The Bohemian Murders

by Dianne Day

  “How-do-you-do,” I said by rote.

  She said, “Charmed. I prefer to be called Artemisia, though there are some cretins around here who insist on calling me Art. One doesn’t want to be called Art, one creates art.”

  “Artemisia is an artist,” Michael said, smiling down at her, “in more than one medium. She paints and writes, and does amateur theatrics.”

  I said, “How impressive.” It was hard not to stare at this artistic paragon. She looked as if she might be somewhere between Michael and myself in age—that is to say, in her thirties. Her face was arresting but not beautiful, dominated by a long nose with a bit of a hook at the tip. Large, dark brown eyes were her best feature, balancing a wide mouth. She had braided into her long brown hair some of the daisies that bloom so profusely here, and she wore a Grecian-style gown that showed off a pair of pointed and obviously unbound breasts.

  “I paint nocturnes,” said Artemisia, “and I write stories out of my dreams. I am only interested, you see, in things of the night.”

  “Then one would presume,” I said brightly, “that is why you are named for Artemis, goddess of the moon.”

  “Of course!” She laughed, sounding a good deal like a shower of golden coins, and laid her head with the greatest of ease against Michael’s shoulder.

  “And of the hunt,” I added.

  “How clever your friend is, Misha,” she purred. “But of course you told me she was, didn’t you?”

  “Fremont is indeed clever. Too much so, sometimes.”

  “You are too kind, both of you,” I said; I was thinking, What was that she called him? A pet name? This was becoming a tad unbearable.

  “Don’t be silly!” She tweaked Michael’s nose. The easy way she touched him quite astonished me. He smiled down at her, not minding her familiarity in the least.

  “One can never be too clever,” she asserted. “Isn’t that right, Fremont?” Lifting her head from Michael’s shoulder she winked at me and, without waiting for a reply, twirled off, the folds of her Grecian gown rippling around her.

  That was my first encounter with Artemisia Vaughn, the Other Woman. It left me so stunned that I met the rest of the Carmelites in a kind of daze. In order to remember people, I had to pair their names with their clothing. This was easier than it might have been, because this picnic was the nearest thing to a costume party I’d seen since Halloween.

  Brunhilde, a sturdy blonde of Germanic appearance, was Mimi Peterson. Although she did not wear a horned helmet, she had hair as yellow as corn, knotted carelessly on top of her head and spilling down her cheeks and nape in a most attractive way.

  There was La Señorita—an extremely thin brunette in ruffles whose name I promptly forgot; the Medium Brown Man, named Arthur Something—a quiet, brown-suited fellow who was medium everything: height, weight, age, length of nose, size of ears, etc., etc., etc.; and Diogenes—an older man, white-haired and round-bellied, in a shapeless drab robe, carrying a lantern—a professor by the name of Stork or Storch. Finally there was Phoebe, who looked like one of those little gray-brown birds but also like a softly rounded Jane Eyre, in a chocolate dress with a white collar, center-parted light brown hair, and hazel eyes. Her last name, which equally suited her, was Broom.

  My reverie was suddenly and rudely interrupted with a snort and a jolt—Hettie’s bay mare had achieved the crest of Carmel Hill and was attacking the downslope with rather too much enthusiasm. “Easy, Bessie, easy!” I yelled, pulling back on the reins to slow her down. Since the fog had cleared I was able to see the magnificent blue curve of Monterey Bay over the tops of the trees as we began our descent. But in my mind I remained in another place, by the edge of another bay: Carmel Bay, on that first and fateful December day.

  All the colorful Carmelites, plus me, had finished eating a potluck picnic supper on the sand—which was as white as Michael had said it was. The sun was a fiery red ball sinking toward the Pacific when Artemisia came running over to the blanket where Michael and I sat, and grabbed us both by the hand.

  “You must come, both of you!” she exclaimed. “I am constructing a living tableau to the dying day!”

  Michael allowed her to pull him to his feet but I resisted, saying, “No, thank you. I much prefer to be part of the audience.”

  She pouted and Michael’s mouth curved in a sensual hint of a smile. “Are you sure, Fremont? Artemisia’s tableaux are quite the thing.”

  Not quite my thing, I thought, but I forced yet another smile and waved them on. Then I watched with a strange combination of envy and sadness as Artemisia assembled her little group of men and women and laid her hands on them, moving arms and legs and tilting heads into various poses, as if they were living statues. The setting sun stained their bodies red-gold.

  “She’s good at that,” a voice behind me said quietly.

  I looked around, startled because I’d thought myself more or less alone; the nearest picnic blanket was perhaps ten feet away, and both its inhabitants were in the tableau. “Phoebe,” I said, recognizing her. “I agree; Artemisia seems endlessly talented.”

  Phoebe sat down next to me, tucking her feet beneath her skirts. She wore brown high-button shoes, an odd choice considering the sand. She said, “You didn’t take my meaning. I meant she is good at manipulating people.”

  “Ah,” I said, in the way that Michael does when he either does not know what to say, or does not wish to give anything away. I waited, but Phoebe did not elaborate.

  In silence we watched a scene so lovely it made me ache. The declining sun gilded the wave crests, while elsewhere the sea was dark as wine; a family of seagulls wheeled on the wind and dipped into a streak of sunset that dyed them pink as flamingoes. Except for that single shaft of sun, the air was thick with purple twilight.

  Artemisia, not quite satisfied with her arrangement, placed her hand on Michael’s inner thigh and rotated his leg outward. A sliver of ice slit my heart. She stroked his throat, forcing his head back; she took her own long white scarf and draped it around his neck so that the tails of it streamed in the wind. His arms were flung back as she had placed them, after the manner of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. The others held positions slightly less dramatic—Artemisia had made Michael the hero of this scene.

  At last she was satisfied and stepped back. The living statues held their poses while the sun, grown gigantic in its declension, released a final scarlet flash that turned them all to blood-red gods.

  And Phoebe said, “I didn’t realize Misha was so handsome.”

  “Misha?” I whispered, so as not to spoil the dramatic moment.

  “Misha. Your friend.”

  At that moment Diogenes lumbered to his feet and began to sing, or rather to chant, a wordless melody in a minor key that was quite affecting—even to me with my divided mind. Artemisia clapped her hands once, and the tableau shifted smoothly to another pose. A collective sigh rose from all the observers, myself included. The living tableau to the dying day was both beautiful and eerie; it gave me goose bumps.

  Phoebe’s voice broke the spell. “I wonder if Misha would pose for me in the nude,” she mused.

  I recalled that she was a sculptor, and was grateful the last rays of sunset would camouflage my cheeks, for they flamed at the thought of Michael posing in the nude. But I did not make any objection; a few hours in their company had taught me that these unusual people were true bohemians, artists and intellectuals, the most avant of the avant-garde—even if a few of them did seem to me slightly insane. So I only asked, “Why do you call him Misha, Phoebe?”

  “Because,” she replied, “it’s the Russian nickname for Michael, and he’s Russian. You didn’t know?”

  “I thought he was an American.”

  “Well, maybe he’s both. All I know is, when he first came looking around Carmel, not long after the earthquake, he was Michael Archer. Then when he bought the land, the title was drawn up for Mikhail Arkady Kossoff, which he said was his legal name, the one he was born with.
He was born in Fort Ross—which used to belong to the Russians before California became a state.” Phoebe shrugged. “We didn’t think much of it—all artists know lots of people who have changed their names. Anyhow, it was Artemisia who first called him Misha. He liked it, and it stuck, and now as far as I know, Michael Archer is no more.”

  “How very interesting,” I said. I stared across the sand where the tableau was breaking up and the living statues were embracing one another, saying their good nights amid arpeggios of laughter. The central figure in this sharing of affection was Artemisia, the white of her Grecian gown glowing as if it fed on the little remaining light, and even as I tried to swallow my jealousy, Michael—whom she had first called Misha—leaned over her, removing her scarf from about his neck and wrapping it around hers.

  I had looked away then, because I’d been afraid he would kiss her, and I hadn’t wanted to see. Phoebe had continued to talk but I hadn’t heard a word she said; my ears were roaring and my mouth had gone drier than the sand on which I sat. At that exact moment it had all come together for me: I would be miserable living in a cottage in Carmel, where I would have to deal with this sort of thing every day; there would be no I-love-you’s for Michael and me on the white sand or anywhere else; I had come within inches of making a complete fool of myself. In other words, I’d made a great mistake.

  I hadn’t cried then; somehow I’d gotten through that night and the rest of the days and nights that followed. I don’t cry easily. But now, with the wind in my face as Hettie’s mare flew downhill toward Monterey, I felt tears drying on my cheeks.

  An earthquake is a great learning experience. I suppose the same is true of any disaster that shakes you up and turns your life upside down; when you start putting yourself back together again, you find that nothing looks quite the same as it did before. And if you have lost a great deal, as most of us did in the quake and fire, you will quickly learn what means the most to you by the ferocity with which you long to have it back.

  Love and friendship aside (for at the moment I am understandably confused on that score), what I missed most after the earthquake, with a longing that was almost physical, was the daily routine of going to my office and having a job to do that earned me a living wage. I learned that any work, paid or not, is better than none; and that forming one’s own routine and sticking to it can be the equivalent of a port in a storm. Therefore I lost no time, once I’d decided to stay in Pacific Grove, finding an office and setting up my daily routine. Though it did have to be modified when I agreed to become temporary keeper of the light.

  Hettie was to be gone for six months, so at least until July my schedule would be as follows: In the mornings I generally would be at the lighthouse, doing all the paperwork associated with the keeper’s job—the log; the ordering and monitoring of supplies; recording the hours worked by Quincy and his occasional helpers; accounting for the ingress and egress of monies; and so on. In the afternoons I would go to my office in town, from noon until about three-thirty. Though I would of course have liked to stay at the office longer, I did not feel I could ask Quincy to take the hourly watch past four o’clock. And since I was a whiz at the lighthouse paperwork, I could spend the occasional morning away without much harm done.

  It was just after eleven-thirty when I returned from Carmel and checked in with Quincy, who told me about the logging schooner that had entered the bay from the north during the last hour. I thanked him and went up to the watch room, where I added the schooner to the “Comments” section of the log. Everything observed on the bay—traffic in or out, sightings of marine animals, any unusual event—had to be recorded there. Such as the drowned woman, I thought on my way back downstairs.

  Much good I’d been able to do her, I reflected while making myself a sandwich of bread and cheese for lunch. I wondered if anyone had reported her missing. And if not, how the police would proceed to make an identification. Perhaps they would have a photograph taken of the good side of her face, publish it in the newspaper. That’s what I would have done.…

  Not being as fond as Hettie apparently was of milk straight from her spotted cows, I helped myself to some of Quincy’s coffee. He is a coffee fiend, it is his one indulgence, and he keeps a pot of coffee on the stove in the lighthouse kitchen all day. This stove is a black iron thing that positively eats wood and looks as if it has been there since the lighthouse opened half a century ago; I couldn’t cook on it to save myself. But then, I am not much of a cook in any circumstance. Why oh why did I ask Misha to dinner?

  “I just won’t think about it,” I said briskly; “what’s done is done,” And in short order I finished my sandwich and set out walking to my office, just over a mile’s distance, in downtown Pacific Grove.

  FREMONT JONES TYPEWRITING SERVICES: My sign, a portable one that has graced several different working arrangements since the earthquake, now hangs in a window on Grand Avenue, between Lighthouse Avenue and the main street, which is appropriately called Central. I smiled when I saw it and my heart gave a little leap of gladness. How good to be in business again, even if only for a few hours a day!

  The office is quite different from my first one, which was on Sacramento Street in San Francisco and burned right after the earthquake. This one is smaller but somehow has more personality. The building itself is brick, rather narrow, two-and-a-half stories tall. My office is located on the ground floor; what is over my head, I am not sure, as I have not yet seen the occupant nor heard anyone moving about. My door opens onto the sidewalk; right next to it is a window so wide it takes up almost all the rest of the storefront. Inside, the ceiling is high, providing a sense of spaciousness that offsets the sparse square footage.

  I furnished this office quite economically with used household furniture from a shop in Monterey. Furniture designed for offices proved to be entirely too pricey. So my “desk” is an old library table, and my typewriter stand is an end table cut down to the right height. File folders reside beneath the desk in a wooden milk crate I begged from the dairy on Point Pinos because it happened to be the right size. Supplies are stashed on the shelves of an old bookcase, the kind with glass doors that drop down to keep out the dust; much of the glass has been cracked and mended with adhesive tape. Two undistinguished straight chairs have cheerful yellow cushions tied onto their hard seats. The pièce de résistance is my new Royal typewriter, which has a moving carriage and a little bell that dings when you have reached the end of the line and must perform the carriage return.

  Filled with pride of possession I uncovered the typewriter, then went to the window and flipped over a card that says OPEN on one side and CLOSED on the other. Since the day had turned so fine, I left the door open. A breeze wafted by, bearing scents of salt and kelp. The streets were quiet; Pacific Grove is nearly always quiet. But compared with the lighthouse on Point Pinos, the little town was abuzz with activity. Traffic sounds were like music to my oft-isolated ears.

  I waved at the man who tends the photography shop across the street. He ignored me, as usual. I presume he is one of those people who believe a woman has no place in business—the world is full of them. I pay such folks no mind. With a smile for extra measure I turned my back on him and proceeded to the typewriter.

  Business was far from brisk, but most days a few customers trickled in. I had two letters to type from yesterday afternoon, so I got right to it. I was completely absorbed in the second one, trying to decipher the author’s endlessly inventive and sometimes amusing misspellings, when I sensed another presence. I looked up.

  A man stood in the doorway, a distinguished older gentleman who was yet by no means old. His hair was so silvery it glistened in the sun. His skin, contrastingly, was tanned, suggesting that he must spend a good deal of time outdoors. He wore a black-and-gray-pinstripe vested suit, a white shirt with a starched collar, and a black tie. In one long-fingered hand he held a black top hat by the brim.

  I smiled and said, “Good afternoon.”

  His face was al
l the more handsome for its lines of experience. But he did not return my smile. He said, “So it’s true, then, what I heard.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  KEEPER’S LOG

  January 10, 1907

  (Additional comment) Coast Guard vessel up from Point

  Sur reports gale-force winds moving up coast from S.

  “I beg your pardon?” I said.

  “Braxton Furnival, at your service,” he said with something between a nod and a bow of his silvery head. “May I come in?”

  “If you have business, Mr. Furnival, by all means.” I stood up behind my typewriter. I was wishing that I had placed the library table/desk out in the room instead of against the wall, so that I might shelter behind it. On the other hand, I hate the fact that I have become so suspicious of people—even if his initial remark was odd enough to merit it.

  He advanced, turning the brim of his hat in his hands. “At the moment I’m merely curious, but I may have business after we have talked. You are, I take it, Fremont Jones?”

  He kept eye contact; his gaze did not roam up and down my body. I counted that a good sign and relaxed a bit. “I am indeed. Will you take a seat, Mr. Furnival?”

  He was so large and long-limbed that he quite dwarfed the yellow-cushioned chair. Seemingly at his ease, he crossed one ankle on top of the other knee. His socks were black with silver clocks. Now came the smile. “I heard Hettie’s replacement over to the lighthouse was a woman with a kind of odd name, and that this woman keeps a business afternoons in town. So I came to see for myself.”

  “I’m replacing Mrs. Houck on a temporary basis only. Typewriting is my main business, which I will pursue full-time after she returns to the lighthouse in July. Provided, of course, that there is sufficient need for my services here.”

  “I see. Are you any good?”

  There was a certain roguishness to the question, and a roughness in general about Mr. Braxton Furnival, in spite of his excellent clothes. I rather liked him—but then, I have always liked older men. So I did not take offense but answered with a touch of roguishness myself, “Yes, I am. Quite good.”