Murder, She Wrote: A Slaying in Savannah

by Jessica Fletcher

  “How did you figure that out?” Payne asked me. “About it being Charmelle’s revolver that Tillie used? I knew it, of course, but what brought you to that conclusion?”

  “A few things,” I said. “In her will, Tillie called for Charmelle to show some gumption. I wondered what had prompted that. The police said Charmelle didn’t have a gun, but they were wrong. She did. And they never found out that she’d had a disappointing affair with Jones, because you all closed ranks and wouldn’t talk to them. Charmelle felt a lot of guilt for having been disloyal to her best friend, but she was also afraid Tillie would blame the murder on her. I connected those dots, as they say. I didn’t know for sure, but that scenario made sense to me.”

  I reached over and patted Charmelle’s hand. She smiled at me, and a satisfied smile crossed her lips. Her subtle nod confirmed what I’d said.

  “Tillie had always been protective of Charmelle,” I said, “but at the same time she urged her to stand up for herself. When Charmelle finally took that advice and faced down Wanamaker, she found she couldn’t kill him.”

  Charmelle gave a small snort. “She came upstairs just when I had the gun pointed at him. But I was shaking so hard, I couldn’t aim. He was trying to talk me out of it, and his face just lit up with happiness when he saw Miss Tillie come to stand next to me. She grabbed the gun away and said, ‘This is how you do it, Charmelle.’ And she shot him. Then she told me to go downstairs and pretend nothing had ever happened.” She looked at her brother. “Frank knew something was wrong and he kept after me. But I wouldn’t tell him. When the body was found, I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I started to cry and I couldn’t stop. He just assumed—and I let him.”

  They’d all fallen silent when Charmelle had spoken.

  “Well, well,” Richardson said at last, patting his mouth with his napkin and rising. “Ah think it’s time for me to open this mysterious sealed envelope left behind by Miss Tillie. It appears that Mrs. Fletcher has fulfilled the terms of Miss Tillie’s will.”

  “May I suggest,” I said, “that we hold off on that for a little longer?”

  “Why?” Rocky Kendall asked. “Let’s open the envelope and settle once and for all who gets the house.”

  “You know, Mr. Kendall,” I said, “I didn’t appreciate the comments you made to the local newspaper about me. I did not come to Savannah seeking personal gain.”

  “That remains to be seen,” Rose Kendall said.

  “Yes, I suppose it does,” I said. “The Grogans have volunteered to serve after-dinner drinks in the parlor. Let’s join them. They have something to show us.”

  “I’m leaving,” the judge said. “As far as I’m concerned, this evening is over.”

  He stood and took a few steps toward the door.

  “Your wheelchair, Judge,” I said.

  Red-faced, he returned to the chair, sat heavily in it, and wheeled himself from the room.

  “He can walk,” Pettigrew said.

  “Yes, he can,” Charmelle said. “When he wants to.”

  I asked Mrs. Goodall to join us and we went to the parlor, where we found Artie Grogan at the bar waiting to serve traditional postprandial drinks. The judge had preceded us into the room and was using the phone to call Beverly to come and get him.

  Roland Richardson asked me when I wanted the envelope to be opened.

  “As soon as we’ve had a chance to view the show-and-tell.” I said it loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “What is this show-and-tell business?” Pettigrew asked.

  “I think it’s time to show and to tell how Tillie Mortelaine died.”

  No one said a word as they stared at me.

  “Artie?” I said. “Ready?”

  He motioned to his wife, who dimmed the lights.

  “The Grogans have spent considerable time here at the house looking for otherworldly spirits.”

  “A couple of charlatans,” Pettigrew pronounced.

  Artie Grogan went to a projector in a corner that hadn’t been there during the cocktail hour. No one seemed to have noticed it until he turned it on. The lens was directed at a section of bare white wall.

  “What is this?” O’Neill barked. “More nonsense?”

  “Go ahead, Artie,” I said.

  As he began projecting a series of images contained on a memory card from one of his many infrared cameras that had been positioned throughout the house, I explained. “The cameras used by the Grogans have taken hundreds of photos of various parts of the house. They operate when they detect motion. I was surprised at how sensitive they are. Even a fleeting shaft of light, or a shadow, activates them. Because of the large number of images captured, the Grogans fell a bit behind in viewing and analyzing the pictures, and they graciously allowed me to go through their unviewed shots with them.” I looked at the wall, where a new image came to life. “Like this one,” I said.

  It showed Tillie leaving her bedroom and heading for the top of the stairs.

  “And this one,” I said.

  Now, the images came faster on the wall. Everyone was transfixed as one picture followed another, creating a montage of still images that had the effect of projecting a continuous story. Tillie reaching the top of the stairs . . . Tillie looking down at the rug beneath her blue slippers . . . Tillie tentatively reaching for the banister . . . Tillie about to take her first step on her way down the stairs . . . Tillie stopping and turning . . . Tillie’s face reflecting surprise, and fear . . . and then . . .

  James Pettigrew coming up behind her and sending her tumbling down the long staircase.

  Mrs. Goodall and Charmelle began to cry. Warner Payne slapped his hand on his knee, and exclaimed, “I knew it!”

  All eyes turned to Pettigrew. He stood in the middle of the room, motionless, unsure of what to do or where to go. He suddenly took long strides to the door. We followed. He reached the foyer, glanced back once, opened the front door, and stepped through it—into the arms of two Chatham-Savannah uniformed officers.

  We watched the policemen cuff him and lead him away before we returned to the parlor, where Artie, with a large grin on his round face, eagerly poured drinks for everyone.

  “Remarkable,” Dr. Payne said, taking my hand and patting it. “I am truly impressed.”

  Richardson asked for everyone’s attention. “With Mrs. Fletcher’s permission,” he said, “I shall now open the sealed envelope left behind by Miss Tillie Mortelaine.”

  “About time,” Rocky Kendall said. His sister kept mum.

  I went to the bar, poured three glasses of sherry, then handed one to Mrs. Goodall and one to Charmelle. I touched the rim of my glass to each of theirs.

  The moment had come for Tillie’s final final wishes to be revealed.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  It was good to be back in Cabot Cove.

  I recounted for them what had led me to the conclusion that Tillie Mortelaine had shot her fiancé to death and that she’d used a gun brought to the party for that purpose by Charmelle O’Neill, who’d intended to do the deed herself.

  “So the old lady wanted to wait until she died before admitting she murdered Jones,” Mort said.

  “Right,” I said.

  “I still find it inexcusable, Jessica, that Miss Tillie suckered you into solving the crime,” said Seth. “And she put you in further danger: You were living next door to a man who turned out to be a murderer.”

  “Pettigrew?” I said.

  “Who else would I be talking about?” my physician friend said.

  “Did you know he’d pushed your friend down the stairs from the beginning?” Tobé asked.

  “No,” I replied. “I considered him to be a harmless, if annoying, eccentric. Of course, I never did believe that Tillie had accepted his proposal of marriage. It was when I learned of his connection with the hotel next door and its plans to expand onto Tillie’s property that I began to suspect his motives for courting her. When he mentioned the color of the slippers she’d worn the n
ight she died, that was when I knew he’d been responsible for her death.”

  “How did the slippers figure in?” Mayor Shevlin asked.

  “Mrs. Goodall had said they were a gift from Charmelle, and that Tillie had taken the box upstairs to open it. So Pettigrew could not have seen those slippers unless he’d been there when Tillie fell down the stairs. Of course, that wouldn’t have been easy to prove. But when it occurred to me that the cameras the Grogans had placed around the house might have caught something the night she died, I had my proof of the murder. Fortunately, I was right. His guilt was beyond question, right there in black and white.”

  “The pictures weren’t in color, Jessica?” Maureen asked.

  “Yes, they were in color,” I said. “I was just using an expression.”

  “What I’m wondering,” Tim Purdy said, “is how the police happened to be there when this Pettigrew character tried to escape.”

  “I’d called them before the dinner. Once I knew Pettigrew had killed Tillie, I alerted the police captain and suggested she have some officers watching the doors.”

  “She?” Mort said.

  “Yes, Mort. Captain Mead Parker, a lovely and very capable law enforcement officer.”

  “Good to see a woman get that far,” Mort said.

  “So who got the house?” Mary-Jane asked.

  “It wasn’t the niece and nephew,” I said.

  “Tell me about this Dr. Payne,” he said as we sat in his car in front of my house.

  “A charmer, but not a straight shooter,” I said. “He knew everything about Wanamaker Jones’s murder from the very beginning.”

  “Why didn’t he share what he knew with you?”

  “Good question. It would have been helpful, but he seemed to enjoy watching from the sidelines while I tried to solve the murder. He and Tillie had a lot in common; both of them were fond of playing games. I like to think he would have solved Jones’s murder for me if it had gotten down to the wire, but I can’t be certain.”

  “Sounds as if you took a liking to him.”

  “Romantic interest, you mean?”

  “Ayuh.”

  “There wasn’t any such thing, Seth. He’s just an interesting man. Although he did ask me for a kiss good night.”

  “See?”

  “I said no.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s good.”

  “Good night, my friend.”

  I’d shared just about everything from my Savannah trip with my friends that evening. The legal papers Tillie had placed in the sealed envelope revealed more than her murder confession. She’d left her historic house to Melanie’s school, the Savannah College of Art and Design, with the condition (of course) that they use it to further the study of Savannah architecture and keep it on the rolls of historic buildings to be maintained but never changed. Melanie was ecstatic when she heard the news, as was her mother. Tillie had declared in one of the legal papers that Mrs. Goodall was to have the option of staying on as “manager” in charge of the house, and provided a sum of money to SCAD sufficient to pay her for that service. Fine people, the Goodalls. I would miss them, although I had a standing invitation to stay at the house anytime I wished to visit again.

  The big surprise had been a bequest for the Grogans. Tillie had left funds for them to continue their paranormal research at Mortelaine House. It wasn’t much, but they were thrilled to have any money with which to finance their research. Tillie stipulated that they were to remain in the guesthouse for a period of up to six months, and to have the run of the main house in order to continue their quest for proof that Mortelaine House was haunted, at which time they should be able to establish more permanent quarters. They were a strange couple, but I’d grown to like them, and I wished them well upon my departure.

  Tillie did have a token bequest for Pettigrew. She left him a single bottle of Armagnac, but it wasn’t the brand that he liked.

  What I had not shared with my friends at dinner that night was the ghostly aspect of my visit, although I did recount the story of the haunted shower turning on suddenly, and how it led to the discovery of the murder weapon.

  Try as I might, I couldn’t come up with a rational reason for how the shower was turned on, nor could I explain the old lamp in the foyer coming to life in the midst of a power outage, nor did I know how the door to the tunnel, which ran between the house and the guest quarters, managed to unlock itself.

  But it was the apparition I’d seen on my final day that gave me the shivers. It occurred as I came downstairs with my small suitcase. Melanie and her mother stood in the foyer waiting for me; Melanie would drive me to the airport for my flight to Boston and then to Bangor, Maine. I’d started down the staircase when I felt a sudden chill, a swirl of freezing air, raising goose bumps on my arms. It stopped me cold. I sensed something to my right, turned and caught a reflection in one of the series of small mirrors that lined the wall. I blinked rapidly to ensure that my eyes were working properly. A faint outline of a face peered back at me from the mirror, a man’s face—Wanamaker Jones. He winked and was gone as quickly as he’d appeared. It can’t be, I told myself.

  “Is something wrong, Mrs. Fletcher?” Mrs. Goodall asked.

  “What? No, nothing is wrong. Did you see anything?”

  “Where?”

  “In the mirror.”

  “Only your reflection, Mrs. Fletcher.”

  “I didn’t see anything at all,” Melanie said.

  “It must have been my imagination,” I said.

  I would never know for sure.

  Warner’s second message was a sad one. Charmelle O’Neill had passed away. I was grateful I’d had an opportunity to spend some time with her before leaving Savannah, and was glad that she’d been able to free herself of the heavy burden of guilt she’d carried for so many years. Payne promised to stay in touch and keep me informed about the Richardson-Pettigrew investigation.

  Two other things occurred having to do with my Savannah adventure.

  I received the check for a million dollars, which I promptly arranged to have transferred to the literacy group in Savannah.

  The second was a delivery, a very large, heavily fortified package. I tore open the brown paper and had to use a crowbar to dismantle the wooden crate. It was just as I feared. Tillie had left me the oil painting Judith Holding the Head of Holofernes. A slip of paper fell out when I pulled the packing away from the dreadful scene. It was a note from Tillie.

  Dear Jessica,

  This is a little thank-you for coming to Savannah (as I know you will) and for solving the mystery of Wanamaker Jones (as I also know you will). I once told you this painting was a twentieth-century copy, but I was wrong. I had it reappraised, and it’s an original worth about $250,000. I hope you’ll think of it more fondly now. And remember your friend in Savannah.

  Love,

  Tillie

  I have good memories of Savannah and my experiences there. I admit to occasionally wondering if I really did see the shadowy outline of a man’s face in the mirror as I walked down the stairs of Mortelaine House. But I’m never sure. The face had winked at me, and I often think of Tillie Mortelaine and imagine she’s winking at everyone—in the world—from wherever she is.