Murder at Teatime Read online

  She spoke as if there were an exclamation point after every other word. Charlotte was amused by the fact that her affectedly stagy speech had become more pronounced with time, like the British expatriates whose Mayfair accents become more clipped the longer they spend on American soil.

  “The locals call her a witch,” said Stan, reaching for a jar of marmalade. “Next thing you know they’ll be calling you a witch, too.”

  “A white witch. Like Glenda, the good witch of the east.”

  Charlotte smiled as Stan slathered a muffin with a quarter-inch of marmalade while Kitty looked on in mute disapproval. It looked as if Kitty’s prohibition against sugar, like that against alcohol, was honored more in the breach than in the observance.

  “Does she sell herbal remedies too?” asked Charlotte. “I should think that would be against the law.”

  “It is. Practicing medicine without a license. Besides, it’s dangerous—a lot of herbs are poisons. In small doses, they have therapeutic effects, but in large doses they can be deadly. ‘What can kill, can cure,’ goes the saying. For instance, the herb I’m using for Stan’s rheumatism …”

  “See what I told you?” interrupted Stan. “Watch out, or she’ll be experimenting on you next.”

  “Oh hush,” continued Kitty, unfazed. “I’ve learned a lot from Frank. He wrote the classic reference book on herbal remedies, The Living Pharmacy. He teaches economic botany at Harvard, or used to. He’s cut back on his course load a lot in recent years because of his health.”

  “Pompous old fart if you ask me,” commented Stan.

  “We didn’t ask you,” chided Kitty. She turned to Charlotte. “He’s dying to meet you. He says he’s a fan.”

  “He sits all day in his library gloating over his rare books,” continued Stan. “Wears white gloves so he won’t get fingerprints on the pages.”

  “For your information, Stanton Saunders, he has one of the finest collections of rare botanical books in the country. He’s very charming,” Kitty went on, ignoring her husband. “Fran would like to meet you too. They’ve invited us over for cocktails this evening. Fran and I have planned something special. I hope you’ll want to go.”

  “Of course,” replied Charlotte. She didn’t want to disappoint Kitty. Besides, she could hardly pick and choose among the social activities on this little island. She was about to ask Kitty more about the Thornhills, when there was a knock on the kitchen door.

  The visitor was Howard Tracey, the Bridge Harbor chief of police. Because the tide was up he’d taken the police launch over from town, and docked it at the Saunders’ wharf.

  As a police chief, Charlotte thought, he wasn’t very convincing, but then Bridge Harbor wasn’t East Harlem. He had a round, boyish face that was shaded by the visor of a baseball cap. A badge was pinned to his windbreaker.

  Although Stan didn’t introduce her—he had long ago learned that she preferred anonymity—she found Tracey studying her intently.

  “Pardon me, ma’am,” he said tentatively, “I hope you won’t think me out of place if I say you’re the spitting image of the movie star Charlotte Graham.”

  Charlotte smiled. She was used to being mistaken for herself by fans who couldn’t quite believe she was for real. She was about to explain, when she caught the twinkle in his mild blue eyes.

  She threw back her head and laughed. “You’re putting me on,” she said delightedly in her famous voice, which was at once both soft and husky.

  “We’ve been expecting you,” said Tracey. He removed his hat, and crossed the room to shake Charlotte’s hand. “The Bridge Harbor Light ran an item that you’d be staying with the Saunders.” He extended his hand and smiled broadly.

  Leave it to Kitty to blab. But no harm done. She returned his handshake, smiling at him warmly with her large, pale gray eyes.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee, Chief?” asked Stan, inviting him to join them at the kitchen table. “We also have some of my wife’s herb tea,” he added with an expression of distaste.

  “Coffee’s fine, thanks,” replied Tracey, taking a seat.

  “What brings you over here?” asked Stan as he poured out another mug. “I don’t imagine you crossed the channel just for a cup of coffee.”

  “Can’t say that I did,” replied Tracey. “It’s Jesse, Dr. Thornhill’s dog.” He looked over at Charlotte. “I heard about how you found him on the Ledges.”

  Charlotte nodded.

  “Dr. Thornhill called me about him last night,” Tracey continued. “He thinks he was poisoned.”

  “Charlotte thought the same thing,” said Kitty. “Do you think it might have to do with the development?”

  “What development?” asked Charlotte.

  “The Chartwell Corporation’s planning to build a big resort out here,” explained Tracey. “Biggest on the New England coast. The Bridge Harbor Resort Hotel—hotel, condos, golf course, conference center, nightclub—you name it.” He spoke with a thick Maine accent in which “harbor” came out haba.

  Charlotte was familiar with the name—the biggest builder of resort complexes and theme parks in the country. “Where?” she asked.

  “The hotel would go on the site of Ledge House,” explained Stan. “The condos and golf course would go out on the east end, near the Donahues’ place.”

  What would happen to the Ledges? Charlotte wondered. The image passed through her mind of armies of camera-toting tourists littering its beautiful terraces with cigarette butts and soda cans.

  “They’re planning to build a causeway where the bar is,” added Kitty. She turned to Tracey. “About Jesse, poor thing. Do you think those dreadful CCC people have been causing trouble again?”

  Tracey frowned. “Maybe.”

  Charlotte was baffled. “CCC?” she asked.

  “Citizens for the Chartwell Corporation,” explained Stan. “They’d like to see the town get the jobs. The county’s got the highest unemployment rate in the State. Chartwell says the hotel alone will create four hundred jobs.”

  “They’ve been causing trouble up at Ledge House, or at least someone has,” Tracey said. “Last week somebody put a bullet through one of the library windows, and let the air out of the tires of the Ledge House jeep. Poison-pen letters too, some of them pretty vicious …”

  “Dr. Thornhills against the development?” interjected Charlotte.

  “Dead against it,” said Tracey.

  “I don’t get it,” said Charlotte. “If he owns the site that’s been proposed for the development, why is it even being considered?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Stan. “The development scheme was cooked up by Frank’s son-in-law, Chuck Donahue. An insurance broker from Boston. He’s got some connection with the Chartwell Corporation. He’s got about a hundred acres or so out on the east end that he’s anxious to unload. He’s in the deal with our neighbor, Wes Gilley, who’s also got a hundred acres or so.”

  “They’ve been putting the pressure on Frank to go along with them, but so far it hasn’t worked,” said Kitty.

  “They’re hoping he’ll croak,” said Stan.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, the professor’s getting up there,” explained Tracey. “He’s still pretty vigorous, but he’s got a bad heart, and the odds are he’s not going to be around much longer. They’re figuring he’ll leave the place to Marion, Chuck’s wife. She’ll be able to do what she wants with it.”

  “Like sell out to Chartwell.”

  “Or some other developer,” said Tracey. “The island’s a choice piece of real estate. Chartwell’s not the only one with their eye on it.”

  Stan got up to refill their coffee mugs. Charlotte wondered where he and Kitty stood on the issue. On Thornhill’s side, no doubt.

  “The trouble is, it’s hard for me to keep an eye on things out here,” Tracey continued. “I haven’t got the staff to put a man out here full time. Of course, if there was someone responsible staying out here who would be willing to k
eep an eye on things for me …”

  Charlotte smiled, amused at the New England way of doing business. The subject at hand was always dealt with indirectly, as if it would be bad manners to actually come to the point. There was a charming formality to it that harked back to the courtliness of an earlier era.

  She looked over Tracey, only to find him looking right back at her—much to her surprise. She thought he had been appealing to Stan and Kitty.

  “I know you’ve had some experience at police work,” he continued, a twinkle in his eye. “I’ve read Murder at the Morosco. I’m a bit of a crime buff, you see. I’ll read anything that has to do with detection.”

  Two years before, Charlotte had helped solve the sensational murder of her co-star in The Trouble With Murder. A young reporter for a New York magazine had done an article on the case, which he had later expanded into a book. Called Murder at the Morosco, it had been a best seller.

  “That was a little different,” she said with a rueful smile. “I was directly involved.” She had shot Geoffrey on opening night during the murder scene, with a bullet that the murderer had planted in a stage prop.

  “It must have been a surprise,” said Tracey with Yankee understatement.

  “It was,” she replied, remembering her astonishment at seeing real blood oozing from the wound. She’d suspected all along that it was Geoffrey’s lover who’d tampered with the gun, but it had taken her weeks to gather the evidence that had cleared her of suspicion, and put him behind bars.

  “One question,” said Charlotte. “Do Wes Gilley and Chuck Donahue have anything to do with the CCC?”

  Tracey nodded.

  “They founded it,” said Stan.

  It was an ugly situation, Thornhill’s son-in-law and his neighbor inciting the community against him. She made a mental note to find out more about Gilley from Stan and Kitty.

  “How are relations between Donahue and Dr. Thornhill?”

  “Not as bad as you might think,” replied Tracey, taking a sip of coffee. “The Professor thinks the world of Marion. He didn’t approve when she decided to marry Chuck. She had a promising career as a concert pianist, just like her mother. I guess he figured an early marriage would put an end to it.”

  “Did it?”

  “Ayuh. Though she still gives piano lessons, I think. He still doesn’t approve of Chuck, especially since the Chartwell business. But he tries to keep relations cordial, on the face of it anyways. For the sake of Marion and the boy, Kevin. The other boy died in an accident a couple of years ago.”

  “I’d be happy to do anything I can,” said Charlotte. For a Mainer, Tracey had actually been quite direct, she thought. He hadn’t even prefaced his request with a commentary on the weather.

  “Thanks,” replied Tracey. He withdrew a business card from his wallet and passed it across the table to her. “It won’t be much of a bother—just a matter of calling the station to report anything out of the ordinary.”

  Charlotte nodded.

  Tracey drank the rest of his coffee, and rose to leave. “We’re mighty pleased to have someone of your stature visiting Bridge Harbor, Miss Graham,” he said, tipping his baseball cap. “Kind of puts the town on the map.”

  Charlotte smiled. It isn’t difficult for one actor to recognize another, and in Tracey she spotted an amateur who took as much delight in his role of country police chief as she did in hers as movie queen.

  But she knew he wasn’t the least bit starstruck by her fame. She also knew he was a lot shrewder than he made himself out to be.

  Once the fog had burned off, it turned out to be a beautiful day—cool, crisp, and clear, with puffy white clouds floating in a sky of lapis blue. While Kitty puttered around the house and Stan worked in his studio—he had a show coming up in Boston—Charlotte explored the neighborhood, if that’s what you’d call it. Her first destination was the cove, where she sat on a driftwood log on the shingle beach, watching the sailboats slide across the pale blue water and inhaling the fragrance of wild roses and rock weed, which mingled deliciously with that of the wood smoke from the cook-stove. Now that the fog had lifted, she could see the sprawling mansions on the opposite shore, whose owners, the great industrial and banking figures of the Gilded Age, had referred to in mock humility as “cottages.” Although the stretch of shoreline was still known as Millionaires Row, most of the larger houses were no longer in private hands. Too costly to maintain, they had been donated to charity or converted into hotels or rest homes. But Bridge Harbor still maintained its reputation as the unpretentious summer hideaway of the country’s oldest, wealthiest, and most influential families, and it was no doubt this cachet that the developers of the Bridge Harbor Resort Hotel were hoping to cash in on for their honeymoon-and-golf resort. Which was how she thought of it, like the honeymoon-and-golf islands off the coast of Scotland.

  From the cove, she followed a marshy path lined by buttercups and elderberry bushes back to the road. Once it passed the Gilley homestead—or rather junkyard, since the area where a yard might have been was littered with rusted-out junk—the road petered out into a wooded track that ran along the north shore of the island, high above the water. For a while she sat on a mossy promontory, chewing on the leaves of the wintergreen plants that grew under the firs, and watching a fat raccoon on the rocks below placidly gorge himself on mussels, deftly washing and opening each shell. She returned for a lobster-roll lunch with Stan and Kitty on the patio. Then she took a nap.

  A minute world of pure perfection.

  Late that afternoon Charlotte and Kitty headed up to Ledge House for cocktails. Charlotte was already familiar with the route, having followed it from the top of the Ledges the day before. The Gilley Road, as the road leading to the Saunders’ house was called, crossed open fields, now grown up to wild roses and scrub. Just past the Saunders’ house was an old family cemetery, neatly demarcated by an iron fence and studded with the weathered gravestones of the island’s settlers. Beyond the fields lay the sea, now a deep turquoise in the late afternoon light. As they walked Kitty stopped to fill a pillowcase with wild rose petals. The rose petals were an ingredient in the Ledge House potpourri, one of the most popular of the mail-order herb products. Leave it to Kitty to find an outlet for her boundless energy even on this sparsely populated island, thought Charlotte as she watched Kitty shake rose petals into the pillowcase. For forty years Charlotte had looked on as Kitty flitted from project to project with all the fickleness of a child at an amusement park. Rarely did she stick with a new enthusiasm long enough to accomplish anything. How different the story of her life might have been if all the enthusiasm she had frittered away on her various projects could have been channeled in one direction. Over the years Charlotte had often wondered why she and Kitty had remained friends; they were so different. She had concluded it was because Kitty reminded her of her mother, a gushing lover of ruffles and costume jewelry, whose childlike enthusiasm for the stage had propelled Charlotte into her career.

  At the end of the Gilley Road they turned onto the island’s main road. Facetiously named Broadway, it ran from the point where the bar joined the island uphill along the south shore to Ledge House and out to the Donahues’ on the east end. Looking out over the blanket of roses, Charlotte could see the bar, which had emerged from the receding waters of the channel like the spine of a giant sea monster. As they turned onto Broadway her thoughts were interrupted by the chugging of a motorboat hidden behind the cliffs of the south shore. The sound was followed momentarily by the appearance of the boat itself, a battered old lobster boat skippered by a beer-bellied lobsterman who lifted his hand from the helm in a solemn greeting. He was accompanied by a young brown-haired girl, who waved at Kitty with a big smile.

  “Wes Gilley and Tammy,” said Kitty, waving back as the boat drew up to one of the buoys that marked the underwater location of the lobster pots.

  Seeing Gilley reminded Charlotte that she had meant to ask Kitty about her neighbor. From the looks of his hous
e, the money that he stood to make from the development would come in handy. But looks could be deceiving. The Maine lobsterman had a reputation for being as eager to exaggerate his poverty as the Texan is to exaggerate his wealth. If he worked at it, the lobsterman could make a good living. The question was whether Gilley worked at it.

  “Were the Gilleys the original settlers of the island?” she asked, adopting the local practice of taking the indirect approach.

  “Yes,” Kitty replied. “A Gilley settled the island in the late seventeenth century. He was an Englishman, a naval officer I think. The story goes that he bought the island from the Indians for two quarts of rum.”

  “Cheaper than Manhattan Island,” observed Charlotte.

  Kitty smiled. “The old Gilley place used to stand on the site of Ledge House. It burned down years ago. Now all the Gilley Island Gilleys live in town, except for Wes and Virgie. It’s hard for them, but they make ends meet.”

  “Do you think Gilley had anything to do with the trouble at Ledge House?” she asked, finally getting around to the subject.

  “That’s what Stan thinks,” Kitty replied, adjusting the flowered headband that was color-coordinated with her pink sweater. “But I don’t believe it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I know he looks like a derelict, but he’s really a dear. He’s always bringing us something: lobsters, firewood, homemade jelly. Generous as the day is long. His family’s lovely, too. Virgie’s just as sweet as can be, and the children are adorable. Tammy and Kim are over at our house all the time.”

  Spotting another rosebush, Kitty ran off to collect more petals, leaving Charlotte to picture Wes without the benefit of her friend’s rose-colored glasses. Had what she said meant that Wes really was Mr. Niceguy? or only that she wanted him to be? With Kitty, it was often hard to tell the difference.

  “Charlotte, you should see the way they live,” Kitty continued, rejoining her. “They don’t even have indoor plumbing, much less television. That’s why the girls come over, to watch TV. You should have seen what they got for Christmas last year. It was pathetic. I wanted to give them some presents, but Stan said it would be showing up their parents. I suppose he was right, but I gave them a little something anyway.”