Murder Under the Palms

by Stefanie Matteson

  “I got it back from the police,” Marianne said, her deep-set brown eyes smiling. “Fresh from the evidence locker. I thought you ought to have it. Or rather, Mother did. It was her idea.”

  “We’re very grateful, Charlotte,” Connie said.

  “Oh, Marianne,” Charlotte exclaimed as she removed it from the satin lining of the box and examined the multiple compartments. “I love it,” she said, adding, “You shouldn’t have.”

  “But I did, so there,” Marianne said, sticking out her tongue. “Now we want to hear the latest. Dede’s only told us the basics. Lydia Collins turns out to be an embezzler! I don’t know her, but Mother and Spalding do.”

  “I’m shocked,” Connie said, shaking her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe that someone would betray a public trust like that.”

  Connie belonged to the old school, and still believed that anyone who would devote their energies to the public interest could do no wrong.

  “Historic preservation,” Marianne snorted. “Lydia preservation is more like it. What did she need the money for? I thought she was married to the bumper king of Flint, Michigan.”

  Charlotte related what she had discovered about Lydia’s purchase of the Dupas panels coming just after the date of her biggest raid on the coffers of the preservation association. “But it turned out that she needed money in general. Apparently her late husband had made some bad investments.”

  “That explains why she puts the house up for rent,” Connie said. “She lists it every season with Barclay’s, for thirty thousand a month. When she originally told us about it, she made it sound as if it made no difference to her. But I wondered. Who would rent unless they had to?”

  “She admitted that’s why she rents it,” Charlotte said.

  “She’s rented to the same person every year: a German industrialist, who’s actually very nice. But we were worried. After all, she is our next door neighbor.” Connie looked over at her daughter. “Do you remember what happened a few years ago on Jungle Road?”

  “Oh, Mother,” said Marianne dismissively.

  “What happened?” Charlotte asked.

  Marianne explained. “An heiress whose money was tight rented her house to a porn magazine publisher who used the grounds to shoot-nude photo layouts. The town was outraged. They live in never-never land here,” she added.

  “That’s the way we like it,” said Connie. “We don’t want our precious island turned into another Forty-second Street.”

  “Then why did every little old lady in Palm Beach go out and buy the magazine when it came out?” Marianne asked. “Including you, Mother dear.” She explained to Charlotte: “Main Street News was sold out.”

  “I was just curious,” Connie said defensively. She turned to Charlotte. “You were saying?”

  “It turns out that Lydia owes money all over town,” said Charlotte, conveying the latest, which she had found out from Maureen just that morning. “Including to Feder Jewelers, which may have been what tipped Paul off.”

  “As if embezzling a hundred thousand dollars in a single shot wasn’t enough all by itself,” said Marianne. “What do you think of Dede’s theory that Lydia killed Paul to prevent him from exposing her as an embezzler?”

  “I think it’s a good theory,” Charlotte said. “But I don’t think she could have done it herself. No one saw her leave the premises. Someone would have had to do it for her.” She turned to Connie and Spalding. “Which is why I wanted to talk with you, as a matter of fact.”

  “Why?” asked Connie, puzzled.

  “I wanted to ask you about the admiral. At the time of the murder, I was out on the deck with Eddie. We saw him go out to the beach.”

  “But what would his motive have been?” Connie asked.

  “A grand passion?” Charlotte suggested.

  “For Lydia Collins?” exclaimed Connie incredulously. “Charlotte, there’s nothing between him and Lydia. He’s a walker: he’s with a different woman at a different party every night of the week. I’ve even been out with him a couple of times myself when Spalding’s been away.”

  “What’s he like?” Charlotte asked.

  “Very charming, very gracious. Though I’d have to say that he’s guarded. He doesn’t reveal much about himself. He’s a widower. He had a distinguished career in the Navy, from what I understand.”

  “He was awarded the Navy Cross during the Korean War,” offered Spalding.

  “He’s a very good dancer,” added Connie.

  “Could he have done it because he needed the money?” Charlotte asked.

  Connie shook her head. “I think he probably has enough money. He lives fairly modestly. He has a condo down by the Brazilian Docks. He does have a fishing boat, the Sea Witch, that he docks there. I imagine it must be quite expensive to maintain, but what else would he need money for?”

  “To cover the high cost of living in Palm Beach?”

  “Charlotte, a man like that—charming, handsome, accomplished, available—wants for nothing in Palm Beach. There are rich widows by the dozens who are happy to pay his way for the pleasure of not having to go out alone.”

  “And hostesses by the dozens who are looking to balance their unevenly balanced dinner tables,” added Marianne.

  “The only thing a man of polish like Jack McLean needs to spend money on in Palm Beach is a well-cut tuxedo. Once he’s done that, it’s a free ride for the rest of his life.” Connie paused for a moment, and then said, “I’m making him sound more calculating than I think he is.”

  “What do you mean?” Charlotte asked.

  “I think he and the other men like him here enjoy the life. They aren’t squiring rich widows around because it’s a free ride, but because they enjoy the company of attractive, sophisticated older women.” Connie straightened up and batted her cornflower blue eyes.

  “Women such as ourselves, you mean?” Charlotte teased.

  “Exactly. Paul was another man who lived that way,” Connie went on. “But for him it was good business as well: getting to know prospective customers.”

  “Well, I know how I’ll get by if you kick the bucket before I do,” said Spalding with a good-natured chuckle.

  “You’d have to take lessons at Arthur Murray first, dear,” Connie twitted, then turned back to Charlotte. “Have we demolished your theory of Jack McLean as a murderer?”

  “Totally,” Charlotte said.

  “Now what?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied.

  After thanking Marianne for the minaudière and saying goodbye to the Smiths, Charlotte got back into her rental car and headed for Château Albert, where she was to meet Eddie. She was as nervous as a schoolgirl on her first date and at the same time oddly calm. She had the feeling that the whole scenario was being orchestrated by a deus ex machina, one with an ironic—if not to say somewhat cruel—sense of humor. Charlotte had met Eddie when her marriage to her first husband was breaking up, a casualty of her sudden ascent to stardom. Her second husband, whom she had loved very much in an affectionate sort of way, had died prematurely of a heart attack. Then had come her notorious affair with the cowboy actor, Linc Crawford, who had been the love of her life. He had also died of an apparent heart attack. After a number of other love affairs, she had made the mistake of marrying her third husband, a drunkard and a womanizer, from whom she had been divorced only six months later. Finally she had married for the fourth time, a man she had thought to possess all the old-fashioned virtues, but who had turned out instead to be just plain boring. It was as if this god with the cruel sense of humor were saying, After doling out a lifetime’s worth of pain and anguish with regard to men, we’re now going to set you up with a wonderful guy whom you could have been with all along, had the timing been a little different.

  Or maybe she was just building castles in the air.

  On her way to Château Albert, Charlotte took a detour past the admiral’s condominium. By Palm Beach standards, it was modest, just as Connie had said. H
is fishing boat, the Sea Witch, was docked across the street. It was goodsized—Charlotte would have put it at fifty feet or more—and it certainly hadn’t come cheap. The docking fees must also cost a pretty penny. But the boat appeared to be the only indulgence in an otherwise unpretentious lifestyle, and surely the financial resources of a retired rear admiral would be sufficient to support a boat. Another argument against the admiral dismissed, she thought as she drove on.

  Ten minutes later, she arrived at Château Albert, which was located in a charming off-street plaza of quaint offices and apartments across the road from the police station. As she pulled up in front of the club, Charlotte was greeted by a tanned young valet, who promptly whisked her car away. Where did they park all the cars? she wondered, imagining them all lined up in some gigantic parking lot in West Palm Beach. A minute later, she had passed through the opening in the tall ficus hedges that shielded the club from the plaza, and was immediately transported to Normandy, France.

  The building was in the style of a Norman country inn, with a first-floor façade worked in a complex pattern of brick and stone, and a second floor façade of half-timbered oak. The roof was steeply pitched and broken up with dormers, turrets, and overhangs. Carefully grouped pots of red geraniums rested on the sills of the tall windows on the first floor, and the tricolor flew from a flagpole in the cobblestoned entrance courtyard.

  It had beaucoup de charme, as the French would say.

  As Charlotte understood it, the château was an exclusive private dining club, membership in which was convenient for paying off social obligations for those, like the Smiths, who didn’t keep a full-time cook on staff.

  Charlotte was greeted at the door by René himself, whose manner, as always, was smooth and debonair. After touching his lips to her hand, he informed her that Eddie had already arrived. Then he escorted her through a stone-paved center hallway past a staircase with a massive hand-carved oak balustrade into a small barroom.

  Eddie was sitting at the bar in a room that was empty except for the bartender. Charlotte had wondered if she would feel differently upon seeing him again, if her feelings would have lessened after the novelty of seeing him for the first time. But there he was, and her heart did a little loop de loop.

  He greeted her with a kiss on the cheek.

  “Here is Miss Graham,” René announced, as he pulled out a stool for her.

  “You make it sound as if you arranged all of this, René,” Eddie commented.

  “Who knows?” said René, his dark eyebrows lifting. “Maybe I have powers you’re not aware of.” He pantomimed Cupid shooting his arrow, then, moving around behind the bar, he removed two small glasses from an overhead rack and pulled out a bottle, which he set on the top of the bar.

  “This is Calvados, the specialty of Normandy,” he told them. “We say in Normandy: ‘Calvados is to the apple what cognac is to the grape.’ This is my finest: Calvados du Pays d’Auge.” He winked. “I think we have a very special occasion to celebrate here,” he said as he removed the cork.

  Standing up, Eddie removed another of the small stemmed glasses from the overhead rack and set it on the bar. “Please, René,” he said, gesturing at the third glass. “Won’t you join us?”

  “I would be delighted,” René said. After dismissing the bartender, he poured the apple brandy into the three glasses, and they raised a toast to the memory of the Normandie.

  “Tell me,” said Charlotte, looking around at the enormous old oak Calvados casks behind the bar, the heavy beams on the ceiling overhead, and the half-timbered walls, “is this an old Norman inn that you disassembled and had shipped over here, or did you build it from scratch in the Norman style?”

  “I renovated it in the Norman style,” René told her. “There was a restaurant here before. I imported Norman workmen. Everything is authentic.” He laid his hand on the bar. “The bar is a slab from the trunk of a three-hundred-year-old tree, the curtains are Alençon lace, the dinnerware is Norman faience.”

  “It’s lovely,” said Charlotte.

  “Have some Norman cheese,” René said. Reaching under the bar, he produced a tray of cheese and crackers, which he set in front of them as a concession to the American custom of serving cheese before the meal. “Tonight is our Normandy night. We are serving only authentic Norman cuisine.”

  Charlotte and Eddie helped themselves as René pointed out the various kinds of soft, full-flavored cheeses that were native to that province of France: camembert, pont-l’évêque, pavé d’auge.

  “And was the building modeled after a real Château Albert?” Charlotte asked, as she spread some of the rich pont-l’évêque on a cracker.

  “No,” he said. “This building is modeled after a modest country house. But there is a real Château Albert. It’s there,” René said, pointing to a photograph hanging on the wall. It showed a big old French château made of red brick and limestone, with a steeply pitched slate roof.

  “What’s the significance of it?” Charlotte asked, studying the photo of the tall, elegant building, with its formal allée of pleached lindens lining the drive to the front entrance.

  “It’s where I grew up,” he said. “My family estate. Louis the thirteenth, built in the early seventeenth century. I’m originally from Normandy, you see. That’s another reason why the ship meant so much to me.” He paused, and then said: “I imagine that you’re wondering why I’m here”—he nodded at the photo—“and not there.”

  Charlotte smiled. “Well, as a matter of fact …” She passed a cheese-topped cracker to Eddie and spread another cracker with cheese for herself.

  “An American millionaire owns it now. My father lost his fortune—and the château—as a result of debts he incurred in Deauville’s high-stakes gambling salons, and what he didn’t lose gambling, he squandered on his racehorses. That was when I was fourteen. He died not long after, a ruined man.”

  “How tragic,” Charlotte said.

  René nodded. “After his death, my mother and I lived in our former bakehouse. We were reduced to the status of tenants on our own estate,” he added bitterly. “I think that’s another reason why Normandie always meant so much to me. She was a substitute”—he waved at the photo—“for all of that.”

  “Then you lost the Normandie, too,” said Charlotte.

  René nodded and downed his shot of Calvados in a single swig. “You have to drink this all at once,” he explained. “To make a trou Normand.”

  “Trou?” asked Charlotte, whose French was pretty lame.

  “A hole for the food,” he explained.

  Charlotte complied. The smooth brandy warmed her stomach. “You never finished your story the other night,” she said. “Of how you ended up here.”

  “Ah, as I told you, it is a very long story. I think you have better things to talk about tonight, eh?” he said with a wink.

  “Please, I’d like to hear the rest of it,” said Charlotte. She turned back to Eddie. “After the Normandie burned, René went back to France and joined the Résistance. He stopped his story just as he was captured.” She noticed that he was again wearing the red and black rosette of the Résistance in his lapel.

  “I think the telling of this story will take some more Calvados,” René said and proceeded to pour another round. Then he continued with the story he had started at the party at Villa Normandie:

  “As you said, I was captured. I was put in a prison for political prisoners in Fresnes, outside of Paris. Cell eighty-five. All my life, I will remember that number. We were crowded seven and eight into a cell that was meant for one. But—I was lucky to be alive.”

  He paused, and Charlotte asked what he meant.

  “The guests didn’t stay long in that hotel,” he explained. “The Gestapo would order regular clean-outs. Prisoners were either executed, or, if they were lucky, shipped out to Buchenwald. I was there eight months—long enough that it was time for them to get rid of me.”

  Charlotte and Eddie listened as they sipped
their Calvados. René once again downed his in a single swig.

  “Then came D-Day. As the Americans drew near Paris in June of 1944, the executions were stepped up. I thought for sure that I would be put to death. But as you can see”—he patted his belly—“I lived to tell the tale. There were only eight hundred of us left when the prison was finally liberated.”

  “And after that?” Eddie asked as he picked up his glass with a burn-scarred hand. Charlotte noticed that he hadn’t volunteered the information that he had been part of the Navy crew in charge of the Normandie conversion.

  “I had been planning to go back to my village,” René answered. “Its name was Oradour-sur-Glane. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “It sounds vaguely familiar,” Eddie said.

  “The Oradour massacre. In June, 1944. One of the most notorious Nazi atrocities of the war. Every man, woman, and child in the village was murdered by the SS. Six hundred and forty-two people, including my mother, my aunts and uncles, my cousins. They shot the men and locked the women and children in the church, and then burned it down.”

  His mother burned alive! Charlotte was horrified. “But why?” she asked.

  “Supposedly in reprisal for a Résistance attack on a military formation moving toward the Normandy beachhead.” René shrugged. “But the Germans didn’t need an excuse to behave like butchers, as we well know.”

  For a moment, there was silence.

  “I’m sorry,” Eddie said.

  René shrugged. “There was nothing to go back to,” he continued. “So I signed on again with the French Line. I was the dining room steward on the Ile de France for twelve years. But the Ile wasn’t Normandie. Nothing could have been Normandie. She had been my life, my love. I loved her with the kind of passion that is usually reserved for a beloved mistress.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” said Eddie.

  Charlotte and Eddie drained their glasses, and René poured another round.

  “Eventually I left the French Line and came to New York. I was drawn there the way one is drawn to the final resting place of a loved one. The East Side restaurant that the Normandie crew used to frequent when the ship was interned was still in business, and I used to go there often. One day the owner asked me if I wanted to buy him out, so I did. I had saved up quite a bit.”