Working Murder (2 page)

I'd felt such intimations with my son's cryptic summons, felt the first faint
stirrings.... And for the past year, the only mystery in my life had been how I was to
go on living without Henry Gamadge.

About a month after he died—it was the bitterly cold November of 1988—a letter appeared
in my mailbox with a Florida postmark and addressed in a familiar, appallingly bad
handwriting. The mail was late that day owing to the icy condition of the sidewalks, and
it was past four o'clock when I went back through the basement foyer of our brownstone
carrying the usual load of catalogues and condolence letters. The former were boring,
the latter heartbreaking. How many persons had Henry Gamadge helped, unknown even to me?
The door of his workroom with all his beloved apparatus stood open, and his elderly,
beautiful Siamese cat lay curled in the chair.

I said: “Loki, maybe you can bear this room, but I can't—not yet.” I picked him up and
went out, closing the door. We took the little elevator to the first floor, where Loki
struggled out of my arms and stood dejectedly in the middle of the living room. I walked
through it and on into the small front bedroom where my two-year-old granddaughter was
napping, spread-eagle. I rearranged her and pushed a chair against the bed. How quiet
the place was. I wished she'd wake up and bawl or that her mother would come back. I
went into the kitchen, made myself a drink, took it back to the fireplace where there
was no fire, and sat down.

The letter, deciphered, read:

Dear Favorite Cousin Clara:

I know, I know, you wish I'd type this. But I'm sitting in a deck chair outside and the
typewriter is in the house. If the glare gets too much—we're in the eighties here—I'll
have to go in and get my sunglasses and then maybe I'll type the whole thing over but I
doubt it.

Now, don't argue with me—just come down here. You know you're miserable and you won't
feel any better staying in that bloody cold canyon. And stop saying to yourself “but he
used to love New York.” Of course I did when I had youth and money (the two requirements
for being happy there) but now I have none of the first and less of the second and while
Florida is, in many respects, boring, banal, and bourgeois, certain aspects of it are so
enormously appealing that if one can just get one's northeast nose out of the air long
enough to try the place, one can begin to enjoy what amounts to life on another planet.

By the way, I don't mean just come for a visit; come live here—with me if you like. At
least try it for a year. Put a tenant in there and
come
.

We've been out of touch, damn it, and the dear note you wrote me about my dumb flowers
when Henry died brought you to “the eyes of my mind” as a Jamaican cook of ours used to
say. So here's the Sadd story—pun intended.

As you know I came down here about three years ago right after Harriet died wanting only
to escape the New York winter. I'd just sold my publishing house—I've probably told you
all this on Christmas cards but here's something new: I've bought a three-bedroom house
on a small island called Santa Martina. It's a countrified little spit mercifully free
from the chic which infests so many of Florida's west coast barrier islands. Now, how to
“sell” you?

Well, the climate is sublime for six months of the year, perfectly tolerable for three,
and ghastly during July, August, and September. Then you can always shoot back up north,
or any other time for that matter, if you can't stand it or if you miss the kids, which
I do not. Jon took all the money his mother left him and blew it on some hopeless,
failed, off-Broadway opera and is now broke and sulking. Kathy's husband is a dreary
money-grubber and their children are spoiled and unattractive; they live, thank heaven,
in the far reaches of Toronto. So much for my image as a benign parent and/or
grandparent.

My house would lend itself beautifully to a permanent guest and you and I always hit it
off as young people. I cook for myself. Sometimes I drink too much but you'll never know
it when I do and I'm not a slob. No problem, of course, about having your own quarters.
The only thing we'd have to share is the sunset which takes place over the Gulf of
Mexico and is often too much to watch alone.

You could pay something if you like but I don't need it. I bought this place as an
investment and plan to move into a retirement home the minute I know I'm getting too
gimp or nutty. So far I'm amazingly fit for seventy-four (aren't you some years
younger?) and I walk a mile of beach every day. By the way, I've become a dedicated
environmentalist and an article of mine called “Violating Our Shores” appeared in...

The baby awoke with a wail at that instant, and I had just dragged off her sopping diaper
and carried her into the living room when her mother, my pretty daughter, Paula, came
through the door, snow-covered, laughing, laden with bundles.

I said, swapping baby for bundles: “You look like Nora making her first entrance in
A
Doll's House
.”

“Nora would feel right at home out there.” Paula blew on her fingers. “Norway couldn't be
colder. Well, I've had my last shopping spree. But I worry about you being alone when I
go home tomorrow.” Paula lived in Boston.

“I may go to Florida.”

“Super! When did you decide? For how long?”

“I'm not sure. I'd stay with Cousin Sadd.” I handed her the letter. “Does it sound
crazy?”

“It sounds great!”

And it had been. Within weeks of that day a delightful young Belgian couple, on exchange
from the University of Louvain, took up temporary residence on East Sixty-third Street;
Loki did the same in Brooklyn Heights, and I on Santa Martina Island.

Sadd was right. We hit it off beautifully, probably because we at once established rules
that allowed for separate interests and for days when our paths scarcely crossed at all.
Sadd was absorbed in expanding his environmental article into a book, and I was able,
for the first time in my life, to paint—and fully enjoy it. In the high-powered,
critical atmosphere of New York I had been, since girlhood, timid to the point of
inhibited about exposing my limitations, for I am solidly second—no, third rate. But in
the indulgent ambiance of Florida, where at every jetty and cove one beholds an elderly
dauber, I worked happily. Sadd kindly never commented on my efforts except for an
occasional “that's pretty.” In addition, at a painting class I met some pleasant people
who play bridge, a game I enjoy and Sadd detests. He loves birding; I am bored by it and
asked him not to describe every contour of feather or bill he'd observed while crouched
in some swamp aggravating his arthritis. Sadd in turn extracted a promise that I never
report anything adorable my grandchildren had said or done.

So our paths were healthily divergent, and we'd avoided asking each other how we thought
it was “working out,” though Sadd came close one day when he quoted Wilfrid Sheed: “Have
you ever noticed that the first one to say ‘aren't we having fun' spoils the fun?”

But the fun had been spoiled for Sadd—even shattered—by May's phone call and young
Henry's baffling involvement which, Sadd said, had “revved” me unnecessarily.

I said: “I thought you never used slang. But ‘rev' is wonderfully expressive, isn't it?”

“Don't change the subject. I thought ‘nothing would induce you to make a round trip to
New York in the middle of January.'”

“I thought so too till Henry came on.”

We were sitting in deck chairs flooded by the sunset glow. The gulf breeze was a kiss and
the sky pure Maxfield Parrish, but, unhappily, mood paints the scene and Sadd's was
foul. He refilled his glass from the pitcher of martinis and said:

“Of course, if one is at the beck and call of one's children—”

“I am not at the ‘beck and call' of anyone,” I snapped. “I'm going because my son, who is
not an alarmist, has urgently requested it.” I refilled my own glass and reached for a
cracker. “And speaking of requests, did you make that plane reservation for me?”

“Yes. The flight Henry suggested. We leave at nine-fifty.”

“
We?
” In my surprise I dropped the cracker, and a gull swooped.

“If I let you go up there alone you won't come back.”

I was very touched. I knew Sadd had been fretting about the approaching end of my stay,
and I wanted him to know how thoroughly I'd enjoyed it.

“Sadd,” I touched his arm, “not only will I come back, I'm fishing right now for an
invitation for next winter.”

“I suppose you realize”—he dropped ice into his glass—"that I have nothing warmer than a
raincoat and will probably get pneumonia.”

“Henry has all his father's things. You shall have his overcoat.”

“Thank you. It should reach to my ankles. The Oliver Twist look. Why do you suppose Henry
couldn't call us back?”

“I don't know. It bothers me. And what on earth was he doing at May's? To my knowledge he
hasn't seen her in years.”

We were silent for a while, Sadd no doubt thinking of May, as I was, with the deep pity
her rather trying image always evoked. A snowy egret paced up and surveyed the plate of
crackers. His beautiful long neck caught a pink glow from the sky as he arched for the
crumbs I tossed. Sadd said:

“Just getting Lloyd buried in the mausoleum is apparently not the entire problem. There's
something else—something perhaps quite unrelated.”

Oh, wasn't it always something “quite unrelated,” and how often it had started with a
relatively innocent request like May's. Déjà vu was strong upon me.... “Clara, we want
you and Henry for bridge tonight and while you're here perhaps Henry can look at some
old letters we found in the attic....” “Henry, you remember great-grandfather's
collection of aquatints? Well, one of them seems to be missing....” “Clara, we wish
Henry would come and talk sense to poor old Uncle—he's convinced the cleaning woman is
Moll Flanders reincarnated....”

Then, too often, horror and death.

I stood up. “Henry must be staying at May's tonight. That's why he couldn't call us
back.”

“Why not call Tina at home?” said Sadd.

Now, why hadn't I thought of that? I swallowed my drink, went into the house, and called
my son's number in Brooklyn. A voice shouted “Yez? Hollow?” in an unidentifiable accent,
then managed to convey that Mr. and Mrs. Gamadge and their little boy had all gone to
see a relative in “Monhatting.”

I hung up and turned to find that Sadd had followed me in.

“Good God, Sadd, they've
all
piled over to May's. What on earth ... ?”

“One can only assume”—Sadd walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator—"that May
invited them. Or sent for them—or whatever. Does she know Tina?”

“I don't think so.” I sat down in the “horrid happening” chair and dug in my memory. “I
don't think she even came to their wedding. She did send them a nice check, I remember.”
I dug further. “Years ago when she and Frank moved to New York after the—the
awfulness—Henry and I used to take the children to visit them once in a while. May
wasn't going anywhere much even then. How long since you've seen her?”

“Years.”

“After Frank died she practically became a recluse. Who can blame her? I'm sure that
business would have turned me into a zombie.”

“Me too.”

Frank and May Dawson's only child, a girl of eighteen, had disappeared from her prep
school graduation party at the Eastern Shores Yacht Club in Gloucester, Massachusetts,
never to be seen or heard of again. The year was 1939.

Sadd came out of the kitchen eating a sandwich. “Of the hundreds of thousands of words
written about the case, these have stayed with me—verbatim: ‘Into oblivion she went,
white prom dress fluttering.'” He stared out at the Gulf. “How much of it do you
remember?”

“Not much. I was too young and dumb and selfish.”

“I doubt the last two.”

Oh, but yes. When one is twenty and in love, one is insulated by happiness. A cousin I
scarcely knew had disappeared; there was a war brewing in Europe. Both facts had equal
impact upon me—slight. I was to be married and that was the central fact of the
universe.

I said: “It's remote, but do you suppose this mystifying business has anything to do
with—what was her name?”

“Ellen. It's been fifty years though.”

Sadd picked up the
Times
and looked at Lloyd Cavanaugh's obituary again. “Nice
guy. Quite a gifted musician.”

“Yes. Henry and I once went to a concert in that downtown church where he played the
organ. May says he was ‘penniless.' Was he?”

“May thinks anybody who isn't rich is penniless. Lloyd did have a big family, and I guess
it was pretty slim pickings in that choir loft all those years.” He tossed the newspaper
into the wastebasket. “Who'd have thought his death would have opened such a can of
worms? That blasted mausoleum. May's right—we'll never live it down. Shall I make you a
sandwich?”

“No, thanks. Fill me in on that mausoleum story. All my life I've heard bits and scraps
about some disreputable person who's buried there. Who is it?”

“James Cavanaugh.”

“Who was he? Why disreputable?”

“I'll tell you on the plane tomorrow.” Sadd was making himself another drink. “It's a
sordid story, and if I talk about it now I'll probably get drunk. I'm going to bed. Damn
it, I don't even have an alarm clock.”

“I do.”

“HE WAS A BOOTLEGGER AND, INDIRECTLY of course, a murderer. His own wife died of his
rotten booze, as did countless other people. May I have more coffee, please?”

The flight attendant, a smiling woman not a whole lot younger than I (refreshing!),
filled Sadd's cup. I was relieved he wasn't having a third Bloody Mary. It had taken us
two stiff ones to get through the stupefying layover in Atlanta, and we were now ten
minutes out of LaGuardia. I'd had him talking before that, but now Sadd was morose. He
hated flying; hated the moth-eaten cap and scarf he'd unearthed for the trip; hated the
child across the aisle whose wind-up helicopter kept spinning into our laps; hated the
word “finalize,” which the pilot had just used over the loudspeaker.