From This Moment (29 page)

“The only thing your sister seemed to be obsessed with in
those final months was some high-flying ambition to attend law school,” her father said.

Gwendolyn wanted to go to law school?
It was the first Stella had ever heard of such a thing. As far as she knew, Gwendolyn’s sole ambition in life was to find a good man to settle down with and have a passel of healthy, happy babies.

“It was pure nonsense,” Eloise said dismissively. “She met some fellow who was encouraging her to reach higher than a secretarial position in City Hall. The law school at Buffalo had begun accepting women into their program, and this Michael fellow convinced Gwendolyn she ought to attend.”

“Michael?” All of this was new information—and so out of character for her sister. “Who are you talking about?”

Her father’s face darkened. “He was an attorney Gwendolyn met in Boston. He was far too old for her, but he was the one nudging her toward law school. I’m not sure why she was so keen to go—”

“It was to impress Michael,” her mother interrupted. “And why shouldn’t she? I didn’t want my daughter to be a spinster, and just because he was a few years older—”

“He was forty-nine!” her father burst out. “No man that age ought to be prowling around my twenty-six-year-old daughter.”

Stella’s mind whirled. Gwendolyn hadn’t told her a single thing about law school or this Michael fellow, and it was worrisome. She and Gwendolyn told each other everything, but now it seemed there were layers of secrecy Gwendolyn had built around herself, and Stella needed to know why. “Who is this Michael person?” she demanded.

“He was an attorney,” Eloise said.

“
Is
an attorney,” her father corrected. “Michael Townsend. He’s very high up in the government and works at the State
House. He’s a widower but still has no business hankering after a girl Gwendolyn’s age.”

Stella closed her eyes. She knew that name . . . she’d met him outside the Boston Athletic Club. The handsome man with prematurely gray hair. He and Romulus were sparring partners.

Romulus had introduced him as
the top attorney
in Massachusetts. At the time, she’d thought it was just an overblown compliment, but if Michael Townsend worked at the State House and was the
top attorney
in the state, it meant that Michael Townsend was the attorney general of Massachusetts. A.G.

It made perfect sense. In her letters, Gwendolyn had written that A.G. was a powerful and well-connected man. He had the authority to bring men to justice. He was a principled man who longed to remake Boston along the idealistic lines of their Puritan forefathers.

He also used a naïve and unprotected woman to spy on a network of corruption at City Hall. A.G. had a lot to answer for.

“I have to get back to Boston,” she said.

“So soon?” her mother said.

She rushed over to place a kiss on her mother’s check. “I’ll try to come back next weekend,” she said breathlessly, her mind flooding with the rush of new information. Was Michael Townsend a friend or an enemy? The only way she’d find out was by confronting him.

Only in a state like Massachusetts would they call a State House built in 1798 the “new State House,” but since the previous one had been built in 1713 when colonists were still paying homage to Queen Anne, perhaps the name was appropriate. Sitting on a prime lot at the top of Beacon Hill and featuring
a classical redbrick façade, white columns, and golden dome, the State House was designed to look imposing.

Stella climbed the elegant staircases to the third floor, where the executive offices dominated most of the space. The office of the attorney general was in the rear wing, fronted by a reception room lined with hand-carved mahogany paneling, oriental carpets, and soft illumination from green-shaded lamps. A number of gentlemen waited in the fancy leather chairs lining the room. Oil paintings of white-wigged men from the eighteenth century stared down at her as she made her way to an official’s desk in the front of the reception area.

“I’d like to see the attorney general, please.”

The young man with thinning hair and an unfortunate herringbone tweed suitcoat looked up at her in disapproval. “Do you have an appointment, miss?” The man spoke in a low voice, made even softer by the muffling from the carpet and swags of draperies surrounding the windows.

“No. I’d like to make one for today. Now, if he’s available.” She spoke in a voice brimming with confidence, for timidity was not likely to get her a meeting with the state’s highest attorney.

The young man coughed delicately. “I’m afraid the attorney general is an important man who is unable to meet with every person who wanders in from the street. The usual manner of contacting him is to send a letter to his office, where it will be addressed in due course.”

In other words, where a clerk would process the letter with as little fuss as possible. She glanced down at the papers spread across the clerk’s desk. Most appeared to be official correspondence, but the open appointment book was likely to contain Mr. Townsend’s schedule for the day. She turned the book to face her, ignoring the sputtering outrage from the clerk.

“I see Mr. Townsend has an opening at one o’clock. Shall I
write my name in, or would you care to do that? Please mark down Stella Westergaard.”

The only time she’d met Michael Townsend was on the steps of Boston Athletic Club, and Romulus had introduced her by her professional name, Stella West. Ever since she’d arrived in Boston, she’d deliberately kept her real last name private from everyone except people connected with the investigation, for she wanted no one making an association between her and Gwendolyn. That time was over.

“You have no authority to write anything in Mr. Townsend’s schedule. I suggest you leave immediately, or I will be forced to summon a member of the security staff.”

Some of the gentlemen in the room lowered their newspapers to peer at her, but she didn’t care. Last night she had passed up an evening with her parents to race back to Boston, and Gwendolyn lay dead in a grave because of her association with Michael Townsend.

She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Get up out of your seat and tell Mr. Townsend that Gwendolyn Westergaard’s sister is here to see him. Tell him that I’ve been at City Hall and I know what the two of them were doing.”

Something in the intensity of her voice must have cracked the young clerk’s sense of decorum, for he nodded to a chair in the reception area as he stood. “Please have a seat. I will return momentarily.”

She sat. She didn’t know if the clerk was carrying her message to the attorney general or was in the process of summoning security, but she’d find out soon. If they threw her out of the State House, she’d be at the boxing club first thing on Tuesday morning to intercept the attorney general before his weekly appointment to spar with Romulus.

It turned out not to be necessary. A moment later, the door
to the administrative wing opened and Michael Townsend emerged. He was a tall but slender man, with silver hair neatly groomed and combed back from his face. With his blue eyes and patrician features, he was exactly the sort of cultured gentleman who would have appealed to her sister.

She stood as Mr. Townsend approached, guarded curiosity on his face. “We met outside the Athletic Club,” she said bluntly. “Gwendolyn was my sister.”

He nodded and gestured down the hall. “I remember. Please follow me, Miss Westergaard.”

He led her into an office at the end of the hall. In contrast to the luxuriant furnishings in the reception area, Michael Townsend’s office was spartan, with minimal furnishings and only a few framed diplomas on the wall. He offered her a seat in the leather chair facing his desk.

She got straight to the point. “I returned to Boston when I learned of Gwendolyn’s death. I’ve been looking for you.” She let the sentence hang in the air like a challenge.

He refused to take it. “First, let me extend my condolences about Gwendolyn’s death. She was a wonderful young woman, and her death was a tragedy.”

Despite his smooth words, there was a hint of sincerity in his eyes. She wasn’t used to talking to strangers about Gwendolyn, and it hurt. Rather than looking at the compassion in Mr. Townsend’s troubled eyes, she let her gaze roam around the office. Usually it was possible to glean insight into a person by looking at how they furnished the space where they spent most of their time, but there was little of a personal nature here. His desk was a glossy surface of polished walnut, with only two framed pictures in the corner, facing toward him. He noticed her gaze.

“My children,” he said briefly and turned the frames to face
her. The first photograph showed a young man in college graduation robes, standing beside a girl a few years younger. The other photograph was much older. It was a family portrait with Mr. Townsend when his hair was still dark, seated stiffly beside a handsome woman who held a baby girl on her lap, with the boy standing beside them.

Stella’s father had said Michael Townsend was forty-nine years old and had no business consorting with Gwendolyn in a romantic capacity. Despite the adoration in Gwendolyn’s letters, possibly their association had been entirely platonic, but his next words dispelled that notion.

“My wife died shortly after that portrait was taken,” he said as he returned the photographs to their proper places. “I’ve been a widower for almost twenty years. I had hoped that was coming to an end. It turned out not to be the case.”

Stella said nothing, too intent on the pictures he had set back on the desk. The surface of his desk was wide and spacious, but in the far corners there was an almost imperceptible sheen of dust. She noticed it only when he lifted the frames to reveal narrow rectangles of clean space beneath.

There were three rectangles in the dust. A third photograph must have been removed right before she came into the room. She wanted to know whose photograph he felt compelled to hide from her, but she had too many questions to squander on idle curiosity.

“Why did you empty Gwendolyn’s safe-deposit box?” She was fishing, but given the way he shifted and looked away, she’d hit the truth.

He recovered quickly. “Miss Westergaard, I gather you are aware of my relationship with your sister. Gwendolyn was doing heroic work in helping me root out corruption in the city. In so doing, she had gathered important and sensitive informa
tion. I needed to retrieve it quickly before it could fall into the wrong hands.”

“So you admit she was spying at City Hall on your request?”

He held her stare, his face so still it might have been carved from stone. She grew uncomfortable beneath his unwavering scrutiny, but at last he answered.

“Of course. And I know from the letters the two of you exchanged between Boston and London that you were well aware of Gwendolyn’s activities.”

“I want those letters back,” she snapped. She was certain Gwendolyn would not have thrown them away. Michael Townsend had stolen them from the safe-deposit box along with everything else that was in there.

“I will have them delivered to you immediately,” he said smoothly.

“What else was in that box?”

He took a moment before answering. “Gwendolyn was well positioned within City Hall to keep an eye on things. She took copious notes documenting suspicious activities. Her notes were stored in the box.”

“I want them, too.”

“No.”

His answer was firm and unequivocal, enough to heat her temper to a low simmer. She didn’t know if Michael Townsend could be trusted or not. All she knew for certain was that if Gwendolyn had never met him, she would be alive today. She would be savoring dreams of a future husband, of decorating the house she would someday turn into a home for laughing children. She wouldn’t have been pulled cold and lifeless out of a dirty river.

“You have no right to the contents of that box,” she said. “My parents are Gwendolyn’s heirs, and those notes belong to them.”

“They were addressed to me. And Stella, you really
don’t
want to get into a legal argument with me.” The framed diplomas on the wall behind him gave proof of his credentials. He also occupied the most powerful legal office in the state, with armies of attorneys and law enforcement officials at his beck and call.

“You wanted Gwendolyn to go to law school,” she said.

He nodded.

“Why?”

“She had the intelligence, but more important, she had a heart for it. She believed in standing up for people who had no voice. I’ve never met a woman with a greater sense of idealism just waiting to break free. She could have funneled that passion into a brilliant career in the law. With my backing, no one would have dared to slight her.”

Stella didn’t believe him. More than anything else in the world, Gwendolyn had dreamed of marriage and motherhood. While Stella reached out with both hands for a professional career, Gwendolyn was happy to take a secretarial position until she found the right man to marry.

“Who killed her?” she asked.

For the first time, he seemed taken aback. “What makes you think someone killed her?”

“Gwendolyn was a strong swimmer. She would not have drowned in five feet of water.”