Read The Bohemian Murders Online
Authors: Dianne Day
The Bohemian Murders (27 page)
“Fremont? You up there?” The voice that called up the stairs was Quincy’s. I called down to say that I was, and he said, “Righty-o. I’m riding Bessie inta town. They ’sposed to have a new wheel on the shay this morning.”
Botheration! I was torn, but my care for Quincy won out and I left the typewriter. “Wait, Quincy!” I took the twisting stairs so fast that I was a little dizzy when I reached the bottom. He was already at the door with his hand on the knob, his other arm still immobilized in a sling against his chest. I insisted, “You shouldn’t try to ride or drive one-handed. The chance of your hurting yourself again is too great. Can’t you send Pete?”
Quincy’s eyes shifted away from mine and he said, “Nope. He didn’t show up today.”
“I can’t imagine that he’s sick. Yesterday he looked healthy as a horse.” Pete Carlson was indeed a strong, muscular fellow in spite of his height, which probably was a sore point. Pete couldn’t have been more than five and a half feet tall, which made him a couple of inches shorter than most men and a full three inches shorter than I.
Quincy reached up under his hat and scratched his ear. “Well, you see, the thing is, I told him not to come today. Thought we could do without him.”
“Honestly, Quincy!” I planted my fists on my hips. “I don’t see what you have against the man. He does the work well enough when you let him.”
He mumbled something that I did not bother to ask him to repeat, because I suspected that Quincy was one of those people who, if he cannot do a thing himself, will never be satisfied with the way it is done by anyone else.
I love Quincy dearly, but at the moment I felt quite cross with him, and so I said, “This is really extremely inconvenient. I do not want you to reinjure yourself, but I do not have time myself to ride the horse in and drive the rig back.”
“But Fremont—”
“Nor do I have time to stand around and debate with
you about it, Quincy. You will not go, and that is that. I’ll be driving the Maxwell over to Carmel in a little while, and I’ll stop by the stables and ask them to bring the shay back using one of their own horses. Do you think, Quincy, if I can come up with a reason to tell Pete Carlson we no longer need him to work here, that you could get along with someone else better?”
“No siree bob! You better not let him go. Don’t even think of doing that! It don’t do to get Pete riled. Now we got him, I reckon we’re stuck with him for a while. I’ll do better, I promise, and I’m sorry for the inconvenience.” Quincy trudged out the door, shaking his head.
I raced back upstairs. Soon I was typing Heloise’s finest hour:
By feigning sleep and keeping myself awake during the daylight hours—as best I could judge within the otherworldly atmosphere of the room of veils—I learned that there were long stretches when I was left alone. Except for Shadow. There were times I told myself I should not be so fanciful, this cat was just a cat; but there were other times when I was sure that Shadow was no more a mere cat than Jonah and Thad were mortal men. What sort of beings they were, precisely, I did not know—but the skills of Jonah Morpheus encompassed far more than mesmerism. I was beginning to claim my own mind again, to use it, to understand.
He had entered into my life through my dreams. The stuff of my dreams somehow sustained him, for when I gave him my dreams, he took from me some part of my life force as well. And when I slept he took me sweetly, racking my body with momentary pleasures; but that did not alter the fact that Morpheus was feeding on my soul.
With each day that passed now, I grew stronger. I withheld bits and pieces of every dream; I ate all the food given to me and asked Thad, not Jonah, for more. There was some small rivalry between the two of them, and I think it amused Thad to see me doing something—anything—without Jonah’s approval. I
explored the two rooms and found that they had only ordinary walls, the veils were only sheer curtains—but the chandelier I did not approach at all. There was something altogether too uncanny about it.
The day at last came when I was ready. I had not regained my normal strength by any means, but I did believe I could walk down the stairs and that was what mattered. I had a plan. After Thad took away my breakfast dishes, I went into the bedroom and climbed up on the bed. Day after day I had picked away at the top hem of one of the sheer panels until now it hung from the rod by only a few threads. I broke the last threads and brought it down in my arms, as gray and insubstantial as fog. Yet the fabric was incredibly strong and silky, like nothing I had ever held in my hands before, like something from another world. I bundled it up and shoved it beneath the pillows.
Not much later, Shadow paid his usual morning visit. The cat liked me—often it would stay all day. I petted and it purred. I crooned, in much the same tone of voice that Morpheus so often used with me: “Shadow, sweet Shadow. You love me, I know you love me. You want to be with me, to stay with me, to go with me …” over and over I said these and similar words, until Shadow slept. Then I arose and put on the dress that I had not worn in so many weeks I’d lost count. The diaphanous nightgown I habitually wore, a gift from Morpheus, I draped over the foot of the bed. My old dress hung on me, for I was painfully thin.
Now I knew I must move swiftly. With deft motions I wrapped Shadow around and around with the curtain I’d taken down earlier. Wrapped the cat so thickly that it could not scratch me, picked it up, and ran. I ran through one door to another, suddenly panicked that I might find it locked. But it was not, and I had not really thought it would be. To all appearances, I had long been too weak to flee. I opened the door and listened. The cat stopped struggling, which somehow frightened me more than if it had continued
to act like a trapped cat. There was a bond between Shadow and Morpheus—I had both seen and sensed it many times. I was counting on that bond to help me gain my freedom, but I had to get physically away first. It was time to fly, and I did!
Down, down, down the stairs, past dark and silent corridors: fly, fly! A door opened somewhere behind me but I did not turn. I was frail but fleet, my very lightness enabling me to move like the wind.
With a satisfied sigh, for Heloise was living up to my hopes for her, I continued typing all the way to the conclusion. I stacked the sheets neatly, all 148 pages of them. Then I sat for a few minutes thinking back on Artemisia’s amazing story.
The Merchant of Dreams
ended like a fairy tale, which I suppose in a way it was—though an exceedingly erotic one and certainly not for children! Heloise went back to her shabby apartment and placed Shadow in a golden birdcage she had inherited from her grandmother. When he came to retrieve the cat, Jonah Morpheus revealed his true nature—he was a shape-changer and an incubus. Shadow was the same but much younger, a sort of incubus-in-training, and Thad was a fallen angel. Heloise used the cat as a hostage in order to force Morpheus to release her from the contract, which he did do, and then both incubi dissolved into thin air. So all was well that ended well—or so one must believe or else have great difficulty sleeping.
I placed the typed manuscript in a box that had held a ream of paper, with Artemisia’s handwritten original on top. I did wonder about one thing: the money. Did Heloise get to keep the money from selling her dreams? Would I have kept it, if I had been she? Would I reason that I had earned it, or would I be afraid that money obtained in such a manner would bring me bad luck?
“I trust you have had no further problems with snakes,” I said to Artemisia as I entered her cottage for the first
time. In keeping with her preference for things of the night, she had named the cottage Moonbow.
“What? Oh, that. No, I haven’t—but Patrick may have something to do with that, even though he spends most of his time outdoors. Come in, Fremont. You must forgive me—I’m a little distracted this morning. What can I do for you?”
“I am delivering the typewritten copy of your novella.” I extended the box and she regarded it for a moment as if she hadn’t the slightest idea what I was talking about, then recovered herself and grasped the box.
“Thank you! Let’s have a look.” Artemisia went swiftly across the room to a cluttered worktable, put the box down on top of the clutter, and proceeded to open it.
Meanwhile I amused myself by gazing around the cottage. It resembled a small-scale anthropological museum, filled with things like masks and pottery and baskets and odd-looking figurines. Her furniture was covered with American Indian rugs. Nothing went together, yet everything had a kind of harmony that was extraordinary, like Artemisia herself.
“I must say, the typewriting gives it a very professional appearance,” she said. “I almost feel as it it’s been published already. What did you think of the story, Fremont?”
“I thought it was fascinating. I’m in awe of your fertile imagination, Artemisia. Yet as you yourself have said, the sensational nature of some of those dreams may give publishers a bit of a pause. Queen Victoria is dead, and they say her son is the veriest rake that ever lived, but—”
“Say no more!” Artemisia held up her hand, interrupting. “I can’t bear to hear it. When I think of the hypocrisy of those men who sit in their offices like pompous prigs and then at night have their own sort of dark and degrading amusements, I just … just want to spit nails! I have decided that I’ll be damned if I’ll put a man’s name on
The Merchant of Dreams
just in order to please them. So I expect Heloise and Morpheus will never see the inside of a bookstore—but who knows? Some publisher may surprise me. Now let me pay you. I have cash around here somewhere.…”
While she looked for her money, I asked, “Where do you do your painting?”
“There’s a separate studio out back. It has one whole wall that is all windows. I suppose you may think it odd that a woman who paints nocturnes should want a lot of light for her studio, but I do. I’d be glad to show you another day, but as I said before, just now I’m rather distracted. Something terrible has happened.”
Having found some bills in an ancient jar, she came back across the room and pressed one into my hand. I looked, saw that it was a twenty, and dug into my leather bag to make change. While rummaging I asked, “What has happened? Can you tell me?”
“Keep the difference, Fremont. Consider it a bonus or whatever.” She collapsed into a chair, and I noticed for the first time that her clothes were rumpled and dirty, as if she had not changed them for days. “It’s Arthur. Or maybe it’s Oscar. I guess it’s both of them. You see, we don’t know if Oscar’s gone round the bend, or if he’s telling the truth, or what.”
I sat down near her, after putting five dollars and twenty cents on the table, where she would find it eventually. I had had that manuscript a long time, and did not in my own opinion deserve a bonus. “I don’t understand,” I said.
She released a long sigh and rubbed at her forehead. “I’m not sure I do, either. Mimi is no help. She’s so damn overprotective!”
“I know what you mean. Why don’t you tell me from the beginning?”
Artemisia looked at me with tragic dark eyes. “They went down to Big Sur to look for jade—you can find it on a particular beach there. Arthur and Oscar went together, but Oscar came back last night … alone.”
I
allowed the implications of what Artemisia had just said to settle, and then I said, “In other words, something happened to Arthur.”
“Yes, and something has Oscar terribly frightened. Oscar has always been high-strung; many poets are, it seems to come with the territory. But he has never been so near to completely falling apart before, and I have known Oscar Peterson since my school days.”
My throat went dry, and there was an odd tingling in the tips of my fingers and in my toes. I mustered enough saliva to swallow and then ventured, “Are you implying some sort of foul play, perhaps witnessed by Oscar? And if so, shouldn’t we go to the sheriff?”
She shot me an ill-tempered look. “I’m surprised to hear you, of all people, suggest that. You have a remarkable talent for getting other people to do your dirty work, either with you or for you, Fremont Jones. I for one will have no further part in it.”
My heart sank, though why I should care what Artemisia Vaughn thought of me I was not entirely sure. I said, “I’m sorry you feel that way, but to be perfectly fair I suppose I can understand it. It is not too great a leap, is it, to assume that whatever happened to Arthur may have some connection to both Sabrina Howard’s death and Phoebe’s disappearance?”
“Phoebe is most likely dead too, and I daresay so is Arthur.” Her eyes blazed at me. “One must wonder if any of this would have happened if you had just left everyone alone.”
I ignored that; I could not let myself believe it or else I would no longer be able to function. “What, exactly, does Oscar have to say?”
“He babbles. Sometimes he says Arthur fell from a cliff, which sounds like an accident, except for one thing: They went down the coastline by boat. What would they have been doing up on the cliffs? Have you ever been down as far as Big Sur, Fremont?”