“To see Grady,” Aragon said. “I have a message for him.”
“Really? Well, you’re about forty-eight hours too late. He took off as soon as he heard the news about Miranda. Oh, I think he wanted to leave anyway, I could see him getting restless, bored. Miranda’s arrest simply brought it to a head. He was afraid she’d drag him into it and the whole business about the Porsche would come out and maybe a lot of other stuff as well.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“He didn’t leave a forwarding address. He just patted me on the head, told me I was a nice girl and packed his bags.” She had begun crumbling the doughnut and rolling the pieces into greasy little pills. “Want to hear something funny? I lent him fifty dollars.”
Frederic aimed a straw in her direction. It hit her on the side of the head but she paid no attention.
“Tell Miranda,” she said, “tell her he wanted to say goodbye to her but he had to leave right away because a chance for a decent job came up very suddenly. In Oklahoma.”
“A chance for a job came up very suddenly in Oklahoma.”
“Yes.”
“She won’t believe it.”
“Why not?” Ellen said. “I did.”
The indictment and arrest of Miranda also led to some less predictable events.
In early fall Cordelia, free of the restraint of her mother and to a large extent of the Admiral, who was preoccupied, bought an Aston-Martin guaranteed by the dealer to go one hundred and thirty miles an hour. Anxious to determine the accuracy of this claim, Cordelia chose for the test a side road that was practically deserted. When she floored the accelerator, only one other car was in sight, but unfortunately it belonged to an off-duty patrolman.
Cordelia’s defense was that nearly everything in the Aston-Martin was computerized and something must have gone wrong with the circuits controlling the speedometer. Her driver’s license was revoked anyway and she took up bicycling. Clad in matching jogging suits and plastic helmets the girls pedaled around town on a bright red tandem equipped with a horn on the main handlebars for Cordelia and a bell at the rear for Juliet.
Juliet had some criticism of this arrangement, which pretty well limited her view: “Your behind is enormous.”
“What do I care,” Cordelia said. “I’m in front.”
In late September, Frederic Quinn was, for a price, reinstated at Sophrosune School. For his first report in Social Studies class he chose a black widow spider. After spending two days (and a hundred and fifty demerits) in the search he found a specimen underneath a gopher trap in the garage and brought it to school in his sister April’s Lucite earring box. By this time the spider had lost a couple of legs and considerable joie de vivre as well as joie de tuer. However, the red hourglass on its abdomen was still visible, identifying it as dangerous.
“Get that damn thing out of here,” the teacher said. “You’re supposed to be making your report on a current event from the newspaper.”
“I am. It was in all the newspapers how a woman I know personally was arrested for murder just like a black widow spider stinging her mate to death, only it wasn’t her mate—”
“Put it in the wastebasket.”
“This is my sister’s best earring box. She’ll kill me.”
“You have a choice,” the teacher said. “Her or me.”
It was in mid-November, after Miranda’s trial had been postponed for a third time, that Charles Van Eyck received the letter from Tokyo. He didn’t know anyone in Tokyo, and those of his acquaintances financially able to travel in the Orient were no longer physically able.
There was no doubt, however, that the letter was meant for him. The envelope was neatly typed Charles Maas Van Eyck, 840 Camino Azur, Santa Felicia, California, and even the zip code was correct. Still he hesitated to open it. At his age bad news outnumbered good by a considerable margin and he felt it would be wise to prepare himself for the worst with a glass of the best. He poured himself half a tumbler of Scotch from the decanter in his den.
It was a cold drizzly day, exactly the kind he remembered from his trips to Scotland—hardly any wonder the natives had invented Scotch, it was a simple matter of survival—so he lit the logs laid tepee style in the grate, avocado prunings, grey and smooth and no bigger than a child’s arm. Then, using his thumbnail as a paper knife, he slit open the envelope.
Dear Charles:
I don’t know when or if you will receive this. I am enclosing it in my chess move to Professor Sukimoto in Tokyo, asking him to stamp and post it for me. I have addressed the outside envelope to his office at the university as usual but this time I marked it Hold for Return. I know he is on a research leave in Paris and won’t be back for several months. This fits in perfectly with the plans I’ve made for Miranda.
It won’t surprise you to learn that I’ve worked things out as carefully as my limited mobility allowed. What will surprise you is that you were actually present when the idea took shape in my mind. It was the last time you came to this house for dinner. Miranda, acting out her role of governess, had given the girls some questions to answer, questions for a summer night she called them. Juliet protested that it wasn’t summer yet, so she didn’t have the answers. But I had mine, right away, then and there.
Do you remember those questions? I can never forget them:
Have I earned something today?
Have I learned something today?
Have I helped someone?
Have I felt glad to be alive?
In my case the answers were easy: no, no, no and no. I added one more question. Did I have a reason to go on living? No.
You were right, Charles, in that anonymous letter you wrote warning me about taking a Jezebel into my home. She is exactly what you claimed, a Jezebel. And Cooper is what he always has been, a nice gullible fool. And the girls, my daughters, they will be the victims unless I act to stop it.
I must protect my girls. They will never marry, never create, never be employed. (What happened? Why are they like this? I’ve blamed myself a thousand times and Cooper a thousand more, though the blame game is useless.) But within their limits they can be quite happy if they aren’t criticized or ridiculed, if they’re not at the mercy of a woman like Miranda.
So I have made my plans and I think they’ll work. Even some of the things I didn’t really plan may implicate her in my death. The Dalmane is an example.
I took a dozen or so capsules from her medicine chest—I learned from watching Cordelia how easily a lock can be picked—to alleviate some of the suffering which is inevitable. I have endured a great deal of suffering and I can endure more, but I hope the Dalmane capsules will help. I will swallow them after the candle is lit and before I turn on the gas and strike myself on the head with my cane, not hard, just enough to cause bleeding. Heads bleed easily, more easily than hearts, perhaps.
I expect the handle of the cane and the candlestick, both being metal, to survive the fire to some extent. There will be blood on the cane, which should start the police wondering, and no fingerprints on the candlestick because I will have wiped it clean, and that will keep them wondering. Probably none of them will even think of suicide because the whole thing is too bizarre. That’s why I planned it the way I did.
I intend to get Miranda to mail this to Professor Sukimoto, a grotesque little touch I can’t resist. I’ll also see that she walks the dog early. She’s bound to tell the police I asked her to, but will they believe her? Will anyone believe anything she says? Cooper, perhaps. No one else.
Poor Cooper. I feel sorry for him, but he’ll get over my death pretty quickly even without Miranda around to help him. And she won’t be around. She won’t be marrying my husband, spending my money, managing my daughters.
I have unloaded all this on you, Charles, because I have a notion you’d rather not think of me as a victim. I ha
ve been a victim of some cruel things in my life but I am in full charge of my own death.
It’s a victory of sorts.
Iris
The receptionist in the District Attorney’s office wore a uniform of a mustard color which made Van Eyck quite nauseated.
He said faintly, “Some time ago, July, I believe it was, I wrote the D.A. a letter about the Iris Young case.”
“What is the name, please?”
“My name or the name on the letter?”
“I thought you said you wrote it.”
“I did. But I didn’t sign it. I never do. I mean, there are so many things one can express better without signing a name.”
“I’m sure one can,” the woman said. “But when you do sign a name, what do you sign?”
“I believe in this case it was Fair Play. That’s not important, however. I mentioned my letter to the D.A. merely to introduce—or rather to let it be known that my interest in the case is—”
“Wait here a moment, Mr. Play.”
“No, no. I’m not Mr. Play.”
“But you just said—”
“Forget about the name. The important thing is that I’ve just had a revelation, a most astonishing revelation.”
“We don’t have time for revelations in this department, especially those induced by alcohol. And you have been drinking, haven’t you, Mr. Play?”
“I told you I’m not Mr. Play. I don’t even know anybody called Mr. Play.”
“Then why did you sign his name to a letter?”
“Oh God,” Van Eyck said and turned and ran.
Back home he poured himself another tumbler of Scotch. Then he threw some more avocado logs in the grate and put the letter from Tokyo on top of them.
It flamed briefly, turned black, turned grey, and rode the updraft into the chimney.
Dear me, he thought with a little twinge of surprise. I believe I’ve just murdered Miranda.
About the Author
Margaret Millar (1915-1994) was the author of 27 books and a masterful pioneer of psychological mysteries and thrillers. Born in Kitchener, Ontario, she spent most of her life in Santa Barbara, California, with her husband Ken Millar, who is better known by the nom de plume of Ross MacDonald. Her 1956 novel Beast in View won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel. In 1965 Millar was the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year Award and in 1983 the Mystery Writers of America awarded her the Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement. Millar’s cutting wit and superb plotting have left her an enduring legacy as one of the most important crime writers of both her own and subsequent generations.
The Murder of Miranda Page 24