Cat With a Fiddle (9781101578902) Read online

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. I . . . I don’t know what I mean about Willy. It’s just . . . all . . . sad. All of it. It just would be him to get—”

  “To get killed,” Miranda said bitterly.

  “I feel so responsible,” Mat said. “When he called to say he was on the way up here, I could’ve said no. I could’ve told him we had a full house up here. But I let him have his way.”

  “Like most of us,” Beth said.

  Mat nodded. “Yes. I guess nobody ever put the brakes on under him. Maybe he’d be alive if—”

  “And maybe another one of us would have been in that barn last night—or somewhere else on the grounds,” Ben protested. “Would it make you feel any better if one of the girls were lying dead now?”

  For a few moments, no one spoke.

  “I think this little wake has had it,” Darcy said at last. “I’d just as soon not dwell on any of us lying dead anywhere.” She got to her feet and the others began to follow suit.

  It was only then that anyone seemed to acknowledge that I was in the room. Beth called out to me, “Alice, you can sleep in the room next to me. Do you know the way?”

  They were all moving so slowly, shuffling, half-asleep. I don’t think anyone even heard me when I answered, “I’ll find it. Thanks.”

  Chapter 3

  I thought I was dreaming. I heard choking sounds. Mournful sounds. Terrible, heartbroken sighs.

  They were all real. I wasn’t dreaming.

  My room was cold, and almost punitively small in relation to the other bedrooms. Perhaps long ago a child’s nurse had used the room, or an au pair.

  I knew from the purplish quality of the dark that the sun would be up soon. I got out of bed and walked soundlessly over to the door that connected my room to Beth’s. Yes, it was she who was crying. When the weeping went on with no sign of stopping, I decided to go in.

  I knocked a few times, not knowing whether she could hear me, and then opened the door. Beth sat up in the four-poster bed. She was red-eyed, and the white comforter was littered with mint-green Kleenex.

  “Beth? Beth, is there anything I can do for you?” I approached the bed gingerly, knowing I was meddling. But as soon as I sat next to her, she fell into my arms and wept until the tears were all gone.

  “Thanks, Alice. Please forgive me for carrying on like this.”

  “No need to apologize. You’ve lost someone close.”

  “Yes. But it isn’t just Will I’m upset about. Just about everything in my life seems to be falling apart at the moment.”

  I waited, asking nothing, while she blew her nose one final time.

  “I told you about the debacle with the Europe thing. Well, I think it did much more damage than we even knew. Mat thought that coming up here was a way to heal us, but I think it’s ripping us apart. Maybe for the first time ever, we’re taking a look at each other—and not liking what we see.”

  “Does this have anything to do with Miranda’s sniping earlier?” I asked.

  “Sure. Even on a good day she’s got a pretty sharp tongue. But she’s been lashing out, just mad at the world these last few days. I think it’s like Roz said: she’s scared, too.” Beth balled up one of the tissues and sent it flying across the room. “Score another one for Roz,” she said, her mouth a little awry.

  “Why is everybody so scared? Bad reviews are inevitable. As inevitable as falling out and bickering among friends. You’ve been together for years. Surely this isn’t your first disappointment?”

  “No. Well, no and yes. We’ve worked like dogs to make it in the music world. I don’t know whether it’s true or not that we had to be twice as good as a group of men. But we decided we’d better be. Of course, not everything turned out just the way we wanted it, but we’ve had great luck—with audiences, with critics, money, the whole thing.

  “And we have Mat to thank for everything. He may be a bit of a stick sometimes, but we owe everything to him. In fact, I wonder if it would be harder on him than anyone else if . . . if . . . something happened to us.”

  “Something like what, Beth?”

  She shook her head, as if to clear it of awful thoughts. “I don’t know. I guess I’m making things even worse than they are, Alice. It’s like I said: things are just coming unwrapped. And I miss Will. He’s not even gone a day, and I miss him already. I never felt lonely when he was around.”

  New shadows fell across her face. “It’s like some kind of morbid preview of what’s to come. Do you know what I mean? Have you ever felt you were really down in a hole—maybe the worst place you’d ever been—but you knew the bad stuff wasn’t over yet? There was something even worse right around the corner?”

  I gave her bleak question, with all its mixed metaphors, some thought. But not much.

  “Look, Beth, you should try to get some sleep.”

  “Can’t,” she said simply.

  “Why don’t I look around the kitchen for some tea, something herbal to help you”—I almost said “relax”—“to help you sleep.”

  She shrugged. I headed back to my room to get a robe.

  “Sorry, Alice,” I heard come floating toward me. I turned back to her. “Sorry we’re ruining your vacation,” she said.

  I groped around for a minute before locating the kitchen light switch. The lights popped on and I gasped, startled by the sudden movement all around me. I guess I must have been expecting Mrs. Wallace to be standing there with a meat cleaver.

  What I saw was considerably more benign. All around me were plump, tufted, adorable little brown field mice—on top of the cabinets, on the counters, playing games in the toaster.

  Where on earth was Lulu, the cat? This was her whole excuse for joining the party. The mice scurried off and I found the kettle and the tea bags.

  I located a tray as well, and I was balancing it carefully as I started back up the stairs. I got another scare when I heard someone ask sharply from the gloom of the living room: “Who is that?”

  I recognized Miranda Bly’s low, whiskey voice.

  “It’s Alice Nestleton.”

  “Oh. What’s going on?” she asked wearily.

  “Nothing really. Beth’s having a bad night, and I’m just bringing her some tea.”

  “Are you now?” Her mocking laughter sounded hollow in the empty room.

  “Listen, um . . . Alice,” she said haltingly, “would you come in here for just a minute?”

  I set the tray down in the hallway and joined her.

  She didn’t switch on the lamp, and didn’t have to, because the first light of day had started rolling through the room.

  “I really should apologize to you, you know,” Miranda said. “I’ve been filthy to you, and just want you to know I know I have.”

  “Stressful times,” I answered. “It’s all right.”

  “Well, thank you for understanding,” She lit a cigarette and picked up a cut-glass tumbler, containing, I guessed, Scotch. Clearly, she was drunk.

  “So, Alice, do tell, what has Beeswax been telling you to enlist your sympathy? Still playing the sensitive wallflower?”

  “I’m not sure what she’s playing, Miranda. Or even that she’s playing at all. But then, I don’t know Beth very well. We’re just friendly acquaintances. As you said earlier, I’m her cat person.”

  “Then let me assure you that she most certainly is playing—at something or other.” Miranda ran her left hand through her lushly waved hair. I hadn’t paid much attention during all the unhappiness of the evening, but she, too, was a beauty, in her way. Her face was pale and moon-shaped and slightly pitted, and she was the only member of the group who was starting to look her age. Hers was the strange, graying beauty of a Lotte Lenya. And her stark black leotard made her appearance all the more arresting. “Well,” I answered care
fully, “of course you’d know better than I, but her grief over Will’s murder seems completely genuine to me. She’s very, very upset.”

  “When you get to know her better, you’ll realize she’d lie about the temperature. She simply doesn’t know what the truth is, that girl. And there’s no more truth in her grief than there is in her playing.”

  “But why wouldn’t Beth be as sorry about the murder as the rest of you?”

  “Because, Alice Armchair, she threatened to kill him herself.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What’s the matter—didn’t you hear me? It’s true, I tell you. Will had a great sense of play. He played with life. He played with people. And as of late he’d been playing with her.”

  “Beth was having an affair with him, you mean.”

  Miranda laughed again, heartlessly. “You might call it that. But from his end of it, they were having something a sight more vulgar than that. I suppose she thought it wasn’t high-minded enough, and she wanted something more from him.”

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, for godsakes, how should I know what Beth wants from a man? I just know they’d been having it off ever since he arrived up here. And then the shit hit the fan. I was passing by one of their little trysting places—that shed near the creek—only two days ago. I supposed they’d just done it and were having a row. At any rate, I heard her call him a few names I never expected that little twit to know. They were actually physically fighting in there—throwing things at each other. And when she stormed out, I distinctly heard her say she wanted to kill him.”

  “I see,” I replied after a moment. “Are you sure it wasn’t the kind of thing anyone might say in the heat of a terrible argument? What makes you take it so literally in Beth’s case?”

  “Because . . . when little worms turn, they turn with a vengeance. Second-rate, jealous-hearted little worms in particular.”

  I sat for just another minute before rising from my chair. “I think I’d better turn in now, Miranda,” I said. “You should sleep, too.”

  As I suspected, Beth had fallen asleep. She was curled up tightly, as if defending herself from those other blows the world was about to deal her. I saw a ball of shredded tissue in her fist.

  And I’d thought I was tired before.

  Miranda Bly had an iron knot of resentment and contempt inside her. Would she make up a story like the one she’d told me? How was I to know? If there was any truth to it, the police had to be told—if there was any truth to it. And how was I to know that?

  It would mean shedding my passive observer role, delving, snooping, opening up who knew how many cans of worms. But I would know.

  And I wondered how Ford would feel about that.

  Chapter 4

  I believe it was Saint Augustine who said that all creatures become depressed after making love. But before that bittersweet mood sets in, after the so-called little death, there is first a feeling of complete discombobulation, isn’t there? I had recently spent a wonderful, unplanned weekend with someone, and it wasn’t until we were parting—reluctantly, regretfully, late Sunday evening—that I recalled how little I actually liked him.

  That was the kind of disorientation written on the faces of the temporary residents of the Covington Center for the Arts that morning after Will Gryder’s murder. We’d all slept late.

  In ones and twos they came down the stairs and groped for coffee from the huge urn Mrs. Wallace had set up in the dining room. Everyone took a turn casting a furtive glance at the uniformed officer ambling around the grounds. Eventually everyone began to talk, but not really to one another. Then the fog began to lift from everyone’s mind, but there was still no real eye contact being made. Yet, oddly, the members of the group seemed composed. Each was civil, each had dressed himself or herself carefully enough. It was as though all were fighting to remain in control.

  I sat alone in one of the dim little alcoves that seemed to be ubiquitous throughout the enormous house. Well, I wasn’t utterly alone: I was having a conversation with Lulu the cat. I had already told her that, quite frankly, she’d better get cracking, or the field mice were going to destroy her reputation, and forever besmirch the reputation of Scottish Folds everywhere. Lulu seemed not at all concerned about that, curled up and alternately snoozing and purring in my lap.

  I could hear disjointed snatches of conversation from the nearby dining room. There was a bit of gallows humor: some speculation about what would happen to Will’s splendid six-room, rent-controlled apartment between Columbus and Central Park West. Then I heard Ben Polikoff’s grave voice say that if some thief had murdered Will for the cash in his pockets, then everyone had better be doubly careful because, after all, there were literally hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of musical instruments in the house—Roz’s violin being particularly valuable.

  When I went in to join them, I was startled by their weird mixture of lethargy and tension. Everyone managed a friendly greeting for me, Except Miranda, whose stuporous silence seemed more the telltale sign of a hangover than of any rancor she may have been feeling toward me. I still had Lulu in my arms. It gave me something to hold on to.

  It had been drizzling all morning, but the rain wasn’t cold. Then, around eleven, the sun came out and the air grew unexpectedly sweet and warm. The ground outside was thawing into muddy slush as water from the leaves of the mighty chestnut dripped down.

  Mrs. Wallace kept gamely trying to interest us in brunch. What was our pleasure? Fresh muffins? Eggs? Pasta? Quiche? But there were no takers. Grumbling, she folded her apron and went about her chores outside.

  Darcy, in a close-fitting T-shirt and black jeans which showed off her marvelous little figure, engaged me in a brief conversation about Al Pacino, her favorite actor, and about the theater in general and my own career. But our chat quickly petered out. I suppose she was just trying to make me feel a little more at ease.

  A few minutes later Ben rose from his place energetically, announcing that he was going to take Roz into Northampton. A nice lunch out and a little shopping would do her a world of good, he insisted, looking down at her bent figure. Maybe they could even take in a movie. And anyone who felt like coming along was welcome, he said.

  Just about ready to start climbing the walls, I jumped at the chance to tag along with them. I was the only one to do so. The others murmured their excuses, or said nothing, and one by one began drifting out of the room. I brushed my teeth, changed quickly into a skirt and blouse, and was ready in less than ten minutes.

  I followed Roz and Ben as they walked out of the house arm-in-arm. Her wild red hair seemed to give off sparks in the afternoon light. Was she really grasping Ben’s arm for dear life—or was it he who was gripping her so tightly? I couldn’t tell.

  The seat covers of the chocolate-brown Mercedes were opulent leather. I slid comfortably into the back. Roz, seated in front of me, seemed to be fending off her private gloom; her face kept twisting and untwisting, as if she were making the effort to think only of better times.

  As we were pulling away, Ben suddenly stopped and cut the motor, cocking his ear. I knew what he was listening to. Miranda’s cello was floating through the lovely, mournful “Swan” andantino from The Carnival of Animals, by Saint-Saëns. The three of us sat listening until the piece was finished.

  It was Roz who broke the silence. She shook her head a little before speaking. “Heavenly, wasn’t it?” she said. “Almost as if she was capable of some . . . genuine . . . individual . . . tenderness.”

  Ben expertly wheeled the Mercedes up the winding gravel path and out onto the main road. “Ever been up in these parts before, Alice?” He was looking at me in the rearview mirror.

  Ben Polikoff looked like such a vital man—extremely healthy, competent, self-possessed, sophisticated. It didn’t seem to square with his almost childish dependence on
and constant attention to his wife, as though she were an invalid, or as though her slightest unhappiness unbalanced him.

  “Yes, I’ve spent some time in Northampton,” I answered. “I once taught a workshop at Smith.”

  “Is that so? But you didn’t go to Smith?” he asked, a gentle smile on his face.

  “Now, Ben, do I look like a Smith girl to you?”

  “Yes,” he said immediately. “In fact you do—tall and blond and beautiful.”

  It was one of the rawest compliments I have ever received, but I really didn’t take it as one.

  “You know, there was a rude little ditty in my day, Alice. As a sort of Smith alumna, I hope you won’t be offended.”

  “I’m sure I won’t.”

  “The fellows used to say, when it came to dating, ‘Smith to bed, Mt. Holyoke to wed.’ ”

  The “fellows,” I assumed, were pathetic Harvard frat boys who got tight on beer and their own fantasies. I laughed politely, catching Ben’s eye in the mirror.

  I leaned back into the leather seat. What a difference there was between this humming, responsive vehicle and the one I’d rented for the drive up here! I felt as if I could ride five hundred miles in this one without experiencing a jot of fatigue.

  “Maybe I should just keep going till we reach Tanglewood,” Ben quipped. “Maybe Seiji is doing something interesting this afternoon.” It was a feeble joke. The Tanglewood music festival was a summer affair. But it must have been some kind of private joke between them, for Roz extended one hand and very slowly and affectionately began to massage her husband’s neck.

  “Do you get to Tanglewood often, Alice?” he asked.

  “Oh, Ben,” Roz interjected a little chastisingly, a little patronizingly, too, “she’s an actress.” As though somehow actors were forestalled from attending such events. As though we, as a class, were culturally retarded, if forgivably so.

  I would have responded testily, but I realized that Roz wasn’t entirely responsible for what she was saying. The grief lines still creased her forehead.