Slain in Schiaparelli (Vintage Clothing Mysteries Book 3) (11 page)

“We have plenty of food for three, maybe four days. Hors d’oeuvres, but nice quality ingredients,” Chef Jules said.

Bette’s champagne glass hit the table with a thunk. “You’re joking. You think we’re stuck here that long?”

“Mom, it’s not that big a deal. It’s just a day. Remember? We’re radioing out again tomorrow. Good thing no one sent you to war zones to take photos,” Portia said.
 

“Are you implying I’m soft? I used to party all night and not take a shower until noon the next day. At Studio 54, Halston once—”

Oh lord, here we go again, Joanna thought.

“Bette, please,” Clarke said. Maybe he did have some backbone. Bette’s face dropped.
 

“I think he means we’re all so jealous thinking of the wonderful times you had in New York,” Sylvia said.
 

Bette appeared placated but wary. “It really was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Like when Bianca rode a horse across the dance floor. Did I ever tell you about that?”

Heads nodded around the table. Daniel rose and tossed a log into the fireplace.

“Did the horse have hay?” Marianne asked.

“Honey,” her mother said.

“They had a horse in a building, Mummy.”

At this rate, they’d never finish dinner, and she’d never get to see the journals. Joanna raised her voice. “I found something interesting today in the library. A hidden staircase.”

 
“A hidden staircase? Why didn’t you say so?” Reverend Tony hovered above his chair. When he noticed everyone looking at him, he lowered himself and returned his napkin to his lap.
 

“You never did show me that staircase,” came Penny’s voice from the doorway, in a late entrance that recalled Wilson’s the evening before. She’d made an effort to dress for dinner and wore the grass-green velvet sheath dress Joanna had found and had tailored for her honeymoon farewell. Her skin was sheer as white tissue. She slid into the chair next to the Reverend.

“How are you, darling?” Bette asked.

“I didn’t want to be alone.” She smiled at Tony and laid a hand on his arm. “Thank you for everything you’ve done to comfort me.”
 

Guilt pinched Joanna’s conscience. She shouldn’t have pushed Penny so hard on being in the tower room. At least maybe Portia had talked Penny out of her ridiculous idea that she caused Wilson’s death.
 

“Have a glass of wine.” Portia pushed her glass across the table and filled it from the bottle of pinot noir.

“I don’t think alcohol is the answer—” the Reverend began.

Penny took a gulp and coughed. She set the glass in front of her and topped it off. A drop splashed to the white linen tablecloth, spreading scarlet.
 

“What staircase, Joanna?” Daniel asked.

“In the library, behind one of the bookshelves.”

Penny’s dull eyes livened slightly. “I want to see it.”

At last, Joanna would get to see those journals. “Marianne tipped me off to it.”

“Me?” Marianne gripped her spoon like a drumstick, and a couple of peas rolled off.

“Careful, babe.” Sylvia righted the spoon.

“You pointed out the carved hornet. Remember? Right up near the ceiling. I pulled on it, and part of the wall unlatched.”

“Vespa! Vespa!” Marianne sang.

“The secret latch was a hornet?” Penny asked.

At least Penny was interested in something. “Plus, behind the faux bookshelves is a whole set of real bookshelves. They’re loaded with red-bound books. I think they’re the original owner’s journals. We can look at them after dinner, if you want. I’ll show you.”

“Yes. Please,” Penny said. “Maybe we can figure out what happened to Francis Redd.”

“It’ll give us something to do until the storm blows over, anyway,” Clarke added. “I’m starting to feel like we’ll never get out of here.”

***

After dinner, the lodge’s guests crowded the library, except the chef, who sullenly cleared the dining room after a fight with Bette. The brief shouting match ended in her agreement to pay him a bonus for additional duties. Taper candles flickered from the end tables and fireplace mantle. Like a tour director, Joanna stood in front of the faux bookcase.
 

“Marianne noticed the carved hornet up there.” Joanna pointed. “I pulled it down, like this” —she stretched to the hornet and tugged its stinger— “and voilà.” The bookcase cracked open, more easily this time.
 

Reverend Tony stood at the front of the group. He pulled the bookcase the rest of the way open. He’d been remarkably nosy, Joanna noted. Digging through the trunk in the attic, wandering the lodge at night, and now this.

“The door to the hidden staircase is against the wall. Here.” Joanna pointed out the latch. Tony pushed open the door and stepped up into the passageway. “It’s narrow,” Joanna warned.

“Let me see.” Marianne slipped under Daniel’s arm and squeezed next to the Reverend.
 

Sylvia caught her by the shoulders and led her back. “No, honey.”

“Very interesting,” Portia said. Her hand reached for where her camera would have been, around her neck, then dropped.

“Well, I’m not surprised at all,” came Bette’s voice from the back of the room. “The guy who built this place thought he was so clever. Can’t even tell the damn time with all the clocks running backwards. You guys can puzzle over this all you want. I’m going to my room. Come on, Bubbles.” She grabbed the candlestick from Clarke’s hands. Her champagne bottle clunked against the doorframe on her way out.

Tony backed out of the staircase and shut the back panel to the passage. The bookcase remained open. “It goes upstairs?”

“Yes, lets out in the tower room’s closet. Hasn’t been used in years. It’s super dusty. This afternoon when I—” Joanna said.

“What are those?” Penny pointed at the half dozen red-bound books hidden behind the faux shelf.
 

“The books I told you about. As I was saying, when I—”

Penny interrupted her again. “He hid them, so they must be important. Let’s look at them.”

Joanna turned to her and nodded. Penny clearly didn’t want Joanna to say she had found her upstairs. She hesitated only a moment. “Sure. We’ll take them to the great room where there’s more light.”

Penny loaded a few volumes onto her arm and led the way to the table in front of the great room’s fireplace. “Maybe he talks about a plot to kill him. You know, about threats, things like that. Maybe he left clues.” She raised her head, and Joanna thought she glimpsed a hint of her old sparkle. “You know, I saw his ghost this afternoon.”

“You were sleeping,” the Reverend said.

“Between sleeps.”

Between Bette’s pills and Tony’s herbs, Joanna thought. Before she went up to the tower room.

Penny continued. “He was thin and white. Bald, too. He appeared for just a second at the end of the hall. I heard a rustle, and before I could even focus my eyes he vanished.”

Clarke exchanged a knowing look with Daniel. The drugs, it seemed to say. Joanna remembered the portrait in the attic. A fair description.

“We’ll all be seeing ghosts soon, no doubt,” Sylvia said.
 

“Let’s look at those books,” Penny repeated.

Joanna already had a volume on her lap. The book smelled of mildew and old cedar, almost like incense. She opened the red leather cover to marbled endpapers. February 3, 1932, Joanna read. She turned the page. Black ink, faded to brown in spots, scrawled tightly across the page, leaving barely a margin. But the writing made no sense. Mouth agape, she raised her head from the page and looked at the others.
 

Tony had taken a volume from Penny and examined it near the great room’s fire where the light was best. Sylvia, Daniel, and Penny leaned around him, with Marianne’s head obscuring the page until Sylvia asked her to stand back. Stunned, they stared at the words.

“Well? What does it say?” Clarke asked.

“Gibberish.” Penny said. She picked up another journal, then another, opening and shutting their pages and pushing them to the side. “I don’t get it.”

“Listen to this.” Joanna read from the journal in her lap. “‘Dog eats sun while ants dance rainbows on salty mountain.’ What does it mean?”
 

“Here’s another one,” Daniel said, the few fingers on his right hand clenching the book. “‘Beam a fairy to scour the world’s pans.’”

“What?” Clarke said. “Let me see.”

“Maybe it’s code.” Sylvia flipped through one of the journals Penny had discarded.

“Automatic writing,” Portia offered from the sofa. “Learned about it in art school. The surrealists were big into it. They believed logic was a barrier to true art, and that you could directly connect to the collective unconscious by letting your hand go loose on the page. Redd obviously bought into it.”

The Reverend nodded. “She’s right. Interesting, but hardly valuable. That is, unless we stumbled onto Chirico’s journals or something like that.” He ran his fingers tenderly over the spider-like words on the page.

If the journals were nothing but arty gibberish, why did Redd hide them away? Could be he was embarrassed. Or—as Sylvia had suggested—maybe it was some kind of code. Joanna decided to take them to her room for closer examination. Penny would love it if she found some sort of clue to Redd’s disappearance.

Penny had lost interest in the journals and wandered into the library again to scan the shelves. “What a drag. Is there anything else to read?” She tugged a few random novels by their spines and pushed them back again. “Here’s something.” She lifted what looked like an oversized ledger from a bottom shelf and opened it. “Oh. An old guest log.” Disappointed, she dropped it back on the shelf. “This looks better.” She pulled a bright orange paperback, probably left by a long-ago guest, and plopped into the great room’s clam chair before tossing the book to the side. “Forget it. It’s too dark to read, anyway.”

“Would you like some more herbal tea?” Tony asked. “Or we could do a few inverted poses to reverse your energy.”

“No. Thank you though, Master. I don’t feel like standing on my head right now.” She slumped. “I’ll be so happy when this day is over.”

“We could get out the Ouija board again. Or play cards,” Sylvia said.

“No cards,” Clarke said firmly.

Daniel’s face fell first, then Penny’s, as they remembered last night’s poker game. Wilson had played with them.

Journals discarded, the group lounged in the great room. Bette had returned in a new caftan—this one aubergine velvet with a charmeuse lining—and set to grooming the vases of flowers intended for the wedding. She must have packed enough caftans to suit up a sultan’s harem. With expert fingers Bette plucked faded petals and droopy blooms, trimming stems for a new arrangement.

“You have a way with flowers,” Sylvia said.
 

“My grandfather, and his father, and his father, too, were florists.” She cocked her head and pulled a bird of paradise forward. The arrangement had transformed from severe shapes exploding with color to a gentler, though still vivid form. “It’s meditative work.”

“They really are beautiful,” Joanna said. She’d chosen a seat apart from the rest of the guests near the fireplace so she could better watch them. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was looking for, but the group’s odd behavior—Penny and Portia in the tower room, Bette’s erratic moods, Tony’s mysterious past, and of course the unexplained clam dip in Wilson’s sandwich—left her with the distinct feeling she should be on guard. Or maybe the strange house itself had put her on edge. “Have you thought about doing it professionally?”

“I’ve been considering it, actually,” Bette said. “Only for exclusive events.”

Clarke slipped a pair of reading glasses from his pocket and opened a briefcase. “No one minds if I do a little work, do they? It’s more comfortable here by the fire than in my room.” He moved a candelabra to the end table next to his chair.

Portia leaned over the ottoman where Penny sat and brushed her sister’s hair. “Go ahead,” she said. Penny stared into the distance. Her head bent back slightly with each stroke of the brush, but she didn’t seem to pay attention. If only there was something Joanna could say or do to distract her.
 

“Uncle Daniel, tell me again how you lost your fingers,” Marianne said. She and Daniel sat on the floor with the coffee table and a checkerboard between them. Candlelight cast a golden aura around her head. Sylvia lifted her eyes from her magazine.

“Well, I was playing tennis with a bear, see, and I was winning—”

“Bears can’t play tennis,” Marianne said.

“Bears are a lot more agile than people think. Ever see a bear run? They’re fast. Anyway, I was winning, and the bear got really mad and jumped over the net to grab my tennis racket. Unfortunately, my hand was attached to the racket.”

Marianne howled with glee. “What about the hotdog factory? I thought they came off in the hotdog factory.”

“That was another time. Never put your hand in the weenie chopper.”

“King me.” Marianne’s fingers rested on a red checker. Daniel stacked another chip on top of it.

“Seriously, though, how did you lose your fingers?” Portia set down the hairbrush and moved next to her mother. Sylvia put down her magazine altogether.

Daniel focused on the checker board. “It’s not interesting.”

“I’d like to know. If you think the story’s too gruesome, don’t even worry about it. In my work I’ve seen it all—legs blown off by land mines, shot up bodies, gangrene—”

“Honestly, Portia. That’s enough,” Bette said.

“I’d rather not talk about it,” Daniel said. “Not now.”

“Armagnac?” Chef Jules appeared from the dining room. He must have come up from the kitchen by way of the service staircase in the butler’s pantry. One hand held a bottle of amber liquid, and small glasses dangled from their stems between the fingers of the other hand. “Left over from deglazing the
sanglier
.”

“No thank you,” came Reverend Tony’s voice from the breakfast room. Joanna leaned sideways to see beyond the poppy chair. The Reverend sat in a lotus position. “Is that cigarette smoke I smell?”