To the Manor Dead

by Sebastian Stuart

  Looking around the summerhouse where Daphne had died, I realized it reminded me of the dead cabin. There was a hint of that smell, pulled out of the old wood by the humidity. This was an abandoned place, too, one that had been adopted by Daphne to fulfill her secret lusts.

  I sat on the flimsy wicker chair and looked out at the river. It was wide and slow and green; on the far bank Sawyerville spilled gently up the hill. I imagined Daphne out here, getting high, looking out at a view that was imprinted on her subconscious—one of the first things she had ever seen, and the last. I thought of her long wild life, of her sympathy and yearning, of the way she had sipped her wine and run her fingertip along the rim of the New Orleans glass.

  I got up and began another search of the summerhouse, poring through the piles of leaves and mouse droppings, turning over the wicker furniture. Nothing. I stepped outside and began a widening concentric search of the surrounding lawn. I was on my third circle when I spotted something small and gray and cylindrical. I knelt down—a hypodermic needle. I gingerly picked it up, wrapped it in tissue, and slipped it into a plastic sandwich bag.

  I headed up to the house. Downstairs, everything looked the same. Up in Daphne’s bedroom someone had finally taken away the toast and tea, but otherwise things looked untouched. The room was starting to smell ripe—old clothes, old wine, old sweat, and that faint swampy whiff. I began one more methodical search. I opened all her dresser drawers, poked through her lingerie, scarves, sweaters. I cased the closet and bathroom, opening boxes and cabinets. I looked under the furniture and in the desk. Everything was ancient, from exclusive stores, of the highest quality, had a dreamy patina. It was a living museum of a fallen aristocrat.

  I knelt down and slid my hand under the mattress. I hit something. I stood up and pulled up one side of the mattress, revealing a stash of photographs. I scooped them up and dropped the mattress. I sat on the edge of the bed and examined the photos.

  They were taken with one of those old Polaroids. They were all of Daphne. All black and white. All recent. All riveting.

  They showed her in black hose, garter belt, thong panties, bra, heels. Old flesh, fresh lust. There she was leaning over the vanity chair, ass out; standing legs spread with her fists on her hips; sitting wide in the chair with one foot up on the desk. In other shots she was wearing less and less, the poses more and more provocative. In each of them she was staring right into the camera, by turns defiant, seductive, dominant, submissive—but always looking out from another world, an outcast from this one, brave and lost and determined to grab onto some essence of life, sensation, feeling.

  I was almost at the bottom of the stack when I came to the pictures taken out in the summerhouse.

  Okay, so Daphne was still getting it on—quite spectacularly—at age seventy-something. Good for her. A lot of women have it happening well into old age. I had a client named Sadie who was in her eighties and picked up men at senior-citizen centers all over Brooklyn. The question here was: who took these pictures? And did he (or she) have something to do with Daphne’s murder?

  I pocketed the photos and headed downstairs. I walked into the parlor to find Maggie, with Rodent cradled on her naked hip, standing in front of an enormous portrait.

  “See, baby girl, that’s your great-grandma,” Maggie was saying. The woman in the painting was imperious and patrician, standing beside the fireplace in this same parlor, looking out with a gaze that said, “Don’t even think about messing with me.”

  “Hi,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “Howdy,” Maggie said with a big goofy smile, seeming not at all surprised to see me. She had a huge joint dangling from her free hand. Say what you will about potheads, they are mellow. “I’m giving Rodent a tour of this side of the house.”

  Rodent had wide blue eyes, was pudgy and pinchable, and looked like she hadn’t seen soap and water in weeks.

  “So that’s Daphne’s mother?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that’s the old bitch,” Maggie said, taking a deep suck on her joint. “She treated God like shit … By the way, who are you?”

  “I’m Janet, we met a few weeks ago, I’m a friend of Daphne’s.”

  “Oh … Daphne’s dead.”

  “I know. I’m trying to find out how she died.”

  Maggie gave me a significant look. Then she put Rodent down. The tyke immediately ran into the middle of a priceless Oriental carpet, squatted down, and proudly peed. “I think she likes to mark her turf,” Maggie confided. “Now, where were we?”

  “We were talking about Daphne’s death, how she died.”

  “She killed herself, she strung herself up from a beam down in the summerhouse.” Maggie tilted her head and examined me for a second. “Shit, that’s right! You found her.”

  “Yes.”

  “So why are you trying to figure out how she died?”

  “I’m not sure she killed herself.”

  “You mean … somebody else killed her?”

  I nodded.

  “But isn’t that murder?”

  And the seasons, they go round and round …

  “Do you remember that morning?” I asked.

  “I don’t remember this morning.” She laughed and took another big toke. Rodent had climbed up into a priceless wing-backed chair and was bouncing up and down. I heard wood crack. “’Course all my mornings are the same. Me and Godfrey make woo-woo.”

  “Okay.”

  “He says he can’t work on his map without his morning muff.” She laughed uproariously. In fact she couldn’t stop laughing. Her flesh jiggled, every last roll. Rodent picked up a priceless figurine and flung it down to the floor, where it smashed into a million little pieces. She started laughing too, which only added to Maggie’s merriment. Encouraged, Rodent smashed another priceless figurine. I just stood there, waiting for the hilarity to subside.

  It took a while—and a few more figurines.

  Maggie finally wound down, but she was left tuckered out, so she plotzed down to the floor, her legs splayed out in front of her. Rodent ran over and leapt into her arms.

  “You know what, actually?” she said finally, looking up at me. “There was something weird that day … at least I think it was that day … after me and God were done, I was down in the kitchen cutting myself a slice of Entenmann’s … damn, I could use a slice of Entenmann’s right now … what’s your favorite Entenmann’s?”

  “Raspberry cheese Danish.”

  “No, shit!! I fuckin’ love raspberry cheese Danish.” She looked at me like we’d just discovered we were long-lost sisters. “Wow … we made a connection … intense.” Rodent was climbing up Maggie’s body, using the fleshy crevices for toeholds.

  “So you were saying about that day … ?”

  “What day?”

  “The day Daphne died.”

  “Oh yeah. I looked out the kitchen window and I saw like a man come out of the woods and go into the summerhouse.” Rodent had clambered onto Maggie’s shoulders and her chubby hands were wrapped around her forehead.

  “What did he look like?” I asked.

  “What did who look like?”

  “The man you saw go into the summerhouse.”

  “He looked like … a man.”

  “That’s great, but was he white, black, Asian? Old, young? Tall, short, fat, thin, blond, bald, redhead?”

  “Whoa, sista! You just asked like forty questions at one time,” Maggie said, and then she giggled. “That’s weird.”

  “I want ride, I want ride, I want ride!” Rodent chanted, grabbing hanks of Maggie’s hair and pulling.

  “Seriously, Maggie, can you remember anything about his looks?”

  “I want ride, I want ride!”

  “Just a second, Rodent, aunt Maggie is thinking … hmmm, let’s see—he ha
d legs and arms and a head …”

  “What was he wearing?”

  “He was wearing … clothes.”

  “What kind of clothes?”

  “Shit, my joint went out, gotta light?”

  “I want ride, I want ride!”

  “Maggie, this is important, please try and remember something about what the man looked like.”

  She looked at me and opened her eyes wide. “This is heavy, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay, I’d say he was … kinda young … yeah, kinda young … I think maybe he had a hat on so I couldn’t see his face or tell for sure how old he was. ”

  “Gimme ride!!”

  Maggie lumbered to her feet with Rodent on board.

  “I gotta go find a light.”

  “You can’t remember anything else?”

  “I’m pretty sure he was solid, like muscles, and tall … but he might have been short.”

  “Giddyup!”

  “Isn’t she the cutest little tidbit?” Maggie said, trotting out of the room shouting, “Hold on there, pard’ner, hold on!”

  I parked in front of the Rhinebeck police station, next to a big fat Cadillac. I walked inside and up to the counter. No sign of life. Then I heard muffled grunting/moaning sounds from down the hall. I peeked my head around—Charlie Dunn’s office door was closed and that’s where the grunting/moaning was coming from.

  Whatever.

  I sat in one of the two plastic chairs and picked up a tattered copy of Field and Stream. There was a story about how all the gas and oil leases that had been granted under Bush were fucking up the hunting out west—land that used to belong to the people now belonged to a few people. It was nice to see all those hunters finally waking up to who their real enemies were.

  The grunting/moaning swelled into a cacophony of agonized ecstasy—I’m not sure if I agree with Freud that every orgasm is a little death, but some of them sure sound like it.

  After a minute or so I heard the door open and close, and then the world’s oldest cheerleader sashayed around the counter. She was around forty, had major blonde hair, big tits, lots of makeup, and was wearing a skimpy cheerleading outfit and carrying a pom-pom.

  “Hi,” she said nonchalantly.

  “Go team.”

  “You got that right,” she said with a smile. Then she pulled a compact out of her purse, checked her makeup, reapplied her lipstick, took out one of those tiny packets of breath strips, placed one in her mouth, and walked out. Her card probably read: Have Tongue, Will Travel.

  I walked up to the counter and said a loud, “Hello?”

  After a minute, Charlie Dunn opened the door and headed toward me, still adjusting himself. A little smile played at the corners of his mouth. “What can I do for you?”

  “What have you done for Vince Hammer is more like it,” I said.

  “I don’t have time to play games.”

  “Recent events contradict that statement,” I said, nodding toward his office. That little smile again. It was starting to work my nerves. “I just have one quick question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Is it legal for a chief of police to accept a six-figure retainer from a real estate developer? We won’t even mention the monthly fee and recent bonus.”

  My smile-eraser did its job.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, sweat breaking out on his upper lip.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I got work to do.”

  “I hope you got it in cash, because if there’s any kind of paper trail, well, some folks frown on cops on the take. You don’t look so good, Charlie. Was it something you ate?”

  “I don’t have to stand here and listen to this.”

  “Would you rather sit down and listen to it? Because you will listen. I want to know everything you know about Daphne Livingston’s murder.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He looked me square in the eye—I looked right back. He exhaled with a loud sigh.

  “I have no goddamn idea who killed her, okay? And that’s the truth.”

  “But you did compromise the crime scene, violate procedure by allowing her body to be cremated, and impede any possible investigation.”

  He made a resigned face, and scratched the back of his neck. “What do you want to know?”

  “Did you have any advance warning of any kind?”

  “No.”

  “No word from Vince Hammer or anyone else that something might be about to go down at Westward Farm?”

  “I knew the situation there was … unsettled.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “This is a small town, people talk. Everyone knew Daphne had come back home, and that she was in bad shape. Probably mixed up with drugs.”

  “Did you pass that information on to Vince Hammer?”

  From his little flinch I knew I’d hit pay dirt.

  “Look, Vince Hammer has been making himself known in these parts for years now,” he said. “He donates to every charity from Westchester to Albany. He gets around, gets to know people who might be useful. We had an officer who was hit by a drunk driver two years ago, poor guy was paralyzed. Hammer contributed a lot of money to his medical fund. He knows how to make friends. One day he asked me out to lunch. Kept bringing up Westward Farm. Wanted to know everything about the Livingstons. I mean everything.”

  “So the two of you established channels of communication.”

  “You might say that.”

  “I just did. And what exactly did you know about Daphne’s drug use?”

  “Look, we have a lot less of a drug problem over here than they do across the river. I heard that she got her drugs from a woman over there, that they were delivered by boat, by that Pillow woman.”

  “And you never took any action?”

  He exhaled again and just stood there, waiting me out.

  “I guess I’d call that malignant neglect,” I said. “Did you hear anything about Daphne having a lover?”

  He snorted a laugh. “Now that’s a pretty picture.”

  “You’re one to talk.”

  “I think I’m done talking.”

  He turned and walked back to his office.

  I called Detective Chevrona Williams and told her I wanted to see her. She asked me to come down to the State Police barracks on Route 209 south of Kingston. I drove across the river and headed down 209. The building was squat and unimpressive. I was directed to the detective’s small cluttered office. She looked tired and sad. But she still looked good.

  “Cup of undrinkable coffee?” she said as I took my seat.

  “With that recommendation, I’ll pass.”

  “What have you got?”

  I filled her in on what I’d learned from Ethel, Maggie, and Charlie.

  “Very interesting,” she said. “We have to find that man Maggie saw. Unless she was hallucinating, I think that information means we can pretty much rule out Godfrey, in spite of the cigarette butt.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  I took out the hypodermic and handed it to her.

  “I’ll send this to the lab and ask for an expedited analysis.”

  “Doesn’t this all add up to some serious resources being put into this case?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately, no. I’ve talked to my superiors, and they won’t budge. This is one of those cases they just want to go away. Allowing Daphne’s body to be cremated was a real mistake, and they’re embarrassed by that. Then there’s all Vince Hammer’s pressure to let this sleeping dog lie. I’d have to say the fix is in.”

  “I think I will take that cup of coffee,” I said.


  Chevrona stood up. “In for a dime, in for a donut?”

  “Why not.”

  While she went to get my coffee, I let it sink in: If Daphne’s murder was going to be solved, it was going to be solved by me. My fascination with murder—with the ability to murder, with the dark festering heart—was growing obsessive. I’d never worked with hardcore criminals in my practice, but I had seen ambition, greed, and rage so extreme that they overpowered conscience and reason and led people into dangerous behaviors. I ran everything I’d seen and heard over in my mind, hoping for some pattern to emerge, for one single piece of evidence to leap out. This was definitely a well-planned, well-executed crime. I searched for the one person possessed enough to take the cosmic leap from wishing Daphne were dead to actually killing her. I was now positive that Esmerelda had given me a clue that dawn back at the Lighthouse. What was it she had said … “Pale horse, pale rider, dark horse, dead rider … if you don’t pay the piper, the piper won’t play … but the piper will sing.”

  Chevrona came back with my coffee and a pink-frosted donut. What a flirt.

  “I know where your mind is going right now, Janet. But remember: to convict someone of murder you need a lot more than circumstantial evidence. Especially when you’ve got powerful forces aligned against you.”

  “I made one other interesting discovery.”

  I took out the stack of photographs and handed them to her. She flipped through them, betraying no emotion. “Interesting. Daphne had it going on. But whether this connects to her death is another story.” She leaned forward on her desk. “Be careful, be very careful.”