Marjorie took exception to this comment. She was about to argue when they were interrupted by the sound of car doors slamming. Mrs. Patterson sprang from her chair, and as if she were hosting an intimate social gathering rather than a police investigation, declared, “That must be Creighton and the other men. I’ll go fix some coffee and sandwiches.” She nervously smoothed her dress and hair and then scurried off toward the kitchen, leaving Marjorie alone with her thoughts.
It was true, Marjorie realized. She had treated Creighton miserably. He had shown her nothing but kindness since his arrival. He had volunteered to help her with her book, although he had work to do in preparing his new home. He had given her a tour of Kensington House, despite the fact that he had been suffering from the stomach flu. And though he had enjoyed teasing her, he had never been anything less than a gentleman the whole time they were together. And how did she repay him? She nearly clubbed him to death.
She cringed as she pictured herself brandishing the tree limb and wondered if a verbal apology were sufficient for an offense of such magnitude. Perhaps a grander gesture was necessary. She could, she thought, express her regret in a letter. But she dismissed this idea as too formal. She could acknowledge him in her next book. But that was several months away. She could bake him a pie or cake. But he might not like sweets. She could sire out Sam and give him one of the kittens—but the offspring might inherit its father’s personality.
“There must be something I can do to make it up to him,” she stated aloud as she placed her untouched cup of tea on the small table next to her. Trying to formulate a plan, she rested her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, minutes later, all thoughts of Creighton Ashcroft rapidly dissolved.
There had emerged, in the sewing room doorway, the figure of a man. He was in his thirties, of average height and build, but the rest of him was far from ordinary. He was, in fact, what one might call movie-star handsome. Lush, undulating waves of dark hair crowned a pleasing countenance: cleft chin, classic nose, perfectly formed lips, and soulful, chocolate eyes lined by thick, sensuous lashes.
Marjorie suddenly learned what it meant to be rooted to the spot, for all she could do was stare, her mouth agape, as he entered the room and sauntered toward her. With a sympathetic smile, he introduced himself, “Detective Robert Jameson, Hartford County Police. I’m in charge of the investigation regarding the body you found in the woods.” He leaned downward and offered her his right hand, but Marjorie, intently studying his face, was too preoccupied to notice.
He drew his hand back and perched on the edge of the chair previously occupied by Mrs. Patterson. “I know you’ve had a terrible shock, but I do need to ask you some questions,” he retrieved a pencil from his jacket pocket and poised it over the notebook he had brought in with him. “First, the formalities. Let’s start with your name and address.”
Marjorie did not answer; the information he wanted was there, in the forefront of her memory, but she was unable to impart these facts verbally, as if the power to formulate words had temporarily escaped her.
“You’re still upset aren’t you?” he asked rhetorically while imparting a look of pity. “I’ll just go and let you rest a little while longer.”
She bolted upright in her chair, but still, she could not utter a sound.
“I’ll send Officer Noonan in later.”
She wanted to scream, No! No, don’t go! I don’t want Officer Noonan! I want you!
But he was already halfway out the door, and as soon as he was no longer visible, her voice, though weak, miraculously reappeared. “Wait!” she exclaimed breathlessly, “Come back! I’ll tell you my name! It’s . . . it’s Marjorie . . .” Realizing her opportunity had passed, she flopped, angrily, back in her chair and sighed, “Marjorie . . . the village idiot!”
_____
After a few moments of solitude, Marjorie perceived the sound of men congregating in the front parlor. Her inquisitive nature taking hold, she pushed her chair closer to the door and settled in to listen to the police encounter that, by all indications, was guaranteed to be less pleasant than hers.
The gruff voice of Officer Noonan spoke first. “Okay Mr. Ashcroft, I need to fill out my report, so let’s just make sure I have all my facts straight. I have your last name as A-s-h-c-r-o-f-t,” he spelled the surname aloud.
“Correct,” replied Creighton.
“And your first name is spelled C-r-a-y-t-o-n.”
“No,” interceded the Englishman, “It’s C-r-e-i-g-h-t-o-n.”
Noonan had gotten lost after the first three letters, “C-r-e-y?”
“No, not ‘y,’ ‘i,’” he repeated the spelling of his name, this time more slowly.
Noonan recited the letters after him, “e . . . i . . . g,” he paused, “‘G’?”
“G,” confirmed Mr. Ashcroft.
“Humph, go figure,” mused the detective. “What type of name is that anyway? German?”
“Yes,” he answered facetiously, “I’m a nephew of the Kaiser.”
Marjorie, relieved that Creighton had found a new soul to torment, tried hard to suppress a giggle.
Noonan, on the other hand, was unfazed. “Oh, I thought so. You don’t sound like you’re from around here.” He continued with the questions. “So, Cretin, your address is Kensington House?”
“That’s Creighton,” he corrected, “and yes, that’s my address, but I’m staying here until I move in.”
“So if we wanted to contact you we would call here.”
“Yes.”
“Got the number, Cretin?”
“Creighton,” he corrected more adamantly, “and yes, I do.” He recited the number cautiously so that the policeman could write it down.
“You got a daytime number I can call you at? You know, a telephone at the job.”
“No.”
“You don’t have a phone?”
“No, I don’t have a job.”
“Don’t tell me you were laid off, too.”
“No, I wasn’t laid off.”
“Then, what are you retired? I mean, how old are you, Cretin? Thirty-one? Thirty-two?”
“Thirty-four,” Creighton responded. “Is this essential to the investigation?”
Noonan didn’t answer, but remarked to the other officer in the room, “Get a load of this, Palutzky! He’s thirty-four, retired, and he owns that great big house we were just at.”
Marjorie flinched at Noonan’s description of Creighton. He had stated the facts simply, without embellishment, but there was a sharp edge in his tone. It was an edge honed by years of economic hardship, an edge that Marjorie had heard before in descriptions of the wealthy. If the Depression had affected class distinctions in any way, it was only to broaden the dichotomy between them: the rich remained rich while the poor became poorer. Certainly, there were stories of people who fell from riches to rags, but those with sense understood that “rags” was just a euphemism; there were no former millionaires to be found waiting in bread lines, experiencing malnutrition, or suffering from dust pneumonia.
Of course, Marjorie had not experienced any of these demons either, but this did not mean that the town of Ridgebury had remained unscathed. In the months following the crash, several local families had left town; some moved in with relatives, others traveled in search of greener pastures—though Marjorie was unsure as to where those greener pastures may lie. Men took any odd job to help feed their families, from mowing lawns to patching roofs. Women took in laundry or sewing. Families started growing more of their own food, and neighborhood gardens had expanded, in some cases to encompass nearly the entire backyard. Some citizens had even begun raising chickens, and though currency was still the preferred method of payment, it was not unusual to overhear neighbors bartering a basket of beans for a fresh young roasting hen and a dozen eggs.
The Depression had left no one untouched. With book sales plummeting to an unprecedented low, the high and mighty Mr. Schutt had been
forced to convert part of his shop into a library, where, for a nickel, a person could borrow a book for one week. And Mrs. Patterson, out of a need to supplement her savings, was spending her golden years lodging total strangers. Even Marjorie, who considered herself very lucky, knew that less than a decade earlier, her books, those small volumes over which she agonized, would have earned seven times what they did now.
No, it was little wonder to Marjorie that Officer Noonan harbored bitterness toward Creighton Ashcroft. For Creighton, with his luxurious mansion, fancy automobile, and finely tailored suits, represented those vanished halcyon years of the twenties: that decade of prosperity and growth, easy money and fast living; that decade for which they were now paying dearly.
Noonan’s bitterness was no surprise, but it was irritating. Irritating because it was grossly unfair: Creighton could not be held responsible for the world’s financial plight. And yet, had she not fallen prey to this prejudice herself? She wondered how much of her suspicion at Kensington House had been spurred by envy of his wealthy status and mistrust of the era he symbolized. Was this also why she stubbornly refused to view him as anything other than an assistant? Disturbed by this thought, she shut her eyes tightly, as if to squeeze the idea out of her head.
In the other room, the voice of Creighton rose above the chuckles and mutterings of the two policemen. “I’m so glad to have provided entertainment for you gentlemen, but can we please get this over with?”
Noonan sounded almost apologetic, “Sorry, Cretin.”
He shouted it this time, “That’s Creighton! Cray-ton,” he sounded it out syllabically. “A ‘cretin’ is a mentally retarded person of diminutive size.”
She heard footsteps moving toward the front parlor and then the voice of Detective Jameson. “Are you gentlemen finished harassing Mr. Ashcroft?”
Noonan attempted to defend himself. “We’re not harassing him. The guy’s a crackpot.”
“If I held that against everyone, you’d be out of a job,” Jameson retorted. “Palutzky, go in the kitchen and get yourself some coffee. Noonan, go and question the girl. I’ll take over here.”
At this reference to her, Marjorie jumped from her seat, returned the chair to its former position, fell back into it and tried to assume an air of casual indifference.
Noonan, a short, stocky, red-faced man in his mid-forties, entered a few moments later. He plopped into the chair adjacent to Marjorie’s and after obtaining her name, address and telephone number, asked, “So what’s your story?”
“My story?” she repeated. “Oh. How I found the body. Where do I begin?”
“Try the beginning,” Noonan retorted.
“Oh, okay. Let’s see . . . well, I met Creighton yesterday in the drugstore, the Ridgebury Drugstore. It’s around the corner from here and it faces the green. I always go there for coffee, and I went there yesterday and Creighton was there drinking coffee too, which I thought was odd, because he’s English, and I thought they only drink tea. But apparently, I was wrong because he was drinking coffee. So I got my cup of coffee and we started talking and it seems that he’s a big fan of my books,” she leaned closer to him. “I’m a mystery writer. You know, detective novels. Oh, but don’t worry, the policemen in my novels are very intelligent. Maybe you’ve read my books. Death in Denmark, Murder in Morocco? Anyway, Creighton is a big fan and he offered to help me with my next book, Fear in Finland. It’s supposed to be published this summer, but I’m having a terrible time with it. So Creighton met me at my house today to help me with the writing, but I had writer’s block and he had the stomach flu, so we decided to take a walk, thinking that the fresh air would make him feel better and maybe help me to write, because that’s what Dashiell Hammett does. You know Dashiell Hammett, don’t you? He wrote The Dain Curse and The Maltese Falcon. Did you read them? Oh, and he wrote The Thin Man, which they made into a movie. Did you see the movie? Myrna Loy was in it. I love Myrna Loy . . .”
Noonan silently made his way to the doorway, where he paused, leaned into the hallway and shouted, “Palutzky! We got another crackpot!”
FIVE
Creighton spent another sleepless night under the Patterson roof. His restlessness was caused by fear, not of ghosts or of corpses, but of falling property values. In the twenty-four hours since he purchased his new home, he had learned of two deaths associated with the estate, and he knew that this could only have a negative effect on his investment. He prayed that no other bodies would be found as the police excavated the woods, for with his luck, he half expected to learn that Kensington House had once been used as a potter’s field.
As daylight began trickling in through his bedroom window, Creighton was flooded with an overwhelming sense of relief—the sunrise marked the final minutes of a darkness that had seemed to last for an eternity. As if rejuvenated by the sunshine, he sprang from his bed, went about his morning ablutions, and hearing noises from downstairs, decided to join Mrs. Patterson for breakfast.
He entered the kitchen to find the kindly woman standing over the stove, stirring the contents of a large pot. “Good morning,” she cried cheerfully. “I’m making oatmeal for breakfast.”
Creighton had experienced an aversion to oatmeal since his childhood, but he tried to smile enthusiastically, “Mmm. Yummy.”
Mrs. Patterson waved a hand in the direction of the breakfast table, “Oh, before I forget, there’s a note for you.”
He looked down at his place setting. Propped against his teacup was an envelope upon the front of which had been written, To C.A. “When did this come?” he inquired.
Mrs. Patterson shook her head, “I don’t know. It was lying on the floor by the front door this morning, as if someone had pushed it through the mail slot.”
He tore open the flap of the envelope and removed its contents. The note, written in neat, cursive letters, read:
Ashy,
Need to discuss case with you. Please come to my house ASAP.
M2
M2? Oh, yes, Marjorie McClelland. He chuckled to himself; Marjorie had certainly inherited her mother’s flair for the dramatic. He wondered if she shouldn’t be writing plays rather than novels, since she had, quite adeptly, made yesterday’s events sound like a cloak and dagger affair. She had even gone to the trouble to provide them both with code names, although Creighton took umbrage at his. Wasn’t it bad enough that he had argued with Officer Noonan about his first name? Did she have to desecrate his last name as well?
He wondered if he should take the issue up with her. It was, after all, rather presumptuous of her to assign him a nickname. It was even more presumptuous to demand that he meet her at her house, particularly after she had threatened to bludgeon him to death.
I won’t meet her today, he thought. That will teach her a lesson!
However, as time passed, and he consumed his thick clumps of oatmeal, his resolve weakened. As much as he hated to admit it, he needed to see her more than she needed to see him. Despite his reluctance, he knew that he would be knocking upon her door a few minutes later.
No, he acknowledged, it was futile to resist. She could summon him to the gates of hell with a dog whistle, and he would still obediently follow.
_____
As predicted, twenty minutes after breakfast found him on Marjorie’s front stoop, waiting to gain admittance.
Unlike the previous day, she greeted him at the door. “Hi. I’m glad you’re here. I wasn’t sure if you’d come.”
She was resplendent in a long, slim, crimson skirt and matching jacket with peplum, and Creighton wondered if it might not be the best dress in her closet. Her lips and nails had been painted to match the color of her suit, and upon her head nested a fashionable, “Robin Hood” hat into whose band had been tucked a scarlet feather.
“Aha! The notorious ‘Lady in Red,’” Creighton commented. “No wonder Dillinger met his end.”
Giggling, she ushered him inside. “Here. Let me take your coat.”
As Marjorie man
ipulated the garment onto a wooden hanger, Creighton took note of a small girl sitting on the loveseat in the living room. She was petite and fair-skinned, with dark, wavy hair and brown eyes that were doe-like in their innocence. From her size, he might have estimated her to be about four years old, but facially she appeared older. On her lap was a doll in a tattered dress.
Creighton leaned downward in an attempt to make his height seem less intimidating, “Hello, there. My name’s Creighton. What’s yours?”
The girl merely stared through him as if he were invisible. And, Marjorie, busy trying to find space for Creighton’s coat in the closet by the front door, was of no assistance.
He tried on his most dazzling smile. “That’s a very pretty baby you have there. She looks like you.”
The girl still said nothing, but this time thrust her tongue in Creighton’s direction.
Creighton’s smile turned to a smirk. In a world full of foolish inconsistencies, the effect of the Ashcroft charm was annoyingly predictable. Regardless of whom he plied it on, be it young women, small children, or household pets, they all reacted with something akin to contempt.
The little girl, fed up with Creighton’s conversational shortcomings, rose from her spot on the sofa, and with her doll trailing on the ground behind her, shuffled to the front door.
Having temporarily tamed the clutter of the coat closet, Marjorie spotted her as she made her exit. “Are you leaving now?”
Without looking up, the child nodded her reply.
“All right, then. I’ll watch you walk home.” She followed the girl to the front door and, after shouting her goodbye, waited there for approximately a minute before she closed it and joined Creighton in the living room.
“Delightful child,” he remarked.
“Her name’s Mary. She lives two doors down the block. She comes and visits every now and then. Sometimes she has breakfast with me, other times she just comes to play with Sam.”
He wanted to comment on the similarities in disposition between Sam and the little girl, but instead he asked, “Her parents let her wander about?”
Million Dollar Baby Page 4