The Alpine Escape

by Mary Daheim

  I hadn’t thought about Ferris Melcher’s many moves as willful. Will-o’-the-wisp was more like it. But perhaps Vida was right. Paul Melcher wasn’t exactly a ball of fire, but somewhere under that anal-retentive exterior I sensed that he had a spine. He’d have to, in order to survive his rollercoaster ride through life with Jackie.

  “The point is,” I impressed on Vida, “Grandpa Sanford rebelled, if briefly. He fell for Minnie Burke, the governess to the Malone children. I think he wanted to marry her. He gave her a locket with his hair in it, and she led him on.”

  “Maybe she loved him,” Vida commented, stirring a great deal of milk and sugar into her tea.

  “I wondered about that, even tonight, after I talked to Claudia Cameron. I came up with an alternate theory, that Minnie was pregnant with Sanford’s child and Lena was so set against her son marrying an Irish immigrant that she killed her. But it didn’t fit with the rest of what I knew, especially Carrie’s impersonation of Minnie.”

  Vida gave a short nod, now obviously impatient to hear me out. “So Sanford caved in to his mother and married this Rose?”

  “Yes, but that was later, the year following the tragedy. We—Jackie, Paul, Mike, and I—had some notion that Carrie was afraid of becoming an old maid, which is why she latched on to Jimmy Malone. His social standing wasn’t any better than Minnie’s, and certainly Cornelius Rowley must not have been keen on the match. Cornelius could have quashed it and sent Jimmy packing. That’s what the old boy did with Armand Nievalle, his wife’s lover. But Jimmy stayed. Then I began to realize that Carrie’s will must have been powerful, too, and that maybe she was madly in love with Jimmy. As for Jimmy, he had the chance of a lifetime—to marry well and to live a comfortable life. The only obstacle was Minnie Burke. Jimmy had married her already.”

  “Well, now!” Vida set her mug down so hard that tea spilled on my plastic tablecloth. “Jimmy was a bigamist?” Hastily, she mopped up the tea with a paper napkin.

  “That’s right. But Jimmy couldn’t pass up his big opportunity. I’m guessing at so much of this, but I assume he met Minnie first, maybe in Seattle. Jackie and I foolishly asked King County to check marriage licenses for the years after the Malones left Port Angeles. We should have inquired about before Jimmy and Carrie were married. We even toyed with the idea of Jimmy being a bigamist because of the discrepancy in golden anniversary dates.”

  Vida’s eyes sparkled behind her glasses. “Well, now. Jimmy and Minnie married in Seattle, then he found work in Port Angeles and met Carrie Rowley. She fell in love with him, they married—illegally—and Minnie followed her husband to his new home. Then Carrie started having babies and Minnie got herself installed as governess where she could keep an eye—and other things—on Jimmy.”

  I nodded with appreciation for Vida’s quickness of grasp. “That’s right. There would be no need for a governess until the children started coming. It must have been a horrible situation, though. Two wives under one roof, Jimmy caught in a cage he’d built for himself bar by bar, Simone and her lover making assignations, Cornelius playing master of the house, Lena manipulating everyone, Sanford mooning after Minnie and ignoring his fiancée. I marvel that there was only one murder. It’s a wonder they didn’t all kill each other!”

  “People had better manners in those days,” Vida dedared. “Still, it must have been particularly difficult for Minnie. I can’t think how she stood it, waiting so long and watching Jimmy be a husband and father to another woman.”

  I refused to spare too much sympathy for Minnie Burke Malone. I also refused to ask myself why I was so uncharitable. A first wife wasn’t always the right woman for some men. “Jimmy must have convinced Minnie that he’d stay with Carrie only long enough to get his hands on her money,” I said, my voice unduly harsh. “They were probably a pair of schemers. Minnie used Sanford as a cover. He was smitten, and provided not only a backup suitor but good camouflage. Then the situation got out of control. I’m guessing that after Cornelius Rowley died—that was in May—Minnie put pressure on Jimmy to leave Carrie. Minnie got pregnant about then and she may have figured that Carrie’s inheritance would go to both her and her alleged husband. But Cornelius’s will wasn’t written that way. It went only to Carrie and the children. I think Cornelius may have had his suspicions about his son-in-law’s devotion to Carrie.”

  Vida poured more tea. “Cornelius sounds shrewd. He was probably a good judge of character except where his wives were concerned. It’s often that way with men. They’re not like other people.”

  I acknowledged Vida’s oft-repeated aphorism with a faint smile. “When Carrie found out—and I don’t know how, maybe Jimmy told her, maybe she just knew—she pitched a jealous fit. I think she was aware that Minnie was pregnant. They lived under the same roof The governess’s condition would have been hard to conceal, especially from a woman who had already borne three children. Even Flint Bullard knew it in some undefined, childish way. He told Jackie and me that he recalled Minnie setting fat. At four months she wouldn’t have shown much, but given the stylishly tiny waists of the period, a sudden change would seem to a young boy like putting on weight.”

  Vida looked askance. “Shocking, really. What women will do to themselves to be chic. I haven’t worn a girdle in years.” She shook herself and her buxom figure rippled under the paisley blouse. It was an awesome sight.

  “Think of the scandal,” I went on, ignoring Vida’s imposing bust. “Legally, Carrie wasn’t Jimmy’s wife. Her three children were illegitimate, which was utterly unacceptable in 1908. Carrie was afraid that Jimmy would leave her. He may have made earlier threats, which is why they kept postponing their plans to build a house. Possibly he’d already connived with Minnie to move to Seattle. The house fire next door at the Bullards’ gave Carrie her chance.”

  “Did she set it?” Vida asked.

  “I don’t know that, either. Jackie’s conversation with Flint Bullard tells us that Carrie was in their house that day.” I waved vaguely at the living room where my answering machine reposed. “I’d like to know if she was borrowing a hat with a heavy veil. She may have worn it when she and Jimmy left town to give the impression of secrecy. It’s possible that Carrie did something to set the fire in motion, but the point is that the blaze provided a big diversion. Everybody cleared out of the Rowley house except for Carrie, Simone, little Walter, and maybe Minnie. Simone was lounging around upstairs, unafraid. That suits her character. But Carrie was putting her small son into the wood basket and lowering him into the basement. It was a game the children in the family played quite often, according to Paul Melcher. Carrie then summoned Minnie to look for Walter. Somehow she lured the governess to the other end of the basement, the unfinished section, where she bashed her in the head, pushed her off the ledge, and killed her. All she had to do was shut the door and worry about burying her later. Then she raced out of the house and announced that Walter was missing. Jimmy went after his son. He knew where to find him, since the wood-basket game was such a favorite with the kids. The furnace and the woodpile are quite a distance from the unfinished part of the basement. Jimmy came running outside with Walter, and as the newspaper story said, he was reunited ‘with his parents.’ I realized then that Carrie Rowley was still alive. But I didn’t put it all together in terms of the timing.”

  Tipping her head to one side, Vida pursed her lips. “Well—you might be wrong about when the murder occurred.”

  “I might, but I don’t think I am. There was another signal I missed when I interviewed Claudia Cameron. She told me how Simone’s name was never allowed to be spoken in their home. The real Minnie Burke wouldn’t have cared if Cornelius Rowley’s wife was unfaithful. But Carrie did. Her own mother, Olive, had been a tramp. Her stepmother was accused of infidelity. And Minnie Burke was trying to take Jimmy Malone away.”

  The kitchen grew quiet. The wind picked up, blowing through the evergreens in my backyard. I could hear a crow caw in the distance. On the other side of tow
n the Burlington Northern whistled as it slowed on its passage through Alpine.

  “Why the impersonation?” Vida demanded. “Why couldn’t Carrie simply pack up with her husband and children and go away?”

  This was the question that had plagued me since I’d discovered that Carrie was the killer, not the victim. “Carrie never intended for Minnie to be found,” I said slowly. “But she knew it could happen. If it did, she wanted to divert suspicion. I think she tossed her own earrings into the dirt along with Minnie. We never found a wedding ring in the basement. That’s because Minnie didn’t dare wear one. Claudia Cameron told me tonight that her mother had a big diamond that she’d had reset. Naturally, that was Carrie’s ring, no doubt paid for by Cornelius Rowley. Jimmy Malone couldn’t afford it.

  “But the main reason was that Minnie was Mrs. James Malone. Carrie wasn’t. In order for her to marry Jimmy in the eyes of the law, Minnie would have to be either dead or divorced. Consider the problems of Jimmy, trying to divorce a wife he couldn’t find. Think of the scandal back home in Port Angeles. Jimmy and Carrie were moving to Seattle. No one knew them there. Not until Simone and Armand showed up a few years later.”

  Vida was looking thoughtful. “So Carrie avoided the Nievalles and would have had a fit if she’d known Aunt Julia was sneaking off to visit Simone. But, Emma, surely the Malones must have run into people who knew them in Port Angeles!”

  “I doubt it. I have the feeling that Carrie stayed close to home. In later years she changed. She put on weight, went gray, switched hairstyles. Naturally, she aged. I saw her picture in Claudia Cameron’s house and I didn’t recognize her. The Malones’ home life was probably a bit peculiar, to say the least. I never saw a photo of Minnie Burke, though I suspect she was the obscure figure on the front porch of the Rowley house.”

  Vida sipped her tea. “Do you think Jimmy knew?”

  “He had to. Oh, Carrie could have talked him into the impersonation simply on the grounds that he’d lose out on any of her money if he didn’t pretend she was Minnie, his lawful wife. She might even have given him some story about Minnie going away to have the baby and never coming back. But what could Jimmy do? Declare that his mistress had murdered his wife? Announce that he had committed bigamy to get his hands on the Rowley riches? Jimmy Malone was backed into a comer.”

  “And poor little Walter got stuck in the basement. My, my!” Vida refilled the teakettle. “Do you suppose he was so psychologically damaged that he became a rapist?”

  I shook my head. “Who knows? He was very young. He may have sensed what was going on. He was probably fond of Minnie. But I’m not going to play psychologist and try to figure that one.”

  Vida plunked herself back down in the chair. “No wonder Aunt Julia couldn’t stand her mother! Julia was a very sensitive woman. She insisted that Minnie—I mean, Carrie—was evil. I simply gathered that Mrs. Malone had a wretched disposition.”

  “We had so many wild theories,” I said, thinking back to our brainstorming sessions in the Melcher den. Had ghosts been looking over our shoulders? Was Lena sneering at our modem mores? Were Sanford and Rose shaking their heads in dismay? Had Carrie mocked our efforts to bring her to justice? Did poor Minnie will us to find the truth?

  But Minnie had been no innocent maid. She had been part of a conspiracy to better herself at the expense of others. Still, she and her unborn child hadn’t deserved to die.

  “Even when we thought Jimmy might be a bigamist, Carrie made the perfect victim,” I continued. “Of course, that’s what Carrie wanted everyone to think.”

  Passing a hand through her jumble of gray curls, Vida wrinkled her brow. “There’s another point of view, it seems to me. What if Jimmy had fallen out of love with Minnie? What if the baby was Sanford’s? Why couldn’t Jimmy have killed Minnie? If he no longer loved her, wouldn’t it be more likely that he was the murderer?”

  Dutifully, I drank my tea. “I certainly put him at the top of the list, either as the killer of Minnie or Carrie. You may be right about his affections shifting from one woman to the other.” It could happen, I thought to myself. It had happened to Tom Cavanaugh. Or so he had led me to believe.

  “You might even be right about the baby belonging to Sanford,” I went on doggedly. “But it was Carrie, not Jimmy, who Julia hated, and maybe even feared. It’s not natural for a daughter to have such hostile feelings for her mother. There’s nothing in what Claudia Cameron said that indicated anything but affection and compassion between Julia and her father. I’m making some of my deductions from studying their characters, and Carrie emerges as the strong, willful partner in the Malone marriage. I don’t think Jimmy Malone had it in him to commit murder.”

  Vida was gazing around the kitchen. I knew from experience that she was contemplating cookies. I didn’t have any. I offered her cinnamon toast.

  “Heavens, no!” Vida professed horror. “I couldn’t eat another thing!” Concealing her disappointment, she retrieved the teakettle once more. “Rose had a good motive for killing Minnie. I’m sure you considered her.”

  “Briefly. But I sensed that the murderer hadn’t stayed in Port Angeles. Paul told us how the children had played in the unfinished basement over the years. Rose and Sanford lived there then. Neither would have permitted unsupervised children in the basement if they knew there was a body buried under the dirt.”

  “What about Eddie and Lena?” asked Vida, pouring more tea.

  I felt I was about to float away. “I considered them both. Especially Lena.” My smile was ironic. “Eddie had no reason to kill his sister or Minnie. Lena did, at least as far as Minnie was concerned. But Lena was innocent. Still, I think she knew Minnie’s body was there. Her feelings were ambivalent about it being found.”

  Vida’s eyes widened. “Lena knew? How?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure how. But she wasn’t the sort to miss a trick. Of everyone involved, she would have kept track of all the players. When the Malone family left town, either Carrie or Minnie wasn’t with them. Lena would have figured it was Minnie who was absent. Since the governess was involved with Sanford, she would have wondered where the young woman had gone. It’s possible that she discovered Minnie’s body. She would have realized that Minnie was pregnant and thought that the child was Sanford’s. Maybe it was. Had Sanford murdered his mistress? Lena couldn’t deal with that. She couldn’t risk a scandal, she was too involved with her social and political concerns. Being a God-fearing woman, I think she took her cross from the chain and put it with Minnie, then closed off the basement, canceled the plans for the billiard room, and never revealed her darkest secret. Maybe Lena recorded Minnie’s death in her Bible. We never found it. She literally may have taken it to her grave. Finis coronat opus. The ending crowns the work. Maybe that was meant for Minnie as much as for Lena.”

  Vida and I were silent for several moments. “Well.” It was Vida who finally spoke, though without her usual decisiveness. “Lena wouldn’t have approved of putting a billiard room in the basement, anyway.”

  “No.” I laughed, somewhat halfheartedly. “I’m sure she also got rid of Cornelius’s hunting trophies and the elephant-foot umbrella stand and Simone’s Parisian furnishings. Of all the family members, Lena’s presence remains the strongest.”

  Vida was staring into her mug. She still wasn’t behaving quite like herself. “Are you going to call your new friends tonight and reveal all?” There was a trace of sarcasm in her tone.

  I glanced at the kitchen clock. It was not yet eight-thirty. Paul would still be up, and so, of course, would Jackie. “I’ll probably wait until tomorrow,” I said. “The rates will be down since it’s Saturday. I should take a look at this week’s edition of The Advocate before I do anything else.”

  Vida perked up. “Yes, you should. You won’t be pleased, but at least you’ll be able to see the problems we had for yourself.”

  I suppressed a smile. Vida was jealous. Never mind that the trip to the Olympic Peninsula had bee
n her idea. She hadn’t liked my new friendships, she resented the time I’d invested in the mystery instead of the paper, and she definitely didn’t care for being left out of my life. I was touched. But I didn’t dare say so. Vida, in her own words, would have a cat fit.

  I started out into the living room where I’d left the mail and the newspapers. “I’m still amazed that you knew some of these people,” I remarked, pausing in the doorway. “Really, Vida, you astound me.” It was as close as I could come to voicing my affection.

  Vida shrugged her wide shoulders. “It helped, I guess. You found out what happened to Simone and Armand Nievalle. And Aunt Julia. You know that Julia didn’t run off with some half-baked teenager. Claudia Cameron might like to know that part. I suppose you’ll call her, too.”

  “I might.” And I might not. Claudia had preserved the image of her sister sneaking off to meet a young man. It was more romantic than the reality about the visits to Simone. Enlightening Claudia about the real reason Julia had run away would only open the door to other, more sinister revelations. In her old age Claudia didn’t need to learn the truth about her mother. No one outside of those of us who had worked on the Melcher mystery needed to know. There would be no feature story for the state wire service and no IRS write-off. My considerable expenses of the past four days were completely down the drain.

  “By the way,” I said, taking a step back into the kitchen, “you never said what happened to young Charles. Did he eventually leave Alpine, too?”

  Suddenly, Vida was again exhibiting distress signals. “No.” She fidgeted with her mug, then stood up and rinsed it out in the sink. Her back was turned to me. “Charles stayed here. He would never leave. He couldn’t live anywhere else.” She looked at me over her shoulder, and to my surprise she actually blushed. “You see, Charles Nievalle is Crazy Eights Neffel.”