The Bohemian Murders

by Dianne Day

  Waiting is not my long suit; therefore I proposed to Phoebe that she make several copies of her sketch overnight, which I would pick up from her the following morning. She agreed, and it was well after four o’clock when I finally got back “home” to Point Pinos.

  The lighthouse has your basic two-by-two cottage design: two rooms down and two up, plus the round watch room just above the roofline, in the base of the tower. I decided it would make eminent sense to type in the watch room, thus saving myself the bother of going up and down the spiral stairs every hour. Quincy volunteered to carry the heavy typewriter up for me. Fortunately the machine had suffered no damage from its jouncing afternoon under the seat in the shay.

  Typing with the dark of night always in my face was not easy; I required a while to settle down. But once I started on Artemisia’s novella I was simply gone. The story had me in thrall, as I am certain she intended her readers to be.

  The Merchant of Dreams told the story of a young woman who is suddenly widowed and left penniless. Without skills, much education, or experience, and desperate to support herself without turning to prostitution, she answers an advertisement in the newspaper that reads: “I will buy your dreams.”

  Artemisia’s heroine is named Heloise. It was some measure of Artemisia’s skill as a writer (aided by the story’s setting, which was Boston) that in no time the voice of Heloise began to sound in my head as if it were my own:

  I thought, what harm can it do for me to go and talk to this buyer of dreams? The address was quite a respectable one, on Commonwealth Avenue, with a business name as well: The Morpheus Foundation. I had heard that the famous Viennese psychoanalyst, Dr. Freud, had done some researches on dreams and I supposed this was something of the sort.

  I could not have been more wrong, but of course I had no way of knowing it then. So all unaware on a fateful Friday I put on my only good dress (the others having been sold to purchase firewood) and rode to Commonwealth Avenue on the trolley.

  The servant who opened the door had a visage so angelic that for a moment I did not know if I were face to face with a man or a woman: a cloud of golden hair, curiously elongated blue eyes more darkly lashed and browed than the hair color would suggest, a straight nose with delicate nostrils. Altogether, it was a face worthy of Botticelli; and when at last my eye traveled downward, I found that this incredible creature wore trousers. Therefore, I concluded, he was a man.

  “I have come in answer to the advertisement,” I said. “I should like to speak to the person who offered to buy dreams.”

  “Come in,” the angelic being said, dropping back into darkness, and I stepped over the threshold.

  For a few moments I was blinded by the abrupt change in the level of light. I felt around and over me a sort of huge quiet, the hush of a house sufficiently grand that it knows it will go on long after those who built it are lying in their graves. There was a sweetish odor in the air: not quite perfume, perhaps incense. As sight returned I looked down a long hall and saw the figure of the beautiful gatekeeper dissolve in the distance, become one with the shadows in the far reaches of the corridor. He had not told me to wait and so I thought of following, but my feet were curiously reluctant to do so. I remained rooted to an oriental runner near the front door.

  The walls, I observed, were panels of a dark and gleaming wood; the coffered ceiling was made of the same wood, as were the stairs. Mahogany, or the darkest walnut, and very fine. Directly overhead a small, unlit chandelier shed transparent crystal droplets, like frozen tears shimmering suspended in time.

  Indeed, in all this dark luxury and enveloping quiet, I myself felt a sudden sense of dislocation, of alienness, as if I had stepped into another dimension where time as one knows it had ceased to exist. And though I chided myself for this fancy, still I strained my ears for the ticking of a clock—only to encounter circles upon circles of silence.

  Suddenly I, Fremont Jones, jerked my head up and pricked my ears. What was that? Had I heard something? Or had Artemisia’s story fired my all-too-active imagination?

  I left the typewriter and went to the window, which the lamplight had turned into a dark mirror. I cupped my hands around my eyes, put my face to the cool glass, and looked out. It was black as pitch out there: no moon, no stars, no nothing. Nothing but a regularly recurring bright band of light streaming from the great Fresnel lens. And the wind: a steady and insistent visitor, ever pressing up against doors and windows, moaning to come in.

  I expelled a short, exasperated sigh. Surely there was nothing untoward going on, but I had to be certain. Pulling the shawl up to the tips of my ears and taking up the binoculars, I climbed the twisting stairs and went out onto the circular platform. The wind rushed to grab me and, in the rudest (not to mention chilliest!) manner, tried to get beneath my skirts. Slowly I walked once around the tower. The lighthouse beam is meant to be seen, not to see by; indeed, the contrast between bright and dark is more dizzying than illuminating. It occurred to me that a clever person might actually hide in the border of the beam—if he or she could keep up with its movement, which was doubtful.

  Having made the complete circuit, I stood in one spot and raised the binoculars to my eyes. I knew from experience that on a relatively clear night it was possible out there to see by starlight alone; with so little as a quarter moon, one can see of a Point Pinos midnight as much as at noon on a dark and stormy day. But on a night like this …

  I searched the ground for lambent glimmers of light, as from a handheld lantern or a candle. I tried to hear beneath the wind, and above the waves breaking nearby. I listened so keenly that I discerned the rustle of cattle in the barn, a distant barking of sea lions, and the snarl of some feral cat. Yet of any intruder I saw not a sign, and heard not a sound.

  “So,” I muttered as I went back in and down to the watch room, “it was my imagination after all.” At least I had performed a most thorough watch—some twenty minutes before it was due.

  Reassured, I returned to The Merchant of Dreams precisely where I had left off, with Heloise waiting amid circles of silence:

  I shifted my weight restlessly from one foot to the other; closed my eyes and held in my mind the face of a clock, with a sweep-second hand ticking away time in an orderly fashion. When I had passed a few seconds in this fashion, the angelic fellow’s voice called out: “Dr. Morpheus will see you now, if you care to proceed along the hall.”

  I opened my eyes and, after a brief bit of disorientation, saw that a door had opened far down the hallway. From that open door a square of golden light proceeded. The same light bathed the Botticelli head and turned its fair hair into a halo. I felt dazzled and most strange, burning with desire to see what lay beyond that golden door while deep inside me something whispered: “Turn away and run!”

  But alas! I did not run. I did not fear the strange situation as much as I feared the things I knew poverty could drive me to do. I would sooner kill myself than live as a fallen woman. So I uprooted my reluctant feet and step after step went down that long, long hall.

  Once again the change in light made it difficult to see; the tall, standing figure of Dr. Morpheus wavered for a moment in my vision and then, as my eyes adjusted, took shape: an intensely handsome man of exotic mien, as if from another place and clime. Long black hair that swept his shoulders, totally out of fashion; broad cheeks and a high brow; pale eyes but with dark rings around the iris like a Persian cat.

  “My name is Jonah Morpheus,” he said. His accent was British but that did not tell me where he was from; the British empire reaches all over the world.

  “Heloise Goodenough,” I said. My voice came out clear as a bell. “I have come in response to your advertisement about dreams.”

  Jonah Morpheus invited me to take a seat; he dismissed the man who looked so much like an angel, calling him Thad; he himself sat behind an imposing desk upon which stood a fantastical lamp fashioned all of colored glass, even its shade. This lamp threw jeweled light across his face as he made
a steeple of his fingers and set his chin atop it. “Tell me about your dreams,” he said.

  I smiled, albeit rather stiffly. “I am here to strike a bargain. Your advertisement made no mention of the particulars. I should like to know these before I talk about my dreams.”

  “A wise woman,” said Dr. Morpheus, and he smiled. At that moment a cat leapt upon the desk—huge, black, long-haired. The cat went first to Morpheus, rubbed its chin on his hands, and purled a greeting deep in its throat; then with its plume of tail held high, padded daintily across the surface of the desk and sat at the edge, regarding me soberly through eyes that were exactly like its master’s.

  This is some kind of a strange test, I thought, but how he had arranged it I could not imagine. I decided to ignore the cat. I said, “Well, sir?”

  Again, that smile. Slow and sensual, it played over his face and drifted through the air to touch me like a caress. His voice was both rich and rough. “I am collecting dreams for a project whose purpose must remain secret until all collection is complete. And as the advert said, I will pay.”

  He seemed to think that was enough explanation, but it was not—at least, not for me. I asked, “Presumably at some point this project would be for publication?”

  “Presumably.”

  “In other words, if I tell you—sell you—my dreams, they’ll be out there someday for all the world to see?”

  The smile grew broader. I fancied that the cat smiled, too. Jonah Morpheus said, “Your protection will be complete anonymity. No one will know which dreams are yours.”

  “I … I see.” I moistened my lips with my tongue, for my mouth had gone dry. “How much?”

  “For each night’s dreams, ten dollars.”

  Ten dollars! Why, in a month I would have three hundred! It was a fortune! So much that I immediately grew suspicious. “Why so generous a sum?” I asked.

  He leaned forward across the desk. The cat turned its elegant but flat-faced head to watch him. “Because,” he said, “it is not easy to buy dreams. Or to sell them, for that matter. There are conditions, and a contract, which is binding.”

  “Ah. Tell me.”

  “First, the duration of the contract is three months. For that time you must either live here at the Morpheus Foundation—room and board provided, of course—or you must agree to come here first thing each morning; in either case, you are not to speak to anyone until you have told me your dreams from the night before.”

  I nodded my understanding.

  “Second, you must tell me everything you dream, in its entirety, no matter if the subject matter is nonsensical to you, or repulsive, or embarrassing. If you attempt to hold anything back, I will know, I assure you. I am highly skilled in this area.” His strange eyes bored into me hypnotically, and I could well believe him. The cat turned its head back and stared at me, too, making an eerily doubled effect.

  “And what,” I asked, “if there is a night when I do not dream?” I did have such nights, frequently.

  He laughed, a rough rumble. “That is extremely unlikely. One interesting finding I have made already: the more a person tells his—or her—dreams to another, the more vivid the dreams become, and the more frequent.” He leaned back again and steepled his fingers, a pedantic posture. “Did you know, Miss Goodenough, that there are some cultures which are based on the sharing of dreams?”

  I shook my head.

  The cat jumped down from the desk with a light thud and to my great surprise, sprang into my lap. “Good heavens!” I said.

  Jonah Morpheus smiled approvingly as his cat turned around three times in my lap, kneaded my skirt a bit with its paws, then curled itself into a warm, purring lump. “The cat’s name is Shadow,” he said.

  “Is Shadow a boy or a girl?” I stroked the pretty creature’s silky head.

  “Neither,” he said enigmatically.

  I did not inquire further.

  “So what is it to be? Do the conditions pose a difficulty for you?”

  The cat purred, Morpheus smiled, and I tried to think. But all I could think was that in three months of selling my dreams I would have earned almost a thousand dollars. Perhaps ‘earn’ was not the right word. It seemed so easy.…

  “I will do it. Draw up the contract,” I said.

  “Ask him,” said Quincy early the next morning. He pointed to a male figure across the dunes, bent almost double as he walked along the rocky shoreline. “That’s Junior, so-called on account of his name’s Joe and he claims to be the son of the one what they named Point Joe after. Anyway, Junior’s kind of a hermit; he’s lived in the Del Monte Forest all his born days. He smells a mite rank, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly, Miss Fremont.”

  “All right, I’ll catch up to him and ask, but I swear, Quincy, if you don’t quit calling me Miss I’m going to fire you!”

  Quincy seemed shocked, but soon the twinkle was back in his eyes. He was getting to know me. Good!

  “Hitch up the shay while I’m gone, will you?” I grinned, and set off over the dunes.

  When I caught up I soon saw why Joe, Junior was so bent over. The poor man was ancient and almost blind, his eyes clouded with milky cataracts. “Eh?” he said, rearing back and almost losing his balance. I grabbed at his ragged arm for fear that he would fall off the rocks into the sea.

  I said loudly, though I did not know if he were also slightly deaf, “I’m Fremont Jones. I live in the lighthouse, and Quincy, who works there, said you might be able to tell me where in Del Monte Forest a certain person lives.”

  “Might,” he conceded, stepping from the rocks onto the sand and laying down his burden, a large burlap sack full of who-knew-what. Junior was, apparently, a scavenger. He put his head over on one side in a canny manner. “Depends who the certain person is.”

  And what the reward might be, I thought, reaching into my pocket. I pulled out a quarter; not much, but all I had with me. “Braxton Furnival,” I said, holding up the money. Overnight the weather had cleared, and the morning sun struck silver from the coin.

  “That be a siller dollar?” Junior asked.

  I moved upwind before answering. “No, it’s just a quarter, but if you tell me where he lives and follow me up to the lighthouse, I can get another seventy-five cents.”

  Junior shrugged. “Ain’t hardly worth a dollar noways.” He reached out his hand palm up and I deposited the quarter in it, relieved that he did not want more. My relative poverty both embarrassed and scared me at times; in truth I did not have a whole dollar to spare.

  Junior said, “You goes in the forest by the Pacific Grove gate. First two times the road forks, you take the left fork each time. Pretty soon you comes on up a rise and there she be. Can’t miss ’er. Biggest darn house you ever seen round these parts, and ugly as sin. Har!” He laughed raucously, which made his poor eyes stream. He wiped at them as he continued: “Lives all by hisself in that big place—leastways, that’s how he tells it. Har!” He wiped his eyes again and squinted. “You going up there by yer lonesome?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  Junior shouldered his pack. “Then you best be careful.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  KEEPER’S LOG

  January 19, 1907

  Wind: W light

  Weather: Cool; clear and sunny

  Comments: Steamships out to S in early a.m.; also whales

  going S, local boats in pursuit

  Braxton Furnival, or his architect, had read too many novels about European royalty and/or made one too many trips to the Black Forest. His house was in the Grand Germanic Hunting Lodge style. If it were mine (a staggering thought) I should name it “Grosse-Dark,” I thought as I came up a track overhung by the low-sweeping branches of old cypress trees. Although the forest between Pacific Grove and Carmel certainly had space for such a monstrous dwelling, in every other way it seemed out of place. In fact, it was quite jarring to come upon anything so large and dark and bulky all of a sudden, even if one were seeking it out.

 
“Well, really!” I commented to Bessie, as with a touch of the reins I guided her through a stone gateway, one side adorned with a wooden shield-shaped heraldic crest, which I presumed Braxton had invented. The crest featured a boxing bear on one side, three pinecones on the other, the name FURNIVAL arched across the top, and on a sort of waving banner at the bottom the words VITA ET PLENITUDO. “Life and wealth,” if my memory of high school Latin served. Such ego the man had! And, it seemed, the wherewithal to support it. Certainly no baron of the German kaiser’s court ever had a grander woodland hunting lodge; but who would want to live in a place like that all the time?

  Not I! It was all great gables and rough shingles and huge beams intentionally left unfinished so they still resembled trunks of whole trees—and all of it, down to the last splinter, an oppressive dark brown. One got the idea that Fafnir could not be far off, and Siegfried (who I personally think must have been thick between the ears) would come bounding along at any moment. It was all so excessively masculine and virile that for a moment I stood in the entry portico feeling overwhelmed.

  The knocker on the massive front door was iron—what else?—and raising it required both hands. I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath, lifted, and discovered that the knocker made quite a satisfying racket when it came crashing down. Once, twice, three times I repeated this process before concluding that Braxton Furnival was not at home.

  “O-o-oh … botheration!” I said, biting my lip because I wanted to say something much stronger.

  Now what? I found it hard to believe that anyone would live in such a huge house without at least one servant to help take care of it. So in spite of what old Joe, Junior had said, I walked clear around it and every now and then called out, “Hello? Anybody home?”