The Styx (16 page)

Marjory was used to the exquisite appointments that her friend always made to the living space when she arrived from New York at the beginning of the season. Despite her sometimes boisterous character in public and displays of athletic prowess before her male counterparts, the woman had a delicate eye for artwork and her husband was rich enough to concede to her passions.

McAdams was drawn as always to a framed mass of gold, reds and purples titled “Japanese Bridge, Water Lilies Pond” by a French impressionist whose name Marjory could never recall. She started slightly when Abby returned and called her name.

“Ma’am would like very much to see you, Miss McAdams,” she said, indicating the way with an open palm.

Roseann Birch was stretched out on an odd-looking wooden chair, the seat and backrest of which was angled in the rear to such a degree as to make the buxom woman look as though she were tipping backward.

“You can’t believe how comfortable it is till you sit in it, honey, which might be awhile,” Birch said with an amiable gruffness unusual to any other woman of her station. “My husband got it as a present from a friend in Westport, New York, up in the Adirondacks. Hell of an ugly thing but my, when you lean back and get your feet up, it’s a wonder.”

Birch’s feet were indeed up, ankles crossed on the cover of a thick leather-bound book which was itself placed atop an expensive-looking ottoman. The crystal goblet in her hand was half-filled with what Marjory guessed was a chardonnay and she looked over the rim with a satisfied but still sharp glint in her eyes.

“Sit down, sweet Marjory, and we shall swap some gossip, and though I will not stoop to adding to the delinquency of a minor, I can get Abby to bring you an apple juice or even a small sherry if you like?”

Marjory pulled a wrought-iron patio chair over the slate patio decking and sat at Birch’s right hand.

“Nothing for me, ma’am,” she said. “I really wasn’t planning to stay long, but did want to see if I could join you at your table for dinner tonight. My father is not due until tomorrow and I’m quite tired of dining alone.”

Birch looked over the rim of her glass again, studying Marjory as she assessed the request. She took a deep draught of the wine. “Bullshit.”

Even Marjory, who had known this undoubtedly frank and spicy woman for some time, felt her eyes go wide at the profanity.

“OK. OK. I apologize dear. That may have been uncalled for, but we’ll see,” Birch said, setting her glass aside. “And what else are you requesting, sweetheart, knowing that you are always, always, always welcome at our table and that you don’t have to ask. Hmm? Any other guests you think might make the evening interesting? Like maybe the fire inspector? Or maybe that cast iron kettle of a sheriff from the other side of the lake?”

Marjory was caught unawares. She knew Roseann Birch was more plugged in to the workings of the island than any of the other guests and, in some cases, more than management itself. Her advantage was a woman’s amiability to chatter while carrying on through the day and her understanding that such talk was not limited only to the upper-class women. Abby, and every housekeeper, maid, laundress, kitchen sweep and handmaiden were her allies in word-of-mouth communication. She was as open to them as any member of her high-class sisterhood, and during her time in the hotel she had turned them from wary to willing in sharing with her the stories of their world. At first they did it for her generous tips, then for her entertainment and finally for their own hunger to know more about the other side, a woman’s place in a society far different from their own. Birch had won over all except Ida May Fleury, who respectfully maintained the wall of separation between the whites who hired and the Negroes who did the work.

“Oh come now, dear,” Birch said in reaction to the look of surprise on McAdam’s face. “Word has been spreading like chicken feed all day about the fire in the Styx and now that bowling ball of a man Sheriff Cox is strutting around the coop like the mad hatter himself.”

She took a sip of wine and leaned over and in a conspiratorial whisper that was totally unnecessary on her own patio: “I’ve even heard there might have been a dead body involved.”

Marjory took a moment, knowing that she had to stoke her friend’s curiosity without revealing too much. She would have to protect herself and her plan as much as protect Birch from some embarrassing questions should the effort go awry.

“I smelled the smoke myself, Mrs. Birch. It raised me out of my bed, and I’ve heard talk that the entire community where the workers lived was consumed by the blaze.”

She let that soak in, but could tell by Birch’s face that it was too little news.

“I’ve also heard tell, like you, that there was a death involved. Word at the Breakers is that it was the body of a white man that was found.”

It was like finding a new aperitif. Birch’s face lit, her eyes widened, she may have actually licked her lips with the tip of her tongue.

“Oh, my,” she said, not with alarm, but with intrigue. “No wonder that disgusting keg of a man is running around the island as if he had even a scintilla of power here.”

Birch moistened the tip of her index finger and began circling the crystal rim of her now empty wine glass. The crystal began to vibrate and the glass began to sing at a high, clear pitch. Marjory had seen Birch pull her parlor trick before, but this time it seemed a rote performance.

“Any speculation on who this dead man is?” she finally said, looking directly into Marjory’s eyes. “Local? Or one of us?”

“Oh, no. Not a guest, I wouldn’t dare think,” Marjory said, pressing her fingers to her heart as though the possibility would be devastating. “Certainly someone would have come forward by now, don’t you think?”

“I wouldn’t know what to think at this point, dear,” Birch said, but that look in her eye meant she soon would know as much as it was humanly possible to find out.

With her line of inquiry now set into the most extensive system of gossip and rumor on the island, Marjory moved on to equally important pursuits.

“On the subject of dinner guests,” Marjory now said, as though the chit chat of a dead man and a snooping sheriff were simple diversions from the important parts of life at the Poinciana. It was her turn to give the matron a coy look. “Could you invite Mr. Foster from the steamship family to join us?”

Graham Foster was a young man in his early twenties who fit most perfectly into the Royal Poinciana’s growing clientele of moneyed society. He was the son of a steamship magnate who had become fast friends with Flaglers. The railroad baron had been a prime customer of the elder Foster for the delivery of his building supplies and the transportation for his advance work crews. For the far-seeing Flagler, it was an investment in a future that he himself would control. Once his rail lines were laid, Flagler would be the main transportation for all things moving up and down the Florida east coast instead of the steam shippers. If Foster couldn’t see he was cutting his own throat, let the instant gratification of money now be his bandage.

As for the son, Graham, he was also more interested in spending his father’s wealth than looking ahead at a dying company that he would inherit. In many ways he was quite dense. Marjory McAdams liked that in a man.

Her request that Graham Foster join them for dinner may have caught Mrs. Birch off guard, but she was the kind of woman who could see her own traits when they showed up in other women.

“Why Marjory, you loathe that young man. What could you possibly want to use him for?”

McAdams professed to pout. “I think loathe is a bit too strong,” she said. “He is a bit of a showboat, but he is also only a handful of years older than I am and unless you can find me a dinner companion less than three decades my elder, I will simply have to make due.”

Birch watched her young charge’s eyes, sure there was something mischievous behind them.

“Very well then. I shall invite young Mr. Foster and then deny all culpability if I am asked,” Birch brushed Marjory away with a flutter of her fingertips. “Run along, dear. And do ask Abby to come pour me another of this delicious French nectar.”

She had planned it all on the run, and she was amazed that so far it had gone swimmingly.

Mrs. Birch had held up her end of the bargain. When Marjory arrived for dinner that evening, the Birch’s table was occupied by her husband and Marian and Robert Rothschild, he of the Manhattan real estate Rothschilds. Marjory nodded to Mrs. Rothschild as the men rose to greet her.

“You are stunning, my dear,” Robert Rothschild said, and meant it.

“Why thank you, sir,” she said with a light curtsy.

Marjory was dressed in a pale blue dress that was long and slim at the waistline and included the newly popular “leg-o-mutton” sleeves that billowed out and accentuated the thinness of her youthful figure. She was naturally a slip of a girl, but tonight she had gone to the trouble of lacing up her corset a few extra notches which, in addition to accenting her waspish waistline, also added a bit more umph to her breasts. Though most of the older women, including Mrs. Birch, wore a high-necked style, it was not inappropriate as evening wear to include a low-cut bodice.

“I would concur,” said Mr. Birch, who, despite his reputation as a careful and circumspect banker, was a jovial man in social company and was known by most as having an appreciative but careful eye for the younger ladies, careful indeed considering his wife’s strength and demeanor.

Marjory then turned to the still standing Graham Foster. He took her fingers in his and raised them to his lips but did not touch. At least he had been taught some manners in his upbringing.

“What a pleasant surprise, Graham,” she said with enthusiasm. “I wasn’t aware that you’d returned to the island. How wonderful to see you.”

“It is an absolute pleasure, Marjory. And you do look incredibly fashionable.”

As they all sat, Marjory could feel Foster’s glance of appreciation into her cleavage. He was dressed in a dark waistcoat and trousers made of a carefully striped fabric. The dress was formal, as was expected for dinner at the Poinciana, but Marjory figured she knew him well enough that his concern for this clothing wouldn’t cause him to hesitate when the time came.

He was a thin and angular man, sharp at the knees, elbows, shoulders and nose. He was clean-shaven but wore the standard moustache that had become popular as of late, and it partially covered his unnaturally pink, thin and almost girlish lips. His eyes were a puppyish brown, at least when she was in his company, and there never seemed to be anything behind them other than an obsequiousness to please her. She smiled at him and felt a slight trickle of shame.

The dinner was of typical fare for the Royal Poinciana, exquisite in every respect. The table linen was impeccably white at the hands of the laundresses Marjory had visited that very afternoon. The silver and crystal were of the finest European style.

The six diners went luxuriously through four courses: green turtle soup, heart of palm salads, oven-baked salmon, a potpourri of shrimp and scallops and clams casino from the Bahamian islands, a sampling of cheeses and apple wedges and—for all at the table—a serving of a strange and succulent fruit called kiwi. Mrs. Birch continued a steady diet of red wines, and the rest also imbibed on a variety from the Poinciana’s well-stocked collection.

The conversation ran from a discussion of summer plays they had all missed in the city, a room by room recitation tour by Mrs. Rothschild of her sister’s opulent home in Hyde Park, a highly political debate by the two elder men over the Spanish American conflict and its effect on the U.S. economy, which was put to an end by a then-braying Mrs. Birch that “no country that produces such lousy wine is worth conquering” and finally an agreeable assessment of this year’s hotel baseball team and a promise by all to attend this Friday’s game against the visiting team from Ashville, North Carolina.

Throughout the evening, Marjory listened with forced intent to Graham Foster’s descriptions of his family’s plan to offer steamship service to Cuba from the terminus of Flagler’s train in Miami, his braggadocio over a new type of steam engine he himself was building for use on a single-passenger personal vehicle, and his plan to break a land speed record in such a contraption.

All the while she smiled coyly, feigned great concern for his safety, looked adoringly into his too close-set eyes and ate a half dozen oysters with such slow, deliberate and sensuous care that even Mrs. Birch (who’d been watching the couple closely) was forced to clear her throat with either admonition or glee.

It had taken only one after-dinner dance to the hotel orchestra’s rendition of “And the Band Played On” for Marjory to convince Foster to walk with her in the gardens. With her fingers laid on his forearm and the smell of night-blooming jasmine in the air, it was hardly fair how easily it was for her to talk Foster into taking her on a ride on the lake in his company’s row boat.

“It is such a beautiful evening and you do know how I love to float, Graham.”

The young man was bewildered.

“I thought you hated the last time we went out in that tiny boat,” he said. “In fact if I recall, Marjory, you said you’d rather be swimming.”