The Bohemian Murders (13 page)

“Fremont,” he said in an oddly deep voice, “you are beautiful.”

Dear God but I was hot! I laughed on a high, false note and said, “Misha, you are quite insane.” I couldn’t bear the intensity any longer, so I got up and went to the stove, where I checked the coffeepot. It was empty.

“Don’t call me that.” He came up behind me and stood too close.

“Why not? I thought that was what you wanted everyone, including me, to call you.” I jabbed my elbow back as I picked up the coffee percolator, forcing him to move. I carried it to the sink; he followed.

“Everyone except you. From you it requires an effort. On your sweet tongue, Misha rings false.” His lips were near my ear and his breath was like fire.

Suddenly I was furious, and so energized by my fury that I no longer felt aches or pain—or caution. I forgot about making coffee and whirled around, my voice low, deadly: “How dare you talk about my sweet tongue! You have not the slightest idea whether my tongue is sweet or not, but the same cannot be said about
hers,
can it?
She
who gave you the name, who first called you Misha, how sweet is
her
tongue?”

He went all pale; his still-naked eyes flared forth pain. And then a veil descended within those eyes and he became the old Michael, in spite of new curls and clothes: an enigma, with depths impossible to fathom. He stepped back stiffly and in a tight voice said, “My mother was the first to call me Misha.”

I was still angry. As if I had tasted blood and been crazed by it, I ranted on, my voice now steadily rising: “But
she
does not remind you of your mother, does she? Or perhaps you committed incest in your youth? Were you a little Oedipus, Misha?”

“Beware, Fremont! My mother is dead, she lies in the ground beside my father. What you are suggesting is obscene.”

I lifted my chin. “And the things you are doing over there in Carmel are not obscene?”

I saw with deep satisfaction that Michael could not keep up his facade. The enigma cracked, the veil
dissolved, his eyes blazed. But what came next was unexpected. In the space of a heartbeat he had me trapped against the sink, pinned by the weight of his body, and he was swallowing me whole.

The heat of him dissolved all my bones. I could no more have pushed him away than I could … could … I couldn’t think of anything.

His mouth left mine. He held my face in both his hands, and I felt his strength. “Say it,” he hissed on the
S
’s, “say my name!”

I trembled. He could crush my head like an egg. “W-w-which one?”

“Who am I to you, Fremont?” He had agony in his eyes.

“Michael!”

He kissed me again, now tenderly. I clung to him and cried without knowing why. He wrapped his arms around me and murmured soothing sounds, nonsense, then finally words. Words I wanted to hear: “Fremont, listen to me. I am not in love with Artemisia. It isn’t what you think.”

“It’s not?”

“No. It’s not.” He released me, came to stand beside me at the sink, and took up the percolator himself. Which was just as well—in my still-boneless state I certainly could not make coffee.

“Then what is it?” I asked.

“I, ah—” He glanced over his shoulder at the open kitchen door, then out the window over the sink. The white beam of the light swept by. “I can’t talk about it. Not yet, and certainly not here. Where do you keep the coffee?”

I got it from the cupboard and gave it to him. My ability to think was returning, along with the dull ache in my head and various other parts. “More spy stuff,” I said bitterly, “is that it, Michael?”

Looking truly miserable, he carried the percolator over to the stove and placed it on a burner. “I can’t talk about it.” He bent over, opened up the stove’s firebox, and tossed in a couple of pieces of wood. “But the ‘spy stuff’ is not what you think, either.”

“Dear God in heaven!” I exclaimed, even though I am hardly sure there is one. “Now you’re driving
me
insane!”

Bent over, poking up the fire, Michael muttered something. His face glowed as if licked by the flames of hell.

I said, “I beg your pardon?”

He flung the stove door shut with a clang, straightened up, and nailed me with a gaze as hard as iron. “What I said was: Better insane than dead!”

“
Y
ou had better explain what you mean by that.” My legs would not support me any longer. I fumbled for the nearest chair, grabbed it, and sat down rather too hard. “I confess this—this—” I made a stirring-around gesture. “All of this is a bit beyond me!”

Michael said, “I cannot.”

He withdrew into himself, becoming a sort of hyper-alert automaton. He watched me, he watched the about-to-perk coffee; me, the coffee; and so on. His face had gone utterly expressionless.

I waited.

Finally he spoke again. “I apologize for losing control of myself with you, Fremont. What I did was, under present circumstances, inexcusable. I hope you will forgive me.”

“It was nothing,” I said—which was of course an utter lie.

Michael winced.

“I suppose I might have rather enjoyed it,” I continued, observing him from the corner of my eye, “if I were more my usual self this evening. That is, of course, provided you told the truth about your feelings for Artemisia.”

He rubbed the top of his head: back to front, then front to back. An old habit that had caused less disastrous results in previous times, when his hair was clipped short. The motion meant he was anxious.

“You forgive me then?” he asked.

I hardened my heart, though he had made the most endearing mess of himself. “I did not say that. There is more at issue between us than a few moments’ indiscretion.”

The coffee began to perk and fill the room with its tantalizing fragrance.

“I told you: I am not in love with Artemisia,” Michael said.

I waited; the coffee perked; the silence grew. He waited, too.

Michael Archer—Misha Kossoff: By either name, he is one of the few people who can outwait me when I am determined. After a while it became apparent that he would not say more tonight. He would not lose control of himself again. He would not explain why these things were not what I thought they were, and the bubble of energy that had been holding me up had collapsed a good many minutes ago.

I sighed and put my head in my hands, elbows resting on the table. Michael, the self-appointed coffee monitor, got up and rooted around the kitchen. With my eyes closed I listened to the sounds of drawers and cupboards opening and closing; I did not offer to help him find anything. He had done perfectly well on the soup without me—why spoil his record?

Yet it was still a pleasant surprise to open my eyes when he said, “Here, Fremont,” and to see before me the coffee mug that I prefer, rather than a cup and saucer, which most women would have wanted. Solicitously he continued, “You are not concerned that a cup of coffee will keep you awake?”

“Surely you jest,” I said wearily, picking up the mug.

When most of the tangy brew had coursed warmly down my gullet, I asked one question I could not make myself let go of: “Does Artemisia know how you truly feel?”

He looked deep into my eyes and solemnly replied, “Yes, she does. But she thinks she can change my mind.”

“Ah,” I said. And then I left him sitting there and went to bed.

The face that peered into mine off and on during the night belonged neither to Michael nor to Quincy, but to Mimi Peterson. “Misha was concerned that the doctor’s orders be followed while still observing the proprieties,” she said in explanation the first time she woke me. “We do know what they are—the proprieties, I mean—even if we generally ignore them. Therefore I have come to monitor you. Now be still, Fremont. I understand that I’m supposed to see if your eyes go all wobbly.”

My eyes did not go all wobbly, not during the night and not when I got up shortly after six o’clock. The same could not be said for the Petersons’ automobile, which wobbled a good deal as Mimi drove away at six-thirty. Their car reminded me of Oscar—spindly struts but a certain charm—whereas Mimi was more of a steam locomotive. Perhaps it’s really true that opposites attract. So where did that leave me and Michael? Actually we are rather alike, Michael and I.

I sighed as I went back into the lighthouse after seeing Mimi off, wondering how this would all come out in the end. At least he had absolved me of calling him Misha. I supposed that was something.

After breakfast I felt a little fragile, and my head was sore but otherwise I was fine. It took quite some time,
though, to conving Quincy that this was so. I was glad when he said, “Then mebbe I’ll take me a walk into town for a coupla hours, iff’n it’s all right with you.”

“Of course it’s all right,” I agreed, but I was curious, for Quincy is not generally much of a one for taking walks. I climbed to the platform around the base of the lantern and watched him disappear into the woods. It was good to be alone again—I’d had entirely too much close company for the past day and night. So why, as soon as I lost sight of him, did I feel apprehensive?

Cold wind tore at my dress. I raised my shawl up over my head, walked halfway around the platform, and looked out upon a gray and deeply disgruntled sea. Neptune was definitely in a difficult mood this morning. I raised the binoculars to my eyes and scanned the choppy waves, praying that I would not find anything out of order. Still with the same prayer, I turned my attention to the shoreline. Slightly nasty weather aside, all was well. I went down to the watch room and so noted in the log.

The typewriter sat on the watch room table, its handsome black-and-silver presence reminding me that I had a lot of work to do. Today was a Saturday, and in the normal course of events I would be going to my office on Grand from twelve to three-thirty. But the thought of carrying that heavy machine down the stairs, putting it into the shay, and so on nearly undid me. Actually I did not feel like getting in the shay myself, though a part of me wanted to dash over to Carmel and see Phoebe, then check by Braxton Furnival’s house again … while another part (the part that speaks in my head with the voice of my mother) said
You do not always have to go dashing about. If you wait quietly, they will likely come to you.

“Perhaps by noon I’ll feel stronger,” I said to myself, canceling the Voice as I trailed a finger across the typewriter keys. Really, I wanted to work, to keep my mind off everything else—I just did not want to transport the machine.
Or,
said the Voice,
to drive the rig through the woods where it happened!
The Voice has an inconvenient way of telling me the truth when I least want to hear it.

Then I realized: The log was done, the accounts were
up-to-date, the animals could look after themselves, and Quincy would have let me know if any supplies needed ordering. There was not a reason in the world, at least none that I could think of, why I should not just sit right down and type.

I did ten of Braxton’s letters in an hour, and twenty-five envelopes in another thirty minutes. By then I was bored out of my mind—so bored that I started thinking about things I didn’t want to think about. Such as: Who was the masked man who struck me? Was he really a robber? Did he just want my purse, or had he really been after the sketches and taken the leather bag merely as an afterthought? Did he know me? Did I know him?

“Never mind,” I mumbled, stacking Braxton’s letters neatly, the envelopes on top and a paperweight on top of all. “Phoebe has more sketches.” And as soon as I felt physically stronger, or got back my nerve or whatever, I would go get them—if she hadn’t already come to me by then. I supposed I might as well admit, to myself at least, that I didn’t actually believe I was merely robbed.

I went out and did the ten o’clock watch a few minutes early. Everything looked exactly as it had before, except for a straggly line of black cormorants gleefully flapping along, their flight aided by a strong tailwind. I wasn’t really seeing cormorants, and my mind was not on the weather. I was seeing eyes that flashed through the holes in a mask, a plain black mask such as both adults and children wear on Halloween. He’d had a bandana folded into a triangle over his nose, mouth, and chin. And he’d worn a Western-style wide-brimmed hat.

A month ago I would have said the only thing I could be certain of was that the masked person was male. Now, after exposure to the Carmelites and their penchant for colorful modes of dress, I could not even be sure of that. The force with which I’d been hit also suggested a man. But I thought of Mimi Peterson’s strong arms and legs; of Phoebe, who worked in stone (no, scratch her—her arms might be strong but this person had been much bigger than Phoebe); Artemisia? “Surely a man,” I said aloud, as if that settled it. But of course it didn’t.