The Bohemian Murders (2 page)

I met Hettie last month because I was thrown out of a boardinghouse in Pacific Grove on an accusation of immoral conduct, and she happened to be on the sidewalk outside at the time. My so-called immoral conduct was that I had, earlier that evening, entertained a male person in my room with the door closed. This male person was my friend Michael Archer, who now lives in Carmel; the “entertainment” was an argument between us, a very personal sort of argument, which was why I had closed the door. The reason for the argument was that I had made a huge mistake about Michael—or Misha, as he now prefers to be called—but I didn’t make it all alone; he misled me. And from that most crucial mistake, all the other mistakes flowed.…

“What
is
that?” I asked aloud of no one, and picked up the binoculars. There was something riding the waves just beyond an offshore rock formation that I call the Three Sisters; whether the three rocks have an official name or not I don’t know. The object was about the same size as a sea lion, but it was predominantly red and they are always brown. Nor was it a seal. Seals, unlike sea lions, do come in different colors—but none of God’s creatures (except humans, who alone are capable of artifice) comes in that particular shade of scarlet.

Try as I might, I could not see the object well enough to tell what it was, even with the aid of the binoculars. I put them back on the desk and went out of the watch room, up the circular stairs that climb inside the tower, and out onto the platform beneath the lantern that houses the third-order Fresnel lens. On the platform there is a powerful spotting telescope, which with some fiddling I managed to focus on the Three Sisters.

“Botheration!” I expostulated; the odd object was gone. Perhaps it had swum away, but I did not think so. I lifted my head and scanned with naked eye, occasionally fighting back strands of long hair lifted by wind gusts, until I found it again. It had drifted, or possibly swum, a few yards north and closer in to the rocky shore. I aimed the telescope and refocused.

Indeed it was not swimming, not moving through the water of its own locomotion, but rather you might say that the ocean was having its way with this thing. Nor was it entirely red—I caught flashes of white and black as well. Whatever it was, the incoming tide brought it relentlessly closer to shore, until it was caught in the crest of a breaking wave, tumbled over and over in flashes of red and black and white, and for a moment I thought—

“Oh, no,” I said, pushing my face harder against the telescope as if that alone could clarify my view, and louder I cried: “No!”

But there was no denying it: The object had both arms and legs of a pale, sickly white. And a head with face obscured by a mass of black hair. It was human, probably female, surely drowned.

“Where’s Mrs. Houck,” the police officer asked in a challenging manner, “and who are you? Why’re you driving her rig?”

“My name is Fremont Jones. I’m the deputy lighthouse keeper, serving for Mrs. Houck while she is on a six-month leave of absence. I’m driving her rig because it seemed the best and fastest way to get over here.” Ridiculous as it had at first seemed, I had quickly learned from experience how long it took to cross the extensive dunes around the lighthouse on foot. It was far faster to get in the rig and drive around by the road. “It was I who spied the body on watch and gave the alarm.”

“Oh.” He tipped his cap, which I took for a sort of apology. “Yeah, I guess I did hear about Mrs. Houck being gone. Sorry if I was short with you, Miss Jones, but a body can never be too careful.”

“Quite right,” I agreed out of politeness, but actually I do not concur with that sentiment at all. There are certainly plenty of people who are altogether too careful and therefore lead rather boring lives. However I do believe that there were more of them in Boston, where I used to live, than in California. This state seems to have been built by risk-takers.

A shout from out beyond the rocks attracted my
attention and that of the policeman. We turned our heads simultaneously toward the sound, and saw that it came from one of the boats of the Pacific Grove Ocean Rescue.

Pacific Grove is a resort community, population about three thousand, nestled along the inner curve of that southern headland which has Point Pinos at its tip. Monterey lies just to the southeast, Carmel to the south. The shoreline of Pacific Grove is spectacular but dangerous for the uninitiated, being made up mostly of jagged pieces of upthrust granite. Hettie Houck, who was nothing if not a stern taskmaster, had trained me thoroughly: Do not walk far out upon the rocks, and even if you think you are at a safe distance, do not turn your back on the ocean—for a rogue wave can rise up and sweep you away in the blink of an eye; and if you are in a boat, stay well out, because the current may trap you and dash your vessel upon the rocks.

Too bad, I thought, that the woman who drowned did not have such a good teacher. She was virtually certain to be a woman because of all the scarlet. Men, unless they are dressed for an academic procession or some sort of religious exhibition, do not wear that much, or that shade, of red.

There are a few places along the shoreline where one may enter and exit the water safely, and my mentor had taught me these as well. Into one such small cove on the north or bay side of Point Pinos, the rescue team brought their boats. But I saw no sign of the drowned woman.

“Where is she?” I muttered under my breath. The policeman didn’t hear—he was already picking his way down the slippery rocks to the scant piece of sandy beach below. The tide was on the ebb, so the scent of sea-stuff was strong; and though the day had been balmy for January, there was a bite in the wind coming off the water. I drew my wool shawl closer about my neck, shivering, and suddenly wished I had not come.

Perversely, even as I wished myself elsewhere, I felt bald curiosity nudge me to follow the policeman down to the sand, where I presumed the poor drowned person would be brought ashore. The rescue boats were taking their time, negotiating their way in tandem around
underwater rocks whose tips showed above the surface in the trough of each ebbing wave. I lifted the hem of my skirt and regarded my shoes with some dismay—they were soft black leather, fairly new, not meant for clambering about on the rocks of Pacific Grove.

Just as I was about to set forth, good shoes or no, I heard the muffled clomp of horses’ hooves on the unpaved road, accompanied by the rattle and clatter of a vehicle that proved to be the coroner’s wagon. The wagon was black, of course, ugly as sin, but the matched pair of black horses that pulled it were magnificent. Glad of the distraction, I went over to admire the animals. I’d thought Hettie’s bay mare was quite fine, but these black beauties put her in the shade.

“They are so beautiful!” I said to the driver. The horses whuffled and stamped, arching necks that gleamed like onyx.

“Yes, aren’t they?” He jumped down with an agility that belied his age. “I take good care of them. Now, where’s the body?”

“Are you the coroner?” I asked, unnecessarily as it turned out, for he reached beneath the driver’s seat and brought forth the black bag that carried the tools of his trade.

“I am. Dr. Frederick Bright, by name. How-do, Miss.” He tipped an imaginary hat. I supposed he habitually went hatless in order to show off his extraordinarily full head of snowy-white hair. He had a white mustache of equally extravagant proportions. With the addition of a beard he might have resembled Santa Claus, except that his body was far too thin. And his eyes were definitely not jolly: They were dark, round, too small for his face, and constantly jumped around in a nervous manner.

I said, “How do you do. I am Fremont Jones, temporarily the lighthouse keeper at Point Pinos. The rescue team hasn’t brought the body in yet.” I inclined my head toward the water, meanwhile stroking the horse’s neck and feeling the tiny quivers of abating exertion beneath his smooth, warm skin. The horse regarded me with an eye of liquid jet, as if he understood that my stroking was as much to calm myself as him. I have heard tell that
horses are not intelligent, but that is hard to believe when you look into their eyes.

Dr. Bright made a grunt of acknowledgment and moved off toward the place where I’d been standing before his arrival. He was bandy-legged, I noticed, and walked with an odd little hitch in his gait. His hair was so thick and heavy that the breeze off the bay barely stirred it, whereas my own reddish-brown topknot was blowing down strand by strand. He put his black bag on a rock and waited, jiggling up and down with impatience. I heard him mutter something that sounded like “Come on, come on!”

They did come on, and it was a sight I might wish to forget, but I know I will never be able to as long as I live. A brawny man in hip boots came striding through the surf with the drowned woman in his arms. Her dark hair was hanging down like a dripping curtain and her scarlet dress was sodden. White silk stockings trailed in tatters from her legs; one shoe was missing. The sky behind the man with his tragic burden was streaked with long rose ribbons and the sea was turning purple as the sun went down.

A small crowd of people, alerted by the horn on the firehouse that summons the ocean rescue, had begun to gather but they kept a respectful distance and an equally respectful silence. I stood apart, still stroking the coroner’s horse, but I went forward when I heard Dr. Bright say, “Put her down right here. After I’ve done a brief examination, we’ll want the people to come forward, see if somebody can identify her.”

Good luck, I thought as nausea rose in my throat, for the one shoe was not all that was missing. So was half her face. I looked away, into the stricken eyes of the man who’d carried her.

“The fishes been at her,” he said. Someone in the front row of bystanders heard, repeated, and a murmuring rippled through the crowd.

“How—” My voice broke. I tried again. “How long do you suppose she has been in the water?” There was not much odor; the body was not decomposed, merely … eaten. Somehow I found that hard to bear; it made
me feel inside as if my spine were a blackboard and someone was scraping his fingers down it.

“Not long,” said Dr. Bright, “thirty-six hours at the outside, I’d guess, but I’ll know more when I get her back to the laboratory. It’s a shame about her face, though. Be that much harder to get an identification.”

“The, um, the dress is distinctive,” I said. That was my final contribution. I couldn’t bear to look anymore at that poor woman. What I had not seen at first was that the bodice of her red dress had been ripped open—by a large fish, or an angry person before she fell into the water, who could tell?—and the fish had eaten away at the one breast thus exposed. They had nibbled at her fingers and at the toes of her shoeless foot. But the dress was indeed distinctive and I guessed it would have been expensive because it looked like velvet. I certainly wasn’t going to touch it to find out for sure. I further guessed that her underclothes would be even more informative, for the inch of petticoat that showed beneath the hem of her dress was quite fine. That is, where the sharp teeth of the fish had not pulled the lace into tatters.

Somehow one does not think of fish as having teeth. But obviously some species must—the proof was there on the sandy ground before me. I moved back a few steps, staying close enough to see and hear all that went on. I was certain one of the people who came forward when Dr. Bright beckoned would know her. A woman who wears exquisitely made clothes cannot be a waif or a stray. But one by one each man and woman shook his or her head and moved on.

Last to come was a personage of some repute, by the name of Euphemia Wells. Hettie had pointed her out to me and warned that I should be careful of Euphemia, whose leadership in Pacific Grove goes back to its founding some thirty years ago. Hettie had also told me that the town was founded as a summer religious retreat for one of the larger Protestant denominations, so the religious influence is still strong, which was why my transgression at the boardinghouse had been dealt with so severely.

Euphemia is a large woman, with a bosom like a shelf.
She wears outmoded dresses of black bombazine and I have never seen her hatless. Even at seven in the morning, if you should happen to be out for breakfast or having your morning constitutional and you pass Euphemia, she will be wearing one of those dreadful forward-sloping hats. The hat will be black also, and her dress will rustle stiffly (not, God forbid, enticingly) as she moves by. She rustled stiffly now, and her corset creaked as she bent down to get a closer look at the poor drowned woman.

“Humph!” she snorted, backing off. Then she gave me the evil eye, for absolutely no reason I could think of, but she soon enlightened me. “Distinctive dress, my foot. It’s disgraceful, that’s what kind of dress it is! Only a certain sort of woman wears such a dress, and you won’t find that sort of woman in Pacific Grove. If you want to find out who she is, you’d better ask those bohemians on the other side of the hill!” With that, she rustled and creaked away.

By “the other side of the hill” she meant Carmel—where Michael Archer lived, with those bohemians.

A year ago I would have gone ahead to Carmel even though night was falling as the coroner bore the body away. A year ago I would not have let little things like dark, seldom-traveled roads and inexperience in handling a rig get in the way of satisfying my curiosity. A year ago—that is to say, before the earthquake—I had not yet had certain experiences which have since caused me to make some attempt at occasional prudence.

There are only two ways to get to Carmel—that is, assuming one does not go by water: by the Old Mission Road or on Seventeen Mile Drive through Del Monte Forest. The latter is a picturesque, winding route that was built mainly to impress the guests of the Hotel Del Monte in Monterey. Indeed that drive gets its name from the seventeen miles between the hotel and the forest’s Carmel gate. The Old Mission Road is more direct, but goes over a hill (the very one aforementioned by Euphemia Wells) so steep that anywhere but in California it
would be called a mountain. Furthermore, that hill is supposed to be haunted—and while I do not believe in ghosts, if ever there were an apt place for one it would be the summit of Carmel Hill. There is something about the summit that compels a look over the shoulder to see what might be behind.