“Your godmother believed that?”
“I doubt it. I wouldn’t have believed it. The story would’ve made sense, though, if the men were escaped POWs. They had to explain themselves somehow.”
Chestra said that Marlissa was staying at Southwind alone at the time, except for occasional visits from Frederick. She gave the Germans food and supplies but refused to hide them in the house.
I said, “If they were POWs, how did they find out where your godmother lived? Six years without contact, in a different country, they meet coincidentally? Even if that’s what happened, why would she help a man who tried to rape her?”
I was getting that feeling again—Chestra wasn’t telling me everything.
I added, “They were waiting on a boat that was going to take them to South America? If what the diary says is true, the night of the storm, they didn’t go offshore looking for a submarine. They went to meet a submarine. The Germans had to have leverage to get that kind of cooperation from Marlissa and her boyfriend.”
I was thinking: If Frederick was a Nazi spy, maybe they’d threatened to expose him. I was aware that, during WW II, every foreign spy caught on U.S. soil had faced a firing squad. The sentencing process was not lengthy.
The woman’s eyes were glassy, alone in some distant place. After a moment, she said, “The answer is here in the diary. Yes, they had a tremendous amount of leverage. They also had a gun.”
The Germans had been watching this house, Chestra said. Secretly. They knew that Frederick sometimes visited late at night. They also witnessed something that Marlissa didn’t want anyone to know. Especially Frederick.”
Marlissa had been experimenting with other men.
Chestra stood and motioned me to follow. There were more photos to see.
M arlissa Dorn wasn’t made for the 1940s. She was a free-thinker, outspoken, uninhibited.
“In those days, women had to pretend to follow the rules or they were ostracized. Sometimes crucified. Marlissa lived a secret life. A lot of strong women did.”
Frederick was one of her secrets. Her friend Vincent was another.
Once again, we were standing at a wall covered with photographs. I was looking at a shot of Edison and Ford, the two surprising mystics, as Chestra said, “It was only a few years ago—I was reading some book about the history of Sanibel—that I realized who Vincent was. Marlissa mentioned the name so often in her diary. ‘Vincent has composed a hilarious poem. Vincent has such brilliant ideas about politics, and social reform.’
“My godmother was very impressed. Vincent influenced much of her thinking about women’s rights, racial equality. Morality, too. Vincent was…open-minded. Marlissa was already too opinionated and free-spirited for women of that time. Vincent encouraged her.”
Chestra pointed to a photo. Vincent was Edna St. Vincent Millay, the internationally admired poet and Pulitzer Prize winner. It was the photo with Frederick in the background, holding a towel. The poet was wearing the flapper’s hat, smoking a cigarette, staring into the camera with her fierce, intelligent eyes.
“Vincent’s husband, from what I’ve read, was as open-minded as his brilliant wife. All that puritanical nonsense about sex being sinful, dirty, and about women being subservient to men. Vincent lived the way she wanted to live. Sanibel was her escape.”
According to Chestra, the diary contained no hint the women had a physical relationship, but Millay’s opinions and open lifestyle validated Marlissa’s own instincts.
Marlissa’s sensuality was more than skin-deep, Chestra told me. “She was never promiscuous, but she did experiment once or twice with other men—what could be more natural for someone like her? A young, healthy woman alone in this house, with the beach, the moonlight? What is it about the tropics, Doc, that makes sin so delicious?”
I said, “Maybe it’s the baggage people leave behind,” before asking if Frederick was as open-minded as Millay’s husband.
“She never told Frederick. She couldn’t. Besides, it wasn’t another man she wanted. It was the experience; the fun of it. Sex is healthy, we know that now. Marlissa believed it then. You’re the scientist—sexual activity changes our brain chemistry somehow. It keeps us young. She was decades ahead of her time.”
Marlissa also experimented, Chestra said, because it was a freedom she’d never experienced.
“Imagine what it’s like to be pursued relentlessly. Your every move watched by men who want more than your body, they want to possess you, even your most private thoughts. No woman can live up to the expectations of that kind of beauty. To choose a partner on her terms? That was freedom. Enjoy sex because she wanted it, that was the allure. But it had a price.”
Chestra read from the diary. “Tonight, H.G. threatened me. Blackmail is the word in English. He saw P.J. enter the house three nights ago. It was an innocent visit; he’s an old friend of the family, and often does yard work at Southwind. No matter. H. somehow knows I’ve strayed, and is threatening to inform. I would rather die than hurt my dear Freddy.”
On the wall was a photo of two of Chestra’s great-uncles posing with an alligator they’d apparently killed. In the background was a good-looking man with shoulders, and a saddle-brown face. He wore bib overalls; looked to be in his midthirties. It was Peter Jefferson, Chestra said.
The next entry in Marlissa’s diary contained the news that someone had gone to Jefferson’s moonshine still, poured liquor on the man, and set him afire.
Once again, Chestra read. “I know it was H.G. I rejected him. He despises me because of it. Only he has that much hatred and evil inside. I am lost as long as he is here. Maybe lost, now, forever. Poor, poor, dear Peter.”
C hestra closed the diary. “For years, I assumed everyone aboard died the night Dark Light sank. I was wrong.”
A year and a half ago, she said, her uncle Clarence Brusthoff’s office received a letter from a Wisconsin attorney, saying he represented an admirer of Marlissa Dorn.
“It was from the same law firm that sent this”—she indicated the FedEx envelope—“but it was from a different attorney. Not an attorney named Goddard.”
I didn’t understand why that was significant but let her talk.
In the first letter, the attorney wrote that his client was terminally ill, and wished to include Marlissa in his will. If Marlissa was no longer alive, the bequest was to go to Marlissa’s oldest living female heir—provided she meet certain terms.
I said, “You?”
“That’s right. This house was deeded to my uncle’s company after our families stopped vacationing on Sanibel. It paid for itself many times over as a rental. My second husband died ten years ago, and I began coming here, always in October, and always alone. It’s like heaven to me. A little less than two years ago, though, when Uncle Clarence’s business was in trouble, and it seemed real estate couldn’t go any higher, the house was sold to a Florida land company.”
Marlissa’s anonymous benefactor bought the estate. There were conditions to the man’s bequest.
“If I lived in Southwind for six months,” Chestra said, “the house would be available to me for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t own it. The estate would remain deeded to my benefactor’s company, which was responsible for taxes and normal maintenance. So it was better than owning it, in a way.
“It was a gift of time, not property. Those were the terms. My uncle thought it was some kind of horrible con. I was suspicious, but I can’t resist adventure. I adore this place, plus I had to find out who my godmother’s secret admirer was. It was a mystery! What did I have to lose?”