Who Killed Mona Lisa?

by Carole Elizabeth Buggé

  “Me, too!” Meredith chirped, following them.

  As they entered the hall, Claire caught a glimpse of movement at the other end of the hall. When she turned she saw just the tip of Henry Wilson’s head disappearing down the back staircase.

  By the time they got downstairs most of the residents and staff were gathered in the small dining room adjacent to the bar. Max was walking back and forth wringing his hands, while most of the others were just sitting in stunned silence. The sun was pouring in through the south window, its fierce brightness only serving to highlight the pain and misery on Lyle’s face. He sat by himself in the corner, the yellow sunlight on his blond curls, staring into space.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Frank Wilson said when Claire and the others arrived. “Detective Hornblower will be here soon and he wants to speak to everyone.”

  No sooner had he finished than the front door opened and Claire could hear the heavy sound of boots stamping on the mat. Detective Hornblower entered the little room a moment later, his battered fedora in his hand.

  “ ’Lo, Rufus,” Wilson said.

  “ ’Lo, Frank. Thanks for getting everyone together.” He turned to the assembled company and cleared his throat. “Mr. Wilson has told you all of the unfortunate death of Ms. Richmond,” he said slowly. Ms. Richmond. It hadn’t occurred to Claire until that moment that she didn’t know Sally’s last name.

  The detective cleared his throat again and continued. “What I want to impress upon all of you is that there is absolutely no reason to believe at this time that Ms. Richmond was murdered. In fact, as some of you may know, she had a history of drug abuse.” As he spoke, Claire watched his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. It was very prominent, and his throat was so long that it was almost impossible not to notice it. “So although Detective Murphy and I may be asking some questions in the next few days, until the completion of an autopsy there is no reason to panic, or feel undue concern.” As he spoke, the Adam’s apple continued to leap and dance. It reminded Claire of a float at the end of a fishing line. “These things happen,” he continued, “and though it’s tragic, we have no reason at this time to believe Ms. Richmond was the victim of any foul play.”

  Detective Hornblower approached Lyle and cleared his throat. “Mr. Lewellyn,” he said gently, “when you’re feeling up to it, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  Lyle nodded. “Okay. Whatever you want. When?”

  The tall detective gave a tiny shrug. “As soon as you’re feeling up to it.”

  “Okay.”

  “All right.” The detective cleared his throat again. It was for him a kind of spoken punctuation, a way to break an awkward silence.

  Lyle shook his head. “I know what you’re all thinking, but we’d given up that stuff. Sally was clean, man. That’s what we were here for—to kind of celebrate our sobriety, you know?” He looked at Claire and the others as if seeking approval. Claire found herself nodding in sympathy.

  At that moment Richard and Jeffrey entered the room. Maybe it was coincidence and maybe Lyle didn’t really mean to look at Jeffrey when he spoke, but when he continued, it was with a glance at Jeffrey.

  “Unless somebody gave her something I didn’t know about. But I don’t see how,” he added. “I was with her—like every second, you know?”

  “Every second?” said Hornblower.

  “Practically. I mean, we were sticking close together. I don’t know . . . maybe she coulda snuck out at night and got somethin’, I guess, but I don’t think so.”

  “Then you will have no objections if Detective Murphy searches your room?”

  Lyle shook his head. “Whatever. I got nothin’ to hide . . . it’s ironic, you know, because Sally really loved it here. I mean, it was her idea to come here and everything.”

  “Oh, really?” said Hornblower.

  “Yeah. She found the place and everything.”

  “How?”

  “Through some book, I think . . . she thought it sounded romantic.” His voice broke as if he were about to cry, but then he took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and stood up.

  Claire looked closely at Jeffrey to see how he was reacting to all of this, but his face was impassive; if he had been supplying Sally with drugs, she thought, he was not about to give himself away. He leaned against the door frame, his muscular arms crossed, as if waiting to enter the conversation.

  Detective Hornblower coughed delicately. “Do you know of anyone who wished to harm her?”

  Again Lyle seemed to be looking vaguely in Jeffrey’s direction, but it was hard to tell. “No, man—I mean, nobody here even knew her, for Chrissakes.” His face crumpled and he hung his head, crying softly.

  Jeffrey left his spot in the door frame and approached Lyle. “Hey, I’m really sorry. She was a sweet girl,” he said softly.

  Lyle nodded, still crying. “Yeah,” he said thickly. “Oh, God, what am I going to tell her parents?”

  “It’s not your fault, man,” Jeffrey said. “These things happen.”

  Detective Hornblower regarded Jeffrey impassively. “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to harm Ms. Richmond?”

  “Nope. Can’t imagine why anyone’d want to hurt her,” Jeffrey replied smoothly. “But if you have any more questions for me, Detective, I’ll be upstairs.”

  With that, he turned and sauntered out of the room, just as Wally and Frank Wilson came in through the other door.

  “Where’s Meredith?” said Claire.

  “She went to help Max in the kitchen,” Wally replied. “Something about a chocolate cake.”

  “Actually, Frank, I’d like to take a look around the kitchen before he does any more cooking, if you don’t mind,” Hornblower said.

  “Mind? Why should I mind? I’ll go tell him,” Frank added with a glance at Lyle, who had stopped crying and was sitting with his hands folded on his lap.

  “I’ll go,” said Lyle. “I got nothin’ else better to do.”

  When he had gone, Wally turned to Detective Hornblower. “Do they have any idea what killed her?”

  Hornblower shook his head. “Not until the tox screen is back. It was really strange; none of the doctors at the hospital could understand what was going on . . . her organs just gave out.”

  “Wouldn’t that be consistent with a history of drug abuse?” Wally asked.

  Hornblower sighed. “Maybe. But, on the other hand, she is young, and the doctors felt that such a sudden meltdown would indicate an acute situation—in other words, a recent overdose.”

  Wally nodded. “The question then becomes what did she ingest—and where did she get it?”

  “Exactly.”

  At that moment Max came in from the hall, followed by Meredith, whose face was smeared with dabs of flour.

  “You need to look at my kitchen?” Max said, standing with his hands on his hips. It was a combative stance, Claire thought, but his tone of voice was not especially challenging.

  “Yes, I would,” replied the detective. “That is, if you have no objections.”

  The big chef shrugged. “Just try not to break anything. I run a clean kitchen, you know,” he added with a glance at Frank Wilson.

  “I’m sure you do,” Hornblower answered calmly as Detective Murphy entered the room. He seemed to come from nowhere; Claire hadn’t heard the sound of the front door opening. He nodded at Detective Hornblower and stood quietly, hat in his hand, while the detective finished his conversation.

  “I’ll go have a look upstairs, then?” Murphy suggested when he was done.

  Hornblower nodded. “Thank you. I’ll accompany Mr. von Schlegel to the kitchen.”

  “Right this way, Detective,” Max said, leading him out of the room.

  “It’s purely procedural, you know,” Hornblower remarked, following him.

  Max smiled ironically. “In my experience, Detective, nothing is purely procedural.”

  As Claire listened to the two sets of footsteps receding down t
he hall, Meredith turned to her. “Does he suspect Max?”

  Claire shook her head. “He doesn’t even know if it’s a murder or not at this point, Meredith.”

  “But he had to check for clues before the trail gets cold, right?” Meredith said to Wally.

  Wally smiled faintly. “Something like that.” When he smiled, a faint dimple appeared on the right side of his face. Claire loved that dimple. It was the asymmetries she loved about people, their quirks and oddities, not the qualities that made them just like everyone else.

  Meredith was all asymmetry, a sprawling, ungainly child apparently without grace, until you got to know her and found the inner grace beneath her prickly exterior. She was like a porcupine—all bristle and points, but soft underneath, so soft. Claire wondered if the girl realized how much her vulnerability showed through all her fire and lightning. Claire herself was, in a way, her opposite: soft on the outside, but she could harden like molten metal if necessary. Wally, actually, was more like Claire than either of them was like Meredith. But then, no one was quite like Meredith, at least no one Claire had ever met.

  Her ruminations were interrupted by the arrival of Chris Callahan and his father, coming in from their afternoon walk. Claire heard them enter the front hall and realized that they probably hadn’t heard the news about Sally. She stepped out into the hall as Chris was guiding his father toward the stairs, his hand around the old man’s elbow.

  “Uh, Chris,” she said, stopping in front of the grandfather clock. She was so close she could hear the gears whirring inside it.

  When he saw her face, Chris Callahan stopped. “What is it? What’s happened? Is it Sally?”

  “Yeah,” Meredith said, coming up behind Claire. “She’s dead.”

  To some extent, Claire knew, this was all a game to the girl; at her age, she hadn’t really grasped her own mortality and therefore the death of others had less impact.

  Chris Callahan gave a deep sigh. “What a shame,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s so tragic. She couldn’t have been more than—what? Twenty-five?”

  “Yeah,” Claire said, but she was thinking that Chris looked very unsurprised by the news, almost as if he were expecting it.

  When Philippe and Otis arrived for work later that afternoon, however, they both became extremely upset at the news. They had not been around when Sally took ill at breakfast, so the whole thing came as a shock to them. The innkeeper sat them both down in the main dining room and explained what had happened.

  “Jesus,” Otis said when Frank told them the news. “That’s terrible.”

  Philippe’s response echoed something in Claire’s mind she wasn’t even aware she was thinking until he said it.

  “What next?” he said, shaking his head. “What next?”

  As they got up to attend to their chores, Claire thought that at least the staff had something to occupy their minds, whereas all the guests could do was sit around and wonder: what—or who—was next?

  Chapter 15

  POLICE LABEL SECOND DEATH AT HISTORIC INN “SUSPICIOUS”

  “We are not yet ready to call Ms. Richmond’s death a homicide,” said Detective Rufus Hornblower, referring to the mysterious and sudden death of one of the guests at Longfellow’s Wayside Inn, the centuries-old guest house that is one of Sudbury’s main tourist attractions. Detective Hornblower, who is in charge of the investigation into the stabbing death of Mona Callahan, a hotel employee, on the eve of Thanksgiving, admitted that while there were some potentially suspicious circumstances surrounding Ms. Richmond’s death, “We have no reason to believe as yet that any foul play was involved.”

  If it is a coincidence, however, even the detective admits that the situation is “bizarre,” to say the least. Ms. Richmond is the second person to die at the inn in less than a week.

  Claire put down the newspaper and took a sip of tea. The Town Crier was the local weekly paper, and Meredith was dying to talk to the reporters who showed up at the Wayside Inn the day before, but Wally and Claire had talked her out of it, convincing her that it would only serve to hamper Detective Hornblower’s investigation. It was a good little paper, with well-written articles about local events, but the livid headline splashed across the front page clearly indicated that this was the most exciting thing to happen in South Sudbury for a long time. Claire put the paper down and stretched her muscles. She decided that no matter how cold it was outside, she would go for a jog today. She was alone in the breakfast room, lingering over her tea and muffins while Wally and Detective Hornblower stood out in the hall talking. She had sent Meredith upstairs to put on a sweater; she had complained of a scratchy throat the night before, and Claire wasn’t taking any chances.

  Wally and Hornblower were talking in low voices, but Claire could hear every word.

  “No, they couldn’t find anything; the preliminary tox screen came up completely empty,” Hornblower was saying.

  “Any sign of heart trouble?”

  “No; right now it looks like she just dropped dead. There were two strange things in the autopsy, though,” said Hornblower. “There was hemorrhaging in the submucus layer of her stomach, which would be consistent with something like phosphorus poisoning. But there was no trace of phosphorus, or any substance they screened for.”

  “And what was the other thing?” Wally asked.

  “Well, her blood wasn’t clotting normally—though that’s not all that unusual, apparently.”

  “So they’ve come up empty-handed?”

  Hornblower sighed. “So far. Blood, urine, vitreous fluid—nothing showed up in any of it.”

  “What’s vitreous fluid?” Meredith’s voice sang out from down the hall. Claire stood up and went to join Wally and Hornblower at the bottom of the staircase. Meredith stood, a red sweater draped over her arm, at the other end of the hall.

  “What’s vitreous fluid?” she repeated.

  “It’s eye fluid,” Wally said. “It’s one of the first things they check for toxins along with blood and urine.”

  “Cool!” Meredith stood on tiptoe and touched the top of the door frame. The inn was built at a time when people were shorter, and Claire could easily touch the top of all the door frames. Detective Hornblower had to bend a little to get through some of the lower entryways.

  “Don’t let me interrupt you,” Meredith said hopefully. “Go ahead and talk.”

  “No, we’re just about done,” Detective Hornblower answered with a sigh.

  “Hey, listen,” said Meredith. “About those reporters that have been coming around—”

  “Meredith, I thought we agreed,” Claire interrupted.

  “Well, they just wanted to know—”

  “Meredith,” said Wally. “I thought we explained how that could damage the investigation.”

  “But—”

  “I’d like to discourage any of you from talking to reporters,” Detective Hornblower said. “Of course, I can’t stop you, but it would be best for our investigation if you didn’t.”

  “Okay!” Meredith said. “I get the message—no talky, no ticky.”

  Hornblower stared at her for a moment, then turned back to Wally. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Wally said as Hornblower replaced his battered fedora on his head.

  “Only one thing I can think of,” the lanky detective replied. “Think of something that might have killed Sally Richmond.”

  •••

  That afternoon Claire wandered downstairs to get a cup of tea for Meredith, who was still complaining of a scratchy throat. It was after five and already dark when she entered the main dining room. She was filling a cup with hot water when Otis came into the room to light the candles scattered about on the tables. As he was doing this, Henry Wilson wandered into the room and stood watching for a moment, then he picked up a box of matches from the mantel and began to light one of the candles. Otis turned to see him at the same moment Paula Wilson came charging into the room
. She swooped down on her son like a bird of prey and snatched the matches from his hand.

  “Henry, you know better than that!” she cried, jerking him away from the table. The boy recoiled from her touch, making himself as small as possible. Claire couldn’t blame him; Paula Wilson was frightening. “How could you let him?” she hissed at Otis, who shrugged.

  “I didn’t see him,” he answered, his face blank. He stood leaning against the wall, his body in a defensive position, his arms crossed protectively.

  “Well, you have to keep an eye out—we all do,” she scolded, her thin face red, her features sharpened by anger. It was at that moment she noticed Claire, who was standing quietly by the coffee machine at the far end of the room. Her thin mouth hardened into an unconvincing smile.

  “Hello,” she said. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t see you.”

  “That’s all right,” Claire replied, anxious to escape the woman’s stare but curious about what she had just witnessed. What was the meaning of it all? she wondered. She wanted to stay and ask Otis, but Paula Wilson stood her ground, smiling her rigid smile. It was clear that she was not going to leave until Claire did.

  “Can I get you anything?” she said helpfully, her voice as false as a three-dollar bill.

  “No, thanks. I was just getting some tea,” Claire replied, holding up the teacup as if to prove it. She felt the woman’s eyes on her as she turned and went back upstairs, her feet tapping evenly against the uncarpeted steps.

  She gave Meredith her tea, then, after waiting a few minutes, went back down to the bar. Otis was behind the counter slicing lemons. Claire ordered a hot cider and sat down in front of the fire.

  “What was that all about today with the matches?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

  Otis glanced at her and then looked back at the lemon he was slicing. “All what?” he said, his voice measured and deliberately bland. It was so obvious he was lying that it was almost embarrassing.

  “All that with Henry and Mrs. Wilson.” Claire was on a first-name basis with everyone at the inn, including Frank Wilson, but she couldn’t imagine calling Paula Wilson anything but “Mrs. Wilson.”