Murder at Teatime (6 page)

Charlotte looked over at Fran, whose expression was sour. She clearly wasn’t pleased with Frank’s announcement. Marching back up to the cauldron, she again waved the magic wand over the fire and recited the words: “This rite of midsummer is ended. Merry meet and merry part.” She then closed her eyes and stood silently for a few minutes. But merry she wasn’t. Without a word, she padded off in her bare feet down the gravel path to the house, a chorus of the guests’ thank yous ringing behind her.

“Well,” said Kitty, breaking the awkward silence. “I think Charlotte and I will get back to Stan.” She stood up. “We don’t want to be caught wandering around after the sun goes down.”

“That’s right,” said Thornhill. “Remember to stay awake for the witching hour. Forestall death for at least another year. As for me, I’m risking all by going to bed at my usual hour of ten o’clock.”

Charlotte and Kitty bade goodbye to Thornhill and the other guests, and took their leave. As Charlotte looked back, she could see the twisted limbs of an old apple tree silhouetted by the glow from the fire in the cauldron.

Tracey had asked her to keep an eye out for anything unusual. She wondered if Fran’s Midsummer Night festival would qualify.

4

Though Thornhill might have chosen to go to bed, Charlotte, Kitty, and Stan had kept their midnight vigil, assuring their survival for yet another year. On the way home from Ledge House, Kitty had kept up a steady chatter about the witches: on Midsummer Night the air was filled with them flying to and from their sabbat with the devil. After that, they hadn’t dared to go to bed. Actually, Kitty told them, modern science believed the witches’ rides to have been hallucinations induced by a mysterious herbal ointment. But you could never rule out the possibility that the witches
had
actually left their bodies, she added. After all, hadn’t one scientific law after another been thrown out as knowledge had become more advanced? Perhaps astral projection existed on a plane that modern science was not yet able to comprehend. All of which had provoked not a little caustic commentary from Stan. Happily, they’d all survived to greet another beautiful day.

At midday, Charlotte headed up Broadway to the luncheon at Ledge House. For someone who had just left Broadway, she was spending a lot of time there, she observed. Turning in at the garden gate, she headed down the gravel path. As she neared the barn a clump of plants came sailing past her nose. Looking over at the knot garden, from which direction the clump had come, she saw what was happening: Fran was on her knees, ripping up the knot garden, her pride and joy. Plants were flying in every direction. The intricate pattern of the design was now interrupted by gaping holes, and torn-up plants lay scattered about in heaps.

“What are you doing?” Charlotte cried.

Startled, Fran stopped her frenzied pulling and turned around. Removing her glasses, she wiped the tears from her eyes with a muddy hand that left her face streaked with dirt. “She’s not going to have it,” she said.

“Have what?” Charlotte asked, kneeling down beside her.

“Have the garden, that’s what,” Fran said, pushing her gray bangs out of her eyes and taking a deep breath.

Once again she was dressed entirely in green, this time a pale gray-green. But instead of the chaplet of herbs, she was wearing a peculiar green skull cap. On her feet she wore bulky tan orthopedic shoes.

“Who’s not going to have the garden?” asked Charlotte. She waited patiently while Fran struggled to regain her composure.

“That woman,” she said finally, laying down her trowel. She looked up at Charlotte. “He’s going to be sorry he did this to me.” Rising from her knees, she waved an arm at the garden. “I created this herb garden: every plant, every sign.”

“Would he make you leave?”

“Yes, he would.”

“But how long have you lived here?”

“Eighteen years. He owns it, but I consider it my home as much as his. Oh, I have an apartment in Massachusetts where I live during the winter—I don’t live here year-round—but …” Her voice trailed off. “You know what he said to me? He said that he and Eleanor would do everything in their power to make me welcome. Now, isn’t that generous of them. Me! Welcome!” she said, pointing at her chest. “In my own home. Some strange woman making me welcome in my own home.” She sat back down on her knees and reached out to pick up an uprooted plant. “Besides,” she added, toying with the plant, “he’s too old to get married. He’ll be sixty on Tuesday.”

“That’s not too old,” protested Charlotte. She hadn’t been much younger herself when she’d been married for the fourth time. And who knew? Maybe there would be a fifth. “Besides, maybe she’s really very nice.”

“Oh, no,” said Fran, shaking her head. “I’ve met her. One of those spoiled garden-club types. The mink coat brigade, I call them. She’ll want to take over. She’s already acting like she owns the place. You know what she said to Frank? ‘Frank honey,’” she mimicked in a high, flirtatious voice, “‘herbs are nice, but they just don’t have the
display
that annuals do. Couldn’t we replace some of the herbs with something more showy, like zinnias?’”

“Zinnias!” Even to Charlotte’s untutored eye, replacing the herbs with zinnias seemed like sacrilege.

“Do you believe it? ‘More color,’ she said.” Fran continued: “I’m sorry about running off. It’s just that it was such a shock. He had hinted around, but I didn’t think he would actually go through with it, not after all these years. But do you know what? I cast a protective spell just before I left.”

Charlotte remembered her waving her wand over the fire.

“Magic shouldn’t be used for negative purposes, but it’s okay to use it to protect yourself. Which is what I did. I used it to protect myself from the machinations of that greedy bitch.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Thornhill,” said Charlotte. “But I’m sure things will work out all right.”

“Fran. Please call me Fran,” she said. “I’d like to think that, too, but I’m not so sure. Not sure at all.”

Leaving Fran, who had already begun to reset the plants she had dug up in her fury, Charlotte continued on through the herb garden to the house, which stood at the far end of the garden. It was a rambling old Victorian structure with porches jutting off in every direction. They were furnished with a variety of rocking chairs, gliders, and porch swings designed for nothing other than being idle. It was a house built in the brief era when all was possible—the confident, optimistic era before resources and time were scarce, the era in which there was leisure for pleasant conversation, for reading a book on a breezy veranda, or for watching the sun sparkle on the distant bay.

Before the millionaires had made Bridge Harbor fashionable it had been the quiet summer retreat of artists, intellectuals, and writers who were attracted by its natural beauty. They had built modest cottages like Ledge House, where they pursued the simple pleasures of sketching, canoeing, and hiking. The natives had nicknamed them rusticators. No doubt Thornhill was a relic of this genteel tradition, Charlotte thought. If so, the idea of a hotel and nightclub on Gilley Island must be as distasteful to him as the thought of girlie magazines on display at Widener Library.

Following a path leading around the side of the house, she emerged at a terrace at the rear. From a balustrade topped with urns of pink geraniums she could see a carefully manicured lawn bordered by tall spruces. At the foot of the lawn stood the gazebo at the summit of the Ledges. Beyond the gazebo lay the channel and the town of Bridge Harbor. On a warm and sunny June afternoon, the feeling was heavenly, like being on a cloud two hundred feet or more above the water.

A table shaded by a yellow umbrella and elegantly set with blue and white Chinese export porcelain stood in the center of the terrace. Around the table sat the guests. With the exception of Fran, it was the same group as the previous evening. Charlotte greeted Thornhill and the other guests, and took a seat.

“Felix and I were just talking about the psychology of book collecting,” said Thornhill as he mixed Charlotte’s drink. “Felix was saying that the drive to collect begins with bibliophilia—the love of books—and progresses to bibliomania, which is an incurable disease.”

“Why incurable?” asked Daria.

“Because the bibliomaniac is never satisfied,” replied Felix. “There is always another book that he must add to his collection. And—fortunately for the dealer—the more unique or unattainable a book is, the more he wants it.”

“Then the real motivation is greed,” observed John.

“
Ja
. Sometimes uncontrollable greed.”

“Now wait a minute,” protested Thornhill. “I must take issue with you there, Felix. Surely the collector is also motivated by the desire to take a part—however small—in the cultural heritage of mankind. The book collector is, after all, on a higher plane than the beer can collector.”

“
Ja
, this is true. The interest of the book collector is in culture, just as the interest of the philatelist is in geography or the interest of the numismatist is in currencies. Or the interest of the beer can collector is in breweries. But the basic instinct—the drive to possess—is the same.”

“Then, what produces the instinct?” asked Daria.

“Aha,” said Felix, raising a manicured forefinger. “That is a question for the psychiatrist, not for the book dealer.”

“The Freudians would say it’s an expression of the need to control,” said John. “A manifestation of the anal retentive personality.”

“I daresay you know more about it than I do,” Felix replied. “But in that case,
Homo sapiens
is not the only species to exhibit the anal retentive personality. Why do magpies carry off trinkets, or dogs bury bones? No, the collecting instinct is very basic.” He paused to refill his glass and then proceeded to empty half of it in a single swallow. “And very potent. The lengths to which a collector will go to acquire a book are legendary.”

Thornhill handed Charlotte her drink, and seated himself at the head of the table. “I sense one of Felix’s biblioanecdotes coming on,” he said, adding, “My good friend here is the greatest book raconteur in the world.”

Felix smiled smugly. “I am glad you say the world, my dear Herr Professor.” He turned back to the others. “
Ja
, there have been many cases of book collectors—how do you say in English?—going off the rails. Murder has even been committed for a book.”

Thornhill nodded. “The story of Don Vincente.”

Felix proceeded to tell the tale with great skill. It involved a Spanish monk named Don Vincente who coveted a book that was said to be the only one of its kind. When the book came up for sale at auction, he staked his life’s savings on it, but was outbid by a rival. Shortly afterward, the rival died in a fire and the collection was destroyed. The prize volume, however, mysteriously found its way into Don Vincente’s collection. When the authorities learned of this, he was tried for murder. In a heroic effort to save him, his lawyer tracked down another copy of the volume in a Paris library. The lawyer argued that since more than one copy of the book existed, it was impossible to prove that Don Vincente’s book was the one in question.

“But on hearing this,” Felix concluded, “Don Vincente broke down. ‘Alas,’ he cried. ‘My copy is not unique.’ You see, he didn’t care about the consequences, he only cared about possessing the one book that no one else could ever hope to own.”

For a moment there was silence as they contemplated the fate of Don Vincente, who, Felix added, was hanged for murder.

“But,” said Charlotte, “doesn’t it take more than this drive to possess to build an outstanding book collection? I should think it would take a great deal of intelligence and taste. After all, anyone can accumulate books, but not everyone can build a great collection.”

Felix looked at her, his eyebrows raised like circumflexes above his lively hazel eyes. “This is true,
meine gnädige Frau,
” he said. “May I compliment you on your perspicacity. The act of collecting is a game. In the words of one of the great collectors: ‘After love, the most exhilarating game of all.’
Nicht wahr
, Herr Professor?”

Thornhill, who was lighting his pipe, chuckled at the reference to his impending marriage.

“Like any game, it requires attributes such as skill, cunning, perseverance, patience, and boldness.”

“Then, skill is more important than money,” said Daria.

“Absolutely. Our dear host is a case in point. From his youth, he has been a collector of—how shall I put it?—uncommon daring. He has assembled one of the finest privately owned botanical collections in the country. A remarkable achievement for a man who, although wealthy, to be sure, has never possessed the vast wealth of the other great collectors of his generation.”

“Thank you, my good man,” said Thornhill, basking in the compliment. “But I never could have done it without your guidance.”

“Not true,” said Felix. “Our dear host possesses all the skills of the great book collector. I will give you an example. For years, our host was known in the book-collecting world as the arch-rival of another of this century’s greatest collectors, Charles W. MacMillan.”

The name rang a bell with Charlotte—MacMillan was the reclusive heir to a New England brass and copper fortune.

“Mr. MacMillan was a man of tremendous wealth, and yet our dear host has assembled a collection that is every bit the equal of his. The MacMillan collection today forms the foundation of the world-renowned botanical library of the New York Botanical Society.”

“My collection is a damn sight more than the equal of his,” interjected Thornhill testily. “It surpasses his any day.”

“My apologies, my dear Herr Professor,” said Felix. “I will correct myself: the Thornhill collection as it stands today surpasses the MacMillan collection as it stood at the time of Mr. MacMillan’s death.”

Charlotte sensed a sardonic edge to Felix’s voice, but she could have been wrong. She had a tendency to read meanings into words that weren’t there, a product of the actor’s eye for detail combined with her own overactive imagination.

“Picking nits, aren’t you Felix?” said Thornhill. He continued: “I’ll never forget the look on old Mac’s face when I bought that nurseryman’s catalogue out from under him.” He chuckled to himself. “Tell them that story.”