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  Murder Under the Palms

  A Charlotte Graham Mystery

  Stefanie Matteson

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  For Edie,

  who’s always been there

  1

  The feeling struck when they turned into an alleyway leading off the shopping mecca of Worth Avenue, and intensified when the alleyway led them past the cloistered terraces of the old Spanish-colonial-style clubhouse of the exclusive Everglades Club. By the time they turned again, onto the narrow street lined with the columnar trunks of royal palms that overlooked the Everglades’ palm-fringed golf course and caught their first glimpse of the neighborhood of Spanish-colonial homes, Charlotte Graham had begun to experience that wonderfully buoyant sensation that occurs when fantasy takes its place in the seat of reason. When they swung open the ornate black wrought-iron gate that led to the house, she was already starting to fall in love, and by the time they emerged from the walk lined with tall ficus hedges in front of which stood terra-cotta planters of lemon trees heavy with fruit, and into a courtyard that only barely managed to keep the jungle at bay, and looked up at the tower from any of whose spiraling windows Rapunzel might have let her down her golden tresses, Charlotte was fully in love.

  At the foot of the tower was a quaint old wooden door studded with iron nails and set into an arched stone frame flanked by iron-grilled windows. Above the door hung a sign that read: “Château en Espagne” or “Castle in Spain.” Because of the Spanish-style architecture, Charlotte assumed. But why, then, was the sign in French?

  She had never been the kind of person who was attracted to tropical climates. A Connecticut Yankee by birth, she much preferred the vigorous climate of the temperate latitudes, and, in fact, the only other time she had ever fallen in love with a house was when she bought her cottage on a mountainside overlooking a picturesque harbor in Maine. But she was in her seventies now, and had to admit that the warm, salty breeze that wafted off the ocean just a block and a half away felt good to her old bones. Especially this winter, which had been the coldest and harshest in recent memory. Though she hated to admit it, she was also starting to slow down. Maybe not slow down as much as begin to entertain the notion that she might be entitled to a bit of relaxation. It was part of her nature that despite her success, she had never let herself ease up on the iron-willed ambition that had propelled her to the top of her profession. After more than fifty years in front of the cameras and on the stage, one would have thought that her reputation was secure, but in her heart, she had always been an insecure young actress combing the columns of Variety for the next casting call.

  At last she had reached the point in her life where she might feel comfortable resting on her laurels. And laurels there were aplenty: it seemed that a month didn’t go by these days that she wasn’t honored by one organization or another for “lifetime achievement.” Her public had come to regard her in the same way they might an historic building: as a monument to American culture. And, it struck her, as their small group stood in the courtyard soaking up the magical atmosphere, if one were to allow oneself to entertain the notion of resting on one’s laurels, a house like this would be the place to do it.

  “Charming,” said her friend Connie Smith as she stepped up to the cool blue- and green-tiled fountain in the courtyard’s center. She dipped her fingers in the water, and touched them to her forehead. “Utterly charming.”

  The house had the old-world air of a home that had weathered the centuries: with its ochre-colored stucco walls and red barrel-tiled roof, it might have been in old Morocco or on the Côte d’Azur or overlooking a canal in Venice. But the house wasn’t in any of those places. Nor was it old. It was in Palm Beach, Florida, a block from the glittering shops of Worth Avenue, and it had been built in the 1920s, part of the Spanish revival building boom that had turned a sleepy barrier island into a winter playground of the wealthy. Charlotte’s old friend, Connie, who had urged her to take refuge from the cold winter as her guest, had been imploring her for years to buy a house in Palm Beach. But she had never been attracted to the enormous old mansions, mausoleumlike Regency-style monstrosities, or glittering condos that made up most of the Palm Beach housing stock. But this was different: an elegant mansion in miniature, a little Spanish-colonial hideaway.

  Connie had told her that she would love it, and she had been right. Not that it was even on the market. Which put the brakes on any aquisitive inclinations that Charlotte might have been tempted to give into. And it was doubtful there were others like it: even the other houses on the street were much bigger and showier.

  The owner of the house was their dinner host, a man by the name of Paul Feder, a Worth Avenue jeweler, who had been targeted by Marianne Montgomery as her next boyfriend. Marianne was a prominent fashion designer and Connie’s daughter from her first marriage. She was also Charlotte’s goddaughter. It was a relationship that had demanded more of Charlotte than she ever would have expected. Marianne had never been an easy child, and as an adult she was even worse. Charlotte had spent many an hour commiserating with Connie over her daughter’s escapades, most of which involved men, for Marianne was as notorious for her outrageous affairs as she was for her outrageous fashions. Connie and Charlotte may have tallied up three and four marriages respectively, but they had nothing on Marianne, who at plus or minus fifty years old, had been married half a dozen times, most recently, which was seven or eight years ago, to a twenty-year-old Italian prince.

  Marianne was fond of explaining away her numerous romantic liaisons with the excuse that each was a “point of light” on her path to artistic enlightenment: the Egyptian statesmen had inspired her Egyptian collection, the rodeo star her Old West collection, the Russian dancer her Ballet Russe collection, and so on. Paul, who was known for his art deco jewelry designs (he had trained in Paris under the tutelage of Fouquet, one of France’s most prominent art deco jewelry designers), was the latest source of illumination on that heavily trodden path. They had met when Marianne approached him to collaborate with her on a line of jewelry that she planned to feature as part of her new art deco fashion collection.

  The group invited to dine this evening at Château en Espagne was comprised of Charlotte, Marianne, Connie, and Connie’s husband, Spalding Smith. They would be joined by Marianne’s daughter, Dede, who rented the guest house on the property from their host. The occasion was a preview of the jewelry collection, which was to be officially unveiled at a society function the following evening.

  For a few minutes, they lingered in silence in the courtyard, caught in the spell of romantic indolence created by the tranquil violet light of early evening, and the soothing sounds of the water trickling in the fountain and the palms rustling in the soft breeze.

  Then Spalding stepped up to the ancient-looking door, and sounded the heavy wrought-iron knocker.

  It was Paul himself who answered the door. Unlike many of Marianne’s other lovers, who often came from backgrounds vastly disparate from her own (Charlotte in particular remembered the African nationalist, whose influence on Marianne had resulted in half the socialites in New York sporting dashikis one season), Paul seemed eminently suited to the role for which Marianne had singled him out. First, he was the right age: Charlotte guessed him to be around seventy. Rather old, but older was certainly preferable to younger in Marianne’s case, since her tastes in younger men verged dangerously close to the pubescent. He was very tall—six foot three or four—and very handsome, with a strong jaw and a long, aquiline nose, a high forehead and short, curly gray-white hair. The ove
rall impression was one of aristocratic breeding. He had a military bearing, and for a man of his age, was in excellent shape. Though he bore no title, he supposedly came from minor Russian nobility, and was distantly related to the czars. The Russian association was emphasized by his band-collared linen shirt that buttoned, Cossack-style, down the side. He was also rich: his shops in Palm Beach, New York, and Paris were patronized by the wealthy, and were well-known for their fine jewelry designs. Moreover, he and Marianne shared an interest in the world of fashion and design. Charlotte knew that Connie, for one, found him a very suitable mate for her daughter—which was more than she could have said for any the others—and was secretly hoping that her daughter would settle down at last. Charlotte wasn’t ready to place any bets on it.

  After greeting Charlotte’s companions warmly, Paul Feder turned his attention to her. Gazing at her with clear, pale gray, deep-set eyes, he graciously lifted her hand to his lips. “I’m very honored to have you as my guest, madam,” he said, kissing the back of her hand, a gesture which, coming from this dashing gentleman, was as unaffected as a casual wave.

  “The pleasure is all mine, monsieur,” she replied.

  “What brings you to our island paradise?” he asked. “Apart from your visit with Connie and Spalding, that is.”

  “A New York winter,” Connie answered in her friend’s behalf.

  Charlotte nodded in agreement. “I got tired of maneuvering around snowbanks and chipping the ice off my front steps. Actually, I like shoveling snow. But the pleasure wears pretty thin after the twelfth snowstorm.”

  “We’ve been trying to get her down here, but it’s been years since she’s graced us with her presence,” Connie explained. “Though we see her in Newport often enough,” she added, gazing fondly at Charlotte. “She arrived three days ago for an indefinite stay.”

  Charlotte and Connie had met years ago when they both were starting out in Hollywood. But while Charlotte stayed on, Connie had left to marry her first husband and have a family. Apart from a few old movie buffs, few would remember her now. Spalding was her third husband, the scion of a conservative old Rhode Island family. The Smiths divided their time between their oceanfront house in Newport, where Charlotte was a frequent guest, their home in Greenwich, Connecticut, and their place in Palm Beach, where they spent the “season,” which ran roughly from New Year’s Day to Easter.

  “It took the worst winter in twenty years to finally get Charlotte down here,” said Spalding as he shook Paul’s hand. A big man himself, Spalding was nevertheless forced to look up to their host.

  After a few more moments of conversation, Paul ushered them into the foyer, with its beamed ceiling and cool floor of black Spanish tile, and then into the living room. At one end, French doors gave onto a walled swimming pool surrounded by tropical plantings, whose brightness contrasted with the somber, meditative air of the room.

  As she took a seat on the sofa, Charlotte found herself being seduced by the magical atmosphere of the house. The room seemed subterranean, surrounded as it was by the dense vegetation that pushed up against the windows. It was cool and dark, and furnished very simply and sparingly with heavy Spanish-colonial-style furniture.

  Most of all, it was serene. It had the feeling of a medieval cloister. A place of refuge. It was a place where she could easily imagine spending the rest of her days.

  Once everyone was seated, their host poured rum cocktails from a silver pitcher into gleaming antique silver mint julep cups, which were perfectly suited to the mood of the house, and placed them on a tray that he brought around to each of his guests.

  After serving the cocktails, Paul took a seat next to Marianne on a sofa facing the pale stone medieval-style fireplace. Then he removed a cigarette case from his pocket and held it out to Charlotte. “Do you smoke, Miss Graham?” he asked. “I know my other guests don’t.”

  Spalding and Connie shook their heads in acknowledgment, and Marianne looked mildly put out at the attention Paul was playing to Charlotte.

  “Yes, thank you,” Charlotte said, taking a cigarette from the magnificent gold case, which was inlaid with diamonds and enameled with a multicolored art deco sunburst design. She wondered if it was part of the new collection.

  Reaching over, Paul lit her cigarette with his lighter.

  “I’m charmed by your house,” Charlotte said, savoring the smell of the tobacco. Since she smoked only a couple of cigarettes a day, she made the most of them. “What is the significance of the name Château en Espagne? I was puzzled that it was in French, rather than Spanish.”

  Paul nodded as he fitted a cigarette in an ivory holder and placed it between his lips. “It’s a passage from a rondeau written by Charles d’Orleans when he was imprisoned in England,” he explained. “In the fifteenth century.”

  After lighting his cigarette, he proceeded to quote the passage in perfect French, and then in English: “‘All by myself, wrapped in my thoughts. And building castles in Spain and in France.’”

  “In other words, castles in the air,” Charlotte said.

  Paul nodded again. “In fact, the translation in English for ‘Château en Espagne’ is ‘Castle in the Air.’ I don’t know for certain why the person who built the house chose that quote, but I suspect it’s a reference to Mizner.”

  “Mizner?” said Charlotte.

  “Obviously, you haven’t spent much time in Palm Beach.”

  “Addison Mizner,” Connie explained. “Palm Beach’s founding father.”

  “You might call him that,” Paul agreed. “He was the architect who designed this house. He came here in 1918, completely broke, supposedly to die. He struck up a friendship with Paris Singer, the heir to the sewing machine fortune, who had also come here to spend his final days.”

  “He was exhausted by his romance with Isadora Duncan,” offered Marianne, for whom the dancer’s countless love affairs had been a lifelong inspiration.

  “Yes,” said Spalding. “He called her Isa-bore-a-Drunken.” He took a sip of his drink and smiled at Marianne.

  She shot him a dirty look.

  Though Spalding affected a limited tolerance for Marianne’s sexual escapades, Charlotte suspected that this strait-laced, old-fashioned man harbored a secret fascination for his stepdaughter’s antics.

  “Anyway,” Paul continued, “the story goes that, as they sat in their rockers on the porch of the Royal Poinciana Hotel, fanning themselves and waiting to die, they started buiding castles in the air.”

  “In what way?” asked Charlotte.

  “They were seduced by the climate. The climate here is as close to perfection as you can get. It’s moderated by the Gulf Stream, which flows closer to land here than anywhere else on the East Coast. They dreamed of a playground devoted to the pleasures of affluent northerners on their winter holiday.”

  “Let me guess the end of the story,” Charlotte said. “As a result of their dreams, their spirits revived and their health improved and they went on to realize the winter playground that they had envisioned.”

  “Exactly. Hence the name Château en Espagne. With Mizner’s artistic talent and Singer’s money, they created a building boom that didn’t let up until the hurricane of 1926.”

  “What do you call this style, exactly?” asked Charlotte as she looked around the room. She had noticed what seemed to be Spanish, Moorish, and Mediterranean elements.

  “You could just call it Mizneresque. Or you could call it—as they did then—bastard Spanish, Moorish, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, bull market, damn-the-expense style.” Paul smiled.

  “I like that,” said Charlotte.

  “Mizner’s aim was to create the air of antiquity,” Paul went on. “He didn’t really care what brand of antiquity it was, as long as it was antiquity. He liked the sense that a building had been added onto over the centuries by waves of conquerors. He even built factories in West Palm Beach where he manufactured antique reproduction furniture, roof tiles, and iron work.”

&
nbsp; “Is this Mizner furniture?” Charlotte asked, running her hand over the rich, heavy wood of the coffee table. Like the rest of the furniture, it looked as if it had been found in a crumbling European villa.

  Paul nodded. “Beaten with chains to give it that antique look. All of the furniture on the first floor was designed by Mizner specifically for the house. He insisted on it.” He pointed to the vaulted ceiling. “The native cypress ceiling is a Mizner trademark.”

  “It’s called pecky cypress,” Spalding added. “It’s very rare now.”

  Charlotte leaned back to look up at the hand-painted ceiling, and smoked the last of her cigarette. She had the feeling that she too, having come here to escape, was starting to spin dreams. She wondered if other houses like this were available. If she could afford it. If she would be happy here.

  Most of all, she wondered if this feeling would last. It was a lot like a love affair. The question was, would she feel the same in the morning, or was it “just one of those fabulous flings,” to quote a line from one of her favorite Cole Porter songs.

  She almost hoped it was just one of those flings. It would make life easier. Castles in the air took a lot of energy. They were expensive to build, and even more expensive to keep up.

  But then, maybe she was ready for a castle in her life.

  2

  They were discussing Mizner—Paul was saying that his house was unusual in that it was a small Mizner house—when they were interrupted by the arrival of Marianne’s daughter, Dede, who entered through the door from the kitchen in the company of a large German shepherd on a leash, which she stooped down to unhook. Marianne had sometimes been called the ugly daughter of a beautiful mother. With her black hair styled in a severe Cleopatra cut and her geisha-white skin, she was striking, but at the expense of slavish hours to her appearance at the beauty salon. By contrast, her daughter, Dede, was a natural beauty, a throwback to her lovely grandmother, who, with her pale blue eyes and delicate skin, had been considered one of the great beauties of her day.