Dark Light

34

“There are no photos of me on the wall because our families closed this house shortly after the war. Marlissa was involved in a scandal that caused quite a stink at the time. Made it awkward for them to remain in the area, so they boarded up the place, and seldom returned. Never again for a vacation.

“I have a few memories—the sound of waves, the weight of the air. That’s all. I was a toddler, not old enough to make Southwind’s photo museum.”

I said, “They closed the house because of the scandal? Or because of your godmother’s death?”

It seemed odd she didn’t automatically mention the latter.

“Both,” Chestra said, “of course. It was painful. The family was deeply upset by her death and the incident I’m talking about. That’s why I didn’t come straight out and tell you. My uncle Clarence is the only one still alive who’s old enough to remember, but it’s something even we don’t discuss.”

Chestra was wearing a black cardigan jacket tonight, pleated pants, and a white blouse with an antique emerald necklace. The bracelet was sterling silver; her watch gold, very thin. She’d closed the balcony doors—too windy—and we were sitting in the candle-dim dining room. On the table, she’d placed a Federal Express envelope and a leather-bound book, its gilded pages darkened with age.

The FedEx envelope, I noticed, was from a Wisconsin law firm. An attorney named Jason Goddard.

The book was Marlissa Dorn’s diary.

I was eager to get a look inside the diary but let Chestra move at her own speed.

I was right, she said. The incident involved at least one German, maybe two. “I wasn’t aware they were POWs,” she said, “but that solves at least part of the mystery, if it’s true.”

A local man was also a tragic victim of events, she added.

She wasn’t aware that Arlis had already told me the man’s name: Peter Jefferson.

“There’s something else I left out of the story,” she said. “I didn’t think you needed all the details until we were certain that you’d found the boat’s wreckage.” She took a few moments to wipe the condensation from the outside of her glass, staring into my eyes. She took a sip. “You are sure?”

I told her for the second time: “We found a wooden nameplate, one of the letters broken off—ARK LIGHT, it says. That and some bottles from the same era.” I hadn’t mentioned the flask-sized metallic object that Jeth had found but did now. The woman wanted to be convinced before entrusting me with family secrets. “The cigarette case that Marlissa’s holding in the photograph, the one you told me you’d like to have? It’s the right size. It could be silver, judging from the black patina. But don’t get your hopes up.”

She did. Her expression was intense for a moment, then became more guarded.

What was so special about a cigarette case?

I waited.

Chestra said, “What I haven’t told you is, there may have been more than two people aboard Dark Light, the night she went down. There was Marlissa, Frederick, plus one or both of the Germans. My family never knew. No one did. Only someone who’s read Marlissa’s diary would suspect.”

Chestra slid the book in front of me, the expression on her face expectant. I’d asked for the diary, now here it was.

“May I read it?”

The woman said, “You’re welcome to try.”

I opened the book. Leafed through the first few pages before opening to the middle, then skimming pages toward the back.

It was in German.

“She wrote wonderfully in English, but German added another layer of privacy. Beautiful women learn how to hide their secrets very early in life.”

“You sound experienced. And cynical.”

“I was never in her league. But I’ve walked into rooms of men where I felt like I was the bull’s-eye behind every lie. An example of how men and women are different? My first husband worried that I’d embarrass him in public, or laugh at him. I worried that he’d hire someone to murder me. The dark side of beauty isn’t balanced by the bright—people don’t realize.”

I was still leafing through the diary. The first entry was January 1939—her new life in America. The last entry was dated 19 October 1944—the last day of her life.

“Tomlinson speaks some German. And there’s a retired German psychiatrist at the marina, Dieter Rasmussen.” I remembered what JoAnn said about women who avoid a man’s friends. “I can come back in my truck, if you’d like to say hello. You can visit my lab and see the nameplate, and the other stuff we found.”

“And bring Marlissa’s diary? No. I’ll share it with you but no one else. It’s my godmother’s private life, Doc. Even though the woman is dead.”

She reached. I handed her the book.

“I’ll tell you the story as I know it. If you have questions, I can translate passages as I read.”

O n a night in late September 1944, Marlissa Dorn was walking near Sanibel Lighthouse when she realized she was being followed by two men. She began to walk faster, returning to Southwind, but stopped when one of the men hailed her by name.

Chestra had the diary open and began to read, sometimes haltingly as she translated Marlissa’s own words. “I nearly fainted when I realized the man was H.G., whom I last saw more than six years ago. I met him at a dinner party hosted by [blank] at the [blank] several months prior to my ocean voyage.

“H. was infatuated with me. He pestered for weeks before I agreed to a social outing. It was to a film; a private viewing for a group of high-ranking officials, all much older than we. Later, he tried to touch my breasts. When I refused, he ripped my blouse. I think he would have raped me if I hadn’t scratched his face and screamed.

“It was terrifying to see H. He’s disgusting, and scares me. I hate it that he’s in America and knows where I live.”

Chestra lifted her eyes from the diary. She’d become emotional as she read, but now calmed herself by explaining, “I’m reading the code words as blanks. They would only confuse you. Marlissa has been my hobby for years, but there’re still abbreviations and codes I don’t know.”

Marlissa met H.G. at a restaurant in Berlin, Chestra said. Her “ocean voyage” was code for sailing on the Normandie.

“She never identifies the second man, other than to say he was also German. They told her they’d escape the Reich, and needed food and a place to stay for a few nights while they waited on a boat to pick them up. They were on their way to South America to join other Germans who had turned against Hitler and were forming a government in exile. They said they were afraid U.S. authorities would mistake them for spies, so that’s why they were in hiding.”

“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?”

I said, “It’s an unusual gift.”

Women employ delicate understatement when dealing with topics they believe men are too naïve or insecure to handle. It’s part survival mechanism, part kindness. “Doc, it might surprise you some of the gifts I’ve been offered during my lifetime. Some of them from men who were supposedly friends of my husband.

“I was offered the deed to a villa in Majorca if I agreed to spend a month there each winter. I’ve been offered the use of private planes and apartments. A gentleman once showed me a magnificent eighteen-carat emerald pendant on a chain of Mayan gold. He said it was mine if I would spend the weekend with him in Paris. Instead, I spent the weekend with his wife, helping her shop for his anniversary present.

“In comparison, the only thing unusual about this gift was that I couldn’t keep it. But at least there were no strings attached.”

Through her uncle’s attorney, Chestra accepted. A Sanibel real estate agency that specialized in rentals opened the house to her and gave her the keys.

“Uncle Clarence brought boxes of family pictures; put them up personally to make this old gal seem like home again. The poor man wept as he hammered away. That was in March. I returned here last month, after the hurricane.”

Her benefactor died around the same time, and his name was finally revealed.

“It was Frederick Roth,” Chestra said. “I couldn’t believe it. That’s why I want to find out what’s among the boat’s wreckage. If there are no human remains, it tells me that maybe my godmother’s lover really did survive. I’m not being made a fool by some elaborate hoax.

“But it also leaves a terrible hole in what I’ve always thought of as a beautiful, romantic story. If Frederick loved my godmother, why did he leave her? The first letter was addressed to Marlissa—he didn’t know she was dead. Why did he never return? It was such cold behavior for a man who was so gentle and decent.

“Yesterday, this arrived, addressed to me. From the same law firm, but signed by Jason Goddard.” Chestra touched the open FedEx envelope. “They know I’m her only heir; we had to get that straight before I moved in. Have a gander. I’m still in shock.”

Ms. Mildred Engle, As executor for the estate of the late Frederick Roth, and acting on Mr. Roth’s wishes, I write to make amends for a regrettable oversight. Many years ago, Mr. Roth borrowed money from Ms. Marlissa Dorn and purchased several hundred hectares of Florida real estate, much of it waterfront. In good faith, Mr. Roth signed promissory notes, using properties he’d acquired as collateral. Due to circumstances, my client never satisfied these debts, nor paid interest on monies due.

Many of these properties are still titled to Mr. Roth’s Florida land holding company. It was my client’s desire to leave this world with a clear conscience, and so I write to inform you, as Ms. Dorn’s heir, you may be due reasonable compensation. You may have claim to some assets associated with the company which owns real estate worth in excess of nine hundred million dollars.

The wording of the promissory notes, signed by Mr. Roth, is important, as well as date stipulations, if any. It’s my understanding that you are in possession of these documents. Please notify me when and if you have them available. You will then be contacted at this address by a company representative.

This representative is a trusted family member, personally selected by Mr. Roth. It was my client’s hope that you two will engage in private negotiations, on behalf of a man and woman who were once friends, and thus avoid the complex legalities and expenses involved.

The letter was signed: Jason Goddard, Executive Assistant to Frederick Roth.

I asked, “Do you have the promissory notes?”

Chestra had been pacing nervously, using her scarf to carve the air. “Yes. I’m sure I do. But not here. They’re in New York, although I can have a friend ship them down. I’m not so sure I should, though.”

“Why?”

“Do you see how the letter’s signed?”

“Yes.” I still didn’t understand the significance.

“The man Marlissa writes about in her diary, H. G. Goddard, begins with a G. Don’t you see? His name could have been Goddard. Don’t you find it frightening? Frederick Roth and H.G. on the same boat that night. Now both names reappear so many years later…”

I watched her twirl the scarf, aware that she was omitting information. Was she being unreasonably fearful, or did she somehow know H.G.’s last name?

Her expression became hopeful when I said, “Goddard and Roth are both common names. It can’t be the same man. A Wisconsin attorney? There’s no way—” I was interrupted by a determined knocking on the door below.

I waited as she descended the stairs, then heard her call, “Doc!”

It was Tomlinson. The instant I saw the stricken look on his face, I knew something was wrong.

Javier Castillo, he told me, had been shot and killed. His body found floating near Indian Harbor Marina.