by Ed Ifkovic
I shrugged my shoulders and Trooper Wolniak, catching my eye, seemed a trifle unnerved. But he nodded.
We sat in the deserted parlor, Carlotta and I on the tuffed settee, Trooper Wolniak, pad and pencil in hand, in a narrow armchair. I thought he seemed ungainly there, uncomfortable, a big man in a tight space. He cleared his throat, swallowed, began, stopped, and then began again. He cleared his throat again. I waited and then suddenly realized that the young man had probably never been part of a murder investigation—or, for that matter, any investigation of any magnitude. Resident trooper for the rural districts and largely new to the occupation, this earnest young man probably spent his workday dealing with vandalized tractors and threshers, stolen cows, wandering sheep, noisy roosters, Saturday night drunkenness at the local bar and grill, family fistfights, jealousies, infidelities, petty wrongdoings, minor-league injustices. Murder—well, not quite.
“What can you tell me?” he addressed Carlotta, and I thought it an anemic opening.
I told myself, capriciously, that Carlotta would respond: About what? Given her spirited composure earlier. In fact, I noted, not with any humor, that Carlotta, in some ways smitten with Wolniak’s powerful masculinity, could not help herself: she was acting the coy ingénue, the fluttering eyes, the inclined chin, the tongue moistening her painted lips, the half turn of her head to catch the light from the window. I turned away.
“I can’t think of a soul who’d take my sister’s life,” Carlotta summed up. “Not a soul. Martha was a harmless, good woman, harmless. Lord, she was a quiet schoolmistress years back. She helped me take care of the Inn. She . . .” Carlotta started to weep.
Wolniak went on. “When did you last see her?” No time for tears.
I nodded, almost to myself. All right, I thought, you’re getting better at this, young man.
Carlotta paused, looked at me. “Well, Edna, you and I left here, what? Before noon, I think. She was here then—in the gardens out back. I said something to her. Then we drove off and went into town, had lunch.”
Wolniak looked at me. I nodded.
“So Martha was left alone at the Inn?”
“Well, Julia was here in the afternoon. She cleans and cooks an evening meal, it’s ready around five, and she leaves after that. Usually. I was supposed to come home to take supper to Millicent around five or six or so—I do that every day—but I couldn’t get back to do it, so . . .” She trailed off, looked around the room, unsure of herself.
“You never returned home before evening?”
Carlotta’s voice became soft, but hesitant. “When I left Edna at the library in the early afternoon, I discovered I had to run an errand in Greenfield. I called Martha to take over the supper. Edna heard me.” She looked at me, and I nodded. “I picked Edna up around seven at the library and we headed to Westport. We arrived home late. Nearly midnight. Right, Edna? Martha was sleeping.” She paused. “We thought.”
I added, “We just assumed she’d gone to bed. And in the morning no one was up but me.”
“Who did you see in Greenfield?” Wolniak asked.
“Is that important?”
His voice was sharp. “Yes.”
She shook her head. “My ex-husband. My third ex-husband. Nathan Brosnan. A lowlife of the most insidious sort. We had some business I had to tend to. Loose ends from a bad marriage. I drove there, then drove back in time to retrieve Edna from the grip of our octogenarian book warden, Miss Dangerfield.”
I started to say something, then thought better of it.
“Could you provide his name and address and number?”
“Is this necessary?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think . . .”
“Let me decide that, Miss Small.”
Wolniak was gathering more confidence the more he questioned, and was obviously irritated by Carlotta’s antagonistic yet coy demeanor. Sitting back now, I admired the quiet resolve of the man, his control.
“I’ll write it down for you,” Carlotta said, a little too sharply.
“So,” Wolniak continued, “you didn’t return here after leaving at noon and returning at night with Miss Ferber?”
A long silence, with Carlotta dreamily looking toward the kitchen, then out the front window. Evasive, resistant, seemingly bartering for time. Just what was this curious moment all about, this delay in responding? I wondered. I was not liking this.
But Carlotta rallied, her tone now icy and thick. “I believe I told you where I was during those long hours. The fact that you ask the question again suggests that you do not believe me.”
“I didn’t say that, Miss Small. I’m simply trying to get all the people clear in my head—who was here. I’ve talked to Miss Wright, to Miss Ferber, though briefly. Your housekeeper Julia told us she left after five, and Martha was leaving with supper for Miss Wright. They walked out the back together. I just need to know where all the inhabitants of the Inn were.”
“Surely you don’t believe any of us are to blame?” Then, an awful truth coming to her, taking hold, the eyes getting wide and teary. “Surely, young man, you don’t suspect me of killing my own sister?”
“I’m just getting peoples’ statements, Miss Small.”
“How dare you!”
“Carlotta,” I began, “it’s just customary . . .”
“I don’t give a damn what’s customary. In my own Inn—to accuse . . .”
Wolniak did not move a muscle, just waited.
There was a rustling outside the front door, a perfunctory rapping, then the door opened, with Constable Johnny Marks bustling in, out of breath, his face crimson with anger. “Officer Wolniak, I told you to wait before you questioned Carlotta. I had things to do in town. I told you.”
Wolniak didn’t respond, which I immensely enjoyed.
Johnny Marks flung himself into a chair. “Why is Miss Ferber here?”
I sat straight in the chair, spine rigid, tried to use my five-foot stature to look down on the upstart, and rolled my large, imposing head. “Is there any reason you find my presence onerous?”
“Onerous?”
“Do you need a definition?”
He fumbled. “You’re just a guest.”
“But a guest who’s part of the story,” I told him, through slatted eyes. But Marks refused to be withered, sputtering his objections with Wolniak, who, like a traffic cop, simply raised his right hand, palm out, and Johnny Marks, flustered, stopped talking.
Wolniak looked at Carlotta. “Miss Small, who do you think killed your sister?”
“I have no idea.”
“No enemies?”
“I told you . . .”
Johnny spoke up. “Well, someone did, you know.”
Wolniak continued his questions for a good while, often interrupted by Johnny, with Carlotta answering in curt monosyllables. Nothing, I realized, was being gained here. A waste of time.
The trooper closed his notebook, stood. “Thank you for now, ladies. I’d like to continue our talk, Miss Small, at a later date.”
“I’ve told you everything.”
“We’ll see.” He didn’t look happy.
Johnny Marks followed Wolniak out the front door.
I decided to visit Millicent, who, I suspected, felt isolated in that huge home. For the second day her backyard swarmed with state police personnel, so I knocked gently on the front door and almost walked away when the door slipped open. “Edna,” the old woman said. “Thank God. Come in.”
“I thought you might feel trapped.”
Millicent laughed. “Not that I leave the house anymore. But let me tell you, Edna, there haven’t been this many men fussing and clamoring in my yard since I was a sweet young thing around twenty, and the farm boys were feeling their oats.”
Sitting quietly in the parlor, Millicent talked of the sleepless night she’d had, the recurring nightmare that startled her awake three or four times: Martha with skeletal face, grimacing grotesquely with chattering teeth, a bony
knuckled finger beckoning toward her. “I wake in a sweat, and I lie in bed thinking that this house is now cursed.”
“No,” I emphasized, “some murderer is cursed. Not this house. Not you.”
Millicent smiled. “Of course, I do know that. I haven’t lived ninety-five years on God’s earth to shrink and cower before something like this. It’s just that the hum and rattle of all those voices out back, all day yesterday and throughout today, well, it’s jarring. Daytime napping is a challenge. I’ve led a quiet life here. I sit, walk slowly among four rooms downstairs, gripping my cane, and listen to my Zenith radio over there. I listen to my stories. In the summer I can sometimes make it to my gonewild flower garden. I wait for a visit from Carlotta with a warm meal each day, and then I go to bed early. Now that world is turned upside down, and I feel as though it will never be righted again. Martha—poor Martha. What are they saying, Edna? No one tells me anything. That nice trooper Wolniak stops in, but he’s purposely inscrutable, I think. Almost bows to me.”
“No one knows anything,” I told her. “At this point. Wolniak interviewed Carlotta briefly but she was not as forthcoming as I thought she should be.”
“Meaning?”
“I felt she wished this would all go away.”
Millicent shook her head. “That sounds like Carlotta from years back—the escapist.”
“But this is no time . . .”
“I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Carlotta, different as she is from me. When she was young and wanted to go to New York, she ran to me for support. I was always touched by that.”
“She’s . . .”
“She’s an actress, you know. You have to make exceptions, I suppose. But a woman with a kind heart hidden under that glossy exterior.”
Millicent offered tea, and taking her cue, I brewed it. We spent a few companionable, silent moments.
“Well, Trooper Wolniak seems dedicated to solving this murder, even if he’s green at the edges.”
Millicent smiled. “I like him, Edna, though I’m not certain why.”
I smiled back. “He does have a certain power, a kind of gentle brawniness.”
“He’s genuine, I think. Most men I’ve known in my life, certainly in my family, have been drifters, wanderers, idlers, men who fled from trial and trouble. That young man seems a different breed. He embraces challenge.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“Edna,” Millicent leaned in, confidentially, “I’m relying on you to keep me informed. I can’t bear silence or ignorance. I need you to be my eyes and ears, too. An intelligent woman who can keep her ear to the ground.” She sipped her tea and gently replaced the cup on the saucer.
I laughed, without humor. “I’m afraid the local law already deems me a busy body.”
“There are worse things to say about a person.”
I stared into her face as I put down my teacup. “Tell me, Millicent, why did you dislike Martha?”
Millicent frowned. “I suppose you have a right to know. Of course, you have a right. You’re my detective now. Well, a few years back, when Carlotta was in New York for the second time, Martha broke up a wonderful marriage. My pastor, the son of one of my oldest friends in the Congregational Church, a good, married man with four children, a decent God-fearing man, confessed a liaison with Martha. It destroyed his marriage, his fellowship, his life. He disappeared, a shattered man, and Martha resumed her outwardly respectable life.”
I was confused. “That seems so uncharacteristic of Martha.”
“Why?”
“Martha, what little I knew of her, struck me as, well, staid.”
Millicent sighed. “An image she cultivated—purposely. There were stories dating back to when she was barely out of her teens, Edna. I ignored them. But to destroy a good family . . .”
The door to the parlor opened from the kitchen and Johnny Marks walked in, having entered from the backyard. “Aunt Millicent,” he said, though he was looking at me. “I would think you need your rest.”
She grunted. “At my age that’s all I do. I want Edna here.” She gripped her cane and tapped the floor.
Johnny Marks tucked himself into an armchair next to me, stared full into my face, his lips pursed in disapproval. “Miss Ferber, you seem to be everywhere. Sort of like a contagion.” He reached for a pack of cigarettes, extracted one, fumbled with a match.
“For God’s sake, Johnny,” Millicent said. “Your manners.”
“I always speak my mind.”
“Not always the best plan of action.”
“Honesty . . .”
“You’ll discover, Bub,” I said, chin up and eyes glued to his face, “I’m cut from sturdier Midwestern mettle.”
He turned to gaze out the window, dismissing me.
Millicent leaned forward in her comfortable chair. I thought I detected the potent smell of mothballs, of winter clothes poorly aired out. Millicent smiled. “You know, Edna, I’m housebound these past ten or so years, and Carlotta is my only lifeline to the outside world.”
Interesting, I thought: Carlotta, not Johnny Marks, who at that moment seemed mesmerized by some scene enacted just outside the front window. But I noticed his eyes move, as he followed the conversation.
“You’ve lived here all your life?” I asked.
“In this house, yes. I’m ninety-five years old”—she grinned—“or is it ninety-four? Born and raised in this very home. Unmarried, and glad of it, given what I see of the new generation, all flapper and bobbed hair and bathtub gin. And avarice. And all the other Deadly Sins.” She stared at Johnny, who seemed oblivious. “I’ve watched all the generations prosper and then decline. Truth to tell, I’m the last of the line of folks who migrated to this town from New Haven in the late 1700s, at the beginning of the new nation. I’m the last of the last . . .”
“Except for me, Auntie,” Johnny interrupted, looking back at his aunt.
She frowned. “The last of the last.”
Millicent was the kind of women I gravitated toward and celebrated in my fiction: fiercely strong, independent, resilient, fiery, outspoken, holders of truths long forgotten, folk goddesses of the soil and the hearth, women of iron. You saw them in America’s small towns and farm fields, weathered, craggy, worn out save for the fire in the eye. You saw souls who had been tested by rock and water and wind.
Irritated, Johnny watched his aunt closely. “I’m just checking upon you. I mean, a murder in your backyard . . .”
“Don’t worry about me, Johnny.” A sad smile. “A sad day for us all.”
“I don’t trust folks from out of town.”
I simply stared, choosing not to answer. But Millicent raised her voice, wagged a finger at him. “Johnny, I won’t tolerate your being rude to my guest. Constable you might be, a title of dubious worth in this hayseed village, an appointment to office no one else with any brains wants, but you are to know that Edna can be a help . . .”
He seemed oblivious. “I don’t see no credentials on her.”
“And I don’t see any intelligence in you. So what is your point?”
“Trooper Wolniak and me don’t want meddling.”
“Don’t speak for Officer Wolniak,” I interrupted.
“Johnny, is there something you want?”
“No.”
“Then leave us alone.”
But he didn’t move.
“Johnny!”
He stood up. “You know what I think.” He didn’t wait. “I’ll tell you. It’s very clear to me that the prime suspect in Martha’s death can only be only person—Carlotta herself. Think about it, Auntie. Who else could do it? Who cared? Martha was a mouse but she didn’t deserve to die. You know, Carlotta and Martha have been at odds forever. Jealousy, anger. Spats. I had to step in last year ‘cause they was yelling at each other on the town green, no less. Created a ruckus. And Miss Ferber seems to me to be dead set upon covering up for her close friend. She’s a spy. Carlotta wants everyone to think she was the i
ntended victim ‘cause she always brings you supper, but that’s a crock. And Miss Ferber, well, she’ll bury the facts . . .”
Millicent’s voice rose again, and her hands trembled. She banged the floor with her cane. “Now you stop this imbecility right now. Such accusation is horrid, Johnny Marks. And evil. You’ve never liked Carlotta, and that’s a fact. You’ve spent countless hours boring me to tears with your rambling about how rotten she is to you. That was then. Stupid chatter, but harmless. But this is now. And murder is a different matter. I’ll not have you accusing that woman.”
Johnny smirked. “You two women will be unpleasantly surprised when an arrest is made, and Carlotta . . .”
I spoke up. “Tell me, Mr. Marks, why do you have this dislike of Carlotta?”
“I don’t.” His voice became shrill.
“Hah,” Millicent yelled out, very Victorian stage melodrama. “Tell her, Johnny.”
“It ain’t nothing.” His balding head turned red.
Millicent went on. “Edna, a number of years back when Carlotta returned after her last sojourn in New York, her return made her a town sensation all over again. Pictures in the press, Cosmopolitan doing a photo spread, New York Times reporters running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Johnny, fresh from a bitter divorce and probably feeling randy as a henhouse rooster, got a little inebriated one night at the Copperhead, and made a loud and aggressive pass at Carlotta, who was there with friends. A young pipsqueak then, cocky, he actually put his hands on her, and she slapped him.”
During this recitation, Millicent stared not at me but Johnny, who returned her gaze, baleful and resentful. But he kept quiet.
Millicent continued. “Johnny, sorry to say, began a town joke. He actually said a very bizarre line, much bandied about in town.”
Johnny glared. He lowered his voice. “You weren’t there.”
“He said, ‘You sleep with everyone in New York. Why won’t you sleep with me?’ Now I’m sorry to relate this story in front of you, Johnny, but you brought it on yourself. You need to stop this nonsense.”
I stared at the middle-aged man, roly-poly, balding, eyes set too far apart in a chubby face.