Murder on the Cliff (7 page)

They were having a drink while they awaited Marianne and Lester, who were staying at a neighbor’s guest house. They would all be leaving shortly for the geisha party. Spalding was talking on the telephone in the adjoining library, making last-minute arrangements for the Mikado Ball the next evening.

“I really don’t understand it,” Connie was saying. “He hasn’t spoken to us in five years, and now he’s inviting us to his geisha party. Maybe I do understand why he would invite us. After all, Spalding
is
president of the Black Ships Festival. Keeping up appearances and all. But why on earth would he invite Marianne?” Her brow creased in perplexity. “Would you like another, dear?” she asked, noticing that Charlotte had finished her drink.

“Thank you, I would. But don’t call Mimi. I’ll get it myself,” Charlotte replied as she got up to fix herself another Manhattan at the bar tray. As she mixed her drink, she offered her explanation: “Maybe he’s trying to get on the good side of the surrogate judge in order to enhance his chances of winning his case,” she said. “He said today that the judge had ordered him and Marianne to cease hostilities, or something to that effect.”

Her drink mixed, she resumed her seat on a chintz sofa facing the fireplace. Over the mantel hung a nineteenth-century seascape of a view almost identical to the one from the Smiths’ terrace. It was called “Twilight on the Seashore.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Connie said. “But that was last March, and he’s never made any friendly overtures before this. And to invite Dede too! The thought that Shimoda might ever go to her is enough to … I don’t know, to make him hysterical or something. He can’t have changed that much. Only six weeks ago, he was accusing Lester and Marianne of trying to kill him.”

Charlotte raised an winged eyebrow in an expression of skepticism that was her screen trademark, along with her long, leggy stride and her clipped Yankee accent. “Kill him?”

“It was a ridiculous incident. It happened on a Wednesday, the day they switch occupancy. Marianne and Lester had just arrived and Paul was just leaving. They’d been fighting about something: where to hang a painting, I think. Paul wanted it in the foyer, Marianne somewhere else. Instead of driving around back to the carriage house, Lester drove around the driveway and came up behind Paul’s car and nudged it from the rear. Paul accused him of attempted murder.”

“In court?”

Connie nodded. “Surrogate’s Court. The judge didn’t pay any attention, of course. The last I heard, Paul had reduced the charge to vehicular assault, though I don’t think he ever filed any official charge. It was more like name-calling. Of course, Lester shouldn’t have done it, but …”

“Lester shouldn’t have done what, mother?” said Marianne. She had entered the room with a teenaged girl. Her daughter Dede, Charlotte assumed.

“Tried to kill cousin Paul,” Connie replied.

Marianne laughed. “Oh that.” She was dressed in a traditional kimono of flowered navy blue silk. On her head she wore a wig in the formal geisha hairstyle, complete with hair ornaments. With her white skin and brown eyes she might have passed for a geisha were it not for her height and for her nose, which was good-sized even by Western standards.

“You look lovely, my dear,” said Connie. “You can always depend on Marianne to dress up for the occasion,” she continued, addressing Charlotte. “I like to think it comes from having an actress for a mother.” She neglected to pay a similar compliment to the teenager, who looked like an Eighth Avenue hooker. She was dressed in skintight black shorts, a skimpy halter top, and high heels.

The girl went over and kissed her grandmother on the cheek.

“Where’s Spalding?” asked Marianne. “Lester’s out in the car. You know Lester. He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

“He’s on the phone. He’ll be off in a minute,” replied Connie. “Hello, darling,” she said, giving the girl a big hug. “I want you to meet an old friend of mine, Charlotte Graham. You’ve probably seen her in the movies. My granddaughter, Dede Montgomery.”

As Dede crossed the room to shake hands with Charlotte, Connie stared disapprovingly at her outfit, and then addressed Marianne: “I hope you’re not letting her go to the party dressed like that.”

“Yes, Mother, I
am
letting her go to the party dressed like that. One, she’s old enough to make her own decisions; two, I don’t want to discourage her fledgling sense of fashion experimentation; and three, I don’t give a damn what she wears to a party given by cousin Paul.”

Connie shrugged.

Dede shook hands politely with Charlotte. She was a petite blonde with blue eyes and a sweet smile. Although her father, whom Marianne had never married, had been a Greek, she had inherited none of his dark good looks. Nor did she resemble her mother, but rather her beautiful grandmother.

“Come sit here next to Nana,” said Connie, patting the sofa. Then she turned to Marianne: “We were just speculating about why cousin Paul’s invited us to his geisha party,” she said as Dede sat down beside her. “Charlotte’s been fraternizing with the enemy. Paul gave her the grand tour this afternoon.”

“Did you see the
shunga
?” asked Marianne with a concupiscent leer as she helped herself to a cracker and cheese from the tray on the coffee table.

Charlotte replied that she had.

“Aren’t you the lucky one! Naughty cousin Paul keeps them hidden away from the rest of us. His own private obsession. I think it’s rather strange to keep a gallery full of pornographic pictures locked up for your own private amusement. I don’t think he’s even showed them to Nadine. But then, we all know that cousin Paul is a very strange person.”

The
shunga
weren’t pornography, but Charlotte didn’t want to bother explaining that to Marianne. Furthermore, when it came to sexual obsessions, Marianne was hardly one to cast stones.

“Charlotte thinks he might be trying to earn points with the surrogate judge,” said Connie.

“Could be. But I have my own theory.” She smiled mischievously. “It’s based on an accident I heard about when I lived in Africa. Do you want to hear it?”

“Marianne lived in Rhodesia for five years,” Connie explained.

Charlotte remembered that particular point of light on Marianne’s path to artistic enlightenment—the African nationalist who inspired her “Uhuru” collection. For a while, every socialite in New York was wearing a
dashiki
.

“Zimbabwe, Mother.”

“Sorry, dear. Zimbabwe. Anyway, what’s your theory?”

“It goes like this: after Zimbabwe achieved independence, the government had all these armed rebels hanging around with nothing to do but get into trouble. Anyway, on the anniversary of independence, the government decided to have a reunion of revolutionaries. All the biggest troublemakers were invited. The reunion was held in a building next to a railroad siding.”

“I don’t see how a reunion of African guerrillas relates to cousin Paul’s party,” complained Connie, who over the years had developed a limited tolerance for Marianne’s sympathetic accounts of various Third World struggles.

“Wait,” said Marianne, raising a hand. “Unbeknownst to the revolutionaries, the government had brought in a railroad car that was loaded to the brim with dynamite.”

“They blew them all up?” asked Charlotte.

“To kingdom come, amen. How to achieve governmental stability in one easy step—African politics at its most creative.”

“What are you saying, dear?” asked Connie. “That cousin Paul is going to blow us all up?”

“Don’t you think it’s odd that he’s assembling all the most troublesome members of the family in one place?”

“Then why are you going?”

“To see what happens,” she replied. “Besides, I want to see the inside of the famed Temple of Great Repose. I’ve never been in it, or at least not since cousin Paul fished it out of the ocean.”

The ride over to Shimoda took only a few minutes. They rode in Lester’s big Lincoln. Though Lester had never said anything to that effect, Charlotte suspected that he was offended by Spalding’s twelve-year-old Chevy. Spalding belonged to the breed of old rich who considered driving a new car an unseemly display of wealth. He also believed in turning off every light in the house except the one that was in use at the moment. Connie always said his obsession with the lights was the mark of a family that could trace its money back to the days before the invention of electricity. She also accused him of being as tight as a tick. But if Lester didn’t think much of Spalding’s Chevy, Spalding thought even less of the country-and-western music that blared from Lester’s tape deck, serenading the ivied walls and graceful trees of Bellevue Avenue.

Lester dropped them off in front of the house, and then parked the car behind the carriage house. Once he had rejoined them, they were escorted by a young man in a kimono across the expanse of green lawn to the temple. Against the dark gray water and misty sky—it looked as if it was going to rain—the temple looked beautiful and mysterious. The pines had been strung with round red paper lanterns, the symbol of the floating world. As they walked, the boy babbled on about the Black Ships Festival.

“What’s your name, young man?” asked Connie, who could always be counted on to be friendly to young people.

“Charlie,” the boy replied with a smile.

“Are your parents on the Black Ships Festival Committee?”

“My mother is,” he said. “My brother’s going to the geisha party tonight. But my mother says I’m too young.”

“And who is your mother?”

“Nadine Ogilvie.”

Although the boy didn’t seem to notice it, Charlotte caught the frown of disapproval that crossed Connie’s face. Marianne was less subtle: she nearly fell off her
geta
. Grabbing Dede’s wrist, she rushed on ahead.

As they drew near the temple, Charlotte could see how closely it resembled the rustic original in Shimoda. Next to the flagpole there was even a replica of the monument that had been erected after Harris’s death, bearing an inscription of an entry from his diary describing the raising of the first American flag: “… at two and a half
P
.
M
. of this day, I hoist the ‘First Consular Flag’ ever seen in this Empire. Grim reflections—ominous of change—undoubted beginning of the end. Query—if for the real good of Japan?”

“The change is ominous all right, but not for Japan,” Spalding grumbled as they stopped to read the inscription. “Maybe he should have said ‘if for the real good of the United States.’” Still smarting from Tanaka’s address, he looked as if he might smash a Toshiba radio at any moment, had there been one at hand.

“Better get it out of your system, dear,” said Connie. “I think Mr. Tanaka’s going to be here tonight.”

Spalding harrumphed.

Past the monument, they climbed a stone path lit by the red paper lanterns. Wind chimes hanging in the pines tinkled in the breeze. As they passed the stone lantern that stood guard at the entrance, their host emerged and descended the stairs to the stepping stone at their base. He was wearing an informal brown-and-black-striped kimono. Welcoming them, he bowed deeply in Japanese fashion.

Marianne took the lead. “Hello, cousin Paul,” she said as she marched up the stairs past her host, her daughter in tow. “Thank you for inviting us.” The tone of her voice was acid.

“I would appreciate it if you would remove your shoes, please,” said Paul as he caught sight of Dede’s sharply pointed high heels.

“Oh, sorry,” said Dede sweetly. But as she paused to take off her spike heels, she was jerked forward by her mother, who made a production out of clomping up the stairs to the gallery,
geta
and all.

Ignoring Marianne’s bad manners, Paul turned back to the other guests and welcomed them to the party.

After removing their shoes and leaving them next to those of the earlier arrivals, they donned the one-size-fits-all slippers that had been provided for them, and climbed the stairs to the gallery.

Skirting the building, Paul led them around to the rear of the gallery, which jutted out over the cliff. Several guests had already gathered, among them a Japanese woman who stood at the railing, gazing out to sea. The collar of her kimono dipped backward as if it were going to fall off, revealing the nape of her neck, which was coated with the traditional white makeup of the geisha.

“I’d like you to meet my house guest, Okichi-
mago
,” said Paul, introducing the famous geisha who would host the Okichi Day celebrations.

Okichi-
mago
slowly turned around, and then bowed to the new arrivals. Her slightest movement was possessed of infinite grace.

Charlotte was taken aback at her beauty. Like the Okichi of the faded photograph, she had the long, oval face of the classical Japanese beauty. But even four or five generations hadn’t obliterated her Caucasian blood. Although she had the high cheekbones of the Oriental, her features were bolder than those of a pure Japanese and she had the round eyes so desired by stylish Japanese women, which they paid plastic surgeons hefty sums to create. They were also of a remarkable color: a rich, luminous sea-green flecked with turquoise, as deep and lustrous as the glaze of the sake cup displayed in the mahogany case inside the house.

“It is a great pleasure for me to meet you,” she said. Her American accent was perfect, right down to the
l
in pleasure.

She was made up in formal geisha style: her face was coated with thick white makeup and her heart-shaped mouth was outlined in carmine red. A circle of rouge marked the center of each cheek. Her kimono was one of the most beautiful Charlotte had ever seen. It was made of a shimmery navy blue silk embroidered with gold and silver seashells that were being lightly tossed by waves imprinted in gold leaf. Her brocade obi was tied with a cord of deep celadon-green and fastened with a clip ornamented with a huge baroque pearl. In her hair, she wore a cluster of red camellias.

It was easy to see why she had become the most famous geisha in Japan.

For a moment, they were all slightly dumbstruck. Spalding finally took the lead, greeting her in Japanese. Then he introduced Charlotte: “Okichi, meet Okichi,” he said. After Okichi-
mago
had chatted briefly with Charlotte, Paul introduced her to the other new arrivals.