Murder at Teatime

by Stefanie Matteson

  “Are you the movie star?” she asked. She was a scrawny little thing in dirty shorts, with a light brown ponytail.

  “Shut up, Kim,” said the older girl from behind. “Maybe the lady don’t wanna be pestered by the likes of you.”

  “You don’t mind, do you?” Kim said imploringly. She fingered the fine silk of Charlotte’s jacket. “I like your outfit. Ain’t it pretty, Tammy?”

  The older girl, who looked about thirteen, had drawn alongside with the radio, which she carried in front of her like an armload of firewood. She had a pretty face and her father’s far-off light blue eyes.

  “What’s your name?” asked Kim.

  “Charlotte,” she replied, with a smile. “And I bet you’re Kim and Tammy. How do you like living on an island?”

  “Ugh,” replied Kim, with an expression of disgust. “We hate it, don’t we, Tammy? There ain’t nothin’ to do.” Her accent was almost as thick as her father’s.

  “Our friends are all in town,” Tammy concurred.

  Charlotte was reminded of a young couple from Brooklyn she had once met who had just returned from a honeymoon in Bridge Harbor. There was nothing to do, they complained. No discos, no boutiques, no beach (actually there was a beach, but not the kind they were talking about). Kim and Tammy clearly shared the young couple’s feelings, magnified a thousand times by their isolation. They were trapped between the anachronistic world of their parents and the world they knew only from Kitty and Stan’s television.

  “We’ve got one friend out here,” observed Kim. “Kevin. He gave Tammy that radio,” she announced proudly. She clung to Charlotte’s side. “Will you come visit?” she pleaded. “We ain’t never had a movie star come visit.”

  Charlotte agreed, thinking it would be a good opportunity to ask their father some questions. They had reached the Saunders’ house, and Charlotte stopped to open the gate in the white picket fence.

  “Please promise you’ll come,” said Kim. She hung on the gate as Charlotte swung it shut. “Pretty please?”

  “I promise,” said Charlotte with a smile.

  “There’s someone here to see you, Charlotte,” said Kitty as Charlotte entered the kitchen a minute later.

  Tom Plummer was already comfortably settled in at the Saunders’ kitchen table, beer can in hand and potato chips and dip within arm’s reach. She greeted him and asked him about his trip—she hadn’t expected him until later that evening—and then fetched herself a glass of lemonade.

  Kitty had been filling him in on Thornhill, Tom said as Charlotte joined them. For years, the Saunders had lived in the same Boston suburb as the Thornhills, and their acquaintance had been one of the reasons the Saunders had retired to Bridge Harbor. In fact, they had bought their property from Thornhill.

  “Excuse me,” said Kitty, rising from the table. “I’m just going to see how Stan’s doing in the studio. I haven’t seen him all day. Besides, I imagine you two have plenty to talk about. Tom, we’re delighted to have you here,” she added. “Please let me know if there’s anything you need.”

  “You’ve provided for me very well, thanks,” replied Tom, raising his beer. “And thanks for the information. I wish I had such an informative source for all the stories I work on.”

  Kitty smiled, and, after fixing a tray with a glass of beer and a plate of potato chips, padded off to the studio.

  “Okay, Plummer,” said Charlotte, once Kitty was gone. “What have you got?”

  He smiled mischievously, stroking his mustache with smug self-satisfaction. “Lots of very interesting stuff,” he replied.

  He was a stocky young man who looked as if he would be more at home coaching midget football than writing about crime. Boyishly handsome, he had an enthusiastic grin; a broad, open face; and a thick head of light brown hair that was parted down the middle. He didn’t fit the stereotype of the new journalist: the brash, trendy young reporter on the make, but it was precisely this open, innocent quality that made him so good at what he did. He had the cheek to talk his way into any milieu from board room to barrio, and the persistence to hang in there asking questions that nobody wanted to answer. But the naturally abrasive nature of his profession was tempered by his warm personality. People trusted him, and rightly so. He wasn’t the type to fawn all over his subjects one minute and stab them in the back the next. Even the subjects of his unflattering portraits respected him. They often told him that what he wrote was true, much as they didn’t like it.

  “I know how you delight in keeping me on tenterhooks.”

  He rocked his chair back against the chair rail on the wall, his beer can cradled in his hands. “First,” he said, “Mayer did report the books missing. But,” he continued, “your hunch about his finances was right on the mark.”

  Charlotte raised an eyebrow and took a drink of lemonade. She was thirsty after the walk from Ledge House. “Go on.”

  “First, a little background. He’s a third-generation book dealer. His father and grandfather were book dealers in Vienna. He emigrated just before the war and went into business in New York. He’s done very well for himself: he’s considered the top dealer in the country. A man of great culture, shrewdness, and mystery. Apparently he’s always flying off on secret journeys to clinch million-dollar deals. He’s the book dealer who handles all the really big stuff, especially manuscripts and early printed books. But … he told you he sold the Gutenberg Bible for two point two million?”

  Charlotte nodded. “The price he paid for it, or so he said.”

  “He lied. He sold it for two point one million. He lost a hundred grand on that deal. He originally put it up for sale for two point seven. Then he lowered the price to two point five, and then to two point three. Finally he sold it at a loss because he needed the cash to buy stock he could move.”

  “But a hundred thousand dollars isn’t that much to lose these days; certainly not enough to risk going to jail for.”

  “That’s just the beginning. He’s been acting like a bettor who keeps raising the stakes in hopes of recouping his losses. The next loss was Audubon’s Birds of America. He bought it for one point two million and sold it for fifty grand less. If he’d sold the plates individually, he could have made a pile, but dismembering a classic plate book for profit is one of the worst sins a self-respecting book dealer can commit.”

  “He was telling me how much he prides himself on his reputation.”

  “You bet.” He continued: “He also took a beating on the Pratt Collection, a collection of nineteenth-century first editions. I could go on, but I won’t bore you. In short, a string of bad guesses and misjudgments, none of them terribly serious in and of themselves, but together adding up to financial disaster. In a better economy he might have pulled out of it all right, but not in the middle of a recession.”

  “How did you find all this out?”

  “I did a little checking around,” Tom replied vaguely. “I found out some other interesting stuff too. He’s a notoriously slow payer. He’s also notorious for returning books to the auction house for trivial imperfections: if a book isn’t exactly as it’s described in the catalogue, he returns it. The auction house doesn’t want to go through the hassle of putting it up for auction again, so they give it to him at a reduced price.”

  “Wait a minute, I thought that when you bought something at an auction, you paid for it then and there.”

  “You do, and I do, but people like Felix Mayer don’t. The auction houses extend a line of credit to their best customers. It’s an arrangement that works to their mutual benefit: the auction house can assure the owner of the merchandise that it will bring a decent price, and the favored dealer can afford to bid a bit more than his competitor because he has more time to scout around for a prospective buyer before he has to pay up.”

  “I see. And Felix hasn’t been paying up?”

  “Right. The book owners are clamoring for their money, and the favored dealer is behind on his payments. The auction houses are caught in th
e middle. They’re willing to live with a certain amount of this, but when a dealer falls as far behind as Mayer has, they’ve no choice but to sue.”

  “Which they have?”

  Tom nodded. “He’s got five suits pending against him.”

  “Five! How much is he in the hole?”

  “As nearly as I can tell, about four hundred grand.”

  “Exactly what the missing books are worth.”

  “Yup.”

  “What happens to him now?”

  “Unless he comes up with the money, the court will order an auction of his stock. Book dealers tend to be cash poor: most of their cash is invested in books. But Felix is even more so than usual. He hasn’t a dime, but his stock is worth a fortune. From what people tell me, he buys expensive books even when he doesn’t have a customer in mind for them. He likes to have them on hand just in case someone wants them. It’s a form of status, I guess.”

  So, Charlotte reflected, Felix had been something of a liar when he told her he was immune to the drive to possess that is the demon of bibliomaniacs. When it came to acquiring stock for his business, he was as much of a bibliomaniac as his customers.

  “The point to keep in mind is that there’s more at stake than just the survival of his business,” Tom went on. “His family honor is also on the line. The business was founded in the mid-nineteenth century. His grandfather was probably selling books to Freud. Can you imagine the ignominy of being the guy who runs the family business into the ground after three generations?”

  “But if he did take the books, how would he dispose of them? Foist them off on an unsuspecting customer?”

  “I doubt it. The risk would be too great. But the underground markets are there, if you know where to look. Some collectors are so hungry for books that they don’t ask any questions. South America. Behind the Iron Curtain. Look at the famous paintings that are stolen from museums. They surface mysteriously years later. Nobody’s able to account for what’s happened to them.”

  “Funny how that figure of four hundred thousand keeps turning up,” Charlotte said. “I was just up at Ledge House talking with him. He admits that Thornhill promised to let him handle the sale of his collection after his death. He estimated that the collection is worth four million. At ten percent, that’s four hundred thousand dollars.”

  She remembered Felix asking Fran at the Midsummer Night scrying session whether the consignment he was anticipating would come through, earning him a big commission. Fran had told him that it would.

  Tom rocked his chair back against the chair rail again and drained his beer can. “What you’re saying is that A: he pinched the books to pay off his debts, or B: he knocked off Thornhill so he could make the commission.”

  “Or C: both of the above,” said Charlotte. She paced around the kitchen, a cigarette in hand.

  “What do you mean both?” asked Tom.

  “I mean that maybe there’s a connection between A and B. Let’s just suppose for the moment that Felix took the books. Maybe Thornhill discovered that he took the books and confronted him with the theft. Which would also explain why Thornhill didn’t report that the books were missing.”

  “Very good, Graham,” said Tom, picking up the thread of her thought. “Thornhill threatens to turn him in, and Felix kills him, figuring he’ll save his own skin and make the commission in the bargain.”

  “He could sell the stolen books on the underground market and collect the commission on the rest. Or, if he didn’t want to run the risk of selling the stolen books, he could just report that they’d been recovered …”

  “And collect the commission on the whole works,” Tom interjected. “A few holes, but a workable hypothesis nonetheless.”

  “Non fingo hypotheses,” she replied, grinning.

  One of Tom’s maddening habits was quoting proverbs in Latin. It was the only use he could find for his classics degree from a fancy institution of higher learning, other than translating the inscriptions on the pediments of museums and banks. She took great pleasure in tossing them back at him every once in a while.

  “Newton,” he said. “‘I do not form hypotheses.’” He smiled sheepishly. “Touché, Graham.”

  10

  The memorial service early that evening was a brief, low-key affair, attended only by close friends and relatives, but it offered some new insight into the personalities of the players in the drama of Thornhill’s death. Marion attended with Chuck, but that was the extent of her dealings with him. When she was put in the position of having to speak directly to him at the gathering at Ledge House afterwards, she had done so with contempt. Clearly the source of their estrangement ran deeper than the stress of recent events. Fran maintained her herb-lady role even in the ritual of death, passing out sprigs of rosemary, the herb of remembrance, to the mourners. Charlotte was surprised to find her chatting at the gathering after the service with Thornhill’s fiancèe. Apparently Fran didn’t find her nearly so unpleasant now that the threat of her marriage to Thornhill had passed. Although Charlotte, who also talked a bit with her, thought her references to her other (still living) wealthy suitors displayed an astonishing lack of taste and sensitivity in a putatively bereaved fiancée. When it came to scheming gold diggers, the vamps were no match for ladylike suburban widows with ailing bank accounts.

  The next morning found Charlotte in the Ledge House library once again, this time with Tom. They had volunteered to help Daria assemble the documents needed to put together descriptions of the missing books. Daria had been called back to New York on business for a couple of days, so she was just getting around to the task to which Felix had assigned her of sorting through Thornhill’s papers. She had found a willing assistant in Tom, who had lost no time in acquainting himself with the only single (young) woman on the island. One thing was reasonably certain, Charlotte reflected as she turned to the stack of papers that Tom and Daria had set on the table in front of her: the murder was probably related to the missing books. She reminded herself to keep that thought at the forefront of her mind. The links between the murder and the vandalism, the poison-pen letters—even the death of Jesse (from where she was sitting, she could see the hole where Jesse’s body had been dug up)—were still all suppositional. As for the motives of the suspects—greed, envy, passion (if that’s what you’d call Grace’s banal sentiments)—they really didn’t amount to much. Once you started digging into the affairs of a murder victim, you were apt to unearth all sorts of motives. But the books were different: Thornhill is taken ill, and the books turn up missing. Charlotte’s New England horse sense told her the connection was too obvious to ignore.

  After a half hour of sorting, she had distilled half a dozen documents relating to the missing books from a stack of academic papers with deadly titles like “Solanum Tuberosum [The Potato] and Its Use for Food” by J. Franklin Thornhill. Taking a break, she leaned back to watch Daria and Tom, who were emptying the last of the filing cabinets. She would wager that Tom would give John a run for his money. The signs were all there, she observed as Daria carried a stack of papers over to the table with her long, leggy stride: he, an appraising look; she, a self-conscious relaxation of the step, an inviting sway of the hips, a coquettish tilt of the head. The almost imperceptible signals that the male and female of the species are programmed to follow through to their immemorial end. She remembered Fran’s prophecy that love was in the air, and smiled to herself. Of Daria’s two suitors, Fran had said, she should choose the stocky one with the brown hair. “He’s your lucky guy,” she had said.

  “Well, I guess that’s it,” said Daria, laying the last stack of papers on the table and taking a seat opposite Charlotte.

  Pulling up an overstuffed club chair, Tom lit a cigarette and tossed the match into an ashtray with the panache of a professional basketball player. He carried a lively spirit of youthful camaraderie around with him that infused his surroundings with the atmosphere of a big city newsroom.

  “What I can’t figure o
ut is this”: said Daria, “if the books were missing two weeks ago when I first noticed they weren’t in the vault, then Dr. Thornhill must have known they weren’t there. And if he knew they were weren’t there, why didn’t he report that the books had been stolen?”

  “We wondered about that too,” replied Charlotte. “The only explanation we’ve been able to come up with is that he knew, or suspected, who the thief was, and wanted to confront him himself. He might even have threatened to turn the thief in, which would have provided a motive for the murder.”

  Daria nodded. “Do you have any idea who might have stolen the books?” she asked. Then she added: “I guess Chuck is the obvious suspect.”

  “Why Chuck?”

  “Because of the argument.”

  A possibility, thought Charlotte. Chuck’s words, “You’d better leave it to me, you understand?” could have referred to his theft of the books. He could have been warning Thornhill of the consequences if Thornhill turned him in. He could even have been offering to return the books, or repay the debt.

  “But why would Chuck steal the books?” Charlotte asked. “He doesn’t appear to need the money; he has a successful insurance business.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” said Tom. “He could be up to his eyeballs in debt, just like our friend the book dealer.”

  “I see one problem with the Chuck theory,” said Daria. “The poisoning would have required premeditation, and Chuck quarreled with Dr. Thornhill just before the poison was put in his tea.”

  “Maybe Chuck hoped to convince Thornhill not to turn him in, but took along the poison just in case he wasn’t successful,” said Tom. “Then, when Thornhill made it clear he wasn’t going to let him get away with it, Chuck decided to use it. The tea just happened to be sitting there.”

  “Kind of far-fetched, isn’t it?” said Charlotte.

  “Non est fumus absque igne,” he said with a devilish grin.