Prospero's Daughter (7 page)

“You said it. You think she is too young, but let me tell you, Inspector.” Gardner put his glass down on the table. His movements were measured, as were the next words that came out of his mouth. “If . . .” His hand was still on the glass and he twirled it between his thumb and middle finger. “If you don’t direct the hormones when they start jumping . . .” He left the sentence hanging in the air, unfinished.

“Jumping, sir?” Mumsford pushed him to complete his thought.

“Have you forgotten when you were fifteen, Inspector?” He picked up the glass. “Yes, jumping. I can’t have her hormones going in the wrong direction, toward the wrong person, can I, Inspector?”

Mumsford did not like the coarse reference to hormones, but he shrugged off his discomfort. “And I take it, Dr. Gardner, the young man here on a holiday is the right person?” There were no traces of sarcasm in his question. He was simply seeking clarification.

“A medical student,” Gardner said.

“Studying to be a doctor, like you, sir?”

Gardner swallowed a mouthful of the blue liquid. “Yes. Like me, Inspector.”

Mumsford came closer to the edge of his seat. “This may seem an impertinence, sir, but I assure you none is intended. Is she alone with him, sir?”

Gardner reddened. “It is an impertinence, Inspector Mumsford.”

“He is in Trinidad, is he not, sir?”

“The young man comes from a good family, Inspector. From Boston. They have kept the old ways in Boston.” Gardner spoke in clipped tones.

“American?”

“From New England. You’ve heard of New England, haven’t you, Inspector? It is as it says.
New
England.”

“And your daughter, sir, is with this American from New England?” Mumsford’s pen moved rapidly across his notebook.

“Not by herself, as you seem to want to imply, Inspector. She’s well chaperoned. By Mrs. Burton.”

“Mrs. Burton?” Mumsford raised his head.

“An Englishwoman. And the young man is not here alone. He is with his father.”

“With his mother, too, I take it, sir?”

“No. Not with his mother, Inspector. His mother is dead.”

Mumsford pursed his lips.

“The young man is quite respectable,” Gardner said.

Mumsford scratched the side of his head.

“Quite respectable. Father and son are staying in a hotel and my daughter is staying with Mrs. Burton.”

“Indeed, sir.”

“They would all be here if that devil had not attacked her.” Gardner threw back his head and drained his glass.

Attacked
was a specific word. Mumsford prided himself on being thorough. He had been properly trained.
Attacked
indicated action. Violence to a person.

“Attacked, sir?” he asked.

“
Attempted,
Inspector.” Dr. Gardner corrected himself and put the empty glass on the table. “As I said to you before, that beast Carlos
attempted
to put a stain on my daughter’s honor.”

After
Daughter in hotel with boyfriend,
Mumsford wrote in his notebook
No violence with the colored boy.

“Still writing, Inspector?” Gardner stretched his neck in Mumsford’s direction.

“Just notes, sir.”

“The inspector on duty,” Gardner said drily. He glanced once more at Mumsford’s notebook and then closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, he was still fixed on the point of establishing the propriety of his daughter’s trip to Trinidad. “The young man would be here,” he said, “if it had not been for the present situation. You understand? The attempt.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And he and my daughter will be here as soon as you remove that savage from my premises. Don’t you think I know about fire i’ th’ blood?” His eyes bored into Mumsford’s.

“Fire in the blood, sir?”

“Sexual passion. Carnal lust. You understand passion and lust, don’t you, Inspector?”

And in truth Inspector Mumsford did not understand, not in the way he felt Dr. Gardner implied. He had read books about carnal lust, dirty books he still stuffed under his mattress, for he lived with his mother, though it was the other way around now that she had followed him to Trinidad. But he had no experience with carnal lust. He had never been to a brothel.

“I have given the young man strict instructions,” Gardner said, when Mumsford did not answer him. “He is never to ask her to his room. They can go for walks, meet in the hotel lobby, that sort of thing. Public places only. Oh, he swore to me that he would respect her. That he would not touch her before they were married. But you know, Inspector,” he lowered his voice, “the strongest oaths are straw to fire i’ th’ blood. I told him so.” He examined his fingernails. “One must avoid all situations where the temptation may be too great or it is good night your vow,” he said.

Did he imagine it, Mumsford wondered, or had he not detected a trace of sadness in Gardner’s voice? “Yes,” Mumsford said, “it is always best to avoid temptation.”

“It’s her greatest treasure, you know.” Gardner raised his eyes to him again.

“Her treasure, sir?”

“I speak of her virginity, Inspector. It is the jewel in her dower.”

Mumsford’s neck felt hot. It throbbed with the rush of blood that rose from his chest.

“Yes, yes, no need for double-talk, Inspector. I will be plain. It is her jewel. I said so to Alfred. That is the young man who wants to marry her. Break her virgin knot, and it is all over. Nothing can follow but disdain after that. I told her that, too. A man may promise you the stars, but if you surrender to him, that which made you so special will be tarnished. Light winning makes the prize light. You understand? We are hunters, Inspector.” He leaned forward conspiratorially, the nuggets he had for eyes hard and shining.

Every instinct in Mumsford urged him to recoil—the man was making him uneasy—but he held his ground. He was here on police business. He was a professional. He would remember that.

“I would agree with you,” he said to Gardner. “Anthropologically speaking, sir.”

Gardner slapped his thighs and let out a loud guffaw. “ ‘Anthropologically speaking, sir?’ ” he mimicked him. “ ‘Anthropologically speaking, sir?’ ”

How had he allowed himself to feel pity for this man? Why did he think he seemed sad minutes ago when he talked of oaths and temptation? “Are you making fun of me, sir?” Mumsford asked.

“Did they teach you to speak like that in police school?”

“Am I amusing you, sir?”

“No, no, Inspector. It was a good word.
Anthropologically speaking.
Those are good words. Precise.” Gardner wiped his eyes on the shoulder of his shirt. “And anthropologically speaking, Mumsford, as you know as well as I do, there is no sport after the kill.” Gardner was no longer smiling. The hardness had returned in his eyes. “Yes, it is her jewel. They will both hate each other if it loses its sheen. Discord will come between them when they marry. Barren hate. He would know it was spoilt meat he got when he married her, and she would hate him for spoiling her before she had taken her vows.”

Mumsford felt he could not take much more of this talk of virgin knot, sexual passion, jumping hormones, carnal lust, spoilt meat. It was talk better for the pub among like-minded companions, or in a sleazy motel, perhaps with a prostitute.
He was her father, for God’s sake.
Dr. Gardner had called him stuffy, and perhaps he was. He was not a city man. He did not have city ways. He was raised in the country, in England, where it was improper for a father to speak this way about his daughter. His stomach felt queasy. They were inappropriate, Dr. Gardner’s intimate references to his daughter’s sexuality, not normal for a decent father.

“So you see, Inspector, that born devil would have destroyed all that if he had succeeded,” Gardner was saying, and in a flash Mumsford saw his mistake. Good detective as he thought he was, he had missed the point of Gardner’s tirade: first, to establish that there had been no assault, but, rather, an attempt to assault, thus leaving no doubt of his daughter’s purity. Then (his real purpose) to lay the foundation that would seal his argument that that very attempt had threatened her future, the plans he had in place for her.

“A good boy from New England would not marry a slut,” Gardner concluded.

Yes. Yes, it was clear now. He should have known.

“A woman who had been broken into. Used. You understand me, Mumsford?”

He understood him now. He turned to a clean page in his notebook. “I would need to know the beginning,” he said.

“The beginning?” Gardner’s eyes drifted across to the record player.

“Can we start from the beginning, sir?” Mumsford asked quietly.

“The adagio.” Gardner was not listening to him. “Mozart’s clarinet concerto in A.” He was conducting again, lifting his hand when the music arced, lowering it when it descended.

“Sir?” Mumsford tried to rouse him. It was mournful, the music, though he could barely hear it.

“She was a piece of virtue,” he said.

“She?”

“My wife.” His hand fell to his side. “Faithful to me. Pure as driven snow. She died shortly after Virginia was born. Twelve years we are here.”

“A long time,” Mumsford said.

“There is no doubt Virginia . . .”

“Tell me about her, sir.”

“No doubt my daughter. Her mother said she was my daughter.” He glanced at Mumsford as if daring him to contradict him.

Not missing the challenge in the glance, Mumsford said quickly, “Indeed, sir. The commissioner said there is a great resemblance between you two, sir.”

“A virgin when I married her, Inspector. Never been touched. A piece of virtue.”

Afraid he was about to launch into another lecture about virginity, Mumsford interrupted him, but not unkindly. “If you don’t mind, sir, could we start at the other beginning, the time immediately before the incident, sir?”

Gardner rubbed his eyes. The edges of his mouth had hardened, and nothing remained of the slackness that moments ago had caused the skin there to droop so that the lines along his chin had deepened. “They had a cure for the disease when we arrived,” he said abruptly.

It was not the beginning Mumsford wanted, but it was a beginning closer to the present.

“The nuns had left,” Gardner said, “but there were still a few patients. The doctor here was old and tired.”

“Is that why you came, sir?” Mumsford encouraged him.

“What?” Gardner seemed momentarily perplexed.

“Why you came, sir?”

“Yes. It was why I came.”

“And why you stayed, sir?”

“Yes, yes. I came for the lepers and I stayed for the ones who were still here.”

“But I understand, sir, you no longer take care of them.”

“And your understanding is accurate, Inspector,” he said angrily.

The glare from the cold light that shone from Gardner’s eyes forced Mumsford to look down. His remark to Gardner had not been benign. He wanted to know why Gardner was still on the island; why, since he no longer took care of the lepers.

“When you came here,” he began, trying another approach, “did you find Carlos here, sir?”

Gardner pushed back a thin lock of hair that had gotten loose from the elastic band on his ponytail. “He was six,” he said without emotion. “His mother had just died.”

“And his father?” Mumsford fumbled through his notes.

“She was a blue-eyed hag.”

“Sir?”

“His mother. Sylvia. Carlos’s mother. She was a blue-eyed hag,” he repeated.

“Blue-eyed?”

“And that whelp she gave birth to was freckled.”

“She was white, his mother?”

“I said blue-eyed, Inspector.”

“So Carlos is white?”

“Freckled,” Gardner said.

“Half white?” Mumsford asked, straining forward in his chair.

“She didn’t know the father, that hag. But he was a black man.”

“There was more than one?” Mumsford fought the anger rising in him.
Damn mixing of the bloods—the impurities.

“She screwed them all on the island,” Gardner said.

“The lepers?”

Gardner narrowed his eyes. “She birthed a misshapen bastard,” he said.

“Because of the disease?”

“Because of his father’s black blood,” Gardner said.

“So he is deformed?”

“Freckled,” Gardner said again.

Mumsford looked puzzled and then, as if finally making sense of what Gardner had said, he drew in his breath. “Ah,” he said knowingly.

“Freckles all over his body,” Gardner said.

“I’ve heard that happens,” Mumsford said.

Gardner raised his eyebrows.

“When the two bloods meet.”

Gardner’s eyebrows arched higher.

“Sometimes it makes black and brown dots on the white,” Mumsford said.

At first Gardner’s jaw simply dropped and his mouth gaped open. No sound came out of it, and then he was choking, laughing uproariously, kicking up his feet and making scissorlike movements with his legs in the air. “I say, I say . . .” The words came sputtering out of his mouth. “Black and brown dots on the white.” He was fighting for breath. “When the two bloods meet.” Tears streamed down his face. “When the . . .”

Mumsford fiddled with his collar, adjusted the buckle on his belt, and tried to look dignified.

“I mean . . .” Gardner swallowed the cough rising in his throat. “I mean, didn’t they teach you anything about biology in police school, Inspector?” He dried his eyes with the back of his hand.

“We were not training to be doctors, sir,” Mumsford said stiffly.

“The fundamentals. Just the fundamentals, Inspector.”

“I didn’t intend to entertain you, sir.”

“I mean, colored people don’t leave dots on white people. Or stripes, for that matter. A black and a white horse don’t make a zebra, Mumsford.”

“I’m sorry you should find me amusing, sir.”

“No. I suppose it’s not your fault. I suppose I shouldn’t have laughed.” Gardner patted his cheeks dry. “I should beg your pardon. I should apologize.”

“No apology is needed, sir.”

“I suppose you shouldn’t be blamed.”

“A misunderstanding, sir.”