The Body in the Boudoir (13 page)

The Cliff was pitch dark except for the outside lights. They pulled around to the back, grabbed their overnight bags, and went down the path.

The door was ajar. Faith began to feel uneasy. Sky and Tammy were pretty casual and might have left the door open, but Mrs. Danforth wasn't. She would never have left it like this before turning in for the night.

“Mom, I don't think we should go in. We should go somewhere and call. Wake up Mrs. Danforth and make sure everything's all right.”

“Don't be silly. What could be wrong? Tammy may not have been feeling well and went to bed early. Mrs. Danforth always does. One or the other may not have shut the door all the way and it blew open. I have a PenLite in my purse we can use, although it doesn't look like a power failure. All these lights are on.” She motioned to the ones by the walk.

Faith followed her in and down the hall. Jane snapped lights on as she went.

“See, nothing's been disturbed,” she said, pointing to an ornate Georgian tea service displayed on a hall table.

From the foot of the dramatic double staircase in the front foyer they could see light from upstairs.

“You go check on Tammy. That looks like her room. I want to crank up the heat. It's as cold as a tomb in here,” Jane said.

Faith went up the curved staircase, and as she approached the light coming from Tammy's open door, she called out to her. There was no reply. She hesitated. “Aunt Tammy?” she called again and moved to the door. Again, there was no answer.

She stood and looked into the room. Jane's words had been eerily apt. Her aunt was slumped forward onto the boudoir's dressing table, but Faith could tell from the way Tamora Baines Wayfort's arm was hanging that the woman dressed in a ruffled cerise negligee, her head wrapped in a bath towel, wasn't in any shape to answer.

Great-aunt Tammy was dead.

Chapter 6

S
omeone was screaming. Faith realized it was her own voice and clamped her hand over her mouth, stifling the sound.

There was a smoldering fire in the fireplace. The room seemed insufferably warm and the air was filled with the scent of a cloying perfume. Everywhere she looked all she could see was red. The embers, the room's crimson décor, Tammy's flamboyant outfit.

And the towel that was wrapped in a turban around the dead woman's head was red, too—blood red.

Faith started toward her to feel for a pulse. What could have happened? The open door. An intruder—a murderer! A murderer who might still be in the house! But there hadn't been a car outside. A murderer who had come up from the shore or across through the woods! She heard footsteps coming up the stairs and started to run toward the door leading to the bath on the left. Someone shoved her to one side.

“What the hell is going on here?”

Faith started to scream again, stopped, stood still, and looked wildly from the corpse to the figure next to her.

“Who's in mah boudoir, wearing mah negligee?”

Tammy Walfort couldn't be dead, because she was very much alive—and as if to prove it, her accent became more pronounced. Faith clung to her side in disbelief as her aunt crossed the room and yanked at the lifeless figure balanced on the dressing table's stool. Tammy let out a screech.

“It's Danny!”

As the body fell to the floor, the towel slipped, revealing a bludgeoned head, and indeed it was the housekeeper. The back of her skull resembled Humpty Dumpty's. It was the second dead body Faith had seen in the last few months, and that was two bodies too many. She grabbed a wrist, confirming what she had suspected—no pulse. No sign of life at all. She tried not to look at the corpse.

“Call 911,” she said. There had to be a phone in the room, although none was obvious.

“Darlin', she's gone. Nothing anyone can do. Poor Sky. He's going to take this hard. Go round the bend, in fact.” Tammy allowed herself a moment before returning to her initial reaction. She began walking around the room angrily plucking at her bed, which had been turned down. “Sleeping here. Playing dress up!” She opened the bathroom door. “And using my tub! And candles! Smell it. That's Rigaud, Faith. Ninety dollars apiece. The big ones are three hundred!” Indignation appeared to be the woman's overriding emotion and Faith generously decided her great-aunt must be in shock.

“I think we should go downstairs to call the police. We mustn't disturb anything here.”

Tammy had opened one of her closets.

“My sable is missing. Two guesses who's been wearing it and the first one doesn't count. Let's go search her room. I thought some of my things had been moved around, but figured it was the cleaners. Danny didn't dirty her hands with housework, you know.”

Considering the woman's age, which had to be about the same as Uncle Sky's, and considering the Walforts' income, Faith thought Mrs. Danforth had earned a toilet-bowl-free semiretirement.

She urged her aunt again.

“We have to call the police. Now! And Mom is downstairs alone. The house may not be safe.”

This did it and Tammy looked alarmed.

“There have been a number of break-ins in the area lately. But we don't have to waste time calling from downstairs. Use the phone here.” She pointed to what Faith had assumed was a decorative cloisonné coffer on the Louis Quinze commode next to the bed. She opened it and pulled out a gold-plated phone, or maybe it was brass. In any case, it had a dial tone. She got through to the police immediately and, as she'd thought, the dispatcher told her to leave the room. An ambulance and a squad car would be there as soon as possible.

Jane Sibley was in the library and reacted with astonishment, then sorrow, at the news.

“I hope she didn't know what was happening. What do you think, Faith?”

“She wasn't facing either the door to the hall or the bath, so I don't think she could have seen the attack.” Unless she was looking straight into the mirror, Faith added to herself. No need to mention the thought to the others.

Tammy had poured herself a drink and was pacing back and forth.

“What was she doing in my room? What was she doing here at all? She's supposed to be at her sister's in Bridgeport for the holiday weekend. We told her to stay until Monday. I know she left the house yesterday. Called the car service myself since Sky took my car. His is in for kid-glove servicing, as usual. Finds a speck of dirt on the hood and off it goes. He's supposed to be hammering out some kind of real estate deal over in Westchester at one of Trump's resorts, but I know these guys and I'll bet they've been spending more time on the golf course and in the bar. He left Friday and is due back tomorrow.”

“Mrs. Danforth must have come back sometime today,” Faith said, reflecting that neither her uncle nor Tammy were ardent churchgoers, or much for things like Easter-egg hunts.

“I wouldn't know. I'd planned to be here, catch up on a few things. You know how it is when your husband is away. Well, you will know, Faith. Anyway, Saturday morning the idea of staying here alone began to give me the creeps and I decided to go into the city. I left when she did. Omigod, what if I hadn't!”

She poured herself another generous shot of bourbon—and no branch—tottered over to the couch, and sank into the cushions.

Faith was still trying to get everyone's whereabouts straight.

“So the two of you took the train to Penn Station and she caught one for Connecticut?”

Tammy sat up straighter and looked askance. “I don't take the train. The driver brought me into the city after dropping her off at the station out here.”

Faith and her mother exchanged glances. They knew there was no love lost between mistress and housekeeper, but not to give her a ride . . .

“I know what y'all are thinking, but you didn't know what she was like. So far as she was concerned I was trailer trash and she didn't hide it. Wanted me to get fed up and leave—like some of the others, I'm sure. I tried to tell Sky what she was doing, but gave that up quickly. If it had come down to her or me, well, you know it would have been Danny. Always going on about Caroline. Wife number two, or three? The one from that rich Philadelphia family. Maybe if she hadn't died so soon after they were married, she wouldn't have been promoted to sainthood. Oh, I can tell you everything about Caroline's perfect taste in clothes. The elegant dinner parties she gave. Her famous friends. And pedigreed ancestors. It's a wonder the
Mayflower
didn't sink.”

Sirens outside interrupted Tammy's soliloquy.

“Thank heaven!” she said.

“Tam, dear,” Jane suggested gently. “It might be a good idea not to let the police know how much you disliked Danny. I mean, of course we understand, but someone else might misconstrue your words . . .”

Tammy paled visibly. “You don't honestly think they'd suspect me of bashing her head in! If anything, it would be the opposite. Believe you me, when we were alone in the house together when Sky was away, I locked my doors. I wouldn't have put it past her to creep in and smother me with a pillow so she could—”

“Hush now,” Jane cautioned. “Faith, go answer the door.”

Faith was relieved to see the police and EMTs, although with a dead body upstairs in her aunt's boudoir, she was aware that the emotion was a fleeting one.

She was also aware of two questions that occurred to her as Tammy spoke. Why had the housekeeper returned to The Cliff and when? Aware, too, of the one that had sprung to mind the moment she'd realized who had been murdered. Dressed fit to kill, had Mrs. Danforth been expecting someone—and been killed instead?

Faith led the way upstairs then returned to the library. She'd told the officer in charge the name of the victim, realizing that she had no idea of Mrs. Danforth's first name or any other salient information—age, permanent address, next of kin. Tammy had mentioned a sister and she told them that. She'd also mentioned the open back door before returning downstairs.

She walked into the room at the same time as her aunt.

“I called and left a message for Sky,” Tammy said. “Just said there had been an accident and to come straight home.”

“We'd better call my mother—and Aunt Frances.”

“No, Jane.” Tammy sounded firm. Either the shock was wearing off or the bourbon was kicking in. She seemed in complete control now. “We'll wait until Sky comes. He can break the news to them.”

“They'll want to be here.”

“And that can wait, too.”

It was the calm before a storm of activity that only Faith had witnessed previously when police had arrived at Emma Morris's apartment in the aftermath of her ordeal in December. The ordeal Faith had fortuitously interrupted, or she would have come across three bodies in these last months.

Her mother and aunt looked askance at the number of uniforms who began to stream into The Cliff carrying all the equipment necessary at a crime scene. An officer, who appeared to be still in his teens, came down from upstairs shortly and informed them that the chief as well as the Nassau County medical examiner would be there soon. Would they mind remaining where they were? And refrain from using the phone? He took a seat near the door. Tam poured herself another drink.

Upon arrival, the chief, Matthew Johnson, turned out to be a jovial-looking man in his late fifties, Faith guessed. He was in plain clothes, as was the man he introduced as Detective Willis, “helping us out from Manhasset.” Chief Johnson greeted Tammy warmly, asking solicitously if she was all right. In a town the size of the one in which The Cliff was located, it would have been odd if the police chief
didn't
know the Walforts and every other inhabitant.

“I'm fine, Matt, but as you know, something dreadful has happened and our treasured Mrs. Danforth is dead.”

“I remember seeing her at some of your lovely parties. A great loss to your family. My condolences.”

Faith began to feel as if she were watching a surrealistic drawing room play. All the niceties were being acted out while above their heads was a chamber of horrors.

“Sky's been away since Friday and I left word for him. He should be calling soon—or on his way already. I told him to come home immediately.”

The chief nodded and the detective took out a notebook. He looked less like a regular on the North Shore social circuit—the chief was wearing a tie that, Faith recognized, sported the local country club logo—than someone just dropping in from much meaner streets.

“I understand the dead woman was your housekeeper,” he said, and began working his way through a list of questions, eliciting Danny's vital information from Tammy, although she often answered by saying he'd have to ask her husband. She had no idea how old Mrs. Danforth was or other relatives' addresses. She did know her first name.

“Mabel.”

He nodded and closed his notebook. “They should be about finished with the photographs upstairs. I'll need some more information about the deceased's movements this weekend, but I want to have a look at the scene now. Matt?”

The chief had settled in next to his hostess and jumped up, apparently recalling the matter at hand.

“I understand the back door was open when you arrived,” he said. “Any signs of forced entry? Broken glass? The lock jimmied?”

“No,” Faith said, shaking her head. “When Mother and I got here the entire place was dark, except for the outside lights. The door was ajar, but nothing indicated it had been forced open.”

“Okay. We're checking around in back, and over the rest of the grounds.”

Faith thought of something. “There were no cars in the garage. And with the house dark, anyone casing it would assume it was empty.”

“She's so smart.” Tammy beamed. “And she's going to be a beautiful bride. Right here in June. Y'all have to come, Matt.”

On that note the men left.

Bride. She was a bride, Faith thought, and she desperately wanted to talk to the groom. She didn't know if she'd be able to erase the picture of Mrs. Danforth in Tammy's frilly, feathered, totally incongruous outfit from her mind by the time the nuptials took place. Whenever she looked up at those windows—they'd be facing the house during the ceremony—she'd be reminded of the body in the boudoir.

Elopement was beginning to seem extremely attractive.

W
hen had they arrived? Around nine thirty? Faith was losing all sense of time. Looking at her watch, she was startled to find it was only a little after eleven. It was going to be a long night. The detective had mentioned the photographers. They'd be taking pictures of the victim as well as every corner of the room. And Faith knew they would also be covering every surface with fingerprint powder besides looking for anything else that might give them a clue to the identity of the murderer. Hairs, threads from fabric, dirt from the sole of a shoe. There wouldn't be anything like a matchbook or a receipt dropped—it would be a much too Sherlockian piece of luck. But she hoped they'd get some kind of lucky. Hoped this would be solved immediately. She needed a swift arrest to lift the shadow that threatened to destroy all their wedding plans.

Tammy was uncharacteristically quiet. And for once Faith didn't suggest food as a panacea. She wasn't hungry and she doubted the other two women were. Besides, the kitchen was Danny's domain and Faith didn't want to be reminded that the woman who had prepared Uncle Sky's favorites all these years was dead. Favorites that tended in the direction of nursery food—jam roly-poly, rice pudding, custards, crumbles, and ones Faith suspected Sky favored for the British names: toad in the hole, bubble and squeak, bangers and mash. Danny kept two cookie jars filled—one for Sky and the other that visiting children were allowed to pillage. They may have been terrified of her, but all of them regularly risked her steely eye for the oversize oatmeal-raisin and chocolate-walnut cookies, the lemon squares and treacle tarts.