Who Killed Dorian Gray?

by Carole Elizabeth Buggé

  Liza must have been thinking the same thing Claire was, because she said, “Gary, why do you always look like you stepped out of the pages of GQ?”

  Gary put down the paring knife he was using to cut into a grapefruit and went to the sink to rinse his hands. “Just because I’m a painter doesn’t mean I have to advertise the fact by looking like a slob.”

  “But your hands,” said Liza, taking off her sun hat and wiping her forehead. “How do you manage to keep them so–clean?”

  Gary shrugged. “I use gloves when I paint.”

  “It doesn’t affect your technique?” Claire said.

  Gary looked at her, his eyes steady behind his wire-rim glasses “I have them custom-made; they’re a very thin cotton blend.”

  “By the way,” said Liza, rummaging through the cupboard under the sink, “has anyone seen the kitchen gloves? I can’t find them.”

  “The big yellow ones?” said Claire.

  “Yeah. They disappeared a couple of days ago.”

  “No,” Claire replied. “I didn’t really use them.”

  Liza stood up and wiped a thin line of sweat from her upper lip. “I just can’t understand where they might have gone.”

  “Maybe they were borrowed by one of the painters,” Claire suggested.

  “Or by the murderer,” Meredith said, sauntering into the kitchen with a miserable-looking Ralph tucked under her arm. “Just the thing if you’re going to strangle someone without leaving fingerprints.”

  Gary looked at Meredith. An unreadable expression crossed his usually impassive face; it might have been alarm, or perhaps distaste. He picked up his grapefruit and left the kitchen. If Meredith noticed his reaction, she paid no attention to it. She disappeared into the pantry and emerged with a box of Mint Milanos.

  “Brain food,” she said, and ducked out of the kitchen just as Tahir Hasonovic entered it from the back door. In contrast to Gary, Tahir always looked a little disheveled, as though he had things on his mind other than neatness. His black hair sprang out from his head in thick ringlets, and his beard was so dark that even by this hour he looked unshaven. His clothes were dingy in the way that clothes get when they have been washed too often, and he wore scuffed running shoes that had once been white a very long time ago.

  “Hello,” he said, smiling shyly. Liza walked up to him and put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Hi, Tahir,” she said. “How are you holding up?” She was a perfect choice for this job, Claire thought. With her easy manner and warm Southern accent, she was someone you wanted to confide in. After Maya’s death she remained steady as a rock, and gave the impression that she was there for the residents who needed her.

  “I’m doing okay,” Tahir answered, though Claire thought he looked tired—haunted, she would have said, with circles under his big dark eyes. She supposed that anyone who had lived through what he had might look that way. She could only imagine what those dark eyes had seen.

  “Well, we’ve just got to do our best to stay in there,” said Liza. “In fact” she continued, looking at Claire, “I was thinking we might resume classes and meetings with you today. I think it might be good for all of us to try to move on.”

  “Okay,” said Claire, “that’s a good idea.”

  “What do you think, Tahir?”

  Tahir looked down at his hands. “I think that would be good,” he said softly. “It’s not good to dwell too much on these things . . . there is so much sadness in life, but we must try to rise above it.”

  “Rise above what?”

  Claire turned to see Jack Mulligan standing at the kitchen door. He wore a broad-brimmed green leather hat and a khaki hunting jacket. Safari Nazi, thought Claire, but she said nothing.

  “We were just talking about resuming classes,” Liza replied brusquely, and with one stroke neatly halved a honeydew melon.

  “Capital idea.” Jack removed his hat and put it on the counter. “I was beginning to get bored staring at my computer.”

  Liza didn’t reply, but walked into the back pantry where the refrigerators were kept. Her dislike of Jack was so strong that Claire could almost see her twitching with the discomfort of being near him. Even Tahir retreated to the other side of the kitchen, busying himself over one of the two stoves. Claire herself felt a certain nervousness in Jack’s presence, though she didn’t always trust her intuition about people anymore—not after Robert. Robert, whose hands were so sure and firm on a piano keyboard, on her body, around her neck. Being done, there is no pause.

  “What’s going on in here?” Meredith stood in the doorway, a book under her arm, her kinky orange hair shooting out in all directions, as though on an escape attempt from her head.

  “I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced,” Jack said gallantly, offering his hand. “I’m Jack Mulligan.” Meredith looked at him through narrowed eyes and took his hand.

  “Meredith Lawrence.”

  “Ah, yes; you’re the child genius.”

  Meredith’s eyes widened and she blushed. “I’m thirteen years old, hardly a child,” she answered briskly, but Claire could tell she was pleased.

  “I believe Mozart had already composed several symphonies by the time he was your age,” Jack remarked.

  “I don’t write music, I solve crimes,” Meredith replied crisply.

  “Do you? Well, that’s just capital. The world needs more people like you.”

  “I haven’t ruled you out as a suspect,” Meredith said. “And the avuncular act won’t work on me; I’m from Connecticut.”

  Jack laughed, a big full-bellied sound, the laugh of a man who was pleased with himself, who slept well at night. “Well, well, I’m glad to hear it. I thought Connecticut only produced golf matrons and bankers.”

  Meredith screwed her face up. “Very funny.”

  “Well, back to work,” Jack said cheerfully, putting his hat back on. “I have miles to go before I sleep.”

  “You do look a little like Robert Frost,” said Meredith.

  Jack looked at Claire and smiled. “She is smart,” he said, then tipped his hat and left the kitchen.

  Tahir turned around from the stove and Claire could see that he was trembling.

  “Are you all right?” she said.

  “Yes,” he replied in a low voice. “I just—I just cannot stand that man. Every time I am around him, I feel like killing him.”

  “Why?” said Meredith.

  Liza came back into the kitchen carrying a yellow ceramic bowl. “Because Jack Mulligan is a Nazi,” she said, placing the bowl on the counter.

  “What?” said Meredith. “How can—what do you mean?”

  Liza poured the broth into a saucepan and put it on the other stove. “Jack Mulligan believes that the Holocaust never happened.”

  Meredith looked at Claire. “Is that true?”

  “That’s what everybody says. I have yet to discuss it with him.”

  “A man like Jack Mulligan has no idea what it is to suffer,” Tahir said, his voice shaking, “no idea at all. I would like him to spend a day just once as I have spent it. In the Bosnian camps he would not last a month. He—he . . . I’m sorry,” he said, his voice thick. “I cannot talk about it; it is too soon.”

  He took his plate and left the kitchen the way he had come, through the back door leading to the garden and the back studios. Meredith turned to Liza. “He was in the Bosnian camps?”

  Liza nodded. “He survived, but several members of his family died.”

  Meredith shook her head. “Wow.”

  “All right, how about some nice chicken soup, just like Mama used to make?” Liza held up a steaming pot of broth.

  “Smells great,” said Claire.

  The memorial service that evening was simple but moving. Liza collected every candleholder she could find in the house and made a little altar over the fireplace. Claire and Camille spent the afternoon picking wildflowers, which grew abundantly around the house. They filled Ravenscroft’s many vases with b
ouquets of Queen Anne’s lace, honeysuckle, Indian paintbrush, black-eyed Susan, and wild daisies. Maya’s possessions had been confiscated by the police, but Sherry had taken photos of everyone at Ravenscroft. She and Liza made a display of pictures: Maya at breakfast; Maya and Sherry returning from a walk in the woods; Maya and Terry on the front porch, smiling in the sunshine that spilled over the eaves onto their faces.

  Even though she had barely known Maya, the pictures filled Claire with a heavy sadness; to think that someone so alive as the woman in these photos now lay dead in a cold metal drawer somewhere was deeply disturbing. Photographs in general made Claire uneasy; to her they always represented times gone by, frozen moments lost forever. She thought again of the jokes about Maya as Dorian Gray, with her “picture in the attic” . . . in the end, her youthfulness had not saved her.

  Now, as she sat among the little huddle of people in the living room, she felt comforted by the presence of others. She thought not for the first time that funerals are not so much to honor the dead as they are to comfort the living. There is a reassurance in a coming together of people, even such an odd group as this one. Everyone had been invited to say a few words, and Tahir Hasonovic was speaking now.

  “She was a gentle soul,” he said softly, his sad eyes drooping, “and she had a sweetness which was more than just her physical beauty.”

  Terry Nordstrom sat by himself sobbing quietly. Claire felt sorry for him. He might be angry, and he might be annoying, but in sorrow he was just a sad little man. There was something about the basic emotions that equalizes everyone: a man suffering is in some essential way like every other man who has ever suffered.

  Claire looked around the room. Liza and Sherry sat together holding hands. Sherry’s eyes were red and swollen and her upper lip trembled as Tahir spoke.

  “She had a way of making us all feel . . . well, happy. That’s the only way I can express it.”

  Two Joe sat on a straight-backed chair, rigid and silent as a stone, his big hands clasped on his lap. He wore his medicine wheel on its leather string, and several strands of brightly colored beads hung from his neck. Next to him was Camille, chic in a black silk kimono and black tights. Gary Robinson and Billy Trimble sat across from them. Gary stared down at the floor, a petulant look on his face, but Billy’s eyes wandered as ever around the room, settling on nothing in particular, searching for God knew what. Jack Mulligan sat slightly apart from the rest of them, a kind of half smirk on his face.

  Evelyn and Roger Gardner shared the couch with Marcel. On the handyman’s big friendly face the emotion of sadness sat so awkwardly that Claire had an impulse to pet him as one might pet a big dog. Evelyn had changed her outfit: she wore an elegant black dress with black stockings, the only splash of color a heavy green jade necklace. Roger looked self-conscious and miserable, his perfectly smooth pink hands clasped around his knees. It was hard for Claire not to stare at him; she imagined him poring over the pictures of naked children he kept stuffed in his glove compartment.

  Next to Claire, Meredith squirmed and fidgeted, her body racked with restless kinetic energy.

  “Is it almost finished?” she whispered, and Claire shook her head.

  “Be patient, Meredith; it won’t be long.”

  Two Joe rose and gave a brief Native American blessing. To Claire’s surprise, when he finished, Camille crossed herself. Claire felt Meredith’s elbow digging into her ribs.

  “Did you see that? Camille crossed herself.”

  “Lower your voice,” Claire whispered.

  “I thought she was a lapsed Catholic.”

  Claire shrugged. “Maybe old habits die hard.”

  Liza got up to say a few words, then they all adjourned for some wine and hors d’oeuvres left over from the party two nights before. As Claire stood sipping Merlot, she couldn’t believe that she had only been at Ravenscroft for three days. Already it seemed like a lifetime since she chugged into the driveway in a pounding rainstorm.

  That night Claire lay in bed, the air heavy with Meredith’s thick breathing. She stared into the darkness and thought about parallel universes. Maybe Stephen Hawking was right, and this was not the only possible history. Maybe by some act of will she could transport herself to another history in which no one died a violent death at someone else’s hands, where no one in this house of sleepers was a murderer.

  The next day was bright and sunny, and the Ravenscroft residents looked a little dazed, as if maybe they had just dreamed everything after all. But the yellow police tape labeled “Crime Scene” still cordoned off the downstairs bathroom, and all day policemen came and went, their patrol cars stirring up waves of dust on the dirt road outside the house.

  Meredith had been trying all morning to get Detective Hansom on the phone, to ask about the phone message she had discovered.

  “He may not tell you anything, Meredith,” Claire said, but the girl wasn’t deterred. She kept calling the station house until finally Billy Trimble came down to use the phone and she was forced to relinquish it.

  Now she was seated at the piano in the dining room, playing the C-major prelude from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Claire recognized it because she had played it as a child. Claire noted with satisfaction that Meredith didn’t play particularly well. She did play with conviction, however, and when she got a passage right, she phrased it in such a way that you felt compelled to listen.

  Claire stood at the kitchen counter making egg salad sandwiches. Meredith loved egg salad sandwiches. She once confessed to Claire that her mother had made them for her when she was ill, and that they were for her a kind of “madeleine experience.” Claire was afraid to ask if the girl had actually read Proust—she doubted it; even Meredith had her limits—but she was flattered that Meredith had shared that memory with her, and so she made egg salad whenever possible.

  Ralph sauntered into the kitchen, perched himself neatly at Claire’s feet, and complained about the general state of things.

  “What?” said Claire, mixing mayonnaise in with the eggs. You could never put too much mayonnaise in anything as far as Meredith was concerned. “You already had breakfast. You want some egg salad?”

  Ralph responded by rolling over onto his back and licking his stomach.

  “Oh, that’s charming,” said Claire, slicing a loaf of whole wheat bread. She had never seen so many natural-food stores and restaurants as in Woodstock; she had bought this bread at the Whole Grain Baker, a little store tucked away in a corner of Tinker Street.

  Marcel appeared at the kitchen door. He wore a green-and-blue-checked flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots. Claire wondered if he owned anything but flannel shirts; he had even worn one to the memorial service.

  “Hi, Marcel.”

  “Hi, there,” he said, bending over to scratch Ralph’s stomach. The cat let his head fall back and wriggled his body in response.

  “He likes you,” said Claire, “and he doesn’t like everyone.”

  “Really?” said Marcel. “I guess cats are like that. My dog Ellie likes everyone. Long as they pay attention to her, she likes ’em.”

  “How is she, by the way?”

  “Oh, she’s fine. I think she just ate somethin’ that disagreed with her. She’s okay now, though.” He stood up and went to the sink to wash his hands. “I gotta be careful; cat hairs make my eyes water if I don’t wash my hands.”

  “Actually, it’s the dander, not the hair, that people are allergic to.” Meredith stood in the doorway on one leg, the other one folded behind her, like an egret. “Leg’s asleep,” she said in response to Claire’s look. “Always happens when I play the piano.”

  “Maybe you’re sittin’ funny,” said Marcel. “Is that egg salad?”

  “Yes,” said Claire, spooning it onto the bread. “Would you like some?”

  “I love egg salad,” he answered wistfully. “But thanks . . . I just came to talk to Liza. Is she around?”

  “She drove to town to buy coffee.” Meredith was now pou
nding her thigh with her fist. “Ow, ow, ow.”

  “Why don’t you have a sandwich and wait for her?” Claire said. “There’s plenty.”

  Marcel looked at the egg salad longingly. “Well . . . all right, if you’re sure there’s enough.”

  “Eggs are cheap,” said Meredith, “like talk.”

  “What?” said Marcel.

  “Talk. You know—talk is cheap.”

  “Oh, yeah, right. I’ve heard that.”

  They took their sandwiches out to the porch, sitting at the long picnic table, its wood scratched and scarred from years of use. Claire had made Earl Grey iced tea—Meredith’s favorite—and she poured them all tall frosty glasses with plenty of ice. Meredith loaded a plate full of dill pickles to go with the sandwiches. Meredith loved dill pickles.

  “This is great,” said Marcel, his mouth full of egg salad. “How d’you make it?”

  “It’s real simple,” said Claire. “Just some mayonnaise, a little garlic salt, and eggs. It’s my mother’s recipe.”

  “Mmm,” said Marcel. “Give her my compliments.”

  “She’s dead,” said Meredith abruptly.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he mumbled, looking embarrassed.

  “Claire and I are both orphans,” Meredith said, taking a large bite of pickle.

  “Really?”

  “Meredith, your father is still alive,” said Claire.

  Meredith shrugged. “So? He’s been possessed by the Wicked Witch; I might as well be an orphan.”

  “He’s possessed by a witch?” said Marcel.

  “Meredith calls her stepmother the Wicked—”

  “The Wicked Witch of Greenwich,” Meredith interrupted.

  “That’s cute,” said Marcel. “That’s funny.”

  “You wouldn’t feel that way if you had to live with her,” said Meredith. “Oh, guess what?” she added, the words partially obscured by a mouthful of egg salad.

  “Meredith, swallow before you talk,” said Claire.

  “But how come Marcel—” Meredith began, but Claire glared at her. “Oh, all right,” she said, swallowing with elaborate exaggeration. “What I was going to say was that Camille told me that Maya took a bath every night before bed.”