Christietown (7 page)
Authors: Susan Kandel
“There’s a gun you use,” Marlene said. “We got it at a garage sale last year. And look,” she added, “Isadora Duncan scarves.”
Lois did a twirl with hers and stumbled, landing directly in
Javier’s lap.
Two minutes.
The caterer bustled back in.
“They’re all seated. Am I supposed to keep feeding them? I’m down to the rejects.” She held up a tray of misshapen pasties.
At that point, I had no choice.
I ran into the bathroom, tore out of my Lauren Hutton outfit, unzipped the gray garment bag, and put on a faded tweed skirt, a wool sweater, a baggy cardigan coat, a felt hat, thick stockings, well-worn brogues, and a steel-gray wig.
“Oh, Miss Marple,” said Javier, wheeling himself to my side. “Thank goodness you’ve arrived. We’ve all been so distraught since the untimely demise of my father, the duke of Chislebury, late last night. Maybe you can help us find the culprit.” He grinned in delight. It was his longest speech in the play.
“The last anyone saw of the good duke was in bed,” said Bridget, turning to give the audience an optimal view of her assets. Several of the men hooted appreciatively.
“Good Mr. Griffiths”—Bridget continued, gesturing extrav
agantly toward Lou—“brought the good duke his sleeping draft. Normally, it’s a cup of chocolate at eleven, but the good duke had been having trouble sleeping these last few nights. So good Dr. Haycock prescribed something.”
What was with the “goods”? They weren’t in my script. I shot Bridget a warning glance.
“Perhaps if my father hadn’t started all this nonsense about changing his will, he would’ve slept better,” said Javier. He was
cruising Lou’s way when his right-front wheel caught on the rug. “For Christ’s sake,” he burst out, immediately clapping his hand over his mouth.
Lois tiptoed over to the fireplace, cleared her throat, and started to weep. At least someone was taking this seriously.
“The duke and I were to have been married tomorrow!” she said, blowing her nose. Then she smiled questioningly at me, and when I made the mistake of nodding, wedged her hankie inside one nostril and dug away.
“Really?” drawled Bridget, who was, as I’d predicted, bril
liant at being insolent. “How very amusing.”
“Not so, my dear woman! The vicar was to have presided. We fell in love, you see. He saw me onstage. The duke, not the vicar.” Lois did an attractive little two-step. “And he so desper
ately wanted an heir.”
I was counting on the audience not to notice that Lois was well past her childbearing years. Luckily, most of them were busy eating.
“Qué rico
!” said a woman in the front row, stabbing her fork into a meat pie like she really meant it.
“The duke was such a dreamer,” said Marlene, striding toward center stage. Inspired by a Luis Buñuel film I’d seen on a bad date years ago, I’d cast both Lois and Marlene in the same role. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. “Ah, the patter of little feet on Aubusson rugs.”
“So what if I couldn’t produce an heir,” said Javier angrily. “It’s this disability. And I’m tired of hearing about it.”
With that, everyone turned to look at me. Of course they were looking at me. I was supposed to say something. What was it? I’d written the damn thing, but I had no idea. I felt my knees start to buckle.
“Miss Marple,” said Wren, twirling her pigtails dementedly. “You should sit down. You don’t look very good. Does she look good?” She turned to face the audience.
“No!” they cried in unison.
“Have you had your tea today?”
“No tea,” I said. The room was spinning now.
“Estella, bring Miss Marple some tea,” Wren said.
Bridget ran back into the kitchen as Wren sat me down in an easy chair.
Bridget came back out with a paper cup of water, which she practically poured down my throat.
“Feeling better, Miss Marple?” Bridget asked.
“Yes,” I managed.
Wren said, “Now that you’re refreshed, didn’t you have something you wanted to tell us?”
“It is true, of course,” I recited, “that I have lived what is called a very uneventful life, but I have had a lot of experience in solving different little problems that have arisen.”
Javier interrupted me. “That’s not it.”
“When I was a girl, nobody ever mentioned the word
stomach
.”
Bridget shook her head.
Finally I said, “It really is very dangerous to believe people,” at which point Marlene, ever supportive, cried out, “Yeah, baby!”
And that was only Act I.
Act II went more smoothly. Lael and Javier got carried away during their love scene. Lou, the closest thing we had to muscle, pried them apart. Wren’s device was a big hit. She detonated it just before informing her governess that Sir Guy Pilkington’s late wife, Lady Donata Pilkington, was attempting to contact her from the great beyond.
Coughing through the smoke Wren closed her eyes and said in a high, squeaky voice, “He is a . . . a . . . malevolent . . . force.”
“Who?” Bridget asked.
“He is . . . the . . . the . . . personification . . . of evil.” Wren pressed her fingers to her temples.
“Who?” Bridget insisted.
“Beware the false face!” Wren cried, then fell to the ground in a faint.
At that point Lou entered stage left and Bridget gasped (which she was not supposed to do).
“I knew it,” Bridget muttered loud enough for me to hear from inside the mahogany wardrobe where I was hiding. “The butler did it.” I rocked the wardrobe to signal her to shut up, then stopped for fear of tipping over.
Lou stood there lamely, waiting for the doorbell to chime offstage, which was where he was supposed to be. When he finally heard his cue, he said, “I believe it is the retired Anglo-Indian colonel from next door to see you, Miss Raven.” He peeked behind the curtain. “Indeed, it
is
the retired Anglo-Indian colonel.”
I couldn’t breathe inside the mahogany wardrobe. Plus, my head was itching like crazy under the wig. I was probably aller
gic to the pomade I’d used to make my hair fit.
“Come, dear child,” said Bridget. She picked her psychic charge up off the floor and they exited just as the phone began to ring.
Javier launched himself onstage and said, “Where in the blazes is my manservant whom I pay so handsomely? That I should have to pick up his slack is lamentable.”
Okay, folks, this is it.
Javier spun around a few times, popped a wheelie, and, seeing no one, rose from his wheelchair to answer the phone.
At which point, I—Miss Jane Marple—threw open the doors to the wardrobe and exclaimed, “You, Sir Guy Pilkington, remind me of a parlor maid I once employed! She was always breaking my teacups and then hiding the pieces!”
“Are you calling me a liar?” Javier asked.
“No,” I said. “A murderer!”
A few people in the audience started to applaud, like they couldn’t wait for the thing to be over with, at which point the entire cast emerged, smiling and bowing, along with a young man I’d never seen before in my life.
“Is it over already?” Marlene asked. “We didn’t get to do our dance.”
“Cece,” Bridget whispered to me, cocking her head in the direction of the stranger, who had floppy blond curls and rather resembled an angel, “in case it escaped your notice, he doesn’t look like a retired Anglo-Indian colonel. They’re fat, with mustaches.”
“He’s not an actor,” I hissed. “I have no idea what he’s doing onstage.”
“Sorry to bust things up here,” the stranger said, addressing the room, “but I’m going to need everyone to remain calm. I’m afraid there’s been an . . . incident.”
“Well, duh!” said Lois, putting her hands on her hips.
I was suddenly cold all over. “What do you mean, an inci
dent?”
The audience was starting to stir now. Several people stood up. The stranger exchanged glances with an older man across the room, who locked the front door of the pub and pocketed the key. The second guy had on schlumpy pants and a jacket
with big pockets. The bags under his eyes reached halfway to
his chin.
Unfortunately, I recognized the look.
He flashed his badge as he joined his partner onstage.
“I’m Detective Mariposa,” he said. “You’ve met Detective McAllister.” The stranger smiled, but caught himself before waving. “We’ve got a body in the sales office,” Mariposa said without emotion. “White woman, middle-aged, brown hair.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the color drain from Lou’s face.
“Don’t exactly know what happened yet. We’re working on an ID. So I’ll be asking the questions from here on in.”
“This sucks,” yelled someone in the audience. “My kid didn’t get his coloring book.”
The other one, McAllister, said, “Right now, we’re looking for a Ms. Caruso. Is there a Ms. Caruso here?”
“I’m Cece Caruso,” I said, my voice shaking.
Someone else called out, “I thought you were Miss Marple.”
No.
Ms. Caruso was alive.
And Miss Marple—it appeared—was dead.
hen Agatha took her hand away from her forehead, shesaw that there was blood on it.
She quickly wiped it away with her napkin and finished the last of her coffee, which was as cold and as bitter as the previous night had been.
She left the station in a hurry. It hadn’t been easy to make it even that far. The walk to Guildford from Newlands Corner, where she’d abandoned the car, was at least four miles, which would have been hard to manage even in proper shoes. The penny bus that came over the ridge at breakfast time had been her sal
vation. From there, she caught a milk train to Waterloo Station, where there wasn’t so much as a bun left at the buffet. She was hungry and tired but she could hardly stop now.
The taxi driver took her to Whiteleys.
William Whiteley had founded the place back in the 1850s. “Everything from a pin to an elephant” was his motto, eventually earning him an unsolicited Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria. A few years later, the old man had been killed in the store by some
one claiming to be his illegitimate son.
Agatha had always been perversely attracted to murder scenes.
This morning, Whiteleys betrayed little of its scandalous past. The righteous hum of commerce filled the lobby. She felt comforted by the crowds, comforted by her anonymity. She selected a heavy winter coat with fur at the cuffs and collar, some night thing, and a small traveling case of brown crocodile.
She was ready.
She glanced up at the large clock over the perfume counter. She had to hurry. The Pullman train to Harrogate left King’s Cross at a quarter past eleven. And there wouldn’t be another until Monday.
Harrogate was a fashionable spa, frequented by everyone from people who’d made something out of nothing—poor William Whiteley came to mind—to foreign dukes and duchesses. The names of visitors, as well as the local amusements available to them, were published weekly in the
Herald
.
The week of December fifth, her name would be among them.
The train whistled as it pulled away from the station.
She smiled to herself as she saw her face reflected in the glass.
eople talk about falling apart, but after making an official
ID of his wife’s body, Lou Berman
fell apart
, sinking to the floor as if his bones had turned to dust.
Wren went to him, but he shoved her aside. The rest of us looked away as his cries tore through the room.
Liz Berman had been born with a weak heart.
It had finally given out.
Lou covered his face, but the tears slipped through his fin
gers and ran down his arms. They kept coming for a long time. Afterward, I knelt down beside him and found his hand. He let me hold it until we saw the truck pull into the driveway through the Vicarage’s front window.
LOS ANGELES COUNTY CORONER’S OFFICE
They spelled the words out in stark white letters so you couldn’t miss them, even in the dark.
Lou got up, wiped his eyes, straightened his clothes.
“I’ll be fine,” he said.
“I know,” I said, though I didn’t.
Casting a glance back at the small office where his wife of twenty-two years lay dead, he walked out the door.
Nobody wanted to be the first one to speak.
“Well, shit,” said Detective Mariposa, breaking the silence. “That was something. I’ve seen a lot of messed-up people in my time, but nothing like that. Not ever.” He twisted his mouth into a smile. “No way my wife would cry like that if I keeled over. Hell, she’d probably celebrate.” He looked at Detective McAllister, who was staring at his shoes, hoping his partner would give him a break. No such luck. “You think so, McAllister?”
McAllister raised his head and said, “Yeah, I think she’d cele
brate. She’d have a party and invite the whole department. Okay?”
Mariposa snorted. “I love you, too, Pretty Boy.”
McAllister said, “That about covers it. Sorry to inconve
nience you with all the questions. We won’t be needing any
thing more.”
Mariposa added, “Yeah, like we say in the business, no harm, no foul.”
“What he means,” McAllister said wearily, “is that we’re very sorry for Mr. Berman’s loss.” His blond hair glowed like a halo. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Mariposa, on the other hand, had a tail tucked into his pants.
I drove back home with the windows open and the radio blaring. Lois and Marlene were in the backseat being unchar
acteristically quiet. For that at least I was grateful. I couldn’t bear the thought of their chatter—not now.
While I’d been playing the fool in the Blue Boar Pub, Liz had been dying. No one to hear her, no one to see her, no one to save her.
I kept going over the events in my mind.
Sometime after eleven, Ian’s assistant went into the office. She was looking for a pen. When she saw the woman’s body behind the desk, she let out a shriek that sent Ian running. Ian’s shrieks interrupted Dov Pick and his girlfriend, who followed suit. None of them, however, had any idea who the woman was or how she’d gotten there or who had done whatever it was that had been done to her. So they’d called the police and screamed bloody murder.
Detectives Mariposa and McAllister had shown up within minutes.
She might have been there like that for hours, they’d specu
lated. Only the autopsy would tell. But there was no sign of foul play, which was convenient since half a dozen people had trampled the scene.
At that point, Ian had suggested it might be a good idea to find me.
I was afraid to go into that office. I was afraid of dead bodies. Panic-stricken. Superstitious. But everyone in the room was counting on me. I was supposed to clear things up. I was hoping—praying—I wouldn’t be able to, that the dead woman wouldn’t be Liz, that she would be some poor soul none of us had ever laid eyes on before.
I pushed open the door.
The office had no windows.
No air.
It smelled like a sickroom, thick and rank.
The acrylic walls gave off a dizzying glow.
The woman’s body was lying behind the desk, a chair top
pled next to her, a phone in her hand.
The detectives told us later that she’d been trying to call 911.
I remember her hair spilling down her back in thick curls, her skin as white as snow, her lips and nails as red as blood.
She was wearing a black dress and black high heels. I didn’t recognize her right away. She looked so beautiful. But there was no doubt. It was Liz.
When I came out of the office, I looked straight at Lou. His arm brushed mine on his way in. Where he’d touched me, I felt the kind of cold you feel a split second after you’ve been burned.
“Cece! Oh, Cece!”
I shook my head like I was coming to.
Lois was bellowing at me from the backseat. “Can you hear me above the music?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” I said under my breath.
“What did you say? We can’t hear you,” said Marlene.
“Well, I can hear you,” I shouted, then snapped off the radio. “What is it?”
“I’m just so sad for that sweet man,” said Lois.
Oh, Lois, I am, too.
Out of my rearview mirror, I saw the Christietown sign retreating in the distance.
Damn Ian Christie.
No, I couldn’t blame him. It was my fault. I’d gotten Liz into this. I’d taken her from Lou.
Twenty-two years. What did he have left?
The dance studio.
His memories.
Would he remember her the way she’d looked yesterday, or the way she’d looked today, so beautiful, so still?
Of course, Lou had always been the pretty one.
Like Archie Christie. Too handsome for his wife, people said. Agatha should have known.
You can’t trust a handsome man.
At their first meeting, Agatha had been thrilled when Archie encouraged her to cut several partners so she could dance with
him. Several days later, he’d turned up at Ashfield, her family home, on a motorcycle. What woman could have resisted?
Lieutenant Archibald Christie, member of the elite ranks of the Royal Air Corps, decorated war hero, recipient of the DSO, the CMG, and the Order of St. Stanislaus Third Class with Swords.
I’d never really had much sympathy for him. But maybe that wasn’t fair.
People are entitled to change their minds. Entitled to fall out of love. But history means something. Sharing a child means something.
I wondered what went through Archie’s head during those eleven days when his wife, Agatha, disappeared and was pre
sumed dead.
What did he think when the authorities informed him that a Morris car was found not far from their home, at the edge of a chalk pit?
And when he was told an initial search of Newlands Corner had yielded a black shoe covered with mud and a brown glove lined with fur, what then? Did he see the look in her eyes when he’d told her he was through with her?
When a local landmark, the Silent Pool, was dredged with a pump, did he remember how distraught she’d been, that she’d been sleeping badly, working poorly, not eating?
My editor, Sally, had generously given me until a week from Monday to figure it out. Glad my mind was so uncluttered.
After dropping off Lois and Marlene, I pulled into my driveway, cut the engine, and trudged across the grass to my front walk. And then I stopped short.
Because standing there on my doorstep were two blondes I didn’t know from Adam, and one dark-haired man I knew like the back of my hand.