Murder Under the Palms (20 page)

“I don’t remember the name, but it must have been,” she said, and then continued: “At first he was fairly rational about his mission, but as time went on he began to suffer from delusions of grandeur. He saw himself as the future White Russian führer. At one point, he even had postage stamps printed up with his image on them. He liked to think of himself as part of a world trio—Hitler, Mussolini, and Koprosky—who were destined to shape twentieth-century history.”

“Was this guy for real?” Eddie said incredulously.

Charlotte nodded. “He sounds crazier than he really was. A lot of what he did, he did in jest: he was a showman, a buffoon, an incorrigible romantic.”

“In other words, a real character.”

“To say the least,” she agreed. “He liked to dress up in storm trooper regalia: brown shirt, Sam Browne belt, jackboots, swagger stick, swastika armbands. Very Erich von Stroheim. He’d drive around Hadfield in one of his Pierce Arrows with swastika pennants flying from the fenders. He turned one of the cow barns into a shooting gallery. He would invite guests to take pot shots at photographs of Stalin and other Communist leaders. I managed to hit Stalin right on the nose once,” she added proudly.

“What did the town think of this guy?”

“Well, it was a pretty sleepy little town, and I think a lot of people appreciated the fact that he livened it up. As my housemother once commented, ‘He stands out in Hadfield like a Hottentot at a meeting of the DAR.’ I think they were amused more than anything else. New Englanders have always had a high tolerance for eccentricity. Also, he was a charming man and very well-liked. People thought of him as a romantic—a quixotic figure with the impossible dream of restoring the Russian monarchy.”

“In jackboots?”

“You’ve got to remember, this was early on. Hitler still wasn’t perceived as being the threat he later became. Also, despite the swastikas, Alex—”

“Alex?” interrupted Eddie.

Charlotte smiled. “We were on a first-name basis. That’s yet another story, which I’ll tell you sometime. Anyway, despite the swastikas, Alex forswore any Nazi associations. He would say over and over again that just because he was anti-Communist didn’t mean that he was pro-Nazi. It was the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-ally philosophy.”

“What did his wife’s family think of him?” Eddie asked.

“They destested him. He was an embarrassment to them. Once he came to a party they were throwing at the Waldorf Astoria in his storm trooper garb. But their politics were almost as extreme, though more subtly expressed.”

“What do you mean?”

“It may have been Alex who was parading around in jackboots, but the Wellands also had fascist sympathies,” Charlotte explained. “They were like a lot of wealthy families at that time. They respected Hitler for solving Germany’s unemployment problems and Mussolini for making the trains run on time. But to get back to Alex: as time went on, he became more and more deluded. He started gathering arms in preparation for the coming struggle against the Reds, and he started training troops. He converted his chicken coops into dormitories for a summer camp for Russian youths from New York.”

“Youths like Paul Federov?”

“Exactly. He looked on these young men as the nucleus of a volunteer army that would some day reclaim Russia from Stalin’s grip. You could think of them in terms of Hitler Youth.”

“Koprosky Youth,” said Eddie.

“Exactly. Loyal and obedient fighters willing to risk everything to advance the cause. I don’t remember much about the camp, actually, since I wasn’t at school in the summer. But there was a small coterie of these young men who lived at the farm year-round.”

“Are you suggesting that he’s the Fox?”

She shook her head. “He was arrested in January, 1942.”

“For what?”

“Espionage. I thought the charges were ridiculous, as did everyone who knew him. But it was right after Pearl Harbor; people were convinced there were spies under every bed. One of the Russian fascist satellite organizations to which he had sent money—Dorothy’s money, of course—had a remote connection with the Bund. He was prosecuted by a politician who was trying to make a name for himself. He served five years in a federal penitentiary.”

“But someone who was associated with him could be the Fox.”

“I think it’s a good bet. Someone who observed Roehrer and Federov, and thought they would make likely recruits for Operation Golden Bird. The question is, How do we find out who? Dorothy died in the fifties, and Alex died twelve years ago. But there must still be people in Hadfield who might remember Alex’s associates. Do you still have the list of the names of those who were aboard the ship at the time of the fire?”

Eddie nodded. “It’s at my hotel.”

“Then maybe we could take it up to Hadfield and show it around.”

Eddie shivered. “Brr,” he said. “I’m a California boy. I’m not sure my blood’s thick enough for Connecticut in February.”

“C’mon,” Charlotte chided him. “But first we have to make sure that Paul Federov and Paul Feder are the same person.”

They got back to Palm Beach just after seven and headed directly for Château en Espagne in search of concrete evidence that Federov and Feder were one and the same. After parking on the street in front of the house, they opened the wrought-iron gate and walked down the path to the jungle-enclosed courtyard that had so intrigued Charlotte on her earlier visit, and which set the house apart from its carefully manicured neighborhood. On this visit, she noticed little things that she had missed the first time. The wood of the front door was pitted and old, and its cast-iron hinges looked as if they had been scavenged from a European monastery. Moss-covered statues were tucked away in niches that had been carved out of the lush tropical foliage at the edges of the courtyard, and old urns were planted with gardenias, whose sweet scent perfumed the air. The house had lost none of its appeal. If anything, the romantic quality that had captivated her on her earlier visit was enhanced by the fact that the house was no longer occupied. In the violet twilight, it had the air of an abandoned farmhouse in the Tuscan countryside.

“Nice place,” said Eddie, looking up at the tower. He was clearly charmed as well. “I wonder what’s going to happen to it now.”

“Dede says it will probably be put up for sale.” As Charlotte spoke, the thought passed through her mind again that she might buy it, and as it did, she felt a pang of nervousness. Was she ready to commit to the life of the lotus-eaters? she wondered. After all, she was at heart a Yankee ascetic, as at home as a puffin on the rock-bound coast of Maine, where her summer house was located.

Putting the thought out of her head for the moment, she headed toward a gate in the stucco wall of the courtyard, over which snaked a lush bougainvillea in full flower. Like the front door, the door in the gate was made out of the native pecky cypress, which had aged to a silver sheen. “I think we get to Dede’s through here,” she said.

“No security system?” asked Eddie.

“There’s one for the house, but none for the grounds, or at least there wasn’t when I was here with Connie and Spalding for dinner. Palm Beach has a low crime rate; it’s hard for burglars to get off the island without getting caught.”

Opening the gate, they found themselves at the pool. Like the rest of the house, the pool was just right. Lined with colorful Spanish tiles and surrounded by lush vegetation, it was as inviting as a natural pool in the rain forest of a tropical paradise.

As Charlotte surveyed their jungly surroundings, it struck her why she was drawn to this life. It was because the elaborate social ritual offered a camouflage that shielded one from the outside world as thoroughly as the lush vegetation shielded Château en Espagne from the street. By living amid it, but not partaking of it, she could be left to live her life in peace and quiet. There was something fundamentally soothing about the endless round of charity benefits—the same people doing the same things over and over again. They were like bake sales on a grander scale: inflated to monstrous proportions, but still basically small-town at heart.

She could enjoy it, that was, as long as she wasn’t the one who had to bake the cookies. She had already gone that route out in Minneapolis.

Skirting the pool, they followed a path through a garden of citrus trees hung with pots of orchid plants, and emerged at the guest cottage at the back of the house. It was a small two-story stucco structure with a latticework-enclosed veranda that was pierced with Moorish arches and blanketed with flame vines. Passing under one of the arches, they rang the doorbell.

Dede answered the door.

“Aunt Charlotte!” she exclaimed, kissing her on the cheek. “What a surprise! And Mr. Norwood,” she added, reaching out to shake Eddie’s hand. “Please, come in.”

She was dressed in a flowing, caftanlike dress that went perfectly with the decor, which was Moorish in style, with low couches covered in exotic fabrics and heaped with pillows, and tables of polished brass. Ornate carved screens over the windows created the darkened atmosphere of a seraglio.

“I feel like I’m in Fez,” Charlotte said.

“The woman who owned the house before Paul decorated the guest cottage like this,” Dede explained. “I just stuck with the style. I like it very much. It’s well-suited to the climate.”

“I’m glad we found you in,” Charlotte said. “I’m sorry we didn’t call first, but we were on our way back from Clearwater, and we thought we’d drop in to see if you were here.”

“I just came from the preservation association office,” Dede said. “What were you doing in Clearwater?”

Charlotte proceeded to tell her the whole story, from the official explanation for the
Normandie
fire to Eddie’s sudden recovery of his lost memories to their encounter with Roehrer and their theory that Paul was his accomplice. “What do you know about his background?” she asked.

“Not much,” Dede replied. She nodded at one of the low-slung sofas. “Please,” she said. “Have a seat.” Then she took one herself. “I do know his parents were White Russians. They came to this country from Paris when he was eight.”

“To Queens?” Charlotte asked as she sat down.

Dede shrugged. “I have no idea. He went back to Paris after the war to be apprenticed to a relative who was a jeweler. That’s where he learned the jewelry trade. From there, he went to Fouquet.”

“Ah!” said Charlotte recognizing the name of the famous art deco jewelry designer.

“Eventually he opened his own shop in Paris, and then one in New York and one in Palm Beach.…” Dede went on.

There was a long pause.

“What is it?” asked Charlotte. Dede seemed disturbed by their conversation.

“It’s just that I can’t believe Paul would do something like this,” she replied, shaking her head in disbelief.” He was so”—she grasped for a word—“
solid
. The preservation association was just one of the organizations he was active in. He was also the backbone of the civic association.”

“Maybe that’s
why
he was so solid,” Charlotte said. “If he was inveigled as a youth into doing something that he later came to regret, perhaps he spent the rest of his life trying to make amends. If he was as upstanding as you say, the lives that were lost and the injuries”—she glanced over at Eddie’s hands—“must have weighed heavily on his conscience.”

She thought of the mood of his house: quiet, meditative, almost monastic. Maybe his life of public service had been an act of penance. As was, perhaps, his role in Marianne’s
Normandie
collection. “How old was he?”

“His obituary said he was sixty-nine.”

“Which would have made him nineteen in 1942,” Charlotte said. “Young enough to be easily influenced. Especially if his parents were devoted to the Russian fascist cause.”

“I suppose so,” Dede concurred.

“We’re pretty sure that Paul Federov and Paul Feder are the same person, but we want to be positive before we go any further,” Charlotte went on. “We were wondering if we could look through his papers. Maybe there are letters or scrapbooks or something.”

Dede looked hesitant.

“I know the estate lawyers have entrusted you to look after the house,” Charlotte added in an effort to reassure her. “We would expect you to stay there with us. After all, you don’t want us pinching the silver or anything.”

Dede smiled. “I don’t see why not,” she said finally, her doubts allayed. She rose, and, after fetching the keys from her tiny kitchen, led them to the door. “His personal papers would all be in his office in the tower.”

After stopping to greet the dog, Lady Astor, who was tethered to a shelter that had been built against the garage wall, Dede led them into the house and through the kitchen to the tile-paved entry hall.

“Have you found out yet what’s going to happen to the house?” Charlotte asked as they climbed the stairs to the second floor.

“Paul’s great-nephew—his brother’s grandson—is coming from Paris to take care of the estate. But from what I understand, he’s not interested in the house. I imagine he’ll put it up for sale. I hope that whoever buys it lets me stay on. I love my little nest.”

“And the business?” asked Charlotte.

“The great-nephew is going to take over the business. He already manages the Paris store, so he’s the natural successor.”

From the head of the stairs, they walked down a hall and then up a spiral staircase punctuated by small, stepped, arched windows, to the tower room. Looking up, Charlotte was intrigued by the view into the center of the narrowing spiral, with a spoked pecky cypress ceiling at its eye.

Noticing Charlotte’s glance, Dede asked, “Do you know the story of why the exterior tower became a signature of a Mizner design?”

“No,” Charlotte said. “But I’d like to hear it.”

Dede proceeded to tell the story: “Mizner had no formal architectural training. As a result, he sometimes made technical mistakes. After forgetting a staircase in one house, he later added it in the form of an exterior tower. People liked it so much that they began asking for a ‘Mizner mistake.’”

“That’s very interesting,” Charlotte commented.

“I don’t know if it’s true, but it makes for a good story,” Dede said as they came to the top of Mizner’s mistake.