Away with the Fishes

by Stephanie Siciarz

  Mrs. Jaymes, forgetting her glee from remembering Dagmore, responded in kind. “Aren’t you reading what you’re writing down in that book of yours? You must be as single-minded as the Captain himself! A thunderstorm doesn’t come out of nowhere,” she declared.

  “Doesn’t it?” Though flattered, now, to be compared to the Captain Dagmore he had once met, Raoul was confused.

  “Well, of course not!” she replied. “It collects itself. Gathers itself up. The sky calls out to the wind, and the wind musters the clouds, who plump themselves up until they blot out the sun. Then the lightning turns up and the thunder behind it. That’s when the rain comes,” she announced triumphantly. “You can’t have a downpour until you line up a few clouds!”

  Hmm. Raoul recalled the story of mathematician-musician Stan Kalpi. Mr. Stan had lined up his variables, but never any clouds. He had played music on his homemade not-quite-guitar-but-more-than-mandolin, which, Raoul reasoned, was not so very different from Dagmore and his piano. He decided to give the story another chance.

  “Very well, Mrs. Jaymes. Carry on,” he said, checking his watch and turning to yet another page in his nearly full notebook. “Line up your clouds.”

  Mrs. Jaymes barely had time to get things in order, to polish the silver and wax the floors, make up the beds and put up pineapple preserves, when next Captain Dagmore set off to town humming. She had only just liberated herself of the Abbelscotts, and already the Shelbys and Fitches were bearing down on her. She feared the villa would never be quiet again—and for a long time it wouldn’t. Dagmore had grown so accustomed to the camaraderie of his English friends that he couldn’t abide an empty house anymore, not even when, alone, he played the piano to summon his father from the beyond. The company of a spirit, while soothing, was not the kind of company with whom he could argue or smoke or take tea. His father’s ghost never answered when Dagmore posed a question, never applauded when Dagmore played, not even after the most rigorous of rinforzandos. If filling the villa with living, breathing visitors meant Dagmore had to tolerate Mrs. Jaymes’s complaints and admonitions, he found it a small price to pay.

  As he had forewarned her when the letters first arrived, a large group indeed were the combined Shelbys and Fitches. The former were four sisters, aged twenty to twenty-five, accompanied by their twenty-six-year-old brother, who served as chaperone. The Fitches, in an unlikely pairing with the garrulous youths, were a somewhat crusty financier, his fussy wife, and his even fussier mother-in-law. Dagmore had cast a wide net with his invitations, and in hindsight the Fitches were not the most sparkling of his associates. Still, Phillip Fitch was an intelligent man and highly regarded in his field.

  Because the Shelbys and Fitches shared so few interests (the ones wanted to see every corner of the island, while the others preferred to observe it from Dagmore’s verandah), their presence posed a challenge for both the Captain and the cook. Dagmore was quite content to spend his days with the Shelby siblings, accompanying them on nature walks or to town on market day (where each bought a coconut-leaf hat with a coconut-leaf bird on a stick poking out of the top), but even a man as adept as he couldn’t be in two places at once. Dagmore regretted leaving the Fitches to fend for themselves at the villa, though the arrangement didn’t disturb the Fitches in the least. They took great comfort in Mrs. Jaymes, whom they turned to for hot meals, cold drinks, and more chats than she cared to count. Dagmore, upon returning in the evenings with the happy siblings, was forced to endure Mrs. Jaymes’s rants before she would set so much as a salt-shaker on the table where the guests were to dine.

  One day when the Fitches had Mrs. Jaymes’s dander up good and thick, she almost quit the villa for good. They had pestered her morning and afternoon with silly questions—“Is it always so hot?” and “How fast does a pineapple grow?”—and when Mrs. Jaymes caught sight of the returning Shelbys, the protruding birds on their hats jerking and flitting above their heads like flustered green gulls in miniature, it was all the silliness she could take.

  “Captain, I can’t stay here a minute longer!” she blurted out. “It’s too much. Too much!”

  “Calm down, Mrs. Jaymes, what’s happened? Is everyone alright?” For a minute he feared one or more of the Fitches had fallen into the sea.

  “Oh, they’re fine! I’m the one going mad listening to their nonsense! Do you know what they asked me today? ‘How many times a year does it rain?’ Like we have nothing better to do around here than sit and count the raindrops. And what about those Shelbys? Traipsing about the island every day like a bunch of children skipping school. Don’t they have lives of their own? Don’t they need to get home and do whatever it is they do?”

  “They’ll be leaving next week, Mrs. Jaymes, if it makes you feel any better. They’re just visiting, taking a little holiday. Surely you’ve done that yourself.”

  Mrs. Jaymes watched him, appalled. She most certainly had done no such thing! “Where in the world would I be going off to, to do nothing but waste my time and someone else’s?” she challenged him.

  “They aren’t wasting my time, Mrs. Jaymes. I want them here.”

  “Don’t I know it! That’s the problem.”

  “Mrs. Jaymes,” he reasoned with her, “for two months now you’ve been preaching about some sort of trouble. But what has happened really? Has a single thing gone wrong? Everyone’s having fun. What’s the matter with that?”

  She couldn’t think of anything to say, her broken plate an admittedly brittle argument, and simply repeated the warning she had delivered so many times before.

  “I’m telling you these people are trouble!”

  Dagmore comforted her and convinced her she was wrong (or so she let him think), and Mrs. Jaymes agreed to stay—but only because in her heart she knew her predictions would prove correct, and she wanted to be there to see it when they did.

  Still and all, apart from a cranky cook, the friends and colleagues that showed up on Dagmore’s doorstep did him a world of good. Dagmore once again felt at home on his island, which he thoroughly enjoyed showing off, and he felt at home in his house, where he entertained his intimate audiences with his music and his island lore, both of which met with their applause. The house that Captain Dagmore Bowles had built soon became quite renowned in his former circles, and before long not a single English acquaintance had failed to turn up, unannounced even (poor Mrs. Jaymes!), for word had spread that Dagmore would turn away none.

  The tales of his generosity and his wealth took on a life of their own. Those who had been fortunate enough to benefit from his hospitality told stories of a luxurious mansion perched high above its own sandy shore. They talked about the breathtaking views and the stars and moon that seemed to shine for the sake of the villa alone, and they talked about Oh. About Crater Lake, from which only Dagmore had ever emerged alive, and about the island’s rainforest full of wild monkeys. They recalled dishes with potatoes in shapes and colors they had never seen and drinks made from fruits they had never tasted.

  Whether for his magnanimity or for the exotic locale in which he had made his home, Dagmore, too, became the subject of speculation, the embodiment of mystique. Hailed as a sea captain, a scientist, a virtuoso, and a wealthy eccentric, some began to wonder if Dagmore and his house were real. Suddenly he found himself in great demand, as important figures from the corners of Europe came to verify his very existence. Within a few short years, his house boasted the most prestigious of houseguests, from princes and painters to writers and entrepreneurs. His sitting room rang with the arias of opera divas and his divans cushioned the bottoms of top-level leaders.

  As the caliber of Dagmore’s acquaintances grew, his interactions with them gradually shifted. The crowd that now came to call wasn’t interested in lizards or almond trees (and wouldn’t be caught dead in hats with protruding coconut-leaf birds). It was more likely to debate the merits of the latest novel or coup d’état than to discuss the differences between island limes and lemons. This didn’t
bother Dagmore. He could hold his own with the best of them. What mattered most was that he wasn’t alone, that he had peers with whom he could joke and discuss. If at the end of the evening they begged him to tickle an ivory or two, well, that just sweetened the fish pot.

  In short, the Captain was becoming a snob and Mrs. Jaymes didn’t like it one bit. He lived on the island without living on the island. All he ever wore were piano clothes; he had even hired a local tailor to sew him some new ones “with more fashionable lines” (the tailor’s first attempt had produced an unfortunate jacket of striped green and blue). He never walked to town to play dominoes anymore, rarely took a swim, and took his guests on only the most perfunctory of island tours. The guests themselves were even worse. They treated Mrs. Jaymes like a common servant, rarely uttering a word that wasn’t a request (or an order) and their “pleases” and “thank yous” were as perfunctory as their sight-seeing. Mrs. Jaymes was almost nostalgic for the inquiring Fitches.

  Over five years had passed since then and, despite the fact that tragedy had yet to disrupt the Captain’s plans or to waylay a single visit, Mrs. Jaymes never ignored the intuitive twitches that told her it was coming any day. The passage of time hadn’t dulled her instincts; it had sharpened them. Her initial fears, she realized, had been misplaced. The visitors were not to be the cause of the problem—not exactly. Although with their talk of taxation and Timbuktu they had inched the Captain’s thoughts from sunny picnics and lucky stars, the desertion was his alone, and jealous Oh would exact a mile of revenge. Mrs. Jaymes’s only worries now, where the houseguests were concerned, was what misfortune would befall them when it did.

  30

  After leaving the house of Mrs. Jaymes (where, along with Hammer, he was treated to one of her scrumptious Sunday lunches), Raoul returned to work. He accomplished little, for his mind raced with thoughts of Captain Dagmore and the misfortune the island was about to unleash on him and his visitors. Though Raoul was normally intolerant of tales about island mischief, the story of Dagmore Bowles exerted an almost hypnotic effect on him. Whether this was attributable to Mrs. Jaymes’s telling of it, or to the fact that the dead man’s name had turned up on his house, he couldn’t say. So enthralled was he with Dagmore, in fact, that the buzz about Madison Fuller and his upcoming murder trial flew right through Raoul’s head without stopping. Let the islanders deal with islander nonsense! Raoul was too old to be bothered. He had his job and his wife and his house still to paint, and his private Dagmore mystery to solve. He decided Ms. Lila had gotten it wrong: it was a baker that the graffiti had told him to find, not Rena, and it had done so as a prank and nothing more.

  He really should have known better. On Oh it’s not as easy as that! Such simple solutions were rare, especially for Raoul, who, without knowing, was lining up a few clouds of his own. His wife, for one. She was none too pleased with the state of her cottage. She could almost live with its untouched front, faded and yellow, yes, but no worse than it had looked for months. The other sides, though, were an incongruous combination of colors and letters. The first, on the left, was covered in a first coat of pink; the second, in back, boasted a rosy blob that covered the mysterious BAKER; and the third, on the right, said DAGMORE in pink on yellow. When Raoul got home from the office, Ms. Lila gave him a piece of her mind.

  Before he could cross the threshold and say “good evening, dear,” she had pushed him back outside for a tour of the house. She started with the wall that said DAGMORE and worked her way round, complaining as she went. Raoul’s day-off Tuesday was coming and she expected him to make some much-delayed headway.

  “The day after tomorrow? Do you hear?” she insisted.

  “I had planned on spending my day off with Mrs. Jaymes,” Raoul objected. “She still hasn’t told me anything to explain why Dagmore’s name was so important that someone should paint it on our wall.”

  “I couldn’t care one ripe fig about Dagmore, and neither should you!” she shouted. You don’t care about Rena Baker anymore. Her name showed up on the side of the house, too. You’re not bothered by a missing girl, but you’re bothered by a ghost? Since when do you, Raoul Orlean, even entertain the notion of a ghost? ‘Ghosts are no different than magic.’ I’ve heard you say it a thousand times!”

  Raoul tried to interject some sort of explanation, but Ms. Lila was on a roll. He wanted to tell her that this Rena had probably just run off, that there was no evidence whatsoever that a crime had been committed. His research on Dagmore, well, that wasn’t ghostly. That was philosophical curiosity, along the lines of Mr. Stan, and she, as a librarian and a woman of books, ought to understand as much! Had she stopped yelling at him for even a moment he would have told her so, but the best he could do right then was try to keep up with her as she stomped along the perimeter of the cottage. Past Dagmore, past the pink blob, carping all the way.

  As Ms. Lila rounded the corner of the only wall that had an even coat of paint, she looked at it and stopped dead in her tracks. Raoul, who had been following close behind, ran right into her and knocked her down. The two of them lay on the grass looking up at the once pink wall that now appeared splotchy and faded, dotted with small and angry white-ish ghosts.

  “What did you do here?” Raoul asked her.

  “Me?! Not a thing! I looked at this wall a few minutes ago and it was solid Playful Rose, just like you left it.”

  “What the devil?” Raoul said, trying to decipher the splotches. He stood up and distanced himself, and, oh, dear. Not again. The angry splotches that marred the pink wall clearly told him to FIND R. BAKER. Raoul sat back down on the grass and emitted a long, sorry sigh. He should have known better, indeed. He had turned his back on a mystery—Stan Kalpi would have been vexed—and now the mystery had come back with a vengeance. Raoul could sense the rage in the dull, eerie letters where the pink paint had been removed.

  “Are you sure you didn’t hear anything?” he asked his wife. “Is it possible someone sneaked inside for some paint thinner?”

  “Well of course it isn’t! I’m not daft! I should know if someone came into my own house, shouldn’t I? It’s not as huge as all that—though you’d never know it to judge by how slowly you’re getting it painted.”

  Suddenly, Raoul jumped up. Perhaps the person who had removed his pink paint was still hiding in the bush. Raoul crept stealthily (as stealthily as he still could, at his age) around the house again and into the woods that bordered his yard.

  “Well?” Ms. Lila asked when he turned up a few minutes later.

  Raoul shrugged. Nothing. No footprint, no clue, no sign that any human had passed within feet of the cottage. The wind picked up just then and he got a spooky chill. Ms. Lila felt it, too, and her eyes met his. Raoul might not entertain the notion of a ghost, but Ms. Lila was not so discerning.

  “One thing’s for sure,” she said, her arms folded to keep herself warm. “We won’t have a moment’s peace around here—or a properly painted home—until you find out what happened to that girl.” She looked up at the air around her, to determine if some specter or spirit were looming, but there was none that she could see. “I’m going inside.”

  Raoul stayed out on the grass, alone in the dusk, taking stock of the week he had had. A girl was missing, a man was in jail, and Raoul’s house had been marked up three times. Twice with the name of the missing girl, and once with that of a dead man. A dead man with a story that Mrs. Jaymes was taking a terribly long time to tell. Raoul stilled his mind and let the flies in his head flutter freely. There was one whose hum out-hummed the others,’ and that one told him that the mysteries of Rena Baker and Dagmore Bowles were intertwined. Raoul didn’t believe in ghosts, but he believed his eyes and his ears. The humming hunch in his head was not to be ignored, nor was the fact that both Rena’s name and Dagmore’s had appeared plain as day on his walls. Very well then, he told himself. He would take up his Rena Baker business again, but he would not forgo Captain Bowles. He would see Mrs. Jaymes the very next da
y. Then, on his day off, the day after, he would do some old-fashioned snooping for plain-as-noses-on-faces clues.

  Pleased with his plan of action, Raoul joined Ms. Lila inside, had his dinner, and went to bed. He dreamed about storm clouds and notebooks that filled themselves up with writhing, wriggling letters that started out pink and turned blood red. When he woke up, his head hurt. He skipped his breakfast and rushed to headquarters, where he made his now routine excuses and headed to Ladywood Road. He accepted Mrs. Jaymes’s tea today, for his empty stomach was grumpy and grumbling.

  Opening a fresh notebook that he had brought with him from work, he readied himself to listen to her tale.

  “Now, then, Mrs. Jaymes,” he pleaded. “Let’s get straight to the ‘downpour’ part, shall we? Please.”

  The trouble at Captain Dagmore’s house began with a handful of birds.

  The guests at the time were a violist from Spain, named Juan, who spoke little English; his translator, Daphne, a famed linguist with whom he had fallen madly in love; a pair of geologists, named Peters and Stewart, back from gathering rocks in Africa; and an Irish doctor versed in liver disease, whose nickname was Ruck. The afternoon they arrived, the weather was sunny, as it always was on Oh when it wasn’t raining, and Mrs. Jaymes’s pots were astir with swordfish, dumplings, callaloo, carrots, and coconut milk.

  While the dinner cooked, she served local beer on the verandah, where Dagmore and his company waited to admire the sun that was about to set. The conversation progressed somewhat bumpily, despite the illustrious minds and talents present, owing to Juan’s lack of vocabulary (Daphne was too tired from the trip to translate) and the doctor’s accent, which posed a bigger problem with each beer that he downed. The geologists were distracted by Dagmore’s mountain perch and his rocky path, and leaned dangerously to get a better look at both, speculating between themselves as to the composition and age of each.

  It didn’t worry Dagmore much that the guests weren’t immediately hitting it off. He had entertained enough to know that a houseful of strangers was like one of Mrs. Jaymes’s stews. It would take some time for each component to soften and relax and mix with the others; but once they did, what a rich and nuanced treat everyone was in for! In the meantime, they would enjoy the sunset, then sit down to eat, and if after that they were so inclined, Dagmore would play his piano an hour or two before sending them off to bed.