The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man (23 page)

Our encounter with him represents an example, I can see in looking back, of the difference between real and fictionalized detective work. In that ethereal realm of Inspector Dalgliesh, for instance, the police show up at a library and are treated with respect, even deference. In reality, Mr. Jackson, thinnish, balding,
bristly beard, and stringy ponytail, a child of the sixties, demanded to know exactly what we thought we were doing in his library.

Lieutenant Tracy showed his badge and suggested we retire to Mr. Jackson’s office, a request that had to be given considerable thought. Mr. Jackson made it clear he considered the police at best a necessary evil. We finally returned to the stark little room and sat around the table.

Mr. Jackson demanded to know if we had a search warrant.

The lieutenant patiently explained that we were merely trying to ascertain the origin of any soy sauce brought into the building over the past several months.

“Then you are searching for something.”

“Mr. Jackson …”

“Dr. Jackson.”

“Dr. Jackson, we are only making preliminary inquiries …”

“I don’t want you interrogating my staff without counsel present.”

“We are only asking some basic questions.”

“I think I should talk to the dean about this.”

There he was, I thought,
Homo academicus
at his worst — petty, picky, and, despite all the bluster, timid. And what galled me to the quick was the realization that, not so long ago, I would have acted exactly the same way.

Lieutenant Tracy sighed. Then, with an edge in his voice like cold steel, he said, “Dr. Jackson, we can go at this two ways. We, in your presence, can question the staff in a very casual way. Or you can call the dean and the lawyers. I then go and obtain search warrants. I bring in a squad of investigators. We turn the place upside down. We maybe take you in for questioning. The public has a right to know, so we have to issue statements. The media circus starts. People talk. Rumors spread.”

Dr. Jackson got the point.

For all that we came up with precious little. A staff party in June had been catered by the Jade Stalk Restaurant. There had been leftovers, including little tubs of soy sauce, which, as everyone knows, have a shelf life comparable to that of salt.

In the end we agreed it was no breakthrough, but another important confirmation of what we already suspected. And there seemed little that we could do in a practical way. Issue a public health warning or a recall of all local soy sauce? That, surely, would only create a panic. Our “lead” had dwindled to a long shot, which the lieutenant said he would follow up.

On the way back to my office, he told me that Celeste Tangent had been seen several times entering the gift shop associated with the Green Sherpa during the past week or so. It probably meant nothing, he said. But he suggested that I drop by there some time inconspicuously and get a sense of the place. He had heard the FBI had been interested in its owner, one Freddie Bain, for some time. But then, the feds never tell the locals anything.

I agreed to, but with more a sense of foreboding than alacrity, a sense I couldn’t really explain to myself.

It swear that the Christmas glitter gets gaudier by the year. It really ought to be called “the Shopping Season.” I was acutely aware of the prevailing incandescent banality when, with Diantha accompanying me as a kind of cover, I visited the Nepalese Realm late this afternoon to do a little sleuthing as requested by Lieutenant Tracy. I didn’t tell her very much as to what I was about, but said I was curious about the gift shop that forms part of the Green Sherpa restaurant. We had, in fact, some shopping to do. But what can you give, alas, to someone you love who is dying?

According to its squib in the Yellow Pages, the shop trades in “imported spices” and “the art and artifacts of Nepal.” Both the restaurant and the shop, sharing a single awning, are located in Clipper Wharf, a renovated part of the old harbor, which, truth be told, had a good deal more charm when it was the haunt of fishermen with their boats, tackle, and smells. Now redbrick and boutiques with signs painted in old lettering on weathered board are starting to predominate.

“It’s all so terminally cute,” Diantha observed after we had parked and were strolling along. Her tone and words gave me a turn. It was exactly the kind of thing Elsbeth would have said.

I agreed, but pointed out that large trawlers, small freighters, and oceangoing barges still docked nearby.

We wandered into the shop like shoppers, glancing over the collection of what seemed to me an ordinary mishmash of orientalia — lacquered bowls, painted screens, batik prints, and
a large selection of decidedly aromatic spices. The wrong note, if there was one, lay in the fact that, despite the season, we were the only customers in the store save for an older woman who looked like a street person.

We hadn’t been there long when the proprietor came out of the back room and approached us. I noticed again how his closely barbered hair gave him an old-fashioned Germanic look. I also noticed, above the not unpleasant reek of spices, the distinctive musk of his cologne.
He
had been in the room with the green baize door. I was sure now he belonged to the
Société
.

This time I remarked the way his tawny eyes shifted about with the animation of a predator, even as he said, “Mr. de Ratour, how gratifying that you should visit us.” Perhaps I am prejudiced, because he took an immediate interest in Diantha, turning on her a practiced charm.

“Are you gift shopping?” he asked, his voice deep, his accent again striking me as familiar and foreign.

Diantha flashed him a high-wattage smile, meeting his frank sexual appraisal with one of her own. “Yes, it’s such a chore when it should be …”

He left her hanging.

“Joyous,” I supplied.

“Yes, joyous.”

“Mr. Bain, this is my daughter, Diantha Lowe.”

She extended her hand and he took it the way an old-school European would, keeping it in both of his, as though she had given him a token to hold. He brought his heels together.
“Enchanté
. I’m Freddie, Freddie Bain.”

Diantha bowed her head and withdrew her hand.
Enchanté, aussi
, she said and laughed, as though at a private joke.

“Joyous, yes,” he echoed. “Then let us make it joyous for you.” He produced a pair of small jade figurines, dancers, I would
have guessed, but in poses more erotic than thespian. “You have a beau, perhaps. These would remind him of you in those days after Christmas.”

Diantha looked at the price tag. “Pricey,” she said.

“But these are for you. A mere token. Our mark-ups are …”

He had a very mobile face, so that one moment he was all smiles and the next nearly feral, the eyes askance then very direct.

“Thank you, but I simply can’t.”

“I must insist.”

She laughed again and looked at me. I shrugged even as I gritted my teeth. Mr. Bain was not the sort in whose obligation I would want to be.

“I’ll put them to one side for you, Miss Lowe …”

“Oh, please, call me Diantha. You have quite a spice collection.”

“Yes. Thank you. And always fresh. We get in shipments all the time. We use them in the restaurant. You must join me for a cup of tea.”

There was no escaping it. He ushered us most proprietarially into the Everest Tea Room, an alcove lined with a large photo mural of the famous peak. He rang a bell; a moment later a slight young woman appeared with a samovar and glasses in old silver holders. Tea Russian-style.

“These are so beautiful,” Diantha exclaimed, holding one of the glass cups in her hand. Then, “Whatever made you think of opening a place with a Sherpa theme?”

Mr. Bain’s agile face shifted from quizzical frown to a smile that came and went like a tic, then back again, staying in place. “I had occasion to spend time in Nepal. I became interested in the Sherpas. They are a fascinating people. They do what they have to do and never lose a particle of their pride or dignity.”

“What took you to Nepal?” I asked, nodding toward the mountain in the photograph, indicating my question as rhetorical, to give him the opportunity to announce his alpinist proclivities and achievements, should he have any. He glanced at me sharply for a moment, perhaps sensing my ploy.

“I was going through my Buddhist phase,” he said, directing his answer to Diantha, as though only she were present.

She laughed. “I’m still waiting for mine.”

He bowed toward her. “I don’t believe you will need it, Ms. Lowe.” He poured our tea and offered around the sugar.

“So you came back enlightened and started this restaurant and shop?” She returned his glances in a way that made me feel extraneous.

“You could say that. As an exercise in enlightenment.”

“Why the Irish …”

“Oh, a sheer whim. My grandmother Katie O’Flaherty was Irish.”

It sounded to me like a blatant bit of fabrication, but Diantha nodded, charmed.

“Now you tell us about yourself, Ms. Lowe. Are you new to Seaboard?”

“Yes, but I feel I have been here forever.”

“Or perhaps in another life?”

“Maybe. Deep in the gene pool.”

“We all have past lives, Ms. Lowe.”

They went on in that vein for a while, Diantha telling him really nothing, intriguing him the more as he made no secret of his interest in her.

Then he veered off suddenly, addressing me. “Has there been any more news of Professor Chard’s fate?” he asked.

I was able to answer with technical honesty, saying, “None whatsoever. I’m sure that Mrs. Chard, his widow, would have
called me had she heard anything from the State Department.”

“Then perhaps there is hope.”

“There is always hope,” I said, mostly to make conversational noise.

“But don’t you find the … silence intriguing? Mr. De Ratour?”

Diantha was about to say something when I shot her a quick glance. “Not at all,” I said blithely. “To disappear among cannibals is to truly disappear.”

The man laughed wickedly at my inadvertent
bon mot
, rubbed his hands together, and said he had things to attend to.

As we dawdled back to the car, I noticed the garish Christmas lighting blinking and winking all around us. I recalled that Malcolm Muggeridge had once remarked how he would like to show Christ around the Vatican. I think I’d rather show Our Lord the shopping areas of Seaboard and the way they get all tarted up like some old New England spinster trying to pass for a Las Vegas showgirl. Not that I disdain it. I was instead ineffably sad because Elsbeth loved it, even — especially — the front-yard displays. And I knew that next year she would not be here to share it with me.

“So, is Freddie Bain your villain?” Diantha asked, teasing me and bringing me out of my gloom as I drove us home in the creaking Peugeot.

“Possibly. I doubt very much that
Freddie Bain
was his original name.”

“What’s in a name?”

“Sometimes everything.”

“I don’t care. I found him fascinating.”

“As he found you,” I said, unaware of how dispirited I sounded.

She laughed, her wonderful, silly little laugh as we pulled up
to the house. “Oh, Norman, I think you’re jealous. How sweet of you.” She gave me a peck on the cheek before getting out. We spoke of dinner and plans for the evening. But I sensed that before long she would have a love in her life.

As I drove back here to the office, I was filled with a distinct unease. The lingering smell of those pungent spices hung in the car like motes of suspicion.

My darling Elsbeth died this morning just as the fog lifted and dawn broke over Mercy Island, which we can just see from the bedroom window when the trees are stripped of leaves. When she woke about five thirty, I asked her if she wanted an injection for pain. She could scarcely talk. She smiled at me and shook her head. “Lie down with me,” she said with an effort. I got under the covers and put my arm around her as she turned to me. Somehow I knew what was happening. I didn’t need the cuff to sense that her blood pressure was dropping, that her kidneys and her valiant heart were failing. We lay like that for some time as I stroked her head and gave her as much love as I could. But again, it was as though Elsbeth were comforting me, was telling me she was okay, that she had entered some blissful peace before the final darkness descends.

Elsbeth whispered her final words, “Take care of Diantha. I love you, Norman.” Her breathing grew uncertain. It stopped. Then started again. Finally it stopped and didn’t start again as, holding my own breath, I waited and waited. I hugged her to me, but she was gone. I called her name, “Elsbeth. Elsbeth. Elsbeth.” But she was gone. And in my sorrow I experienced the faith of disbelief: I could not believe that this woman, this being, my love, had ceased to exist.
You are not nonexistent
, I said to myself, holding her lifeless form,
you are only gone, gone somewhere else
. But where? “Come back,” I murmured. I wept quietly. I sighed. I got up and went down the hall to tell Diantha.

I pushed open her door and sat on the side of her bed. “Diantha,” I whispered, “Di …”

She sat up and turned on the bedside light. “Mom?”

I nodded.

She came into my arms, her tears running together with mine as I held her. And I had the strangest sensation, a sensation like a revelation: Diantha was Elsbeth. This is where Elsbeth had gone. It lasted only a moment, of course. No one is anyone else. But it lingered as we walked back to where Elsbeth lay, as Diantha knelt by the bed and ever-so-gently stroked her mother’s wan, still face and moved the wisps of hair to one side.

Then Diantha said a strange and provocative thing. She looked directly at me. “I want a baby. I want a baby girl. I’m going to call her Elsbeth.”

I nodded as though I understood, but didn’t really, except in some abstract sense of knowing that we all have an impulse to answer death with life.

We got dressed and attended to the doleful necessities. I called the Medical School to whom Elsbeth had left her body. A couple of hours later a vehicle arrived from Flynn’s Funeral Home and bore Elsbeth away after Diantha and I, alone and then together, spent a few more moments with the still and still-beautiful form lying on the bed.