Murder Under the Palms

by Stefanie Matteson

  According to gossip, the dining room steward aboard the Normandie earned more than the captain, thanks to the generous tips of the passengers, and Charlotte suspected that much the same was true aboard the Ile de France.

  René continued: “Before, the restaurant had been only marginally profitable. People from the neighborhood, a regular clientele of French emigrés. I turned it into a very successful bistro.”

  Charlotte wasn’t surprised. With his impeccable manners, infallible memory for names, and polished diplomatic skills, René was a natural restaurateur. “What was it called?” she asked.

  René cited the name and address, and she nodded in recognition.

  “I first came down here with a lady friend fifteen years ago.”

  That was another thing that hadn’t changed, Charlotte thought: René’s penchant for rich American women, and theirs for him.

  “An acquaintance took us to the Club Parisienne, as this place was then called. While we were here, I got into a discussion with the owner—naturally we both shared an interest in French cuisine—and learned that he was about to retire. The idea of moving south sounded good to me …”

  “And the rest is history,” Eddie broke in.

  “Pretty much,” René agreed. “Another acquaintance suggested that I turn the restaurant into a private dining club. So I sold the bistro in New York, and set to work. The renovations took two years.”

  A noisy group of four had come in and taken seats at one of the tables at the back of the room.

  René downed his glass, and then said: “And that, madame et monsieur, is how René Dubord ended up in Palm Beach, Florida.”

  “It’s quite a story,” Eddie said.

  “I warned you that it would take more than one shot of Calvados,” René reminded him. “And now,” he said, gesturing in the direction of the dining room, “would you like to sample the cuisine of Normandy?”

  8

  The dining room was characterized by the same sense of rustic elegance as the rest of the building, with a floor of quarry tile, a beamed ceiling, high-backed runged chairs with rush seats, and windows with lace curtains. René showed them to a table in a private nook by a huge field-stone fireplace hung with old copper pots. It was a romantic setting for a romantic event. As René pulled out her chair, Charlotte was reminded of those late-night suppers with Eddie in the intimate Café-Grill aboard the Normandie, and it struck her that the course of life tended to express itself in geometric patterns. Sometimes it felt as if it were traveling in a circle, sometimes as if it were doubling back on itself, sometimes as if it were traveling at an upward or a downward angle, or in a zigzag path. Sometimes it ran at cross purposes to itself or meandered in a wavy line. Maybe it was the art deco influence, but right now she felt as if the dominant geometric motif in her life was a spiral. Ever since her arrival in Palm Beach, it seemed as if she kept coming back to the same places she had been before, but on a different plane. First there had been René, then the Normandie, then Eddie—all coming back into her life after fifty-three years. Everything the same, and everything so different.

  Charlotte hadn’t seen Eddie since the night of the Normandie benefit, and she filled him in now on the investigation into Paul’s death, and Dede’s discovery that Lydia Collins was an embezzler—it was an easy way for a nervous date to launch a conversation. When he learned how much Lydia had stolen from the preservation association, Eddie’s first reaction was to wonder if he was ever going to get paid for his gig at the party. Charlotte then went on to tell him her theory that McLean might have murdered Paul on Lydia’s behalf, and asked him if he thought the admiral could have done it. “He was your commanding officer, right?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Eddie replied, “but I haven’t seen him in fifty years.” He shook his head. “But I don’t think he could have done it. He was one of the most upstanding men I’ve ever known. Big Jack, we used to call him. It was a nickname from his Yale days. He played football there.”

  “Then I guess I’ll abandon that theory,” Charlotte said. “I don’t seem to be getting anywhere with it.”

  A waiter appeared at their table with a dark bottle of cidre bouche, which he described as the sparkling cider that was native to Normandy, and a plate of hors d’oeuvres, which included dry-cured duck sausage, a duck galantine, a pâté de campagne of pork and veal, and pickled vegetables. He also brought menus, which listed four more courses, as well as red and white dinner wines, a dessert wine, and a sampling of Normandy’s fruit brandies.

  The Calvados had already gone to Charlotte’s head, and being in Eddie’s company had heightened the giddy sensation. She could just imagine how she would feel before the evening was over. Moreover, all three entrée selections were cooked in Calvados.

  The choice of main courses included veal chops in a Calvados and cream sauce, chicken sautéed with apples in a Calvados and cream sauce, or filet of sole cooked in butter, cream, cider, white wine, and Calvados. “Not exactly cuisine minceur,” she said as she scanned the menu.

  “Nope,” Eddie agreed. “Good thing I don’t have a cholesterol problem.”

  Charlotte entered that snippet of information on the credit side of the Eddie ledger; these things were important at their age.

  “Charlotte,” he said, after they had finished making their selections, “I know you’ve helped out with criminal investigations before. That’s why the Smiths asked you to look into Feder’s murder, right?” He sat across from her, drumming his fingers on the table and looking uncharacteristically serious.

  She nodded.

  “I want you to help me with something,” he announced.

  “Of course,” she said, wondering what it was that could possibly require her help.

  They were interrupted by the reappearance of the waiter, who took their orders—steamed shrimp and mussels marinated in onions, vinegar, and butter to begin with, and the veal chops for the main course.

  “First, I have to tell you a story,” Eddie said after the waiter had gone. Picking up the bottle of fermented cider, he filled their glasses. “If you think René had a whopper of a story, wait until you hear mine. Oddly enough, it’s tied into the same event as part of René’s: the Normandie fire.”

  Charlotte sipped her cider, which was delicious, and waited.

  Eddie also sampled the cider. Then he began: “As you know, I enlisted in the Navy right after Pearl Harbor. I was an assistant to McLean, who was the District Materiel Officer in charge of the conversion. It was a hell of a job. There were only nine of us supervising the conversion, ten counting McLean, and we were under orders to convert the Normandie to a troopship in five weeks. I had almost no free time, but whenever I did have a few minutes, I used to spend them at the piano in the Grand Salon.”

  Charlotte smiled, remembering how he had played that piano on the Normandie’s last voyage.

  “There was one song that I played a lot. It was ‘Just One of Those Things.’ I can’t count how many times in my life I’ve played that song—our song.” He grasped Charlotte’s hand and held it in both of his. “I was still a lovesick young puppy, Charlotte. All I thought about was that crossing—and you.”

  Once again, Charlotte noticed the terrible scars on the back of his hand.

  “On that day, I had gone there after lunch. I was there—in the Grand Salon—when the fire broke out. I was just sitting there, thinking of how the room had looked on that crossing. The salon was in the process of being converted into an officers’ lounge. It looked a lot different. The furniture and the carpet had been put into storage, the windows were painted black, the murals had been removed. There were two crews working in the room: a welding crew that was cutting down the metal stanchions that had supported the light fountains—the glass had already been removed—and a crew from the carpet company that was laying linoleum over the parquet floor.”

  Charlotte shook her head. The thought of linoleum being laid over that beautiful parquet floor—the floor that was was a repr
oduction of the one in the throne room at Fontainebleau—was heartbreaking.

  “That’s my last memory,” Eddie continued. “Of that moment in time: sitting at the piano, looking out at the room where we had danced the night away. Thinking of how beautiful it had been before they took out the murals and the furniture and the light fountains. At that point, the welding crew had taken down three of the metal stanchions, and they were working on the fourth. Two weeks later, I woke up at Bellevue with my hands in bandages and a terrible headache. I have no memory of anything that happened in between.”

  “Not a thing?” Charlotte asked.

  “I shouldn’t say that. I get flashbacks from time to time. About trying to find my way out—feeling my way along that long, smoky, dark corridor. The stream of cold air rushing in …” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head. “Traumatic amnesia, they call it,” he explained. “It’s very common in cases where there’s a head injury, as there was in mine.”

  He paused to heap two crackers with the pâté. He passed one to Charlotte and ate the other himself. Then he went on. “Even though I can’t remember anything, it’s an event that’s haunted me all of my life. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about it. It’s right here in front of me, all the time.” He held out his hands, with their terrible scars. “Oddly enough, it’s also what made me what I am. If it weren’t for the burns, I’d still be playing piano. It was because I wasn’t able to play for so long that I went into arranging and ultimately into conducting.”

  “Your hands were too stiff?”

  He nodded. “It took years of therapy before I got the full range of motion back in my fingers. To continue,” he said, “I had no memory of the events that occurred between that moment and when I woke up at Bellevue. Until two and a half weeks ago.”

  “What happened two and a half weeks ago?”

  “I went to a dinner party at Villa Normandie. I had met Lydia Collins when I first came down here last spring to talk with the chairman of the Big Band Hall of Fame Ball,” he said. “Lydia very kindly volunteered to throw a dinner party in my honor when I returned. Which she did—two and a half weeks ago.”

  “Out of her own good will?” Charlotte asked. Such a friendly gesture didn’t strike her as being Lydia’s style.

  “To tell you the truth, she was chasing me,” Eddie admitted with a trace of embarrassment. “A healthy widower with a fair amount of change in the bank is like the ring on the merry-go-round in this town.”

  Charlotte nodded. “So I’m finding out. The admiral also fits that category. The Smiths told me that he’s out every night of the week.” She smiled. “But I’m told that you have to be able to dance.”

  Eddie laughed. “Yes, that’s true,” he agreed. “Anyway, they’d had a grease fire in the kitchen just before I arrived. It was no big deal; they’d put it out right away. But the smell of the smoke was still in the air. Do you remember your first impression when you walked in?”

  Charlotte nodded. “So like the Grand Salon on the Normandie. All the memories came rushing back in a flood.”

  “Exactly. At the moment I walked in, it also happened that someone was playing our song on the piano. Lydia had hired the guy who plays the piano at the bar in your hotel for the evening.”

  Charlotte nodded again. “I heard him play just the other night.”

  “It was something about hearing the song, smelling the smoke in the air. It was as if someone took a key and unlocked the door to the compartment in my brain that had been locked up since February ninth, 1942. The memory of what happened that afternoon rose up from somewhere in the depths of my brain. It was like watching something float to the surface of a murky pond. I still couldn’t remember it all, of course, though a lot of it has since drifted back in bits and pieces. But I remembered the most important part.”

  “Which was what?” prompted Charlotte, who was still wondering what this fascinating story had to do with him needing her help.

  “Do you remember the conclusion of the New York Attorney General’s investigation into the Normandie fire?” he asked.

  “Yes. It was that the fire was started accidentally by the welders who were taking down the light stanchions. That a spark from a welding torch accidentally ignited a bale of life preservers stored in the Grand Salon.”

  “The wording was ‘There is no evidence of sabotage. Carelessness has served the enemy with equal effectiveness.’ Or something to that general effect, anyway,” Eddie said.

  “I remember,” Charlotte said as she put some hors d’oeuvres on Eddie’s plate and some on her own.

  “Wrong,” he said. “I saw it with my own eyes. The memory of that second in time is what came back to me two and a half weeks ago at Lydia’s party.”

  She looked up at him. “It was sabotage?”

  He lifted a finger, then set the salt and pepper shakers on either side of Charlotte’s octagonal faience plate. “Here are the welders.” He pointed to the salt shaker on her left. “And here are the linoleum installers.” He pointed to the pepper shaker on her right. “And here, in between, is a head-high pile of kapok-filled life preservers—Mae Wests,” he said, pointing to the plate.

  “And where are you?”

  “On the bandstand at the forward end of the room,” he said, moving the flower vase with its spray of pink orchids into position to the right of the pepper shaker representing the linoleum workers. “The only one with a bird’s-eye view. The spark supposedly went from the welding torch to the pile of life preservers.” He moved his finger in an arc from the salt shaker to her plate.

  “Didn’t they use some kind of shield?”

  “They did. A sheet of scrap metal. But it didn’t matter. Because the ignition source wasn’t the welding torch. The fire was started with an incendiary device that was tossed into the pile of life preservers by one of the workmen who were gluing the linoleum down here,” he said, pointing to the pepper shaker on her right, and then moving his finger in an arc from that shaker to the left-hand side of her plate, next to the salt shaker.”

  “Whew!” said Charlotte, letting out a deep breath.

  “There were two guys. One slightly older than the other. The younger one was about twenty, I’d guess. Before the younger guy threw the device, the older-man gave him an order, in German. The order was jetzt. Do you know what jetzt means in German?”

  She shook her head.

  “I looked it up. It means now. After the younger guy threw the device, he looked around. That’s when he saw me. We locked eyes. I remember it now as clearly as if it took place yesterday. He had very clear, gray eyes. I don’t think he realized until then that I was there. They had their backs to me. I hadn’t started playing, and the room wasn’t brightly lit. I also think they were the ones who conked me on the head.”

  “Conked you on the head!”

  “My concussion was from a blow to the head. The doctors thought I must have fallen in an attempt to escape. But to get back to that moment: after the fire broke out, we all tried to extinguish it. The life preservers were packed in burlap-covered bales, and the flames raced from bale to bale. It was like watching a fire spread across a field of dry grass. We beat at it with coats, sweaters, pieces of linoleum—our bare hands. That’s how I got burned. After that … I still don’t remember.” He ran his fingers through his close-cropped white hair. “One of the rescue workers found me in a corridor in tourist-class and carried me out. I have no idea how I got down there.”

  “That would have been one deck down,” Charlotte observed.

  He nodded. “I think those guys cold-cocked me, dragged me down there, and left me for dead. They probably would have stowed me in the cargo hold if they thought they could have done that and still got out in time themselves.”

  “I’ll say this is a story!” Charlotte exclaimed. “Have you told Jack McLean?”

  He shook his head. “I wanted to wait. Once I remembered what had happened, I was determined to find out who those guys were. They
had tried to kill me, after all. I also felt a patriotic duty to expose them, as it were. You see, it was the Navy that took the blame.”

  “Carelessness,” Charlotte commented.

  Eddie nodded. “The fire may have spread because of carelessness, but it didn’t start because of carelessness. There are a lot of guys who have been carrying the Normandie fire on their consciences for a lot of years—Jack McLean among them, I suspect. He was the scapegoat. He took the heat for the higher-ups. Never complained about it either,” he added.

  “Odd that you should have run into him down here.”

  Eddie shrugged. “Life is full of odd coincidences.” He reached out and grasped her hand. “Some of them have a lot more significance than others, like meeting up again with your girl after fifty-three years.” He smiled, and Charlotte melted.

  “Did you find out who they were?” she asked.

  “Yes. It was difficult, but not as difficult as I would have thought. I started with the Attorney General’s report, which listed the names of everyone who was aboard at the time of the fire. That was over three thousand people: mostly workmen and prospective Navy crew members. Then I narrowed the list down to the employees of the Tri-Boro Carpet Company. They were a subcontractor to the Robins Dry Dock Company, which had been hired to do the conversion work.”

  “And who the linoleum layers presumably worked for,” said Charlotte.

  Eddie nodded.

  “That limited it to nineteen. But that’s where I got stuck. So I made up a possible scenario. Since I had heard the one guy speaking German, I figured that he might be a member of the German-American Bund, a German fifth columnist.”

  “Didn’t the contractor conduct security checks?” asked Charlotte. “It would seem as if having all those workmen aboard was asking for trouble.”