Chapter Sixteen
A song that was still echoing in my mind six months later when I pulled up to my father’s house, the old man a spectral figure now, lost in grief and intoxication.
He sat in the parlor, the same closed room where we’d placed my brother’s coffin, the smell of funeral flowers still faintly in the air, along with the scent of my father’s whiskey. The drapes had been drawn since Billy’s death. It seemed to me that the shadows in which he sat hour after hour had by then come to possess my father, that he’d chosen to be entombed within them, as dead as his murdered son.
“Any luck, Cal?” he asked wearily.
“Not much.”
“Who’d you talk to?”
I gave him the names of the people I’d spoken with since beginning my search for Dora.
“Preston Forbes?” my father asked. “He wouldn’t be any help.”
“No one was.”
He took a sip of whiskey. “The gods use us for their sport, Cal.”
He seemed to fear that any less mythical speculation might overwhelm him, compel him toward some desolate land where even the classical and biblical references that had anchored him for so long would prove no more than windblown straw.
And so he preferred to focus on the small details of Billy’s death, revisiting them continually.
“There must have been a lot of blood,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Stabbed in the heart. That would explain so much blood.”
Billy had actually been stabbed in the chest, the blade passing smoothly between two ribs, then into the soft tissue of his left lung. He’d pulled the knife out himself, then tossed it across the petal-strewn floor.
“Terrible,” my father muttered.
I saw my brother on his back, eyes open, glaring, a hand lifting toward me, his blood gathered beneath him, so that he seemed to float on a thick red stream.
“Terrible,” my father repeated. He tightened his fingers around the glass. “His eyes were open,” he said as he brought the glass to his lips.
“Yes, they were.”
He lowered his head briefly, then lifted it. “William was high-strung.”
At Billy’s funeral he’d stood stoically in his black suit, his eyes fixed on the granite tombstone as if it were the accuracy of the dates carved upon it that really mattered, the cold precision with which they recorded the all-too-brief circuit of my brother’s life.
“Like his mother.” He pondered this, then added, “Emotional. Dora brought his emotions to a head. He was so taken with her.”
“He didn’t know her.”
His eyes cut toward me, struck by the firmness of my last remark. “Did you know her, Cal?”
In an instant, she was before me, staring at me blazingly, as she had on that last night, I can’t, Cal. I can’t.
“No one knew her, Dad.”
He studied me briefly, his eyes very still. Then he said, “T.R. came by.”
“I thought he might.”
“He said he’d had a word with you this afternoon. He had some questions for you, he said. He didn’t like the answers you gave him.”
“They’ll have to do.”
My father leaned forward unsteadily. “He’s worried about you, Cal. About what you’re doing. Tracking her down. I’m worried too. The way you look. I don’t want to lose another son.”
“I’m going after her,” I said.
“How can you do that, Cal?” He didn’t seem surprised, only doubtful of my success. “You have nothing to go on. No way to find her.”
“I’ll go to New York first,” I told him. “To where she lived before she came here.”
“And do what?”
“Find something maybe. A direction.”
“What if you don’t find one?”
“Then I’ll head west.”
“West,” my father repeated softly. “Because of that book you found.”
“It’s the only lead I have.”
To my relief, my father asked nothing more about my plans. Instead, it was a favor he wanted.
“If you find her, Cal, don’t hurt her. William wouldn’t have wanted you to hurt her.” He took another sip from the tumbler, letting the whiskey’s warmth draw him toward oblivion. “He loved her. Remember that. He loved her with all his heart. He’d expect you to do the right thing.”
In my mind, I saw my brother as he’d faced me at the final moment, heard his one-word question: Cal?
My father lowered his head, his mind churning briefly before it threw up a reference. “She was like Mephistopheles,” he said when he looked up again. “Not always in Hell, but always of it. A born deceiver. A thief. A liar.” His eyes bore into me. “You could smell brimstone in her hair.”
And in mine, I thought.
“Seduced him,” my father muttered bitterly. “Made him fall in love with her. Then stole from him. Stabbed him in the heart.” Something in his mind sparked through the approaching stupor. “T.R. thinks she didn’t do it by herself.”
“He told you that?”
“Thinks she had an accomplice.”
I shifted restlessly, eager now to be on my way.
“He thinks there was another man in Dora’s life,” my father persisted. “Besides William.”
“There was only one man in Dora’s life,” I told him.
“T.R. thinks William might have gotten wind of it. This other man.”
My brother’s question taunted me: Is it you?
My father nodded blearily, giving up on the idea that it would ever be solved, that he would ever know the source of his son’s death, the dark collusion from which it had sprung. “When are you leaving?” he asked.
“Tomorrow morning.”
He made no objection to my going. “I’ll miss you, Cal” was all he said.
It was only a short drive to my mother’s house, the farewell I owed her before my departure.
Emma was surprised when she saw me at the door.
“Is Mother sleeping?” I asked.
Emma waved me inside. “She don’t sleep like she used to. Maybe you can ease her.”
The only one who could ease her, I thought, is dead.
She lay on her back, dressed in a white nightgown, her hair a silver curtain in the lamplight. Her blue eyes fell upon me as I came into her room.
I took her hand. “I’ll be away for a little while,” I told her.
She gazed at me without expression.
“Not too long, I hope,” I added.
She remained entirely motionless, grief like a weight slowly crushing her to death.
“She’s ‘bout stopped talking,” Emma told me. “Mostly just stares out the window. Looking for something.”
Her dead son, I thought. The full substance of her hope and joy.
“Where you headed, Mr. Chase?” Emma asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
My mother’s eyes flared. “Cal?”
I leaned toward her. “I’ll be back soon,” I promised. She struggled to lean forward, ran out of strength, and drifted back. Her lips moved but no sound came. After a time, she closed her eyes. Seconds later they fluttered open again. “William,” she whispered, her eyes fixed upon me. “William loved you, Cal.”
I saw my brother’s eyes as he’d gazed at me in the final moments. “I know,” I said.
“Loved you … Cal,” my mother repeated. I took her hand.
“And you loved him,” my mother added.
I felt something squeeze together deep inside me, like fingers around the handle of a knife.
“You would have saved him if you could,” my mother said. “But I …” She lurched forward, eyes glistening. “I…”
“Try to sleep,” I told her softly.
She drew in a labored breath, offered no resistance as I pressed her back into her pillow.
I left her, locked in silence, a few minutes later, went directly home and packed a valise, intent upon leaving Port Alma as quick
ly as I could. But I found I couldn’t leave without making one more visit. And so, for a little while, I walked through the bare rooms of Dora’s house, careful not to glance at the stain that swept out from the place where my brother’s body had lain. In the bedroom the chair still remained by the window, the pillow propped up against its wooden back, the imprint of her body still pressed into it, a ghostly form that gave no sign of where she’d fled.
When I’d had enough, I walked to my car and drove to my house. For a few minutes, I paced about my study, sometimes halting to peer at one of my drawings, follow a sketched wall across a frozen field. Then I poured myself a final drink, knocked it back pleasurelessly. I could feel nothing but the tumult of the past few weeks, could conceive of nothing beyond them but my search for Dora. For a moment, I felt myself shrink to a tiny, aching center of anger and regret. I saw my brother’s body, splattered with blood. And Dora, pale and unsmiling, her eyes upon me as fiercely as they’d been at our last meeting, her words no less virulent: We can’t do this.
At first light, I strode to my car and tossed my valise into the seat behind me. As I pulled away from my house, it seemed fitting that I was traveling light, stripped of everything but a few clothes and some money, the book Dora had left behind, along with the only purpose left to me now, an order endlessly repeated in my mind: Find her.
The snow had stopped and a clear blue sky hung above me as I drove out of Port Alma, noting the seawall where Billy and I had spent so many hours, the stone jetty we’d run along as boys, he forever in the lead, always happiest, it seemed to me now, at its very edge. I saw him in his final moments, sprawled across the wooden floor, his eyes growing dim as they stared wonderingly into mine, his question carried on a faint breath: Cal?
My answer had sounded only in my mind.
Because there’s something you don’t know.
Part Four
Chapter Seventeen
In New York, I found a hotel just off Broadway. It was small and intimate, its lobby adorned with plaster statues of Greek figures and lit by a modest chandelier. It was the sort of place where assignations no doubt took place, and there might have been a time when I could have imagined Dora and me meeting here, deciding what to do, how to do it, finding a way that did not end in murder.
“Sir?”
I looked up, realized that I’d drifted once more into a grim meditation. “What?” I answered.
The man behind the desk eyed me suspiciously, as if I were the one in flight, leaving bloody tracks across the pale blue carpet.
“Our dining room is to the right,” he said. “Will you be dining with us this evening?”
I was tired and hungry, but the lash struck again: Find her.
“No, I won’t,” I replied, took the key from his hand, and went directly to my room.
The room was spare, with nothing but a bed and small bureau, a worn carpet on the floor. I locked the door behind me, then walked to the window and looked down at the street. A dirty snow lined the gutter, blackened by soot and car exhaust, people slogging through it, clutching bags, packages, the collars of their coats, the wind forever howling at their backs. In every face I searched for Dora’s.
The Tremont Residence Hall for Women was only a block away. It was an ugly brick building, five stories high, with a spacious vestibule furnished with two sofas and a few tables and chairs. Potted plants stood here and there, along with reading lamps at almost every chair. It looked like the student lounges I remembered from my college days.
The man who approached me was short and stocky, with the cauliflower ears of an ex-prizefighter and a body that rolled toward me heavily, like a cannon ball. He introduced himself as Ralph Waters, and although he offered a friendly smile, his gaze remained steely, full of silent warning. Here was the guardian of women against the dark obsession of disordered men.
“Is there something I can do for you?”
I told him my name, where I’d come from, and that I wanted to see the woman who ran Tremont Hall.
“I believe her name is Cameron,” I added.
“Mrs. Posy Cameron,” Waters said respectfully, as if her married status were a royal title. “She’ll want to know what this is about.”
“Tell her it’s about a young woman who once lived here.”
One eyebrow arched. “And that would be?”
“Dora March.”
The name registered in his eyes, but Waters said nothing of what it had sparked in his mind. Instead, he pointed to a wooden bench nearby. “Have a seat,” he said, almost as a policeman would address a felon, my appearance perhaps so changed since my brother’s death and Dora’s flight that I now gave off a criminal air.
At the bench, I watched as Waters headed toward the back of the building. He knocked at a closed door, then stepped inside.
While I waited, the residents of Tremont House came and went. Most of them were in their twenties. They glanced at me furtively as they passed, somewhat fearfully, so that I felt like a wolf among them, grim and predatory, a creature they should, at all cost, avoid.
Posy Cameron appeared a few minutes later. She was in her sixties, I supposed, a small but imposing woman, who dressed with a clear eye to modesty. Even from a distance, she gave off a no-nonsense authority, which, along with the look of command she offered the young women who greeted her as she made her way across the room, reminded me of Maggie Flynn, the sort of woman for whom young women felt, in equal measure, a daughter’s trust and fear.
I rose as she came up to me.
“Mr. Chase?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She seemed to glimpse the grave task I’d set myself.
“Perhaps we should speak privately,” she said, then led me into a small, uncluttered office, its walls lined with neatly arranged shelves and cabinets. There was nothing on her desk but a notepad, a telephone, and a few pencils, all carefully lined up along one side. A photograph of President Roosevelt hung in a large wooden frame on the wall behind her, his jaunty grin determinedly at odds with the gloomy state of things.
“Please, sit down,” Mrs. Cameron said. She lowered herself into the plain wooden chair behind her desk. “This is about Dora March, I understand?”
“Yes, it is.”
“You’re not the first person who’s made inquiries about Miss Dora March,” Mrs. Cameron told me. “Another man came by some months ago. He was also from Maine, as I recall. He said he worked for the district attorney.”
“So do I,” I told her, the lie tripping from my mouth as easily as the truth.
“Doing what?”
“Looking for Dora March.”
“Has something happened to Dora?”
“Not just to Dora.”
“Well, the other man only asked questions about Dora,” Mrs. Cameron said. “He didn’t mention anyone else. Any other problem. I take it the information I gave him was not enough.”
“At the time, it was.”
“But now you need more?”
I saw my brother stumble backward, his eyes wide, unbelieving, no doubt astonished, in his last instant, that his love could end this way.
“Since then there’s been a murder,” I said.
“A murder?” Mrs. Cameron asked unbelievingly. “And you think Dora had something to do with it?”
“She was the last person to see the victim alive.” I kept my voice steady, gave no hint of what the words themselves summoned up in me.
“A man was killed,” I said. He returned to me in all his splendor, first as a boy rolling in the grass, then a young man singing duets with our mother, and finally as I’d seen him in his last hours, emboldened by romantic certainty, a man of diamond purity, a heart swelled with romance. “He loved her,” I added softly.
“Loved Dora?” Mrs. Cameron asked.
I saw them together on the old wooden bridge that spanned Fox Creek. “Yes,” I said.
Mrs. Cameron nodded. “I see.” She studied me like one waiting for the pool to clear, ca
tch a view of its dark bottom. “What makes you think Dora had something to do with this man’s death?”
“She fled the scene,” I answered in what was left of my official voice. “That’s why I’m looking for her.”
Mrs. Cameron continued to watch me warily, perhaps suspecting the very motive I labored to conceal. I took out a notepad, hoping it would give me a purely dispassionate appearance, suggest that I was just a man doing his job, with only the faintest connection to the one he sought.
“You told Mr. Stout, the other man, that Dora March stayed here only around a month,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Do you know where she came from?”
“No.”
“Did she make any friends in the residence?” “Not that I know of. She kept very much to herself.”
“You never saw her with anyone?”
“No,” Mrs. Cameron said. “She always seemed rather distant, Mr. Chase. I had the feeling that she really didn’t want to have any sort of relationship. That she preferred being alone.”
I saw Dora rise from the moist ground, brush the sand from her dress, then stretch her hand toward me.
“I don’t think she wanted to be alone,” I said before I could stop myself.
Mrs. Cameron looked as if I’d suddenly confirmed a faint suspicion. “So you knew Dora?”
My own voice sounded in my mind: Don’t go, Dora. Not yet. Please.
“Yes, I knew her.”
Mrs. Cameron’s eyes were two small, probing lights.
“A little,” I added, then glanced down at my notebook, away from Posy Cameron’s penetrating gaze. “Do you know why she left New York so suddenly?”
“No,” Mrs. Cameron answered. “She didn’t say a thing to me about it. But I had the impression that the city disturbed her. The crowds. The noise.”
My question: What do you want, Dora?