Louisa and the Missing Heiress (15 page)

“But if Preston doesn’t inherit, then he doesn’t have a motive, does he?” Sylvia said, opening her purse and putting a dime on the table for the tea.

“My turn, Sylvie,” I said, opening my own thin coin purse. Sylvia let me pay, knowing I would be embarrassed if she did not.

“Don’t you see, Sylvia? He didn’t know he wouldn’t inherit. When Dot died, Mr. Wortham still believed her death would enrich him.”

On our way back to Beacon Hill, I decided to stop and have a chat with Constable Cobban.

“Come with me, Sylvia. Just for appearances’ sake.”

It was windy, and last year’s half-rotted leaves whirled down the street as the world readied itself for spring, for renewal. One leaf, still showing the red and gold of its last year’s demise, flew onto my little flat pancake hat and stuck there with determination, as if a milliner had arranged it.

“If you are worried about appearances, then you are not blind to what I have already suspected. Constable Cobban is smitten with you,” Sylvia said.

“Don’t be silly.” I reached up and removed the leaf. Sylvia smiled.

Constable Cobban was just ending his shift, and rolling down his shirtsleeves in preparation for donning his brash plaid jacket. He blushed a bit when I walked into his office, but very courteously pulled out chairs for both of us and sat back down behind his beat-up desk. There were papers everywhere, and a spilled pot of ink no one had thought to wipe up had dried and left a black continent of stain. In the rare spaces of open, uncluttered wood were years and years of penknifed graffiti. There was one deeply etched phrase directly in front of where I sat:
Three down
, it said. (For years I mused over that phrase, wondering.)

“How can I be of assistance?” Cobban looked steadily at both of us, but I was aware his attention had gathered and focused on me.

“You say there was an anonymous letter accusing Dorothy’s husband. Might I have the details of that letter?” I asked boldly.

“The Wortham case,” he said with a note of impatience, which surprised me. I hadn’t considered that he would be working on other matters at the same time. Dot’s death had changed me and my world, though I was just beginning to suspect the forces of those changes. How could it not have similarly affected everyone else? How could young Constable Cobban look at me so brightly and say, “The Wortham case,” as if it were no more than a matter of a milk jar stolen off a back porch?

“Yes, the Wortham case,” I said.

“Not the actual letter, of course,” Cobban said, no longer smiling. “That must be retained as evidence. But I will tell you exactly what it says. That a tall man wearing a fancy, expensive greatcoat with a high collar was quarreling with a woman near the docks on the afternoon of Mrs. Wortham’s disappearance. The man is described, and meets Mr. Wortham’s description. The woman with whom he quarreled met Mrs. Wortham’s description.”

“Even so, it is a fact of life that husbands and wives do sometimes quarrel, and sometimes in public,” I said.

“Sadly true,” Cobban agreed. “But when a wife is found murdered, the quarrel takes on significance.”

“And you have no idea who sent this anonymous letter?”

“Usually, with an anonymous letter, that is the point, isn’t it?” Cobban said gently, patiently. At that moment, for some reason, he reminded me of my father, and I felt exasperated by his masculine manner of trying to impose philosophical logic into the more feminine corners of a disordered world, not accepting that intuition is a companion to, not a substitute for, logic.

I returned a gentle, patient smile. “Exactly. But the method of delivery, the quality of the paper, the slant of the handwriting itself, might provide some information about the sender, their class, the part of Boston in which they reside. You might take a closer look at the letter.

“And there is another point I wish to make,” I continued, ignoring the blush that rose to his cheeks.
Redheads blush so easily,
I thought. “Constable Cobban, I have talked to a woman who spends her days at the dock, the crab-cake seller, and she said that on that afternoon there was no quarreling couple, not anywhere near the place were Dot was later found. It was the day the child fell into the water, and there was a large commotion over that, but she says there were no other distractions that afternoon. And my witness is not anonymous.”

I rose, and could not resist a smile of victory.

He rose, too, keeping his desk between us, as if he needed restraint.

“Maybe her eyes and ears and concentration failed her for a moment,” Cobban offered.

“I think not. She is elderly, but her faculties are sharp enough to witness a public quarrel.”

“And she is not so busy selling cakes that she would miss an event of that nature were it to take place near her kiosk and in a manner that caught the attention of others,” Sylvia added.

His blush had died down, but now there was harshness in the set of his mouth, and he tapped impatiently on his desk.

“Miss Alcott, do you really believe him innocent? What is he to you, that you seek to defend him?” A brief flash of jealousy in Cobban’s placid blue eyes . . . and then composure again, official indifference, professional distance. I thought, at that moment, that he was a man of great passion, and such men can easily be moved to violence.

I took a deep breath before answering his question.

“He is innocent till proven guilty,” I answered. “That is what he is to us all.”

 

 

WE WALKED BACK to Beacon Hill. The first stars were already out, and clouds moved over a slender moon, making of the night a theatrical event of flickering light and shadows that came and went. We could hear cats rustling through the hedges, dogs barking as their toenails tapped on the cobbles. Sounds of a piano, a polka, came dimly through the darkness. Sylvia and I passed a house where voices were raised, a man shouting, a woman weeping. . . .

“What course now, Louisa?” Sylvia asked.

“Now we must determine the condition of that marriage,” I answered. “It is not enough to speculate on individual natures, since once merged in matrimony, nature changes or is at least enhanced. We must discover Mr. Wortham’s nature, and Dot’s, and the nature of their union.” I gazed up at the moon, which was playing a disappearing act with the clouds.

“Preston is vain and foolish,” Sylvia said. “Dorothy was gentle and, I must say it, a little slow, and in rich abundance of those instincts termed maternal. Their union was based on her love and his greed, with perhaps a little friendship thrown in.”

“You simplify, Sylvia. We must both try to look past the superficial and examine the subtleties.”

“I am trying, I’m sure. But it is my nature to take things at face value.”

“Ah, Sylvie. You don’t yet even know yourself. I predict that when matured, when tempered with time and experience, you will look back and see yourself for what you already are . . . a woman of many layers, many purposes.”

“You describe yourself, Louy.”

THE NEXT DAY I called on Edith and Sarah Brownly and their aunt, Alfreda Thorney, at the Brownly Beacon Hill mansion. It was not far from my own modest home, but the few blocks made a firm demarcation, a Mason-Dixon line, separating the very wealthy from the not wealthy. Each step from my own little Pinckney Street home toward the Brownly home brought forth disconcerting change: The houses grew larger until finally they were nothing less than palatial mansions; the front gardens grew more elaborate, sprouting daily trimmed yews shaped into peacocks or green versions of the
Mayflower
; the servants dashing to and fro grew more numerous and more finely uniformed.

By the time I arrived, I felt that I might as well have arrived on another planet. Neither Sylvia nor I had often visited Dorothy at home, though the Brownly family had regular calling hours on Wednesday afternoon. Even Dorothy had been uneasy in that large, intimidating redbrick version of a Georgian town house.

In a way, I had arrived in an unknown world: The information that the Brownlys owned shares in a plantation had affected me deeply, and now I could not but help view this manifestation of wealth as the most ill-begotten of gains, since it had been won upon the backs of slaves. Till that news had been proffered, I had believed the very rich Brownlys, though eccentric and often self-absorbed, were capable of reasoning and moral reliability. Now I had my doubts, and those doubts affected the interview that was to follow.

The Brownly sisters and aunt were at home, the lacecapped servant who answered the door announced solemnly. My coat was taken but not my hat. This was to be a formal call, which meant it must be limited to half an hour or less. The rules of etiquette were very strict on that matter.

The three women sat in the front parlor before a blazing fire, though the afternoon was not all that chilly. This was one of the prerogatives of the rich: a fire even when not needed. They wore black crepe for Dorothy, and had replaced their pearl earrings with jet, but that seemed the extent of any grief they felt or exhibited for their sister and niece.

When I arrived at the front parlor, Sarah was pasting last summer’s pressed violets and daisies into a scrapbook. She looked rather pretty and girlish, with dried violets strewn over her lap and a rose petal stuck to her cheek, though the dab of white paste on her nose somewhat spoiled the effect. Edith was polishing a pair of walking boots to a high sheen. She rubbed with such gusto that she reminded me of those curious movements of locomotive machinery. Alfreda Thorney was reading a novel, which she hastily buried under a pillow when she saw me, just announced, standing in the doorway. Women in mourning generally did not read the popular press, but devoted their time to sermons and uplifting poetry.

The overall impression was that these three had quite successfully managed to restrain their burden of grief for the deceased Dot.

“Oh, Louisa, isn’t it exciting!” Sarah cooed, looking up from her scrapbook and pushing her little spectacles further down her nose so she might look over them. “We are to go to the Matterhorn! The Matterhorn! I have always wanted to go to France. It was so unfair of Mother to take Dorothy. . . .”

“That is exciting,” I commented, still standing, for no one had offered me a chair. “Perhaps, though, you should visit Switzerland as well, since I believe that is where you will find the Matterhorn.”

“No. Really? Edith, you never . . . Oh, you are such a tease to have let me go on like that, believing we were to visit France when all along you knew . . . Oh, you are a tease.” And she threw down her little paste brush in a temper, so she could wag her finger at her grinning sister. I knew from my own experience in service that the dab of paste on the polished table would take half an hour of polishing to remove, but since Sarah did not even know that tables must be polished but were looked to by servants . . . Oh, spoiled, spoiled!

“We shall visit France, too,” was Edith’s cool response.

“I am relieved,” I said—and if there was a tone of irony and disappointment in my voice, the weird sisters did not hear it—“that you are not overcome with grief.”

Edith looked up from her boot polishing and pushed her spectacles higher up on her nose. “We never liked you, Miss Alcott. I feel free to break this connection, now that your friendship with Dorothy has been severed,” she said in her deep, booming voice.

“Now, girls,” lectured Alfreda Thorney, shifting on the sofa and rearranging the pillows over her buried novel. “Remember your manners.”

“Thank you for your honesty.” I addressed myself to Edith. “And for the courtesy you showed me while Dorothy was alive. It was a convenient pretense that we enjoyed each other’s companionship, and it pleased your sister. May I sit?”

“Do get to the point, Miss Alcott. We are rather pressed for time. There is much packing to be done.”

“Oh, Edith.” Sarah sighed. “Try to be a little friendly. Miss Alcott, would you like us to call Mama? She is just upstairs in the nursery with Agnes. Will you take tea?”

“No tea, thank you.” I chose a straight-backed wooden chair far from the fire, for the day was damp, though warm, and my dress dripped ever so slightly. I had no desire to stain one of the formidable velvet-upholstered chairs or settees. At my own home there would have been towels and hot-water bottles to greet me, and no concern at all for a chair; but this was the Brownly mansion, where lace tablecloths, knotted rugs, carved chairs, bouquets of ferns and hothouse flowers seemed of more consequence than people. I shivered, and not from the dampness. I carefully turned in my chair so that I might see all three women at once.

“There is no need to disturb Mrs. Brownly,” I answered mildly. “I have already offered her my condolences. As I now offer them to you. How is Agnes, by the way? Is her congestion improving?”

“Agnes is much too delicate, as is often the case with these change-of-life babies,” said Edith coldly. “How Mother ever—”

“Now, Edith, you know women have no say in these things. We must take as God sends. . . .”

“Bollocks,” muttered Edith, resuming her boot polishing.

I stifled a smile. I agreed with Edith on that issue. The day before I had shown Queenie a packet of sheaths, and given her instructions on their use . . . instructions that were all too often pointless for girls such as Queenie, whose babies began in nights of forced rather than willing sex.

I could not discuss such matters with the Brownly girls, of course. If legs could not even be referred to in polite society except as vague and sexless limbs, how to refer to other, more secret parts of the body? No, and that was not the purpose of my visit.

“I hope Agnes grows stronger,” I said, pretending to look at a vase of roses but surreptitiously studying the women, waiting for their response. “It would be heartbreaking for you to lose two sisters.” I leaned closer to the vase and inhaled the fragrance.