The Alpine Escape

by Mary Daheim

  Jackie bounced off the sofa, where she’d been sitting next to me. “I’ll get the phone book. We’ll call around until we find some old-timers. Meanwhile, we need a cast of characters. Suspects, you know? Who have we got?”

  Mike was tapping the notebook with his ballpoint pen. He shook his head. “We can’t be sure of the victim.”

  “For the sake of argument, let’s stick with Carrie,” Paul replied doggedly, as Jackie scurried away. “We don’t know that it wasn’t her. Anyway, I want to sort out these people. They’re my family, after all. Or at least somehow connected.”

  “We’ve got Cornelius,” I noted, but I sounded uncertain. “We can’t eliminate him just because we think he died before the victim did. It might not have happened that way.”

  Paul agreed. “Right. Then we’ve got his wife, Simone. There’s Eddie and Lena, the odd couple. Then comes my grandfather, Sanford, and my grandmother, Rose. The skeleton can’t be Rose or I wouldn’t be here.”

  I found Rose on the family tree. “Sanford didn’t marry Rose until 1909, but she was local, so she would have been around. Okay, we’ll count her in. And let’s not forget Carrie and Jimmy Malone. Who else?”

  Neither of the men answered. Jackie returned with the phone book. Apparently, she’d caught my last question.

  “Servants,” she said firmly. “You said so yourself, Paul. There had to be servants in this house. There are servants’ quarters, and I can’t imagine Simone lifting so much as a tea towel. Or Lena, either. She was too busy being a suffragette.”

  Jackie’s point was well taken, but we knew nothing of the Rowley-Melcher staff. The den was silent as Jackie ran a finger down the listings for lawyers in the Yellow Pages.

  “Oh, poopy! I can’t tell much from all these names. Why don’t they say stuff like ‘Blah-blah and Blah-blah, established 1902—over a billion clients exonerated’?”

  I glanced at my watch. “It’s not five yet. You could call one of them, and they’d probably know which firms go back to the early days.”

  With an aggrieved sigh Jackie lugged the phone book out of the den. Paul, Mike, and I studied the family names on our list.

  “As mysteries go,” mused Mike, “this isn’t much of a cast. Let’s say that Carrie is the victim. Let’s also say she was killed after Cornelius died. Carrie was listed as a survivor in her father’s funeral notice, right? That leaves her husband, Jimmy, her brother, Eddie, and his wife, Lena, Lena’s son, Sanford, and the stepmother, Simone. Oh, and Sanford’s bride-to-be, Rose Felder. Six suspects in all. Now why would anyone want to kill a young wife and mother? Did she get the money instead of Simone? We know she didn’t get the house. Did she quarrel with her brother over the inheritance? Did Jimmy Malone want out of his marriage?”

  I had turned back to the photo albums, flipping through the thick black pages with their sepia-toned pictures: Cornelius Rowley, with his bristling beard, high forehead, and sharp eyes; Simone Dupre Rowley’s exotic sophistication and undeniable beauty; Eddie Rowley’s weak chin, his engaging smile, the cane not a prop but a necessity; Lena Stillman Melcher Rowley’s chiseled features and the determined set of her shoulders; Carrie Rowley’s soft blonde curls and innocent air.

  “If Jimmy Malone was a bigamist, he definitely might want to get rid of a spare wife,” I said. For the first time I felt a real connection with the Rowleys and Melchers of over eighty years ago. They were coming to life in my mind, possessing personalities, physical qualities, human emotions. I felt a rush of excitement. Ambivalence fled. I wondered what time the ferry left in the morning for Victoria. I’d call for a schedule as soon as Jackie was off the phone.

  “Where is Jimmy Malone?” I asked out loud, searching through the album. At last, toward the back, I found a wedding photo. Weighed down by the ten-foot veil and train, a demure Carrie Rowley Malone stood behind her seated groom. Jimmy Malone looked smug, his broad features and burly build not quite in harmony with the satin-faced lapels on his frock coat and the high, white dress-shirt collar. I felt that he’d have been more at home in rumpled linen, leaning on the bar of a Belfast pub.

  On the adjacent page I found another couple I hadn’t noticed earlier. The young man was dark, with feral features, a forest creature frightened by the crack of a gun. Or maybe the soulful eyes were startled by the photographer’s flash. The woman’s head leaned stiltedly toward the man. She was no more than twenty, with a gentle face that was not quite spoiled by an overly long chin. I offered the album to Paul.

  “Your grandfather, Sanford? And Grandma Rose?”

  Paul studied the photo. “Yes, I’ve seen this picture someplace else. My folks must have had a copy. Or else I saw it here when I was a kid. Do I look like them?”

  I considered. “Your coloring, maybe. Like Rose. But no, I don’t see any resemblance to Sanford.”

  Lightly, Paul touched the photograph. “I vaguely remember Grandma Rose. I was only about four when she died. She stood and sat very straight. We had to mind our manners when we were around her. Luckily, it wasn’t often.” He smiled shyly and offered Mike a second beer. Mike volunteered to get it himself. I wondered if he preferred not to be left alone with me. Maybe Mike thought I was going to play the part of a wisecracking female journalist again. Paul went with Mike. It occurred to me that, like women going in pairs to the ladies’ room, men must seek beer together.

  Jackie wore a victorious air when she returned to the den. “The Smiths,” she trumpeted. “A bunch of them, going back to eighteen-something-or-other.”

  I congratulated her on tracking down the law firm. “Did you talk to one of them?”

  “No.” She flopped down next to me on the sofa. “They’re all dead. But their files are stored in somebody’s back room. Meriwether and Bell took over the firm about twenty years ago. Or maybe it was forty.”

  Paul had rejoined us, carrying a fresh can of beer and a bag of Cheetos. “Did you call Meriwether and Bell, Sweets?” he asked.

  Jackie had, but they’d left for the day. She’d try again in the morning. “I may ask them about my parking ticket. There were extenuating circumstances. I’m pregnant, after all. In fact, maybe that’s what made me sick. I could sue the city for a threatened miscarriage.” She brightened at the thought, then reached for the Cheetos.

  My warning glance to abstain was ignored. Paul didn’t encourage his wife’s litigious mood, but he did let her grab a fistful of Cheetos. Checking the time, Paul noted that it was after five o’clock. “I’ll call Aunt Sara now. Let’s hope she’s home.”

  Jackie scrambled to her feet and rushed after Paul. “Hey, Emma and I’ll listen in. Come on, Emma,” she urged. “I’ll go upstairs. You can use the phone in the basement by the washer and dryer.”

  Feeling like an intruder, I started to protest, but Jackie was already headed for the stairs. I surrendered, since three sets of ears were better than one. Probably this would be our only chance to quiz Aunt Sara. I took the spiral notebook with me, wondering where Mike had gone. He wasn’t in the kitchen. Paul was already there, dialing his aunt’s number in Seattle.

  By the time I reached the laundry room, Paul was still answering Sara Melcher Beales’s questions about renovating the house. Hearing the clicks as Jackie and I came on the line, Paul explained that his wife had joined him. He didn’t mention me, which was just as well. As silently as possible, I moved piles of dirty clothes, empty detergent boxes, and bleach bottles. The laundry room was clearly Jackie’s domain.

  Aunt Sara had a strong, slightly reedy voice. I pictured her as a well-preserved dowager with a trim figure and expertly coiffed hair. I was probably wrong, but the image suited her voice and social status.

  At last, Paul worked his way around to the pertinent questions. He surprised me with his cunning, by asking his aunt where Cornelius Rowley had come up with the idea of a small lift to haul firewood from the basement to the entry hall.

  “Paul, dear,” Sara Melcher Beales responded with a rich laugh, “I may be old, but
I’m not that old. Cornelius Rowley had been dead for over ten years when I was born. I never knew any of the Rowleys except my father’s stepfather, Edmund. Even he is hazy. Edmund—Eddie, he was called—came up with the wood-basket idea. He fancied himself an inventor. Otherwise, he took a backseat to Lena, as I’m sure you can guess if you know any of your family history.”

  “I know about Lena,” Paul said. “Do you remember her well?”

  “Daunting,” Sara replied promptly. “All of us children were terrified of her when we were small. Grandmama was so grim. Very autocratic, very religious, very self-righteous. My papa—your grandfather, Sanford—was intimidated, too, I think. But my mother, Rose, would stand up to her. I don’t believe Mama liked living with her in-laws. Looking back, I have the impression that my mother was never a happy woman.”

  Jackie’s voice came on the line for the first time. “Rose? Wasn’t she happy with Sanford?”

  Sara hesitated. I envisioned her fingering a long strand of perfect pearls. “That’s difficult for me to say. Children want their parents to be happy. But again, in retrospect, we all left Port Angeles as soon as we could. Except for Arthur. Our generation was quite daring. My grandparents and parents had stayed in the family home, and so had Aunt Carrie and Uncle Jimmy until they moved to Seattle. Of course, it was a big house, with plenty of room, but still, it probably wasn’t emotionally healthy. Did you know that I was the first to go away even though I was the only girl?”

  Jackie and Paul hadn’t known and chorused their surprise. I clamped my lips together to keep from making any giveaway noises.

  “Yes,” Sara went on, warming to the tale of her youth. “I suppose I was a bit of a rebel. I got into a lot of trouble—oh, nothing by today’s standards, but in a small town, in the Thirties, I was a scamp. Grandmama Lena thought I should go to a boarding school in Seattle, not merely to tame me but to get a good education. Naturally, she was a great believer in educating women as well as men. She offered to pay my way. I was thrilled, though my parents were not. Lena, as usual, prevailed. Off I went to St. Nicholas School, by St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral. It was very strict, very exclusive in those days. At first I hated it—the discipline, the uniforms, the lack of privacy. But after the first year I began to discover the city. And myself, as one does. I never went back to Port Angeles except for the occasional visit.” Her voice had taken on a brittle note. “I think I broke my mother’s heart.”

  To my dismay, Jackie was weeping into the phone. “Poor Rose! Unhappily married! Estranged from her only daughter! A prisoner in her own house! Under the thumb of old Hatchet Face!”

  “Really, Jacqueline,” Sara said in mild reproof, “it wasn’t as bad as all that. As I mentioned, Mama could get her back up when Lena became too overbearing. I was there for all the holidays. In any event, what’s done is done. I had my life to live. The real tragedy is that Mama never got the chance to live hers. Like all of us, she had only herself to blame.”

  Jackie’s sobs subsided. Paul spoke again, but in my mind I heard the voice of Lena, speaking through her granddaughter, Sara. Out of the comer of my eye, I glimpsed Mike Randall coming down the hall from the unfinished basement. I gave a little start of surprise, then signaled for him to be quiet. Pointing to the phone, I mouthed Sara’s name.

  “… a very gentle man,” Sara was saying in response to a question about Sanford Melcher that I’d only half heard. “Papa spent most of his time in the music parlor, writing. He played the piano, too, quite beautifully. It was his inspiration, he said. I never saw him angry, though he was often melancholy. He would watch my mother with such sad eyes. Haunted, it seems to me now. Perhaps he blamed himself for staying at home with his mother and stepfather. As well he should. I don’t recall that he ever held a real job. Occasionally he would sell a poem. In later years my parents weren’t at all well off. Mama gave bridge lessons. Papa wrote more poems.”

  Mike hovered at my elbow, trying to listen in. I held the phone out from my ear, sacrificing some of the conversation in order to let Mike hear, too.

  Paul had brought up the subject of the ghost. I strained to catch Sara’s response. She laughed, that rich, brittle sound. “I never saw it! Oh, I remember listening in bed at night during a storm and thinking I heard a woman howl outside. But no, she never walked for me. My older brothers, Henry and Arthur, swore they saw her, with long black hair and a flowing cape. They made it up, I’m sure, to frighten John and your father and me.”

  Jackie had now composed herself. “Who was she? I mean, did anybody ever say who they thought she was?”

  “Certainly,” Sara answered calmly. “It was Cornelius Rowley’s second wife, Simone. There was some silly story that she was murdered. But it wasn’t true. Imagine! A murder in the Rowley house! Knowing the family, how could anyone believe such nonsense?”

  Chapter Eight

  PAUL MELCHER HADN’T contradicted his aunt. No doubt she would have scoffed at him and insisted that he was being fanciful. What really surprised me was Jackie’s reticence. I’d expected her to blurt out the truth about the skeleton. But she didn’t. Even Jackie occasionally succumbed to an attack of discretion. Or else she really wanted another sterling silver place setting.

  After I called to get the ferry schedule, we reassembled in the den. I began to realize that it was here that the Melchers lived, the other rooms being too large and too sparsely furnished. Someday, perhaps, the house would come alive with comfortable chairs and cheerful drapes and cherished possessions. Most of all, it would wrap its walls around a family again.

  Briefly, I chided myself for romanticizing the Rowley-Melcher house. As far as I could tell, it hadn’t always been a happy home. Now, after hearing Aunt Sara describe her youth, I could picture Eddie Rowley, possibly relegated to the garage, seeking solace with his inventions; Sanford Melcher, playing sad songs on the piano and writing what I assumed was gloomy poetry; and his wife, Rose, restlessly going from room to room, readying herself for the next confrontation with her indomitable mother-in-law, Lena.

  “It could be Simone,” Paul allowed, tapping his beer can. “She borrowed her stepdaughter’s earrings, maybe. Or the other way around—Carrie had borrowed them from Simone for the photo session.”

  Jackie’s eyes grew round. “What if they were both murdered. Carrie and Simone? We could keep digging and find another skeleton!” She was flushed with excitement.

  Paul was shaking his head. “I don’t know … that’s pretty farfetched. But so is finding just one of them.”

  I tended to agree with Paul. “It is odd that Simone seems to have fallen off the face of the earth right after her husband died,” I remarked. “We have birth and death dates for everyone in the family except Carrie and Simone.”

  “She must have gone away,” Paul said. “Back to Paris, maybe. She probably had family there. I wonder why she came to this country in the first place. And how did she get to Port Angeles? It seems like an odd choice for a young woman from Paris.” His gaze flickered from Jackie to me to Mike.

  I realized that Mike had been very subdued since returning from the basement. Jackie and Paul seemed to notice the same thing at the same time.

  “Hey,” Paul said, grinning, “what’s up? You’ve turned into a clam, Mike.”

  Mike, who was using a packing crate as a seat, rubbed his scalp in an agitated manner. “It’s bizarre. Especially the speculation about two women being killed. And yet …” His hand now chafed his chin. “I went back down into that unfinished section. I felt inept, not noticing the damaged skull. I wanted to make sure I hadn’t missed anything else. I had. So had the doctor. There were more bones.”

  Next to me, Jackie jumped. Paul fumbled with his beer can. I stopped thinking about my gnawing hunger panes.

  “From the skeleton?” Paul asked in a strange, dry voice.

  Mike shook his head. “No. It’s remarkably well intact. And this may not mean anything. The bones are tiny and there are only three of them. It could be f
rom a cat or a dog. There might be more, but I didn’t take the time to dig farther. To really go over all that dirt would be a major task.”

  “Where are the bones?” Jackie asked breathlessly.

  Mike had found an old fruit jar. He’d left them on a shelf near the door to the unfinished area. “Maybe we could have them analyzed up at the college. Shall I go get them?”

  We agreed that he should. Jackie was still agog. “This is so thrilling! To think I was about to give up! But it sounded like so long ago. And then Aunt Sara talked about these people as if it were yesterday!”

  “She only knew some of them,” Paul reminded his wife. “Not Carrie, not Simone, not Cornelius. Not Jimmy Malone, either. And we forgot to ask her about the servants.”

  Jackie dismissed the servants with a sniff. “She wouldn’t have known them. Not the ones who were with Cornelius and Simone Rowley. I can’t imagine Lena keeping on the same people Simone had hired. Hatchet Face is the kind who’d want to choose her own staff.”

  Jackie’s assessment rang true. The portrait of Lena was coming into sharper focus. Yes, she had probably been a rigid, stubborn, obsessed creature, self-righteous and devoid of sentiment. But her motives were admirable, and she had matched word to deed by paying for Sara Melcher’s tuition to boarding school. Lena also seemed to have instilled a sense of independence and self-confidence in her granddaughter. Some good qualities were emerging to offset the chiseled bronze image in the park.

  “Frivolous,” I said, apropos of nothing, certainly not of Lena.

  “What?” Jackie gave me a puzzled look.

  I offered her a wry smile. “I was thinking of what Lena would least admire in another woman. The word frivolous came to mind. It might apply to Carrie. Or Simone.” My smile turned self-deprecating for Paul. “Your grandmother Rose doesn’t sound lighthearted enough to qualify. Was she living here when she died?” I asked as Mike reentered the den carrying a dusty fruit jar.