The Edith Wharton Murders

by Lev Raphael

He had me there. “Maybe Priscilla wasn’t exaggerating. Maybe he really is evil. Maybe Joanne’s the loudmouth, but he’s the one who’s re ally dangerous. I mean, all that niceness when I was first getting to know him. It’s just like Hamlet says: ‘One may smile, and smile, and be a villain still.’ Let’s go back inside. I want to watch him. And I think I should talk to Valley.”

  We quickly returned to our table, but just as we sat down, Valley appeared at the door to the dining room, followed by a tall, curly-haired, dark-eyed woman in a drab suit. I figured she was his “other detective.”

  I didn’t get a chance to talk to him because he said, “I’d like to see the following people outside, please.” He read from a list: “Joanne Gillian, Robert Gillian, Serena Fisch, Devon Davenport, Grace-Dawn Vaughan, Nick Hoffman, and Stefan Borowski.”

  Davenport groused, “Can’t this wait until we’re done with dinner?” Grace-Dawn clucked with annoyance.

  Serena Fisch challenged Valley: “What the hell is this all about? You’ve talked to us already. I don’t have anything more to say!”

  “We want to get your fingerprints to check them against the books found next to Chloe DeVore’s body, and Priscilla Davidoff’s.”

  Davenport reluctantly got to his feet, cursing about “half-assed cops” and “hick towns.” Grace-Dawn was at his side as he headed from their table, head high as if she were Mary, Queen of Scots facing the ax. The other people Valley had designated began to stand and leave their tables, some looking anxious or frightened. Don’t ask me why, but even I felt uncomfortable, as if somehow I might get framed for killing Chloe or Priscilla.

  Heading towards the door with Stefan, I heard Joanne Gillian behind me suddenly let out an anguished cry of “NO!”

  I whirled around to see Bob Gillian leap from his chair and race to the service door, crashing through. There was a jagged, brutal clamor of shouting, struggling, dishes breaking, trays falling. Valley and the woman detective didn’t even stir. I watched their aplomb with astonishment, until the service door flew open and a tall, muscular, uniformed Campus Policeman shoved Bob Gillian back through the door, his arms pinned behind his back.

  In the hushed, expectant room, I was transfixed by the scene, and reached out to touch Stefan as if to ground myself.

  Bob Gillian’s left side was slathered with what looked like key lime pie.

  “I think I’ll skip dessert,” I said.

  Just then Bob kicked back at the Campus Cop, getting him in the knee. The cop let go, doubling over in agony, and Bob ran straight for the door, cannoning right through Valley and the woman detective, who rushed over to help the injured cop while Valley tore after Bob. Stefan and I ran after him. We heard a crash of some kind down the hall and followed it.

  Bob Gillian was on his back in the same hallway where Chloe had been killed, wrestling wildly with Valley near a ragged heap of those granite tiles. There was blood spattered on the floor and his clothes.

  “Get a doctor,” someone called from behind me, and I turned to see a mass of conferees gaping at this new spectacle.

  Bob somehow dragged himself to his feet and lunged at Valley, who finally stopped him cold with a very professional-looking right to the chin and a quick left. Bob collapsed on his ass, gasping.

  The woman cop burst through the crowd and yanked Bob’s hands behind his back, then handcuffed him.

  Valley turned and saw his audience. His suit was torn and bloodied, and dotted with some of that pie, but he grinned at all of us. “He tripped.” Valley pointed. “He tripped on those tiles and cut himself.”

  “It’s all her fault!” Bob screamed as Joanne Gillian pushed through the crowd and approached him. She froze. “She did it!” Bob shouted.

  Joanne tried to look innocent, but Vivianne suddenly leapt out of the throng and shouted “Assassin!” She smacked Joanne repeatedly across the face before Joanne started fighting back. The two women fell grappling to the floor, cursing in French and English. Valley watched, breathing hard and looking exhausted.

  Stefan rushed over and swept them apart. Valley announced he was arresting Bob and read him his rights. Then he turned and asked the wild-eyed, red-faced Joanne to come along for questioning.

  “I’m calling my lawyer first, and then the governor!”

  Valley wasn’t intimidated. “You can call from the station.”

  “Detective Valley,” I said, “did you suspect him?”

  Valley grinned. “Nope. But I hoped showing up and starting to take more prints would smoke out the killer. It worked.” And with that, the strange procession left the Campus Center.

  Weeping, Vivianne fled, to the ladies’ room, I suppose.

  Stunned, we all trickled back to our tables, and dinner resumed, but in a roar of speculation and excitement.

  “I was right!” Angie said at our table. “I think. But what if Bob Gillian was afraid of being fingerprinted because he has a criminal record that could sabotage his wife’s political future? Don’t they say she might run for governor? And what if her husband’s fingerprints aren’t even on the book they found with Chloe DeVore?”

  Stefan chimed in with his own objection. “How can Bob’s fingerprints be on the book if he was wearing gloves when he killed Chloe? Isn’t that what you assumed, Nick? That he wore his racing gloves? And if he was wearing them, why would he try to escape? Wouldn’t he be sure he was safe?”

  I heard the questions, and heard myself say, “I guess he just panicked.” I was sitting there in a stupor, too dazed to even touch my coffee, working on the motive. I felt sure that Stefan and Angie were wrong about us jumping to conclusions, and that Bob was obviously guilty because he’d made a run for it, but why?

  Dinner continued for most of the conferees with as much festivity as if they were at a wedding and had just seen the bride and groom drive off to their honeymoon. No, it was more intense than that. There was an almost prurient undertone, as if the guests had also gotten to secretly watch the consummation. What a show!

  It completely eclipsed the entertainment scheduled for after dinner. I’d arranged for the chair of the Theater Department, Vic Godine, to do a dramatic reading of Wharton’s delicious short story “Xingu,” a satire of culture vultures. A Wharton fan, Vic had a rich round voice that matched his rubicund tenor’s body, and he gave the story every bit of nuance it needed.

  But the performance fell flat—how could anything follow up a dramatic arrest? We all scattered when the reading was over, incidentally proving what Wharton had observed in The Age of Innocence, that “Americans want to get away from amusement even more quickly than they want to get to it.”

  I WOKE FROM a drugged and dreamless sleep to find Stefan sitting in the bedroom with a broad and easy smile. He looked almost like a goofy lottery winner.

  “Why are you dressed already?” I asked.

  “I went to get the paper. Look.” He held the Michiganapolis Tribune out for me to see the enormous headline, “BOB’S BOMBSHELLS,” over an article that took up the entire front page. “It’s like something from the National Enquirer.”

  “Read it to me!”

  He did, and I luxuriated under the covers while scandal broke over me in lavish waves.

  Bob had confessed to killing both Chloe and Priscilla. He had lured Chloe to the dark hallway and killed her because she’d had an affair with Joanne when they were both students at Smith. He claimed he was afraid Chloe was going to write about it in her memoirs. He arranged for Joanne to find the body, so that no one would suspect her.

  And Bob killed Priscilla because she was blackmailing Joanne. Priscilla had demanded Joanne Gillian change the Board of Trustees’ position on domestic partner benefits for gays and lesbians, or she’d reveal that she was having an affair with Bob—and with Joanne.

  Stefan would look at me every now and then to catch my reaction. “You were right,” he said. “You were more than right, if it’s true. And you’re also bouche bée “He laughed.

  “Please, no Fre
nch before breakfast! I don’t know that one. What’s it mean? Bouche Bay sounds like some vacation spot in Maine.”

  “Your jaw’s hanging open,” he explained. “Shall I go on?”

  “Yes I said yes I will yes.” Nothing less than Molly Bloom’s rhapsodic voice seemed fitting for such wild revelations. Stefan finished the article with gusto.

  So if Bob Gillian was telling the truth, then Priscilla was not only sleeping with a man, but with a man she had said she detested.

  Stefan was less astonished, and very logical. “Priscilla wouldn’t want anyone in the lesbian and gay community to know she might be bisexual. It would bring her a lot of flak. They’d say she was betraying the cause and all that.”

  Though I’d figured out that Bob was the murderer, elements of the case didn’t make sense to me. “But what about sleeping with Joanne! She’s Michigan’s own Jesse Helms, she’s the Antichrist! And Priscilla told me she loathed them both! She even criticized me for trying to be nice to Bob. Was it a cover?”

  Stefan had an explanation for that as well. “Of course she’d have to hide an affair with someone who publicly bashed gays and lesbians at SUM.”

  “Okay. But I still don’t understand how she could sleep with Joanne—and when could they have met?”

  Stefan figured that Joanne and Priscilla had probably first encountered each other at a Board of Trustees meeting, or when the task force got going. “There are some people who are attracted to women or men precisely because they’re the wrong person, and cruel.”

  “That’s sick!”

  Stefan disagreed. “It makes sense emotionally.”

  Well, who was I to argue a point like that? And then something came back to me from the first time Priscilla and I ever talked about Bob anJoanne Gillian. She’d said that even if members of SUM’s gay and lesbian task force had slept with their opponents, nothing at the university would have changed.

  “Was that a Freudian slip?” I asked Stefan. “Or did she decide right then she was going to sleep with Bob and Joanne to shake everything up? Or had it already happened?”

  “I don’t know, Nick. But this might not make Priscilla into a villain at SUM for gays. If people think she was killed because she was trying to get the Board of Trustees to change its position, she might end up being seen as a martyr for gay rights, despite how she went about it.”

  “Saint Priscilla? That’s a stretch.”

  “Well—you’re probably right. The whole situation does make domestic partner benefits at SUM feel even murkier than before.”

  I suddenly slapped my hand to my head. “Stefan! Ethan Frome! It’s all about a triangle. Ethan, his wife, and Mattie, the girl who’s their servant. No wonder Priscilla was fascinated by that novel enough to think of using it somehow for a mystery. It’s a story of being trapped, and guilt and shame. It’s so dark and twisted—just like her own story!”

  I showered and dressed quickly and we headed off to the Campus Center for the last conference breakfast, where I was greeted like a hero at the door to the dining room. People crowded up to shake my hand and congratulate me on the conference. They praised the panels and the speakers and the food.

  No one mentioned the murders or the arrest, but that was clearly what had excited them. Sweet Angie was there practically bouncing off the walls. “I can’t believe we were so close to death!” she said over and over.

  I marveled at her youth.

  Before I could even sit down, Gustaf Carmichael and Crane Taylor stopped me to say that they were thinking of having another joint conference of Wharton scholars, less formally, to see about healing the wounds that had been caused by the open dissension at the conference. What could I do? I gave them my blessing.

  Then they asked if I’d like to chair the conference since I’d done such a marvelous job on this one.

  “I couldn’t possibly,” I said. “I’m booked through the end of the century.” When Carmichael started to speak, I added, “And beyond.” That quashed any further recruiting.

  As breakfast began, Verity Gallup and Van Deegan Jones rose. “We have an announcement,” Jones said, looking very serious. A buzz went around the dining room and I wondered what the hell was going to hap pen now.

  “Yes,” Verity said. “We’re both resigning from our respective Wharton societies.”

  There were gasps from the conferees.

  “We’re getting out of Wharton studies entirely,” Jones said, and now the room sang with gossip. Jones took Verity’s hand. “I’m taking early retirement. We’ve fallen in love here at this—” He choked up a little. “At this wonderful conference.”

  Stefan kicked me under the table.

  “We’re getting married,” Verity said with a proud grin. “And we’re moving to Santa Fe.”

  They sat down, still holding hands, and there was an immediate uproar of protests and applause—for the marriage, for the retirement, for their both quitting their positions as society presidents. Instantly, I could sense factions form across the room as Wharton scholars started quietly electioneering, surveying their chances, calling in favors. Would there be one society or two—or more? The only unhappy people in the room, that I could tell, were Gustaf Carmichael and Crane Taylor. They looked disgusted and confused by the turn of events, the announcement dimming their shot at being Wharton peacemakers.

  Vivianne slipped into the empty chair next to mine at that point and started apologizing for her behavior the previous night. “My code has always been Sois sage, sois chic, and I am mortified to have displayed such bad manners at your conference.”

  Stefan asked her if she knew anything more about what Bob said.

  Vivianne nodded. “I believe that Priscilla drove to the Gillians’ home distraught, terrified she would be arrested. Mr. Gillian took her home, and they parked in the remote lot because he was trying to calm her down. Priscilla grabbed the gun she kept in her glove compartment for protection and said she wanted to kill herself. He saw his opportunity to get rid of trouble, and pretended to try taking the gun away, but pointed at her instead, and fired.”

  The story came out with impeccable smoothness.

  “How do you know all that?” Stefan asked.

  Vivianne smiled. “Do you remember the woman detective last night? She and I have…spoken since then.”

  Fast work, I thought.

  “But what about Chloe’s memoir? Wasn’t Chloe going to reveal the publisher she’d chosen at the end of the conference? Did she tell you who it was?”

  “There was no memoir. She was just making trouble, making publicity.”

  Astonished, I brought up the supposed bidding war between publishers. Was that phony? What were they going to bid on?

  “Her name,” Vivianne explained. “And scandal. Monsieur Davenport has said that writers are scum. Well, I say publishers are fools.”

  Stefan and I wanted to applaud.

  Vivianne rose, nodded to both of us, said, “Au plaisir,” and left.

  A latecomer to breakfast announced to the room that he’d heard on the radio that Joanne Gillian had denied her husband’s allegations and was filing for divorce, citing “drug abuse and sexual perversion.” Joanne Gillian planned to hold a press conference later that day.

  More tumult.

  Angie was craning her neck, trying to take it all in. “This is just so awesome—it’s so cool—it’s awesome.”

  Serena waltzed by just then and said gently, “Give it a rest, babe.”

  A waiter came up to me, one I didn’t recognize. “Are you Dr. Hoffman? You are? Well, the other day, when we were cleaning up here, someone on the staff found a paperback they figured must belong to someone at the conference.” He handed it to me, saying, “Sorry I forgot.”

  It was a copy of The House of Mirth, and when I opened it up, Priscilla’s name was written on the inside flap. Her missing copy.

  “She must have dropped it somewhere,” Stefan said.

  “But what about the copy in the hallway wher
e Chloe was killed?”

  Angie shrugged. “We might not ever find out who it belonged to or how it got there.” She sounded as thrilled as if she were a Bermuda triangle fan.

  Van Deegan Jones and Verity Gallup started to leave the room hand-in-hand. At the door, they turned. Verity said loudly, “Why don’t you all go home and live real lives?”

  That seemed a more than fitting way to wrap up the conference.

  But when they were gone, I rushed out after them. They turned, amused at my haste, eyebrows up in a silent “Yes…?”

  “What did you have against Chloe DeVore? There was something personal, wasn’t there?”

  They looked at each other and shrugged as if to say, Why not tell him?

  Looking markedly less affectionate, Verity said, “Chloe was a good friend of a prominent French publisher interested in doing a French translation of my first book. Chloe said the project would be a waste of time.” She stiffened and Jones slipped an arm around her.

  “And you?” I asked him. “Why did you dislike Chloe DeVore?”

  Jones was as welcoming as someone on 60 Minutes being invaded by a camera crew at his place of work.

  “She knew something about me that no one else did,” he said stiffly. “A cousin of mine was an ex-lover of Chloe’s—” He broke off and now it was Verity who offered him comfort, slipping both arms lovingly around his waist. “It’s not at all widely known that…my mother was a Jewess,” Jones brought out at last, eyes down.

  “Jewess,” I repeated, understanding at once how shameful that would be to someone claiming patrician status, claiming descent from Edith Wharton, who herself was of fine old Dutch and English stock, and not exactly philo-Semitic herself.

  “None of that matters now,” Verity said, grinning, and Jones perked up.

  I left, glad to be rid of them both.

  WHEN STEFAN AND I got home, I began pulling off my clothes to take a long hot bath, but Stefan said, “Start packing. We’re going to the cabin.”

  “We can’t. We both have classes tomorrow.”

  “So we’ll drive back early. Pack. Now. And stay out of the kitchen.”