“Anyway, he didn’t like it much,” Grace continued. “He said it tasted kind of peppery. Do you think that was the poison in it?”
“Could be,” replied Charlotte. She remembered that the alkaloid aconitine had been described as having a hot, sharp taste. “Mrs. Harris,” she said. “Think carefully. Do you remember any time that afternoon during which someone could have added the poison to the teapot?”
“Lordy, yes,” said Grace. She leaned back and crossed her arms. “I told that State policeman all about it. I was carrying the tea tray out to Frank when the doorbell rang. It was Wes Gilley delivering the lobsters I’d ordered for Frank’s birthday party. I was going to serve lobster thermidor.”
“What happened then?”
“Well, I set the tray on the sideboard in the parlor and answered the door. Wes didn’t have change for a twenty. That’s when I went upstairs to see if I could get change from you girls. I figure someone could have added the poison to the tea while it was sitting there on the sideboard.”
The perfect opportunity, Charlotte thought. The poisoner must have concealed the poison on his or her person. But how? The crushed root, which is what she supposed he had used—it was the most poisonous part—would be moist and runny; it would require some sort of container.
“Did you see anyone in the parlor when you came down?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean anything. The tea tray was just sitting there for a good five minutes. I remember worrying about its getting cold. Frank was a bit perturbed when I finally brought it. You see, it was past four by then. I know because The Edge of Night had already started.”
“One last question, Mrs. Harris, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course not, honey,” she said, patting Charlotte’s arm affectionately. “Anything to bring a villain to justice.”
“Did you know that Dr. Thornhill had plans to remarry?”
“Lord-a-mercy—that man,” she said, shaking her head. “I knew there was talk of it, but I didn’t believe it, not for one minute. You see,” she said, leaning forward, “I knew Frank would never have married a woman like that. Just between you and me and the lamppost, she was nothing more than a common you-know-what. When she was up here over Memorial Day weekend, she didn’t even go through the pretense of sleeping in her own bed.” She leaned back with a self-satisfied air and poked a finger through her lacquered curls to scratch her scalp. “Oh, Frank would have remarried eventually,” she continued. “Why, he was a real man, if you know what I mean. Goodness knows a man like that needs a woman in his life. But what Frank needed was a woman of culture and refinement”—she paused to pat the spot she had just scratched—“not a trashy gold digger like her.” She nodded confidently. “He would have come to his senses eventually. Take it from me.”
“I’m sure he would have,” Charlotte agreed.
Grace leaned forward again, a fresh cigarette dangling from the fingers of her limp-wristed hand. “Of course,” she said, her blue eyes glittering, “There’s not much chance of that happening now, is there?” She smiled smugly and leaned back again, puffing on the cigarette she held between her twisted fingers.
Guiding Light had ended, and she switched the channel.
“General Hospital’s on now,” she said.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” said Charlotte, rising to leave.
“I’m happy to help. Anything to bring a villain to justice.” She paused and then added, “You know, my Ellie Sue will be just thrilled to hear I met you. You wouldn’t mind giving me your autograph for her, would you? She’d just love to have it. She has a little autograph collection.”
“Not at all.”
“Oh, wonderful. I have a picture of you right here,” she said, reaching into her handbag and withdrawing a photo from an old magazine interview. “Just write ‘To Ellie Sue: I’ll always remember the good times I shared with my dear friend, your mother. Wishing you love and happiness, Charlotte Graham.’”
Charlotte wrote the message across the corner of the picture in her bold scrawl, adding another name to the ranks of her good friends across the world.
“Thank you,” said Grace, retrieving the picture and putting it back in her handbag. “That’s my baby,” she said, pointing to the snapshot of a young mother with her two children that was taped to the refrigerator door.
“She’s very pretty,” said Charlotte politely.
“Oh, yes, she was homecoming queen at Georgia Teachers College. Her boys are Bobbie and Chuckie. I’ve got five grandchildren. My other daughter, Mary Ann, has three.” She held up the locket that she wore around her neck, and showed Charlotte the picture of a baby. “This is the youngest, my little Betsy.”
Charlotte admired the pictures of the grandchildren, and turned down Grace’s offer to show her the other pictures of her grandchildren in her room. “I’m afraid I have to be going,” she apologized. “Maybe some other time.”
“I’m always here,” she said, getting up to check the cake in the oven. “Always right here.”
9
On the way back through the parlor, Charlotte stopped to study the layout. The room had access to the kitchen and the dining room on one side, the library on the other side, and the veranda at the rear. Then there was the front door and the twin staircases. Grace couldn’t have picked a more vulnerable spot to leave the tea. That is, if the tea had been poisoned by someone else. The suspect with the least motive had turned out to have a strong motive after all. It was clear that Grace had had romantic designs on Thornhill, however delusional they might have been. And, like Fran, she knew a good deal about herbs. It might have been a case of, “If I can’t have him, nobody else will.”
As Charlotte was standing there John entered the front door. He was dressed in khaki shorts and a khaki drill shirt and was carrying a tripod in one hand. A 35mm camera hung from around his neck.
“You look as if you’ve been out in the African bush shooting pictures of wild game,” she said with a smile.
“No, only out in the Gilley Island bush shooting pictures of wild waves crashing against the rocks.”
“For Stan?”
He nodded.
“He showed me some of your photos. They’re very good.”
“Can I take that as an indication that you wouldn’t be averse to my photographing you?” he said, with a suave little smile.
Damn. She’d opened herself up to that one. “Okay,” she said brusquely, “but let’s do it right here, shall we?”
“Fine,” he said. “It’s nice light, soft. It will just take a minute. Why don’t you sit there?” He pointed to one of the wicker chairs. “I’ll get a close-up against the Chinese screen—a profile, maybe; it should be very nice, with your black jacket and your black hair.”
“How’s your work going?” she asked as he removed a roll of film from one of the film containers taped to his camera strap.
“Well, very well in fact,” he said as he loaded the film. He paused. “I don’t know if I should be confessing this to someone who’s helping the police with their investigation, but Frank’s death doesn’t exactly hinder my career. He wasn’t a great champion of my work, as you know.” He smiled. “However, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t come to the conclusion that because I stand to benefit from his death, I was the one who killed him.”
“I’m finding out that there are a lot of people who stand to benefit from his death—you’re not alone in that.”
“Strangely enough, I miss him now that he’s gone,” he continued as he tried out different angles. “The man you love to hate, and all that.”
It was odd how people missed their enemies, she thought as he snapped the shutter. The spouse who is hated is as deeply mourned as the spouse who is loved. Hate or love, the ties were equally strong.
“Now you can do something for me,” said Charlotte, once he had finished.
“What’s that?” he asked as he rewound the film.
“Repeat for me what you told the poli
ce about Tuesday afternoon.”
“Sure. What do you want to know?”
“What you saw when you came downstairs.”
“Nothing. I didn’t even notice the tea on the sideboard. Chief Tracey asked me about that.”
“Did you go out the front door?”
“Right out, and over to the gardener’s cottage.”
“And you didn’t see anyone?”
“No one. Not even Wes Gilley, although his truck was parked out front. Chief Tracey kept asking me if I was sure I hadn’t seen anyone at the front door. It was obvious that he thought I should have seen Gilley.”
Then where was Wes? she wondered. He should have been at the front door, waiting for Grace to come back with his change.
“I’m afraid I’m not much help,” he continued. “Would you like to join Daria and me for some tea? Hopefully, we’ll live through it.”
Charlotte smiled at the black humor; everyone had suddenly become very suspicious of their food and drink. She declined, and thanked him for his help. As he headed up the stairs to the bindery she reflected that there were only three possible reasons why John hadn’t reported seeing Wes One, Wes had left the door for some innocent reason; two, Wes had concealed himself to avoid being caught in the act; and three, John was lying. She suddenly realized how little she knew about him, and made a mental note to ask Tom to check him out.
She found Felix stretched out in a chaise on the veranda, with a book in one hand and a glass of Scotch in the other. He was fastidiously dressed as usual in a white suit, but he had made some concessions to the country in the form of large, dark sunglasses and a floppy white-duck hat, the combination of which made him look like an Arab potentate traveling incognito. Settling herself on the chaise beside him, she asked what he was reading.
“Moby Dick,” he replied as he lifted the book, a finger marking his place. “My favorite chapter—‘The Whiteness of the Whale.’”
Surveying the white expanse of his stomach, Charlotte thought that reading about white whales must be right up his alley.
“For pleasure I read Melville, Dickens, and last but not least, detective stories. The detective story has been called the ordinary recreation of noble minds. I am a great fan of the police procedural. With regard to our interest in police matters, we have something in common, nicht wahr, Miss Graham?”
“As a matter of fact, that’s why I’m here.”
“I thought as much. The case of the poisoned book collector. Very tragic—my oldest and dearest client. And I suppose you want to know my whereabouts at the time of the murder?”
Charlotte nodded. She knew full well he had been in the same place that he was now, but she wanted to see what his answer would be anyway.
“I was right here, reading The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, one of the great classics of detection. A first edition, and quite valuable. The detective story has been overlooked as a collector’s item, but it is finally gaining the recognition it has long deserved. Especially the early detective stories, which are becoming valuable indeed. Take the work of the father of the detective story, the great Edgar Allen Poe. Only a few copies are still extant of his Murders in the Rue Morgue, a little pamphlet printed in 1841. Very valuable. And then there’s the Beeton’s Christmas Annual.…”
“Can you tell me if you saw or heard anything unusual?” interrupted Charlotte, knowing that once he got started on collecting detective fiction she would have a hard time getting him back on the subject of Thornhill’s murder.
Reaching into one of his many inside pockets, he withdrew a cigar. Charlotte observed that one of his pockets would be a good place to keep a container of poison at hand for dropping into a teapot.
“I’m sorry, no. I was immersed in my book.” He paused, and lifted the cigar to his mouth to moisten it. “I must correct myself. I did hear what sounded like an altercation. Franklin and someone else, in the library. Followed by the sound of a door slamming.”
“Did you hear what the quarrel was about?”
“It seems to me that I heard the other party say something like, ‘You’d better leave it to me, you understand?’ Oh yes, and I heard the doorbell ring. I believe it was answered by Mrs. Harris.”
The same words she had heard, she thought as she gazed out over the urns of geraniums to the lawn. She wondered whether Thornhill and Chuck had been arguing about the will. “Leave it to me,” sounded as if Chuck was talking about the Ledge House property. But wouldn’t he have said “Leave it to us,” referring to him and Marion, if he-was talking about the will? Thornhill had presumably left his house and grounds to his daughter, but until his will was retrieved from a Boston safe-deposit box they wouldn’t know for sure. She wondered whether Thornhill would have left the property to Marion, knowing that Chuck would probably sell it to Chartwell. Perhaps he had threatened to include a clause prohibiting development. Or he might have threatened to leave the property to the public. In either case, Chuck would have the strongest motive. The use of poison to dispose of affluent relatives had a long history, and the property—valuable as it was—was only a fraction of the total estate.
“Does that help you, Miss Graham?” asked Felix, who had gone through the elaborate ceremony of lighting his cigar.
“Yes, thank you,” she replied. “Mr. Mayer,” she continued, turning to face him, “Have you any idea of the value of the Thornhill collection?”
“That depends on whether or not the incunabula are recovered,” he said. “As we discussed the other day, the incunabula alone are worth in the neighborhood of four hundred thousand dollars.”
“If the incunabula are recovered.”
“The Thornhill collection contains about five thousand volumes, of which perhaps half can be considered rare. Such a collection, Miss Graham, is unique; it ranks among the finest botanical collections in the country. For that matter, the world. In today’s market, such a collection would be worth, in my estimation, a minimum of four million dollars.”
Charlotte was surprised.
“You see, Miss Graham,” he went on, “when it comes to collecting books, the whole is worth far more than the sum of the parts.”
“Have you any idea what will become of the collection now?”
“That remains to be seen, doesn’t it? However, Franklin often told me that he would rather sell it than donate it to an institution, despite the persuasive arguments of our young scholar. You see, he was not a man of great wealth: the bulk of his estate was tied up in his books. To have bequeathed his collection to an institution would have been to deprive his heir—namely his daughter Marion—of her rightful inheritance.”
“Then you think his will stipulated that the collection should be sold—probably through you—with the proceeds to go to Marion.”
“That is what he led me to believe. You heard him say it yourself the other day. He always promised me that upon his death I would handle the sale of his collection. However, he always said I would be the first to go. It was a joke between us: who would outlive the other.” He smiled, his hazel eyes twinkling. “I know what you’re hinting at. It’s true that I stand to make a substantial commission on the sale of his collection, the kind of commission that comes along once in a lifetime. But to kill an old and beloved friend for profit? Business is bad, yes”—he shook his head slowly—“but never that bad.”
“Thank you for your help,” said Charlotte, standing to leave. “I’m sorry I’ve had to disturb you with these questions.”
“I understand. We are all suspects. But you must understand that a book dealer’s good name is his stock in trade. The business of bookselling is a business that is rife with opportunities for the unscrupulous. The book dealer is constantly being faced with temptations: to accept a stolen book, to pay a gullible seller less than a book is worth, to purloin a valuable book from a collection he has been entrusted to appraise. The book dealer who yields to such temptations may make a profit in the short run, but he will not be in business very long. It is th
e book dealer who builds a reputation for honesty and fair play who survives and prospers.” He took a deep, self-satisfied puff on his cigar. “It is exactly because my reputation is sans peur et sans reproche that I am considered one of the world’s greatest book dealers.”
Charlotte thanked him again and left. Like Grace, Felix had turned out to have a strong motive after all. He flaunted his good name like a badge of innocence, but she couldn’t help thinking that reputation, as the bard had said, is “oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.”
On her way back to the Saunders’ house she stopped to rest in what had become one of her favorite spots: a bench under a big old oak tree overlooking the bar, which was now buried ten feet beneath a high tide. Out on the bay, the islands lay like lily pads on the calm silver surface of the sea. It was these islands that gave the Maine coast its character. In an era in which the sea had been an open highway, the islands had been its way stations. In the Saunders’ living room was a nineteenth-century map of the area. The islands were heavily dotted with the little black squares that indicated residences, while the mainland had practically none. But today, many of the islands were ghostly relics of their former selves. All that remained of once-prosperous homesteads were filled-in wells, fields grown up to poplar and pine, and tiny family cemeteries like the one on the Gilley Road. She shivered as she rose to leave: the death of centuries seemed close at hand on this island of Gilleys past.
As she stood up her reverie was interrupted by a peal of girlish laughter accompanied by the blare of rock music. Two girls—one carrying a radio the size of a small suitcase—were skipping down the road from the direction of Ledge House. A few minutes later they had caught up with her. The younger girl, who looked about eleven, ran right up to her. Like the other girl, whom Charlotte recognized as Wes’s daughter, she had the kind of careworn, old-young face that is often found among the children of the rural poor.
Murder at Teatime Page 12
