Who Killed Blanche DuBois?
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Who Killed Blanche DuBois?
Carole Buggé
Copyright © 1999 by Carole Buggé.
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. For information, address Writers House LLC at 21 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10010.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ebook ISBN: 978-0-7867-5330-7
Print ISBN: 978-0-7867-5331-4
Distributed by Argo Navis Author Services
Contents
Wise beyond her years . . .
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Erlkönig
The Erl King
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Wise beyond her years . . .
Claire looked around the tiny, windowless room and felt her forehead prickling with sweat. She concentrated on breathing, angry at her irrational claustrophobia, her fear of entrapment.
Meredith, on the other hand, seemed not only at ease, but in her element. She leaned forward and questioned Detective Jackson as though she were the detective and he a tricky suspect.
“How did you say Ms. DuBois died?” she said suspiciously.
Jackson regarded her with the expression of a tolerant uncle. Claire thought he might even be suppressing a smile.
“I didn’t. She was poisoned.”
“Cyanide?” said Meredith thoughtfully. There was a pause. Sergeant Barker attempted to catch Jackson’s eye, but he was looking straight at Meredith.
“Yes,” said Jackson calmly, hiding whatever surprise he may have felt.
“Just a guess,” said Meredith, “albeit an educated one.”
Praise for Who Killed Blanche DuBois?
“[A] wonderful blend of gracious writing, vivid characters, and deft plotting . . .”—Marvin N. Kaye, author of Bullets for Macbeth
For Paul and Katherine
Acknowledgments
First I would like to thank my friend and colleague, Jeff Clinkenbeard, for helping give birth to (and name) Meredith Lawrence. Thanks also to Bruce Edward Hall for the weekends in his wonderful house in Hudson; to Marvin Kaye for his friendship, encouragement, and support; to my editor Hillary Cige and my agent Susan Ginsburg for believing in this book; to Anthony Moore for his companionship on our many upstate rambles; to my siblings for putting up with me all those years; to Chris Buggé, for the steady supply of medical textbooks; to Fritz Capria for his help with fact-checking; to Leona and Cora for their companionship on the trail—and finally, to my parents, for creating an environment that fostered and nurtured creativity.
Erlkönig
Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind?
Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind.
Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm
Er fasst ihn sicher, er hält ihn warm
“Mein Sohn, was birgst du so bang dein Gesicht?”
“Siehst, Vater, du den Erlkönig nicht?
Den Erlenkönig mit Kron’ und Schweif?”
“Mein Sohn, es ist ein Nebelstreif.”
“Du liebes Kind, komm, geh’ mit mir!
Gar schöne Spiele spiel’ ich mit dir;
manch’bunte Blumen sind an dem Strand,
meine Mutter hat manch’ gülden Gewand.”
“Mein Vater, mein Vater und hörest du nicht,
was Erlenkönig mich leise verspricht?”
“Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig, mein Kind,
in dürren Blättern säuselt der Wind.”
“Willst, feiner Knabe, du mit mir geh’n?
Meine Töchter sollen dich warten schön,
meine Töchter führen den nächtlichen Reih’n
und wiegen und tanzen und singen dich ein.”
“Mein Vater, mein Vater und siehst du nicht dort
Erlkönig’s Töchter am dustern Ort?”
“Mein Sohn, mein Sohn, ich seh’ es genau,
es scheinen die alten Weiden so grau.”
“Ich liebe dich, mich reizt deine schöne Gestalt;
und bist du nicht willig, so brauch’ ich Gewalt!”
“Mein Vater, mein Vater, jezt fasst er mich an!
Erlkönig hat mir ein Leids getan!”
Dem Vater grausets; er reitet geschwind,
er hält in den Armen das ächzende Kind.
Erreicht den Hof mit Müh und Noth;
In seinen Armen das Kind war tot.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
THE ERL KING
Who rides there so late, through night so wild?
It is a father with his child
He carries the boy close in his arms
He holds him tightly to keep him warm
“My son, why is your face so white?”
“See, Father; the Erl King is in sight!
He stands there in his crown and shroud!”
“My son, it’s just a misty cloud.”
“Oh, dearest child, come go with me;
many games I’ll play with thee;
many lovely blossoms you will behold;
my mother will give you robes of gold.”
“My father, my father—why can’t you hear
the Erl King whispering softly in my ear?”
“Be calm and tranquil, my child;
it’s the wind in the branches blowing so wild.”
“Will you come, fine boy, and go with me?
My daughters wait even now for thee;
my daughters will keep you throughout the nights
with singing and dancing and other delights.”
“My father, my father, don’t you see that face?
It’s the Erl King’s daughter waiting in the dark place!”
“My son, my son, the face that you see
is just the hollow old willow tree.”
“I love you, fine boy; come ride with me on my black horse;
and if you’re not willing, I’ll take you by force!”
“My father, my father, hold me tightly to your breast!
The Erl King’s icy fingers have me possessed!”
The father shuddered and spurred his horse to run
He held to his bosom his poor fainting son
As he reached his house he was filled with dread:
In his arms the child lay dead.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Chapter 1
The wheels of the train sang like birds. Claire Rawlings gave up on the manuscript she was reading and stared out the window at the river. She had two other manuscripts to read by the end of the weekend, but the Hudson was irresistible, with grey-shaded cliffs giving way to sun-splattered grasslands under a sky full of wispy, violet-tipped clouds. It swelled and curved in front of Claire’s eyes, taking her breath away, like a lover who suddenly and unexpectedly reveals himself.
/> The conductor passed in his shiny blue suit, and the walkie-talkie in his back pocket brushed against Claire’s hair. She pulled herself upright in the seat and looked around at the other passengers. It was midweek, and the train was not very crowded. Claire wasn’t sure if she felt guilty or not about taking a couple of days off in the middle of the week, but Robert was working all weekend, and this was her only chance to see him. And of course she carried with her the ubiquitous manuscripts—as an editor, she always carried her work with her. Like all editors, she was always backed up with more reading than she could get done during office hours—with phone calls, staff meetings, and lunches with agents and authors taking up most of her work day.
Across the aisle, a small red-haired child with a round, determined face sat on her father’s lap eating raisins from a red cardboard box. The man was reading an article about the O. J. Simpson trial in the New York Times. In these weeks immediately following the acquittal, it was hard to read about anything else; even the Times knew it was good copy and that it wouldn’t last forever. The father was thin and gentle looking, ascetic in his gold wire-rim glasses and thinning sandy hair; Claire thought that in a few years he would be no match for his daughter. “My father always told me to watch out for redheaded women,” Claire’s father had teased her mother. Her mother always rolled her eyes in the same way, but even as a child Claire knew it was a kind of compliment, and knew also that her mother was secretly proud of her abundant auburn hair. Claire looked at her reflection in the train window, saw her own rust-colored curls, and allowed herself a moment of satisfaction. It was like belonging to a club; even Arthur Conan Doyle—himself a redhead—had enjoyed the joke in “The Red-Headed League.”
Claire looked back over at the girl and her father. The man was gently trying to wrest a packet of cookies from her, but she held on fiercely.
“You’ll get a tummy ache if you eat any more sweets,” he was saying in a low voice. “You know you will.”
The girl’s face grew more set and her plump rosy hands tightened their grip on the cookies.
“Nooooo,” she bleated, and a shrill, siren-like wail began to emanate from her throat.
The father looked around in desperation, and his eyes caught Claire’s. He smiled miserably, shrugging his shoulders in a gesture of parental despair. Claire smiled back as sympathetically as she could, remembering her own rumpled father, looking after Claire and her brother the fall their mother attended night school. Claire’s mother had made parenting look easy, but with her father, even as a child she could see the strain. She felt now that she had never appreciated sufficiently how difficult parenting was, and, seeing the struggle across the aisle, wished she could go back in time and erase any difficulties she or her brother caused her parents. She remembered her temper tantrums, when she would cry so hard she thought her face was going to explode; remembered slamming her bedroom door so violently that the mirror on it broke—remembered, too, the flowered poster which finally replaced the second shattered mirror. Mirror, mirror on the wall . . .
Claire stared out her window again, leaving the father on his own. Why do people do it; if they knew what they were in for, no one would have children . . .
Half an hour later, looking again across the aisle at the father and child, both asleep, the girl’s curly head resting in the crook of her father’s arm, Claire thought she had never seen a sweeter sight. The disputed cookies lay on the seat, discarded and forgotten.
The Hudson was awash with the October sun reflecting off the white sails of a couple of sailboats. A breeze whipped around the corners of the river, filling out the sails and making the boats lean out at a sharp angle over the rippling water. The trees swirled and swayed in the wind, their remaining leaves curling and showing their white undersides. The mountains of the Hudson Highlands rose up at uneven, oblique angles all around—grey humpbacked hills, eternally mysterious and beckoning.
Now the sun was hitting the river in full force, creating little points of sparkling light that twitched and danced on the water, and Claire could feel a wave of sunlight euphoria coming on. She settled back in her seat to wait for it—it was like sleep, and couldn’t be forced. But then a cloud passed over the sun and the river was once again thrown into shadow. The train rounded a bend and across the river Claire could see the stern stone fortresses of West Point, stark and forbidding on its promontory amid the luscious landscape of the Hudson River Valley. Claire had visited the academy once, and the smooth, blunt-faced cadets reminded her of obedient children, patiently awaiting the orders of grownups. They were all so polite, and it amazed her to hear those young men with their cropped hair “yes, ma’aming” her this, and “no, ma’aming” her that. It was like traveling through a time warp.
The train rounded a bend in the river just north of the academy, and Claire looked back at the expanse of water. Why was it so thrilling, all of this open water; why did it both invigorate and soothe? Claire felt her breathing relax as she settled back into the Amtrak Custom Coach seat. She sighed and picked up the manuscript on her lap: The Ku Klux Klan Since the Civil Rights Movement, by Blanche DuBois. This book was a departure for Blanche, who up until now had written only murder mysteries—very successful ones—and Claire had doubts about her ability to tackle such a subject. But Blanche had worked hard on it, researching for four months before she even started to write. Claire hoped the book was good and that Ardor House would want to buy it. Now she wasn’t sure if she was going to have time to finish it before she saw Blanche. She was going straight from Robert’s house in Hudson to a party in Manhattan in honor of Blanche’s last book, The Persian Cat Murders, which had just sold a million copies.
Some loose pages fell out of the manuscript and onto the floor. The thin, ascetic-looking father was awake now, and he leaned down to pick them up. He handed them to Claire with a sheepish smile, holding her eyes just a moment longer than necessary, a vaguely imploring look in his mild grey eyes. He’s shopping, Claire thought. Watch out for redheaded women. You’d think he’d know that by now. She looked at the loose papers in her hand. It was a magazine article about her that had appeared in New Woman; she had brought it along to show to Robert. Claire opened the shiny folded pages, EDITOR OF DEATH, proclaimed the title in large Gothic lettering. She read the opening paragraph:
Claire Rawlings is no stranger to death—in fact, it’s how she makes her living. The deaths we speak of are literary, and they come between the pages of the mystery books she edits in her job as fiction editor at Ardor House Publications. Recognized by many in the field as perhaps the foremost mystery editor, Ms. Rawlings . . .
Claire put down the article and looked out the window. She had never gotten over the little thrill of seeing her name in print, and although she liked to think of herself as intensely private, she was pleased by the modest sort of fame this article represented. She folded the pages and slipped them into her bag, and as she did she saw the letter she had brought to show Robert. She took it out and read once again the sprawling, untidy scrawl.
Dear Ms. Rawlings:
I have just finished reading the article about you in the recent issue of New Woman—though I must confess such semiliterate pulp came into my hands through my stepmother, who is an avid consumer of such trash.
The sordidness of this “magazine” notwithstanding, the article convinced me that you are an exceedingly interesting person, and I feel we may be able to discuss topics of mutual concern. I may be of some service to you in your profession, as I am something of an amateur sleuth; I have made a study of criminal modus operandi, and have the solution of several school mysteries—mostly petty thefts—to my credit. I can modestly say that in my town I am even something of a minor celebrity.
At any rate, I am contemplating a trip to New York and would welcome the opportunity to meet with you. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely Yours,
Meredith Lawrence
P.S. Since you could not possibly guess it from
my writing style, I should mention that I am thirteen years old.
P.P.S. The article says you went to Duke. I wonder if you knew my mother there—her maiden name was Katherine Bowers. She has unfortunately left this world, which is why I am forced now to live with the Wicked Witch of Greenwich (d.b.a. my stepmother).
Claire folded the letter and put it back in her bag. She had brought it along to show Robert, thinking it would amuse him. She had answered it a week ago—surprisingly, she had known Meredith’s mother at school. They sang together in the Duke Chorale, and both lived in Wilson House, on East Campus, the smaller of the college’s two campuses. This—plus the fact that both women were redheads—had led to a casual friendship between them. Claire liked Katherine Bowers but was intimidated by her; Katherine was a dynamo—fierce, competitive, and driven—and Claire could never match her energy level. She looked at Meredith’s vigorous handwriting, sprawling all over the page as if about to jump right off the paper, and decided that the girl took after her mother.
Claire’s palm was itching. Whenever she felt tense, there was a spot on her left palm that itched. She scratched it absently as she pondered Meredith’s letter, then she remembered the beer she had brought with her. She rustled around in her bag until she found it—Corona, a good, clear beer she had come to like during a stay in Mexico. She foraged around in her bag some more and found the bottle opener. The beer was not very cold, but it was crisp and clean.
Claire drank it too quickly. Her head felt elevated from her body, and her brain was full of cotton wool. She leaned back in her seat and looked out the window. Tall blond grasses and marshlands swept by. The Hudson swirled on the other side of them, moody and dark now as the pale autumn sun was hidden by a low grey cloud cover. Moody. How could a river be moody, really? Claire smiled at the human need for personification, to turn the forces of nature into something we can understand . . . She let her mind wander to Robert . . . certainly he could be moody. His moods did descend on him like a cloud cover, opaque and forbidding. It was like a shade being pulled down in a room, shutting out the sunlight, and it made her feel needy and off balance. She had to remind herself that this was the same Robert whose skin was so warm under the fabric of his shirt, whose hands were so firm, so graceful on a piano keyboard or on her body.