A Trick of the Eye

by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  “But you don’t like her.”

  I thought about this for a moment.

  “No, I do. Sort of. I’m wary of her. I think there’s some hidden agenda there and I can’t figure out what it is. I don’t know, maybe the father did it.”

  “What?”

  “Killed Cassandra. I just know it was an inside job.”

  “Now the father I could see,” Harry said.

  “Why so sure?”

  “I told you, I met him once. Now there was ice incarnate. I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me he was a murderer.”

  “Hmm. And we can’t forget about Madi,” I reminded him. “I must confess I wonder what he’s like.”

  “In any event, both are far more plausible suspects than poor old Frances.”

  “But she knows who did it,” I said. “I know she knows.”

  “Well, according to her, so does Madi. So why don’t we go and have a little talk with him.”

  “You know, Harry, I’m tempted. I really am. Insane as it is.”

  “What have we got to lose?”

  “Our lives, our sanity. I mean we really are nuts to even think of it . . . And anyway, think of the expense.”

  “Wait there.”

  Harry excused himself from the table, rose to his feet with some effort, and waddled out of the dining room. He hadn’t been gone five seconds when I felt an insistent scratching at my leg. It was Mr. Spencer, pawing me, looking for a handout. I gave him a piece of chicken from my plate and watched him eat, a laborious effort since he had no front teeth, save one at the dead center of his mouth. When Harry returned, he saw Spencer still fretting over the morsel I’d given him. There were tiny half-chewed bits of chicken all over the carpet.

  “He’s not supposed to be fed from the table,” Harry said snippily.

  “Sorry, but he was pawing at me, and he looked so imperious I couldn’t refuse him.”

  “That’s a trick he learned when he was a colonial administrator in Africa.”

  I loved the way Harry invented elaborate lineages and histories for Mr. Spencer, speaking of the little dog as if he were a series of grand persons who had lived in the periods Harry favored as a scholar.

  “He’s had more teeth out since I saw him last,” I observed, bending down to pick up stray scraps of chicken with my napkin.

  I heard Mr. Spencer growl.

  “Yes. The vet left the one tooth in front in, however—‘for cosmetic reasons,’ he said. You have to love a vet who leaves one front tooth in a decrepit old schnauzer ‘for cosmetic reasons,’ don’t you? Now, stop all that cleaning-up nonsense and close your eyes,” Harry said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Just do as I say.”

  I straightened up and did as I was told.

  “Is this some sort of joke?” I inquired, my eyes squeezed shut.

  “No joke. Now open them,” Harry commanded.

  I opened my eyes and looked down. Propped up against my wineglass was a long blue envelope.

  “What’s this?” I said, lifting up the envelope to examine it more closely. I discovered it wasn’t an envelope at all, but a ticket folder stuffed with paperwork.

  “Two round-trip tickets to Colorado,” Harry announced with pride. “Plus a reservation for a rental car, and rooms at the finest—and only, I might add—hotel in Broken Ridge, called, appropriately enough, the Fortune.”

  I stared at the folder, then looked back up at Harry.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because, goddammit, now you’ve got my curiosity up too. Even dear Rodney’s intrigued. You have to understand, Frances Griffin is an icon to me. I lived through the scandal. You didn’t. I can’t imagine anything more fascinating than actually solving this murder. And from what you tell me, we’re close. I think this fellow Madi’s worth talking to.”

  “Me too, but what makes you think he’ll tell us anything?”

  “I don’t know. It’s worth a try. What have we got to lose?” he said.

  “What makes you think he’ll even see us?”

  “I think if you call up and tell him the truth, he might actually.”

  “And what exactly is the truth?” I inquired, somewhat puzzled.

  “Well, we can call him up—I’ll do it if you like—and tell him you’ve been working on the ballroom for Frances Griffin. Believe me, he’ll know what that is. I’ll say that Mrs. Griffin is old and ill and we feel—you feel—she’s harboring the secret of who killed her daughter. And that she herself told you that, quote, ‘Roberto Madi knows the truth.’ ”

  The idea was amusing and intriguing.

  “Right,” I laughed. “And then he says, ‘Golly gee, I’ll tell you everything I know just because you asked, and because you’re so cute!’ Come on, Harry, he’s not going to blab anything to us. Can you imagine how many people must have tried to get the truth out of him?”

  “You never know,” Harry said. “He might. Time’s passed. It’s been a while, I’m sure, since anyone has talked to him seriously about it. Let me call him. What have we got to lose?”

  “Okay, and what happens if Madi himself is the killer?”

  “Well, then he probably won’t see us. Let’s assume he’s not the killer. He might very well shed some light on who is. He might have a theory. And even if he doesn’t know, you might get an insight into Cassandra or Frances. Let me ask you something, Faith, aren’t you curious to meet Madi, to see what he’s like, how he looks?”

  “Sure I am.”

  “Well, then, I say it’s worth a try.”

  As I mulled over this convoluted reasoning of Harry’s, the idea began to appeal to me more and more. At the very least, I thought to myself, it would be an adventure. And Harry had made it all so easy, getting the tickets and rooms. I did wonder where he’d gotten the money to pay for all the arrangements and I offered to reimburse him.

  “All right, but you must let me pay you back for my ticket and hotel room,” I said.

  “No, no, this is my birthday present to you.”

  “My birthday isn’t for another six months. I’d be grateful if you didn’t rush it.”

  “Don’t be so strict,” Harry teased. “The trip’s on me, and that’s that. Shall we go and have our coffee in the living room? I won’t be a moment.”

  “Can’t I help?”

  “No, no. Too many cooks—”

  While Harry was preparing coffee in the kitchen, I wandered into the living room, trailed by Mr. Spencer. I sat down on one of the two chocolate-colored sofas flanking the fireplace and sank deep into its silk velvet folds. As usual, the sconces were blazing with candles, making the room glow like a firelit cave. Mr. Spencer jumped up alongside me on the couch and nestled against my thigh while I thumbed through an elegant book on the painter, David, by a French scholar named Luc de Nanteuil, personally inscribed to Harry on the cover page.

  It was always a pleasure to sit in Harry’s living room after dinner reading or relaxing. He’d created a wonderful setting out of relatively little, making up for no view and an indifferent architectural space by covering the walls and ceiling with fabric and filling the room with exotic collections of ivory and tortoiseshell objects.

  Harry had kept the same general decor ever since I’d known him, though the furniture had changed over the years. He always joked that everything in his house was for sale, including himself. At one time, his living room had been the repository for some of the best antiques I’d seen outside a museum. Harry was never ashamed to brag about the conquests of his great eye—“God’s compensation to a fat, ugly man”—as he dubbed it. He loved discovering treasures, especially when they had been overlooked by everyone else. He used to deride his fellow dealers for their lack of expertise, especially the ones who dealt in what he called, “overpriced, overpainted Huey, Dewey, and Lou
is the Fifteenth copies.”

  Through the years, however, I saw Harry’s collection of great furniture dwindle down to only a couple of good things, the rest having been replaced by decorative mediocrities. Though he never complained about his finances, I gathered that over time Harry had been forced to sell off the best examples of his collection in order to make ends meet. Nevertheless, the apartment, like Harry himself, had managed to retain its original character.

  I remembered all the times I’d sat there in that very spot, watching Harry hold court, listening to his reminiscences about art and acquisitions and great eccentrics he had known. Just at that moment, I found myself wondering if Harry had enjoyed his life half as much as he enjoyed the recounting of it to other people. I knew he embellished stories for the amusement of his listeners. By his own admission, he often over-restored anecdotes and regilded personalities so as not to disappoint his audience. But that was Harry. The moment was everything for him, and he wanted to be loved. He had been as good a friend to me as I’d ever had. He knew me better than anyone else, having made it his business to burrow deep inside my emotional life and help me through some very tough times.

  I thought back to the time I’d first met him thirteen years ago. Thirteen years—was it that long ago? I could hardly believe it. A mutual friend had taken me to his apartment for dinner, saying that Harry had admired my work, heard all about me, and was anxious to meet me. Apparently we shared some clients in common, a rich young couple who’d hired me to trompe l’oeil their oversized Park Avenue dining room to resemble a Roman ruin and hired Harry to stock it with antiquities.

  Though ill at ease at first—coming to a strange apartment to meet a man I didn’t know—I was won over almost instantly by Harry, who, by all accounts, was at his most charming and seductive that evening. He was witty without being cruel, informative without monopolizing the conversation, flattering but in no way sycophantic. He wanted to know all about me and my work, but I never once got the feeling he was prying. We discovered many things we loved in common, as well as a shared loathing we had of a certain modern painter whose work was as inferior as it was expensive, and who himself was as pompous as he was untalented. The two of us had poured vitriol on this man for at least twenty solid minutes. I remembered the moment when Harry turned to me and smiled as sweetly as a child and said, “You know, dear, nothing bonds people together as quickly as a common hatred.” I laughed and laughed. Our friendship began.

  “Are you all right?” Harry cried out from the kitchen. “I’m just getting things together. Won’t be a minute.”

  “Just fine thanks,” I called back. “Sure you don’t need any help?”

  “No, no—rather make the mess all by myself!”

  Harry entered at long last carrying a black lacquer tray on which was the coffee, a plate of fortune cookies, and another plate of the chocolate mint twigs and crystalized ginger Harry always served after dinner.

  “Oh lord, I forgot the spoons!”

  “Not for me,” I said, holding up my hand to stop him from retreating to the kitchen again. “I’m taking mine black.”

  He seemed relieved as he sat down to pour the coffee.

  “What beautiful cups.” I was admiring the particularly rich gold-and-blue pattern of the delicate porcelain demitasses.

  “They’re marvelous, aren’t they?” he agreed. “They belonged to Tsar Nicholas the Second, poor soul. These are the only two I have left.”

  “I’m honored. What happens if I drop one?” I said mischievously.

  “Then you instantly get deposed and shot.”

  “But do I get to see the Winter Palace one last time?”

  “Not if you break the saucer too,” he warned. “What a beautiful family they were, the Romanovs. It’s heartbreaking to see pictures of them.”

  “Beautiful, but dysfunctional,” I said.

  “Pop lingo rears its ugly head. Speaking of dysfunctional families—are we going to Colorado?”

  “Yes, we are,” I replied before thinking too much about it.

  Harry seemed pleased.

  “Fortune cookie?” He offered me the plate.

  I picked up one of the cookies, splitting it in half in order to extract the little white strip of paper. I read aloud: “ ‘Congratulations, you are about to solve an old murder.’ ”

  Harry looked at me in utter disbelief.

  “You’re not serious!” he cried.

  “Yes, I am. That’s exactly what it says.”

  “Let me see that,” he said, grabbing the paper away from me.

  Harry put on his glasses and read the fortune.

  “ ‘Make hay while the sun shines.’ You little liar.”

  “All right, what does yours say?”

  Harry split open a cookie and examined the message inside.

  “It says, ‘Beware of trompe l’oeil artists who lie about their fortunes.’ ”

  “Quite right too. What does it really say?”

  “It says, ‘The wise man goes unnoticed.’ Have another one.”

  I opened up another cookie and was quite taken aback when I saw the message inside.

  “What’s the matter?” said Harry, who must have noticed the look of surprise on my face.

  “Nothing—just something odd, that’s all.”

  “What does it say? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  I handed Harry the little slip of paper, and he read the fortune out loud.

  “ ‘Art is the accomplice of love.’ Very nice. What’s so strange about that? Not exactly my idea of a fortune, but—”

  “That’s the exact note Mrs. Griffin wrote to me when I first started working for her. She sent it with a narcissus plant.”

  “So?”

  “So, it’s just a bit of a shock, that’s all. I thought it was an unusual message then. And now, to find it in a fortune cookie from Foo’s, well . . .”

  “Maybe she eats at Foo’s, who knows?”

  “Harry, you don’t seem to understand, she never goes out of the house.”

  “Well, then, maybe it’s a saying we all should know,” Harry said, dismissing the subject with a wave of his hand.

  “You have to admit it’s odd.”

  “Life is odd. But I’ll tell you something, Faith—I’m grateful to you.”

  I lit a cigarette.

  “Why?”

  “For giving me an excuse to look Rodney up again. I had the best time of my life. Ah,” he sighed, “nothing beats romance. Nothing. It’s the true Fountain of Youth . . . ‘For love, all love of other sights controls, / And makes one little room an everywhere.’ ”

  “Dryden?” I ventured.

  “Donne,” he said primly.

  “Oh yes, of course. ‘No man is an island.’ I wonder if that applies to women? I somehow doubt it.”

  “Are you feeling islandish these days?” Harry said.

  “Desert islandish.”

  Harry and I sat in silence for a time while Mr. Spencer snored fitfully, still huddled against my leg. I thought about my life, my “desert islandish” life, as I had dubbed it. I was just now beginning to perceive its arc—the downturn, when everything that is to come is less than what has been before. Was I forever done with romance and adventure, I wondered? Was I going to spend the rest of my days contemplating what might have been instead of looking forward to what could be? Suddenly, I was no longer content with being content. I wanted a new experience.

  “Call Madi again, Harry,” I said decisively. “I’m ready.”

  Harry looked sheepish.

  “Faith, I must confess—I already have. I called him before I bought the tickets. He’s expecting us.”

  “You wily old bird,” I said, somewhat astonished.

  “Well, I didn’t see the point in buying the tickets if the man wouldn’t see us
.”

  “Oh Harry, you never cease to amaze me.”

  “Don’t forget, dear girl,” he said gently, “I always have your best interests at heart.”

  I leaned back on the sofa, chuckling to myself, thinking how wise Harry was. He always seemed to know my mood before I knew it myself.

  “When do we leave?” I said.

  “Thursday? Is Thursday all right for you? The sooner the better, I say.”

  “Thursday it is.”

  “Good!”

  “You really are a wily old bird, Harry Pitt . . .”

  I crushed the cigarette, but the ash kept on burning. I let it burn.

  Chapter 13

  After I left Harry’s, I walked around the corner and stopped in at Foo’s Restaurant. I asked the maître d’ if a Mrs. Holt Griffin ever ate there. He shook his head, saying the name didn’t sound familiar. I tried describing Mrs. Griffin to him, but it wasn’t any use. He had no recollection of her. I asked him who made up the fortunes in the cookies. He said he didn’t know, that the restaurant purchased their fortune cookies from a large supplier in Brooklyn, and if I wanted the name he’d give it to me. I declined. Perhaps it was just an old saying after all.

  That night I tossed and turned until dawn. “Art is the accomplice of love” kept coming back to me like an aimless tune. Brush, a victim of my restlessness, unable to get any sleep himself, slunk off the bed around three in the morning and curled up on a chair. In the morning, with the first bloom of light, I leaped out of bed, made breakfast, and drove out to The Haven. I wanted to put everything in order before I left and to inform Deane that I’d be away for several days in case Mrs. Griffin started asking for me from the hospital. When I arrived, I saw an ambulance parked in the driveway.

  “She’s home,” Deane said, opening the door.

  “How is she?”

  “Very weak. She wants to see you immediately.”

  Deane made no mention of the incident in the bathroom the day before, but his manner was cool. The careful camaraderie that had been building up between us during the past few months was gone. He seemed mistrustful around me. I thought perhaps he had a right to be wary of me now. I had, after all, invaded his mistress’s most private territory. Nevertheless, I felt no regret for what I’d done. The experience had afforded me an important insight into Mrs. Griffin’s character, one that I was having some difficulty dispelling, despite Harry’s protestations to the contrary. That bath had been worth all Deane’s scorn.