expression cleared. He released my arm. “Sorry.”

I nodded and turned back toward the chasm, searching the rocks. I sucked in a breath when I saw him. Shock lodged in my throat, trapped between my hammering heart and my clenched jaws. “Sir Randall . . .”

He was several yards down, just above the low tide line. His body hung wedged into the sharp convergence of the fissure, his torso twisted, his legs dangling and clearly broken, his arms pinned to his sides by the granite walls that held him. But his head—his head lolled backward on his neck, so that he appeared to be staring skyward with sightless eyes. A gash scored his brow, washed clean by the sea, the bone showing starkly white.

Grief and nausea rolled in a great wave inside me. Still I stood there, battling my revulsion, until the Life-Saving Service skiff passed under the bridge. The three men inside used poles to steady the boat and prevent the waves from thrusting it against the rocks. They propelled the vessel as far into the gap as it could safely go. It was as one stepped out onto the boulders protruding from the undulant waters that I roused myself. With my teeth gritted and my lips pressed together, I pushed away from the wall, and from that awful sight.

“Why did you bring her here?” My father shouldered his way past the officers with their tablets and evidence pouches and their murmurs of theory and speculation. “Jesse, are you mad, bringing Emmaline down here like this?”

Jesse's color surged. I saved him from having to fashion excuses. “It was me, Father. I insisted on coming. I had to see.”

He gripped my wrists and stared incredulously down at me. “In God's name, why? You're just a girl. A child. Why subject yourself to such a horror?”

I raised my face to meet his gaze full on, and perhaps he saw something of the change I myself had seen in Jesse, for he released me and took a half step back. His brow creased as if he were puzzling out a perplexing riddle. My name broke from his lips on a whisper. “Emmaline?”

“I've changed, Father. I've grown up. So has Brady. All of us—me, Brady, Jesse—we've gone on living while you were away in Paris.” I heard the sting of accusation in my tone at the same time my father winced. Perhaps I hadn't grown up as much as I'd like to think, but at least I was being honest. He started to reply. I spoke over him. “I cannot pretend I knew Sir Randall very well. But he and I spoke yesterday before he came out and I . . . I learned something about him that compels me to be here now. It's that simple.”

Father swallowed, shifting his gaze from me to Jesse and back. Jesse came forward and placed a hand on Father's shoulder. “You and the others should go on up to the house now and let the Life-Saving Service and the uniforms do their work. I'll speak with you again soon.”

* * *

Suicide.
The word hung over the dining room, where we had all assembled after each of us was interviewed about the days and hours leading up to Sir Randall's disappearance. Patch sat at my knee. Perhaps I shouldn't have allowed him into the house proper, but my intrepid pup had essentially recovered Sir Randall's body, and now seemed held in the same web of bewilderment as the rest of us. Surely I had never seen him so subdued, nor so unwilling to leave my side. I wondered, had he witnessed the incident? If he could speak, could he answer our questions?

“Suicide,” Claude Baptiste repeated. He laced his fingers together on the tabletop and stared down at them. “It is a most horrible conclusion.”