Dead and Breakfast

by David Crossman

  The room – not Spartan, but uncluttered – would have been easily negotiated by a blind person. An array of personal items stood on a side table, arranged in no apparent order. This struck Caitlin as odd, since she had observed the young woman’s mealtime ritual of arranging her food on the plate, with Mr. Piper’s patient help, as if it were a clock: 2 o’clock, first vegetable; four o’clock, second vegetable; eight o’clock starch; ten o’clock, condiment. The entree, whether fish, fowl, pork or steak, would occupy the gravitational center of the exacting little galaxy.

  Caitlin picked up a bottle and looked at it casually. “How does she know what’s what?” she said aloud.

  Over the bureau was a mirror, in which Caitlin imagined the blind girl’s likeness: an unseen, unseeing companion. She was reminded of a conundrum posed to her years before by a teacher in the third form: ‘If a tree falls in the forest, and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?’

  “If a blind girl walks in front of a mirror,” she queried aloud, “and there’s no one there to see it, is there a reflection?”

  Two books lay, one atop the other, on the bedside table. The acid test. Caitlin picked up the first, which a somber cover announced as C.S. Lewis’sThe Great Divorce. She ran her hand across the jacket. It was pitted with Braille, as were the otherwise blank pages within.

  The second book – its cover an unbroken expanse of dull white, front and back – made no concession to the sighted, even as to its identity.

  Both books were new, their crisp pages unsoiled by the softening patina of blind fingers – however clean – hungrily tracing the telltale bumps and dimples.

  “They’ve never been opened,” she pronounced aloud. “What are you doing in here?”

  The voice, a harsh whisper from the doorway was, at first, unrecognizable. As if struck by lightning, Caitlin spun on her heal with such violence that the books flew from her hand, crashing to the floor ten feet away.

  “Jill! You scared me half to death!”

  “Only half?” Jill replied doubtfully. She crossed the room and picked up the books.

  “Braille,” said Caitlin, her hands clasped to her chest in the aftermath of the shock.

  “Odd the things you find in a blind person’s room,” Jill said sarcastically, placing the books on the bedside table.

  “They’re new,” Caitlin pointed out defensively. “And haven’t been read.”

  “So? My bookcase is swaybacked with books I haven’t got ‘round to reading.” Jill placed the books carefully on the bedside table. “Is this where they were?”

  Caitlin nodded.

  “I’ve got to tell you, Caitlin, this is pushing things a bit. I don’t like the idea of poking around in guests’ rooms.” The implication that she didn’t approve of such behavior on the part of her guests was pointedly clear. “What were you looking for?”

  “Proof that Miss Tichyara isn’t blind,” Caitlin replied sheepishly. She chronicled her suspicions as she carefully picked through the drawers.

  “Why would she be pretending to be blind?” asked Jill, following her as the search led to the bathroom.

  “To conceal her identity, I suppose.” Caitlin read randomly through a small cluster of jars and bottles beside the sink.

  “From whom?”

  “Everyone.”

  “Doesn’t work,” said Jill. “Mr. Piper’s clearly known her for ages, so did his wife, according to you. Certainly they accept her blindness. Or are you suggesting some kind of conspiracy?”

  Once again, Caitlin’s conviction of complicity on Miss Tichyara’s part was wavering, when she happened to glance into the waste bin the same instant she turned off the light. She turned it on again and, reaching into the ornate little brass container, withdrew a small plastic bottle of Boston lens solution. It must have been discarded in the brief interval since Genevieve had cleaned the room. She held it up for Jill to examine. “What do you make of this, then? How many blind people do you suppose wear contact lenses?”

  She dropped the bottle loudly into the waste bin and held up her fingers, which she tucked under one at a time as she ticked off her observations. “The light clicked on and off in here last night, when there was no one here but Ella Tichyara. Why? I know it was off when the fire alarm sounded. Why had it been turned on and off for just that half-second? So she could see where she was going; maybe grab something important from somewhere.” The first finger bowed to her logic. “Those Braille books are window dressing. They haven’t been read. They haven’t even been opened.” Another finger. “She uses contact lens solution and,” she concluded with a flourish, “I know she was looking at me at the breakfast table.”

  Jill, still skeptical, took Caitlin’s remaining finger and tucked it into her palm. “Why?”

  Caitlin retrieved her hand sharply and strode purposefully to the closet. She flung open the door and sifted briskly through Miss Tichyara’s wardrobe. A few empty hangers chimed in alarm. “You tell me. Why does she wear clothes that make her look heavier than she is?”

  “She’s modest,” Jill hazarded weakly.

  “You wouldn’t think so if you’d seen what she was wearing last night during our little fire drill.”

  “That’s different,” Jill defended. “I doubt she expected to be on public display. I sleep in the nude quite often, for heaven’s sake. That doesn’t make me an exhibitionist. Nor does it prove anything about Miss Tichyara.”

  Caitlin closed the closet door, took Jill firmly by the shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes. “Jill, Miss Tichyara is no more blind than you or I. I know it. You know it.”

  Jill relented. Caitlin could feel her muscles relax. “It’s possible.”

  “You know it. You must.”

  Jill lowered her eyes and, for the first time, Caitlin was aware how profoundly troubled she must be by all that had happened. The reputation she and Joe had worked so hard to build, to say nothing of the countless hours of physical labor they had invested in the chateau’s reclamation, all could be jeopardized by whispers of the last week’s events. She was exhausted, too. Confused. Perhaps frightened. And, with Joe still in England, alone.

  Caitlin hugged her, and she fell easily into the comforting arms.

  “But why?” she repeated softly over Caitlin’s shoulder.

  The telephone rang in the maid’s closet. They heard Genevieve run down the hall and answer it. Jill listened. “Someone’s speaking to her in English. She’s flustered.” She started down the hall, with Caitlin close behind. “I’ll take it, Genevieve,” she said, holding out her hand. The maid, having expended her store of conversational English within a few seconds, yielded the instrument with a look of profound relief. “Anglaise,” she said.

  “I’d better go,” Caitlin said hastily, as Jill put the phone to her ear. “They’ll be wondering where I got to.” She didn’t add that she was afraid Farthing would have them at one anothers’s throats by this time.

  Jill nodded. “Hello? May I help you? Yes, she is. Hold a moment. It’s for you, Cait,” she called, arresting Caitlin at the top of the stairs. She came back, squeezing past Genevieve who went on about her chores, and took the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Caitlin.” Lavida’s voice, once again bringing Michael sharply to mind, reminded her of the larger world beyond the looking glass she’d fallen into.

  She brought Lavida quickly up-to-date. Jill, meanwhile, subsided to the solitary chair, utterly exhausted and, thanks to Caitlin, evidently frustrated and fearful as well.

  When she had finished her story, Caitlin could almost hear Lavida, the consummate attorney, sorting the evidence through the analytical machinery of her brain.

  “Nope,” she said after a while, the colloquialism hinting at the summers she’d spent with the family in Maine, “I don’t see how she fits into anything sinister. You’re sure she’s not blind? Positive?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean, did anyone tell you she was totally
blind? Maybe she’s just legally blind, or has astigmatism, or macular degeneration that makes it impossible for her to operate normally.”

  Caitlin was suddenly less sure.

  “If she has myopia, or peripheral vision, she could be wearing special contact lenses that help her maximize what she can see.”

  Caitlin was glad that Jill couldn’t hear what she was hearing. Leave it to a damned lawyer to take something so simple and make it so complicated.

  “Nope,” she summarized. “It wouldn’t hold up in court.”

  “But she was looking right at me,” Caitlin protested desperately. But the jury was rising to adjourn.

  “She was wearing sunglasses?”

  “Yes,” Caitlin confessed sheepishly.

  “You couldn’t see her eyes?” Lavida persisted calmly.

  “I couldn’t see them, no. But . . . ”

  “But?”

  Caitlin knew how it was going to sound before she said it, but it was too late. “I couldfeel them on me. It was her attitude.”

  Lavida let the statement twist in the void.

  “You’re not helping.”

  “Said the pot to the kettle,” the attorney replied without missing a beat. “Listen, Cait, I think there may be some shady business on your end, and you’ve got enough to deal with without imagining things.”

  Caitlin, her thoughts once more flying in all directions at once, was awash in doubt and indecision; in sharp contrast to Lavida, so professional. So self-assured. If she were here, Caitlin imagined, she’d have distilled and presented the evidence, brought in a verdict, and hung the bugger by this time, while she had yet to frame a decent question. “What did you find out, anything?”

  “Two things. First, I got my hands on a copy of Philip Capshaw’s will. It’s pretty much the way Joanna outlined it to you. There is a curious codicil, though, stipulating that in the event of Mrs. Capshaw’s demise, her inheritance is encumbered.”

  “Encumbered?”

  “Still subject to the stipulations of his will.”

  “Which are?”

  “That should Joanna pre-decease Gayla, her share . . . Joanna’s . . . would go to charity.”

  Caitlin massaged her temples, which were throbbing. “Which tells us – what, exactly?”

  “Which tells us that he went out of his way to make sure Gayla couldn’t benefit from his wife’s death. Doesn’t that strike you as a point of interest?”

  “You think he was protecting Joanna?” Caitlin ventured.

  “That much seems obvious. He went a step further, though. Any benefits accruing to her as a result of her stock ownership or position in the company were to go directly into a trust fund. She had to agree to this in writing, which she seems to have done, though I’d be surprised – given your description of her – if she was exercising anything but blind obedience at the time.”

  “Oh, she’s not a stupid woman,” Caitlin defended.

  “No, I didn’t get the impression she was. It’s just that – I may as well tell you – I’ve had a look at her medical records, which fact I will stoutly deny in a court of law, and she’s been a pretty sick puppy.”

  “How so?” said Caitlin, not wanting to know.

  “Ten years ago she suffered a clinical depression. Apparently tried to commit suicide, more than once. Nearly succeeded the last time, by drowning.”

  Caitlin could feel her stomach tying itself in a knot. “Several years of therapy brought her through, but during therapy she was diagnosed with clinical depression, and there’s mention of paranoid schizophrenia and MPD. Nothing definite, but...”

  “MPB?”

  “’D’ as in doorknob,” said Lavida. “Multiple Personality Disorder.”

  “She thinks she’s someone else?”

  “At least one someone else. Possibly more.”

  “I’ve always thought that wholeThree Faces of Eve thing is ridiculous. I don’t believe it.”

  “Not the point,” Lavida said brusquely. “Juries have been known to buy it. You know what Michael always said . . . says . . . ” she glossed over thefaux pas, “if it counts in court, that’s all that counts. You’d be amazed.”

  “So it doesn’t matter if there is such a thing or not . . . ”

  “As long as the jury can be made to believe there is . . . or might be,” Lavida concluded the thought. “The courtroom is to the law what theTwilight Zone is to reality: connected to the outside world by a gossamer thread. Reality is a pretty fluid object in the hands of the skilled a litigator, I’ve seen the best.”

  They were digressing. “So, was she cured?”

  “The symptoms seem to have vanished, at least to her doctor’s satisfaction. This was several years before she met Philip Capshaw. She’s still in therapy, but so are most people with that kind of money.”

  Caitlin recalled Joanna’s knife incident with Gayla, and that she had been on her way to ‘an appointment.’

  “Did he know about it? Philip?”

  “I don’t know.”

  In a few fractions of a second, Caitlin mentally replayed her brief, tumultuous relationship with Joanna Capshaw. That she was mentally fragile was obvious, but she hadn’t engaged in protracted conversations with the wallpaper or anything of that kind. She made these thoughts known to Lavida.

  “I’m just telling you what I learned. I guess since you’re the one on the spot, you have to make of it what you will.”

  So far, Caitlin hadn’t a clue what to make of anything.

  Chapter Twenty-Three–Prescience

  “Anyway, she hasn’t committed a crime,” said Caitlin. “She has nothing to hide, does she?”

  “You tell me. Maybe she’s contemplating something.”

  Caitlin didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”

  “She could be laying the groundwork for an insanity defense.”

  “Defense for what?”

  “Future crimes,” Lavida said, all traces of humor gone from his voice.

  “Future crimes?” Caitlin and repeated dimly, as her brains scrambled to catch up to the implication. When it dawned on her she didn’t even have time to fight it off before it was on her lips. “You think she’s planning to murder someone?”

  Lavida’s voice crackled over the wire. “Not murder, necessarily. It could be any number of things.”

  “Name one,” Caitlin reported.

  “I . . . well, I can’t off the top of my head, but . . . ”

  “Then youare thinking murder.”

  Lavida hesitated. “It’s a possibility. However, that leaves the primary ‘m’ dangling.”

  “What’s dangling?”

  “The primary ‘m’, as in ‘motive’. Police look for motive, method, and opportunity, when investigating crimes. Without any one of these, you’re going to have a hard time convicting someone with a reasonably capable defense.”

  “Motive,” Caitlin said thoughtfully. “There is none.”

  “You’re thinking money,” Lavida said quietly, as if she’d been rehearsing the statement. “There are lots of motives for murder: love, hate, jealousy, to protect a loved one, self preservation . . . ”

  She’d saved that for last, allowing her to draw the conclusion. Paint by numbers. Fill in the blanks. “Then, I could be right that Amber is really Gayla, and that Joanna senses she’s a threat, so could be planning to somehow take things into her own hands.”

  “And working out her defense beforehand,” Lavida added. “That would take a pretty cool customer.”

  The description conflicted with her impression of Joanna Capshaw. No one could be that convincing. Caitlin shook her head. “I can’t buy it. I may be gullible, but I’m not a complete fool. Whatever’s haunting Joanna, whether or not it’s real, it’s real to her. I’m convinced of that. Besides,” she continued, having cleared an emotional hurdle. “There are all the other things.”

  “Circumstantial,” Lavida interrupted.

  “Taken separately, granted. But not together.
”

  “Theories are no good in the court room. Ever seepapier–mâché in the rain?”

  It was a vivid image, Caitlin’s little piñata of evidence being pissed on by a quartet of high-priced lawyers.

  “But this is not a court room,” she said. “It’s real life. It’s right here. Right now.” Her voice trailed off. Somewhere in the extreme distance of the electronic ether, other voices were carrying on another conversation. The words, even the language and the sex of its participants, were absorbed by the gentle uncaring hiss.

  “Cait?” said Lavida, after a while.

  Caitlin made an unspellable noise of a response. “Still there?”

  Caitlin repeated the noise, a little louder.

  “There’s something else. This is the weirdest thing of all . . . ” she waited, allowing the words to draw her back to the conversation at her own pace.

  “What?”

  “There’s a codicil to the codicil.” She waited.

  “It stipulates that if Joanna predeceases the girls, Amber gets everything – the houses, the stocks, real estate – everything. “

  “What about Gayla’s twenty-percent?” Caitlin asked automatically.

  “Gone. She’d get an allowance.”

  “How much?”

  “Well, let me put it this way, she’d never be among the homeless. But she couldn’t borrow against it.”

  Caitlin’s head was swimming. “What did he know about Gayla?”

  “I don’t know. Something. Because he also stipulated that, if Amber dies, the entire estate goes . . . ”

  “To charity,” Caitlin concluded the thought. “Right the first time.”

  “He was trying to protect Amber, too. Gayla couldn’t profit from her death,” Caitlin thought aloud.

  “She must have been one charming young lady to have engendered that kind of fear from her own father.” Lavida’s tone relaxed somewhat. “It’s a wonder they didn’t have her committed.”

  “She isn’t mad,” said Caitlin spontaneously. “She’s evil.”

  “Was evil,” Lavida corrected.

  Caitlin was nudged from the privacy of her thoughts. “Pardon?”