Death of a Second Wife

by Maria Hudgins

  My face flushed, I know, for in that moment I was certain everyone in the room thought that was it. My entire gift to my son and his bride. They were all thinking, What a piker!

  Erin read the enclosed note aloud. “The silver flatware service Grandmother Strait left to me is now yours. Sorry I couldn’t bring it with me. I wish you a life of happiness. Love, Mom.” Erin stepped forward and hugged me. Her body beneath the sweater felt like a little bird.

  “You shouldn’t have, Mom,” Patrick grinned as if he, too, was glad I was to be spared the embarrassment of having presented an inadequate gift. “Wow. That’s great.”

  I pulled the second gift from behind my back and handed it to Patrick. “This is from Marco Quattrocchi. You remember him, Patrick? From Florence?” I let my gaze sweep past Chet’s face and noted the tiniest tightening of the jaw in response to that name.

  Patrick slipped off the Florentine paper and handed it to Erin. He opened the box, looked in, pulled out a small note, and read it to himself. Tears welled up in both Patrick’s eyes and he dashed from the room.

  We were all left standing awkwardly, speechless.

  Erin and I looked at each other, jockeying for position. We were about to establish an important precedent. When Patrick needs a soft shoulder, whose shall it be? It had always been mine but now Erin, wife-to-be, appeared ready to throw down the gauntlet, shove me aside, and claim the spot for herself.

  Incredibly, Stephanie stuck her pinched nose in before either Erin or I could react. “Since everyone else seems to be paralyzed, I’ll go and see what’s wrong with him.”

  I grabbed her by the elbow as she flew past me.

  Stephanie whirled around, defiant. Her green eyes flashed.

  “Patrick would prefer to be alone now, Stephanie. Trust me. I’m his mother.”

  Stephanie’s gaze darted toward Chet, but she stayed put.

  I considered this minor skirmish won by Yours Truly.

  * * * * *

  Like a long-established evening protocol, Gisele appeared on the landing above us, nodded to Juergen, then turned back toward the dining room.

  “Dinner is served,” Juergen announced in his high-pitched voice. “Dotsy? May I escort you to the table?” Very formal, but in this case very much appreciated. Good timing.

  As I turned toward Juergen and his outstretched arm, I caught the briefest glimpse of a large shadow sweeping across the meadow beyond the living room windows.

  * * * * *

  Juergen and Stephanie sat at opposite ends of the rustic table with Chet and Erin on one side, Babs and me on the other. The dining room walls were of natural wood with big exposed beams overhead and a rough stone fireplace on one end. Casement windows along the two exterior walls looked onto a steep slope, now in shades of blue and pink with the setting of the sun.

  We were all seated when Patrick slipped in and, with a self-conscious cough, seated himself between Babs and me. “Sorry I ran out like that, folks.” He glanced around the table, and I noticed his nose was red. “I’m all right now.”

  “Super!” Juergen said, then raised his wine glass. “I’d like to propose a toast.”

  Gisele appeared at a door on the far end of the room. “Telephone, Steph. In the kitchen.”

  I happened to be looking straight at Erin in that moment, thinking about how innocent she seemed with her elfin face and big brown eyes that bulged a bit in their sockets. At Gisele’s words, Erin froze. She looked across the table toward her mother and her eyes flashed cold fear.

  I couldn’t see Babs’s face because Patrick sat between us, but I saw the wine glass in her hand shake. She quickly lowered it to the table.

  Shifting my gaze to Juergen at end of the table with his back to the crackling fire, I caught another strange reaction. His eyes darted swiftly left and right and his hands dropped to the arms of his chair. His body tense, he leaned slightly forward as if to stand up. And follow Stephanie? He watched his sister’s retreating form as she stood and slipped past Gisele, then vanished through the doorway.

  It felt as if an icy wind had blown through. I shivered. “Someone’s walking on my grave,” I said. All heads turned to me and I realized how that must have sounded. “Old country saying,” I added.

  After several seconds, Juergen repeated his last statement. “I’d like to propose a toast,” he said, his voice quavering as he raised his own glass again.

  “But first, I’d like to explain,” Patrick interrupted.

  Juergen nodded, his sparse grey hair framed by the glow from the fire behind him.

  “The gift from Captain Quattrocchi overwhelmed me.” He cleared his throat, reached over and placed his hand on mine. He smiled at Erin. “I got choked up, and I do hate to cry in front of the girl I’ve tried to convince I’m her knight in shining armor.”

  We all laughed, and Erin said, a bit too loudly, “Well? What was it?”

  He pulled the box from his pocket. “It’s a rosary. Blessed by Pope John Paul the Second shortly before his death. Captain Quattrocchi knows how much I loved the Holy Father, and although the rosaries he blessed are now all gone—all in private hands—he gave Erin and me this one. He’s had it since two thousand five and he knows he’ll never be able to get another one. But he wanted me to have it.” He pulled a silver and crystal rosary from the box. Some of the beads, I noticed, were emerald green; most were clear.

  I couldn’t wait to tell Marco how much Patrick loved his gift.

  Gisele brought in a tray and lowered it onto the sideboard. On it sat seven small plates of melon slivers wrapped in thinly sliced prosciutto. I wondered about Gisele’s position here. She had called Stephanie “Steph,” and her interactions with Juergen seemed to range from the flirtatious to the formal. She called Chet, Babs, and me by our last names. She called me Mrs. Lamb, but Stephanie, also a Mrs. Lamb, was Steph. She served at table and didn’t eat with us. An employee, albeit a casual one, I decided.

  After we drank Juergen’s toast to the new couple, Chet turned to Gisele, holding up his empty wine glass and asked for a refill.

  “Oh, I forgot. I took the bottle back to the kitchen,” Gisele, both hands full of starters, hesitated as if she didn’t know which way to turn.

  “I’ll get it.” Erin popped up and headed for the door to the stairs.

  Gisele whispered, “You will need to open another bottle. It’s the Chardonnay. Do you know where is the opener?” I noted her odd placement of the verb. Otherwise, Gisele’s English seemed flawless.

  Apparently, it’s considered okay for guests to help out. Erin had been here longer than I, so I supposed she knew better than I how the Chateau Merz functioned. I couldn’t help thinking Erin had another motive for volunteering and dashing off like that. Stephanie was on the phone in the kitchen.

  During the main course, a lovely filet of sole poached in wine with red potatoes, Chet asked, in Juergen’s general direction but in a tone that indicated anyone could answer, “With the American and European economies both in a state of flux, is this a good time to invest in U.S. interests or is Switzerland a better bet?”

  Juergen lowered his fork. “Any time is a good time to invest in Switzerland. We are solid as a rock in spite of the current state of affairs. Our problem here is that we are land poor. In America you think an acre of land is nothing. Here, well! You can see! We are using every half-acre that can be tilled and have been doing so for a thousand years.”

  “Even your mountains,” I said. “You hollow them out and put bunkers in them.”

  Juergen laughed, his brown eyes sparkling. “Dotsy has great curiosity, ja? She wants to know all about our bunkers. Where we keep our artillery.”

  “Mom’s a spy,” Patrick said, deadpan.

  “In World War Two, we were forced to arm ourselves in order to maintain our neutrality. Here we were. Germany to the north, Austria to the east,” Juergen’s hands described an imaginary map of Europe. “Italy to our south and poor old France to the west. But nobody invaded us
. They would have been crazy to try it.”

  “The Allies would’ve appreciated a little help, though,” Chet said.

  I thought Chet’s remark inappropriately argumentative for the dinner table, but Juergen ignored it. He flipped a finger past his vein-red nose. “That’s why we have a law. Be prepared. Every Swiss household has a gun and ammunition. Did you know that? Our government gives every adult man between twenty-one and thirty-two years of age an M Fifty-Seven assault rifle.”

  Stephanie came back in and took her seat.

  “Strange, isn’t it?” I said. “In some countries private gun ownership is forbidden. In others, like here, it’s mandatory. In the U.S. it’s a perennial topic for debate. But where is the relationship between gun laws and the murder rate?”

  Stephanie said, “The murder rate in Switzerland is practically non-existent if you subtract the ones committed by immigrants and foreign nationals who—let’s go ahead and say it—come here for the express purpose of committing crimes.” She cocked her head to one side, looked straight toward Juergen as if he were in charge of Switzerland’s immigration rate.

  Chet opened his mouth, then shut it.

  Juergen pushed back from the table and nodded toward Gisele, stationed in the doorway. Gisele began clearing plates. “Before the Great War, they say, the German Kaiser asked us, ‘What will your quarter-million Swiss do when they have to face a half-million German soldiers?’ and a Swiss answered him, ‘Shoot twice and go home!’ ”

  Three

  The house phone rang again after we finished our meal. It was Lettie Osgood calling from the village below as I had done earlier in the day. Patrick volunteered to go and pick her up, and Juergen tossed him the keys to the little cart.

  Chet, heading for the living room with a rather unsteady gait, caught Patrick on his way out. “You can’t go just yet. Let’s get . . . hey, folks, let’s all go to the living room. Steph? Where is she?”

  Stephanie appeared from somewhere below. This house was still a mystery to me. People popped up, down, and disappeared around corners. We all gravitated back to the living room and Chet, standing in the middle of the room, raised his arms calling us to attention.

  “I have a presentation to make. That is, Stephanie and I have a presentation to make.” Chet looked at Stephanie, and then held out a hand to Erin. “Come here, baby doll. You, too, Patrick.” His right hand rummaged around in his jacket, and he wobbled a bit before pulling out a key on a brass ring. He paused for several seconds as if he had forgotten what he was about to say. “You two have been looking for a place to live, haven’t you? Somewhere convenient to both of your places of work. And you’ve put down a deposit on an apartment on Stanford Street.”

  Patrick and Erin eyed the key.

  I couldn’t believe what I knew I was about to hear.

  “Well!” Chet went on. “Do you remember the condo you both looked at a couple of months ago? The three-bedroom place a couple of blocks down? The one you said you liked but couldn’t afford?” He held out the brass ring, jangling the key. “It’s yours now. I bought it for you.”

  I confess that my first reaction was chagrin. I gave them silver and he gave them a house. Patrick and Erin smothered both Chet and Stephanie with kisses. Babs stood with her hands clasped and a perfectly smooth smile on her face. When I looked at Juergen, I caught him looking at me. He smiled and nodded. Was that sympathy I saw in his smile? I sincerely hoped not.

  Patrick grabbed his coat and left to pick up Lettie. Juergen offered brandy or coffee to the rest of us. While we were listening to Chet’s presentation, Gisele had set a coffee pot and cups near the brandy decanter on a side table.

  “Thank you,” I said, “but I think I’ll go for a little walk.”

  “Be careful, Dotsy. You don’t know these hills yet so don’t go too far,” Juergen said, pouring a cup of coffee.

  I promised I would be careful, then climbed the stairs to my room. I grabbed my new jacket off the bed and spotted the price tag and the little envelope with an extra button and matching thread still dangling from the sleeve. I’d been wearing it like that all afternoon. Snapping the plastic thread, I pulled on the jacket and put the envelope on top of the dresser. In the mirror, I studied my own face and deliberately brightened my expression, reminding myself how much easier Patrick and Erin’s new life would be with no rent or mortgage payment. It shouldn’t matter to me who gave them the condo or how it compared to my now-paltry-looking gift. Nothing but foolish pride on my part. I ran a brush through my hair and freshened my lipstick. Now. How do I get out of this house? Must I go through the living room or is there an outside door on this floor?

  On the far side of the dining room I discovered the door Gisele used while serving our dinner led to a descending staircase on the right and straight ahead to an exterior door. Clanging pots and clinking glassware told me the kitchen was at the bottom of those stairs. I tried the door and it opened with a loud pop.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder. Juergen held out a flashlight to me. “You don’t know these hills yet, Dotsy. Take this and watch your step.”

  “Thank you, Juergen.” I was touched by the concern I saw in his face. “I’ll be careful.”

  “Keep it in your room. We have plenty of flashlights.”

  * * * * *

  The cold night air felt good when it hit my face. I trudged up the slope and around the back of the house, keeping the beam of my light on the ground a few feet ahead of me. As I passed the dining room windows, I peered in. The fire had died down and now cast a faint red glow against the walls. Across the meadow maybe a hundred yards beyond the house, lay the bunker, masquerading as a sheer rock cliff. Tomorrow, I decided, I’d ask Juergen or Gisele to take me into it. Would I find anything left from World War II? I imagined ammo belts and saucer-shaped helmets. Machine guns mounted on tripods. I recalled my visit to Winston Churchill’s war rooms with its bomb-proof concrete walls under the streets of London.

  I stepped around and over rocks along the west side of the house where, looking up, I saw lights aglow in my room and in Babs’s but both rooms appeared vacant. My beam found a comfortable-looking boulder and I sat, just out of view from the living room, the light from its picture windows slanting yellow rectangles onto the meadow south of the house. The air smelled of green cedar. A few stars were out—not many—telling me it might be clouding over. The hulk of the Matterhorn loomed darkly in the east, beyond the lights of a little village. So peaceful. Such a contrast to the tension inside that house. Could I be imagining it? I didn’t think so. Several times during dinner I had felt the room was about to explode.

  Continuing my circuit of the house, I passed the living room with its long porch outside the picture windows. Juergen stood on the porch, gazing up at the heavens, his hands braced against the porch railing. On a lower level, jutting out from under the living room at an angle, a large indoor swimming pool glowed blue from recessed lights beneath its glass-smooth surface.

  Climbing the steep slope on the east side, I glimpsed a dark form ahead. A man, his head bent forward, loped eastward and slipped around the hill. It was Chet. I could tell by his walk. Where was he going, all alone? It was after ten o’clock.

  I passed the kitchen door and paused.

  Angry voices punched through the screen of an open window. Women’s voices, I thought, although I couldn’t make out whose. A croak, as if from pain. A keening whine. No sound at all for a minute.

  Then, quite loud, Stephanie’s voice boomed. “If you don’t tell him, I will! I swear I will!”

  * * * * *

  I joined Juergen in the living room and poured myself a cup of coffee, now lukewarm in the pot. He sat in the big leather chair with his laptop computer on his knees and his feet on an ottoman. As I walked behind him, I saw he was studying an online star chart. He looked up and smiled at me. From his casual demeanor I concluded that the angry words from the kitchen hadn’t reached his ears.

  “Is astronomy your hobby?�
� I asked.

  “My passion,” he said. “That’s the main reason I keep this house here. It’s inconvenient as hell to get here from my home in Zurich, but with the altitude—the stars! Tonight is not so good with the clouds rolling in. But if we get a nice clear night while you’re here, I’ll show you things you’ve never seen before!”

  I smiled innocently, not wishing him to think I had a dirty mind. He seemed to blush a little.

  “What are your plans for tomorrow?” he asked, pausing his fingers above the keyboard.

  “I don’t have any, really, but I think Lettie Osgood and I will probably do a bit of sightseeing. I want to see the church where the kids will be getting married, and I’m sure there will be other things to see in LaMotte.”

  “I’ll show you a faster way to get there. Let me know when you want to go.”

  “Does it involve the elevator Patrick told me about today?”

  “Damn him. I like to keep it a surprise.”

  Babs descended the stairs from the landing. “I’m trying to adjust the hem on Erin’s wedding gown,” she said, folding herself into one end of a sofa. “It’s a bit long, and I don’t want to run the risk of her stepping on the hem when she’s walking down the aisle.”

  Juergen excused himself, closed his computer, and left Babs and me alone.

  I asked her what she knew about Juergen. Beyond the facts that his primary home was in Zurich and he was CEO of the Merz family enterprises, whatever they were, I knew nothing.

  Babs folded her hands and crossed her gracefully slanted legs at the ankles. “Juergen is an adventurer. In fact, until recently when he had to take over control of the family businesses, he was a real dare-devil.” She glanced toward the stairs as if assuring herself Juergen wasn’t still within earshot. “He has climbed every face and ridge on the Matterhorn. Ten times, Patrick told me. He’s climbed Everest and Kilimanjaro. He’s done the motorcycle race on the Isle of Man. He’s ballooned across Asia and I don’t know what all. He’s done a research trip to Antarctica.”