Daria cupped her hands around a cup of tea and shivered. “I just can’t seem to get warm,” she said, reaching out to pull up the blanket.
“No wonder,” said Tom, who was sitting on the edge of her bed. “Taking a moonlit dip in fifty-degree water. What do you think this is, Miami Beach?”
She smiled at him. The brown eyes that had seemed so dull and lifeless on the rocks had regained their golden sparkle.
“Daria,” said Charlotte, after the nurse had gone, “I’d like to go over exactly what you did yesterday, step by step.”
“Okay,” she replied. “I was getting some documents together. The chairman of the board of the botanical society had called to say that someone would be flying up from New York this afternoon to pick up some of the books.”
“Which books?”
“The incunabula. The rest of the collection won’t be shipped until they have their shelving ready, but they wanted to take possession of the incunabula immediately. They’re a bit nervous, on account of the theft.”
“So you were assembling documents relating to the incunabula?”
Daria nodded.
“What documents?”
“The bill of sale, the notes for some sort of a catalogue—they looked like they might have been written by MacMillan …”
Charlotte nodded. They were the papers she had returned to Daria, the papers that had tipped her off that Thornhill had stolen the books. She was surprised Daria hadn’t noticed the discrepancy in dates, but she probably hadn’t looked at them that closely.
“… binder’s reports, auction catalogues, cards from the card catalogue, that sort of thing,” continued Daria.
“Where were you doing this?”
“In the library. The documents were spread out on the library table, and the books too.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“Yes,” she said, thinking. “Grace came in twice: once with a phone message from Chief Tracey, and once to ask if I wanted some tea. Actually, three times: she also brought me the tea. I guess she can’t get out of the habit. And Fran—she came in to consult a book about herbs. And John, and Felix.”
“Did you tell anyone what you were doing?”
“No. No one asked. They’re used to seeing me working in there.”
“Did you leave the room at all?”
“I had lunch with John out on the East End—where I saw you. I was gone for maybe an hour and a half. Later on, I went over to pick up Der Gart from the gardener’s cottage—John had been working on it. He was out taking pictures somewhere. That’s when I saw you again; it was just about four. Just before tea. I drank my tea out on the terrace. I also read a bit. I was gone for about forty-five minutes, I’d say. Maybe a little more.”
Someone might have seen the documents spread out on the table and put two and two together, just as Charlotte had. Especially if, like Felix, they already suspected that Thornhill had stolen the books. But that still didn’t explain the attempt on Daria’s life.
“What then?” asked Charlotte.
“Then I got the books together and put them in the vault.”
“What about the documents?”
“I put them in the vault too, with the books. And then I locked it. I’m not taking any chances when it comes to these books.”
Charlotte sensed that the solution to the riddle was to be found in the library, if it was to be found at all. It was like playing the role of a famous person: you could read all the biographies in the world, but until you walked the ground they had walked on, sat in the rooms they had lived in, and read the books they had read, you really couldn’t get a sense of who they were.
“Daria, I’d like to look at the books,” she said. “Do you think you could give me the combination? I won’t tell a soul.”
Daria wrote the number on a slip of paper and handed it to Charlotte, who promised to destroy it the minute she was finished.
An hour later, she was back at the library. As she turned the dial on the combination lock, she felt a little as if she was plundering an Egyptian tomb. This was Thornhill’s sanctum sanctorum, its contents the treasures for which he had risked his reputation, maybe even his life. They were the earliest examples of a technology that had revolutionized learning, making knowledge accessible for the first time to the common man.
At the click of the final tumbler, she opened the door. The books were stacked in a pile, each in its linen-covered box. They ranged in size from the Gerard, which was as thick and weighty as an old family Bible, to the Herbarius Latinus, which was the size of a large paperback. The documents were lying on top of the books in a manila folder. She looked inside. They were all there, just as Daria had said—the bill of sale, the catalogue notes, the binder’s reports, and so on. She carefully removed the books and carried them over to the table, where she took a seat in one of the baroque armchairs. She decided to look at Der Gart first. Gently, she slipped it out of its box. It was good-sized, measuring about 8 by 11 inches, but surprisingly light. The wooden boards, or covers, were covered with calfskin stamped in a flower pattern and riddled with the tracks of nearly five centuries’ worth of bookworms. They were held together by leather straps affixed to a clasp of tooled brass. Unlatching the clasp, she opened the cover. Between the cover and the flyleaf was a sheet of paper giving a description of the book and a translation of the dedication on the first page:
“Now fare forth into all lands, thou noble and beautiful Garden, thou delight of the healthy, thou comfort and life of the sick. There is no man living who can fully declare thy use and thy fruit. I thank thee, O Creator of heaven and earth, Who hast given power to the plants and other created things contained in this book, that Thou hast granted me the grace to reveal this treasure, which until now has lain buried and hid from the sight of common men. To Thee be glory and honor. Now and forever. Amen.”
She reread the words, “… this treasure, which until now has lain buried and hid from the sight of common men.” Even after five centuries, they made her shiver. Turning the page, she drew a sharp breath: she could see why Thornhill had been willing to steal for this book. It bore no more resemblance to a modern book than a magnificent hand-worked tapestry does to a cheap synthetic fabric. The thick rag paper was stiff and creamy. Except for a few water stains, it might almost have been new. Against it, the ornate Gothic lettering was black and shiny. The headings and capitals were hand-lettered in red ink, the delicate curlicue embellishments showing care and love and even a sense of whimsy. But the most remarkable part of the book wasn’t the hand-lettering but the woodcuts, which depicted plants and flowers simply outlined in heavy black, like the pictures in a child’s coloring book. They were colored in by hand with painstaking delicacy and accuracy. To some, they might have seemed crude, but to her, they had a delightful innocence and charm. They were the first printed illustrations to be drawn directly from nature, John had said, forming the basis for all subsequent botanical illustration. There were woodcuts of parsley, onion, dandelion, violet, chive, scallion, grape, daffodil, squash, hop, rose, lily of the valley, and strawberry. There were even animals: real animals—the rabbit, the stag, and the wolf—and imaginary animals—a horselike creature with horns and tusks, a dragon with webbed feet and breath of fire, and a strange elephantlike creature with a long nose.
The index at the back (even the earliest printers had seen the value of an index, she noticed) was the most time-worn part of the book. The pages were well-thumbed, and the margins were annotated in a minute Gothic script that resembled that of the text. She could make out the words melancholie, complexion, and für das Herz. Also something about Tegernsee, a Bavarian lake-town known for its ancient Benedictine monastery, which she had once visited. She remembered its flower-bedecked houses and the white sails dotting the lake. The notations had probably been made by a monk whom the peasants had sought out for treatment of their ailments—their depression, their acne, their heart problems. The book even seemed to have an ecclesiastical sme
ll, she thought, an observation that she wrote off to her imagination before identifying it as a smell from her youth: the musty odor of the hymnals and prayer books that she used to help carry up from the church basement for the extra worshipers who always showed up on Christmas and Easter.
Midway through the index, the pages opened up on a manila envelope that had been inserted into the book. Opening it, she found a slim manuscript with the title: The Charles W. MacMillan Collection of Rare Botanical Books—A Short Title Catalogue. The neatly typed text duplicated the handwritten notes she had found among Thornhill’s papers. It was the typed manuscript of MacMillan’s private catalogue, the manuscript that she had presumed to exist but had been unable to find. Not only did it include the books that MacMillan had supposedly sold to Thornhill, it even included a reproduction of the iris woodcut from Der Gart, along with a disquisition on the influence of Der Gart on botanical illustration. And it was dated December, 1959, proof positive that Thornhill had stolen the books from the MacMillan estate.
But what was it doing stuck in Der Gart like a bookmark? It couldn’t have been there when Kevin stole it: Tracey had said that Daria examined the books afterwards. She would have found it and put it with the other documents. Then she realized that “like a bookmark” was exactly it: someone had absentmindedly used the envelope as a bookmark, like the reader of a library book might use Aunt Ethel’s postcard from Myrtle Beach. She was returning the manuscript to its envelope when a loose page slipped into her lap. As she picked it up she realized that it wasn’t part of the manuscript, but a sheet of letterhead stationery on which was typed a list of seven names. Next to each name was a “yes” or a “no.” In some places, the “no” had been crossed out and a “yes” substituted in its place, for a total of five “yeses” and two “noes.” The names meant nothing to her, but the letterhead did. “That’s it,” she said to the stone-faced portrait of John Gerard. The pieces fit together as neatly as the mortised rafters on the roof of the Saunders’ barn. She now knew who had murdered Thornhill, and why. All it would take to confirm her theory was a phone call or two.
But, she thought as she sat down at the secretary to make the call, her theory didn’t explain who had tried to kill Daria. And then she discovered the answer to that question as well. On the secretary was a “While You Were Out” message pad with a message for Daria from Chief Tracey, dated yesterday. The message, which had been taken by Grace, said: “Chief Tracey wants to change meeting time. Will meet you tomorrow at ten.”
15
As Charlotte sat on a driftwood log, watching Stan prepare the lobster bake, her thoughts turned to the Red Paint People, who had held their clambakes on these shores when lobsters were still so plentiful they could be picked up by the dozens off the rocks. Named for the red ochre with which they painted the bodies of their dead, they had disappeared mysteriously around 4000 B.C., replaced by the ancestors of the modern day Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes. Each spring, after planting their crops of corn and squash and beans, they had paddled down river in their birch bark canoes to camp on the coast and feast on the plentiful seafood. The grassy slope that led down to the bar at the foot of Broadway had once been one of their campsites. For many years a shell heap had marked the spot, but it had long since disappeared, the crushed shells hauled away to surface local roads. In the old days, Stan had said, one could still see the stone circles that had surrounded their campfires.
The preparations for the clambake had been going on all day. The Saunders were going the traditional route. Not for Stan the fifty-gallon oil drum, the aluminum trash can, of the sealed barbecue grill. This would be an authentic bake, right down to the stones used for cracking open the lobster claws. The time-honored method had begun with the gathering of round stones worn as smooth as softballs by the waves. Next came the driftwood fire, which had been built on a bed of round stones on the rocky shore at the foot of the Ledges. Once the fire had burned down, it had been covered with damp rockweed. Then had come the food: first the clams and lobsters, which provided moisture for the steam, then the hard-boiled eggs, the foil-wrapped vegetables, and the corn on the cob. Wes and Virgie had donated the clams and lobsters, carrying bushel after bushel over from Wes’s lobster boat, the Virgie G., which was docked at the Ledge House landing. The bake would now be covered by another layer of rockweed, sealed with an old sailcloth, and allowed to steam.
Charlotte surveyed the scene. The cast was nearly complete. Wes and Virgie were supervising Kevin and the Gilley girls, who were collecting more rockweed from the shore. Felix had just appeared at the foot of the Ledges. He looked like a Disney elephant-ballerina as he tiptoed across the rocks in fear of scuffing his shoes. Grace was right behind him, Felix appearing to have taken the place in her fantasies that had been previously occupied by Thornhill. Chuck and Marion were still descending the Ledges, Chuck carrying a large cooler. Behind them came Fran and John, who were loaded down with other supplies destined for the tables on the landing.
The only members of the cast who were still missing were Tom and Tracey, but they were both in sight. Tom was approaching in the Saunders’ runabout with Daria, who sat in the stern with her leg outstretched. Her cast made it impossible for her to negotiate the Ledges, so Tom had driven her over in the boat. Tracey was approaching in the police launch with Detective Gaudette and another police officer. All three would be armed. She hadn’t been an actress all these years without developing some talent for staging a performance. And she wanted Tracey and his colleagues waiting in the wings for the final scene. There was even music: the sound of the community band tuning up drifted clearly across the channel on the light offshore breeze.
“Looks like the weather’s going to hold,” said Stan to no one in particular as he pitched another forkful of rockweed onto the bake.
Rain had threatened all day, but it had held off, the threat of cancellation only adding to the anticipation.
“We’ve got the best seats in the house,” Stan continued, nodding at the crowd of early birds who had already set up their folding chairs and blankets in the park overlooking the town pier.
Charlotte smiled wanly. They had good seats for the show all right, but it wasn’t the one they were expecting. The show they were about to get was apt to be a lot more explosive than the fireworks.
The new arrivals headed directly for the drink table, which, with Kitty as barmaid, was doing a brisk business. Chuck was reminiscing with Kitty about past clambakes, their conversation punctuated by his braying laughter. Grace, already in her cups, was making sheep’s eyes at Felix, who looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed or flattered. And Wes, who had given up supervising the kids, was lovingly tending the spigot of the keg of beer that he had tapped for the occasion. For that matter, thought Charlotte, she could use a little snort herself. She got up to fetch herself a drink.
An hour and a half later, the bake was nearly gone. Stuffed with seafood, the group sat on logs around the fire that Stan had rekindled. Here and there, the last stubborn morsels of lobster flesh were being sucked out of a leg or picked out of a claw. To one side was a shell heap that, if it failed to rival the Red Paint People’s, was nonetheless a respectable accumulation for one evening’s feasting. Tracey and the two other policemen had put away their fair share. Their presence had aroused no suspicion: it was assumed they would be leaving shortly to deal with the fireworks crowds. In addition to Gaudette, looking resplendent in his State police uniform, Tracey was accompanied by one of his own men, a dim-witted young man named Rodgers, with glasses that kept slipping down his nose and a severe overbite that gave him a rodentlike appearance. No wonder Tracey had been so eager for Charlotte’s assistance.
“Can I get you a drink?” asked Tom, who had risen to replenish his glass.
“Thank you,” she answered. “Gin and tonic, with lots of ice.”
Sweet Tom, she thought. He knew what she was going through. It was called stage fright, that paralyzing fear of failure tha
t turns the legs to Jell-O and makes the voice a feeble croak. Ever since she’d first set foot on the boards, at the tender age of eight, she’d struggled to conquer her fear. Her case was a mild one: she’d never been completely paralyzed like some—some of the best. Oddly enough, it was the better actors who were the most susceptible to stage fright, because it was they who were the most likely to open up every nerve to the demands of the part. Nor was a good performance necessarily a cure. On the contrary, it sometimes made it worse. It was one of the mysteries of the stage that only rarely was a performance infused with the kind of electrifying power that turned it into an experience that audiences would talk about for years to come. But such a performance was a gift from God: if you strove for it, it eluded you. Like water in the Zen proverb, the harder you tried to grasp it, the more quickly it flowed through your fingers.
Tom brought her her drink, and she took a long swallow. He’d been coached to be her prompter, but it turned out to be Stan who delivered her cue. After whistling to get everyone’s attention, he stood up to address the group: “One week ago today,” he said, “we were shocked to learn that our good friend Frank Thornhill died as a result of poisoning. We are all aware that the police, with the assistance of our guest, Charlotte Graham,” he said, nodding at Charlotte, “have been conducting an investigation into the murder. But few, if any, of us have been informed as to the progress of their findings. I wonder if we could take advantage of your presence here, Chief, by asking you to fill us in on what’s happening. I think you can understand that this matter has been a source of great anxiety to us all.”
Charlotte recognized the speech as a mild reproof. The Saunders were put out at her failure to confide in them. She hadn’t done so partly because she didn’t feel right about revealing the details of a police investigation, but also because she hadn’t had much to tell them—until now.
Murder at Teatime Page 20
