Who Killed Mona Lisa?

by Carole Elizabeth Buggé

  They agreed to wait until everyone was assembled before breaking the news to them, and then do it all at once. It was after eight by the time everyone was assembled in the main dining room, waiting for the Wilsons to arrive. Otis and Philippe, Claire noticed, did not sit together but were at opposite ends of the room; both of them wore expressions that could either be construed as curiosity or guilt, depending upon how you looked at it. None of the hotel guests looked especially keen or well rested; Richard and Jeffrey sat at their usual table in the corner, Richard crisp in chinos and a blue Brooks Brothers shirt, Jeffrey surly in jeans and a white T-shirt. He tapped an unlit cigarette on the table; there was no smoking anywhere in the building, but Jeffrey managed to make even an unlit cigarette look vaguely like a threat.

  The young couple from the bar the night before, Lyle and Sally, looked as though they hadn’t had four hours of sleep between them. Sally’s face in the pallid morning light was ghastly: dark circles surrounded her eyes and her skin had a yellow tint. In the morning light Claire was able to get a good look at her, and her thin hands shook as she tugged absently at a strand of hair. She wore a fluffy blue bathrobe over a white flannel nightgown, and there was something pathetic about the way her eyes darted around as she pulled at her lank, unwashed hair. Claire didn’t have much experience with junkies, but in Sally the signs were unmistakable. Her long thin fingers were darkened with what looked like tobacco stains. Lyle sat next to her, hands folded in his lap. Though his face was outwardly calm, Claire noticed his jaw was tightly set and his fingers twitched. With his curly blond hair and full lips, he was attractive in spite of his unkempt appearance.

  She heard the sound of the front door being flung open and the stomping of feet on the floor, then Frank Wilson emerged from the front hall, followed by Max.

  “What is this?” the innkeeper demanded, looking around, a frown on his big Irish face.

  “If you would have a seat, we’ll tell you,” Max said gently.

  “I don’t want a seat,” Wilson replied gruffly. “What’s going on here?”

  “Where’s Mrs. Wilson?” said Philippe. “I thought we were waiting for everyone.”

  “My wife will be here shortly,” Frank replied curtly. “She’s getting herself and Henry dressed.”

  Otis looked around the dining room. “Where’s Mona?”

  Max cleared his throat and stepped to the center of the room. He hung his head as though he were responsible for the horror in the basement.

  “I regret to inform you,” he said, as though he were announcing staff cutbacks or something, “that a crime has been committed here.”

  There was a murmuring among the others, and Frank Wilson stepped forward. “What? What sort of crime?”

  Max took a deep breath, and Claire realized she had been holding hers. Why doesn’t he just get it out all at once? she thought, and suddenly she had an image of her father standing in the shallow end of their swimming pool, splashing water on his arms to “get used to it” before going in. She remembered equally well her mother’s approach, diving cleanly into the deep end, slicing through the water like a knife . . .

  “A murder.”

  Max’s pronouncement fell like a blade on the tense silence, and a collective gasp went up from the others. Frank Wilson sprang forward, his stocky body more agile than Claire would have guessed.

  “What? Who? Who was murdered?”

  To Claire’s surprise, Otis Knox began to cry. “It’s Mona, isn’t it?” he said. “Mona’s dead.”

  Everyone looked at him, and then back at Max, who nodded sadly. “Yes, I’m afraid so. It is Mona.”

  Another gasp arose from the group, and Claire had a horrible, perverse impulse to laugh. It wasn’t that she found the situation funny; it was just the combination of fatigue, tension, and suspense made her giddy, and there was something darkly comic about the reaction of the others, as though they were badly rehearsed movie extras overacting their parts. Real people’s reactions to actual events, Claire found, often exemplified every behavioral cliché one is presumably taught to avoid in acting school. This was no exception: everyone stared wide-eyed at Max; even Frank Wilson appeared chastened by the news.

  Then he said the thing people say when confronted with bad news: “Are you sure?”

  “You mean sure it’s her or sure she’s dead?” Jeffrey interjected, a smirk on his handsome face. The others glared at him, and Claire thought he wouldn’t be winning any popularity contests soon.

  “Both, I’m afraid,” the big chef replied.

  “Oh, my God,” Lyle said softly. “What happened?”

  Max studied his immaculate fingernails. “She was stabbed.”

  A little gasp came from Sally. “Oh, my God,” she murmured softly.

  Lyle stroked her hair and looked up at the chef. “Are you sure?”

  Max nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  Suddenly Philippe, who had been sitting as if he were made of stone, rose from his chair and emitted a loud, high-pitched wail.

  “Nooooo! It can’t be!” The words shot from his body in a rush, and then he continued his wailing. The sound was eerie, like the howl of an animal.

  Just then there was the sound of the front door opening.

  “Someone’s here,” Meredith whispered to Claire. “Maybe it’s the police.” She sprang from her chair and dashed into the front hall. She returned moments later, followed by Paula Wilson and her son Henry. The boy’s face was pale and he clung to his mother’s thin arm as the two of them entered. When Philippe saw them, he abruptly stopped his wailing and, sitting down heavily, buried his face in his hands.

  “What is it, Frank?” Mrs. Wilson said. “What’s happened?”

  “It’s Mona,” he replied in a low voice.

  “What about her?” Paula Wilson cocked her head to one side. With her spindly neck, she reminded Claire of a goose.

  Her husband avoided looking at her as he spoke. “She’s dead.”

  The words fell like a deadweight upon the assembled crowd. Even Jeffrey averted his eyes as Paula Wilson looked wildly around the room.

  “Dead? What do you mean she’s dead?” she said, pulling her son closer to her.

  By way of replying, Otis Knox pulled a chair over for Mrs. Wilson to sit on. She sat heavily and stared at her husband.

  “How can that be? I just saw her last night.” Henry Wilson remained standing next to his mother, and gazed at the others with frightened eyes.

  “I’m afraid she was murdered,” Frank Wilson replied. “Isn’t that what you said?” he said to Max, as though accusing him. “That she was murdered?”

  Max nodded his big head slowly. “It looked that way to me.”

  “Have you called the police?” Richard asked, but Max shook his head.

  “The phones are out.”

  Once again Claire heard the front door opening, and moments later James Pewter appeared at the dining-room entrance. He wore knee-high rubber boots and a thick blue parka with a fur-lined hood. Snowflakes clung to the fur on his hood, and his cheeks were ruddy from the cold.

  “My phone’s out,” he said, seeing Frank Wilson and Max standing in the center of the room, but then his eyes fell upon the silent group gathered all around. “What’s going on here?”

  “There’s been an accident,” Wilson replied, but Meredith cut in loudly.

  “It’s no accident—it’s murder!”

  The historian’s face registered disbelief. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “No, James, it’s no joke,” the innkeeper replied.

  “Who’s been—who is it?”

  This time Max answered him. “Mona Callahan. I found her this morning in the basement,” he said softly. “By the looks of it, she’d been stabbed.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Pewter, and once again Claire was struck by the unoriginality of people’s reactions to tragedy. “Do you know—” he said, turning to Wilson, who shook his head.

  “We don’t know anything y
et, James.”

  “Well, we have to get the police—”

  “Yes, but we can’t!” Philippe broke in suddenly. “The phones are down and nobody can get through in this blizzard anyway.”

  Jeffrey stood up from his table and stretched himself. Claire noticed how the white T-shirt emphasized his knotty, hardened muscles.

  “Well, I’m going out for a smoke,” he said in response to Richard’s inquiring look. The older man shrugged and looked away as Jeffrey sauntered out of the room.

  Otis Knox rose from his chair and glared at Frank Wilson. “Well, what are we going to do?” he demanded angrily.

  The innkeeper studied his hands. “I don’t see what we can do until the phone is working.”

  “Does anyone have a cell phone?” Meredith interjected.

  Chris Callahan shook his head. “I have one but the battery is dead.”

  Richard sighed. “I have one, too, but I purposely left it at home on this trip. I didn’t want anyone at the office to be able to reach me,” he added apologetically. Claire hated cell phones and had resisted getting one, but now she regretted it.

  Lyle laughed softly. Up until now, he and Sally had been sitting quietly in the far corner.

  “Wizards of technology, slowly becoming widows in the storm,” he said, then lapsed back into silence.

  Sally looked at the others through her dark-ringed eyes. “It’s from one of his poems,” she explained.

  “There must be some way to alert someone,” Otis declared, gripping the back of his chair until his knuckles stood out.

  James Pewter glanced out at the gathering blizzard. “I could try to walk into town.”

  Frank Wilson shook his head. “It’s coming down really hard. Even if you made it, it would take them a long time to plow through this.”

  Otis Knox began to pace the room. “Well, we can’t just sit here and do nothing!”

  Frank Wilson sighed. “We can and we will. One thing we can do is maintain the integrity of the crime scene. I don’t want anyone going into that basement.”

  Meredith groaned. “Oh, man! I wanted to check out the crime scene,” she whispered to Claire.

  Claire shook her head. “You heard what he said.”

  “But I won’t touch anything—I promise!” she whined.

  Once again they heard the front door opening, and Jeffrey appeared in the doorway.

  “What did I miss?” he asked, a little smirk on his face. Looking at his bloodshot eyes, Claire wondered if it was tobacco he had been smoking. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw a glance pass between Jeffrey and Lyle as he walked by. He sat down again, ignoring Richard’s disapproving look. Philippe began drumming his fingers on the table. For a few moments it was the only sound in the room, until the silence was broken by a stifled sob coming from Otis Knox. He buried his face in his hands, his broad shoulders shaking.

  Frank Wilson went over to him and laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Look,” he said, “we all feel the loss. I wish . . . I wish there were something I could do.”

  Chris Callahan shook his head and stared out the window. “I really can’t believe it,” he murmured almost to himself. “It doesn’t seem possible.”

  “Murder seldom does,” Meredith remarked solemnly, and again Claire had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. She suddenly felt giddy from fatigue and tension, and since childhood she had an unfortunate habit of laughing at the worst possible moment. The whole scene took on a surreal aspect. Sitting in the dining room as they were, sealed in by the swiftly falling snow, they might have been waiting for brunch instead of the police. It seemed impossible to her that there was a body in the basement, and it even occurred to her that this was some kind of prank, a joke dreamed up by Max, but one look at his face and she knew it was no joke.

  “Well, if nobody has any objections, I’m going up to my room,” Jeffrey said with a look at Richard.

  “I—I think we should all remain on the hotel grounds until the police are contacted,” said Frank Wilson.

  Jeffrey laughed, a harsh, hard sound, like the scraping of metal on metal. “Where would we go?”

  “All the same . . . I think we should all be here when the police arrive.”

  “Whenever that is,” Otis Knox muttered.

  Max shook his head. “I don’t think you have to worry much about that.”

  Claire looked at the others, and wondered if they were all thinking what she was: that, in all likelihood, someone in this room was a murderer.

  Chapter 6

  After sitting around in stunned silence, most of the hotel residents finally retired to their rooms, some bearing hastily assembled sandwiches Max threw together in the kitchen. Everyone appeared genuinely dazed and upset by the sudden tragedy; only Jeffrey had the sangfroid to return to the dining room and devour a full brunch. Richard, Claire noticed, did not accompany him, but retired to his room like everyone else. Frank Wilson closed and bolted the door to the basement, much to Meredith’s dismay, and declared the area off-limits; so Meredith had no alternative but to retire with Claire to their room.

  The snow continued to fall throughout the afternoon and into the evening, burying them all beneath its soft whiteness, smothering all sound outside the building. It was as if life outside the inn had entered a state of suspended animation.

  Claire lay on her bed thinking about the inn and its inhabitants as trapped within one of those winter scenes in the little glass containers that you shake to make the snowflakes fall; it was as if some unseen hand were continuously shaking it so that the snow would continue to fall.

  Meredith lay on her cot playing with a piece of string. Tying the ends together, she looped it between her fingers to form a cat’s cradle, all the while chewing heavily on a piece of bubble gum. Meredith always had to be doing something, preferably several things at once.

  Meredith blew a large pink bubble and popped it loudly. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing: this girl was killed by someone who knew her.”

  Claire rolled over onto her right side and propped her head on her hand. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “Yup,” Meredith continued. “You know how I always say there are two kinds of murders?”

  “Cold-blooded and hot-blooded.”

  “Well, this is a crime of passion or I’ll eat my hat.”

  “You don’t wear hats.”

  “All right, then I’ll eat your hat.” Meredith rolled over onto her stomach. “Wonder when the phone lines will go back on.”

  “I don’t know. They say it’s the biggest storm in New England since—”

  “Since the Blizzard of ’89,” Meredith interrupted. “I know. I just wish someone would do something.” She sighed. “If Wally were here, he’d do something.”

  Claire felt the sigh echo in her own throat. “Well, we’ll just have to think of something to do until he arrives.”

  Meredith sat up on the bed. “Really? Like what?” The promise of activity always brightened her mood.

  “Well . . . let’s see.”

  “We could talk about who might have done it.”

  “All right . . . well, Max discovered the body.”

  Meredith flopped back down onto her back and resumed fiddling with her piece of string. “Means nothing. Lots of killers are the ones who ‘discover’ the body. They either think that will deliver them from suspicion—if they’re good enough actors—or they revel in displaying their crime before others.”

  “Sort of like a cat who drags a dead mouse to your bed in the morning.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, of course everyone’s going to suspect Jeffrey, because he’s so rude,” Meredith observed. “What the hell does Richard see in him? I wonder.”

  “Youth,” Claire replied. “He sees youth in him.”

  Meredith shrugged and looped the string over one of her bare toes. “Well, he looks like rough trade to me.”

  Claire watched as Meredith tried to create her cat’s cradle
using only her toes. “Rough trade? Where did you learn that expression?”

  Meredith shrugged. “I dunno. Some English novel I was reading.”

  Rough trade. It did seem to fit Jeffrey perfectly; he was the prototype of a young thuggish character out of a novel. There was something melodramatic, Dickensian even, in his surly attitude. Richard was something else altogether, however. Claire had seen plenty of May—December relationships among both gay and straight people, but usually, she thought, there was a better match of cultural values and personality. It was true that Jeffrey was young and good-looking, but she had yet to see why someone as refined as Richard would choose this young vagabond; he appeared to be a dangerous choice. But maybe that was it, she thought; the danger itself could be part of the lure. Without knowing Richard, it was impossible to say. Maybe . . .

  “Maybe he’s got something on Richard.” Meredith’s words broke the silence, echoing Claire’s own train of thought.

  “Funny you should say that. I was just thinking—”

  “Of course you were. Great minds, and all that. He could be blackmailing Richard or something, don’t you think?”

  “It’s possible. But what connection would that have with Mona’s death?”

  “Maybe none.”

  There was a knock on the door and Meredith, catapulting herself from her cot, lunged to open it. “I’ll get it!”

  She opened the door, and Claire saw James Pewter standing in the hall outside.

  “Hiya,” said Meredith.

  “Hi. I just thought I’d see if there’s anything you need,” he said as Claire approached the door.

  Meredith stepped to one side to let Claire stand in front of her, but as she did so she pinched Claire’s arm.

  “Ow,” Claire said.

  “Are you all right?” James asked.

  “What? Oh, fine—we’re fine—right, Meredith?”

  “Whatever you say.” Meredith was back on her cot, the string dangling over her head.

  “We’re fine.”

  “Okay.” He leaned on one arm against the door frame, and lightly brushed his other hand across Claire’s hair. “Just thought I’d check.” The gesture was so casual and yet so full of implication that she caught her breath.