The Bohemian Murders (28 page)

I shook my head in the negative.

“It is absolutely breathtaking, especially at this time of year, when the mountains are a brilliant emerald green; but it is also formidable in terms of geographic features. The mountains are steep-sided and rise right up out of the sea, except that in one area there is a kind of shelf that was once an undersea plateau. Of course, there are these little coves tucked in all along the way, with sandy beaches. One would have to have a very good reason to leave the beach and climb up the cliffs, for it would be a perilous climb. Frankly, I can’t imagine either Arthur or Oscar doing such a thing.”

“Unless they were forced,” I said grimly.

Artemisia wiggled uncomfortably in her chair, but I suspected her discomfort was internal rather than external and would not respond to a change of position. She continued, “The most peculiar thing is that Oscar keeps insisting there was no one else there. A couple of times he has just dissolved in fits of weeping, saying that Arthur is dead and he’s to blame.”

Something in my head went
click.
I allowed a few moments of silence and then said, “There is something
you should know, and so should anyone who is concerned in this matter. At the lighthouse earlier this morning I had a report that a body found in the ocean was being brought up from south of Point Sur. For the coroner’s attention.”

Artemisia’s hand flew up to her mouth. “Oh, no! Mimi will be … will be—I can’t even think of the word!”

I stood up, my heart hardening. “Your reaction suggests that no matter how much he may have blamed himself, Oscar did not bring Arthur’s body back with him in the boat.”

“You can’t expect a man like Oscar to deal with something so horrible as a … a dead person! He is far too sensitive.…” Her voice trailed off, one presumed as she realized the full implication of what she’d said.

“And highly strung. Yes, and as long as a man like that has a woman like Mimi to deal with things for him, I suppose one cannot expect much of him in the way of dealing with the dirty, messy little realities of everyday life. On the other hand, it takes a certain kind of person to go off and leave a friend’s body in the water and make no attempt to return with help, wouldn’t you say?” Without giving Artemisia a chance to reply, I continued talking as I walked to the door: “I am going to the Petersons’. If you want to come, I’d be glad of your company. If not, then I wish you as good a day as can be expected under the circumstances.”

When Artemisia neither spoke nor moved from her chair, I took that as her reply. In the doorway I turned, experiencing an unexpected moment of self-illumination. “There is something you may as well know about me,” I said. “I do not go out looking for trouble, but if trouble comes to me I won’t run from it either. Particularly if an injustice is involved. Where injustice is concerned, I seem to be constitutionally incapable of looking the other way.”

My little speech of self-justification made scant impression on Artemisia, but I felt better for having said it. I
went on to the Petersons’ alone, glad that I had my new walking stick with me. If Artemisia was hostile toward me, Mimi was bound to be even more so. In physical build Mimi is a strapping sort of woman, and while I did not really think she would physically attack me, it is always best to be prepared.

After parking Max in the bushes I took walking stick in hand, tested its balance, smoothed my skirts, took a deep breath, and began the longish walk through the trees to the Petersons’ house. I walked slowly, trying to get my thoughts in order along the way. Mimi had reacted strongly to the picture of Sabrina Howard, but Oscar had not; Arthur had said he’d seen Sabrina, and I’d been counting on him to eventually dredge up from his memory exactly where. Ten to one, I’d bet wherever it was, Braxton Furnival had been there, too.

What connection could there be between Braxton Furnival and Sabrina Howard, and Mimi and Oscar Peterson, and Arthur Heyer? I knew where Phoebe fit—it was Phoebe who had made possible the identification of Sabrina Howard, that was why she had to be silenced. (One could only hope, not permanently!) What I simply could not get around in order to make the pieces fit together was the indisputable fact that the Carmelites are fanatically loyal to one another. No Carmelite would harm another; I was as certain of that as I am that breath equals life. So where, and how, did Braxton fit in?

Perhaps he didn’t. For the life of me, I couldn’t recall at that moment what had made me so suspicious of him in the first place. I was confusing myself.

I stopped on the far side of the clearing, with the house just beyond. Through the live oak trees, I could see the shingled roofline and the fieldstone chimney that Oscar had built with his own hands. A nearby plant, something between a bush and a tree, was filled with fluttering yellow finches. On another sort of day I would have smiled at these tiny little birds with their robust, sweet song—but as it was I went grimly on. Over the birdsong I could hear, from the house’s open casement windows, a thin, pathetic keening. The sound was barely human. It was enough to break your heart.

I rapped on the door with the head of my walking stick. It was opened almost instantly by one of the Twangy Boys. “Dick?” I guessed. “May I come in?”

Either I had guessed correctly or he was accustomed to being mistaken for one of his fellows, for he nodded and stepped back to admit me. The keening was louder. I lowered my head and whispered, “Is that Oscar?”

He nodded again, an expression both grave and frightened on his young face. “They’re in the kitchen. You heard what happened?”

It was my turn to nod.

Dick said, “Go on in, Fremont, but don’t expect much. Oscar just about can’t talk, and Mimi probably won’t. I don’t know what we’re gonna do. This is awful, just awful!”

“I have some news that may speed things up,” I said. “You should hear it, too. Come on in there with me.”

Tom and Harry sat next to each other on a window-seat, holding hands; they both looked as grave and as frightened as Dick, who went immediately to join them. Irma Fox, in a severe gray dress, sat in a chair in a corner, as if she wished to be both present and absent at the same time. Khalid was nowhere about. Mimi and Oscar were both at the kitchen table, he slumped over the table-top, crying as if his grief might dissolve him into the very wood; she, stroking and stroking his lank, longish hair. Her eyes were like the Medusa’s—they could turn you to stone.

“I have some news,” I said. My voice sounded too loud, or perhaps too rational, for this group, where everyone was to a degree in shock.

Mimi moved her head slightly and focused on me. “We don’t need any news. We’ve had enough, thank you.”

Oscar wailed again. His bony arms hid his face. The hair that Mimi so rhythmically stroked was filthy and appeared damp.

I went and sat on the other side of the table and spoke in a low tone. “This news I’m afraid you do need. I had word at the lighthouse this morning that the Coast Guard is bringing a body to Monterey for identification
and examination by the coroner. They picked this body up south of Point Sur early this morning. I expect they will be in Monterey by now and if not, then shortly.”

Oscar raised his head. His face was a skull with the skin stretched over it, no more—whatever flesh once covered those bones had wasted away. Only the eyes were alive, reddened and raw and streaming, as if his tears were supplied from an everlasting source. “Arthur!” he said. “Ar-thu-u-ur!” ending in a scream of anguish, his hands scrabbling and clawing at the tabletop.

“Hush,” Mimi soothed, trapping his hands one at a time, stilling them and bringing them to her breast. Oscar slipped from his chair and slid to the floor, sobbing now and trying like some great dog to climb into his wife’s lap. Meanwhile she studied me.

“He is right,” I said gently, “it could well be Arthur.”

The air of the kitchen reverberated with such tension that every word, no matter how softly spoken, rang hollow. My skin felt as if at any moment it might burst like an overripe plum.

Mimi blinked, and I saw a change in her eyes, a resolution. “I’ll go,” she said, standing.

I said, “You should both go.”

From the corner, Irma Fox hissed.

Mimi’s voice dropped to a low, deadly pitch. “Look at him!” When she stood, Oscar had collapsed on the floor beside her chair. He looked like a ragged heap of bones. “Do you really think he’s capable of talking to anyone, much less of taking responsibility for his actions?”

“I think he might if you gave him the opportunity, and I expect he would feel better afterward for having tried.”

This did not fit her agenda, so she ignored it.

Suddenly the heap of bones spoke in a loud voice: “I did it, I told you, I told you. I did it! I killed Arthur!”

“He has no idea what he’s saying,” Mimi said.

“Don’t you think you need to let someone else—the police or the coroner—decide that?”

From the windowseat there came gasps and mumbles.

Mimi persisted: “Tell me, Fremont—if Michael were your husband and he might have killed someone, what then? Would you turn him in?”

I thought about it for a long time, and at last I said, “Yes. I would.” It was the truth, but I felt as if I had stabbed myself in the heart. And when Mimi refused my offer of a ride in to Monterey and instead went off on her own, I neither protested nor followed her.

I did not really know if it was quite correct to put so much information into the log about Arthur’s death, but as Hettie always seemed to record as much as she knew about deaths in and around this part of the coast, and as I had a great need to make note of it, I wrote all I knew myself.

Whatever Mimi had told the police, they apparently did not suspect Oscar of having a hand in Arthur’s death. In spite of what Oscar had said, I tended to agree; but I did not think he was really out of his mind. I thought he knew what he was doing, and saying, although he was obviously distressed to an extreme. According to the morning newspaper, Arthur’s body was to be sent to his family home in Sonoma for burial. Unless the coroner intervened, or some new information came from somewhere, the drowning would be labeled an accident: Treacherous Big Sur coastline claims another victim. Poor Arthur.

I sat in the watch room and forced myself to do the midmonth accounting. When I added up Pete Carlson’s hours I felt a now-familiar flood of irritation and affection combined—Quincy had not used Pete for anywhere near as many hours as I’d authorized. If I were to go outside right now I’d probably find Quincy tugging away at feed sacks or raking pine straw or some such
onehanded. I made a mental note to be sure none of the routine jobs around the lighthouse had fallen behind. I could easily do more myself, now that I was no longer trying to keep up my typewriting business.

Early in the afternoon, having satisfied myself that all was well with the lighthouse, I opened the wardrobe in the bedroom and surveyed my limited supply of clothes. I don’t know what I was thinking, or hoping—that something suitable might suddenly materialize, I suppose. I knew perfectly well that I owned nothing suitable for what I had in mind.

“Aha!” I said, as an idea occurred to me.

The clothes Hettie had not taken on her trip were all on one side of the wardrobe, protected by dustcovers; mine, unprotected, were on the other. Hettie and I were quite nearly identical in size, except that I was somewhat taller and thinner than she. Surely she would not mind, and I would be extremely careful …

I selected the dreariest, most outmoded dress in the wardrobe. It was a dull satin, gunmetal gray, with tiny buttons all the way down the front and, in back, a swag skirt over a cascade of pleats that hung like a plethora of turkey wattles. On me it was a bit short, but I would wear my black high-button shoes so my ankles wouldn’t show. Due to the fact that Hettie would have had a corset under the dress, it fit my own uncorseted waist just fine. If I didn’t move too quickly, perhaps it would not be obvious that I wasn’t wearing one of those strangulating inventions of the devil. Or of some man who could qualify for that position; surely it could not have been a woman who first thought up corsets?

Having gone this far, I looked into the hatboxes on the wardrobe shelf. Since moving to California, where I do not have proper Bostonians always breathing down my neck, I have seldom worn a hat—I think hats are a lot of foolishness and uncomfortable besides. Nowadays there are women who go around with dead birds and baskets of fruit and God-knows-what-all on top of their heads. It would be amusing except that the wearers themselves fail to see the humor.

If Hettie owned any outrageous hats, she had taken
them with her. She did, however, have one that looked as if it might have been made for this very dress. Like the dress it was a bit out of style, a dark-gray satin chapeau shaped like a little flat cake with one thin black feather slanting skyward; it was meant to be worn forward on the head, held in place by thin satin straps that tied under the chin and looked for all the world like gray spaghetti. I put my hair up, and the hat on, and was astounded when I looked in the mirror. I looked quite respectable, and quite unlike myself.

Thus transformed I set off to beg an audience with the Matriarch of the Grove: Euphemia Wells.

“I hope you will forgive my presumption, as we have not been formally introduced,” I said, using my most proper Beacon Hill manner, “but as it is a Sunday and therefore a day of leisure, I thought you might be at home to callers.”

She frowned down at the calling card I had placed in her hand when she’d opened the door herself.

“The card,” I hastened to explain, “still has my old San Francisco address. There have been so many things going on since the earthquake that getting new ones printed was the last thing on my mind.”