An eerie feeling crept over me, and I shivered. It must be the Halloween atmosphere, I decided, and patted the pocket into which I’d tucked my talismans-comb and lipstick-reminders of what I really looked like.
My mood of gloom-and-doom had disappeared by the time Seth and I arrived at Paul Marshall’s palatial estate. His household staff had turned the huge first-floor rooms of the main house into a replica of a vast dungeon, replete with catacombs and realistic spider webs, boiling cauldrons and faux stone walls, all accompanied by the sounds of rattling chains and eerie moans and cackles piped through the stereo system. His guests were arrayed in costumes that ranged from the inventive to mundane, outrageous to subdued. The most prevalent were identical moose outfits made especially for the event. They were worn by more than a dozen invited employees of Marshall-Scott Clothing, Inc., our host’s sportswear factory. There was no way to know who was under the giant moose heads, so complete was their disguise.
Late in the evening, a group of friends gravitated from the main room to one of several patios overlooking the sprawling grounds of the Marshall estate.
“You’d never know Paul Marshall was in financial difficulty, judging from this place,” my dentist Doug Treyz said absently.
“Is he?” asked Jack Decker, publisher of our Cabot Cove magazine.
“That’s the scuttlebutt from my treatment chair,” Doug said. “The way I hear it, his partner, Tony Scott, never did come up with a solution for BarrierCloth’s flammability problem, and paid the price with his life in last year’s fire. Without that, the company can’t compete with L.L. Bean and Lands’ End.”
“One of my patients told me that the two partners had taken out hefty ‘key man’ insurance policies not long before the accident,” Seth said. “Paul should have collected on the policy-millions, I understand.”
“Yes, but I heard the company hasn’t paid yet because of the suspicious nature of the fire,” Tina, Doug’s wife, added.
“Looks like if you want to know anyone’s financial condition around here, go for a root canal or a routine physical,” Marylou Decker said, raising her eyebrows.
“Maybe he did perfect the formula,” Decker offered. “I heard he might have.”
A pair of large white doves, or maybe they were swans, joined us on the patio. They turned out to be Peter and Roberta Walters, owners of the area’s only radio station.
“Maybe you know, Pete,” Decker said, turning to them. “You keep up with the news. Did Tony Scott solve the flammability problem with BarrierCloth before he died?”
“Can’t prove it by me,” Pete Walters said.
My attention wandered from the conversation to the property beyond the patio. We had a clear view of a small cemetery adjacent to Paul Marshall’s estate where, among others, The Legend was buried with her unfaithful spouse. Beyond it, I knew, were two outbuildings, one of them known as “The Rose Cottage,” named for the magnificent flowers surrounding it. It had been rented some months back to a newcomer to Cabot Cove, Matilda Swift, an enigmatic, mysterious figure with a penchant for flowing gowns, whose hair was snow white, and eyes a piercing blue that bore right through you. She had arrived not much before Lucas Tremaine, and ever since odd things had been happening in town, including an almost constant static on everyone’s phones that the phone company couldn’t explain or fix.
“What’s new with the nut out on the old quarry road?” Pete asked, drawing me back from my musings.
“Lucas Tremaine?” Decker said. “Our copy editor, Brenda Brody, has been attending his-what would you call them, services?”
“Con games,” Seth said, guffawing.
“She calls them seances,” Decker said. “You know Brenda lost her husband a year ago.”
“Ayuh,” said Seth. “He was my patient. Fell off a ladder putting on a new roof. Damn fool was too old to be roofing.”
“Brenda’s a believer. I told her she was throwing away money, giving it to Tremaine, but when someone is grieving the way she is, you grasp at straws. She swears Tremaine puts her in touch with Russell and that they have long conversations,” Decker said.
“The man is a charlatan,” Doug Treyz said.
“Unconscionable,” added Pete Walters.
“There’s got to be a law against what he’s doing,” Doug said.
“If there were, Mort Metzger would have invoked it long ago,” I said, indicating Cabot Cove’s sheriff, who was dancing with his wife in the room behind us.
“Look at that.”
We directed our eyes to where Tina Treyz pointed. Two partygoers in moose costumes could be seen walking through the cemetery, their antlered heads silhouettes in the light of the full moon.
“Sneaking off for a little moose smooching, I suspect,” Seth said of the couple, smiling.
The festivities ended at midnight, but our host, millionaire Paul Marshall, invited a small group of us to linger awhile, including Seth and me. We gathered in the living room and enjoyed leisurely conversation after the crush of the party.
“I never really got a chance to talk with my guests,” Marshall said to me. “There are so many things that pulled me away during the evening.”
“It was a wonderful Halloween party, Paul-as usual,” I said as a waiter appeared with a tray of brandy, which I declined. “Thank you for inviting us.”
“Thank you for coming. Wouldn’t be as much fun without you. By the way, Jessica, you look terrific as The Legend. Are you sure I didn’t just see you haunting the cemetery?”
“This is the night she’s supposed to appear,” Seth put in, “but I can vouch for Jessica’s presence all evening.”
“Tonight was fun but-I just wish Tony Scott could have been here to share in it,” Marshall said, soberly.
“Yes, I’m sure you do,” I said.
“We were like brothers,” Marshall continued, waving the waiter away, “much more than business partners. I just can’t accept that he’s no longer here. When I first learned he’d died in that explosion and fire in our lab, I-”
A loud wail pierced the night air and all conversation ceased.
“I thought I told you to turn off the sound effects,” Marshall growled at a nearby moose.
“I did,” a masculine voice responded.
The wail rose again, raising the hairs on my arms. We rushed onto the patio and peered out over the dark property in the direction from which the sound seemed to have come. We heard it again, louder this time, now a scream, from the cemetery, or beyond.
“Good Lord,” Marshall said.
“I’d better see what’s happening,” Mort Metzger said, shifting into his law-enforcement mode.
He took off at a run, with the rest of us following. We raced through the cemetery, dodging tombstones and grave markers, the damp earth pulling at our shoes. The screams had stopped by now, but we followed the sound of sobbing. As we approached the Rose Cottage, two figures could be seen standing together near the bare branches of bushes that climbed the brick wall. They were in costume, their bodies so close together their moose heads touched as they slowly backed away from the onrushing crowd.
“Stand back!” Mort ordered, bringing us to a halt. But we weren’t so far away that we couldn’t see what had caught his attention. There, in a pool of moonlight, lay a motionless form. A stain, the same claret red as the roses that bloomed on this brick wall every spring, had turned the white hair to crimson. Those incredibly blue eyes were open and dull.
It was Matilda Swift.
Donald Bain, Jessica Fletcher
