The Bohemian Murders

by Dianne Day

  A damp, slightly rotten smell hung about like a miasma. Perhaps Braxton had told the truth about the rooms being in need of cleaning. If only one of the doors had been left open, or even ajar …

  Footsteps! Holding skirt and petticoat up, clutched close to my body so that they wouldn’t rustle, I ran back to the bathroom, slipped inside and pulled the chain to flush the toilet. For a crazy, disjointed moment I lost myself in admiration of the engineering skill that had brought a real bathroom to this forest when in Carmel they had only outhouses. Then I glanced in the mirror and decided I had best splash some cold water on my flushed face. I hate to admit it but this type of activity seemed to agree with me—my color was high, my eyes sparkled, and a couple of escaped tendrils of hair seemed to be trying to curl. I had seldom looked better.

  While dousing my face, I heard the footsteps come to a stop outside the bathroom door. My heart thumped with uncomfortable force. I could feel the human presence on the other side of that door; how I wished for the clairvoyance to discern if it meant me harm or not! I had no weapon, nor any way to get one that I could see unless I broke the mirror and used one of its shards. Even as the thought occurred to me, I knew it would be an over-reaction.

  Though my fears were nearly running out of control, I managed to rein them in by telling myself that Braxton Furnival, no matter what else he may or may not have done, was for now only interested in one thing from me: sex. And until he had satisfied himself in that area, I should be safe from other threat. I took a deep breath and opened the bathroom door.

  It was not Braxton who stood outside waiting, but Ramon. With a glassy-eyed stare he muttered, “It sure took you long enough,” and pushed rudely past me into the bathroom. Braxton himself had waited at the bottom of the stairs, gazing upward with a lovelorn expression. “Tell me you will come again!” he said when I descended. And I had promised to think about it.

  On Monday I received a note from Braxton, apologizing in flowery terms for his forwardness. On Tuesday he sent the actual flowers, via a sullen Ramon as messenger, with a note attached that said he would like to call on me if I would send a note of permission back. I sent one of the flowers, a yellow hothouse carnation, instead. Ramon smirked, so I told him not to eat it or lose it along the way or Braxton would hear from me. And now I wondered what, if anything, today would bring.

  It had better bring the tender with our supply of whale oil for the light, according to schedule. A “tender,” I’d learned from Hettie, is a ship that tends to other ships by hauling supplies and communications back and forth; and as lighthouses (officially called light stations) are overseen by the Navy, tenders also tend to us.

  I got up and went downstairs to look at the clock in the parlor. I no longer have a watch to consult—the one I was given when I worked for the Red Cross popped its mainspring, and watches are too dear for my circumstances. It was eight-thirty. The tender should come before noon, and there were certain things I had to do to get ready.

  Speaking of things that needed tending: I had to count Quincy among that number, though he protested mightily. Quincy had a broken collarbone, not to mention a load of guilt that was almost as crippling. No matter how I tried, I could not convince him that the guilt was unnecessary. And of course I couldn’t tell him that I believed the accident that happened to him was intended for me. If anyone should have felt guilty it was I—and as a matter of fact, I did—but if I let guilt cripple me and keep me from action then I should feel worse still.

  Quincy drove Hettie’s rig to church on Sunday, and as I had guessed might happen, he couldn’t resist taking a lady friend for a ride in the country afterward. They’d gone up from Monterey toward Moss Landing. To make a long story (the version that came out of Quincy’s mouth) short, the shay lost the wheel on the driver’s side and Quincy went down, landing on his shoulder. His friend was unhurt.

  They had kept him at the hospital overnight for observation, and it was nearly nightfall by the time he had convinced someone to come and tell me what happened. As one might imagine, I was by then more than a little alarmed. Poor Quincy blamed only himself: The upkeep of the shay was his responsibility, he must have overlooked a weakness in that wheel; he never should have driven out so far without permission; if he hadn’t been “all puffed-up, showing off” for his lady friend he might have seen the rock that supposedly the shay had run over—etc., etc., etc. And now, just to make Quincy feel worse, he couldn’t do his regular work properly because of having his shoulder all bandaged up and the use of only one hand.

  I grinned ruefully. If the situation had been less fraugnt with uncertainty, and probable danger, I should quite have enjoyed pampering Quincy. I went outside and found him scattering feed for Hettie’s white leghorn chickens with his one good hand.

  “Good morning,” I said as I approached. “Another beautiful day.”

  The chickens squawked and flapped their wings but they needn’t have worried—I was not about to venture among them, much less threaten their food supply. If any of Mother Nature’s creatures are less endearing to me than a chicken, I cannot think which. Possums might perhaps score a tie.

  “Morning,” said Quincy, bobbing his head in the battered black hat. He still wouldn’t look me in the eye; hadn’t since he came home on Monday.

  “The tender is supposed to off-load some oil today,” I said. “Hettie has put it on the schedule.”

  Quincy glanced up, surprised because he had forgotten, then quickly away. He put down the feed bucket and with his good hand clasped the hurt shoulder, unconsciously, I was sure.

  I continued, “I want you to supervise. You’ll have help—I’ve hired a man to work with you until your shoulder is healed, which as you know will be at least six weeks, and even then you will not be able to do any heavy lifting right away.”

  “But Miss Fremont—”

  I ignored him, having expected all sorts of tiresome protests. “His name is Pete Carlson. I gather he is a sort of man-of-all-work about town. I’ve told him he is to report to you, and to do whatever you ask of him. I want you to really use him, have him do the work and don’t strain yourself. Is that clear, Quincy?”

  He regarded me with such a lugubrious expression that I longed to tickle him or make a funny face or something. But of course I simply waited for him to agree, and in a moment he began shaking his head slowly, rhythmically, from side to side in a way that made me think of dolefully swinging funeral bells.

  “Quincy, whatever is the matter?”

  “Wished you’da talked to me about it first, Miss—I mean, Fremont.”

  “If I’d done that you would only have insisted that you don’t need help, or told me how terrible you feel that we have to spend money to pay someone to help you out when the accident was your own fault, or some such nonsense. You know you would have, so it would have been a complete waste of time to tell you beforehand.”

  “But Pete Carlson …” More doleful shaking of the head.

  I have only just so much capacity to be amused by these things, and even that exceeds my small store of patience. I said curtly, “I took his name from a list that Hettie left for me. If he were not reliable, I’m sure she would not have put his name on the list. Nevertheless, Quincy, it is you and not I who will be supervising the man. If Pete Carlson’s work is unsatisfactory in any way, all you have to do is say so and I will fire him and hire someone else. All right?”

  Finally Quincy nodded, though he did not say anything and there was a dubious look in his eyes. The nod was enough for me.

  “Good,” I said. “Pete will be here at nine o’clock. Between the two of you, you can handle the oil delivery. If you need me, I shall be typing in the watch room.”

  I was about halfway through Artemisia’s The Merchant of Dreams, eager to finish with the manuscript for reasons of my own that had nothing to do with typewriting, but also eager to find out what would happen next to the naive but intelligent Heloise.

  I began to live for the night. I no
longer came fully alive until the sun went down. All day I waited for that delicious moment when I could lay my head upon my pillow, let out my breath in a long sigh and close my eyes. Dreams, I was finding, were like love—the more one gave them away, the more one had to give. That in my case the dreams were being paid for did not seem to matter; I still felt as if I were giving them away, and Jonah Morpheus received them with the most tender care and gratitude. He could not have been a more attentive listener. He hung on my every word.

  There was just one problem, a minor problem surely, but still irritating because it would not go away. I became slightly, only very slightly ill. I had caught a chill that would not go away. I felt feverish from time to time, but not all the time; and my appetite was not quite right. So of course I grew a little frail. I told myself that this slight illness would pass, but a week went by and then another, and my condition did not change except, perhaps, to worsen.

  My dreaming self was unconcerned; the dreams went on, more vivid, more exciting from night to night. There were nights—many nights—when I wanted the dreams to last forever; because it was with morning’s light that the problems came.

  My bones ached. My head felt as if it floated an inch above my neck without quite connecting, and if I moved in any direction too quickly, I became dizzy enough to fall. Getting out of bed was, therefore, a laborious task. Dressing myself was an effort that caused my pulse to race and beads of perspiration to break out upon my forehead. Walking to the streetcar was an unsteady affair that required the most minute attention to balance, and to the business of putting one foot in front of the other. And through all this, I carried each night’s dreams within me like a woman nine and a half months gone, so desperately did I long each morning to deliver myself of them to Dr. Morpheus.

  The angelic being, Thad, knew better now than to speak to me upon my arrival; rather he helped me up the stairs in the most solicitous fashion; the cat, Shadow, greeted me always by rushing beneath my skirts as soon as I crossed the threshold, and rubbing luxuriously against my ankles. In the room of veils, Jonah Morpheus would already be waiting; he would take my hand, dismissing Thad with a glance, lead me to the chaise lounge, and lay me tenderly—oh so tenderly—down. My heart would cease beating and my breath would stop until I heard him say the single word: “Begin.”

  The days passed in this fashion, and the nights; the weeks accumulated into months; I was paid over and over again. Money was no longer of primary importance to me—how could it be, when every morning I awoke feeling as if I might burst before giving Jonah my dream? But inevitably the morning came when something changed.

  I had had a particularly hard time getting up and getting dressed that morning. I hadn’t been able to put my hair up properly and strands of it kept tumbling down—I’d tuck them back but they would only fall down again, for I had scarcely enough strength to wield a hairpin. Exactly how I got to the Morpheus Foundation I could not say—presumably, as always, on the streetcar, yet upon my arrival and feeling the velvet softness of Shadow upon my legs, I realized that I could not remember a moment of the ride. And so when Thad took my arm to assist me up the stairs, I broke the rules. I said to him: “I think I may be too ill to continue.”

  “Shh!” he said, raising one finger in the manner that goes with that sound, and he frowned. Oh! The pain of that frown—it pierced me to the heart. Have you ever thought how you might feel if you’d made an angel cry? That is how I felt. And so when we reached the room of veils and Thad handed me over to Jonah Morpheus, all unwittingly I broke the rules again. I said to Morpheus: “Forgive me, I—”

  And he pronounced: “Silence!” His voice reverberated like a great gong, sending ripples through all the veils. The chandelier flashed once, a great white light, then dimmed.

  And I fainted.

  “Oh, botheration!” I said, jumping about a foot when the doorbell rang. The bellpull was attached to one of those apparatuses that they have for the servants in large houses, so that it rang in the watch room—right over my head. Leaving poor Heloise was the last thing I wanted to do at the moment, but duty called.

  “Coming!” I yelled as I wound my way down the circular stairs. I caught a toe in my hem and slipped; I would have fallen if I hadn’t grabbed the railing and hung on. As it was, I felt a twinge in an old ankle injury and cursed myself for carelessness. With Quincy already incapacitated, we certainly did not need another injured person around here!

  The bell rang again, but when I wrenched the front door open, there was no one there. “If you’re in such a hurry that you can’t wait for a person to get to the door …” I muttered—but then as I was closing the door, I looked down. The mailman had left a package on the step. A long, thin package. I leaned out, glanced to left and right, checked the stamps and the cancellation and the return address before taking the package in hand: It was from Gump’s, a fashionable San Francisco store that specializes in imports. The sort of store that Father—and one supposes his new wife, Augusta—might gravitate toward if they were in San Francisco ratner than Boston, but as it is, no one of my acquaintance would be likely to frequent Gump’s. No one except—

  “Michael!” I pounced upon the box, which defeated my best attempts to open it until I took it into the kitchen and got a knife and performed dissection along the seam.

  “Oh my,” I said, drawing forth the item from within. Smooth as silk, hard as rock and as sturdy, crowned and tipped in— “Oh my!” I said again. Michael had sent me a walking stick of black walnut crowned and tipped not in brass, but in gold. The head of the stick was carved like the head of a dragon, and a secret button was hidden in the dragon’s scales. I pressed and felt the click that released the blade, which I then drew forth with the most satisfactory sweep of arm and hand. The balance of the weapon was perfect, far superior to the similar secret weapon I’d lost many months before.

  As I feinted and parried around the kitchen, a small envelope caught my eye—it must have fallen on the floor in my eagerness to unwrap the gift. I did not need to read the note in order to know who had sent me this excellent and most welcome of presents. My heart sang as I sheathed the weapon and turned it into an innocent-looking walking stick once more. He was in San Francisco, he was thinking of me, he cared!

  The note was indeed from Michael. As I read it I could see in my mind his dear face:

  My dearest Fremont,

  If as I expect you would scorn a Valentine, you may consider this an early birthday gift. I have a feeling you may be in need of something along this line, not in April but now. Be assured that, in spite of all appearances, I have your best interests at heart.

  Your devoted friend,

  Michael Kossoff

  I read Michael’s words over three times and then I did a silly thing—-I put the paper with the words his hand had written to my cheek and closed my eyes … and that is how I was standing when Quincy came to tell me that the tender had been sighted coming up from the south.

  Late in the afternoon I took my walking stick for a walk across the scrubby dunes. The deer, which feed at this time of day as well as in early morning, were so unafraid they did not move until I was nearly upon them. When I reached the rocks at the water’s edge I turned to the right and followed the curve of the bay toward Lovers Point, about a mile distant as the crow flies—or gull, as the case may be. There was a particular rock formation that I thought might make a lofty seat, offering a different view from the one I saw so often out the watch-room window.

  I was walking both for pleasure and for the exercise. Typewriting is such a sedentary occupation, and due to my late reluctance to walk through the woods, I had been driving whenever I wanted to go anywhere. If not for the lighthouse stairs, I should have had muscles of mush—and that would never do. One of these days or nights I might literally have to run for my life.

  The rock formation I’d had in mind did indeed have a high, flat place that made a fine seat. It was worth the fight I’d had with the wind to get there. I
watched a few fishing boats headed in for Monterey; most, I knew, would have been out before dawn and back in the early afternoon. I wondered if these few were, like myself, unable to accomplish much that is worthwhile before mid-morning. If my livelihood required landing a catch prior to that time, I’d starve to death.

  A myriad of equally silly thoughts were chasing themselves around in my head, when what I wanted was peace. Peace and renewal. But the rhythmically breaking waves, which often have a calming effect on me, today seemed noisy and restless. I raised my eyes to the irregular scallop of hills far across the bay, and above them to long blue savannahs of clouds in the sky. Sweeping, trailing sheer clouds so high in the atmosphere that they seemed unmoved by the burgeoning winds. I caressed the walking stick and allowed myself to miss the Michael I once knew … to miss him, and to hope.

  I got into a complete funk, tears and all; between that and the wind blowing constantly in my ears, and the waves not being any too quiet, I failed to hear someone approach. Without warning I suddenly felt a presence behind me. My thumb rubbed the dragon’s scales and found the concealed button, and then I realized I had no space to maneuver, not even enough room to easily turn. One false step, a single ill-considered movement, and I could meet the same fate as Sabrina Howard.

  “I thought that was you sitting up here all by your lonesome, Fremont,” said the bluff baritone of Braxton Furnival.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Somewhere around nine o’clock that night I began to think I’d been wrong about Braxton Furnival. He had walked alongside me back to the lighthouse, then presented me with a beautiful little heart-shaped box of chocolates, all tied up in red ribbons and lace. He had invited me to be his guest for dinner at the Hotel Del Monte, with the most abject apology for asking at the last minute. He’d waited downstairs without complaint while I changed into my one good suit, the olive silk gabardine. Now over dinner he was being an excellent conversationalist, all the more charming for his roughness around the edges. I looked across the table into those silvery eyes in their attractive nest of laughter-wrinkles, and could not find any real malice in him to save myself.