Death in Vineyard Waters

by Philip Craig

  “How did you notice it?”

  “Because we were looking for something strange.” Helen Barstone tapped my chest again, bringing my eyes back down to her. “And at first we didn’t notice anything either. I mean how many people know that some privately printed book doesn’t exist? But when we checked the listings, F. X. Eastford wasn’t there, and when we talked to Tristan it turned out that there was a reason for it.”

  “There is no F. X. Eastford.”

  “Correct. Would you like to dance?”

  “Not right now, thanks. Excuse me.” I slipped past her and poured myself the last of John’s Cognac. “So Marjorie Summerharp slipped a ringer into her bibliography.”

  Helen Barstone said, “Exactly,” and Bill Hooperman agreed but just couldn’t believe it. John nodded without expression.

  “Why?”

  John shrugged. “Maybe she thought she needed another source to back her argument about William D’Avenant’s activities during the Commonwealth. She’s not the first or last to fake a document. I imagine that one reason it got overlooked is because it’s really an insignificant part of her total dissertation.”

  I thought about Marjorie Summerharp. It did not surprise me that she had been more than the rigid, wry old lady I’d known so briefly, for which of us is only what he seems? I remembered Hooperman’s voice on the telephone speaking of Marjorie and saying “It takes one to know one.” Of course that had been his pettiness speaking of her pettiness, but he had been near to another truth about her, too: She was a forger herself, which perhaps accounted for her lifelong fascination with the practice. There is no one more fanatically religious than a reformed sinner, and of course no one better at catching thieves than a former thief.

  Somehow I did not think the less of her. In fact, it made her a bit more human. I thought of the crooked things I’d done during my life. The thefts during my army days when I had liberated gear I felt I deserved, the occasional peeks over a friendly shoulder during high school exams, the girl who had helped me write my papers in History.

  I wondered if my own excursions into immorality had anything to do with my later becoming a cop. I didn’t think of myself and of Marjorie Summerharp as fanatics, but maybe down deep somewhere we had a touch of that sort of madness within us. I remembered Dostoevski writing that there was little difference between moral and immoral men, between saints and sinners.

  I suggested a motive: “Could it have been done as a joke? A fast one pulled on the scholars who were supposedly judging her scholarship? She didn’t have a very high opinion of a lot of people who had high opinions of themselves.”

  John arched an eyebrow. “I’d love to have been able to ask her. She always had a wicked sense of humor.”

  “Did you find anything else?” I asked Hooperman and Barstone.

  They exchanged meaningful glances.

  “Indeed,” said Hooperman, with an alcoholic smile. “There is a link between Ian’s thesis and Marjorie’s. Very interesting. Very, um, distressing.” His large face showed no distress at all.

  “F. X. Eastford again,” said Helen Barstone. “Ian quotes Marjorie’s thesis in his own discussion of the last years of Elizabethan drama. Quotes a remark Eastford made about D’Avenant, in fact.” She smiled and I saw a lioness. One of Ian McGregor’s cast-off women was showing her fangs. She raised her pointing finger and made little circles with it in the air, then aimed it at me. “The remark he quotes is not in Marjorie’s dissertation.”

  “Shocking,” murmured Hooperman. He lifted the Cognac bottle and noted that it was empty. A sherry bottle was not, so he poured himself a glass from that. “Had he been content to quote Marjorie’s thesis, he could not be faulted. But quoting a passage from Forbidden Drama that is not in Marjorie’s text. Tsk, tsk . . .” He gave a happy sigh.

  I looked at John. He spread his hands. He did not share his colleague’s joy at their discovery.

  “Anything else?” I asked. “Any other revelations?”

  “None at all,” said Helen Barstone primly. “Not that we need anything else. We found quite enough, I think.”

  “Quite enough,” agreed Hooperman. “Yes, indeed.” He drank down his sherry and looked at Helen Barstone’s breasts. He smiled.

  “Scandal,” said John. “Major scandal. Marjorie and Ian both guilty of fakery. Two reputations ruined. I don’t like it. I suggest that the four of us keep this pretty quiet until we know what to do with the information.”

  “I don’t see why,” said Helen Barstone coolly. “Marjorie’s dead—she can’t be hurt. Besides, she never pulled a punch when it came to others’ shortcomings. The things she’s said about me! And Bill! And God knows Ian has been hard on people when it suited him. Under all that sleekness, he’s been hard on a lot of people.”

  “For one thing,” said John carefully, “we don’t know for certain that there isn’t any F. X. Eastford or a book by him called Forbidden Drama. All we know is that it’s not in the lists you know of and that Tristan never heard of Eastford or his book. I’d advise all of us to move very cautiously in this matter. We must consult with other experts and make a very thorough study of the catalogs and listings before we can decide that Marjorie and Ian are fakers. Their reputations are all that they have, after all. Marjorie’s is a major one and Ian’s promises to be so. I cannot say too strongly that we must walk lightly here until we know our ground better than we do now.”

  Somewhat to my surprise, Hooperman agreed. “Quite so, John. Self-interest, if nothing else. What if we cried scandal and then discovered that Eastford actually had written that book? Damned awkward, I can tell you. No, no, we must be cautious. Swear ourselves to secrecy until we can dig deeper. Yes, indeed. Particularly since the whole thing is so hard to believe.” He poured himself more sherry.

  “That’s not my sort of work,” I said. “I leave it to you three. How long will it take you to check it out?”

  The three academics exchanged questioning looks. “Oh, months, at least, I should think,” suggested Hooperman.

  “Months?” exclaimed Helen Barstone. “I should think less time than that. Weeks, at best.”

  “Weeks, months,” said John. “Something like that. It takes time and money to do this sort of thing. Money would buy us help to speed things up, but none of us is rich. The important thing is to agree among ourselves not to let this suspicion out until we’re absolutely certain that Forbidden Drama doesn’t exist. Are we agreed?”

  Helen Barstone rubbed her neck with her hand, sighed, and smiled a small, tight smile. “All right, John.”

  “Good,” said Hooperman. “I find this very exciting, I must say. Shall we also agree not to publish separately, but as one? If, that is, we discover that we actually have something to publish. . . .”

  “Yes,” said John. “I agree to that. It’ll keep any one of us from going off at half cock.”

  “Very well,” said Helen Barstone. “I agree. We’ll publish together, if at all. I say, Bill, would you like to dance?”

  John frowned at them, not really seeing them as they began to sway to music heard only by themselves. It must have been sweet music, for they looked blissful as they danced. Then I was aware that he was also frowning at me. He moved closer, glanced at the dancers, then spoke quietly. There was a note of sadness in his voice.

  “This means Ian had a motive for murder. Marjorie got the theses, read them, and confronted Ian. He killed her to protect himself.”

  “Sounds neat,” I said.

  I put my back to the happy dancers. “Of course, if she squealed on him, he could squeal on her, too. What about that?”

  He thought. Then, “She was at the end of her career anyhow. His was just beginning. She would retire to Maine where no one knew her reputation, or cared, but his future would be destroyed. She was quirky enough to tell all and take her chances, I think. Besides, she really didn’t have to say anything; all she had to do was withdraw from this Shakespeare project. That alone would make the disc
overy suspect enough to dim Ian’s hope of fame and fortune. It would put the whole matter in limbo even if the document is authentic, which it well may be.” John did not like what he was saying. He was not one who liked to sit in judgment and was, therefore, one whose judgment I trusted.

  Zee was listening. “Motive isn’t enough,” she said. “A killer has to have opportunity, too.” We looked at her. “Marjorie was seen driving to the beach that morning. Ian was seen running the bike path shortly afterward. He couldn’t have killed her. If he had, her body would have been washed farther east. You said that yourself, Jeff.”

  “Try this on for size,” I said. “His car was seen in the vicinity between midnight and four. He went home after dropping you off, confronted Marjorie, overpowered her, dressed her in her swimming gear, drove her to South Beach, drowned her, and took her offshore on his surfsailer so no one would find her body too soon, if at all. It sounds complicated, but he had time to do it. Then, in the morning, he puts on a pair of gloves and her white swimming cap and drives her car to the beach. In case anybody actually pays any attention, they’ll think he’s her. He parks the car and runs home along the bike path. What do you think?”

  The dancers jostled a table and laughed. They were very happy about killing two birds with one stone. John and Zee were not happy at all.

  “Or,” I said, “maybe he didn’t mean to kill her. Maybe they struggled and she fell and then the rest of it happened. She can’t tell us, but he can.” As my voice said this, it occurred to me that I should reread the Gazette reports of the drowning.

  “He shouldn’t tell us,” said John, “he should tell the police, if he tells anybody. I guess I should give them a call.” He walked frowning toward the kitchen.

  At the far end of the library, Doctors Barstone and Hooperman had stopped dancing and were kissing. Zee and I followed John out of the room and left the victors alone. I was thinking of the tale of the serpent in Eden and wondering about its moral. Was it that in every garden there is a serpent or that for every serpent there is a garden? Both the serpent and the garden were beautiful and both were tempters, the serpent offering a nibble from the fruit of the tree of knowledge and the garden offering the sweet bliss of innocence. Which was the most dangerous? Which offered the greatest blessing?

  As I drove Zee home, I told her about the Man Who Craps. The Man Who Craps is a little figure of a guy wearing a red fez who is squatting and shitting on the ground, his trousers down around his ankles. He was brought to me by a friend who had been in Barcelona during the Christmas season and who, while browsing through Catalonia’s markets, had come across the figure amid other figures who were in the traditional Christmas crèches: Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, angels, shepherds, donkeys, sheep, cattle, and so forth. In Catalonia, Christmas crèches are apparently very popular, for the figures are for sale everywhere in all sizes and for all prices. But my friend had never seen the Man Who Craps as part of the scene and had been sufficiently fascinated to purchase two, one of them for me. Curious, my friend had asked acquaintances the significance of the obscene figure being mixed in with the other more traditional figures and had in time been given the following explanation: In Catalonia there were, in fact, three figures not elsewhere found in the crèche: the Man Who Craps, a woman washing clothes, and a fisherman at work. They signified that at the moment of the birth of the only son of God, surely the most sacred and important event since the beginning of time, all of the very human activities that normally took place continued to take place. Nothing really changed. Everything that usually happened continued to happen. Clothes still needed to be washed, fish needed to be caught, and shit needed to be shat. Life went on as it always does in spite of the miracle.

  Or in spite of death. Marjorie Summerharp’s or anyone else’s.

  At Christmas, when I put up my little crèche, around in back, modestly out of sight, I always put the Man Who Craps, because I like what he stands (or squats) for: life going on in spite of doom or marvel.

  I suddenly became aware of my monologue. “I am a famous babbler,” I said.

  Zee hooked her arm in mine. “You left-bank undergraduates pretend you’re existentialists, but all the girls know you’re just frustrated idealists.”

  “God,” I said. “It’s such a relief to be understood at last. Does this mean that I can go back and live with Mom and Dad again and that I don’t have to wear this damned beret any longer?”

  “You got it, cookie,” said Zee. “You can start teaching your Sunday school classes again and join the Rotary Club.”

  “Oh, I’m so happy! You’re an angel. Let’s get married right away.”

  “No. I’ve been so inspired by your return to normalcy that I’ve decided to enter a nunnery just like my Aunt Sylvia always wanted. I’ll pray for you daily.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “There, there. Just think of Warren Harding and everything will be all right.”

  We pulled up in front of her door. “Are you sure you have to enter the nunnery right away?” I asked.

  “Actually,” she said, running her tongue along her lips and looking up at me, “I thought I might put it off until tomorrow.”

  In the morning, the rising sun poured red light through her window and touched her sleeping face with radiance. I watched her for a long time, then slipped away and made breakfast for us both and brought it back on a tray. She was sitting up, looking as lovely as a goddess, smiling. My heart thumped.

  An hour later she drove to work and I drove home. She had again declined to marry me but on the other hand had decided to give up the nunnery. Things could have been worse. As I drove east into the rising sun, clouds were building in the sky. I turned on the radio and learned that we were to have rain that night and a bit of wind. I wondered if it would wash out our date with Tristan Cooper and his standing stones.

  At home I dug around and found the Gazette editions reporting on Marjorie Summerharp’s death and reread them. I had been dumb once again. If I’d been smarter, I could have saved myself a split lip. I got into the Landcruiser and drove into Edgartown.

  There I parked on Green Avenue, where the meter maids never trod, and walked down Main Street. On Dock Street I found the chief trying to fit a cup of coffee into his day. Beyond him, tall sails moved out of the harbor toward the Sound, pushed by a following wind. I watched him sip from his Styrofoam cup and move his eyes here and there, as was his habit.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Did John Skye call you about the dissertations?”

  “Yes, he did. So what?”

  “So maybe there’s a motive for murder in them.”

  “Ian McGregor’s motive for murdering Marjorie Summerharp, I take it.”

  “Could be.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  “I’m just an amateur snoop. You’re the professional officer of the law.”

  “Hereabout it’s the official policy to let the state cops handle murder investigations, the theory being, apparently, that we local types aren’t bright enough or well trained enough to deal with such sophisticated crime. But as even you know, so far we don’t have a murder here, just an accidental death.”

  “I think you have more than that.”

  “And now you think McGregor’s the guy?”

  “I think that if I was a real live policeman I might rank him as a legit suspect. He had motive.”

  “I hate to repeat myself, although with you I should expect to. Do you think that McGregor’s the guy?”

  “As a matter of fact, I doubt it.”

  “Really? My, my. I thought you were the fellow who had him taking the victim down to the beach in the early hours and running her outside on his surfboard, then faking a six o’clock drive to the beach wearing her bathing cap. What made you change your mind, if I may ask so simple a question of so complex a thinker? Now use short words—I don’t want to get out of my depth.”

  “You may be just a poor hick cop living off parking tickets and s
mall-town graft, but even you can grasp this. Marjorie Summerharp only had one bathing suit and one bathing cap, and according to the Gazette I just reread she was wearing both when the Mary Pachico found her. The driver of her car was wearing a white cap that morning. Unless McGregor managed to buy himself one in the middle of the night, he couldn’t have been wearing one at six that morning. Ergo, it was Marjorie driving her car down to the beach just when McGregor said she did. Ergo again, he didn’t do her in. He just didn’t have time to do that and still be seen running on the bike path when witnesses saw him there.” I touched my split lip. “Besides, McGregor isn’t the killing type. I gave him a chance to try to do a real number on me and he didn’t take it. I don’t think he could kill somebody if he wanted to and I don’t think he’d want to. Most people are like that.”

  “I don’t know what most people are like or what a killing type is, but then I’m just a poor hick cop going broke on local graft. But I’m glad to hear that you’ve finally come around to believing what everybody else knew all along.”

  “All I’m saying is that McGregor didn’t kill her. But that still doesn’t explain how she ended up where she did when she did.”

  He crumpled his cup and dropped it into a waste barrel. “I know. For what it’s worth, I’ve been talking with the state cops about this whole thing for the last three weeks. I understand that they’re asking some questions on the mainland, trying to get a lead on what might have happened down here. It’s still an accidental death, but the D.A. knows that it might be something more. Before I trudge off to protect and serve, do you have any other tidbits you’d like to add to my collection?”

  “Two. First, Sanctuary keeps a couple of sailboats and a sportfisherman on South Beach. Second, there’s reason to think that some of the girls and maybe some of the boys who work up there offer sexual favors to the customers but keep their mouths shut about it because they’re illegal aliens trying to make some money to send back home to the poor folks.”