The Marlowe Murders

by Laura Giebfried

  I reached the door labeled Augustus and raised my hand to knock against the wood. There was no answer. I folded my hands together as I waited, automatically filing away the assorted names of the rooms to ensure that I remembered them all for later.

  Creaking came from behind me, and I half-turned to see the door to the Lillet Room opening a crack. The movement was so slight that it might have been a breeze that had caused it, though I couldn't be sure. Then a voice – so high and childlike that it almost didn't sound human – called out from within.

  “You came back.”

  I took a step toward it, curiosity pricking my skin.

  “No,” I said. “I only just arrived. I'm Alexandra Durant –”

  But before I could say more, the door slammed shut. I shifted uncertainly in my spot, suddenly getting the impression that Mrs. Tilly was playing a trick on me by sending me to the wrong room. After all, Professor Marlowe had said that his mother lived alone except for the cook and ferryman. I briskly turned back to the Augustus Suite and knocked again. More silence followed.

  “Mrs. Marlowe?” I said, raising my voice further so that she could hear me through the wood, but by now I was almost certain that she wasn't inside. I knocked one more time and then opened the door. A breeze rushed over my face.

  “Mrs. Marlowe?”

  No one answered. I stepped into the room uninvited.

  Utter cold enveloped me. All of the windows were open, blowing the deep purple curtains away from the glass in streams of velvet, though the sunlight that flitted through them barely lit the room and certainly did nothing to warm it. The air that I breathed was released in puffs of white as I exhaled, obscuring my view. I walked through it to get further into the room.

  The bedroom immediately struck me as a room of neglected splendor: the walls were gilded and the fireplace was golden, but it was tarnished and battered, and the silk pillows and fur blankets draped over the armchairs looked worn from years of use. Even the cushions on the window seat, which was large enough to hold an entire family comfortably, sank down in the middle beyond repair, and there was a stale odor that permeated the fabrics and made my eyes water. As I moved to cross the room, the indistinct faces of animals that had been turned into rugs glowered up at me with blank black eyes.

  “Mrs. Marlowe –?” I tried one last time, but then I spotted her. She was laying on top of the covers of the bed, dressed in a long-sleeve black gown adorned with crystals. I moved closer to better see her, and as the curtains blew upwards, her form was illuminated by sunlight. Her iron-gray hair was pulled back from her face to reveal an unsightly brown birthmark that stretched over her right cheek which hadn't been visible in the photograph I had seen of her, and the frown lines on her skin were so deep that they looked like canals that had been drained of their water source.

  A gasp came from the hallway, and I swung around to see a figure with a frigid white face. She looked at me for a split second before fleeing down the hall. Shivers ran up and down my skin, and as I turned back to the bed and stared down at John's mother, a surreal sense of understanding came over me. The cook had been right: I wasn't working for Mrs. Marlowe.

  Mrs. Marlowe was dead.

  Chapter 1

  There were twelve people on the island, not counting the dead body, of course, and when the doorbell rang to announce the arrival of the thirteenth, the snow had begun to fall again, and it would surely be the last time for the night that someone would be able to access the Marlowe Estate.

  Abandoning my search of the kitchen cabinets, I hurried toward the front door, wiping my dusty hands on my apron as I went and wondering why none of Mrs. Marlowe's children had informed me that anyone else was coming. The hallways seemed to have narrowed in the three days since I had arrived, making the house even darker and stranger, and I weaved through the East Room and past the Ballroom and Billiard Room with the childish fear that if I went a step too slow, something might reach out to drag me into the shadows.

  Or maybe I already was in the shadows, I realized.

  I reached the Foyer and pulled open the front door. A gust of wind greeted me and scattered snow all over the black-and-white tiled floors. A man stood on the porch, bundled up to combat the cold, and the little bit of his face that was visible was raw and red from the harsh ocean wind. He had undoubtedly just come off the ferry, though Mr. Kneller hadn't come with him; he was probably back at the guesthouse enjoying his solitude.

  The man stepped past me to come inside, snapping the door shut behind him. Shaking the snow from his head, he stripped off his overcoat and scarf and hung them up.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, my arms still outstretched with the intention of taking his coat for him.

  “I'm here for the wake.”

  He had hair and eyes the color of espresso and wore a herringbone three-piece suit with no tie. A button was missing on the left arm, quite unlike the perfectly pressed tuxedos that the men in the Parlor had on, and there was an air about him that I recognized well enough to know that he didn't belong there. I put my arms back at my sides.

  “Mrs. Marlowe's wake?” I asked, as though there was any possibility that he was looking for another person's wake at another house on another island, but had just gotten off at the wrong stop.

  “Yes.”

  “The wake was at noon. You missed it.”

  “I see,” he said, looking only mildly concerned. He had a clipped voice: poised and proper, but distinctly American-enough to know that he wasn't part of the family. “Well, this was when I was told to come.”

  “And you are …?”

  He tilted forward ever slightly.

  “Isidore Lennox.”

  Though I was certain no one had mentioned anyone by that name, the way he was looking at me with such sureness was throwing me off. With my hands behind my back, I snapped the rubber band against my wrist to jolt my memory. Nothing came.

  “I'll just … go announce that you're here,” I said.

  I crossed the Foyer and knocked twice on the Parlor door before entering. The Marlowes were seated in a circle of tufted chairs and love-seats while a Nat King Cole song played on the radio from the table in the corner; his deep, calming voice was out of place amongst the bickering. I listened to it for a moment, reveling in the sound of Chestnuts Roasting on An Open Fire, but as my throat tightened at the memory of all the times my mother had played his records, I focused my attention back on the task at hand. I scanned the beaded evening dresses until I found the eldest of Mrs. Marlowe's children, Bernadette. She had perched herself on a chair much too small for her girth and seemed incapable of freeing herself. With her black feathery shawl and small eyes, she looked like a giant stuffed vulture.

  “Mrs. Carlton?” I called to her, but my voice bounced off of the conversation I had interrupted. I ought to have been telling John Marlowe of the guest's arrival, but since he had been purposefully avoiding me since he had arrived the day before – ignoring my efforts to find out why he had hired me to work for his mother when she was, most certainly, dead – I saw no point. Not right now, anyway.

  “And when I looked in, I saw it standing over her bed!” Edie was saying, her fingernails digging into either of her bony arms and her prominent teeth chattering.

  “It's the wine, Edie. Some people can't handle their liquor,” said Marjorie.

  “That's the pot calling the kettle sloshed,” Bernadette said in a carrying whisper, taking another sip of her brandy.

  Marjorie glared at her.

  “I can handle my liquor just fine, Birdie,” she snapped, though her blotchy red cheeks disagreed.

  “Oh, yes – I know,” Bernadette said. “That's why you drink so much.”

  I cleared my throat.

  “Mrs. Carlton?” I said, louder this time, but it didn't help.

  “I'm telling you that it was a ghost!” Edie exclaimed. “Bill saw it, too!”

  Edie's husband was sipping his drink and didn't seem to notice that he had been
pulled into the conversation until his wife jabbed him in the side. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his thin, crooked nose and looked around.

  “Didn't you?” Edie said, giving him a look that determined his answer for him.

  “I … well, there was certainly some sort of movement …”

  “Well, that proves it,” Marjorie said dryly, downing the rest of her drink. Her face had now taken on a purplish hue, clashing horribly with her bright orange hair.

  “I've seen a lot of odd things since we arrived, too, Edie,” Rachel said. She was dressed in a rigid black gown and had a thin, delicate silver cross hanging around her neck. Beside her was her husband, and despite the fact that he was in a wheelchair, even he was wearing a tuxedo for the occasion, though the front had been stained by the saliva dripping from his open mouth. “Shadows from the trees outside, the moonlight shifting –”

  “It wasn't a shadow!” Edie cried. “It was still daylight! And the ghost – it looked like Mary –!”

  “You're being ridiculous, Edie,” John said, adjusting the red bow tie around his neck. “And now you're getting hysterical –”

  “I am not hysterical!”

  “Mrs. Carlton!” I nearly shouted, and Marjorie, at least, heard me.

  “Birdie!” she snapped at Bernadette, then jabbed her finger in my direction. “Shut up for a minute and pay attention to your maid!”

  “If she wants me to hear her, she has to speak louder,” Bernadette replied as though I wasn't in the room. “Now, Edie, the house is very old. What you're hearing are the sounds of the wood contracting and expanding due to the temperature changes –”

  “Mrs. Carlton, there's another guest who's just arrived –” I began again, but Bernadette couldn't, or was pretending not to, hear me. “– should I let him in?”

  “Did you hire another servant of some sort, Birdie?” Marjorie called. “It's bad enough that you fired Tilda –”

  “I didn't fire Tilda,” Bernadette said. “John did, though goodness knows why. She knew how to do things properly –”

  “That woman was ancient: she ought to have been let go years ago,” John said. “Just because she came over on the boat with Mother was no reason to pretend otherwise.”

  “At least Tilda knew how to iron wool,” Bernadette muttered.

  “I'll have another drink, when you get the chance,” John said, shaking his empty glass in my direction in what was now the closest he had come to speaking to me since he had arrived. I took the glass from him and went to the bar cart to refill it, not bothering to ask what he was drinking. It was always –

  “Give me the Macallan,” he called, as though I could have possibly forgotten.

  “Mrs. Carlton,” I said as I slopped some into his glass and brought it back over to him, “there's another guest waiting out in the Foyer.”

  “Has Cassandra finally come down?” Rachel asked, apparently unaware that the doorbell had rung. I didn't blame her: it was difficult to hear anything other than the incessant chatter coming from all directions, let alone anything outside of the room.

  “No,” I said. The fifth Marlowe sister still hadn't emerged from the room where the odd, childlike voice had called to me on my first day at the house, and though I had been bringing food to her door three times a day, I had never so much as gotten a glimpse of her. “It's a man. He's just arrived, so –”

  “There are no more guests, dear,” Bernadette said. “I have four sisters and a brother, and they're all here with their significant others – except for Marjorie, of course.”

  “She doesn't care that I'm divorced, Birdie,” Marjorie snapped. “Only you do.”

  “I don't need to know the reasons why your husband left you,” Bernadette said, holding up her hands as though surrendering despite asking the firing squad to shoot. “I was just telling young Alexa, here, that everyone who was supposed to be here came.”

  “Alexandra,” I corrected automatically, but Bernadette hadn't heard me. She cupped her hand around her ear.

  “I can't hear you if you don't speak louder, Alexa,” she said, her own voice rising to demonstrate for me, but John had gone back to arguing about the supposed ghost sighting with Edie, and Bill was trying to start a discussion with Rachel, and it was impossible to speak louder without outright screaming.

  “Leave the poor girl alone, Birdie,” Marjorie said. She rolled her eyes at me. “Who's in the Foyer, Alexa?”

  “It's – ah – it's a man,” I said, thrown off by the seemingly permanent damage that had been done to my name. “He said his name's Isidore Lennox.”

  The buzzing of voices dropped, and silence apart from the low hum of the radio met me as though I had just said something vulgar. Eight pairs of eyes turned slowly toward me.

  “Lennox?” Bernadette repeated, suddenly capable of hearing me quite well.

  “You must be confused,” Edie said. “He wouldn't show up here.”

  “Apparently he would,” Marjorie said, “or else he wouldn't be standing in the Foyer –”

  “Well, who invited him?”

  “No one invited him,” Marjorie replied. “No one likes him.”

  “Just because no one likes him doesn't mean no one invited him,” Bernadette said.

  “Does that mean it was you?” Marjorie shot.

  “Certainly not. Like I said, everyone I knew to be invited showed up at the proper time.”

  “Well, this is horrible,” Amalia said, setting her drink down so that she could cross her arms. She looked at John as though doing so might negate what I had just told her. “It's not appropriate for him to be here – he's not family.”

  “Neither are you,” Marjorie said in an undertone, and Amalia threw her a withering look suggesting that, since she had married the family patriarch, she was far higher up than her red-headed sister-in-law would ever be.

  “Alexa, why don't you ask him to come in here?” Rachel said kindly. “Maybe he'd like a drink –”

  “Maybe he'd like to leave,” Marjorie said. “God knows there isn't enough liquor on earth to stand being in a room with him.”

  “Spoken like a true alcoholic,” Bernadette whispered loudly.

  Marjorie's mouth opened to retort, but Rachel cut her off.

  “We can't just leave him out in the Foyer.”

  “Can't we?” Marjorie said.

  “It's our house now,” Amalia said, laying her hand over John's to show off the dime-sized diamond on her finger. She tossed her dark hair over her shoulders, and with her elegant gown and heavily made-up face, she gave off the impression of a woman who was still clinging desperately to what had once been her striking beauty, but now only held resentment for the way wrinkles had sneaked onto her face and weight had crept upon her figure. “I think we ought to tell him to leave. Immediately.”

  “But somebody obviously invited him,” Rachel said. “He couldn't have just guessed when the wake would be –”

  “He might have read about it in the papers and come as soon as he could,” Amalia said.

  “Then how did Mr. Kneller know to pick him up?” Rachel asked.

  Marjorie narrowed her eyes at her.

  “Yes, Rachel,” she said. “How would Mr. Kneller know?”

  “I don't know,” Rachel replied. “That's why I asked.”

  “Who among us regularly chats with Kneller –?” Marjorie began, but Bill quickly cut her off.

  “This is ridiculous,” he said. “The man's standing right outside the door. Let's just bring him in and ask him what this is all about.”

  “I don't think that's a good idea,” Amalia said, looking again at John. “He's obviously come for the money. There's nothing in the will that gives him any right to it, is there?”

  “Mother was very good about keeping it up to date,” John said.

  “Even so,” she persisted. “He might've found a loophole, or he's planning to challenge it –”

  “In that case, I'll ask him for some advice,” Marjorie said. “
I wouldn't mind challenging it myself.”

  “Alexa,” Rachel said, turning to me. “Why don't you tell Lennox to make himself comfortable while he waits –?”

  “He cannot!” Amalia said, looking horrified. “What if he goes through the rooms pocketing things?”

  “I doubt it will come to that, Amalia,” Bernadette said. “The Tiffany lamp can't fit in his breast-pocket, after all …”

  “Well, someone should keep an eye on him anyway,” Marjorie said. “I already got cheated out of most of my inheritance, and I don't need help losing any more of it from him –”

  “The estate was always going to John,” Amalia snapped. “You didn't get cheated out of anything –”

  “I got cheated out of a lifetime of favoritism and overindulgence,” she returned icily, “all because I wasn't born a son –”

  “Let's not start that again,” Rachel said calmly. “We're all very happy for John –”

  “Really? Then why were you practically on your knees begging him for money yesterday to help you out of your debt?” Marjorie asked. “I'm surprised you would bother to humiliate yourself. You ought to have known he'd say no.”

  Rachel's cheeks flushed as though she had been slapped in the face. She looked down at her hands, which were twisting around in her lap.

  “I can't be blamed for others' financial failures,” John said. “Just because you and I shared a womb doesn't mean I'll share my money. You're all acting as though you thought Mother's allowances would last forever.”

  Rachel's face was now the color of a cooked beet. Her mouth was clamped shut, either to stop her from retorting or vomiting. She continued to stare down at her hands, though John was paying her no mind anyhow. I had the sudden urge to say something despite knowing nothing about the situation, only because John was ignoring her in the exact way he had been doing to me since he had arrived. Just as I opened my mouth to speak, though, Rachel spoke again.