Murder Under the Palms

by Stefanie Matteson

  “Yes,” said Eddie as they started eating their fruit cocktails. “After fifty years. Did you realize that today is the fiftieth anniversary of the fire?”

  “No,” said the admiral. “I didn’t. But you’re absolutely right, Norwood.”

  “Really?” said Lydia. “I hadn’t realized that either. If I’d known, I would have changed the date. We’re supposed to be celebrating the life of the Normandie, not her death.”

  “February ninth, 1942,” said Eddie.

  But Lydia’s attention was occupied by the two empty seats at the table, whose place cards indicated that they were intended for Marianne and Paul. “I wonder where Ms. Montgomery and Mr. Feder are?” she said, clearly perturbed by their tardiness.

  “The last I saw them, they were out at the beach,” offered Dede, with more than a hint of petulance in her voice.

  “We’ll be having the speeches soon. They’d better get back here,” Lydia said. She thought for a moment, and then summoned one of the stewards and asked him to go out to the beach to fetch Marianne and Paul.

  Then she gave a discreet signal to René, who was still stationed at the door, and the phalanx of waiters sprang into action. Within minutes, their empty fruit cocktail coupes had been cleared and they were served the next course, a classic soupe à l’oignon.

  “Are the place settings all original?” asked Charlotte as she picked up her heavy Christofle soup spoon.

  Her hostess nodded. “I bought most of them at an auction in Monte Carlo in 1979, and I’ve added to them over the years. Unfortunately this is the only table that’s set with originals. I only have a complete service for fifteen.”

  “That strikes me as a substantial number,” Charlotte commented. She had once been tempted to buy a Lalique goblet from the Normandie as a memento until she saw the price: $400. “How did you come by your interest in collecting Normandie art?” she asked. “Were you a passenger?”

  “Regretfully I was never a passenger,” Lydia replied with a saccharine little smile. “I wasn’t even born when the Normandie burned.”

  Charlotte doubted that, but she wasn’t about to challenge her.

  “It started with an egg cup, actually. A silver-plated Christofle egg cup. Harley and I bought it at an antique shop for three dollars. Now it’s probably worth three hundred. I fell in love with that egg cup. We had been collectors of art deco furniture and objets d’art for some time, because of the house.”

  “This is quite a place,” Eddie commented.

  “Thank you. It was built in 1935, the same year that the Normandie made her maiden voyage. It was designed in the streamline moderne style and is meant to resemble a ship. We found that we needed to narrow the focus of our collecting, and it seemed fitting to collect art from the Normandie because of the nautical theme of the house. From the egg cup, we went on to other silver, and then to glasses, porcelain, furniture, and finally to the art itself.”

  “It’s an obsession,” explained the admiral. “Lydia doesn’t know when to stop. She lives and breathes her Normandie collection.”

  As they continued to chat about Lydia’s collection, Charlotte noticed that the steward whom Lydia had sent to find Paul and Marianne had appeared at the door and was talking agitatedly with René. Then she saw René leave his post and wind his way through the tables in their direction.

  Arriving at their table a moment later, he leaned over to speak in Lydia’s ear. “May I speak with you for a moment in private, madam?”

  Excusing herself, Lydia left the table to talk privately with René in the nearby corner. When she returned to the table a moment later, her skin was the same platinum color as her hair. “Mr. Feder has been murdered,” she announced in a hushed tone.

  Paul Feder murdered! Charlotte couldn’t believe it.

  “He’s lying out on the beach right now—dead,” Lydia continued. “He was stabbed in the chest.” Her blue eyes widened as if she were looking at the gruesome sight. Then she started to cry.

  Charlotte wasn’t sure if she was crying out of grief for Paul or because his death meant that her party would be ruined.

  Lydia turned to the admiral. “Oh Jack, what are we going to do?”

  Across the table, Dede looked crushed. Her yellow-blue eyes welled with tears, which flowed silently down her lovely cheeks.

  “Nothing, at the moment,” Jack replied. “Get a grip on yourself, Lydia,” he told her sternly. “We don’t want a panic situation here.” He looked at everyone around the table, commanding them with his glance to keep calm. “We want to keep this a secret among ourselves for the moment.”

  Lydia sniffled a couple of times and regained her mask of social composure, while Dede blew her nose in a handkerchief provided by the gallant admiral, who seemed quite taken with the beautiful young woman seated at his side.

  “Has Mr. Dubord called the police?” the admiral asked.

  Lydia nodded. “He told them not to use their sirens, and he’s going to try to keep them downstairs for the time being. But he said he thought that at least some of the guests would have to be interviewed. He said he would try to get the police to wait until Mr. Norwood is playing.”

  Thank God for René, Charlotte thought. A lifetime of experience in damage control. She remembered an incident on board the Normandie in which an elderly woman at an adjoining table had fallen over face-first into her dinner plate, the apparent victim of a heart attack.

  With a nod from René, two members of the dining room staff had quietly come over, picked the woman up, chair and all, and discreetly whisked her out of the dining room. René hadn’t missed a beat: the incident had simply been erased.

  But a murder wasn’t as easy to erase.

  A group of waiters had fanned out over the dining room to remove the soup bowls. They were immediately followed by a second group, who served the fish course: Loire pike with clarified butter. It was a pity that Charlotte had suddenly lost her appetite.

  “Did you know him?” Eddie asked.

  Charlotte shook her head. “Not really. I just met him at a dinner party last night. He collaborated with my goddaughter, Marianne Montgomery, on the Normandie jewelry collection. Marianne is the daughter of my friend Connie,”—she nodded at Connie—“who used to be Connie Montgomery.”

  “The actress?” Eddie asked, looking over at Connie, who was talking with the president of the preservation association.

  “Yes,” Charlotte replied. She shifted her glance to Dede. “Dede is Marianne’s daughter and Connie’s granddaughter.”

  “I can see the resemblance,” Eddie said, looking from the lovely granddaughter to her lovely grandmother.

  Dede looked up briefly and then back down at her plate. She was picking at her fish and biting her lip to keep from crying.

  “Do you have any idea why he might have been killed?” Eddie asked.

  Charlotte shook her head, though her glance shifted involuntarily to the empty place at the table marked with a card on which the name Ms. Marianne Montgomery was written in hand-lettered calligraphy.

  5

  The fact that a murder had occurred just a few hundred feet away did not stop the party, though a damper had been put on the festivities at the captain’s table by the absence of their hostess, who had been summoned by the police. The waiters cleared away the fish course and served the entrée, le caneton à l’orange. Led by the president of the historic association, the guests at their table, who had been instructed by Lydia to behave as if nothing had happened, carried on a stiff and uncomfortable conversation about the quality of the food aboard the Normandie and how this evening’s meal compared. As the only guests present who had been passengers aboard the ship, Charlotte and Eddie answered questions about the wines, the cheeses, and the pastries. As if they had been paying close attention to the food, Charlotte thought. Though Eddie was obliging enough with his answers, Charlotte’s mind was elsewhere. She was eager to question Dede, who sat silently across the table in her white satin sheath and diamon
d choker, picking at her food and occasionally sniffling into the admiral’s handkerchief. What had happened at the beach that caused her to return with such red and swollen eyes? Had Marianne confronted Paul and her daughter with her suspicions?

  Fifteen minutes later, Lydia returned on René’s arm. She looked quite composed for a hostess at whose party a murder had just taken place, but Charlotte had already pegged her for a cool customer. After resuming her seat, she flashed a wooden smile and then asked how they were enjoying the food.

  René had moved around the table and now leaned over to whisper in Charlotte’s ear. “The police would like to see you next, Miss Graham.” Then he graciously pulled out Charlotte’s chair and offered her his arm.

  Charlotte was not surprised at the ease with which René was handling the situation. “Remember the storm on the westbound crossing in August, 1939?” she asked as they threaded their way among the tables. She was thinking of how he had raced around making sure everything was secure.

  “Very well. I remember everything about that crossing. Including making my first acquaintance with a beautiful young American movie star. Are you implying that a murder at a dinner party is nothing by comparison?”

  “I guess that’s what I was thinking,” she admitted.

  “I think you’re right. At least I don’t have to cater to seasick passengers,” he said.

  “The man who can handle anything,” Charlotte said as they began their descent of the stairs.

  René smiled.

  “I wonder why the police want to talk with me before the other guests?” she asked as he led her past the room where they had talked earlier in the evening.

  “I think you’ll find that your reputation has preceded you,” René replied.

  René delivered her to the door of the library and then returned upstairs to resume the job of damage control. Opening the door, Charlotte found herself in a book-lined room in which a young woman with thick, dark blond hair done up in a French braid sat behind a desk crafted of blond wood in the same moderne style as much of the other furniture in the house. She was broad in the shoulder and big in the bust: not overweight, but definitely stocky. She was also very pretty, with a wide face, large hazel eyes, and a glowing complexion. She wore a short-sleeved blue denim blouse and gold hoop earrings. Beside her, an older policeman wearing the brown shirt and khaki Bermuda shorts that comprised the uniform of the Palm Beach police sat on a loveseat holding a notebook. The young woman didn’t look like the typical detective, but then, the Palm Beach police department wasn’t typical. With a year-round population of only 10,000 (a figure that doubled during the season), Palm Beach was in reality a small town in which the police knew almost everybody. Charlotte remembered Connie once telling her about a friend who had drunk too much at a party. He had been escorted home by the police and tenderly tucked into bed. Nor was there much crime on the island. Though the occasional sensational crime made the headlines, basically it was a place in which stealing bicycles and going shirtless within one hundred feet of the beach (a violation of a local ordinance) were the most common infractions.

  At Charlotte’s entrance, the young woman stood up and extended her hand across the desk. She was taller than Charlotte’s own five foot eight: about five foot ten, she guessed. All in all, a sturdy-looking young woman. “I’m Detective Maureen White,” she said as she shook Charlotte’s hand.

  Though she may have looked as if she belonged here, Detective White’s accent told a different story. She was from New Yawk, probably the Bronx. There was no r in Maureen. Charlotte guessed that her father was a cop. Also her brother, her uncle, her brother-in-law. That’s the way it was with women cops in New Yawk.

  She nodded at the chair facing the art deco desk. “Please have a seat, Miss Graham,” she said, then seated herself. “I think we have a friend in common,” she began.

  “Oh?” said Charlotte. “Who’s that?”

  “Jerry D’Angelo,” the detective replied with a wide smile.

  “You know Jerry!” Charlotte exclaimed with pleasure.

  Jerry D’Angelo was a former cop whom Charlotte had met when he was working as a trainer at a spa in upstate New York. Charlotte had been invited there by her friend, the beauty queen Paulina Langenberg, to look into an attempt to sabotage her spa business. The investigation had turned into a murder case. In the course of solving the murder, she and Jerry had become friends.

  “We worked together in New York,” Maureen explained. “He was the head of my team in Manhattan South Narcotics. I was the undercover,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Your basic buy-and-bust. Which is why I’m down here now. It gets to you after a while: acting like a junkie, looking like a junkie. And you have to, because otherwise you’re dead meat.”

  Charlotte couldn’t imagine Maureen ever looking like a junkie, though she, more than most, was aware of how different people could be made to look.

  “He told me all about you. I also read Murder at the Morosco.”

  Murder at the Morosco was the best-selling book about the murder of Charlotte’s co-star on stage at the Morosco Theatre. It was Charlotte who had shot him: a real bullet had been put in a stage prop. In an effort to clear her name, Charlotte had not only solved the murder, but established a reputation as an amateur sleuth that later led Paulina to call on her in the spa case.

  “That’s why I wanted to talk with you first,” Maureen went on. “I thought you might have some insights into what’s going on here.” She lifted her chin to the ceiling, where the party was going on overhead. “I understand that you’re an old friend of the Spalding Smiths, who are the parents of Marianne Montgomery. I also understand that Marianne and the victim were lovers.”

  It appeared that Lydia had already filled Detective White in. “Yes,” Charlotte said. “I’m here visiting the Smiths. Marianne and Mr. Feder were business partners in the jewelry line.” She proceeded to tell the detective about Marianne’s fashion business and about the new jewelry collection. “But as for their being lovers, I couldn’t say. Though I suspect they probably were.”

  “What makes you suspect that?”

  “Marianne’s history,” Charlotte replied. “She’s notorious for her many love affairs. If she wanted Paul—and it appeared to me that she did—she wouldn’t exactly have played hard to get. Also, she behaved in a”—she thought a moment for the proper word—“proprietary manner toward him when we were together at a dinner party at his house yesterday evening.”

  Maureen was leaning back in the desk chair. She picked up an ivory Japanese netsuke in the shape of a monkey and started turning it over in her hands. “Miss Graham,” she said, looking up.

  “Yes?” Charlotte said.

  “In my experience, if a woman acts in a proprietary manner toward a man, it’s usually because she thinks there’s someone out to steal the goods. Was there anyone at the dinner party who Miss Montgomery might have perceived as a threat to her relationship with the victim?”

  This woman is sharp, Charlotte thought. “I don’t know,” she answered. It looked as if Lydia had already done a good job of setting up Marianne, however unwittingly. Charlotte didn’t want to contribute to a scenario that featured Marianne as the jilted woman.

  “Let me put it differently. Who else was at Mr. Feder’s dinner party?” Maureen asked and nodded at the policeman on the loveseat, who pulled out his pencil.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Smith; their daughter, Marianne Montgomery; Marianne’s daughter, Dede—her real name is Diana—and myself,” Charlotte replied. “In addition to Mr. Feder, of course.”

  “Tell me about the daughter,” Maureen directed.

  “She’s in her mid-twenties, has her master’s degree in historic preservation, and she’s worked as the assistant to Lydia Collins at the preservation association for the last couple of years.”

  “I understand that the victim was treasurer of the association.”

  Charlotte nodded.

  “Does Dede have a boyfriend?”
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br />   “I have no idea,” Charlotte replied.

  “Pretty?” asked the detective.

  “Extremely,” Charlotte said. She failed to volunteer the information that Dede lived in the cottage behind Paul’s house, though she was sure Maureen would find that out soon enough.

  The detective looked at Charlotte appraisingly. “Could you have been the woman who the victim was interested in?” she asked.

  Oh brother! Charlotte thought—though it was true that she was more Paul’s age than Marianne was. She shook her head.

  “Okay,” Maureen said, abandoning that line of questioning, much to Charlotte’s relief, “let’s get back to tonight. Do you have any idea what time it was that the victim went out to the beach?”

  “It was six minutes past seven.”

  Maureen looked surprised. “How do you know?”

  “I saw him go out there,” Charlotte said, and went on to explain about standing at the rail with Eddie and noticing his burns. “I was looking at the burns on Mr. Norwood’s wrist. And I noticed the time on his wristwatch.”

  “Was anyone with Mr. Feder?”

  Charlotte nodded. “Dede Montgomery.”

  Maureen gave her a disapproving look. “Why didn’t you tell me that right away?” she scolded. “Remember, we’re not jumping to conclusions here. We’re just gathering the facts.”

  Charlotte nodded contritely.

  “And where was Dede’s mother at this time?”

  “She was inside. She came down the gangway to the patio a few minutes later. I saw her talking with some guests, a couple. Apparently she asked them where Paul and Dede had gone, because they pointed in the direction of the beach. Then she followed them.”

  “She followed them out to the beach?”

  Charlotte nodded.

  “Did any of the other guests go out to the beach? You must have had a bird’s-eye view of everybody’s comings and goings.”

  “We had a pretty good view, but there’s a lot of vegetation along the driveway, so somebody could easily have gone out there without our seeing them. Also, I wasn’t paying attention every minute—boy, was that ever true—but I did see a number of guests going out to the beach, yes.”