Margaret Millar
The Murder of Miranda
To my grandson, Jim Pagnusat
Part I
Mr. Van Eyck had a great deal of money which he didn’t want to spend, and a great deal of time which he didn’t know how to spend. On sunny days he sat on the club terrace writing anonymous letters.
Bent over the glass and aluminum table he looked dedicated, intense. He might have been composing a poem about the waves that were crashing against the sea wall below him or about the gulls soaring high overhead reflected in the depths of the pool like languid white fish. But Mr. Van Eyck was oblivious to the sound of the ocean or the sight of birds. The more benign the weather, the more vicious the contents of his letters became. His pen glided and whirled across the paper like an expert skater across ice.
... You miserable, contemptible old fraud. Everyone is on to what you do in the shower room...
His attention was not distracted by the new assistant lifeguard sitting on the mini-tower above the pool. She was a bony redhead whose biceps outmeasured her breasts and Van Eyck’s taste still ran to blondes with more conventional anatomy. Nor was he paying, at the moment, any attention to the other club members, who dozed on chaises, gossiped in deck chairs, read under umbrellas, swam briefly in the pool. Wet or dry, they presented to the public a dull front.
Viewed from different, more personal angles they were far from dull. Van Eyck was in a position to know this. He had, in fact, made it his business as well as his hobby. He spent his time shuffling along the dimly lit corridors that led to the secluded cabanas. He wandered in and out of the sauna and massage department on the roof, the wine cellar in the basement, the boiler room and, if it wasn’t locked, the office marked Private, Keep Out, which belonged to Henderson, the manager.
Locks and bolts and signs like Keep Out didn’t bother Van Eyck, since he assumed they must be meant for other people, passing strangers, new members, crooked employees. As a result of this casual attitude, he had acquired a basic knowledge of vintage wines, therapeutic massage, Henderson’s relationship with his bookie, the heating and chlorination of swimming pools and human nature in general.
... You are weaving a tangled web and you will be caught in it, blundering spider that you are...
Van Eyck had another advantage in his pursuit of knowledge. He frequently pretended to be hard of hearing. He looked blank, shook his head sadly, cupped his ears: “Eh? What’s that? Speak up!” So people spoke up, often saying highly interesting things both in front of and behind him. He grabbed at every morsel like a hungry squirrel and stored the lot of them away in the various hollows in his head. When he was bored he brought them out to chew and finally spit out on paper.
... You must be incredibly stupid to think you can keep your evil ways hidden from an intelligent woman like me...
Van Eyck reread the sentence. Then, very lightly, he struck out woman and substituted man, leaving the original word easily legible. It was one of his favorite stratagems, to toss in small false clues and allow the reader to lead himself astray, up and down blind alleys, far from the center of the maze where Van Eyck sat secure, anonymous, shrouded in mystery, like a Minotaur.
He leaned back and took off his glasses, wiped them on the sleeve of his Polynesian print shirt and smiled at the bony redhead across the pool. No one would ever suspect that such a kindly old man, hard of hearing and seeing, was a Minotaur.
“He’s at it again,” Walter Henderson told Ellen, his secretary. “Don’t give him any more club stationery.”
“How can I refuse?”
“Say no. Like in N-O.”
“We haven’t had any complaints. Whoever he addresses the letters to can’t be club members or we’d have heard about it before this.”
“Suppose he’s sending threats to the President. On our stationery.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t. I mean, why should he?”
“Because he needs a keeper,” Henderson said gloomily. “They all need keepers... Ellen, sane people like you and me don’t belong in a place like this. I think we should run away together. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
Ellen shook her head.
“You don’t consider me a fun person, is that what you’re trying to tell me? Very well. But bear in mind that you’ve seen me only in these non-fun circumstances. After five I can be awfully amusing... It’s that lifeguard, Grady, isn’t it? Ellen, Ellen, you’re making a most grievous error. He’s a creep... Now, what were we talking about?”
“Stationery.”
“A very non-fun subject. However, let us proceed. In the future club stationery is to be used exclusively for club business.”
“When members ask for some stationery it’s hard to refuse,” Ellen said. “It’s their club, they pay my salary.”
“When they joined they signed an agreement to abide by the rules.”
“But we have no rule concerning stationery.”
“Then make one and post it on the bulletin board.”
“Don’t you think it would be more appropriate if you made it, since you’re the manager?”
“No. And remember to keep it simple, most of them can’t read. Perhaps you should try to get the message across in pictures or sign language.”
Ellen couldn’t tell by looking at him whether he was serious or not. He wore Polaroid sunglasses which hid his eyes and reflected Ellen herself, twin Ellens that stared back at her in miniature as if from the wrong end of a telescope. Henderson’s glasses needed cleaning, so that in addition to being miniature, the twin Ellens were fuzzy and indefinite, two vague pale faces with short brownish hair balanced on top like inverted baskets. Sometimes, deep inside, she felt quite interesting and vivacious and different. It was always a shock to run into her real self in Henderson’s glasses.
“Why are you peering at me, Ellen?”
“I wasn’t, sir. I was just thinking there isn’t any room on the bulletin board since you put up all those pictures your nephew took of sunsets.”
“What’s the matter with sunsets?”
“Nothing.”
“And by the way, I wish you’d stop calling me sir. I am forty-nine, hardly old enough to be called sir by a mature woman of—”
“Twenty-seven.”
“I made it quite clear on my arrival how the various echelons are to address me. Let me repeat. To the maintenance men and busboys I am boss. Waiters and lifeguards are to call me sir, and the engineer and catering manager, Mr. Henderson. To you I am Walter, or perhaps some simple little endearment.” He smiled dreadfully. “Sweetie-pie, love-bunny, angel-face, something on that order.”
“Really, Mr. Henderson,” Ellen said, but the reproof sounded mild. Henderson’s lechery was, in fact, so fainthearted and spasmodic that Ellen considered it one of the lesser burdens of the job. She didn’t expect him to be around long anyway. He was the seventh club manager since she’d worked there, and though he was competent enough and had arrived with excellent references, his temperament seemed ill-suited to dealing with the wide variety of emergencies that came with the territory.
The current emergency involved the plumbing in the men’s shower room.
One of the toilets had been plugged with a pair of sneakers and a T-shirt. All three objects, in spite of their prolonged soaking, were still clearly inked Frederic Quinn and the nine-year-old was confronted with the evidence. He was then locked in the first-aid room to ponder his crime by Grady, the head lifeguard.
Little Frederic, who went to an exclusive boys’ school and knew obscenities in several languages, needed only one: “You can’t keep me a prisoner, you pig frig, you didn’t read me my rights.”