by Ed Ifkovic
“Tell me, Nathan,” she said. “Did Martha bed you down, too? Were you another one of her conquests—leftovers from Carlotta’s bounteous table? Tell me. Were you?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Late that afternoon, with Carlotta dozing in her bedroom, the house was still. Peter and Delia were the last to leave, though Peter seemed inclined to linger, concerned about his mother. Alone in the library, I idly picked books off the untouched shelves—handsome, gilt-edged sets of Thackeray, Eliot, Dickens, even a lavender vellum-bound slip of poetry by someone named Sarah Tyler Small, dated 1827, a collection of homiletic verse to God and His goodness—until, putting it off no longer, I dialed Trooper Wolniak, reaching him at his home. I apologized for the intrusion, but he cut me off. “I did give you my home phone, you know, Ferb.” I smiled at that. I knew that Carlotta had not called Stas to confess her lie, of course. But it had to be told, and immediately. Carlotta had, indeed, returned home that fateful afternoon, confirming what Eben had suggested. Stas, listening intently, sucked in his breath, said Whew! dramatically, and added, “Well, that takes us up a few steps on the ant hill.” I felt squeamish, as though betraying our friendship, but I knew I had no choice: I was in this mix now, party to the investigation. We talked a little more, mostly my review of the day, Jason’s behavior and Nathan Brosnan’s sudden appearance, but I had nothing more to offer.
“Ferb, that Brosnan guy hated being interviewed. He strikes me as a weasel. Some wildly unpopular animal. Always looking over his shoulder, like he wanted to escape.”
I agreed. “People like that look guilty even though they’ve committed no crime.”
He laughed. “Making my job harder.”
“I saw you at the funeral.”
“Captain Smith at the State Barracks believes murderers can’t stay away from the funerals of their victims.”
“You were trying to be inconspicuous.”
“Obviously, not too successfully.”
“Well, I’d hazard a guess the murderer was, indeed, there. This was no itinerant hobo hopping off a freight train up in Danbury and bashing in Martha’s head.”
He sighed. “Very likely.”
“So what do you do now?”
“I’ll have to run all this by my captain, who’s keeping me on a short leash. My investigation, but his bailiwick. His call. Frankly, Ferb, it doesn’t look good for Carlotta Small.”
I closed my eyes for a second, saw flashes of light. “I know, but I can’t believe she’d kill her own sister.”
“It happens.”
“I know, I know. But she’s a friend . . .”
“Ferb, sometimes personal demons . . .”
“Stas,” I insisted, “I have to hold on to hope here.”
“That’s your job in this investigation. But I’m afraid it’s not mine.”
Carrying a covered dish to Millicent, I realized I was down at heart. It also didn’t help that I was entering by the back entrance for the first time since the murder. The spot—the trampled leaves and broken underbrush where the state police squad had worked—was shrouded in darkness now, but I walked slowly, carefully, on the dark path. Light from inside the kitchen reflected outside, but dimly, yet letting me see the way. Had there been such a light gleaming that night? Probably not. Twilight? No, Millicent said Martha left in darkness. I stood there, plate in hand, by the back door, and imagined Martha emerging from the house, unsuspecting, of course, opening that final door with the light behind her, showering illumination on the walkway—suddenly hit on the head. Did the murderer see her closely? Or, in that frantic clubbing with the brick, did the murderer assume it was Carlotta? There was no way to know. Yet.
Millicent was happy to see me. “I was hoping it was you, Edna, and not Carlotta today. All those people, and I watched the show from my window. Even passed up my soap operas.”
“Did you miss not attending church or the luncheon?”
Millicent shook her head. “No, Edna. These days crowds bore me—tire me. I tire anyway. What I missed was the story. So tell me, what’s going on?” She had a glint in her eye that amused me, this dowager with frail walk and lion’s-head cane, her white hair tucked under a white lace bonnet.
So we sat companionably in the parlor, Millicent picking at the food set before her on a small stack table, sipping the tea I brewed in her kitchen, one cup for each. The inveterate storyteller, I ran through the day’s events, the funeral, the people, and Millicent freely commented. “So Stanley showed up at the church? A decent man.” “I would have liked to see Julia’s strapping boy.” “Never cared for Henry Fenwick and his social-climbing wife, Peggy.” “Peter used to stop in to say hello, but not for a long time now. Sad. It’s that fiancée of his, I think, a woman who overpowers him.” “Jason Fargo? A nincompoop, that one.” “This food tastes like cardboard. Julia had no hand in it, truthfully.” “You don’t say . . . She was . . . I heard her . . . Well, I never.”
“Millicent, you’ve barely touched your meal.”
She glanced at it. “I don’t relish food, really. Not any more. Truthfully, Edna, it was never about my daily meal, the visit of Carlotta or Martha. It was the social contact. There were times, way back when, when Martha would actually miss a day, and I never minded. I only hungered for simple talk.”
I was enjoying myself, as I always did in the company of feisty, opinionated women. “Nights are getting chilly,” Millicent began. “I dread winter sometimes. Each new winter I decide will be my last. But God always has other plans. I’ve been announcing my death in winter for two decades now.” She chuckled. “You know, in winter Eben lights me a fire each morning, tends to it at evening.”
That surprised me. “He doesn’t seem that charitable.”
“Mean people sometimes make exceptions for old ladies. I guess they figure we’ll be talking to God shortly. Make a favorable report.”
Then the conversation turned to Carlotta’s admission that she’d returned to the Inn and Trooper Wolniak’s brusque reaction. To hide her manuscript? “Don’t believe a word of it,” Millicent grunted. “Those loathsome memoirs. That’s all I’ve heard about this past year. Even if Martha did snoop, she’d learn nothing new. Carlotta can’t write a lick nor remember what she had for dinner last night.” But then she got serious. “This is not good news, Edna. You don’t lie to the police. It sets up all sorts of alarm bells.”
“But I can’t believe Carlotta would murder Martha.”
“I can.”
I looked surprised. “What?”
Millicent went on. “If Cain could kill Abel, his brother in paradise, anything is possible on God’s good earth.”
The following day, a lazy Sunday, Carlotta hid in her room, and I walked and read. On Monday, restless, wondering why I hadn’t heard from Stas, I went downstairs to ask Carlotta for a ride into town. I wanted to go to the library. But Carlotta had disappeared, driving off in the Pierce-Arrow. When she returned that afternoon, she walked by me without saying a word, hiding in her room. At seven o’clock that night, Carlotta still in her room, I in mine, pecking out a few overdue letters on my typewriter, I heard a motor dying in the driveway, and crossing to the front of the house and looking down, I saw Trooper Wolniak’s state police cruiser pulled up alongside the Pierce-Arrow. Stas and another man, also in uniform, stepped out. I rushed downstairs, as Carlotta, leaving her room and rubbing the sleep from her haggard face, faced me. “What’s going on, Edna?” Three feet away, I smelled liquor, a dry rancid smell.
Trooper Wolniak, hat in hand, glanced from Carlotta to me, and introduced his companion as Officer Josiah Taylor. “I’m afraid my superior, Captain Smith, out of the Danbury Barracks, would like you to come with us for some questioning, Miss Small.” He seemed almost apologetic and looked at me, a knowing glance that suggested I would understand how his hands were tied at the moment.
Carlotta crumbled. “Am I being arrested?” she whispered in a little-girl voice.
“No, ma’am,” Stas repli
ed. “Just questioning.”
Carlotta looked at me. “But I explained . . .”
“Could you come with us, please.” His voice level, kind.
She nodded. “Edna, come with me.”
Stas looked at me, and I saw a trace of a smile. “I fully expect Miss Ferber to come along for a ride.”
For a ride?
“Edna?” Carlotta pleaded.
“Of course.”
“Do I need a lawyer?” Carlotta asked.
“That’s your choice.”
Carlotta looked to me. “Edna?”
“Let’s just see how this conversation unfolds. No one is arresting you, I gather. Correct, Officer Wolniak?”
“Exactly. Questioning. Information.”
Officer Taylor echoed, “Information.”
In Danbury I held Carlotta’s elbow as the actress walked into the State Police Regional Headquarters, a marble-façade building once used as a nineteenth-century county courthouse. Shrill yellow-orange globes bordered the ornate wrought-iron entrance, giving the block-like structure, tucked among other municipal buildings on Spring Street, a coffin-like feeling, an ornate and ornamented mausoleum. A tomb of the wounded and the lost, I thought, grimly. Carlotta, walking trancelike, kept leaning into me. I looked to Stas for some reassurance. I found none. The trooper, all business, chatted with his partner, who seemed to be some sort of district liaison for public affairs. I realized then the gravity of this simple squiring of Carlotta into the Danbury office. Here was a celebrity, an actress, famous in America (or at least the New York part of it), whose name, associated with a murder, could only become a public-relations nightmare. Doubtless Officer Josiah Taylor, savvy in the ways of the sensational press and its hungry need for juicy items, was assigned the task of protecting the department from any embarrassing mishap, while at the same time fulfilling the mantle of the law enforcement agency: a delicate walk on some judicial tightrope, indeed.
Captain Smith was a man who understood diplomacy as well as the severe nature of his calling. I decided I liked his look—appropriate for a law-enforcement agent, especially, I thought, one in Connecticut. You saw a towering man, over six feet, around fifty years old, gray at temples but with an otherwise helmet of authoritarian black hair; thick, menacing sideburns, Burnsides, very out of date; firm Gibraltar chin, no-nonsense moustache over his upper lip and drooping slightly down the sides of his full mouth, a crescent that made me think of Spanish-American war generals. Expansive shoulders, snugly filling a blue-gray dress uniform, shoulders that narrowed to a slender, collegiate athlete’s hips. He smiled and charmed and flattered and cajoled, and I believed none of it. This man knew his craft, and his singular power.
“Rare it is to have two celebrated ladies in my meager office,” he began, looking from me to Carlotta. Lord, I thought: here we go, the slippery ride to doom. “Miss Small, my wife and I saw your performance in The Slave to Love some years ago. I still remember your brilliance, your power. And Miss Ferber, Officer Wolniak told me to expect your visit”—he eyed the young officer appreciatively—”and he mentioned your helpful, keen eye on these, ah, sad events. And, I might add, my wife once, at dinner, read me some passages from Cimarron, that touched me—how shall I say it?—forcibly and profoundly.” He went on and on, fawning but not entirely, approaching the line of blatant unctuousness but never passing a mark that would betray insincerity. A master of the form, I thought, taking note. Surely I could use this man in American Beauty. He was Connecticut authority, granite, black oak, rolling hill, the sweep of Housatonic River valley. The legitimate son of Increase Mather, maybe, or Anne Hutchinson’s favorite son.
Seated, we were offered tea. Both of us refused. Carlotta just nodded, scared. I liked the military starkness of the office, with its olive-drab dullness, its small window covered with what looked like a burlap curtain, its dark oak four-tier file cabinet, the tangy smell of thick cigar smoke. And, noticeable and prominent, the one softening touch: a stylized photograph in a green-and-silver-and-black Art Deco frame, showing a severe small-town wife, no smile but kind eyes, her arms around two aggressively-chubby lads, carbon copies of their resolute father.
Captain Smith wanted, he said slowly, to review the facts, first hand. He’d read the reports filed by Wolniak, and he was sensitive to Carlotta’s considerable and envied fame. “I want to make no hasty judgment. But,” and he lingered on the word, “there are discrepancies.”
Carlotta, regaining her voice, “I want to explain . . .”
He held up his hand. He wasn’t ready to hear her. “A minute, please.” Carlotta looked at me. This man is dangerous, I told myself. He smiled too much. I’d hate to be a guilty party in his presence, a mongoose mesmerized by the preying cobra. “We are determined to find your sister’s murderer,” he said gravely. “Murder is not too common around these parts, but we know our duty. Slowly, we’re drawing up a list of suspects—people who knew your sister, those she met in the course of her day, and we’re trying to eliminate”—he paused—“them one at a time. When we get down to one, we got ourselves a killer.” He smiled a humorless grin, the moustache moving like a nervous inchworm. “We’re not near there yet.”
He droned on a bit, repeated himself, worked the same theme, though he rephrased it, until I took a breath. I could see where this was going. Clearly Carlotta was suspect number one. But he pulled back, suddenly. “Part of the problem, Miss Small, is that there also is the possibility that your sister may not have been the intended victim. And that victim could have been you.” He stopped, dramatically, his voice thick. “At this point we don’t know. We don’t know.”
“Me?” she screamed. “Impossible!”
“Is there anyone who wants you dead?” He waited.
We all waited, Stas and Taylor sitting on the side, shoulders almost touching. I sat alongside Carlotta.
“Of course not,” she thundered. “I don’t work anymore. I have no enemies. Not since my New York days! I had enemies then. Ask Edna. Rivals. Resentful people. I hurt peoples’ feelings. You know how show business is . . . egos bruised. Their careers. But that was then.”
He waited and watched, and then he circled back around, asking her to tell her story. When Carlotta got to the part where she returned to the Inn, he stopped her. “You lied to us, Miss Small.”
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
“That wasn’t wise.”
She shook her head. “I made a foolish mistake. I didn’t want to embarrass myself.”
I thought the line sounded even more absurd than when Carlotta first used it with me.
“Tell us again what happened when you got back to the Inn. Just before twilight, correct?”
“Well, yes.”
“Something about your manuscript?” He reviewed his notes, obviously Trooper Wolniak’s rendering of my own telephone communication. “Miss Ferber informed Officer Wolniak—” Carlotta looked at me, accusingly. I shot her a look that communicated—What could I do? You didn’t call, as you should have. Murder, Carlotta. We’re talking murder here.
Carlotta mumbled. “My memoirs.” Then, almost to herself, “The Farmer’s Daughter: My Life on the Stage and Behind It.”
Captain Smith smiled. “Nice title. Can’t wait to read it.” Then, quickly, “So you went to secure your written sheets?” Said, the line seemed as preposterous as I had warranted it, and the tone was definitely unbelieving. Captain Smith waited. We all waited. Captain Smith stared at her with that mixture of kindly regard and threatening menace. Stas cleared his throat, and looking at him, I realized that he looked very sad, almost melancholic, as though he knew the end of this meandering and treacherous road.
A long silence. Outside the closed door a man was yelling at a culprit, and the harsh words echoed in this civilized, polite chamber where we now sat.
“No,” Carlotta admitted slowly, looking down into her lap, “I lied again.” She stared at me. “I’m sorry, Edna. I lied to you. I shouldn’t have.”
We all waited. Carlotta drew in a deep breath and asked for a cigarette. We waited as she lit the one Stas offered, closed her eyes, and began, “I did return to the Inn, but not for the manuscript. That wasn’t true. The real reason is a little more embarrassing. You see, I’ve suspected that my second husband, Jason Fargo, was having an affair with my sister, Martha. They’d had—well—a fling back years ago, when we were all young, just after our divorce, and then he disappeared. But he’s back in my life, supposedly to help me with my memoirs, although I think it’s actually to make money off me. At any rate, he’s around, and I sensed he was involved with Martha. The little unsaid things—the glances. She had a way about her, this unassuming, seductive side. And any man I ever knew was fair game. It’s just the way she was. Really, Edna. I tried to keep men away from the Inn, any man, really.” She looked at me, but I said nothing. “I saw the way they looked at each other. I don’t know why it drove me mad. After all, he’s no longer my husband, hasn’t been for a hundred years, of course, but it was the . . . the deviousness, the duplicity, the sneaking behind my back. I couldn’t stand that game. I know it makes me sound even more petty, a scorned woman, a role I don’t like for myself. I shouldn’t have lied . . .”
“Where did you park your motorcar?” the Captain interrupted. “No one remembers seeing your Pierce-Arrow in front of the Inn. It is very conspicuous. Even though you were spotted.”
Carlotta blinked rapidly. She licked her lips. “As Edna will tell you, when we were together in town, Jason Fargo drove by. We spotted him. There was no reason for him to be in town. Stupidly, I thought he was headed to the Inn. I’d just called Martha and told her I wasn’t coming back, but he couldn’t know that. But maybe he knew I was headed to Westport with Edna for dinner. I don’t know. So when I drove away, I just got crazy. I thought maybe he was in town, called the Inn, and Martha told him I was going to be away. And she said come over. I was gone for the night. I know it makes no sense. So I drove, not to the Inn—my God, it’s in a valley, so I’d be spotted arriving, as would he. So I drove along the River Road, and I spotted a car parked off the road, hidden in a grove of trees. I know tourists, hikers, others park there and walk from River Road to the state forest across from the Inn, but I suspected the car was Jason’s. Furious, I drove to Caleb’s Rise, the hill over the valley, you know, and parked in that hidden cove there, looking down on the Inn. And I snuck back to the Inn, along the state forest path, until I rushed in, maddened with anger, expecting to find Jason and Martha.” She stopped, out of breath.
