The Bohemian Murders (19 page)

“I won’t ask Art to leave,” Michael said quite clearly, and quite loudly enough for her to hear. “Anything you have to say, Fremont, you can say in front of her.”

“I have snakes in my house, so I can’t go home,” she said, plunking a small bowl of water down beside the larger bowl of chicken, which was fast disappearing. Kitty was ecstatic.

“I had gathered that you spent the night,” I said evenly. “But that is beside the point,” I continued bravely. “I’ve come because I’m concerned about Phoebe. I think there is something sinister going on.”

“Sinister? How delicious! Do tell!”

Michael merely raised those eyebrows.

“I know something you do not,” I said, and then I told them about the sketches of Jane Doe, told them everything, including Braxton Furnival’s frustrated attempt to identify the woman in person. “Michael,” I said, leaning forward, deciding the hell with Misha, “you remember Wish Stephenson.”

“The young San Francisco policeman whose honesty almost got him into trouble with a corrupt superior officer? Yes, I remember him.”

“Wish?” asked Artemisia. Her face was animated, her dark eyes sparkled with interest. She was most attractive, in a full-blown, mature way I could not hope to achieve, and my heart ached—but I must not think about that.

“His real name is Aloysius,” I said, “and he is the only person of his profession I currently feel I can trust. I wrote to Wish and asked him to check on the actress Sabrina Howard. I haven’t yet had a reply, which is rather discouraging, because if someone had reported her missing I expect he would have replied by return mail.”

“I told you before,” Michael growled, “to leave it alone! Let the Pacific Grove police handle everything. But
could you keep your inquisitive nose out of it? No! Dammit, Fremont—”

“Hush,” Artemisia said, “don’t be such a grouch.” Then she said enthusiastically to me, “Of course we must help! How? What can we do?”

This was assistance from an unexpected quarter. I said, “I don’t like to involve you, Artemisia. Look what happened to Phoebe. I wanted
him
to help. He’s the one with all the experience.”

“Misha?” She jabbed him with her elbow. “Well?”

“I’m retired,” he said, glaring at each of us in turn. “I am a man of leisure. I will look after Phoebe’s cat until she returns. That is the extent to which I am prepared to help. And don’t badger me, either of you!”

I rolled my eyes. Artemisia stuck out her tongue at Michael and said, “Sometimes you are such an old fuddy-duddy!” Then she leaned eagerly across the table. “He’s no use. Tell me what to do, Fremont.”

I tried not to look at her breasts and to keep an open mind. A part of me wanted to tear a good deal of her hair out, but another part of me recognized that Artemisia was a person of exceptional talent and courage, and moreover she was offering what I so much needed: help. So I said, “You could come with me to Phoebe’s and help me look through her things for any clue as to where she may have gone. An address book, perhaps, listing family and close friends. Letters with return addresses. That kind of thing. We must send telegrams. Then we wait a day for the replies. If there are none defining her whereabouts, as I am almost certain will be the case, then you could go to whatever law enforcement agency oversees Carmel—”

“Monterey County Sheriff,” said Michael gruffly.

“Thank you,” I resumed, “and report Phoebe as a missing person. No mention of the sketches, or Jane Doe, or any of that. Just that Phoebe is missing. Such a report would come better from one of her Carmel neighbors, as I’m sure you’ll understand. Will you do it, Artemisia?”

“Of course I will!” She smiled radiantly. “Anything for dear old Phoebe. And for you, Fremont!”

• • •

Artemisia really did have snakes in her house. Getting them out became something of a production, a weird, impromptu ritual, Carmel-style. Khalid, the Burnoose Boy, beat upon a drum while Artemisia shook a gypsy tambourine; the Twangy Boys stood around looking dubious and every now and then saying together “Oooh!” like a Greek chorus; Arthur Heyer was full of suggestions that the principal snake-chasers, Oscar and Mimi, mostly ignored; and Michael, newly shaven, brought Phoebe’s cat. Others, Irma and the man I’d called Diogenes at the picnic, and some I’d never met, hung around across the street simply watching. As did I.

The general idea seemed to be that noise of sufficient intensity or of a certain pitch would drive the snakes—two, supposedly—out of the house, whereupon Oscar would chase them toward Mimi, who had a long, forked stick and a net. It looked like a butterfly net to me, but I had never heard of a snake net, so what did I know?

These snakes, alas, proved impervious to noise. While various people were discussing what to try next, Michael walked calmly up to the front door of the cottage, opened it, and let the cat loose. Because I was listening, and because I know so well the timbre of his voice, I heard him say, “Go get ’em, kitty!” But the others did not hear him, nor did they seem to know that he had let the cat go inside the house. A few minutes later the two snakes slithered out, with the cat scampering behind, which is how the cat got its name: Patrick. The name was bestowed by Michael, with the explanation that Saint Patrick had chased all the snakes out of Ireland.

I believe that story about Saint Patrick and the snakes to be a metaphor—what Patrick really drove out was the old religion of the Druids—but I did not say so. Along with everyone else I smiled and congratulated the cat, but what I was actually most happy about was that now Artemisia could return to her own home. Of course that did not necessarily preclude her spending more nights in Michael’s bed, but I preferred not to think about that.

I said good-bye to the motley group and went home myself, to the lighthouse. There was nothing more to be done today. When Artemisia got going she was like some
force of nature: It was she who had found Phoebe’s address book and she who composed the telegrams to people whose names I selected from it; she who paid when we sent them from the telegraph office next to the Carmel post office. “Don’t be silly!” she’d said when I protested that as it was my idea to send the telegrams, I should pay. “I know you haven’t any money. Misha told me.” My humiliation would have been complete, except for some unfathomable reason I didn’t feel humiliated.

Indeed, if we were not rivals for Michael’s affections, Artemisia and I might well have become friends while we worked together on Phoebe’s plight. She was lively, she was funny, and she was efficient. On parting she proposed to meet me at my office on Grand Avenue in Pacific Grove at two o’clock on Friday, the next day, to report on any replies to our telegrams, and to go over with me what she should say to the sheriff. I agreed without bothering to tell her that the office was now closed. After all, I’d paid through the end of the month and I still had a key. Anyway, I should have to tell them all sometime—Arthur especially, as I was still working on his manuscript—but not yet. It felt too much like admitting defeat.

Well, I thought as I clucked and cajoled Bessie into her fastest trot on our last leg home through the Point Pinos woods, after tomorrow they will all find out, because I will tell Artemisia and she will surely tell the others. I smiled. It felt like a good resolution for a task I’d dreaded. And besides, Artemisia had a car; she could take Tom, Dick, and Harry’s paintings back to Carmel with her.

The truth was that I was beginning to rather like Artemisia, breasts and all. Life is so perverse!

Quincy was waiting along the track as Bessie and I came bucketing up to the lighthouse. His expression was particularly lugubrious, so as I pulled on the reins, bringing us to a halt, I asked him what was the matter.

“It’s them cows, Fremont,” he said, shaking his head slowly back and forth.

“Our cows? I mean, Hettie’s? The Holsteins?”

“Yup.” He took Bessie by the halter and walked her to the barn. I followed along.

When he didn’t say any more I asked, “What about the cows?”

“We lost one.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake, Quincy, a cow shouldn’t be too hard to find out here on the point. There’s only just so many places it could go. In fact, I should think we could spot a lost cow from the lighthouse platform.”

“Not this’un you can’t. She’s not lost that way. She’s dead.” Quincy looked at me with mournful eyes. “And two of ’em are sick. I reckon as it might be something in the water what’s causing it. I reckon maybe you and me, we best be darn careful till I get this figgered out.”

O
ur water had been poisoned. Not at the source, thank God, which is a well that also serves the dairy in the Point Pinos woods, but at a large tank where the water is held after flowing (downhill) through a pipe from the source. The lighthouse must have such a tank as a safety measure, in case of fire.

Of course I had to report the poisoning to the Lighthouse Service, as it caused expense. The water had been analyzed, and now the tank must either be thoroughly cleaned or outright replaced. I was for replacement, but
of course the decision was not mine to make—that duty fell to some bureaucrat overseeing the Lighthouse Service.

On Monday morning I received, by messenger, a toxicology report: The water tank had been poisoned by the addition of kerosene. The concentration should not have proved fatal; therefore the cow that died must have had some constitutional weakness, probably of its complex digestive system, as that would be where the poison was absorbed. The sick cows had showed signs consistent with what the report suggested: a staggering gait, an attitude of stupor, decreased appetite, and poor milk production. Over the weekend, while we waited for the report, they had begun to improve; nevertheless I was so guilt-ridden that I wanted to have the veterinarian back now that the cause of the poor cows’ problem was known.

The animals were Quincy’s responsibility, so he was taking this even harder than I. He kept puzzling over how such a thing could happen, and I did not think I would be doing any favors by suggesting the various possibilities that leapt into my mind. Quincy is a complete stranger to malice—therefore the idea that someone might have poisoned the water tank intentionally simply did not occur to him. Of course to me it did, and so when Quincy had fetched the veterinarian, I set off on foot with the explanation that I had business downtown.

Once in downtown Pacific Grove, I hopped a horse-drawn trolley car for Monterey. With the toxicology report in my leather bag, I was on my way to the hospital to see Dr. Frederick Bright.

I confess I am no great fan of hospitals, which seem to me to have more to do with sickness and suffering than with making people well. I was glad to know where I was going this time, so that I could stride breezily along looking neither left nor right. Illness is so depressing, not to mention ill-smelling, and it seems that the available cures do not smell much better.

The dead smell worst of all. Even though I had no previous experience of such things, it was not difficult for me to conclude when I entered the pathology suite that
an autopsy was in progress. My nose led the way, and I peeked through the double doors. Dr. Bright, easily identifiable by his unusually full head of white hair, was bent over a body; further details of the procedure were mercifully unavailable to me, due to his assistant’s stance, which blocked much of my view.

The smell was really not so horrible once one got used to it. Soon my insatiable curiosity compelled me through the doors, first one step and then another. Being absorbed in their ghoulish task, neither doctor nor assistant noticed my presence. I moved a few more steps to one side, and then I could see what they were doing. What they were doing was eviscerating a corpse. They were wrist-deep in gore.

Without looking up, Dr. Bright barked, “Whoever you are, you’ll have to wait. Outside, please!”

I didn’t argue; I’d seen enough. My mother, rest her soul, used to belabor me with that old saw about curiosity killing the cat. From as far back as I can remember I’d refused to believe this, and had been delighted when at about age ten or so I’d learned the rejoinder “Satisfaction brought it back!” With indecent glee I’d hurled those words in her face, and with her great patience she had regarded me, saying, “Someday, Caroline, you will learn.”

If Mother were still alive, I reflected as I walked back up the corridor to Dr. Bright’s office, I would write her a letter tonight—she would be glad to know that my curiosity had at last found its limit. I shall in future be content to take people upon the merits of their outsides, accepting the fact that their insides are better left alone … at least by me.

Dr. Bright’s office was unlocked. Leaving the door open, I went in and spent a few moments prowling around in search of something to read. I did not know how long I’d have to wait, and these days I do not do well with my thoughts unoccupied. At last I found something I thought I might understand—a tract about the use of mesmerism in surgical procedures. Then I selected the least-cluttered chair, moved its stack of papers to the floor, and sat down to read. The article was interesting,
but I could not help noticing that the patients on which these mesmeric experiments had been tried were all women, while the surgeon and the mesmerizer were both men. This made me suspicious, although I would have been loath to put my suspicions in words.