French Polished Murder (25 page)

“All my life, people have pitied me for being abandoned by my mother. And those that know a few hints of the case have considered her an adulteress and worse, a woman of light morals. I think it is high time my mother’s reputation was restored, and I’m the only one who can do it. You see, it took me years to realize what had happened, but I am now sure that Edward must have woken up enough, as we left, to follow us, and that he must have realized my mother was about to leave without him.

“Now, I understand why she wouldn’t take him. Not only was she more attached to me, because of my frailty at birth and beyond, but he was the boy and heir. My father’s heir. My father would never have let her leave with him. If she had, he would have moved heaven and Earth to find them. But if she took only me, he was much less likely to consider pursuing her for fear, of course, that it would come out that she had eloped with another man. But at ten I doubt that Edward could understand that. And he was very passionately fond of our mother.

“He must have felt like he was being betrayed and abandoned. What I think happened—although, you know, it might have been quite different—is that he had got hold of something that was a poison somewhere. Boys at that time were . . . well . . . more vigorous than boys are currently. They played with dangerous things and had fewer of the common feelings of kindness we expect from children now. I know we had arsenic in the house. It was used to poison rats or sometimes squirrels. So I think he had some with him and, in his ire, put it in the coffeepot from which they were drinking.

“The pot was on the stove behind them, as they sat side by side, discussing things. Edward used to play games of being an Indian—Native American you would now say, but in those days—at any rate, he used to play at being an Indian sneaking around. There were all these stories about how Indians could walk through the forest without cracking a twig, and he used to practice it all the time.” She frowned. “I thought it was very silly.” She shook her head. “But I think that’s what he did, and poisoned the coffee in the pot . . .”

“How can you say that?” I said, and I think I surprised her as much as I surprised myself with the vehemence of my words. “How can you say that about your brother?”

She smiled a little, looking at me. It was the indulgent smile of an adult to a small child. “You must forgive me, but I wasn’t aware that I was saying anything especially bad about him, except that he was a child and loved his mother dearly and reacted in an inappropriate way when he thought that she didn’t love him. He never again—to my knowledge—killed anyone else.”

“No,” I said. “I mean you’re making this accusation against him when he can’t defend himself, and you’re going on old, old memories. For all you know you dreamed it all.” I registered the faintly scandalized look in her eyes and pushed on. “There have been studies—I’ve read about them because I have a child of my own—and children do that sort of thing. They confabulate dreams and realities, what they heard told and what they witnessed, all of it in a big jumble. They do it, and they don’t think about it, and years later they’ll swear that what they remember is true. Maybe you dreamed it all when you heard your mother had disappeared. It would be a way to cope with your feelings of abandonment. You really have no proof that what you are saying is true.”

A smile slid across her lips. “Only this,” she said. “What happened best explains how my father and my brother treated me from then on. Though I’d always been a slight young girl, I was perfectly healthy and at the time of Mama’s death I’d started to go out in society a little. Oh, not on my own, of course, that was just not done. But Mama had arranged for me to take dance lessons and painting lessons, and I was mingling with girls my age.

“After Mama’s death that all changed. Not for my brother, so there was no fear of a scandal being kept alive by us being seen in society. No. The fear was more that I would form a friendship, that I would marry, that I would tell what I knew.

“The excuse given was that I was very frail and couldn’t go out, and I myself believed it until I was well into my thirties, at which time a habit of reclusiveness had formed. I had my books, and my interests, and didn’t see any reason to mingle in the common way. But if I tried or became close to someone, my brother always found a way to discourage it. The only way I could see to escape was to do what Mama had planned and to leave, taking very little with me. But I wasn’t prepared to sacrifice my comforts.” She shrugged. “It took me years to realize that both Edward and Father simply wished to ensure I didn’t tell anyone what I knew.”

“And so you are telling me for revenge?” I said.

She shook her head. “Revenge upon whom? My brother is dead, and even if it becomes known, it was a murder he committed at ten under circumstances that these days would condemn him to nothing more than some intensive counseling and perhaps psychiatric care. My nephew and his wife are very private people. In fact, because they are afraid that their staff is insufficient to prevent the seizures I suffer from, and because they are so often absent at the ranch, they are closing this house and putting me in a quite nice assisted-living facility. Sunset Acres, I think it is, on the edge of town. They have activities and a very good library.” She smiled. “Maybe I will have a social life for the first time since I was eight. At any rate, I don’t think my nephew would care. He is . . . has always been a man of few social graces. I don’t say this to disparage. It is simply his character. He was a silent and sullen boy, and he’s grown up to be a silent and sullen man. He will not care what anyone thinks of his father, as long as his horses continue receiving proper care.” She spoke with amusement, as if she were talking about a little boy’s hobby. “And as long as they continue winning prizes.” She nodded, emphatically.

“And Mama’s reputation will be saved.”

There didn’t seem anything I could say to that. Of course, I had no intention of writing a book at all, something that would probably disappoint her. I had a sudden, sharp suspicion that she was counting on this book to make her the belle of the assisted-living ball.

But then again, could I blame her, considering the blight of her life? She had never been the belle of the ball, and if she finally had a chance in her nineties—well, better than never, I supposed.

I stood up, feeling like I should be pulling my gloves on, and noticed that she was looking at me curiously. “You have a lovely complexion, Ms. Dare,” she said.

I stopped. Couldn’t help it. No one had ever told me that before. Oh, my skin was good enough. Except for a brief and disgusting outbreak of pimples at nineteen, I had weathered adolescence unblemished. And because I lived in the age of effective remedies, the brief acne had left no mark.

Whatever Ben had to say, at thirty I was not old enough to have to worry about wrinkles, so I had none, and my skin looked unexceptionable—not at all something to remark on. It was sort of like being told, “Ms. Dare, I see you have a head and four limbs.”

“Thank—Thank you,” I stammered, not knowing what else to say. Mom got told she had a lovely complexion all the time because she did. She was all white and peach and looked like she couldn’t be real and someone must have painted her in porcelain.

Miss Martin’s hand went out to the stick, and it made a little
thump thump
on the floor, as though she meant to make me pay attention, or perhaps she meant to wake herself up. I had a notion that she had got in the habit of using her walking stick as a punctuation mark. “Do you use any of those miracle treatments that they offer now? Botox or what have you?”

I didn’t know how old she thought I was. Besides, if she really wanted a rousing discussion about beauty products, she should get hold of Ben. He could probably tell her what every moisturizing cream did, and about each clarifying lotion she might purchase. So I just said, “I use moisturizing cream, when I remember to.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I see. Yes, I see. Well, you know what I tell my nephew’s wife, it is never to early to start making sure one doesn’t age badly.” She smiled at me. “If I hadn’t taken to applying several clarifying lotions and such as early on as my twenties, I’d probably look like parchment now.”

And since she didn’t—her face looked like a version of my mother’s, peaches and cream, only a little older and a little dustier—I had to bow to her knowledge.

“I’ve found though,” she said. “That the best beauty product of all is to wash my face with rosewater in the morning. I don’t know if it’s the lovely smell, but I feel refreshed and buoyed all day.”

I admitted it might be the smell, thinking she was after all years ahead of all the aromatherapy people, and I’d left her to her thoughts.

First I had, of course, to say good-byes, and receive her compliments to my mother and my grandmother, whom she seemed to have forgotten had died. I didn’t enlighten her. She told me she was too weak and unbalanced, since her stroke, to go more than a few steps, and even that only with the walking stick. I didn’t see any reason to destroy her illusions of the outside world and the longevity of her friends, when she was not likely to ever leave this room and confront them.

Instead, I smiled and nodded a lot, returned the frame and picture to its table and finally, after being led by the housekeeper along echoing corridors, walked out of the house and into bright sunlight. It felt like I had left age and oppression behind and come out into a beautiful day. I felt like saying, as Elizabeth I is said to have when they brought her news of her sister’s death, “This is the day the Lord has made, and it is marvelous in our sight.”

I didn’t even think of her story again until I was in the car and headed home.

I didn’t have very long to think about it, either. Only
the short drive between the Martin house and my apartment. But even in that brief time, I thought that there was something wrong about the story. But it was not something I could have put my finger on. Instead, I decided I’d go home and write it all down, then highlight the parts that were giving me issues.

The minute I opened the door to my apartment, though, I completely forgot the old murders and homicidal ten-year-olds.

Usually when I left E with Ben—or anyone else—I’d come home and find the adult slumped on the sofa, staring blankly into space, while E ran circles around the table. Up until six months ago, when he’d refused to talk in front of strangers—or at least to talk in front of anyone but me, an uncommon but not rare form of selective mutism that I was told struck only very intelligent children—he’d run around the table making senseless noise. Now he was more likely to be repeating something he’d heard that struck his fancy or that was guaranteed to get a reaction. When Ben had been so incautious as to say, “Oh, holy fuck,” in front of E, it had become E’s favorite exclamation for months and months, dropped willy-nilly into all sorts of situations.

This time, E was sitting huddled, on the sofa, clutching Pythagoras to his chest—and Ben was walking in circles, round and round the coffee table, babbling. For a moment, I thought it was a joke and that they’d staged it to see my reaction.

Then I realized what Ben
was
babbling. “Buried under the tree,” he said. “I’m sure of it. That’s why the trees grew together like that. What do you say?” he asked, even though neither E nor I had said anything. “Yes, exactly, reaching out. Trying to give a sign. Poor things. Murdered with ax. Buried under tree. Almost a hundred years of silence.” He looked over at me, and madness shone out of his eyes, a sly madness that I wasn’t sure was trying to play me—or someone else. “Mustn’t tell them. No, no, no, mustn’t tell them. You know what they’d do. They’d lie. And they’d grind the bones to make soup.” He rubbed the middle of his forehead, which was a gesture that Ben had made as long as I’d known him, and that meant he was worried and had a headache coming on. “I’m confusing things, aren’t I. It’s not the giant. There are no giants here. All very small men,” he said with patrician disdain. “And they buried them under the tree.” He looked at me, and his look seemed completely open and innocent. But the madness was still there, perhaps worse than ever. “You don’t understand, Dyce. They’re suffocating. I must save them. Imagine dirt in your mouth. All that time.”

I was in shock. I should explain that of all forms of mental illness, any type of dementia, has always terrified me. There is a feeling that there is something there that is both more and less than human.

Worse yet, it was Ben who seemed to have slipped a cog. Ben who was always so precise, so exact, so full of understanding and planning of the world around him. It made me want to turn around and run, fast, get in the car, and never stop until I was very well away.

But I couldn’t do that. Something happens to you when you become a mother. Unlike what several popular comedians maintain, it doesn’t give you superpowers or make you special in the sense of giving you something extra. It just divides your consciousness into two.