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“Martha! Remy!” Leslie called, and finally they heard a shuffling sound coming from upstairs. Then, while glancing toward the hallway, they thought they saw Zelda slipping out the back. Seconds later, their attention was drawn to Martha coming down the sweeping staircase.
“May I help you?” she said politely, though she didn’t seem particularly happy to see the two detectives.
“We’d like to take a look at Felicia’s bedroom,” Robin said.
“Oh?”
“Betsy assured me that we could have free access to the room, since of course, it was hers, too.”
“I doubt Betsy has the authority to allow anything regarding this house, but,” Martha
shrugged, “go ahead if you want. I assume you’ll stay clear of our room. We really have nothing to hide; and since the police went through everything, including underwear drawers before they finished their investigation, I can’t imagine there’s anything left to find.”
“We won’t be long,” Robin said, ignoring Martha’s editorial.
The two detectives mounted the staircase, and made their way down a massive hallway, entering the spacious apartment that had always been Felicia’s bedroom—and that of whatever lover shared her bed.
“Apparently Betsy didn’t have her own room,” Robin said. “She sometimes slept downstairs on the sleeping porch, but this was her room too.” She made a first perusal of the room noting similarities and differences between the present and when she used to share the room with Felicia Roman.
Leslie watched her partner work, knowing that Robin had a way of climbing inside a person’s psyche and waltzing around, looking through their eyes, feeling what they felt, thinking their thoughts – if she could imagine well enough. Leslie had heard of psychologists who talked of doing this, but she’d never known anyone but Robin get such startling and immediate results.
Her partner gave the room a thorough scrutiny. There was a round turret that was set up as a sitting area with two chairs, a small footstool, and a table with an antique lamp. The bed was to the right of that against the wall, an enormous antiquated piece, not just a four poster bed; the massive structure had a canopy and drapes that closed around it.
Leslie had seen pictures of the bed with Felicia in it, but in person, it looked even more imposing. Now, stripped of all its sheets, the bed looked stark and wholly uninviting without the soft aura of pillows and comforters.
On the far wall was a dressing table and mirror, while an enormous wardrobe stood to the left of the doorway. On the right wall were doors to closets and the bathroom. With the door standing open, Leslie and Robin could see inside the stark, white tiled-room, which had been cleared out and cleaned.
The blonde detective moved around the room slowly, opening doors and drawers, but not really looking beyond the surface of things. Occasionally she looked back at the turret sitting area as if there was something there that she was trying see, and yet hadn’t been able to. She went about the whole room doing this strange cursory inspection. Her mind like a mad scientist’s. Leslie was certain that her partner would soon spin out of control if she didn’t come to a verdict soon.
“Robin … ?” She wanted to hear her speak her mind.
Robin stopped in her tracks, while her eyes continued to move from place to place. “You know I can almost hear her laughing at me right now, as if we’re little kids playing hide and seek, and she’s giggling in some dark corner. I know there’s something in this room that no one has seen. It’s like she’s toying with me. I’ve got goosebumps all over.” That was Robin’s sure sign of cosmic truth about to descend.
“So, what is it?” Leslie prodded.
“It’s so strange in here,” Robin started. She started on her trek again, opening more of the infinite cubbyholes and hiding places scattered around the room. “I guess I’m time warping, remembering this room, it hasn’t changed very much since I was here. But don’t you think it’s kinda strange, there’s really nothing that personal around here, certainly nothing of Betsy’s? And all these things, these pictures and figurines, they’re all the same as they used to be. Seems odd to me. I wonder in all her jumbled disordered life, if this room wasn’t the one place that was stable for Felicia. Perhaps this house was her anchor, what kept her from really going out of control. I was thinking about what Jane said, that she couldn’t give this up. I can’t imagine Felicia ever living anywhere but here; she was a very provincial woman.”
Leslie listened, content to let her partner ramble.
“She liked it here, she used to sit in the window …” Robin’s voice drifted off, as she moved toward the turret, her eyes on the footstool. Had she found something? Suddenly grabbing the small piece of furniture, Robin pried the top of the cushioned seat off the four legged base. With little effort it came loose, spilling a white dog-eared envelope onto the floor.
“I knew it!” She threw the stool aside and picked up the envelope. Sitting down in the chair behind her, Robin opened the envelope and pulled out the contents.
“Your source at Sapphos was right. Look,” Robin said. She handed Leslie the photographs after glancing at each one. They were pictures of Felicia tied to her bed, not unlike the pictures of her at her death. The delayed action of the camera had caught Jane Hugh in the act of whipping Felicia’s rear end. In other pictures Jane was shoving a dildo in the woman’s ass, still another showed Felicia at Jane’s feet, her head pressed to the carpet, with a riding crop at her back. Red marks showed that this was no passive staged pose; Jane was in the process of punishing her. The expression on Felicia’s face was remarkable: a little anguish, a little pain and fear, and a degree of contentment that was mesmerizing. Frozen in the white frame of the photographs, Felicia looked alive, as if she could walk right out of the picture as big as life. So very different than the violent peace of her death, though that death seemed all the more fitting after seeing startling images.
“How did you know they would be here?” Leslie asked.
“I’m not exactly sure, except that I flashed on this picture of Felicia sitting by these windows—she loved this view of the grounds. She’d meditate here for hours sometimes; I often wondered what she was cooking up in that bizarre little brain of hers. I remember walking in on her one day; she had her hand in her cunt and was teasing herself to climax. I stood stock still and watched her masturbate. She knew I was there, but she kept going, not for an instant missing a stroke. It was really lovely … Felicia there in her paisley print dress, the skirt pulled up, her naked cunt all pink and wet, responding to her thoughts and probing fingers.”
“Perhaps she was looking at pictures then?” Leslie asked.
“No, I don’t think so. That was long before her obsession with the camera, but I can imagine her sitting here in recent weeks, looking through these photographs and getting re-charged by what had been captured on film. I wondered where she might have hidden them and this seemed like an obvious choice.”
“Well, you got results,” Leslie said happily.
“Did you notice the ropes?” Robin returned to a picture of Felicia tied to the bed.
Leslie studied the color photographs for a few moments. The ropes were tied the way they were tied in the photographs of her dead body. “Exactly, the same knots the murderer used,” Leslie said. “A reason to implicate Jane?”
