Must the Maiden Die (37 page)

"Yes," Glynis said, "the Oneidas."

"Those're the ones."

Glynis stood there, thinking, and then
realized that Addie was still staring at her. "Where are Clements
and Phoebe?" she asked.

"It's Clements's day off, so I s'pect he's
gone to town."

"Did he go before or after the sheriff
arrived?"

"Before."

So there was another member of the Brant
household who did not yet know of the disastrous turn of events.
"And where's Phoebe?"

Addie frowned as she said, "That one!
Touched in the head. She's supposed to be in the dining room
cleaning the silver."

The silver that was about to be seized for
Roland Brant's debts, Glynis brooded as her thoughts now scurried
down previously dim or unseen paths.

"Thank you, Addie," she said. When she left
the kitchen, the woman had not replied.

Glynis went up the hallway toward the front
of the house and looked into the dining room. Once she'd confirmed
that Phoebe was indeed there—although the silver lay unpolished
while she likely daydreamed of warlocks—Glynis went across the hall
and was about to step into the parlor when her name was called from
the top of the stairs. She looked up to see Tirzah Brant on the
landing. The light coming from the stained glass window behind her
made it impossible to see her expression, but Glynis guessed it
wasn't a pleasant one.

"So, Miss Tryon, come to witness the end of
an era?

When Glynis said nothing, Tirzah gestured to
her. "Come up here, Miss Tryon, if you would."

Glynis, still gripping the handle of the
basket, wondered how unstable Tirzah was at this moment—her hopes
surely dashed by the property seizure—and she regretted not having
told Zeph where she would be. But Tirzah clearly wanted something,
and Glynis couldn't gamble on it being a mere whim. She climbed the
stairs warily.

"I've been expecting the constable," Tirzah
said. Glynis saw puffy, red-rimmed eyes which had once beguiled,
and nervously twitching hands which had played the harpsichord with
such precision.

"Why did you expect Constable Stuart?"
Glynis asked her, moving well away from the top of the
staircase.

"I thought he might have the courtesy to
tell us the kitchen maid confessed to murdering my husband's
father."

"But you already know that," Glynis said,
stating the obvious. "As it is, I don't believe that confession,
and I doubt you do, either."

"Why shouldn't I believe it?" Tirzah
demanded, then turned from Glynis and for a brief time stood
staring up at the stained glass window. The pearl-white lilies had
acquired a funereal cast Glynis had not perceived earlier.

"I believe my mother-in-law would like to
see you, Miss Tryon." Tirzah's voice now held a commanding
edge.

Glynis glanced toward the closed door of
Helga Brant's room, where a tray of uneaten food had been left on a
table next to the dumbwaiter. "I can't imagine she'd want to see
anyone now," she objected. "I think another time would be more
appropriate."

"Let's find out." And before Glynis could
protest, Tirzah had rapped sharply on the bedroom door and, without
waiting for a response, pushed it open.

Helga Brant stood at the window. The room's
flower motif resembled that of the parlor, with blossoms on every
conceivable surface. Its occupant turned slowly toward the
door.

"Tirzah, I refuse to discuss this further,"
Helga Brant began, "and...Miss Tryon? I'm not in the mood for
visitors today, so you'll have to excuse me. Tirzah, close the door
as you leave."

Helga Brant turned again to the window.
Tirzah didn't comply, but stood with her eyes scanning the
room.

"Close the door, Tirzah," repeated Helga
Brant.

Her daughter-in-law began to slowly pull the
door closed, but not before Glynis caught a flash of bright red on
the surface of a small writing desk.

She gave Tirzah a brief nod, and quickly
went down the stairs. As she stepped out the front door, she
appreciated the clean fresh air that met her.

***

Neva greeted her at the refuge door with, "I assumed
you'd be along soon. Tamar is very much improved. Now if she'd just
stop worrying about that Gagnon man!"

They walked together across the yard and
into the shade of a spreading beech. Neva said, "After what that
girl has been through, it's a marvel she trusts anyone, let alone
a man."

"I think she's learned that not all men are
dangerous," Glynis answered with some confidence.

"And just where would she have learned
that?" Saving Glynis a response, Neva went on, "Isn't your family
about to arrive? We do have a wedding on the docket for tomorrow,
don't we?"

"Indeed we do. And yes, I need to start
behaving like a maiden aunt—however that might be. But you know why
I'm here, Neva."

"I'm afraid I don't have much to tell you.
Cullen left here just a few minutes before you came, and I said the
same thing to him."

"You did perform the autopsy?" Glynis asked
anxiously.

"Yes, but there isn't much to tell. I can't
say with any degree of certainty which blow killed Roland
Brant."

"You can't?"

"Glynis, either of those injuries could have
caused death. He had hemorrhaged from the blow to the temple, and
the knife had been thrust directly into the heart.
Directly
.
Since it's unlikely the blows were delivered simultaneously, about
all I can say is that one must have followed soon after the other.
I can speculate that the blow to the head occurred first—because
of the hemorrhaging—but that's all I can do."

"What time do you think death occurred?"

"There I'm on firmer ground. His stomach was
almost empty, so we can assume he hadn't eaten for some
hours."

"Almost
empty?"

"There was a fair amount of liquor present.
Now, everyone at the Brant house says he ate supper on Sunday
night. No one saw him eat breakfast, although that supposedly
wasn't unusual for him, but I don't believe he was killed during
the day on Monday."

"Why not?" Glynis asked,

"Because of the rigor. Commonly, rigor
mortis sets in four to six hours after death. It lasts about
twenty-four hours, and Brant was already stiff when we got there
Monday night. I went to the icehouse to check Tuesday morning at
seven a.m., and his body was still somewhat stiff, but the rigor
was leaving. I went back at ten o'clock and at that time, even
given the cooling effect of the ice, there was no rigor remaining.
Are you with me?"

"Yes," Glynis said. "He couldn't have been
killed later than—"

"Very early Monday. And
before
he ate
breakfast or lunch. But remember, there's a considerable amount of
leeway in the rigor time."

"Let's imagine, for the sake of trying this
out," Glynis proposed, "that Brant was killed, one way or another,
somewhere around three a.m. Monday morning. Rigor mortis would
have set in about seven to nine a.m.?"

Neva nodded.

"So," Glynis went on, "if we add twenty-four
hours to
that
we can say that the rigor should have worn off
by Tuesday morning."

"All things being equal, which they never
are," Neva cautioned. "But yes, ordinarily the rigor would have
been gone by around nine a.m. Tuesday."

"And it
was
gone, when you checked at
ten. Although you say there's leeway, is it reasonable to assume
that he was killed a few hours after midnight Sunday? Or even at
midnight—but probably not before—since he'd eaten supper, and you
found no food in his stomach?"

"Yes, it's a reasonable assumption, but I
can imagine a lawyer like Merrycoyf raising doubt. Look, Glynis,
I'm trying to help you narrow down the time period. I'm just not
sure it would stand up in a court of law," Neva emphasized.

"Maybe it won't have to stand up there,"
Glynis said quietly. "I think it's time to set a few things in
motion."

I do not pretend that I have brought aerial
navigation to perfection.... I have no doubt, but cherish a
fervent hope, that the time is not far distant when we can travel
in air without the aid of balloons for buoyant force.

—letter from Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine
Lowe, 1859

The most remarkable thing about sitting in the sky,
Bronwen decided, was the silence. Once she heard a hawk's
high-pitched scream, and occasionally an upward tug made the
mooring ropes of the balloon groan or the rattan basket creak, but
otherwise the quiet was absolute. There was not much to make noise
one thousand feet above the ground.

The stately, fifty-foot-high
Enterprise,
a huge, silk, gas-filled envelope varnished with
rice starch, towered above the waist-high basket in which she and
Professor Lowe were riding. Bronwen was perched on a narrow bench
that ran around the basket's interior, scanning with field glasses
a stretch of the Oswego River. Lowe insisted she should be able to
see campfire smoke twenty-five miles away. About this, she had her
doubts. Campfires at the end of May were scarce.

The balloon was anchored five miles west of
the river, and ten miles downstream from the Lake Ontario port city
of Oswego for which the north flowing river was named. From where
Bronwen sat, she could see twenty miles of that river: north to the
city and south to where the Oswego and the Oneida Rivers met. The
river traffic at this time of year was negligible because farmers
had not yet begun shipping crops, so the few canal and rowboats she
observed rode fairly high in the water. These she ignored.

An hour before, though, when scanning some
distance to the south, she had spotted three flatboats. All three
were riding low, indicating heavy freight.

"Professor Lowe, I think I've got
something," she had said, pointing to the southeast.

Lowe had picked up his own glasses, followed
her finger, and after a minute or two he nodded. "Could be. Could
very well be," he'd agreed. No silk top hat or Prince Albert coat
on this trip; just a long smock-like coat, high cavalry boots, and
cap of sleek black hair.

They had both swung their glasses to the
north to survey the riverbanks. "I haven't found anything unusual
along them," Bronwen told him. "The farms all look pretty average
and the few wharves are empty."

"We didn't think there would be any activity
until dusk," Lowe reminded her, putting down his glasses and taking
a swallow of water from their canteen. "But things should liven up
soon, I expect. Carry on."

Lowe was, without doubt, one of the most
even-tempered men Bronwen had ever met. Nothing much seemed to faze
him, yet nothing happened that he didn't observe with keen
curiosity. He also believed that if anything went wrong, he could
fix it. If he ever worried, Bronwen had yet to see it. Even during
the perilous drop into Seneca Falls he had remained the soul of
composure.

Following their ascent of several hours ago,
Lowe had checked the mooring ropes and then spent most of his time
making copious notes in his logbook, recording barometric readings,
latitude and longitude, and altitude as indicated by the altimeter
he had developed. Since the balloon was still anchored to the
ground, Bronwen decided he must be building a case for the
reconnaissance flights he was trying to persuade the War
Department to approve. When she and Treasury detective Rhys Bevan
had been in Cincinnati, Major General McClellan had
enthusiastically backed the idea of a Balloon Corps to assess
Confederate troop positions. This present assignment was more or
less a practice run.

"See anything yet?" Lowe now asked her, then
hoisted his own field glasses.

"Nothing but those three suspicious
northbound boats," Bronwen said.

She had worried that the balloon could be
observed from below, but as the sun behind them grew to a bronze
ball and began to roll toward the horizon, she became less
concerned. She had seen the
Enterprise
aloft at dusk, and
knew that from a distance it resembled nothing more than a small
cloud. And trees would make it difficult for men on the ground to
see very far. But once the balloon was freed from its mooring and
moving east toward the river, it would become a much more visible
target. Most of that area was farmland.

They knew from a Treasury agent posted in
Oswego—the one tracking activities of British espionage agent
Colonel de Warde—that Enfield rifles had been unloaded from a
Canadian ship the night before. There was nothing illegal in that.
The agent said that from a Lake Ontario wharf, the guns were loaded
on wagons. Again nothing illegal. Some hours later the guns were
transferred from the wagons onto canal boats, which then headed
south on the Oswego River. The agent followed on horseback, hidden
by trees growing along the bank, but after five miles he finally
was spotted. He took himself out of range when he was fired upon.
The canal boats and guns had continued on.

The ultimate destination of the smuggled
British rifles was the Confederate South. The treasury agent's
report had considerably narrowed Treasury's current search for the
smugglers.

By stealthily evading Lincoln's blockade of
Southern seaports, the rifles had been transported through western
New York and Pennsylvania twice before. During transport the rifles
were equipped with sword bayonets. All of which
was
illegal.
Was, in fact, high treason.

It was not a simple operation. Treasury
calculated that the guns and bayonets, to travel south undetected,
needed to be disguised. They were likely being repackaged and
falsely labeled. This process would require a quiet, isolated
place. Since Treasury now knew the guns were disappearing
somewhere along the Oswego River, it was speculated that a barn,
and a good size wharf would be necessary. And from what the agent
had reported, these facilities must obviously be located south of
the Ontario port, but north of where the Oswego River joined the
bustling Erie Canal system. They also thought a site remote enough
to avoid observation would be north of the hamlet of Fulton. This
reduced the area under surveillance to a five-mile stretch of
river.