by Ed Ifkovic
“What does it matter? She’s gone. It’s not like someone’s writing a book about her.” She paused, suppressed a giggle. “Oh, dear, I guess I am, aren’t I?”
I was peeved. “Most likely, there will be only one character mentioned in that tome, Carlotta. One blazing sun. The dark moons will remain in outer space.”
Carlotta frowned. “I don’t care, frankly.” She turned to Henry. “Excuse me, Henry, but you of all people should be aware of what I’m talking about.”
I saw Henry blanch, shoot a furtive look at his wife. “Carlotta, please.”
But Carlotta, angry now with Henry, realizing her visit to this home was futile, lashed out, in fury. “Edna, Henry had a weak moment as a young married man.”
I looked at Peggy, whose sleepy face was frozen into a mask, not because she was hearing a news flash about her husband’s infidelity decades ago, but because Carlotta dared to introduce it into the present conversation. “My word,” Peggy sputtered, an expression that I thought rather anemic, given the revelation.
Henry, his face ashen, the color of parchment. “Carlotta, in all these years that—that episode has not been brought up. We all agreed . . .”
“You agreed.” She sighed, then started to sob. “Oh, Henry, I’m sorry. It isn’t important. It’s just that you make me so furious now.”
It was Peggy who answered the querulous look I was wearing. “Oh, Edna. Martha had a way with men, I suppose. Especially when she was a young woman. She had that fastidious, prim look, you know, Hester Prynne in broadcloth and bonnet, but certain fires burned in her, I guess. Men love that, for some sick reason.” She glared at her husband. “When I was carrying our first child, Henry had a moment—just one moment, one—of weakness and allowed himself to be, well, seduced by Martha. Horrified, he told me all about it, right away, and I forgave him. That’s what we wives do. It was Martha’s fault, of course. Men are—were—notches on her cowgirl belt.” She finished, sat back, and closed the book on the conversation.
“No big deal,” Henry mumbled.
Then Peggy changed her mind. She deemed the conversation was not over. “Of course, it was a big deal, Henry. But it’s over with.”
“So that’s why you were suspicious of Jason, Carlotta?” I asked. “Because of Martha’s history?”
“History in the present tense,” she said. She smirked at Henry, still angry. “Not with Henry, of course. He’s a Republican now and doesn’t even sleep with his wife.”
“Really, Carlotta,” Henry said. “We’re old friends, you and I. Childhood playmates. Blood relatives, though distant. Such abuse.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Henry, I’m in danger here, and I’ve come to you for help.”
Henry softened. “Carlotta, I can’t stop an investigation. You must realize that, no? But I’ll make a few phone calls.”
Peggy actually flew out of her chair and wagged a finger at him. Her night bonnet sipped a tad, giving her a zany Mark Brothers look. “No, you won’t. You need to stay out of this, Henry.”
He looked from one woman to the other, then at me. He shrugged his shoulders. “Just to get information, Peggy. Let them know I’m interested. My name is known. My call might temper their enthusiasm for arrest.”
Thunderous. “No.” Peggy remained standing. “Do you want to jeopardize your chance for the governorship? Think of it. You need to distance yourself from this . . . this horror show.”
“But Carlotta is a lifelong friend.”
“And we will continue to support and love her. But there’s no need for public demonstration.” Peggy’s voice had become loud, raspy, all vestiges of drugged sleep now gone. “For once, Henry, think of yourself. Stop being the nice guy.” She went on and on, her words rising like floodtide, accusatory, nasty, even threatening, ending with, “What we’ve worked for. Connecticut is conservative state, Henry. A religious state, and moral. To be involved with Broadway, New York, theater, murder. Murder, Henry. Think of it. Murder is not something you want people to think of when they’re checking a box on election day. Murder, Henry.” Out of breath, she collapsed back onto the chair.
Henry looked at Carlotta, then back at his trembling wife. “I can’t do this for you, Carlotta. I’d like to, but can’t. Do you understand?”
“A telephone call, Henry.”
He shook his head. No.
Carlotta stood up, looked momentarily lost, and nodded to them. “So be it. Well, all my life I’ve made my own way. I fought prejudice decades back when I went to New York. Good girls didn’t go on the stage, not good Congregational old-family girls. I made it to the top—by myself. I’ll do it again. Now.” But she herself did not look convinced. Rather, she seemed to doubt her own words, letting her voice trail off at the end of her declaration. Carlotta in 1900 was a feisty, driven ingénue. Carlotta, in her fifties, I thought, was weary, a little haggard, years away from her New York stage acclaim, a woman whose chronic drinking problem had sapped her resolve and confidence. She was, I thought, a shadow of the spitfire girl who left Rawley’s Depot for the footlights of Broadway.
“I’ll clear my own name,” she announced grandly, and swept out of the room. But as she opened the front door, she turned back and said, pointedly, “With Edna’s help, of course.”
In the Pierce-Arrow, weaving her way home to Rawley’s Depot, Carlotta wept out of control.
The Inn was dark as we turned off the lane and into the driveway. An automobile was parked directly in front, despite the late hour, but I didn’t see anyone inside. As both of us got out of the car, I heard a man’s voice in the darkness. Constable Johnny Marks, inebriated and leaning against a maple trunk, staggered into view. “The murderer and her mouthpiece.” He slurred his words.
“Go home,” I told him.
Marks hiccoughed, sputtered. “There’s a rule of law in this here town, Miss Ferber. I don’t appreciate learning ‘bout visits to the State Police Barracks in Danbury from Roger Emerson. I should be telling him. I’m the law around here.”
“Go home,” I repeated.
“Ain’t right that famous people get away with murder.”
“Why not?” I responded. “Boorish men obviously can get away with annoying me.” I turned away.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Who was Martha Small?
I woke in the morning with a rare headache. I lay in bed, crumpled in sleep-tossed covers, thinking about Martha: Who was this elusive woman, so anonymous but so emphatically conspicuous in all these troubled lives? I had met her for but a scant few hours, a moment of Martha’s sixty-odd years on this earth, and, frankly, I’d liked the woman. Of course, Martha had immediately disarmed me by acknowledging her fond opinion of my scribbling. That mattered to me, surely. But Martha clearly wrestled with demons—erotic compulsions, maybe—forbidden desires, an unbiblical coveting of other women’s current or castoff spouses. Who was this woman, now dead?
Now dead. Murdered brutally. Could there be any connection with the way she lived her life and her murder? Who harbored a grudge against her? Who had Martha alienated these last few years, her simple years of retirement at the Inn? Why now, this murder?
I disturbed Millicent Wright at midmorning, rousing the old woman who was dozing on her rocker, eyeglasses askew on her head. She’d drifted off, she said, while reading an E. Phillip Oppenheim novel. The Great Impersonation. I wanted to ask: Why waste your time on such drivel? But I bit my tongue. Other folks’ reading habits were their business, though definitely suspect. While I busied myself in the kitchen, brewing tea, Millicent yawned and stretched, like an ancient and pampered cat rousing itself by the winter hearth.
Sipping tea, I filled Millicent in on last night’s events, and Millicent shook her head. “This does not look good for dear Carlotta. Imagine being brought in for questioning. It’s so Sherlock Holmes.”
I smiled. “More like some hapless woman in a Mary Roberts Rinehart mystery.”
“Will she be arrested?”
“
I think that’s a possibility.”
Millicent tsked, sipped her tea. “Carlotta has often been her own worst enemy. Such a decent woman who has purposely cultivated a questionable public image—for the sake of a half-hearted career.”
“Which brings me,” I began at once, “to Martha—and her public, even private, image.”
I could see Millicent frown. This was an unwelcome topic for tea-time conversation, even if that talk centered on murder. “Edna, you know I cannot speak kindly of that woman.”
“Last night, at the Fenwicks, there was even more revelation about Martha’s sexual escapades, if you will. Jason Fargo and even a respectable man like Henry Fenwick . . .”
Millicent cut me off. “Everyone knows about those episodes, Edna. Carlotta never stopped talking about them, boring everyone to tears. Not because she was a gossip, but because she was hurt by Martha’s conduct. She couldn’t abide it.”
“But just what sort of woman was Martha? Was she really so . . . flagrant with her favors?”
Millicent chuckled. “How you phrase the indelicate, Edna. Yes, she was. That was, as I’ve told you, my problem with her . . . her conduct.”
“But that was years ago, decades back. She seems to have mellowed into a respectable woman.”
“Appearances,” Millicent insisted. “Martha couldn’t help herself. There must be name for women like that, although I’d rather not know it. Maybe Freud—whom I’ll never read, of course—gave it a name.”
“I wouldn’t know either.”
“I trust Carlotta is right about her current suspicion about Jason Fargo. I’ve met him a number of times, of course. I’ve known about him. Truth to tell, I’ve even seen his automobile pulling up in front of the Inn at times when Carlotta was in New York. And this was within the past year, mind you. I never told Carlotta, not being a talebearer.” There’s a difference between a gossip and a talebearer. You gossip behind peoples’ backs.” She smiled. “You tell tales to hurt someone.”
Jason’s visits to the Inn were a revelation. “So . . .”
“So it’s possible, but who cares? Really. Peoples’ sexual peccadilloes, frankly, are tedious and always redundant. I only make a harsh judgment when marriages are shattered, lives ruined. Families with children affected. As for Jason and Martha, so what?” She paused, fretting. “Perhaps he’s still married. I don’t know. If so . . .” She shrugged. “A cad.”
I put down my teacup. “The only ‘so what’ would be if it led someone to murder Martha. Or her mistaken, accidental murder. Carlotta as intended murder victim.”
“Very complicated,” Millicent said, munching on a cookie. “Hmm. Do you think that Jason killed Martha? Or, ironically, he intended to strike Carlotta? Jason hiding outside my house in the dark, brick in hand?”
“Possibly.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him. Never liked the man.”
“But could there be other men?”
“Who knows?” She smiled. “Stanley Lupinski, I doubt it. Eben? Who knows? No reason to. You know, for a while there was a traveling salesman who’d stop for supper and an illicit moment with Martha on his way through town. That was a year ago or so. Dear Carlotta, coming back from New York early, put a stop to that when she found out. Told that skinny drummer to move on.”
“How could she stop that?”
“Carlotta is a demanding woman.”
“You know, Millicent, I’ve always considered Carlotta the woman of loose morals. Delightful, but far from the way I live my life. Clearly I was wrong.”
“Carlotta, as I once told you, is the last New England Puritan.”
“But Carlotta’s three marriages.” Short-lived, all of them; and controversial, scandal splashed in the gossip sheets.
“All desperate attempts at respectability, ironically. And all that Broadway razz-ma-tazz is just that: window dressing on a prudish, somewhat judgmental and rigidly moralistic woman. Lord, Edna, by comparison, I’m a Parisian libertine.”
“I would never have thought it. I’ve known her for years. Well, superficially. At parties. No intimate tête-à-tête, I admit.”
“Well, her New York world was different. A questionable liaison perhaps, now and then, all really genteel, in her early New York years. New York does that to women, I declare—makes women believe they have more freedom than men want them to have. Women in New York are probably lied to more than prostitutes in the Pigalle.”
I laughed, enjoyed the line. Even Millicent chuckled. “I may be housebound, but I still read very bad novels.” She pointed to the E. Phillip Oppenheim novel on the side table.
I maneuvered the conversation to Henry’s refusal to assist Carlotta, and Peggy’s vehement insistence on his keeping a low profile. “Well, Edna dear,” Millicent confided, “those two are Carlotta’s old friends. Henry went to grammar school with her, and they’re all related somehow. They were already close friends before he disappeared into Yale’s exclusivity. Henry has always been a bit of romantic, I think, a dreamer. But Peggy has always been the pragmatist. He married her for her spine, not her looks. Left to his own devices, Henry would forsake politics, live on the piddling fortune he still has after the Crash last year, and play golf in Darien, day in, day out. It could be a good marriage if they both stopped running for office. You know, he was a rebel for five minutes in his younger days.”
“How so?”
“He left the temple of Republican loyalty, and he played with being a Teddy Roosevelt Bull Moose.”
“That’s so scandalous?”
“Edna, this is Connecticut. Land of steady habits.”
“More like the land of Stodgy Babbitts.”
Millicent laughed. “I don’t read Sinclair Lewis. I leave him to you youngsters. He gives me indigestion.” She clicked her tongue. “But Carlotta is being unreasonable, appealing to Henry. She’s a firecracker ready to explode.”
I closed my eyes for a second. Tired, I thought. I’m tired. Carlotta, the fuse burning down to the gunpowder.
Yes, I thought, especially since she’s allowed red wine to control her evenings.
“Especially,” Millicent said, aloud, “since wine is the friend she turns to for comfort.”
Startled, I wondered if Millicent could read minds. The two of us stared at each other, conspiratorially.
Back at the Inn, I found Carlotta sitting in the kitchen. She looked up, disoriented, and I read the signs: the swollen eyes, the bloody complexion. Carlotta had just gotten out of bed, it seemed. Last night, lying in bed, I heard her downstairs, heard the tinkle of glass against bottle, heard the stumbling into doorframes, the misstep, the muttered and slurred oaths.
“All of my friends have betrayed me, Edna,” she declared, flat out.
“All of them?”
“Except you, of course.” Her voice was gravelly. She reached for a lit cigarette in an ashtray, started to put it between her lips, then put it back into the ashtray, staring at it as though she didn’t know how it got here.
I sighed. “Carlotta, you know I was supposed to return to the city yesterday.”
Carlotta’s eyes got wide. “Oh God, Edna, no. Please stay longer.”
I was troubled. I wanted to be back in my apartment, but I felt I couldn’t leave Carlotta alone. Yet I didn’t want to be at the Inn. “A couple days,” I said now.
“Oh, Edna, stay. I can’t be here alone.”
I thought of Stas, and my helping with the investigation. I nodded. “A few more days.”
“Thank you.” She stared at me. “I have no other friends.”
“Carlotta, you may have made an unreasonable demand on Henry Fenwick.”
“Edna, we went to school together. Same grade. Our parents were friends. He’s like a sixth cousin, once or twice removed. Whatever that means.”
“It may not be tenable . . .”
Carlotta shook her head. “All of my friends have abandoned me. They will come to watch me hanged on the town green.”
“They don
’t hang women in Connecticut, Carlotta.”
“What do they do? Stone them, or burn them like Salem witches?”
“You’re not going to hang, Carlotta.”
“Famous last words.” Carlotta stood up, gripped the table’s edge for a moment, then walked to the kitchen sink and splashed water on her face. Dripping, she faced me. “Peter’s coming to get us at noon.” She ran her fingers through her uncombed hair. “I need to have my hair done, but he wants to have lunch with you. Just the two of you. Is that acceptable to you? I’ll try to join you later, if I’m still un-handcuffed by your Trooper Wolniak.”
I was surprised. “What does Peter want?”
“He claims my stories of what’s going on confuse him. I seem to keep losing track of facts. I forget things that happened. And Trooper Wolniak talks in monosyllables to him, as to a simple child. It was my idea that the two of you meet.”
“Will Delia be there?” I asked, not so innocently.
Carlotta smiled, though her brow contracted. “She is a bore, no? You know, I always married weak, pathetic men. My one son, always a shy, handsome boy, seems to reverse the great chain of being. He connects with a barracuda. At least my husbands knew enough to leave when I showed them the door, although two of them hang around like barnacles on a weathered ship.” She bowed. “Real weathered. But Peter is too kind to tell her to go away.”
“Maybe he loves her.”
“Oh, Edna, please. How can you love someone who only loves herself?”
“You never liked her?”
“I told her once, at a New Year’s party, when I intentionally imbibed too much bubbly, that I despised her very being.”
I smiled. “How did she take that?’
“Oh, she’s a witch, Edna. She laughed, tucked her arm into Peter’s, and said, ‘I’m not going to marry you, Carlotta.’ Can you imagine?”
“Well, this generation is different from ours. Short skirts, short tempers.”
“No shortage of ego, Edna.” She smiled. “Peter once told me Delia actually carries a silver hip flask in her purse.”