In December of 1906, my great-aunt returned to Ohio, discovered me farmed-out to the Lathams, and whisked me away to St. Augustine. It was my first time out of Ohio, my first time seeing the ocean, my first time in a hotel. Outside, palm fronds skittered in the breeze. Orange trees grew heavy with fruit. The sun shone from a big blue sky. It was like being in a dream.
Two weeks after our arrival, Aunt Grace pushed me out of the nest. She held onto her large flowered hat with both hands and let the carriage roll away without me. I trudged across the street to the Hotel Alcazar where, according to the literature provided me by my aunt at breakfast, there were tennis courts, bowling alleys, a gymnasium, a spa with Turkish and Russian baths–not that I knew the difference–and an indoor swimming pool, the largest in the world.
I rented a bathing costume, eyed the enormous pool, searched along its colonnade, and finally found the ladies changing rooms in the curve of the west end beside a half-moon pool shielded from view by a partition. There was a woman there, hidden all but her bathing boots and a fluff of blonde hair, lying on a bench under a blanket, and a lone girl swimming laps. Unlike the puffed-sleeve black wool dress and accoutrements I cradled in my arms, the girl in the water wore a dress bright with yellow flowers and a gathered bathing cap of the same color. I felt a stab of envy at the sight.
I changed into my rented costume, skirted a wheelchair parked at the metal railing, and descended ladder-like steps. Sunlight bounced around white walls from a glass ceiling three-stories above. Sounds echoed all around–boys diving and jumping into the main pool, a band playing on the second floor, spectators calling to swimmers from the balcony. I felt suddenly overwhelmed and froze, like a rabbit in an open field. The girl in yellow swam closer and introduced herself.
“Maddie Anderson,” she said.
I took a deep breath and lowered myself into the water until we were eye-to-eye. “Lydia Parker.” We shook hands.
Maddie was seventeen, raised in a Detroit mansion. I was fourteen, raised on an Ohio farm. She had brown eyes flecked with gold. Mine were gray. She swam laps like a dolphin. I splashed around like a drowning dog. Naturally, we became fast friends. After the water had wrinkled every square-inch of me, I called it quits for the day. Maddie said she’d had enough, too. When her shouts failed to rouse Miss Kanerva–it was she who would carry Maddie up the ladder–I climbed out, gave the woman a shake, and received a not-so-nice surprise. Miss Kanerva wasn’t dozing comfortably on her side under a wool blanket. She was dead.
I’d never seen a dead person before. My first impulse was to run away, ostensibly for help, but Maddie begged me not to leave her alone. I leaned over the railing and tried to reason with her, my eyes stretched wide. “We can’t stay here forever. What if no one comes?”
“You’ll have to help me out of the water.”
“I can’t carry you up the steps.”
“How do you know until you try?”
Because I had fourteen years experience on how things work. But I didn’t say that. Instead, I shifted my weight from foot to foot, chewing on my fingernails.
“Lydia, please? I don’t want anyone to see my legs.”
I straightened my shoulders and went back in the pool.
It wasn’t my idea to go up backwards, but it worked. We went one step at a time, on our bottoms, with my arms wrapped around her and the muscles in my legs doing their share of the lifting. Maddie rearranged her legs and feet as we rose. The ridged soles of her yellow bathing boots helped keep her feet in place on each step. When we reached the top, I lifted her into the wheelchair. She folded her stick-like legs with her hands and secured her booted feet with straps while I retrieved her yellow coat and daisy-covered straw hat from the changing room on the other end. Maddie had her bathing cap in her hands when I returned.
“You wear the duster,” she said, pinning her straw hat in place. “I’ll be fine with some towels. There’s lots in my changing room.”
I didn’t want to go back to her changing room, past the bench again, for towels. My room, on this side of the bench, had a bathtub, a stool, and no towels. Her room had piles of towels, a cushion-covered bench, and no tub. I shivered, said I didn’t care if my legs showed, and helped her into her coat. The wheelchair complicated the process, but I followed her directions and Maddie was soon fastening the coat’s horn buttons. I sidled closer to the pool, squeezed some of the water from my dress, straightened my stockings, wrung out my wool cap, tucked it in the waistband of my leggings, unlocked the wheels on the chair, and pushed Maddie away. I didn’t know how far we’d have to go to find someone in charge, or where there was an elevator, and I was worried about someone else getting a not-so-nice surprise in the ladies pool area, though I was relieved to be getting away from there myself, when Maddie pointed toward a man in a black suit and hat leaning against the wall near the east end.
He came off the wall as we neared. “Ladies, what–”
Maddie cut him off, gave him the details in a tidy package with her hands twitching in her lap.
He regarded me quizzically. “You sure she wasn’t sleeping?”
I managed a nod, picturing the staring eyes.
The man snagged a boy in street clothes leaning against a column. “Go to Reception and tell whoever’s there that Mr. Coxe requires a female and a doctor at the ladies pool. Lickety-split.” He pushed the boy on his way, strode ahead, and stopped us with a raised palm when we reached the west end of the pool. He went immediately to the bench where white laces dangled from one of Miss Kanerva’s black bathing boots. I turned away as he lifted the blanket.
“He’s a Pinkerton detective,” Maddie whispered. “Daddy pointed him out to me in the dining room once.”
I steered my thoughts away from what lay on the bench. “What was he doing there?”
Maddie looked at me like I was an idiot. “Eating dinner.”
My face flushed and I hung my head. The wool bathing dress sagged. The soggy cotton stockings drooped. The canvas bathing shoes pinched. I wanted nothing more than my dry clothes–all new, none sewn by me–and my well-worn high-button shoes.
“Lydia, I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”
My spirit soared.
Mr. Coxe returned to us with a small notebook in his hand. “Staying at the Alcazar, are you?”
“I’m staying at the Ponce,” Maddie said. The Hotel Ponce de Leon was the most expensive of Mr. Flagler’s three St. Augustine hotels, which included the Alcazar and the Annex.
Mr. Coxe awaited my response.
I cleared my throat. “The Ponce.”
We gave him our names and room numbers. A boy came and went after receiving a paper torn from Mr. Coxe’s notebook and instructions. Mr. Coxe asked us a few questions, made notes of our answers, and reviewed them with us. He wondered aloud if we would have seen anyone in the area given our vantage point and I glanced at the pool. The water depth was between three and four feet, but the concrete shell was almost twice that. We certainly wouldn’t have heard anyone, not unless they’d shot a gun, what with all our splashing and the many background noises.
A woman appeared on the other side of the pool, a no-nonsense type with upswept hair, pursed lips and perfect posture. Mr. Coxe walked past the bench to confer with her and afterward she went to stand at the beginning of the curve. He made a circuit of the dressing rooms, checking behind each closed door. The boy returned and announced that Mr. Anderson was on his way. Mrs. Anderson was at the Ponce, indisposed. I asked about my great-aunt, Mrs. Dewitt. The boy shrugged, said he’d check, and left. A blond man in white flannels hurried past the woman, toting a black leather case. I figured he was the doctor, but he wasn’t like any doctor I’d ever seen. More like a Greek god. Tall, broad shoulders, golden hair. The doctor flipped back the blanket, dropped his bag, knelt on one knee beside the bench, and bowed his head as he felt for a pulse.
Mr. Coxe approached Maddie with another question. “Did Miss Kanerva usually stay in the pool with you?”
“Yes.”
“What was different about today?”
“She wasn’t feeling well.”
“Headache? Chest pain?”
Maddie didn’t give him the same you-must-be-an-idiot look she’d given me,though there was a trace of it in her voice as she repeated the information she’d already told him, that Miss Kanerva’s stomach was sore and she wanted to lie down a while.
He asked, “She eat lunch with you?”
Maddie shook her head. “I ate in my mother’s sitting room. Miss Kanerva met me there at noon to take me to hydrotherapy.”
“After hydrotherapy, you came down to the pool?”
“We didn’t go to hydrotherapy, or massage. Miss Kanerva said we were going to skip today’s treatments. Ask the doctor if you want to know more about my schedule. Or Miss Kanerva,” she added. “The two were very friendly. Maybe he ate lunch with her.”
“I’ll do that,” Mr. Coxe said, making a note. “She didn’t work for the Alcazar?”
“No, she came with us from Detroit,” Maddie said.
“She carried you into the pool and then climbed out again?”
“Correct.”
“The reason I’m asking is that her dress feels dry.”
Maddie gritted her teeth. “She didn’t need to immerse herself to set me afloat.”
“I see.” He wrote something in his notebook.
I was trembling all over by the time Aunt Grace arrived, striding a few yards ahead of a stocky man in sporting clothes who stopped for a few words with the doctor.
Maddie said, “Daddy,” in a little voice and started to cry.
Aunt Grace didn’t speak to anyone but me. She hugged me tight even though I was wet, gathered my belongings from the changing room, and ushered me away. I looked back. Maddie was alone. But there was no backtracking; Aunt Grace held my arm in an iron grip.
“Wait!” Mr. Coxe had to run to catch up. “I may need to ask your niece some more questions.”
Aunt Grace looked down her nose at him. “And you are?”
His neck reddened above his stiff collar. “I beg your pardon, ma’am.” He showed her a badge pinned to the inside pocket of his jacket. “Detective Coxe at your service.”
“Hired by Mr. Flagler?”
He nodded.
“Carry on,” Aunt Grace said with a nod, pulling me sharply away.
After a brief hesitation, Mr. Coxe’s footsteps sounded heading the other way, Aunt Grace mumbled something under her breath, and I hoped I’d seen the last of him. I pounced on a yellow sateen bathing cap at the base of a column.
“Maddie’s,” I said.
Aunt Grace took it from my shaky hand. “We’ll return it some other time.” Her carriage driver was waiting for us in the street with her golf bag. Aunt Grace tipped him, arranged the slender canvas bag on her shoulder, and steered me over the sandy street, around the frog fountain, through the main entrance and across the glowing rotunda to the elevator. No one said a word about my attire or bedraggled appearance. My wet shoes left footprints on the mosaic tile. A maid was on her hands and knees drying the floor with a towel before the elevator doors closed and I felt a pang of remorse for the extra work I’d created for her.
That night, after a hot bath–Aunt Grace made me take it; the last thing I wanted was to immerse myself in more water– Aunt Grace fed me cocoa laced with something fiery, and put me to bed. I protested feebly; I hadn’t eaten dinner and it was still light out. I don’t know how she responded. I closed my eyes and that was it for me.
When I awoke the next morning, Aunt Grace was drinking coffee and reading her way through a stack of newspapers under the floor lamp in my room. It had a shade of leaded stained glass, like most of the lamps and windows in the hotel, and its jewel-like colors, glowing with electric light, mesmerized me. When Aunt Grace said she’d ordered me breakfast in bed, I sank, disconsolate, into the covers. She hurried to explain it was only an expression; I didn’t actually have to eat it in bed. I leaped out in one bound and prepared a plate. Aunt Grace waited a while before asking about the pool.
I filled her in between bites. “Maddie said Miss Kanerva had been complaining of a sore stomach.”
“What do you think happened?”
I poured a cup of tea from a cozied pot and added two spoonfuls of sugar. “Maybe her appendix burst,” I said, sipping.
“Any sign of vomit?”
I made a face. “No.”
“Diarrhea?”
I pushed my unfinished plate away. “No.”
Aunt Grace went on, “There would’ve been, wouldn’t there, if either her appendix had burst or she’d been given a fatal dose of arsenic.”
My cup clanked into the saucer. “Arsenic?”
“There was some talk last night in the ladies parlor about poison.” Aunt Grace folded the newspaper, returned it to the pile on the table beside her, and switched off the lamp. “Word has it the doctor found nothing in his examination to explain the woman’s death. I gather Mr. Anderson has objected to an autopsy. I wonder where the girl’s family lives.”
I gazed into my tea cup. No answers there.
Aunt Grace said, “Were there red marks around her mouth and nose? Chloroform may cause irritation of the skin.”
“No.”
“Did her breath smell like garlic? That could be a sign of arsenic poisoning.”
“She wasn’t breathing.”
“Right-o. Did you notice her pupils? Morphine would constrict them. They’d look like pin-points. Though the administration of some belladonna in her eyes would counteract that effect,” she added thoughtfully.
I stared at her.
“Newspapers,” she said. “The expert testimony at murder trials is always well-reported. The belladonna counter-effect was used by Dr. Buchanan to murder his second wife back in 1892. He died in the electric chair at Sing Sing in 1896, three years after the trial.”
I shuddered. “I’ll stick to the puzzle pages, thank you very much.”
“I, for one, think her employer seems to be in an awfully big hurry to accept ‘don’t know’ as her cause of death. What about you?”
“Me?” I shied away from the thought. “Grandmother would say it was none of my business.”
“Pfui.”
I nibbled on an orange slice, trying to hide my unease. I’d spent most of my life under Grandmother’s reign. Playing golf and cards, with or without pennies, was one thing; I’d done my share of rule-breaking as Poppa’s accomplice. Poking my nose into the business of a stranger’s death seemed more like breaking a Commandment. I half-expected Grandmother to appear in a swirl of mist wielding her leather strap.
Aunt Grace’s voice broke in: “If Miss Kanerva were murdered, don’t you think her family would want someone to find out who killed her? The sheriff’s not going to do it; the death wasn’t reported to him. The Hotel has decided it wasn’t suspicious.”
“You just said the doctor doesn’t know how she died.”
“Or maybe he does.” My great-aunt smiled enigmatically.
I sighed. “I’m so confused.”
“All will become clear. Eventually.” Aunt Grace handed me a folded sheet of hotel stationery. “I almost forgot. This missive arrived for you last night.”
The handwritten note signed by Maddie asked me to join her in her family’s sitting room after breakfast. Spencerian script, of course. All swirls and curlicues. My own handwriting was efficient and legible and plain. I showed the invitation to Aunt Grace. She urged me to accept, said she’d meet me in the ladies parlor at noon and we’d go in to lunch together.
“Don’t eat or drink anything,” Aunt Grace said with a wink, leaving me to dress. I wasn’t sure she was kidding.
***
The Andersons’ rooms were on the ground floor near the ladies parlor. The door to room fifty-eight opened a crack in response to my knock and I pushed it further open slowly. A dark-eyed maid appeared from behind the door, juggling an armful of garments. I nodded to her and closed the door. Maddie waved me forward. A woman was seated at a small table, in a silk dressing gown and bobbin-lace cap, pale as a ghost. When Maddie introduced us, the woman–who was Maddie’s mother, though she seemed very old–blinked in acknowledgement and fit her tea cup into its spot on the saucer, taking her time about it, needing several tries to get it right. Maddie’s father–three-piece-suited, grim-faced–poked his balding head into the room, harrumphed a hello, and quickly withdrew. Maddie’s thumbs beat a rhythm on the arms of her wheelchair. She told her mother she and I were going to tour the grounds. Mrs. Anderson smiled crookedly and reached for her cup, struggling with the task. Another maid–this one had red hair and blue eyes–held out a wide-brimmed straw hat decorated with rows of colored ribbons. Maddie took it and gave me a nod. Before I could rise from the table, Mrs. Anderson’s claw-like hand grabbed my lower arm.
Her mouth worked as she sounded the syllables of my name. “Lih dee yah.” Her body leaned precariously sideways. A white-frocked nurse stepped forward to release me from the vise-like grip, one bony finger at a time.
I stood and backed away. “N-n-nice to meet you, Mrs. Anderson.”
One of the maids opened the door and we took our leave. Maddie secured her hat as I pushed her down the hall. She pointed; I steered. In five minutes, we were seated among the palms–I on a curved concrete bench, she in her chair–listening to birdsong and watching a gardener tend the orange trees. The air smelled fresh and clean. I swung my legs, happy to be alive. Unlike Miss Kanerva. My legs slowed to a stop.
“Mother is getting better. I knew she would. She hasn’t spoken to anyone besides family for years.” Maddie beamed at me.
I breathed in the happiness.
She gestured toward the orange trees. “Do you like oranges? I find them too sweet. I like blueberries though, and they’re sweet, aren’t they? Perhaps it’s not the sweetness I object to, but some other feature of the fruit. What do you know about oranges?”
I was thrilled to have some information. “They’re a type of citrus, like lemons. I used lemons to bleach ink out of the boys’ shirtsleeves. It’s the acid in the juice that does the lightening. That and hot water. Maybe it’s the acid you don’t like.”
“Interesting,” she said, eyeing me. “Miss Kanerva always ate the orange slices on her plate. I thought them more for decoration, like sprigs of parsley.”
I was glad she didn’t ask about the boys; I didn’t want to talk about the Lathams. “Did you know Miss Kanerva for a long time?”
“A few months. I have maids at home, of course, and there was always Mother’s nurse, but Daddy thought I should have someone all to myself while we were here, someone who could take charge of my therapy here. Miss Kanerva was a masseuse. Finnish, from northern Michigan. Daddy said we were lucky to find her.”
A mockingbird chased a hawk out of the grove. “Do you think she was poisoned?”
Maddie played with a corner of her blanket. “Is that what people are saying?”
“Some. You know how they talk in the ladies parlor.”
“What else are they saying?’
“I don’t know; I wasn’t there.”
“What kind of poison?”
“Arsenic.”
“There were mushrooms on the chicken we were served at lunch yesterday.”
“You said she didn’t eat lunch with you.”
Maddie gave me that look again, the one that questioned my brain capacity, and I shrank with shame. “Wild mushrooms can be poisonous,” she went on. “I saw some in the trees. Over that way. Past the orange trees.”
I jumped off the bench, ready to serve. “Shall we take a look?”
There was no path per se, only scrubby grass and sand. We soldiered through and found our way to a spot with scattered pines and oaks. The ground was covered by a layer of pine needles and where Maddie pointed showed sandy evidence of disturbance. I dug around with the toe of my shoe, but found nothing resembling any type of fungi.
“I must have remembered wrong,” Maddie said. “The place I’m thinking of had a clump of orangish mushrooms. Miss Kanerva said they looked like Amanitas. Extremely toxic.”
“Maybe this is the right place,” I said, eyes widening.
“You think someone picked them?”
We stared at each other in horror.
“We should tell Mr. Coxe right away,” Maddie said.
I pushed her in the street to the corner and turned right and right again, hurrying, making good time in the hard-packed sand. Mr. Coxe caught up with us as we passed the curve of the dining room on its east.
“Just the persons I was searching for,” he said. “Did either of you see a lady–”
“It was mushrooms,” I burst out.
“Amanitas were growing in the lot over that way,” Maddie said, “and they’re gone now!”
Mr. Coxe took out his notebook. “Amanitas?”
“They’re very poisonous. The doctor could have added them to the chicken at yesterday’s lunch,” Maddie said. “Miss Kanerva would have never suspected.”
“I guess not.” Mr. Coxe consulted his notes. “Especially since it was your father who ate an early lunch with the young lady yesterday in a private corner of the dining room. I have several witnesses. Miss Kanerva was crying. Do you have any idea why?”
Maddie’s face paled. “I must have seen the mushrooms at some other place.”
“One person I spoke with suggested she wasn’t happy in her job and wanted to return home,” Mr. Coxe said. “Your father won’t divulge the details of the conversation, but I wonder if he was about to fire her. It’s been said that Miss Kanerva was less conscientious in her duties than you’d led us to believe. She didn’t always accompany you into the pool, did she.” It wasn’t a question.
Maddie looked at me. “I’d better get back to Mother.”
Mr. Coxe held the wheelchair so I couldn’t push it away. “There’s something else. We’re looking for a lady who was wearing a large hat in the pool area yesterday. You see anyone like that?”
“I saw a lady in a reddish dress,” Maddie said. “The brim of her hat was almost as wide as her shoulders. She was watching the boys on the rings. The hat must have had a hundred roses on it. Is she the one?”
“I saw her, too,” I said. “I saw another large hat decorated with a white bird. The lady wearing it came up the stairs while I was renting my bathing costume to complain about the bicycles.”
Mr. Coxe put his foot on the wheel of Maddie’s chair to free his hand, and made a note. “Miss Kanerva wasn’t wearing a hat yesterday,” Mr. Coxe said, turning back a few pages, “and neither were you, Miss Parker. But you were wearing a large flowered hat, isn’t that right, Miss Anderson? One with daisies?”
Maddie frowned. “Yes, but it’s not what I would call a large hat.”
“Where was your hat while you were swimming?” he asked.
Maddie looked at me with puzzlement on her face. “I–”
“Her hat was in the changing room,” I said, “hanging on a hook behind the door, next to her coat. The door wasn’t locked. I got the hat for her before we went to get you.”
“Thank you, Miss Parker. That’s all for now. If you see one of the two ladies from the Alcazar in this hotel, kindly notify the front desk. They’ll let one of us know. It’s extremely important that we talk to them as soon as possible. I’ll see Miss Anderson to her room.”
“Have you questioned the doctor’s wife?” Maddie asked the detective over her shoulder.
“Should we?”
I was on his heels as he wheeled her up a hidden ramp beside one of the entrances to the kitchens. The door closed behind him and no one came to let me in, though I knocked for several minutes, and not lightly.
***
It was thirteen minutes before noon when I entered the ladies parlor. An elderly matron, sitting in a side chair, back straight as a rod, caught my hand as I walked by and called to my aunt, “Here’s the sixth for euchre, Grace!”
I said, “I don’t–”
“Sounds wonderful,” Aunt Grace said, negotiating her way through the occupied furniture in the area by the Edison clock. “Shall we meet at four?”
“Tea and cards?” another woman put in. “Delightful! I shan’t miss it.”
Several of the other ladies chimed in, smiling brightly at me. I smiled to all of them on my way out. Climbing the stairs to the dining room, I reminded my aunt I’d never played euchre; I couldn’t possibly learn it by four o’clock. Aunt Grace waved away my protests, said I’d learned pinochle in five minutes, euchre would be no different. But they wouldn’t be playing for pennies, I protested. Aunt Grace said we’d be partners and anyway, the ladies playing cards at tea time wouldn’t be playing for money. I wasn’t convinced. I’d seen for myself how the white-haired ladies pounced on Aunt Grace for bridge in the evening whenever I headed to bed, whispering their bets with impish glee.
We’d ordered our lunch and been served a beverage and soup before I remembered about the large hats, and then only because Mr. Coxe insinuated himself into a chair at our table to ask Aunt Grace about hers.
She gave him the once-over before asking a question of her own: “Now why would you be interested in my flowered hat?”
He fired back: “How long have you known Mr. Anderson?”
“I don’t know him.”
“You were seen playing golf with him today.”
Aunt Grace pursed her lips and surveyed him. “It’s like that, is it?”
He pressed his male advantage, demanding answers to his questions with a threatening demeanor, but to no avail. Aunt Grace broke a breadstick and stirred her soup with it, ignoring him pointedly. He glanced at me. I put on the blank face I’d learned from playing cards with her. After a few minutes, he pushed his chair back.
“You should have asked nicely,” Aunt Grace said to his retreating form.
As soon as he was out of hearing, she leaned closer to me. “You know what this means, don’t you? Why they’re looking for a woman wearing a large hat? They’ve found a hole in the poor girl’s head. I’ll bet my bottom dollar she was killed with a hatpin. I read about a murder like that in a local paper this very morning. An older paper.” She raised an eyebrow. “Maybe someone else read the same report. I found the stack discarded in the ladies parlor.”
Stunned, I relayed everything I thought I knew, everything I’d seen, everything I’d told Mr. Coxe. Aunt Grace remembered seeing several large hats, including the one with the white bird and the one with the roses, knew the women by sight but not by name, had even seen them in the ladies parlor a time or two. I could never recall what I ate for lunch that day, or even if I ate, I was so overwhelmed by the thought of Miss Kanerva’s killer in the pool area while we were swimming. For that’s what Aunt Grace said had to have happened; a sharp poke through the back of the neck into the brain and death would have been instantaneous. And it didn’t have to be the outsize pin for a large hat. Normal-sized hatpins measured eight inches, a steel needle quite long enough for a fatal jab. It didn’t even have to be a woman. Anyone could have gotten the hatpin from Maddie’s hat hanging in the changing room. I hadn’t seen anyone in the west end. Maybe Maddie had.
“If she saw her father sneaking around, she’d never tell,” I said. “He made Miss Kanerva cry at lunch. Maybe–”
“Mr. Anderson was playing golf, two holes ahead of me,” Aunt Grace said, shaking her head. ”It wasn’t him.”
Back at our rooms, Aunt Grace paged through the newspapers until she found what she wanted, a small item, situated below a large advertisement.
“Joseph M. Neil, a noted pugilist, recently died ten minutes after his marriage. A small hole was found in his head which entered his brain. It is believed it was made with a hat pin and that his wife committed the act. Just before his marriage Neil deeded his property to his sister and this may have had something to do with his death. A hat pin was found near the body and his wife is in custody.”*
I forgot all about euchre. Aunt Grace wanted to tour the scene of the crime, as she called it, and told me to gather all the items of the rented bathing costume. I was standing over the pile I’d made of them on the chair, straightening the stockings, when she tossed me Maddie’s yellow bathing cap. “Better take this to her in case she has to swim today.”
“I don’t think she’s ever going to swim again,” I said, catching the cap. The sateen had been given a water-resistant treatment and crackled in my hands. The drawstring, knitted of green wool, was tied in a bow.
“It might be a necessary part of her treatment,” Aunt Grace said, “though I doubt she’ll regain the use of her legs. From your description, they’ve lost their vitality.”
I agreed.
Traveling down in the elevator, I played nervously with the bathing cap, tying and untying the drawstring, trying to decide if I should ask Maddie if she had seen anyone in the pool area. I wasn’t as sure as Aunt Grace that it couldn’t have been her father. Maddie was already swimming when I arrived. I wondered briefly about the doctor. He had seemed moved by Miss Kanerva’s death, bowing his head over her as if in prayer.
An elderly voice cried out, “See you at four!” and I tripped in the middle of the rotunda, dropping the cap. I smiled at the woman as I bent to retrieve it. The toe of my shoe was on the drawstring as I lifted the cap and it came half out of its casing. I carried it like that, trailing the green wool, out the main entrance and across the courtyard, but before I mounted the steps to the loggia at the side entrance, I worked on getting the wool back through its casing, maneuvered the drawstring until its ends were even, tied them in a bow, then set the cap on my fist and twirled it slowly, brushing off dust from the floor. As it turned, the sun illuminated two tiny holes, several inches apart, and I jerked. Like the fish in the matching sculptures flanking the steps, I was caught. Not by a fish trap or a sculpting artist, but by the only possible explanation. Maddie had secured her bathing cap with a hatpin. But why? Surely the green wool kept the sateen cap in its place. By the time I reached her door, I knew.
The red-haired maid responded to my knoick. Maddie’s voice was loud, berating the young girl from the depths of the room. I apologized for the interruption. The maid kept her features blank, though her cheeks appeared to grow pinker as she stepped aside. Maddie looked confused at the sight of me in the hallway.
“Come here,” I said, holding up the yellow cap. If she could wheel herself from the bench to the pool’s steps, she could move her chair to the door. She dismissed the maid and rolled slowly toward me. When she stopped in the doorway, I showed her the pin holes.
She asked, “Why did you poke holes in my cap?”
I felt a sadness wash over me and my voice was soft. “You knew you could go up the steps in the pool because you’d already gone down them. Miss Kanerva couldn’t have carried you into the water because she was already dead.”
She snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve seen my legs.”
“You have a lot of strength in your upper body from swimming. Gravity would have helped you going down. I think Miss Kanerva was on the bench, bending over to tie her second bathing boot, when you struck. I wondered why she’d only untied one of her boots. But she wasn’t loosening the laces, she was tightening them. When she collapsed, you pushed her body sideways onto the bench, and covered her with your wheelchair blanket. I don’t know why, and I don’t care. But I do believe you killed her, Maddie.”
“Daddy was going to marry her,” she whispered, averting her eyes. “They met in the changing room whenever I was in the pool. He was going to commit Mother to an asylum and divorce her. He couldn’t do that in Michigan, but if Florida’s law let Mr. Flagler do it, why not Daddy? I couldn’t let that happen to Mother. I just couldn’t. You have to understand.” When she reached for me, I tossed the cap into her lap. Her voice followed me down the hall: “Lidia, I had no choice!”
***
It took me a while to get back to Aunt Grace. The panoramic view of the Matanzas River from the hotel’s roof was very different from the slice of the Ohio visible from my attic window at the Lathams’.
Aunt Grace gave me a hurried explanation of euchre on our way down in the elevator. I didn’t understand a word. Still, as was her practice, Aunt Grace found a way to win. Banknotes exchanged surreptitiously at the conclusion of the game included a large number in Aunt Grace’s direction. I excused myself from dinner and lay awake most of the night, troubled by Maddie’s words: I had no choice.
***
“You were such a long time returning the bathing cap,” Aunt Grace said over breakfast, “I thought I might as well take the opportunity to walk across the street with your rented bathing costume.”
“Thank you for doing that.” I dragged a spoon through my oatmeal. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”
“I imagine it’s very upsetting to discover a friend has done something as horrible as murder.”
My eyes flew to meet hers. “You knew?”
“I saw the pin holes a few minutes before I gave the cap to you.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
Aunt Grace sipped her tea. “I thought I’d let you handle it.”
“What if I didn’t see them?”
She shrugged. “So be it. The problem we have now is that the Andersons have the evidence of the bathing cap, and the girl is saying it was you who committed the deed with my hatpin, which you returned to me when I retrieved you from the pool, thus implicating the pair of us.”
I was flabbergasted. “What?”
“I received a whisper of the claims from one of their maids.”
I spied Mr. Coxe making his way toward us. My body tensed.
Aunt Grace patted my arm. “Don’t worry. We have the ace we need.”
Mr. Coxe slipped into the chair across from us, lowered his chin and gave my great-aunt a squinty glare. “I have the unfortunate–”
Aunt Grace interrupted. “Tell Mr. Anderson I have a gold cufflink engraved with his initials. If he does not cease his calumny, I shall turn it over to the county sheriff and swear I found it in the ladies changing room where Miss Kanerva always hung his daughter’s coat and hat. The one with the cushioned bench?” The last two words received a special emphasis I didn’t understand at the time.
Mr. Coxe seemed even more confused than I.
“Tell him!” Aunt Grace said. And he left us, muttering something about bossy women.
The next day we rocked in green chairs on the loggia while Mr. Anderson, dressed for train travel, hurried across the courtyard to join his family, already assembled in the carriage beyond the gates. Gradually the crowd on the loggia thinned as people headed inside to dress for dinner. Aunt Grace explained the significance of a man’s cufflink found in a ladies changing room, and admitted she’d paid a maid to retrieve one, preferably monogrammed, from Mr. Anderson’s dressing room. I nodded understanding as she spoke, but I didn’t really care. I had made and lost a friend. That was enough reality for me.
*The Ocala Banner, Marion County, FL. Dec. 21, 1906, Page 2. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88074815/1906-12-21/ed-1/seq-2/
NOTE
The Florida legislature changed its divorce law in 1901 to allow Henry Flagler to divorce his second wife who suffered from dementia and resided in a sanatorium. The law was repealed in 1905.
BIO
Jeanne grew up in New Jersey, graduated from the University of Michigan in English and History, and immediately moved to the Florida Keys where she waited tables, drove the bookmobile, memorized the land use regulations, and fished. When her son was six, she headed north, earned an M.Ed. at the University of Florida, and thereafter taught elementary school. She lives with a retired racing greyhound and still teaches elementary school, from time to time.
