Vane Pursuit

by Charlotte MacLeod

  “Oh sure, I’ll be there. I don’t stray far from home base, as a general rule.”

  “His wife’s the traveler in the family.” Catriona must be annoyed because Guthrie wouldn’t stay to supper, Helen decided; otherwise, she wouldn’t have brought up a tender subject. “Where’s she off to this trip, Guth?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? New York, I guess. I quit trying to keep track of her long ago. Well, see you later, folks. Thanks for the drink.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Iduna gave her silver gilt curls a compassionate shake. “If that’s women’s liberation, I’ll take raspberry. Imagine a wife having no more consideration than to go off for weeks at a time and not even tell her husband where she’s going. I’d no more do that to Daniel than I’d order him to get up and cook my breakfast for me.”

  “Peter usually fixes mine,” Helen admitted, “but I know what you mean, Iduna. I wouldn’t do a disappearing act either, if I could help it, and I certainly wouldn’t want Peter to do it to me. Not to criticize your friends, Cat, but the Fingals must have rather a strange marriage.”

  They were all in the huge kitchen now, watching their hostess pull food out of the air with the practiced ease of all hostesses who live in country places and have scads of visitors in the summertime. Catriona probably didn’t mean to set the platter of cold roast chicken down on the table with quite so hard a thump.

  “Don’t pussyfoot on my account, Marsh. Not that it’s any of my business how Guthrie and Elisa Alicia run their lives.”

  “Nonsense, my dear. I’ve never yet been in an academic community where everybody’s business wasn’t everybody else’s business. I can’t imagine it’s not the same up here. Or do I mean ‘down’?”

  “ ‘Down East’ properly refers only to Lubec and Eastport, not that anybody seems to give a damn nowadays except the guys who give the weather reports. Okay, everybody, haul up and set. Supper’s ready, such as it is.”

  She had fresh asparagus, boiled just enough to take out the rawness without spoiling the crunch, fresh leaf lettuce from the patch beside the bulkhead, fresh bread baked by the lady down the road who’d put a little fresh dill in the batter. There’d be fresh-picked strawberries for dessert.

  “I roasted this chicken as soon as you called up and said you were coming, just in case. I get them from Harriet McComb’s poultry farm over at Squamasas. She pinfeathers them all in person.”

  Catriona rambled on about the chicken until Helen took the bull by the horns. “Cat, listen to me. The Fingals are your business and they’re ours as well. Guthrie was Peter’s friend long before you ever knew him, and we have reason to believe he may be in serious trouble. If he means anything to you at all, you’d better tell us right now everything you know about Elisa Alicia Quatrefages. And if you want the reason, it’s because I have a very strong hunch she may be our link with Paraguay.”

  Catriona had just picked up a spear of asparagus. She began whipping it to and fro with nervous jerks of her hand. “Would you care to explain why?”

  “Would you kindly stop waving that asparagus around first, before it starts coming apart all over the tablecloth?”

  “Oh, sorry.” Catriona examined the spear for possible damage, bit off the tip, and began to chew. “Carry on, old scout.”

  Helen carried. If she’d expected to throw a bombshell, she was soon disabused of the notion. When she’d finished her explanation, Catriona merely nodded.

  “Okay, Marsh. What do you want to know?”

  Helen wasn’t prepared for immediate capitulation. She threw a helpless glance at Peter. “Darling, what do we want to know?”

  “M’well, for starters, Cat, what does Elisa Alicia look like?”

  “Like a pea-brained twit who’d get a kick out of playing Anna the Adventuress. Long black hair worn in artful dishevelment, slinky black jumpsuits unbuttoned to the bellybutton or thereabout, lots of jingly chains and clanking bracelets, earrings dragging on her collarbones, fourteen different shades of eye goop—”

  “What color eyes?” Peter interrupted.

  “What color happens to be in fashion at the moment? To tell you the truth, I’ve never taken the trouble to grope my way through the layers of false eyelashes far enough to notice. Sultry brown, one would assume.”

  “The original Elisa Alicia was a blonde with blue gray eyes,” said Helen, “though I suppose if this one is really a descendant of Francisco Lopez, she’d be a brunette.”

  “If she’s a Lopez, why would she be calling herself Quatrefages?” Iduna wanted to know.

  “Because it sounds classier, perhaps?” Catriona suggested. “She was bending my ear a while back about changing my name to Clarissa Armitage.”

  “Whatever would you want to do that for?” Iduna helped herself to more asparagus. “My, this is a real treat. Do you see much of Elisa Alicia when she’s around, Cat?”

  “Oh, I try to be sociable for Guthrie’s sake, but it’s an uphill struggle. I suppose what you’re mostly concerned about, Peter, is where she goes on those trips of hers. The only places I’ve heard her mention are New York and Boston. I don’t recall the names of any specific shops, not that they’d mean anything to me if I did because I wouldn’t go shopping in New York if you dragged me by the boot heels through Macy’s basement. According to what she says, every high-class boutique operator on the East Coast is clamoring for her wares.”

  “She must really be making money out of them, then.”

  “She claims she does. I asked her once if it was because she makes those herb wreaths of hers out of hashish. She pretended to think I was being funny.”

  “Does she in fact show any sign of untoward affluence? For instance, does she dress better than a pedagogue’s wife normally would? I’m assuming Guthrie doesn’t find money growing on those trees he’s raising.”

  “No, I don’t think he’s getting rich in a hurry. As far as Elisa Alicia’s clothes are concerned, better is hardly the mot juste since she appears to take a perverse pride in dressing as unsuitably as possible. She buys expensive stuff, though, and her so-called costume jewelry looks to me like the genuine article. Guthrie wouldn’t know the difference, poor clod. I can’t tell you whether he really believes everything she tells him or if he’s simply quit listening. She did rattle his socks a bit the time she drove off in his old brown Toyota and came back in a brand-new bright green Cadillac Sedan de Ville.”

  “My God!” Peter ejaculated. “Did she offer any explanation?”

  “She told him the Toyota didn’t adequately express her personality and besides she needed more trunk space for her merchandise. She’d paid cash for the Caddie except for whatever allowance she got on the Toyota, so there wasn’t a great deal Guthrie could do about it except fume. He’s never once set foot in the new car.”

  “She goes on these trips all by herself, then?”

  “To the best of my knowledge. She always has so much fragile junk to carry that it’s really the most practical way for her to go. She claims to enjoy the driving and she has nothing else to do so an extra couple of days’ travel time doesn’t bother her.”

  “She just packs up and leaves whenever she feels like it, then?”

  “That’s what she does. And never tells Guthrie where she’s going, when she’ll be back, or how to reach her in the meantime, assuming he’d ever want to. She may spend the whole time peddling her wares or she may be doing God knows what. She actually does make all the things she takes because I’ve seen her working on them. They’re not the sort I personally go for, but they’re cleverly done. She’s good at decorative painting, and could certainly have concocted that Guy Lombardo camouflage for the Ethelbert Nevin. And that’s about all I can tell you, Peter. I don’t know whether Guthrie could add a great deal more, but there’s only one way to find out. Want some cream for your strawberries?”

  Peter accepted the cream and ate his strawberries in a state of perturbation, which he regretted because they were excellent and deser
ved his full and undivided attention. He then made his excuses to the ladies and went to call on his old schoolmate. He found Guthrie gazing in melancholy absorption into the lush foliage of a horse-chestnut tree that would have been just the ticket for Miss Binks to nest in.

  “What’s up there, Guth?”

  “Oh, hi, Pete. Nothing in particular. I was just sort of musing. Had your supper?”

  “Yes. You should have stayed. Catriona’s a good provider.”

  “I know she is. I’d have liked to stay only— Oh, hell, Pete. Life’s a bitch sometimes. Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound grumpy. Come on, let me show you around the campus. It’s not much like Balaclava, I don’t suppose.”

  “Nothing’s like Balaclava,” Peter assured his friend. “Including at times Balaclava itself. I don’t know whether you’ve ever met President Svenson?”

  “I’ve heard about him.” Guthrie quit looking sad and began to grin. “He must be hell on wheels to work for.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. At least he’s never dull.”

  They strolled around the school’s grounds, swapping academic gossip. Guthrie showed Peter some work that was being done on tree development, which the visiting horticulturist found totally absorbing. Not until it got too dark to see what was happening in the experimental nurseries did he remember what it was he’d come for.

  “Mosquitoes are beginning to bite,” he observed with good cause, although in fact they’d already been biting for quite a while. “If you happen to have any thoughts about inviting me in for a drink, now might be a good time to voice them. Not hinting or anything, you understand.”

  “You always were a subtle cuss, Pete. Gosh, it’s good to see you. Come on, then. That’s my house right over there.”

  The president’s dwelling at Sasquamahoc was no pillared mansion but just an ungainly two-story frame house built, Peter judged, during the ugly 1920s. Its clapboards were painted the most peculiar shade of yellow he’d ever seen. He suspected Elisa Alicia had chosen it. There was a useless little front porch; squares of pebble glass in garish red, blue, green, and amber framed the front door. A large wreath made of grapevines trimmed with artificial flowers, dried grasses, a good many guinea hen feathers, and a couple of plastic eggplants was no doubt intended to provide a welcoming note but didn’t make Peter feel particularly welcome.

  When Guthrie opened the door, Peter found himself confronted by a huge arrangement of gilded bulrushes, pampas grass, and peacock feathers in a lacquered brass cuspidor. Shying away nervously, he stumbled over a section of tree limb that had been mounted in plaster of paris to serve as a roosting place for a number of artificial birds. There were even a few nests artfully contrived from multicolored raffia and rolls of streamer confetti dipped in shellac.

  Peter was horrified to notice real birds’ eggs, blown of their contents, lying in the nests. Any doubt that Guthrie’s peripatetic spouse could be linked up with that gang of evildoers he’d just had the pleasure of seeing off to the jug was dissipated. A woman with the kind of mind that could contrive this foyer would be capable of any atrocity.

  “Come into my den,” Guthrie urged. “It’s the one place where Elisa doesn’t put any homey touches. Does your wife go in for them?”

  “She bakes me a pie now and then,” Peter replied cautiously.

  “Elisa makes pies, too. Out of papier-mâché with fake cherries on top.”

  Guthrie sank into gloomy silence for a moment, then blurted, “Honest to God, Pete, sometimes I wonder what the human race is coming to.”

  This was as good an opening as Peter was likely to get. He cleared his throat and took the leap. “How did you happen to meet her, Guthrie?”

  “I was at a convention in New York and she happened along. She knew one of the guys I was talking to and a bunch of us wound up having drinks together. Then one thing led to another. You know how it is.”

  Guthrie shrugged. “It got so she’d fly to Portland for the weekend and I’d drive down to meet her. She was kind of… oh, exciting, I guess. She dressed different, smelled different, talked different. Did a few other things different, too, if you want to know. What the hell, Pete, I’d never been fifty miles from Sasquamahoc except when I went to college, and you know the kind of glamour girls we used to hang out with there. Great kids to muck out a stable with, but there’s nothing romantic about rubber boots and a sweaty union suit.”

  “You might consider them homey touches,” Peter murmured, but Guthrie was too steeped in woe to listen.

  “So anyway, this went on for a few months, then I took a long weekend off and we went for a quickie tour of Costa Rica. I stayed drunk on planter’s punches the whole time, and when I sobered up, I found out I was married. Sounds crazy, eh?”

  What it sounded like to Peter was the old Bristol splice, but he thought perhaps this wasn’t quite the time to say so. “What’s her family like?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve never met any of ‘em. They’re all over in France, or so Elisa claims.”

  “Whereabouts in France?”

  “Don’t ask me. They never write, which doesn’t surprise me any. She’s not much of a one for keeping in touch, herself.”

  “What do you mean by that, Guthrie? Doesn’t she phone you while she’s away?”

  “Heck, no. She just takes off whenever she feels like it and shows up here when she’s run out of places to go. And when she is around, she might as well not be for all the good it does me. Not that I give a damn, if you want the truth.”

  Guthrie started to pour himself a little more Old Smuggler, then changed his mind. “Help yourself if you want to, Pete. I don’t drink much any more. Look where it got me that other time. Not that I’m blaming Elisa. She’s what she is and I’m what I am and I was a damn fool to think we could make a go of it in the first place. I could be worse off, I suppose. We don’t fight or anything. She’s got her craft business and I’ve got the school. It’s easy enough to stay out of each other’s hair even when she’s around. It’s just that—well, damn it, seeing how it is with you and Helen—”

  “I know what you mean, Guthrie.” Drat it, this could get embarrassing. “Then according to what you’ve just told me, you don’t actually know one damned thing about your wife except that she puts fake cherries in her pies and knows how to gild the bulrush. Furthermore, you’ve reached the point where you don’t care.”

  “That’s about the size of it, Pete. I’ve mentioned divorce once or twice, but she just laughs in my face. Elisa claims she doesn’t see anything wrong with the way we’re living now, and if I think I can divorce her, I might as well forget it.”

  Peter could think of one perfectly good reason why a divorce would be impossible, but he didn’t feel this was quite the time to bring it up.

  “In view of what you’ve been telling me, Guthrie, perhaps it won’t offend you too much if I get on to asking what I’ve been trying to work up nerve enough for.”

  “Such as what?”

  “M’well, for instance, does the name Elisa Alicia Quatrefages mean anything to you, other than that your wife insists on being called by it?”

  Guthrie stared at him. “Isn’t that enough? What the hell are you driving at? Why should it mean anything else?”

  Instead of answering, Peter put another question. “Does the word Paraguay mean anything to you personally?”

  “Hardwoods, mostly. Their principal export used to be a tanning agent made from the quebracho tree. Maybe it still is, I couldn’t say. God knows what’s happened to their economy in recent years, with all this clearing of rain forests. Unless they’re smarter than some of their neighbors.”

  “That wasn’t quite what I had in mind, Guthrie. When I said personally, I meant—er—personally. For instance, have you ever heard the word used with regard to your wife?”

  Guthrie slammed down his glass and sat up straight. “No, by God, but I heard your wife use it with regard to those bastards who tried to drown her and Cat. Pete, are you trying t
o tell me Elisa’s involved in that weather vane racket?”

  “I’d like to be reassured that she isn’t.”

  “So would I. What makes you think she might be?”

  Peter finally got around to explaining. Guthrie didn’t interrupt once. When his friend got through talking, all he said was, “So now what happens?”

  “So now, if you’ll forgive me, I want to search through your wife’s personal effects and see whether we can find something that either clears her of suspicion or—”

  “Lands her in the soup,” Guthrie finished for him. “And me with her, I suppose. Okay, Pete. If it has to be done, now’s as good a time as any.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Whatever else Elisa Alicia Quatrefages might be, she was indubitably a dedicated bulrush gilder. Except for one bedroom that Guthrie had staked out for his own, she’d managed to fill the entire second floor with the raw materials of her craft. She had stocks of dried grapevines, dried milkweed, dried vegetable matter of all descriptions and some that even Peter found downright indescribable. She had Styrofoam in sheets, chunks, cones, spheres, rhomboids, and dodecahedrons. She had plastic flora and fauna; she had whimsical elves, gnomes, sprites, witches, pookas, and banshees. She had plywood cutouts of roosters, fish, pigs, sheep, cats, dogs, emus, wildebeests, apples, pears, papayas, cauliflower, Swiss chard, potatoes, tomatoes, kohlrabi, pomegranates, mangoes, and spaghetti squash.

  “But yes, we have no bananas,” Peter murmured. What anybody would want of all this stuff was beyond his comprehension.

  From the looks of her ledgers, though, Elisa Alicia knew what she was doing. Peter blinked when he looked at her profit column.

  “By George, Ms. Quatrefages has quite an enterprise going here.”

  Guthrie shrugged. “Does she? I keep my nose out of her affairs.”

  “You wouldn’t know whether she—er—farms out work to housewives in the area, or anything of the sort?”