To the Manor Dead (4 page)

“I have a small shop, antiques and whatnot, over in Sawyerville. Your aunt came in. She wants me to help her sell some of her things.”

Something flashed across Claire’s face—surprise, annoyance, rage? But she quickly recovered.

“Well, she certainly has a lot of things
to
sell. My father’s Livingston bounty is pretty much long gone,” she said with a bitter edge.

There was the sound of footfalls bounding down a back staircase that opened into the kitchen.

“Ah, here comes paterfamilias now,” Claire said.

Godfrey blew into the kitchen—tall, lean, bursting with energy. The guy was a pretty amazing specimen—a full head of thick black hair pulled into a ponytail, glowing skin, clear blue eyes, a taut, toned body. He was wearing khaki shorts, a loose oxford shirt, and looked about twenty years younger than the sixty-something he had to be.

“
Goooood
morning!” he said cheerily.

“Hi, Dad,” Claire managed. “This is Janet.”

He fixed those limpid blue eyes on me. “
God
frey Livingston, what a pleasure,” he said, smiling. He was missing a tooth on the upper left.

Then Godfrey beelined over to the health-food counter and started to spoon odd-colored powders and potions into that infamous blender. This was a serious ritual and he went about it with religious concentration.

“Janet is a friend of Aunt Daf’s,” Claire said.

Godfrey’s lithe body tensed momentarily, and then he turned to me and asked, “How’s my sister doing?”

“I’m not sure. I can’t find her.”

“She often goes for long walks, especially in this weather. She’s always loved rainy days, since we were children.” He sliced a banana into the blender. “I love Daphne. What’s happened to her fills me with a sadness that is cosmic, almost too much to bear.” He went to the fridge and got out organic eggs and soymilk. He cracked an egg into the blender. “I’ve tried to reach out to her, to meditate with her, stretch with her, sit with her,
be
with her. But she won’t open up to me. She won’t let me in.”

Claire handed me a mug of coffee—it came with a little roll of her eyes.

“Her rejection has been very painful. She won’t acknowledge my essential self. She won’t even look at my Map of the Unknown World.”

Claire grimaced.

“Your map of what?” I asked.

“The Unknown World.”

Godfrey turned on the blender, and as it whirled he did a yoga-pretzel thing—one leg up in back, arm back to grab it, opposite arm out. All he needed was a little salt. He closed his eyes, got all ethereal—probably communicating with the unknown world.

“Dad’s been working on his map since I was seven,” Claire explained. “He started it, coincidently, the summer my mother left him and moved to the Australian outback.”

Godfrey released the pretzel and turned off the blender. “Claire thinks her father is a kook,” he said, pouring his greenish concoction into a large glass. “In fact, my Map of the Unknown World is going to make me famous and rich and restore the Livingston name to the glory it once knew. Not that I care about fame or any other material manifestations.” He took a big sip and when he put down the glass he was sporting a fat green moustache. Cute look. “Now, I must get to work. When you find my sister, please tell her that my door is always open … my soul is always open.”

Godfrey bounded back up from whence he had come.

“I never should have come back here,” Claire said, her jaw tense. “My mother knew what she was doing. That man is a narcissistic, deluded, sociopathic asshole. I’ve been here for a month and he hasn’t even asked me what subject I’m teaching.”

“Oh damn, the mac ‘n’ cheese,” I remembered.

“
There’s no fucking mac ‘n’ cheese!
” Claire wailed, racing around and violently throwing open the doors of three ovens. Then she plopped into a chair and began to cry.

I’d walked into the middle of something deep and dark, intense and intractable. The worst part was that I found it seductive. If I was still in practice and had a few years to work with Claire, I think we could have come to understand her family and her place in it, could have untangled some of the mess, at least partially freed her. I was sure that she came back to Westward Farm not for her father or her sister, but for herself—like so many children with narcissistic, unavailable parents, she kept going back to the well, unable to accept the fact that it was dry.

Janet, cool it! You came here for antiques! The Claire Livingstons of the world are no longer your responsibility.

But I couldn’t stop myself, damn it.

I walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Why don’t you see if the college has some housing for you. And maybe check Craigslist.”

Claire looked up at me and managed a quivery, embarrassed smile. She got up and grabbed a paper towel, blew her nose and gulped some air. “That’s a good idea.”

“Well, I should be heading out.”

“When you do find Aunt Daphne, please give her my love.”

It was still drizzling,
a gentle drizzle, but it felt good to be out in the open air. It always does.

I made a quick recheck of Daphne’s digs. No sign of her. Her car was still in the drive; she was probably out for that walk. I headed around the side of the house. The view from the crest of the hill was fantastic—the river, Sawyerville on the far bank, the Catskills rising up in the distance. I realized I was dead opposite the spot where Vince Hammer wanted to build his mini-city. Not only would his plan fuck up Sawyerville, it would screw up a lot of views on this side of the river.

From where I was standing, there was a path that led down to an overgrown formal garden, and beyond that to some kind of folly or summerhouse. Even if I didn’t find Daphne, I’d get to walk and clear my head.

The path was flagstone, old and wide, cut into the slope and flanked by mossy stone walls as it descended. The garden itself had once been grand and classical, but was now overgrown, ruined and dreamy, centered around a pocked stone fountain of frolicking nymphs, highlighted by the defiant blooms of rugged old roses. I imagined it in its heyday—manicured, lawn parties, ladies in long dresses, gentlemen in hats, Daphne’s childhood in a gilded bubble.

I headed down toward the folly, which sat on a perch above the train tracks and the river. It was rundown too, but pretty cool—octagonal, stone halfway up, then open, finally topped by an onion dome like a Russian church. As I got close, I saw a flash of blue inside. For a moment I thought it was a large bird. I stopped, focused: it was a robe … a quilted blue robe. Hanging from the rafters.

Daphne was in the robe.

I hurried down the path and stepped into the folly. Daphne was hanging from a noose made from the robe’s belt, her feet dangling about three feet above the ground, a chair nearby. Her head hung over her collarbone, her mouth was slightly open, her tongue protruding. Her eyes were open too, but her eyeballs were rolled back and all I could see was white. The expression on her face wasn’t that final peace we all dream about.

It was terror.

It was quiet, wet,
the world seemed very still—it was just me and Daphne’s corpse.

I was with my friend Lena when she died of ovarian cancer, and my friend Manny when he died of AIDS. Fear at the end is common; death is a scary river to cross. But this was different. I barely knew this woman, and it looked like she’d killed herself. Something had happened in the last twenty-four hours that had plunged Daphne into the abyss. And there she was, hanging from a beam.

What to do next?

I had an urge to climb up on the chair and bring her down, move her body into a more dignified position. But it wasn’t my place to do that.

I supposed I should go and tell Godfrey—he probably had champagne chilling for just this occasion. But the thought of going back into that swirling vortex of rage, lunacy, and loss filled me with dread. Still, I really didn’t have any choice, did I? I needed a few minutes to get my bearings. So I just stood there.

Then I took out my cell phone and called George.

“I’m standing in a crumbling gazebo in front of Daphne Livingston’s dead body. She hung herself.”

“Holy shit.”

“It’s spooky.”

There was a pause and then George asked, “Are you sure it’s suicide?”

“I hadn’t considered anything else.”

“Hey, remember, that family is
looney tunes. And there’s a lot at stake.”

I looked at Daphne. I guess it was possible that someone had hauled her body up there, but it didn’t seem very likely.

“I’m going to call the police,” I said.

“Good idea. Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“All right, keep me posted.”

I hung up and dialed 911. I couldn’t take my eyes off Daphne, dead, hanging there in that quilted blue robe. For the first time I noticed a small trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth. And she had soiled herself.

“What is the nature of your emergency?” a woman’s voice asked.

“I found a dead body.”

“Are you sure the individual is dead?”

“Yes.”

“Location?”

“Westward Farm, River Road, Rhinebeck.”

“We’ll send someone out.”

She took my name and asked me not to leave the area.

I hung up, took one last look at poor Daphne, and headed for the house.

I walked in to
find Maggie pretty much as I’d left her—naked with her hookah, her remote, and her Dots. Rodent was on another couch, pulling the stuffing out of a pillow.

“Hi, Maggie, I need to speak to Claire and Godfrey. And Becky, too.”

Even from the depths of her stoned zone, Maggie could tell that something was up. She got up, walked into the bisected front hall, cupped her hands to her mouth, and screamed upstairs, “GODFREY! GET YOUR SCRAWNY ASS DOWNSTAIRS! YOU TOO, CLAIRE AND BECKY!”

There were footfalls on the front steps and Godfrey appeared, wearing an ink-smeared smock and a do-rag on his head. Claire appeared from the direction of the kitchen.

Claire took one look at me and said, “Is everything all right?”

“I went looking for Daphne. I found her in the gazebo past the garden, she’s … dead.”

The three of them looked at each other. Tears began to stream down Maggie’s face, Godfrey tilted his head and his eyebrows went up.

“Poor Daphne,” Claire muttered. “How did she die?”

“I found her hanging from a beam.”

Maggie let loose an incoherent wail and her tears morphed into a blubbery weeping fit.

Becky appeared. “Wassup?”

“Aunt Daphne killed herself in the summerhouse,” Claire told her.

“How come?”

“She was having a bad hair day. For Christ’s sakes, Becky, why do you
think
she killed herself? She was a terribly unhappy woman. What is
wrong
with this family?” Claire said, her eyes filling with tears.

“Don’t get all fucking high and mighty with me,” Becky said, going to Rodent and picking her up.

“I could have saved her, but she wouldn’t let me,” Godfrey said.

“The police are on their way out here,” I said.

“You called the police?” Godfrey said.

I nodded.

“You had no right to call the police to Westward Farm. I don’t even
know
you. Who
are
you?” he said.

“I discovered a dead body and called the police.”

“Well, I want to see my sister,” Godfrey said.

He headed for the door, followed by Maggie, who slipped into a pair of flip-flops and a rain slicker,, Claire, and Becky, who scooped up Rodent.

“Do you really think bringing Rodina is a good idea?” Claire asked her sister.

“Why not?” Becky answered.

Claire lowered her voice, “She’s three years old, Becky, seeing a dead body hanging from a beam might not be the best thing for her.”

“I guess you know all about raising a kid, huh? You know, Claire, I’m sick of you looking down at me, you and your stupid fucking Ph.D.”

“It’s not my fault you chose to fry your brain cells on crystal meth. Not that you had that many to begin with … I can’t believe I just said that. I’m sorry. Look, Becky, please, leave Rodina here. Just trust me.”

Becky made a pouting face and then put Rodina down on the couch. “You stay here, Rodent honey, Mommy will be back in a few minutes.”

We all followed Godfrey outside. He strode around the house toward the garden.

“Oh, Godfrey, I’m sorry, I’m
so sorry
,” Maggie moaned, rushing to keep up with him.

Claire reached out and took Becky’s hand. “You okay, Beckums?”

“I’m scared, Claire-claire.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Claire said.

All four of them were charged with that strange thrill death brings. I’d seen it over and over in my practice—nothing makes people feel more alive than death.

Godfrey rushed down the garden steps, through its wistful decrepitude, and reached the summer house. We followed him in.

“Oh no, poor Daphne!” Maggie keened on seeing the body, “Poor dear Daphne, poor Daphne,
poor Daphne
!”

“Cool it, Maggie!” Godfrey barked.

“Wow,” Becky said, looking up at her dead aunt.

Godfrey climbed up on the wobbly chair. “Okay, girls, I’m going to lower her down. Get underneath and grab her.”

The three women gathered under the body and Godfrey began to untie the blue quilted belt that wound around the beam and then Daphne’s broken neck.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

I turned. A cop in his early thirties was standing there.

“I am restoring to my sister a shred of dignity,” Godfrey said.

“Until I’m told different this is a crime scene. All of you clear the area.”

“Do you know who you’re talking to?” Godfrey said.

“Dad …” Claire pleaded.

“I am Godfrey Livingston and my family has owned this land since 1732.”

“That’s great,” the cop said. “Now clear the area.”

An older, portlier policeman arrived. He looked at Daphne and his eyebrows went up. “Damn,” he muttered. He blew out air, looked down, scratched his head. “Godfrey, I’m awful sorry.”

“I’m very glad to see you, Charlie,” Godfrey said. “I would like to lower my sister to the floor. It bothers me to see her like this.”

“I don’t see what harm that can do.”

The younger cop walked over to him. “Isn’t this officially a crime scene? It’s being compromised.”

“These are the Livingstons, Paul.”

“Yeah, but …”

“There is no
but
, Paul. Now, why don’t you help bring Daphne down?”

Godfrey stepped off the chair. Paul shrugged, stepped up onto it, and expertly lowered the body into Godfrey’s and Claire’s arms. They placed her on the floor. Godfrey sat cross-legged beside her and gently pushed the hair out of her face.

“You must be Janet Petrocelli,” Charlie said. I nodded. “Let’s head back to the house. I’ll need to get statements from everyone. Paul, you stay here.”

“Charlie, please, before we go,” Godfrey said, “I’d like to make a soul circle for my sister.” He stood up and held out his hands. Soon we were all holding hands in a circle around Daphne’s dead body, even the two reluctant cops.

Godfrey closed his eyes. “Sister Daphne, the Unknown World awaits you,
peace
awaits you—like when it rained and cook made us cinnamon toast before Mother got addicted to pills and Father got addicted to transvestite hookers and everything got twisted and weird. Come home, Daphne, home to the Unknown World.”

I snuck a look around—Charlie looked like one of those people in church who work really hard at praying, Paul was scratching his butt crack.

Godfrey turned his head skyward and went into a bellowing chant—“
WHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAA!
” Must have freaked out the birds and squirrels.

He ended it abruptly. Then a hand squeeze went around the circle and everyone opened their eyes.

“I have saved my sister,” Godfrey said modestly.

I looked down at Daphne—she didn’t look too saved to me.