by Dianne Day
But not for Jane Doe, who was perhaps Sabrina Howard; and probably not for Phoebe Broom, either. If anything had happened to Phoebe, I was certainly responsible. I had involved her; the sketch for which I had been hit in the head and (I very much feared) she had been kidnapped, or worse, had been my idea. I could not let self-protectiveness or pride get in the way; I had to do something, and I had to start in Carmel.
As I went back inside to make the day’s entry in the log, I realized that this was a new month. Always with a new month there is the possibility of a new beginning. Unfortunately February is my least favorite month of the year, so it did not seem particularly auspicious.
I had the answer to one question, anyway: Yes, I should pay attention to the part of me that remembered Shakespeare’s counsel—Love is not love which alters when it alteration findes.…
At midmorning it was still foggy. The wind had shifted slightly to blow out of the northwest rather than the west, and with the shift had taken on a wintry nip. I noted this in the log and wrote in the “Comments,” which I’d left blank earlier: logging schooner and freight steamer in from S. Then I closed the logbook and went looking for Quincy.
He was nowhere to be found. I wrote him a note, using simple words that I hoped he would be able to read: Gone to Carmel. Please take watch. Thank you, Fremont. Then I wrestled with harness and traces until I got the rig put together, said a few encouraging words to Bessie, and took off for Xanadu. Michael’s cottage, that is.
It was a good thing I had learned to trust Hettie’s little mare, for the fog was thicker going over Carmel Hill than I had yet encountered during daylight hours. There were times when I could not see past the horse’s ears. And a time near the summit when Arthur Heyer’s ghost story about the demon-child grabbed me and I was sure I heard someone crying. But I found no demon-children; instead, an idiot in a motorcar found me. He was driving much too fast for the poor visibility and almost ran over the rig. Bessie was magnificent; she expressed her displeasure by putting back her ears, but she stood stock-still and waited for the idiot to whiz on by.
“If he goes over the edge it will serve him right,” I remarked, and the mare whickered her agreement.
Eventually I found the opening among the trees that marked the Ocean Avenue turnoff. In the little village of Carmel there was less fog, but: everything was gray and drippy. The car that had almost run me down sat dripping in front of the Pine Inn, so I surmised the culprit was a tourist who didn’t know any better than to go tearing around blind. I went on past, started to lay the reins on Bessie’s neck for the turn onto Casanova, then thought better of it. Instead I pulled her into a wide U-turn and went back up to Lincoln and along to Phoebe’s cottage.
I did not even get down out of the shay. I didn’t have to; Phoebe’s cottage looked so forlorn it was perfectly obvious that no one was home. No lights shone through the windows, no smoke curled from the chimney. An emaciated black-and-gray-striped cat lay listlessly sprawled on the front steps, raising its head for a moment to stare at me with glazed eyes. A stray, probably. But maybe not. I had thought to continue on my way, but now I did get down from the carriage.
“Here, kitty, kitty,” I called softly, feeling a bit like a fool. My parents had not believed in keeping animals as pets so I never had one as a child. Father, particularly, thinks it is evil to bend nature’s creatures to one’s will. I have heard him on occasion expound upon his conviction that the Fall of Man occurred not when Eve ate the apple but when Adam named the animals—presumably the first step toward domesticating them. Therefore I know almost nothing about dogs and cats, not to mention horses, cows, canary birds, etc. My personal opinion, though, is that once a species has been domesticated the damage is done and we must take care of them.
“Poor little thing, poor kitty,” I said in what I hoped the cat would interpret as a sympathetic tone. She—or he, I had no idea which—did not run or so much as cringe from the touch of my hand. She was limp and light when I picked her up. In the carriage she dug her claws into my lap and made a pathetic, halting attempt to purr.
I took the cat to Xanadu. With her limp, furry body hanging over my arm like a black-and-gray-striped muff, I banged on the door, shortly thereafter interpreted a grunt from inside as an invitation to come in, and did so.
Due to the grayness of the day, the inside of the cottage was quite gloomy. A single lamp burned on the dining table. Involuntarily I tightened my grip on the cat, and she wriggled. Michael sat slumped over his elbows at the table like a dark shadow, and he was not alone. Either or both of them may have greeted me; it was difficult to hear anything over the roaring in my ears.
Nevertheless I advanced; not for all the tea in China would I have revealed the tiniest part of my true feelings. “Good morning,” I said. My voice was steady and clear. “I wonder if either of you has anything we might feed this cat. It belongs, I think, to Phoebe and is quite starved.”
“Oh dear!” Artemisia exclaimed. Deshabille, one of those rare words that looks like it sounds, could not even begin to describe her appearance. Her hair looked as if it had blown loose during a windstorm and frozen that way. The kohl she used to darken her eyelids had smudged in a raccoonish manner. She was more or less wearing one of those intentionally ragged layered things of hers, but without its underdress. In other words, when she moved and the layers shifted, one could see right through it. Like a naughty show in a stereopticon: Flash, flash. Now you see it, now you don’t.
I put the cat down on the table. Kitty blinked and looked up at me, made a sort of peep, and began a wobbly exploration. Artemisia leapt up with a flash of nipples and dark triangle; I blinked. From the direction she went and the sounds she subsequently made, I presumed that she was getting the cat something to eat. I did not follow her with my gaze, because Michael had captured my eyes.
There is a Russian fellow who for the past two years has been taking the tsar’s imperial court by storm—he is called Rasputin. In magazines I have seen photographs of this Rasputin, who did not look all that different from Michael at the moment. Michael’s eyes burned in his head, burned into me; his dark brows were drawn together in the scowl of all scowls. He wore a nightshirt open at the neck. Black hair, sometimes shot with silver, curled everywhere: his chest, his arms, over his forehead, down into his collar, on the bare legs that stuck out beneath the nightshirt. Rasputin is said to be both a miraculous healer by powers of mesmerism and a terrible debaucher. At the moment I could believe Michael also capable of either or both those things.
Love is not love which alters when it alteration findes …
The cat wobbled over to him, delicately sniffing, and curled her tail under Michael’s chin. His burning eyes never leaving mine, he began to stroke her, which oddly gave me hope.
He had not asked me to sit down at the table. I did so anyway, directly opposite him. “Are you growing your beard back,” I asked, “or have you just forgotten to shave for the past several days?”
The corners of his mouth twitched, that sensual mouth, but he did not reply. Artemisia was chopping something, in sharp counterpoint to a low, continuous rumbling from the cat. A strong odor hung about Michael, both acrid and ripe, a combination of alcohol and something I could not exactly define, but I suspected it was sex. I have not had enough experience along those lines to know for certain.
“Fremont—” his voice cracked and his tongue showed pink for a moment as he moistened his lips “—this is not a convenient time.”
“I do apologize. If you had a telephone I would have called first.”
Artemisia returned with a bowl of something, which she put on the table. The cat came running over. “Chicken,” she said.
Michael picked up both cat and bowl and set them on the floor, saying as he did so, “The cat should have water too. I didn’t know Phoebe had a cat, did you, Art?”
“No, I didn’t, but then I hardly pay attention to such things. Oh, bother! There’s no water in the pitcher. I shall have t
o go out to the pump, Misha.”
He was very involved with the cat, hunched over, supervising the eating process with repeated murmurings of “not too fast, puss,” and so did not reply. I suppose I might have offered to go, as “Art” was barefoot and hardly dressed for the outside, but I did not. Instead I offered her my shawl, which she accepted. This shawl is black, knitted rather than crocheted, I have no idea by whom—another find from the donation bin when I was homeless after the earthquake, living in Golden Gate Park. Not a very grand garment, yet when Artemisia covered herself with it and flung one end back over her shoulder, the shawl took on an allure that it had never had on me.
“I should not have done that,” I muttered after she went out the door, “now I’ll never be able to bear wearing it again.”
“Your generous, helpful nature gets you in trouble every time,” said Michael with a touch of sarcasm, straightening up. “Now what exactly did you want? Aside from something to feed the cat.”
“First, I want you to send your friend away. Or should I say your lover? At any rate, I need to speak to you alone, Watson.”
He shook his head. Hair fell in his eyes and he didn’t bother to flick it away. “No. I can’t do that. Not even for Sherlock Holmes.”
I sat up as straight and tall as I was capable of. “Surely you mean that you won’t do it. You can if you want to.”
His eyes were burning again. “You could have gone out aboard the Katya with me too—but you didn’t want to. I needed to speak to you. Alone. And you did not want to be alone with me.”
“Alone on dry land is not the same as alone in a boat in the middle of Monterey Bay, and you know it!”
“Do I?”
A volatile silence shimmered between us. Artemisia broke it by banging through the back door with a pitcher so full she kept slopping water and muttering, “Damn! Damn!”
“I won’t ask Art to leave,” Michael said quite clearly, and quite loudly enough for her to hear. “Anything you have to say, Fremont, you can say in front of her.”
“I have snakes in my house, so I can’t go home,” she said, plunking a small bowl of water down beside the larger bowl of chicken, which was fast disappearing. Kitty was ecstatic.
“I had gathered that you spent the night,” I said evenly. “But that is beside the point,” I continued bravely. “I’ve come because I’m concerned about Phoebe. I think there is something sinister going on.”
“Sinister? How delicious! Do tell!”
Michael merely raised those eyebrows.
“I know something you do not,” I said, and then I told them about the sketches of Jane Doe, told them everything, including Braxton Furnival’s frustrated attempt to identify the woman in person. “Michael,” I said, leaning forward, deciding the hell with Misha, “you remember Wish Stephenson.”
“The young San Francisco policeman whose honesty almost got him into trouble with a corrupt superior officer? Yes, I remember him.”
“Wish?” asked Artemisia. Her face was animated, her dark eyes sparkled with interest. She was most attractive, in a full-blown, mature way I could not hope to achieve, and my heart ached—but I must not think about that.
“His real name is Aloysius,” I said, “and he is the only person of his profession I currently feel I can trust. I wrote to Wish and asked him to check on the actress Sabrina Howard. I haven’t yet had a reply, which is rather discouraging, because if someone had reported her missing I expect he would have replied by return mail.”
“I told you before,” Michael growled, “to leave it alone! Let the Pacific Grove police handle everything. But could you keep your inquisitive nose out of it? No! Dammit, Fremont—”
“Hush,” Artemisia said, “don’t be such a grouch.” Then she said enthusiastically to me, “Of course we must help! How? What can we do?”
This was assistance from an unexpected quarter. I said, “I don’t like to involve you, Artemisia. Look what happened to Phoebe. I wanted him to help. He’s the one with all the experience.”
“Misha?” She jabbed him with her elbow. “Well?”
“I’m retired,” he said, glaring at each of us in turn. “I am a man of leisure. I will look after Phoebe’s cat until she returns. That is the extent to which I am prepared to help. And don’t badger me, either of you!”
I rolled my eyes. Artemisia stuck out her tongue at Michael and said, “Sometimes you are such an old fuddy-duddy!” Then she leaned eagerly across the table. “He’s no use. Tell me what to do, Fremont.”
I tried not to look at her breasts and to keep an open mind. A part of me wanted to tear a good deal of her hair out, but another part of me recognized that Artemisia was a person of exceptional talent and courage, and moreover she was offering what I so much needed: help. So I said, “You could come with me to Phoebe’s and help me look through her things for any clue as to where she may have gone. An address book, perhaps, listing family and close friends. Letters with return addresses. That kind of thing. We must send telegrams. Then we wait a day for the replies. If there are none defining her whereabouts, as I am almost certain will be the case, then you could go to whatever law enforcement agency oversees Carmel—”
“Monterey County Sheriff,” said Michael gruffly.
“Thank you,” I resumed, “and report Phoebe as a missing person. No mention of the sketches, or Jane Doe, or any of that. Just that Phoebe is missing. Such a report would come better from one of her Carmel neighbors, as I’m sure you’ll understand. Will you do it, Artemisia?”
“Of course I will!” She smiled radiantly. “Anything for dear old Phoebe. And for you, Fremont!”
• • •
Artemisia really did have snakes in her house. Getting them out became something of a production, a weird, impromptu ritual, Carmel-style. Khalid, the Burnoose Boy, beat upon a drum while Artemisia shook a gypsy tambourine; the Twangy Boys stood around looking dubious and every now and then saying together “Oooh!” like a Greek chorus; Arthur Heyer was full of suggestions that the principal snake-chasers, Oscar and Mimi, mostly ignored; and Michael, newly shaven, brought Phoebe’s cat. Others, Irma and the man I’d called Diogenes at the picnic, and some I’d never met, hung around across the street simply watching. As did I.
The general idea seemed to be that noise of sufficient intensity or of a certain pitch would drive the snakes—two, supposedly—out of the house, whereupon Oscar would chase them toward Mimi, who had a long, forked stick and a net. It looked like a butterfly net to me, but I had never heard of a snake net, so what did I know?
These snakes, alas, proved impervious to noise. While various people were discussing what to try next, Michael walked calmly up to the front door of the cottage, opened it, and let the cat loose. Because I was listening, and because I know so well the timbre of his voice, I heard him say, “Go get ’em, kitty!” But the others did not hear him, nor did they seem to know that he had let the cat go inside the house. A few minutes later the two snakes slithered out, with the cat scampering behind, which is how the cat got its name: Patrick. The name was bestowed by Michael, with the explanation that Saint Patrick had chased all the snakes out of Ireland.
I believe that story about Saint Patrick and the snakes to be a metaphor—what Patrick really drove out was the old religion of the Druids—but I did not say so. Along with everyone else I smiled and congratulated the cat, but what I was actually most happy about was that now Artemisia could return to her own home. Of course that did not necessarily preclude her spending more nights in Michael’s bed, but I preferred not to think about that.
I said good-bye to the motley group and went home myself, to the lighthouse. There was nothing more to be done today. When Artemisia got going she was like some force of nature: It was she who had found Phoebe’s address book and she who composed the telegrams to people whose names I selected from it; she who paid when we sent them from the telegraph office next to the Carmel post office. “Don’t be silly!” she’d said when I protested that
as it was my idea to send the telegrams, I should pay. “I know you haven’t any money. Misha told me.” My humiliation would have been complete, except for some unfathomable reason I didn’t feel humiliated.
Indeed, if we were not rivals for Michael’s affections, Artemisia and I might well have become friends while we worked together on Phoebe’s plight. She was lively, she was funny, and she was efficient. On parting she proposed to meet me at my office on Grand Avenue in Pacific Grove at two o’clock on Friday, the next day, to report on any replies to our telegrams, and to go over with me what she should say to the sheriff. I agreed without bothering to tell her that the office was now closed. After all, I’d paid through the end of the month and I still had a key. Anyway, I should have to tell them all sometime—Arthur especially, as I was still working on his manuscript—but not yet. It felt too much like admitting defeat.
Well, I thought as I clucked and cajoled Bessie into her fastest trot on our last leg home through the Point Pinos woods, after tomorrow they will all find out, because I will tell Artemisia and she will surely tell the others. I smiled. It felt like a good resolution for a task I’d dreaded. And besides, Artemisia had a car; she could take Tom, Dick, and Harry’s paintings back to Carmel with her.
The truth was that I was beginning to rather like Artemisia, breasts and all. Life is so perverse!
Quincy was waiting along the track as Bessie and I came bucketing up to the lighthouse. His expression was particularly lugubrious, so as I pulled on the reins, bringing us to a halt, I asked him what was the matter.
“It’s them cows, Fremont,” he said, shaking his head slowly back and forth.
“Our cows? I mean, Hettie’s? The Holsteins?”
“Yup.” He took Bessie by the halter and walked her to the barn. I followed along.