Manor of Dying

by Kathleen Bridge

  In the seventeenth-century town of East Hampton, I saw only a few people mulling about, looking like extras from a Hallmark Christmas movie. Like most of the towns, villages, and hamlets that made up the Hamptons, the white clapboard Early American shops and small houses gave off a timeless New England feel. Even Starbucks, with its white façade and large plate-glass window decorated with evergreen boughs interlaced with red ribbons and blinking white lights, seemed in step with the cozy village ambiance. I knew from trying to get permits for my cottage that the Town of East Hampton Zoning Board of Appeals took their job very seriously, not allowing any riff-raff and very few chain stores into the area, Starbucks being one of the exceptions.

  Next on my travels to Southampton were the villages of Bridgehampton, Wainscott, and Watermill. The snowplows had been busy during the night, the sides of the road piled with a thin layer of white slush that was starting to melt—a little different than the black-tinged sludge I remembered the trucks in Manhattan leaving behind that usually morphed into solid UFOs (unidentified frozen objects), never disappearing until late spring.

  It was nine fifteen when I walked into Priscilla’s Tea & Toast. Elle and Felicity had scored a private table in a little nook to the right of the barista bar. Their heads were bent, whispering like coconspirators. Felicity looked up and smiled, showing off her dimples. Elle followed her gaze and waved me over.

  After sitting and ordering both a chai tea and a double espresso, the espresso something I rarely drank but needed, we discussed what we would tell the police. We agreed that for the time being we would leave out anything having to do with Arden Hunter’s murder. We concurred that the loud howl we’d heard had come in the ballpark of two or two thirty in the morning.

  Glancing around the tearoom, I saw that each teacup and saucer in Priscilla’s had a different design. I recognized more than a few antique transferware patterns from Ansley, Coalport and Shelley. Coffee came in oversized white mugs with a large P monogram. They were so large they could double as soup bowls. A waiter brought over two platters of avocado toast and set them in the middle of the table, then he passed out small bread plates to each of us. Like the teacups and saucers, the plates were in mismatched patterns, making for a festive table. Each piece of toast had mashed avocado arranged inside a metal Christmas tree cookie cutter. I placed the toast on my plate and removed the cookie cutter. The tree in the center of my toast was almost too charming to eat. But I managed.

  Elle stuffed half of a piece of toast in her mouth, mumbling as she chewed, “Arthur said he has a good buddy on the Southampton PD.” She wiped her mouth with a napkin, then took a sip of Darjeeling and continued, “Because Arthur was the first on the scene, even though Shelter Island isn’t in his jurisdiction, he might get special disposition to assist in the case.”

  “Well, that’s great news,” I said, raising my right hand to give her a fist bump that she didn’t return. “Did he share anything about what happened after we left?”

  “No. You know Arthur. He goes by the book.” Then she added, “For the most part.”

  “No pillow talk?” I asked, giving her a wink.

  “He won’t share anything unless my safety’s involved. He said he’s already played every card he could when he allowed you, Felicity, and me to leave the estate before the CSIs processed all the evidence.”

  “What did you share with him?” I asked, trying to get a snippet of info from her.

  “What could I? We were locked in that box during the murder,” Elle said. “However, I did tell him about Sabrina and Willa not getting along and the thing about not paying the malpractice insurance. I’m happy he’s not involved directly,” Elle said wistfully. “He has a lot on his plate.”

  She didn’t elaborate, just took a sip of her tea and gave me a mournful look. I’d tried earlier on the phone to get her to open up about what was going on besides the obvious murder at Nightingale Manor, but she’d been with Felicity and said she would share everything the next time we were alone.

  Felicity added the contents of a wildflower honey stick to her cup of tea and stirred it. I could tell by the rising steam it was too hot to drink. “I love this place. It’s so cozy. It’s a shame we have to go to a police station and give our statements about a grisly murder.” Felicity dabbed the corners of her mouth with a linen napkin. “I’m so grateful I got to leave the Nightingale estate. All thanks to you, Elle, or should I say your fiancé. My husband wasn’t too thrilled when I told him what happened. Wanted to fly out here. But I told him no. At least until we decide if the filming will stay here on the East Coast.” She turned to me, cognizant even with my hearing aids that it was easier for me when I also read lips. “Meg, I have some news you might like. Elle told me your father is a homicide detective.”

  “Retired,” I added.

  “And that you’ve been involved in a few murder investigations.” Felicity took a sip of tea and smiled. “Yum.”

  “And almost got killed each time,” Elle scolded, sending me her motherly look.

  “Anyway,” Felicity said, placing her cup on its saucer, “I think you can eliminate one suspect from your list.”

  “List. What list?” I said in mock horror, throwing up my hands.

  Felicity laughed. “Our producer. Jeremy Prentice. I talked to his production assistant, Roger, and he’d picked Jeremy up from the North Shelter Island Ferry dock on Wednesday, the afternoon of the snowstorm. They shared a room at a B&B in Greenport, then yesterday took a limo to Manhattan.”

  “So that narrows it down to Willa, Sabrina, Dr. Lewis and Langston. A short list.” I was doing it again. Getting involved in something that wasn’t my business. This time it felt less dangerous because I was away from the murder scene and had no connection to Dr. Blake Nightingale. I was willing to allow the authorities to handle it, if not for the nagging puzzle of how a murder from decades ago was mixed into the equation of Blake Nightingale’s murder. “Felicity, you seem pretty close to Langston. Do you have any idea why he might have a motive to kill Dr. Blake?” Then I told them about what I’d witnessed on Monday in Dr. Blake’s office. “Yesterday, your director knew all about the old murder and the fact the estate used to be a mental asylum and pretended he didn’t.”

  “It’s impossible to figure out why Langston would keep all that from me. As far as I know, he’d never met Dr. Blake until he saw an advertisement in the East Hampton Star offering to rent out the mansion for movies or television. It happens a lot out here. Or so Langston tells me.”

  I knew what she said was true. “There’s always filming going on in the Hamptons. I have to give Blake Nightingale credit. Renting out the estate was a good way to make extra cash off-season.” Not giving up on picking Felicity’s brain, I added, “I know Langston has a mega mansion in Bridgehampton and has been a public figure in the Hamptons for quite a while.”

  “I’ve worked with him on two other projects. One in England and one in California. Never heard a bad thing about him. He’s always treated the cast and crew with the utmost respect. He’s one of those rare people who takes time to stop and listen to you. Eye contact and all.”

  “What about the woman who was suing Dr. Blake from the show Bungled?” Elle asked. “I’m sure she has to be on the list. At least we know Mr. Prentice is in the clear. And it’s also hard to imagine Langston having a motive for murdering Dr. Blake. Willa, Sabrina, and Dr. Lewis, I would keep near the top of our list. Ugh, here I go, Meg. Getting sucked into all your hypothesizing. Let’s get this interview over with and get back to some semblance of serenity. I have a new crate of goodies to unpack from that estate sale Maurice went to last weekend. Think I even spied an old Sag Harbor whaling captain’s log book from the early 1800s.”

  “That’s a rare find. It could be a fake though,” I said.

  “Why so distrustful? Think of all the treasures we’ve found in the past.”

  “Don’t you watch the Roadshow?” I asked her. “It could be a facsimile.”


  “Yes, but even if it’s a copy, I’m sure the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum would love to put it on display. Speaking of copies,” Elle said, digging through her ginormous vintage handbag, “I made copies of the pilot script. One for you, Meg, and here’s the original, Felicity.” She handed me a sheaf of papers. “By the way, Meg, I looked it over. Patrick Seaton is a very talented screenwriter.”

  I grabbed it, excited to read Patrick’s work. Felicity had been staring into space. She took the original script and stowed it in her bag. “Willa is so sweet. I would look into the other two first.”

  “Willa seemed mad at the doctor and Sabrina for sending her son away,” I said. “Plus, she has to remain a suspect. Our pool is limited but the reasons for murder are limitless. Felicity, did she talk to you about Donnie? Maybe he did it.” I said it as a jest, but now that I thought about it, he could have been hiding out in the mansion. A lot of schools had winter break. It would be interesting to see if he attended one of them.

  Someone had cranked up the Christmas music, adding to the tea shop’s holiday atmosphere but making it hard for me to hear. Background noise, even when wearing my top-of-the-line hearing aids, was one of my biggest challenges. I reached for my key chain in my handbag and pressed the up button on the fob that controlled the volume to my hearing aids.

  Felicity noticed and paused until I gave her a thumbs-up. “All I know is Willa really misses her son.”

  “I wonder why Willa was so angry with Dr. Blake. His wife, Sabrina, I can understand. She seems a little one-dimensional. Not that I know anything about her,” I added.

  “Mrs. Nightingale’s always running off to Southampton for shopping or beauty appointments or lunch at the country club,” Felicity said. “I guess that does sound slightly shallow, but I get the feeling she’s one of those people with a lot of nervous energy that needs to get burned off, and like Willa said, the Nightingales usually go away in the winter months to a more temperate climate. Langston told me she asked to have a walk-on part in Mr. & Mrs. Winslow, but now with the murder there’s a good chance we’ll be switching locations.”

  Elle’s cup clattered against her saucer. “I think that will be a relief.”

  Felicity slapped her forehead with the heel of her right hand. “The logistics of moving to another location because of the murder are daunting. We’ll have to bring in craft services. I know Jeremy. If the budget goes over the initial projections, he might cancel the whole thing. Or sell to another production company.”

  “He can do that?” Elle asked.

  Felicity looked up at the glittering holiday ornaments hanging from the ceiling catching the light and reflecting off the walls in red, green, silver and gold. “Yes, it’s done all the time. I don’t know if you’ve ever stayed for the ending credits in a movie. Sometimes they have multiple producers and production companies listed. They each get a piece of the pie.”

  Elle grabbed a cranberry scone, took a bite, and said, “Yum,” then asked, “Felicity, maybe they’ll catch Dr. Blake’s killer soon and things will go back as planned?”

  “I doubt it. Too much bad press about the old and new murders. I’m low woman on the totem pole when it comes to decisions on that level.”

  Feeling the espresso coursing through my veins, amping up my already jittery nerves, I told them about the letter I’d found between the floorboards in the attic storage space and the empty suitcase that probably belonged to Arden Hunter.

  “Wow. How sad,” Felicity said, putting down her teacup. “I had a great-aunt who was put in an asylum in upstate New York because her husband said she was crazy. What husbands said back then, no one questioned. What we found out years later was she was just suffering from postpartum depression after giving birth.”

  “Mental health issues were dealt with differently back then,” I said. “Epilepsy, seizures, blackouts, schizophrenia were all lumped together. From my research, even if you were born with crossed eyes, or your husband simply wanted to get rid of you so he could take up with another woman, you might find yourself admitted to a sanitorium with no chance of leaving. Last night, I found an article about a photo exhibit based on four hundred suitcases that were found in the attic of an old asylum ready to be demolished. Each photo showed the suitcase and next to it all the items that were inside, giving a voyeur’s view into the type of people who were admitted to mental institutions during the middle of the last century before major reform happened. What struck me was how normal the contents were. It was like they were packing for a weekend in the country or a trip to the seaside. The photos from the exhibit reminded me of what I saw at Nightingale Manor. You can learn a lot about people from what they pack in their suitcases.”

  “Thankfully, we’ve come a long way in psychiatry,” Elle added, stealing the top of my cinnamon-bun muffin, having already eaten hers.

  “Hey, that’s the best part!” I scolded.

  Elle ignored me and put the whole thing in her mouth. After she swallowed, she said, “Let’s focus on getting our interviews over with and enjoy the holiday season. I say we take a break from any talk of the murder. I need to start making the cookies for our weekend open house at the shop. I’m also doing something different this year, I’m bringing in local artisans who can sell holiday items that are handmade but still fit the vintage Christmas theme. One woman, who’s in her nineties, makes these amazing wood and uncombed wool sheep that look like they came from an 1890s German Putz nativity scene.”

  We talked for a few minutes about childhood holiday memories and I invited Felicity and her husband to spend Christmas with us at Pondfare.

  “With everything going on, I can say, if production continues, I would love to spend Christmas with you guys. My husband might be able to fly in. I have a feeling I’ll be too behind schedule to fly home to California, even for a day.”

  I was facing the front window, which was fogged around the edges like a mirror after a hot shower. But in the center, I spied Sabrina Nightingale strolling by. She was dressed in fur, her matching hat like something from a Chekov play or the movie Anna Karenina or Dr. Zhivago. She appeared to have been crying. “Look who just passed by,” I said, pointing to the window.

  “Sabrina,” Elle said. “Not a surprise, I’m sure everyone from Nightingale Manor has an appointment with the police.”

  “Hurry. Let’s follow her.” I stood and threw down a twenty.

  “Why?” Elle exclaimed.

  I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure myself why we should follow the Widow Nightingale but something beyond curiosity spurred me on. I threw open the door, jingle bells jingling, and went crashing into Langston Reed’s chest just as he’d called out, “Wait, Sabrina!”

  Had they gone to the police station together? I opened my mouth to ask, but my boots hit a patch of ice and I went down butt-first on the slushy sidewalk. Langston chivalrously scooped me up and set me back on my feet. He was stronger than his thin frame suggested.

  “Ms. Barrett, isn’t it?” He kept his gaze toward where Sabrina disappeared inside a shop. The white sign etched with gold letters read Beauty Bar Salon and Day Spa.

  “Yes, but please call me Meg. So sorry for almost knocking you over. Nothing like black ice to send you to the hospital with a broken hip.”

  He smiled. His face was so darn friendly. Judging by the casual way he was dressed in jeans, sneakers, wool sweater and down vest, it was hard to believe he had almost as much money as his producer, Jeremy Prentice. Langston was also one of the top philanthropists in the Hamptons area. I remembered reading about some local charity he’d started, I just couldn’t remember what it was for.

  Elle and Felicity trotted up to us.

  “Nice tumble,” Elle said. “Meg, are you okay?”

  I nodded. “Nothing’s hurt but my pride . . . and my tailbone.”

  “Felicity,” Langston said, “I suppose you’ve been to see the police?”

  “Not yet. We’re going now.”

  “I just returned from giving my s
tatement,” he said. “What a sad state of affairs. Recapping the morning we found Blake Nightingale seems almost surreal. Although I don’t think I had anything to say that would help the investigation, except that he was drunk as a skunk.”

  “Do you know if they’ve arrested anyone for Dr. Blake’s death?” Felicity asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  He unzipped his vest. The sun was doing a fast job of melting every patch of white. “I don’t think I would be in their confidence if they had. I did see Willa the housekeeper inside, waiting her turn to be interviewed. I’m relieved the authorities promised they won’t be sharing anything about Mr. & Mrs. Winslow at this time. The whole point of coming out to the Hamptons in the winter was to keep things hush-hush so the press wouldn’t get in the way. And we sure don’t need bad press preproduction.”

  “I thought any press is good press,” I said.

  “Not always.”

  It was hard to reconcile the man in front of me, who I’d immediately liked and Felicity admired, as the same person who’d gone off on Blake Nightingale with an almost venomous zeal.

  He glanced at me and smiled, as if reading my thoughts. “The police seem competent and nothing like the good-cop, bad-cop scenarios you see on television. That is, until this huge man with a military buzz cut, dressed in a state trooper’s uniform, entered the room. The two officers shrunk into their chairs and only repeated, ‘Yes, Sir’ and ‘No, Sir.’ Talk about being frightened.”

  “Chief Pell,” I said.

  Langston gave me a strange look, like how would I know the lead homicide investigator for the Suffolk County Police Department. I’d first met Chief Pell, who everyone nicknamed the Incredible Hulk because of his massive WWE muscled body, after I found someone murdered inside the mansion at the East Hampton estate Seacliff.