Quiet Dell: A Novel (26 page)

“Eric,” Emily said, “I’m so indebted to you.”

“Likewise,” he murmured.

In a moment, she sat back to look at him. “The Eicher boy was emasculated. It’s not to be known . . . until the trial.”

He met her eyes. “That is what Grimm told you.”

“Among other things.” She could not mention the rest. “But that is the thing I had not expected. It has set my mind going. I must get out of these wet clothes. Can you wait?”

“Yes, Emily. I shall wait right here. Might I have, though, the glasses you promised me?”

“Of course.” She gave them to him, from the small cupboard by the table, and went to the bathroom to strip off her clothes and throw the damp bedspread to the floor. She pulled on her robe, a Japanese silk in a pattern not unlike the style of illustration in the Eicher playhouse. Duty jumped at her and stood, paws on the rim of the tub. His water bowl was full, but she lifted him in, placed the stopper, and ran him the puddle he required. Perhaps the water was colder thus, perhaps he felt safe in the tub. She put her hand on him. “He was your boy. I know, Duty. Your boy.” She waited while the dog drank and found herself weeping effortlessly, as if these were not her tears. Whose, then? She took her hand from the dog’s muscular back and wiped her eyes. “Come on, then,” she said, but Duty jumped from the tub and ran before her.

Eric had arranged the brandy and glasses on the table by the sofa, and poured the tumblers an inch full. “Ah, you see?” he said. “Civilization.”

“Or its appearance.” She took up her glass. “To survival, and truth.”

He touched his glass to hers. “To health, Emily. And home.”

“I’m glad O’Boyle is in Mexico.”

“I wish I were with him.”

“Do you, Eric?”

“No, no,” he said, licking brandy from his lips. “Better to be here with you.” He took her hand and looked at her quite seriously. They laughed at the same moment. “Tension,” Eric said. “You’ve tears in your eyes, but it’s tension.”

“Release of tension,” Emily said.

He swirled the dark brandy in his glass. “But it’s odd, about O’Boyle. When we were in that cave of a morgue, I was focused on the images as evidence. I stood right under the lights for the close shots; they were white hot on the back of my head, like tropical sun. I had a sense of O’Boyle looking at me, as though I were far below him in some bright, lit space. Like a public square or a beach. Each day here, I feel as though I’m seeing what he does not.”

“To know this, about Hart Eicher,” Emily said, “would shatter O’Boyle.”

“It exposes the narrative Powers constructed. A lady killer, yes, but purely for profit and sadistic control, or a myth he perhaps believes.”

“Attack, mutilation, elevates him. Does he want men then? Why mutilate the boy, and not the women?”

“Perhaps something was done to him when he was a boy that age. Perhaps he’s heterosexual and impotent. Impotent because he wants men? Seems awfully simple. If he wanted men, he could find them; men do, every day. Does he want a woman he can’t have, mother, sister, so it’s all taboo? And they owe him? He wants them to suffer; he wants to watch.”

“He has them, that way.”

“The point is,” Eric said, “he can’t have anyone, until he kills them. That’s why he kills. The rest is empty form and fakery, and control, to keep some sense of order.”

Yes, Emily thought. “Is that bottle finished?” she asked softly.

“Afraid so. I shall go now.”

“Tomorrow then. We will go to the garage at Quiet Dell with Bond.”

“I’ll be at breakfast, here, at eight.”

Emily nodded. “I will interview Lemke’s relatives, who arrive tomorrow to identify her. Bond will take us to the jail and produce Powers, but you must simply appear there, to photograph the confrontation.”

“Powers and the relatives?”

“Yes, for the
Tribune
. Duty is not to be recorded.”

He gave her a look. The dog was sound asleep at her feet. “Don’t get up. And go to sleep, please. The door will lock as I leave.”

Emily heard him try the door, to be sure, from the hallway. She turned off the light and thought of William, and home, when she could leave here. He had said to telephone, and she must. She reached to stroke the sleeping dog. Duty barely stirred. She could not sleep: she planned. She would close off this room tomorrow, set up the adjacent room for the interview. It had the smaller bed, a table for dining, a settee. It would be the aunt and the sister, and likely the sister’s husband. Emily would order tea and sandwiches, in case they had not stopped for food.

The night was close. Emily lay in bed, her damp hair cool along the pillow. She was not afraid or distressed. Her thoughts were clear.

In affect, Powers was gentlemanly, courtly. The threat was never sexual, one reason he succeeded with these women in midlife, women likely already ravaged by men or by fortune; they wanted care and protection. They were not heiresses; they hadn’t great riches. They wouldn’t imagine someone murdering and swindling for their savings, going to such trouble, when he’d convinced them he had his own means. And they would not find him out by demanding potency: women of any age were discouraged from making such demands. These women were not young. Youth wanted penetration; young love wanted pierced to the quick. The
brain, the heart, the body, wanted sex and love, wanted trust, the equivalent of mother love in one’s lover: unconditional love, passionate, true, at least in the instant.

Asleep, Emily saw and felt it.

Dorothy lay in the earth, trussed in burlap. Her hair was loose about her, fallen from Powers’ hands, for the noose had snapped immediately, not killing her. Roaring at her stunned, bound form, pleasured, he took the secret, small, soft, like a mouse of flesh, from its place. The scream that rent him open was her scream and his own; he used the strap then, pulling it tight around her neck until she died, and then dragged her to the ditch by the long rope of her thick dark hair. Dead, she frightened him when her hair came away in his hands. A moment, an instant: he was terrified. He threw it down upon her quickly, all of a piece.

•   •   •

Emily woke early to type a first dispatch and found the morning edition of
The Clarksburg Exponent
slipped under her door. A banner headline proclaimed the known details:
Fifth Love-Farm Victim Found, Webbing Strips Lashed Tightly About Her Neck.

An old photo of Lemke graced the front page below the fold, with a caption stating only that police identified the victim as Mrs. Dorothy P. Lemke, of Northborough, Massachusetts. Lemke had not been pretty in her youth, like Asta Eicher, but her eyes were wide-set and her open, indirect gaze almost wistful. Her hair was beautifully done, thick and dark. Emily guessed the portrait was taken on the occasion of Lemke’s marriage to Pressler, whoever he was, and that Grimm had released it surreptitiously, through a contact at the
Exponent,
just after finding the body. She skipped to the end of the article:
The new body had not been buried as long as the first four. A considerable quantity of her jet-black hair was saved as an aid to positive identification.
The coroner was quoted indirectly, but no one would mark the word
saved,
or know what it meant.

She threw down the paper and dressed quickly in a dark suit and sensible low shoes. She trusted Grimm’s pronouncement that
the hotel would accommodate Duty, but leashed the dog in her valise regardless, tucking in the finger bowl she’d brought from home. She felt the door lock behind them and stepped to the elevator, which revealed Coley Woods, the Negro porter, elegantly turned out in his braided jacket.

“Mr. Woods, good morning.”

“Miss Thornhill.” He nodded and stepped back to allow her entrance. “I’ll take you directly down, or we’ll be delayed on second and first.”

“Thank you, Mr. Woods. You must be pressed with arrivals. You saw the paper?”

“Oh yes. That woman stayed in your room, night he brought her here. Middle of the night too, not usual.”

Emily turned to him. “Dorothy Lemke? She stayed here, with Powers?”

“No, ma’am. She was alone. Drove up before the hotel, one thirty in the morning, end of July sometime. I went out to get her bags, couldn’t see who was driving. Brought her up here to Room 127.”

“To my room,” Emily said.

“Yes,’m. She only stayed a few hours, left before seven
A.M
. that same day.”

“Mr. Woods, you’re saying she slept, most likely the last night of her life, in 127? Did someone reserve Room 127 for her, or was it coincidence?”

Woods slid his gaze toward her. “Ma’am? Mr. Parrish can advise on reservations. But you know, it don’t matter. The devil walks abroad. Churches around here? They’re full up.”

The elevator opened on the lobby. She gave him her card. “Mr. Woods, may I speak with you further? Something more may come to mind.” He only nodded as she stepped past him. She saw Eric in the tearoom; he stood to receive the weighty valise, which he placed gently on the floor under their table. “Eric,” she said.

She had wanted to phone William. She was too late.

“My dear cousin,” he replied, taking his seat. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost. If so, don’t tell me.”

She busied herself cutting slices of country ham and bits of egg into small pieces. Duty was sitting up in the valise, his head protruding slightly. She filled his bowl, positioning it within.

Eric ate, ignoring her ministrations. “I have the photographs from yesterday, just in on the plane. My assistant stayed up all night, printing them, and released the garage pictures to run with the Quiet Dell story in the
Trib
. They ran your piece about the Eicher house, the animal graveyard, Annabel’s drawings, yesterday, with O’Boyle’s snapshots. The house is attracting crowds. McKee has posted guards.”

“And the morgue photos?”

“I have them. Not for publication, as Grimm asked. I gave him copies, and the negatives, an hour ago.” He flung open one of a pile of newspapers. “I’ve been to the kiosk and bought them all. They’re compiling a legend for him.
Murder Farm Romance. Lady Killer Romeo.
”

“Lady killer,” Emily said. “That term again, an homage of sorts to an attractive man successful with women.”

Eric signaled for more coffee. “But successful in a predatory way, purely for his own gratification. It’s an apt word.” He picked up one of the papers, open to an image of Powers in horn-rim glasses, salesman for the Eureka Vacuum Company. “But to look at this short, dull-seeming pod of a man, one knows he was never confident with women until he worked out writing to them. He needn’t even troll for women; they presented themselves and he knew to choose the most vulnerable.”

“They’ve released the letters to the press,” Emily said. “More fodder for the Romeo myth.”

“I have it on good authority,” Eric was saying, “that Powers tracked the progress of a correspondence with an elaborate system of phrases he took from love columns and romance magazines, and articles ascribed to Valentino. He filed letters from women according to a code. Everything having to do with Eicher or Lemke was filed under P-15. It will all be in my story tomorrow.”

Emily felt nauseous.

“It’s so childish,” Eric went on, “the busywork of a boy accountant. He is subnormal, an outcast who couldn’t hold a job. Eureka fired him for stealing vacuum cleaners. Why P-15?
P
for Powers? Fifteenth time?”

“He liked numbers, and repeating numbers,” Emily said.

“Emily, do eat. And when you can, you should telephone William Malone. I hear he’s trying to make arrangements for the Eichers.”

“What do you mean?”

“To bring them home, Emily.”

•   •   •

Bond’s police car assured them swift passage. They sat in the backseat, which was high and stuffed with horsehair. Eric’s camera bag, their valises, and Duty’s carrier were arranged in the deep floor. The car bounced along, raising a great deal of blond dust, very close, on Emily’s side, to the split-rail fences of the fields. Negotiating the turn onto the dirt road to Quiet Dell proved challenging. Bond required his bullhorn; farm trucks, smart roadsters, even carriages, jostled for space.

“Of what is Quiet Dell composed?” she asked. “Are there businesses, a store or gas station further on? Where does the road go?”

Bond neglected to answer, but his detective called back to her. “It’s just farms one after t’other, set far apart mostly, to Mount Clare, ’bout four miles distant. Road just goes deeper in, following Elk Creek, and there’s a right pretty waterfall at the end.”

“The end?” Emily asked, but they had arrived, and she was surprised to see that a fence of tall white pickets stood between the road and the garage property. Cars were parked as far as the eye could see. Onlookers stood in long lines perhaps four across, proceeding first to the front of the garage and then around behind it, to view the long T-shaped ditches and the winch. Entrepreneurs were selling lemonade and sandwiches from carts; one man hawked broadsheets hastily printed with the legend “Bluebeard of Quiet Dell.”

“Deputy Bond,” said Emily, struggling from the car with her
notebook and valise, and Duty on his leash, “who has authorized the fence, the salesmen? Does Sheriff Grimm know of all this?”

“Private property,” Bond replied.

“But it’s Powers’ property, isn’t it?”

The garage doors were half open to allow light to penetrate, but police directed onlookers past while Emily and Eric went inside with Bond. The interior was big enough for three or four cars. Brick tile walls, concrete floor, and a basement formed by the foundation walls. A large trapdoor to the rear lay flung open. Rough stairs led below; a broken rope still hung from a rafter above them. Several trunks sat to one side, thrown open. Emily looked only at the objects there, for the idea of the basement made her dizzy. Duty walked back and forth, back and forth, until she pulled the dog to her on the leash. Eric was shooting close-ups of various possessions police had taken from the trunks: Emily recognized photographs of Heinrich Eicher, holding baby Annabel, and formal portraits of the children. Silver buckles and spoons and a graceful ladle lay tumbled amongst children’s clothing and a baby bonnet—clothes the children had obviously outgrown. Asta Eicher must have brought them along as objects of sentimental importance. There were no toys; she’d thought they were going back for the children and their things. According to O’Boyle, Annabel would have brought the rag doll to which she was so attached. But it was not here. Powers’ property seemed mixed in indiscriminately: small, cardboard-framed photos of various women, such as portrait studios send their customers for display proofs. There had to be fifty. The letters themselves had been removed and held in evidence, but Emily wrote down the names on the signed photographs: “your Bessie,” “from Virginia, for ‘Connie’ only,” “fondly, Your Edith.”