Murder at Teatime (19 page)

“Now,” he said, with a little smile. “The other’s much more interesting—an assault and battery case. The person in question served some time; appears to be quite a dangerous customer, though you’d never suspect it.”

“Who is it?”

“Well, it’s someone we excluded from the original list of suspects, which shows how misleading appearances can be,” Tracey continued, with a little smirk. “The incident in question happened quite some time ago, but …”

“He’s talking about you, Charlotte,” interrupted Tom, with a smile.

“Oh,” said Charlotte, with a grin. “You found out about that?”

Tracey nodded. “I’ll tell you,” he said, “if I were a gentleman of the press, I’d have second thoughts about associating with Miss Graham.”

“Well, I can’t fault you for being thorough.” Charlotte now looked back on the incident with amusement, although she hadn’t found it funny at the time. In frustration at his constant harassment, she had once decked an obnoxious paparazzo. He had filed charges against her and she’d filed countercharges. They had both won: she’d been ordered to spend twenty-four hours in jail, to the delight of the tabloids, and he’d been ordered to stay away from her. In her opinion, a day in jail had been a small price to pay to get rid of the pest.

“What other skeletons did you unearth?” she asked coyly.

“That’s it. Apparently you’ve led a pretty blameless life.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Are you here solely for the purpose of confronting me with my past misdeeds, or is there something else?”

“A little of both,” he said. “In the latter category, I came to report that the lab tests are back. The poison that killed Dr. Thornhill was monkshood, or rather, aconitine, the poisonous alkaloid in monkshood, just as we suspected. It was aconitine that killed Jesse too.”

“Have you found out anything about the will yet?” asked Tom.

“Ayuh. The bulk of the estate, including the house and grounds, was left to Marion. Fran Thornhill received a substantial cash settlement, and there were small bequests to Grace Harris and to Maurice, the handyman.”

“What about the books?” asked Charlotte.

“The entire collection was bequeathed to the New York Botanical Society, along with money for cataloguing, shelving, repair, and other expenses incurred as a result of the acquisition.”

“So much for Felix’s commission,” said Tom.

“Yes,” said Charlotte.
And so much for the Ledge House property
, she thought. Without the money from the sale of the collection, Marion would be forced to sell the property in order to pay inheritance taxes. She wondered why Thornhill had changed his mind about selling the collection. Maybe he’d had a belated crisis of conscience. It was odd how he’d called in Daria to spruce up the collection, as if he’d had a premonition of his death.

“Ironical, isn’t it?” said Tom. “If the stolen books are recovered, they’ll come to rest in the very place they were been destined for over twenty years ago. Like overdue books returned to the library on one of those no penalty days for delinquent borrowers.”

11

The air was balmy as Charlotte, Tom, and Daria crossed the channel in the Ledge House runabout after dinner. They were on their way to the public hearing on the tax abatement proposal. Charlotte wanted to see how deeply community feeling ran on the issue, and Tom and Daria were along for the ride. It was an intoxicating evening, the kind of summer evening that is as rare in Maine as a thaw in January. The setting sun suffused the sky with a glow of shrimp pink, and the windowpanes of the houses of Bridge Harbor glinted like topazes in their setting of dusky purple hills. Even the gulls had ceased their restless circling and crying; they floated quietly, several hundred black silhouettes bobbing on a sea of molten silver.

For Tom and Daria, too, the evening was special. The romance that Kitty had plotted had taken off like one of the Roman candles that was being launched from the town pier. Tom sat at the wheel, his hair blowing in the wind. Now and then he would take his eye off the water to glance at Daria, who smiled like a schoolgirl who’s been handed a valentine. The romance made Charlotte feel old and cynical. In the evening quiet the young couple seemed to sparkle and sizzle like one of the Roman candles. But she knew that the fireworks never soared as high as you expected them to, and that the sizzle eventually sputtered out. And then, blackness. For years she had sought the flame, and for years she had been consumed by it. Until now. She had finally learned to live in the darkness, to take comfort from its shroud of security. She was a lonely old lady, or rather an old lady alone, since she had grown to treasure her solitude.

The town pier was now in sight. Cutting back on the throttle, Tom steered the boat into the dock. After disembarking, they walked up a ramp to the pier, which was at the foot of Main Street. The town was done up festively for the upcoming Fourth: the Stars and Stripes hung from porch columns; miniature flags were planted in flower boxes; and red, white, and blue bunting draped the storefronts. The street was crowded with strollers, mostly vacationers staying in the town’s hotels and guest houses or camping in the nearby State park. They browsed in gift shops, watched the fishermen unload the day’s catch, or dined on boiled lobster at the rustic lobster pounds lining the waterfront. From a pub that was the hangout of the young and the young-at-heart came the muted strains of a Dixieland melody. The only note of incongruity in this atmosphere of relaxed gaiety was struck by the brisk strides and sober expressions of the townspeople who were heading up the hill to the Town Hall, with a very unvacation-like seriousness of purpose.

As Charlotte entered the meeting hall with Tom and Daria the room grew hushed as the townspeople craned their necks to get a glimpse of their famous visitor. Most of them knew who Charlotte was, the
Bridge Harbor Light
having run a notice of her arrival in the “Social News and Notes” column. The few who didn’t turned to their neighbors to find out, for it was obvious that she was
someone
: in her rakish fedora and elegantly tailored suit, she stood out like a diamond in a tray of paste. Somewhere else, her appearance might have set off a stampede of autograph hunters, but the townspeople of Bridge Harbor were held back by their New England restraint. She was approached by only two fans, a little blue-haired old lady who remembered Charlotte’s first movie, and a punk rocker with hair combed into stiff, shiny spikes. Much to her amusement, she had recently become a cult figure among the rock set, as a result of the fact that the fashions she had helped to popularize—the man-tailored shirts and broad-shouldered jackets of the forties—were again in vogue. Signing her autograph in a large, bold scrawl, she chatted graciously with the old lady and the punker. Unlike today’s stars, she came from a tradition in which scorning one’s fans was not acceptable behavior. She was a relic of the old Hollywood studio system in which a star was a queen and her fans her royal subjects. The lack of privacy that was the complaint of today’s stars was no more an issue for her than it would be for the Queen of England. She had been raised to think of herself as a public figure, to always be gracious, glamorous, and in command—even if she was just running out to the supermarket. She had succeeded in that system because its standards were also her own. She felt an obligation to her fans, that she owed them an image—even now. If they wanted to see Charlotte Graham, the star, they would see a star, not a slob in a T-shirt and dungarees. To her, being a star was a business first and a privilege second. Her fans were her bread and butter. They had paid their money’s worth, and they deserved to get it.

After signing the autographs, she looked around the hall. The house was full: the extra folding chairs that had been set up at the rear were occupied, and the late-comers were still streaming in. Among them were Stan and Kitty, looking glaringly suburban among the workshirts and fishing boots of the locals. Just behind the Saunders came Fran, whose outfit provoked some curious stares. She was wearing a green skullcap and an ankle-length green robe; around her neck hung a jeweled talisman in the shape of a pentagram, the symbol of the witch. Chuck was present, but not Marion. The turnout was evidence of how seriously the townspeople took their civic responsibilities, a phenomenon that was generally attributed to their form of local government, the New England town meeting. One of the country’s last vestiges of true democracy, the town meeting was truly government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The dealings with a big corporation such as Chartwell might have necessitated the formality of a public hearing, complete with microphone, reporters, and court stenographer, but the tax abatement proposal would still stand or fall on the vote of the citizens themselves.

The concept of the town meeting had a certain romance—it was in just such meetings that the foundations of the Constitution had been laid—but Charlotte knew from her years in Connecticut that it was often less romantic in fact than in theory. The drawback of democracy in its purest form was that it was often cumbersome and inefficient, to say nothing of downright uncivilized: fists had been raised on more than one occasion over a proposal as seemingly benign as the restriction of dumping hours. One thing was certain, Charlotte thought as she settled in: a town meeting was rarely boring.

The meeting was called to order with a bang of the gavel by the First Selectman, a middle-aged man who looked uncomfortable in his coat and tie. After reading the proposed ordinance, he invited the audience to state their views at a microphone in the center aisle. The first person to come forward, a lawyer for the Chartwell Corporation, read a long, dull statement describing the benefits the project would bring. He was followed by a pleasant-looking man who identified himself as the proprietor of the local drugstore and president of the Citizens for the Chartwell Corporation.

“Fellow townspeople,” he said, taking the microphone, “I think most of you know me. I’ve lived in this town my whole life. Now, there’s nobody who’s more reluctant to speak ill of our town than me. But I think we’ve been fooling ourselves long enough. I’m standing up here this evening because I don’t want to see our community die. And it
is
dying, whether we want to face it or not. In the last five years, the cannery’s closed and the boatyard’s closed, and now the shoe factory’s laying people off. Even the tourist trade isn’t what it used to be. How much longer are we going to sit around before we do something about it? The Chartwell Corporation is offering us a chance for a prosperous future, and I think we should grab hold of it, if not for ourselves, then for our children. I, for one, don’t want to see my boy have to go out of state to find a job, and I think the same goes for the rest of you.”

The speech met with enthusiastic applause. “Thank you,” said the speaker. After nodding to the First Selectman, he returned to his seat.

The reference to native sons being forced to leave the state to find work could be depended upon to touch a responsive chord in Maine, whose young people were often forced to seek better lives elsewhere. The next two speakers touched on the same theme: one was a high-school teacher who viewed the jobs the development would create for teenagers as a panacea for a host of social problems, and the other was an unemployed shoe factory worker who spoke of his reluctance to uproot his family to find work elsewhere.

The first person to speak against the proposal was the president of the Coalition to Save Gilley Island, a tanned, athletic-looking young woman who gave her occupation as student and her address as the Shore Road. Charlotte recognized the address as the stretch of shoreline known as Millionaires Row. She read from 3 by 5 cards in a crisp, businesslike tone:

“Six thousand years ago the Red Paint People canoed down our rivers to spend their summers on our beautiful coast, to feast on its plentiful harvest, to delight in its natural beauty. They were the first of the summer visitors who have sought out our coast over the centuries for respite from the tension and routine of their everyday lives. Until recently, our coast has been bountiful with its resources, but now those resources are threatening to give out under the sheer weight of demand: the peace and beauty that we cherish is being eroded by those who would seek its refuge. Our coast is at a crossroads, and how we vote on this issue will be one factor in deciding our future. Will we sacrifice our spiritual sanctuary for material gain? or will we preserve it for the generations to come? I say we have a sacred trust to preserve it for our children and our children’s children, as an unspoiled reminder of the fragile beauty of nature. If our coast continues to serve as a lifeboat for the hordes seeking salvation and peace, the lifeboat will sink. And with it will disappear the very qualities that we, as its caretakers, most cherish.”

The speech was applauded, but not as heavily as those of the previous speakers—the CCC forces were obviously in the majority.

The young woman’s speech was appealing in its idealism, but there was a mendacious tone to it that Charlotte didn’t like. The Coalition to Save Gilley Island reminded her of the residents of a tract development who oppose construction of an identical development next door, under the sanctimonious guise of protecting the environment. Or, to use the speaker’s own analogy, lifeboat passengers who would keep other shipwrecked passengers from climbing aboard, to protect their own comfort and safety. The other aspect of the argument that bothered her was its anti-progress bias. She didn’t think Maine’s future lay with unimpeded development, but neither did she think it lay with subsistence farming and arts and crafts, particularly when it was one of the less prosperous states in the Union.

Once the hubbub caused by the young woman’s speech had died down, the next speaker, Chuck Donahue, made his way to the microphone. He stalked up the aisle with his head down like a bull on the attack.

“Charles Donahue, Gilley Island, insurance broker,” he said, identifying himself to the stenographer. “First,” he said, taking the microphone, “I’d like to know what right the previous speaker has to preserve Gilley Island for her children, her children’s children, or for anyone else. In case you weren’t aware of it, young lady,” he said sarcastically, “Gilley Island is private property, just as your property is private property. You have no more right to preserve it than I have to camp in your backyard. The only people who have a
right
to preserve it are myself, Mr. Gilley”—he nodded at Wes—“and the other owners of property on Gilley Island.”