Who Killed Blanche DuBois?

by Carole Elizabeth Buggé

  “Well, I always suspected that Jean knew something about it . . . something she never told anyone.”

  “Jean as in Jean my evil stepmother?” said Meredith.

  Sarah let the curtain drop, ignoring her.

  “It isn’t anything concrete, just that she seemed very nervous after that, and then when she transferred to UNC Greensboro, none of us ever heard from her again.”

  “So the plagiarism incident was after this?” said Meredith.

  “Yes; it was a few months later.”

  “Maybe she did it on purpose, because she was looking for an excuse to leave,” Claire remarked.

  Sarah shrugged. “Well, I don’t know about that. It’s possible, I suppose…”

  Meredith leaned back in her chair. “As a colleague of mine once said, ‘Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’”

  Chapter 18

  You know, Meredith’s the ultimate egoist,” Claire said to Peter Schwartz over lunch at Keens. “She knows she’s smarter than most people, and doesn’t feel guilty about it or think she should hide it.”

  “She’ll have to find a hell of man to take her on someday,” he said, adding quickly, “that is, if she ever—I mean, not that she necessarily will want to . . . but if she does . . .” He sighed. “I keep trying to play by the rules, but I’ll probably end up getting sued someday. It’ll be something stupid, like telling a woman she looks good in red. She’ll think I’m sexually harassing her and she’ll sue me. You’ll testify in court for me, won’t you?”

  He looked at her over his Scotch glass, his brown eyes sad as a beagle’s. The left corner of his mouth twitched upward, though, and Claire smiled back at him.

  “Of course I will,” she said. “I’ll even say you’re gay, if you want.”

  Peter wrinkled his nose. “You don’t have to go overboard,” he said indignantly, and Claire laughed again. She couldn’t resist teasing Peter; he was so huffy, like a little bantam rooster, when his sexuality was in question.

  “Do you know, we used to play a game when I was in graduate school,” Peter said. “If someone was heterosexual, they had to say who they would sleep with if they had to have a homosexual affair, and then the reverse for someone if they were homosexual. They had to say who of the opposite sex they would choose.”

  “Interesting,” said Claire. “Who did you pick?”

  “Well, my first choice was Alan Ladd, but if he wasn’t available I would have taken Basil Rathbone or Humphrey Bogart.”

  Claire laughed. “I’m not sure I see a pattern there,” she said.

  Peter shrugged and took a bite of mesclun salad. He was always dieting.

  “Does there always have to be a pattern?”

  “I don’t know,” said Claire. “Meredith seems to think so.”

  “Meredith wants life to imitate fiction,” Peter sighed, “but it doesn’t. It’s much messier than she realizes.”

  “I could be wrong, but I think Meredith may see patterns where other people just see chaos.”

  “Jolly good for her,” said Peter. “Maybe she should have been a quantum physicist.”

  “It’s not too late,” said Claire, taking a sip of red wine. “It’s funny you should say that, because ever since Amelia died I’ve been thinking about the passage of time . . .”

  “Uh-oh, maybe I should order another drink.”

  Claire made a face at him. “It’s just that when I’m around Meredith, I notice her ability to immerse herself entirely in the moment, and I sometimes think I’ve lost that ability. She uses her time simply and naturally, as though it were a gift, whereas I hoard it, obsess about it, and worry about its passing.”

  Peter nodded. “That seems natural enough. I do the same thing.”

  “But is it a function of growing older, do you think?”

  Peter shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “You know, this may sound strange,” Claire said slowly, “but today I suddenly realized that I expected Amelia to . . . always be there. I mean, I guess she seemed beyond death in some way. Does that make any sense?”

  Peter nodded. “I think we all have people like that in our lives. When we’re young it’s our parents, but then later I think movie stars and athletes often perform that function. We can even accept our own aging as long as we can point to someone who doesn’t—a delegate, if you will, for our own secret hopes of immortality.”

  Claire sighed. “You’re so wise, Peter.”

  Peter smiled and took a sip of Scotch. “Ooo, you take advantage of my poor male ego. Flattery will get you everywhere. Be careful, or I may ask you to marry me.”

  Claire laughed, but something like a sob caught in her throat. Amelia had been the true core of their little group, and now that she was gone Claire knew that the center had not held. Lately she had been obsessing about the people who were no longer in her life, either because of death or geography or just apathy, and she was beginning to feel that over the years she had shed people like a snake sheds its skin. People were like comets, whirling in and out of solar systems, spinning through space, orbiting around each other like lost planets. Claire ran her finger over the lip of her wineglass, making a faint ringing sound. A couple of overfed business men in expensive suits looked up from their rack of lamb, but she didn’t care.

  “Do you know what Willard wants to do?”

  Peter sighed. “Please, not while I’m eating.”

  “He told me he wants to write a book based on Blanche’s murder.”

  Peter put down his fork. “Good Lord, that man’s capacity for tackiness really does continue to amaze.”

  “Peter,” she said slowly, “you don’t think Willard . . .”

  “What? Do I think Willard killed Blanche?” He smiled and shook his head. “Wouldn’t that just be too perfect?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can just see the headlines: ‘Best-selling author kills competition.’ We’re not in Texas, you know.”

  “Texas?”

  “I was thinking of the mother of the cheerleader who put a contract out on her daughter’s competitor.”

  “Oh, right. Still, do you think . . .?”

  Peter balanced a piece of arugula on his fork, studying it as if it were a laboratory specimen. A sudden eruption of laughter burst in from the bar in the next room; it was Friday afternoon and the office crowd was beginning to gather for their weekly ritual.

  “Willard is . . . well, let’s just say he’s not my favorite person in the world. But it’s hard to imagine him . . . I mean, it’s hard to imagine anyone I know doing something like that.”

  Claire nodded. “I know what you mean. I’ve gone through the list of everyone I can think of, and . . . it just seems inconceivable.”

  Peter signaled the waiter for another Scotch. (His diets always included a certain allowance of single malts.) “Yes, well, that’s what the police are for. By the way, I understand your swain Robert has some competition from a certain detective.”

  Claire looked at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Never mind, never mind . . . rumors will circulate. Forget I said anything.”

  But Claire couldn’t forget. She spent the rest of the afternoon wondering who had spread the rumor—and why.

  Sarah and Claire made an appointment to go to Blanche’s apartment together the next day to gather Blanche’s notes on her book. Meredith asked if she could come along, and Claire agreed on the condition that she not get in their way. She was afraid that Meredith would send one of the stacks of magazines crashing to the ground with one careless fling of an arm.

  They picked their way cautiously through the piles of things and went into Blanche’s living room. Blanche used a computer for her final drafts, but there were sheets of scribbled research notes everywhere on her writing desk. Claire sighed when she saw them, and Sarah laughed her dry little laugh.

  “Well, you have your work cu
t out for you, as the saying goes. Good luck.”

  Claire sat down at Blanche’s writing desk and looked at the scattered sheets of paper with dismay. Meredith roamed the room like a bird dog, poking into everything. Claire glanced at Sarah to see if she was annoyed yet, but she was just sitting on the edge of the sofa, staring into space. Claire turned back to the desk, and noticed a mirror with an ornate brass frame hanging on the wall over the desk. Tucked into the corner of the mirror was an elegant tortoiseshell comb. She picked up the comb and ran her finger over its smooth edges. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? Blanche had certainly been fair, but it had not saved her . . .

  “That comb was a gift from Anthony,” Sarah said.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “Yes, isn’t it? It’s from Italy. He brought it back after one of his trips there.”

  “Does he go back very often?”

  Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know. He has family there, in Palermo, I think.”

  Meredith appeared at Claire’s shoulder.

  “Find anything? I haven’t found a damn thing,” she said, leaning on the desk.

  Claire was about to reprimand her for swearing when she noticed the little drawer pop out of the side of the desk. Meredith saw it at the same moment, and pounced on it.

  “Look! What’s this?” she said, extracting a small book from the drawer. “It’s Blanche’s diary!” she said loudly, holding it up for Sarah to see.

  “You don’t have to shout; I’m right next to you,” said Claire, thinking more of Sarah, who hated loud noises.

  But Sarah was staring at the diary.

  “Good Lord,” she said, “I didn’t know she kept a diary. Can I see it?”

  Meredith handed it over reluctantly, then proceeded to read over Sarah’s shoulder.

  “What? What does it say?” she said, wriggling with excitement.

  “Look,” said Sarah, holding it up for Claire to see, “the last page has been torn out.”

  “Oh my God,” Meredith murmured. “Oh my God.”

  For once Claire didn’t think Meredith was being overly dramatic.

  The Ninth Precinct was just a few blocks from Blanche’s apartment. The blond woman was at her desk, eating a bagel with cream cheese, when the three of them arrived.

  “Can I help you?” she said, her cheeks puffing out like a chipmunk’s.

  Meredith started to speak but Claire put a firm hand on her shoulder.

  “We’d like to see Detective Jackson, please,” she said as calmly as she could.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, but—” Meredith began, squirming away from Claire’s hold on her.

  “No,” said Claire with a look at Meredith. “He knows us, though. Tell him—tell him Claire and Meredith are here.”

  “And Sarah,” Meredith added, determined to be involved.

  “Wait just a second,” the blond woman replied. She heaved herself out of her chair and lumbered over to Jackson’s cubicle. In a moment she returned and motioned them over.

  “Go ahead and go in.” She resumed her vigil with satisfaction, delicately spreading the cream cheese around the bagel with her index finger.

  Claire saw Sarah roll her eyes, but fortunately the blond woman was oblivious to such nuances of behavior. The three of them walked over to Jackson’s cubicle, arriving just as Sergeant Barker shot out of it at a trot.

  “Oh, hello,” he said. “Sorry, I gotta dash. I’m late to an audition.”

  “What does that man do?” said Sarah, looking after him.

  “I don’t think even he knows,” said a voice behind them, and they looked up to see Detective Jackson standing there, the familiar trench coat slung over his arm, the same weary slope to his shoulders.

  “Would you mind very much joining me for lunch?” he said apologetically. “I haven’t eaten all day. Is the Veselka all right with you?”

  The Veselka was all right with everyone, and ten minutes later they were all seated in the back room amid potted plants and blackboards listing the day’s homemade soups. Even in a neighborhood full of Russian and Ukrainian restaurants, the Veselka was a landmark: open twenty-four hours a day, it boasted the best borscht in the East Village. Anytime of day you could find poets, businessmen, and anarchists side by side, hunched over the rickety crowded tables, sipping soup and reading the Times—or the Anarchist News.

  It did not take long for Detective Jackson to peruse the diary and agree that it was a most important find.

  “A secret compartment?” he said, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his forehead. “Would I insult your sister if I said ‘how clichéd’?” he said to Sarah.

  Sarah let some air escape her lungs—not a laugh, not a snort, but something in between.

  “She’s past insulting, Detective, and besides, it is clichéd! I think Blanche reveled in that sort of thing. It was all part of her playacting.”

  “Well,” said Jackson with a glance at the waiter delivering his soup, “the most obvious question, of course, is who tore out that last page. Was it Blanche, or was it—”

  “The murderer!” Meredith exclaimed.

  The waiter stared at her. Tall and thin, sallow-skinned, with a bristly crew cut and little wire-rim glasses over a narrow nose, he resembled a young Bertolt Brecht. Sometimes Claire thought everyone in the East Village looked like they were in costume. She supposed this young man was an anarchist—or, at the very least, a socialist.

  “It might have been someone else,” said Jackson. He turned to Claire. “Didn’t you tell me that Amelia and Marshall went to the apartment right before she was—”

  “Yes, yes, that’s right,” Claire interrupted, not wanting to hear the awful word.

  “So it could have been one of them!” cried Meredith, nearly upsetting the plate the waiter was trying to set in front of her.

  “Yes, it could have,” said Jackson. “I just regret that our boys didn’t find the drawer when we searched the apartment. Frankly, we found it tough going. No offense,” he said to Sarah, “but it was hard work, sorting through everything there.”

  “Did you really go through everything?” Sarah sounded horrified at the idea.

  “Well, maybe not everything, but we did our best,” he answered. “Evidently it wasn’t good enough.”

  “Oh, don’t feel bad,” said Meredith. “Even I would have missed it if I hadn’t happened to lean on it by accident.”

  “So good of you to admit that it was an accident,” Claire observed dryly, but her sarcasm was lost on Meredith.

  “Oh yes,” Meredith went on cheerfully, “this is a difficult case, really quite difficult.”

  “So what do we do now?” asked Sarah.

  “Nothing,” said Jackson. “Don’t tell anyone about this. The fewer people who know about the diary the better.”

  “Because one of them could be the murderer, right?” said Meredith, tackling the hamburger on her plate energetically.

  “That’s part of it. We also don’t want the press to get ahold of any details,” he said to Claire, “because that can really hamper our investigation.”

  “Right—got it; no press,” said Meredith.

  Sarah looked at her.

  “What do you do when you’re asleep?” she said. “Or do you sleep?”

  For some reason the remark struck all of them as funny, and they all burst out laughing, even Meredith. The combination of anxiety and fatigue made it difficult to stop, and they were still laughing when the bemused waiter came to clear their plates.

  Chapter 19

  Meredith was lying on the living room rug reading Madame Bovary while Claire sat on the red leather chair reading manuscripts. A soft autumn rain fell outside. It was one week before Thanksgiving, and Claire had left the office early to work at home.

  Meredith suddenly snorted and rolled over on her back. “Ugh!”

  “What?”

  “This description of her death! It’s disgusting.”


  “Oh, when she poisons herself . . . yes, I remember it was pretty gruesome.”

  “What a yucky way to die.”

  “Yes, it is.” Claire put her manuscript down for a moment. “I hope Blanche didn’t suffer too much.”

  “Yech,” said Meredith. She closed the book up and wriggled on her stomach in the direction of Ralph, who had been sitting just out of the danger zone. He saw her coming and fled, and Meredith rolled over onto her back again. Absently, Claire began scratching her left palm.

  “You know, that spot on your hand is linked to a chakra,” said Meredith.

  “What?”

  “That spot you’re always scratching—it’s linked to a chakra. There’s an imbalance of energy somewhere in your body.”

  Claire decided to humor her.

  “Oh, really—where?”

  Meredith shook her head.

  “I think it’s linked to your heart meridian.”

  “You mean heart as in cardiovascular health, or heart as in romance?”

  Meredith shrugged. “Take your pick. The Chinese don’t dichotomize the mind/body relationship the way we do; they believe more in the connected nature of all things.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s become a commonplace in Western medicine now that there’s a connection between emotional health and physical health, but the Chinese were there way ahead of us.”

  “Yes, well, this is very interesting, Meredith, but I really have to finish reading this manuscript today.”

  “All right, all right.” Meredith rolled over onto her stomach and resumed her reading. After a few minutes she said, “I wonder what concentration of cyanide would have been used in the crime? Who would know the answer to that?” Then she raised herself up on her elbows and looked at Claire.

  “I know—Anthony! I’ll call Anthony. Where did you say he worked—Hoffman LaRoche?”

  Claire sighed and put down her manuscript. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, bothering him at work,” she said, but Meredith was already dialing.

  “Hello? May I speak with Anthony Sciorra?” she said, lowering her voice and doing her best imitation of an adult. There was a pause and then she said, “Anthony Sciorra, please.” There was a longer pause and then Claire heard her say, “Oh . . . do you know where he can be reached?” Then another pause and Meredith hung up. A moment later she appeared around the corner, her face dejected.