by Ed Ifkovic
“What business?”
She got wide-eyed, innocent. “Why, tracking down the murderer, of course.”
“Surely you can’t expect me to . . .”
“Of course, I can. Even murder needs a woman’s touch.”
Back at the Inn I found Johnny and Trooper Wolniak waiting for me, sitting quietly at the kitchen table. I said nothing about Millicent’s last words, though I knew full well I had no intention of delving into Connecticut state police business. Absurd, my being an investigator. I may have been a literary snooper, a prober into the hearts of my characters, but I knew where to draw the line.
“Where’s Carlotta?” I asked.
“Still sleeping, it seems.” Wolniak seemed a bit perturbed. “I knocked on her bedroom door, but nothing.”
“You can speak to her tomorrow.”
He nodded.
“If you want my opinion,” Johnny blurted out, staring at Wolniak, “we should look at Stanley a little closer.”
“And why is that, Johnny?”
At first he had no answer, but then he mumbled, “I never trusted him.”
Wolniak grinned. “We can’t haul in every citizen you don’t trust, Johnny.”
“He looks at people funny.”
“Well, so do you,” I interrupted.
Wolniak smiled. “Miss Ferber, please.”
“Frankly, I don’t believe in character assassination.”
“And what does that mean?” Johnny glared at me.
I didn’t answer.
Wolniak sighed. “Seems possible to me that Martha was murdered by accident.” He was looking at me.
“Why?” Johnny whined.
“Well, think about it.” He was still looking at me, not at Johnny. “I’ve learned from everyone so far that Carlotta is the one who brings supper to Miss Wright every day around the same hour. When she’s around, that is. When she’s out of town, Martha does it. Now there’s the strong possibility that whoever killed Martha was waiting there for Carlotta. She’s probably the intended victim.”
“That complicates things,” I noted.
“It certainly does.” He nodded.
“Yet everyone also knew that Martha filled in for Carlotta. Often, I was given to understand. So it could have been Martha as the object of murder.”
“And,” Wolniak added, “there’s a good chance someone watched Martha walking to Miss Wright’s. It was still light out when she got there. Maybe someone followed her.”
“So we don’t know who was the intended victim, Carlotta or Martha,” I concluded.
Johnny seemed annoyed. “You know, anyone call tell them apart. They don’t look alike.”
“But it was dark when she left,” I reasoned. “In a moment of panic. In anger. A sudden move. By someone not used to murder.” I went on. “The murderer in the bushes after dark—Martha already inside the house.”
Trooper Wolniak rolled his tongue into the corner of his mouth and caught my eye. “We’ll see.” He stood, reached for his hat.
I stood, too. I was about to say something else—for some reason I wanted him to linger—when we heard the abrupt stopping of an automobile in front of the Inn, the slamming of doors, a rapping on the kitchen door, and Henry Fenwick, trailed by his wife, rushed in. “Where’s Carlotta?” he yelled, ignoring everyone there. Wolniak eyed him suspiciously.
“Asleep,” I told him.
Fenwick no longer looked the slick, debonair businessman, the dedicated politician. He was sweating and his hair was ruffled. “I just heard on the radio,” he thundered, to no one in particular. “My God, Martha.” He trembled. “Sweet Martha. Why?”
He slumped in a chair, still ignoring everyone, and his wife Peggy, pale as dust, stood behind him, her hand on his shoulder. When he looked up at her, he started to sob. Peggy’s eyes were moist, red. He placed his hand over her hand. Comforting. “Lord in heaven,” she whispered.
Johnny Marks and Officer Wolniak, backing up, offered their goodbyes. “Friends and family will start to call now,” the trooper said in a soft voice, leaning into me. “I’m gonna need a list of who these friends and family are. Tell Miss Small I’ll be by in the morning. Let her rest.” Then he added, “You’ll be here?”
“Of course.”
The Fenwicks were mumbling to each other, and I focused on the trooper.
“I didn’t think you’d leave in the middle of a story,” he said to me, a sliver of a smile on his lips. He tipped his hat.
The two men left by the back door. Since I had no desire to linger in the kitchen with the grieving Fenwicks, I excused myself. The couple suddenly didn’t seem to know whether to stay or leave, looking at each other helplessly. No Carlotta to talk to, and, I realized, no Martha. I wanted to lie down now, to nurse a growing migraine. Later, I knew, I’d have to deal with Carlotta, and I wasn’t looking forward to those histrionics.
In the hallway I lingered because I heard the muffled voice of Peggy whispering something to Henry. “I know this is sad, Henry, but you cannot let your name get into the papers. You just can’t. For heaven’s sake, it’s murder. This is not good—for us.”
“But it’s Martha,” he pleaded.
Her voice was nearly hysterical. “We need to keep you out of the papers. Think of the stigma, Henry. The stigma. Murder. You and I, well, we don’t like murder.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Carlotta slept through the evening, and I stayed in my room, refusing Julia’s conscientious offer of food, and the house was dead. I knew that at one point Peter had showed up because I could hear him downstairs, calling for his mother. Then I could hear him in his mother’s bedroom, but he couldn’t rouse her. When he called for me, I didn’t answer. He stayed downstairs, fielding telephone calls, friends who knocked on the door, God knows who else. I could hear him turning people away. “My mother is not well,” he kept saying. “Yes, I’ll tell her.” He sounded weary. I wondered where Delia was. Finally, late, I heard Peter’s car leaving the driveway. Carlotta had not budged from her bedroom.
I stayed in my room, unable to work though I rustled and shifted notes I’d taken. Somehow American Beauty seemed to drift away from possibility, the novel suspended in time and space. So be it. I realized I was trying to escape the image of Martha’s body. I bathed, retired early, and dreamed of winter crows cawing above dense copses of oak and hickory, menacing birds that slammed against sides of old saltbox houses and decaying barns. I woke out of breath, frightened. The deep of night at the Inn: boards creaked and groaned, the wind whispered and suggested, the autumn chill seeped under the sills of the old windows and made me shiver. The house wore a funereal cloak now as thick as marsh fog.
Now and then my mind drifted to Millicent, probably troubled, alone in a house forever tainted with that hideous murder on her back doorstep. Millicent and her request that I pursue this murder. How foolish! I thought. How very foolish! But then, perhaps, Millicent understood more of the workings of this village, its complexities, its nuances, its hauntings. Its ghosts. Still, how foolish! I would remain in town as comfort to Carlotta, then leave, as planned. Back to my apartment, my private world, with terrace. My Steinway, my red moiré armchair. My eighteenth-century writing desk. Mother and her intrusions would bring me back to reality. Her carping and fault-finding, and perhaps then I would escape for lunch at the Round Table. Aimless chatter and frivolity from Harpo Marx. Yes, Harpo . . . Robert Sherwood . . . or . . . At some point I drifted back to sleep.
I dreamed I had trouble choosing a sandwich at the Automat, where I was trapped for days . . .
But I woke, suddenly, with one nagging thought: Carlotta or Martha? Which one the intended victim?
I had trouble falling back to sleep.
So, in the morning, early, I left the house, needing my ritualistic mile walk. But today I headed away from Millicent’s home, headed past Stanley’s silent home, headed up to Caleb’s Rise, with its seclusion and hint of wilderness. I found myself walking rapidly, a little out
of control, losing breath, and I had to tell myself to slow down, to catch my wind. The sky was a dull iron gray, the color of heavy lead, and elephantine storm clouds hovered low at the far horizon. Rain was coming. Already the air felt wet and raw, thick with the acrid smell of burning leaves. I debated returning to the Inn—not that I’d mind getting soaked—but for some reason I wanted to exhaust myself.
But walking, in fact, was a mistake. A low-slung Cadillac, an older model with dented bumpers and a cracked headlight, slowly cruised by, stopped ahead of me. And the sole proprietor of The Connecticut Valley Gazette, Roger Emerson, that offensive young man, jumped out of the vehicle, nearly toppling into a tangle of poison ivy and creeping vine. “Ah, Miss Ferber.”
I tried to walk past him.
He fell into place alongside me. I stopped. “Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Emerson?”
“Ah. You remember me.”
“It’s a bad habit of mine, I’m afraid. Train wrecks, decaying bodies, buildings on fire, homicidal maniacs, perverts—a reporter finds that the underbelly of life stays longer than the grandmother who provides cookies to the poor house.”
He laughed. “You’re not being very nice.”
I stopped. “How may I help you?”
He stood there, slightly stooped, a butter-tub of a man, with his straw-blond slicked-back hair, his thin penciled moustache over a weak upper lip, his jaunty hat, his obvious aping of some matinee screen idol.
“A moment of your time, Miss Ferber. I’d been planning on begging an interview—after all, someone of your celebrity in this little town, well, that’s what our readers love. And a friend of Carlotta Small, our own homegrown celebrity, well . . .”
“I have no time for interviews.” I cut him off, deliberately, and resumed walking.
He caught up with me and walked too close, his sleeve touching my jacket. I stopped. “Mr. Emerson, don’t force me to repeat myself.”
The smile disappeared. “Now with the murder right here in this valley, this is all big -time news. I expect my reporting to be syndicated out . . .”
“Good day.”
I started walking. He yelled after me, his voice laced with smarminess. “You’ll be talking shortly to the police, Miss Ferber. And that’s public record, as you know. I would think you’d want to provide the press with your version of things.”
I’d had enough: I turned to face him. “My version of things? There is no version of things. There is what happened, and that is a police matter.”
“But don’t you think you being there for just a day adds a certain spice to the tragedy?”
“How so?”
“That’s what I intend to find out.”
I stormed back at him, wagging a finger into his smirking face. “Your brand of yellow journalism, Mr. Emerson, may impress a few locals who find your intrusive and pesky behavior attractive. Some people are attracted to the grotesque. Some of us don’t see it that way. I’d like it if you’d refrain from approaching me or even quoting me in the future.”
“Oh, I’ll quote you all right. How about: ‘Miss Ferber, New York’s best-selling authoress and noted member of that city’s cosmopolitan Jewish intelligentsia, refused to comment when asked about her role in the murder investigation.’ How’s that for an opening?”
“You, sir, are pond scum.”
He started to laugh as I rushed away.
Back at the Inn cars were parked in the driveway, across the road by the state forest, even on the lawn. There were police vehicles in front of Millicent’s, and some suited men wandered the yard. Inside the kitchen I paused, listening to the muted voices coming from the parlor, where obviously everyone had assembled. I heard Peter’s low baritone, mournful. Delia, throaty. Other voices, unknown. A woman’s voice, weeping. Someone whispering something consoling to someone, but the tone sounded forced, manufactured. I heard what sounded like forced laughter from an old man’s voice. False cheer. Oh my God, I thought, I bring my horrible cynicism here, full-blown, to this house of grief. I stayed in the kitchen, sitting at the table.
Suddenly Carlotta swept into the kitchen, seemed surprised to see me. “Edna, I wondered where you were. Trooper Wolniak is arriving in the hour with that toadstool Johnny Marks. To take my statement. Can you imagine that? My statement. I want you there.” Her words flew out in a rush, a waterfall, and strangely cheerful.
“Why?”
She seemed surprised. “I fear I might say the wrong thing.”
“Say the truth,” I announced, not liking this.
“But you know how I am—impulsive.” She smiled.
I said, wearily, “Just tell what you know.”
The voices in the parlor now rose in crescendo, and then a strange man’s voice dominated. He was talking of Martha as though she were still alive. I looked at Carlotta, who’d seated herself at the old kitchen table, her hands folded before her. “Edna! I’m terrified.”
She didn’t seem so. Hardly, in fact. Carlotta acted as though nothing untoward had happened the day before. Or at least that was my impression of her odd behavior. Yesterday, stunned with my announcement, Carlotta had caterwauled, burst into hysterics, thundered and raged on, insensible. Then, sedated—doubtless plied with red wine—she remained the living dead, lost in her bedroom. Now, freshly bathed, her makeup intact, she suddenly asked me how my walk was. Idly, she leafed through a copy of Vogue she’d left lying on the table. I stared at her in disbelief. “Carlotta, are you all right?”
She seemed surprised, her face shiny. “Of course.”
“Yesterday . . .”
“Don’t think me callous, Edna dear. I’m not. For Lord’s sake, I’ve lost my sister. But I need to be in control.”
“Why?”
Carlotta tried to frown. “Edna, you know me. I’ve always been a woman in control. People rely on me to lead.” She ran her fingers against the side of her carefully coifed hair. “I have so much to do today.”
There was a burst of noise from the parlor, followed by a stony, eerie silence, and I started. “Who’s in there?”
Carlotta shrugged. “Everyone.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Everyone who loves me.” She paused. “And loved Martha. Our neighbors.”
Startled, I peered into the shadowy room and noticed a crowd of now-quiet souls sitting in protective clusters, huddled. Standing there, feeling intrusive on their difficult grief, I started to turn away, but I caught Peter’s eye. He was seated in the middle of a sofa, slumped over, his handsome face nearly concealed behind his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. He looked disconsolate, forlorn, the final keener at the wake, and I felt a pang of sorrow for him because he looked so lost. “Edna,” he called out, his voice scratchy. I approached him.
He stood up and I took his hand. He started to sob. “She was like a mother to me.” I nodded. The dramatic, flawed face was streaked with tears now, pale and drawn.
“Peter, please sit down,” Delia mumbled from the sofa. She tugged at his pant leg. He ignored her.
“I’m so sorry, Peter,” I whispered.
Peter leaned into me and the crying got louder. “I told you how she raised me.”
“She wasn’t your mother,” Delia muttered, but almost to herself. I wondered why she spoke at all.
Peter looked down at her. “A second mother.” He looked toward the kitchen where Carlotta, standing now in the doorway, was watching him, her face stoic, unreadable.
No one else in the room, all those gathered mourners, said a word. My eyes swept the crowd, a dozen or more people. Who were they?
He let go of my hand and slumped back to the sofa, and was immediately enveloped by Delia’s clumsy embrace, protective but oddly distant. Again, he covered his face, dissolved into tears.
There was a rapping at the front door, loud and sudden, breaking the mournful atmosphere of the old room. Everyone jumped, and one woman became hysterical, then stopped, embarrassed. But no one moved, so
I opened the door to find Trooper Wolniak standing there, hat in hand. Apologetic, he asked to see Carlotta and mentioned that he was expected. “Constable Marks,” he added, “should be joining us.” He smiled a bit. “He told me to wait for him—he’s still in town, but . . .”
I grumbled. “But there is no need for him at the moment.”
He said nothing.
Trooper Wolniak surveyed the huge crowd staring at him with gaping mouths and wide eyes, and, I thought, a little trepidation. “Who are these people?”
“Friends,” I answered. “I suppose.” I turned away. “Come with me.” I led him into the kitchen where Carlotta, now sitting at the table, looked terrified, her hands trembling, her eyes half shut. She jumped up, sending her copy of Vogue to the floor. She started to retrieve it, then stopped. “Officer,” she mumbled.
“Is there a place where we can talk?” he asked politely. The silence from the parlor suggested everyone was listening intently. Carlotta saw him glance in that direction. She walked into the doorway, cleared her throat, and then, in a voice delivered with bravado and a tinge of hysteria, asked everyone to leave. “I have to help the state police find the killer of my sister.” It was an overly dramatic line, said so that the balcony could hear, and for a moment no one moved. I wondered whether they might applaud its delivery. Peter, rousing himself, surveyed the crowd. “I think it’s time we all gave Mother a little quiet.” People bustled out, some clearly resentful, but Carlotta stood there, a smile on her face, accepting the hugs and kisses of those leaving. A half wave to them, and she returned to the kitchen.
Trooper Wolniak looked at me. Carlotta stared at him. “Edna stays.”
“Why is that?” From Wolniak.
“What?” From me.
“I need her support.” Said with finality.