Must the Maiden Die (43 page)

Cullen snatched the paper from her desk,
quickly scanning it. Glynis watched his eyes stop, move back, and
read more slowly. When he lowered the paper, she could see from his
expression that the truth was still elusive.

"All right," he said. "Sort this out for
me."

"Why don't you sit down. This might take a
while."

Once he had lowered himself into the chair
opposite her desk, she said, "What Helga Brant told me about the
murder of her husband was true—the motives behind it and the means
of executing it—except for one thing. She was not the one who
killed him."

"Did you know that?" Cullen said. "While she
was telling you, did you know she was lying?"

"That's hard to answer," she said. She got
to her feet and moved to the window. The canal was busy with boats
passing through the locks, their towlines harnessed to teams of
surefooted mules plodding ahead on the gravel path. At the crest of
the opposite slope, barely visible from where she stood, the old
village cemetery lay serene and still, waiting.

Had she known without a doubt?

Glynis turned back to him. "I couldn't be
absolutely certain, Cullen. Two things had led me to the killer's
identity. But they would never have produced a guilty verdict. At
least I didn't think so. I still don't. I intended to tell you this
yesterday, after Bronwen and I found the rifles. By then I was
fairly sure I knew
who
killed Brant because I knew
why
he was killed. But you were involved in transporting the
contraband, and I thought one or two days more wouldn't matter.
Perhaps I was wrong—" she gestured at the newspaper "—but I don't
believe so. It likely would have ended much the same way."

"Except that two more men are dead," Cullen
said. "No, make that three."

"And how many Union soldiers would have died
from the Enfield rifles those two gunrunners in the South were
procuring?
That
was the fatal spark that set off this
tragedy. "

"First tell me why you didn't you believe
Mrs. Brant's confession?"

"Several reasons. First, the bruise on
Roland Brant's temple was on the left side of his head. Cullen, I'm
right-handed; so if I were to face you and strike you with a heavy
object—intending to kill you with
one
blow—which side of
your head would take that blow?"

Cullen paused before saying, "The left side.
So? Helga Brant was right-handed, wasn't she?"

"I observed her enough to think she was,
yes. Most people are. Significantly, though," she added, "Erich
Brant is left-handed."

"But Helga Brant might not have been facing
her husband."

"True enough. But that rose paperweight's
globe is slippery and unwieldy. I know because I picked it up
myself and nearly dropped it. Helga Brant's hands are palsied—you
must have seen the tremors. When she held the paperweight last
night, she couldn’t keep her hand level. I just did not believe
her capable of the necessary strength or the needed dexterity. So I
also didn't believe Helga Brant capable of such astonishing
accuracy. That was the telling flaw in her story. Accuracy was also
the reason, after I heard Neva's account of the autopsy, why I
suspected someone else entirely. Someone we hadn't looked at too
closely."

"You've lost me," Cullen said.
"Accuracy
told you who killed Brant?"

"Cullen, that single blow to Brant's temple
was done by someone who knew
precisely
where to aim it. How
to make a lethal strike that would hardly be noticed, which could
be explained away as a bruise that happened in a
struggle—particularly since he was found with a knife in his chest.
But the knife wasn't what killed him."

Glynis paused, seeing by Cullen's expression
that he didn't quite yet grasp the implication.

"Remember the biblical David and Goliath? "
she said. "The giant warrior felled by a small pebble from a boy's
slingshot? A far-fetched tale, even for a parable, unless you
believe that David and his pebble were guided by the Lord. And for
all we know, this killer could have been guided, too. But the
deadly accuracy of that one blow to Roland Brant's head offered
another explanation."

Cullen's eyes suddenly widened and now,
obviously following her, he said, "Yes. And when I think about it,
so did the knife in Brant's heart."

"Exactly. I doubt many people could make a
single, clean knife thrust guaranteed to go, as Neva said,
directly
into the heart. But there is definitely one person
who could do it. Someone who had studied anatomy. Who had attended
medical school."

Cullen said, "Konrad Brant."

Glynis nodded as she seated herself behind
her desk.

"So Helga Brant confessed to protect her
son," Cullen murmured. "Not an unprecedented reason."

"No, but I believe, as she stated, that she
also wanted to free Tamar and Gerard Gagnon from blame."

"But, Glynis, how did she know it was
Konrad?"

"Because she was there. For most of it,
anyway. I think that when Roland Brant stormed upstairs after
she'd called to him, he intended to...to brutalize her as he had
meant to brutalize Tamar. Helga implied he had done it often enough
in the past. But this time there was a difference. Konrad was
either in his mother's bedroom, or he overheard his parents' loud
voices—which was the way Tamar described them. Remember, too, that
Konrad would have just heard, on Sunday afternoon, what Helga Brant
characterized as a 'rancorous argument' between Roland Brant and
Derek Jager."

"When Konrad," Cullen said, "learned that
his father was the mastermind behind smuggling arms to the
South."

"We know," Glynis added, "that Konrad was a
patriot, dedicated to the Union. As a member of the Seneca Falls
militia, he could well imagine those guns being used against his
own company—his friends and neighbors."

Cullen exhaled sharply. "I hadn't thought of
it that way."

"Plus, I think there was another, earlier
factor in Konrad's hatred of his father," Glynis said. "I'd be
willing to wager that when his belongings are located, among his
things will be a carved wooden moth. I'm quite sure he cared for
Tamar. She told me that a few weeks before Roland's death, Konrad
had given her a book of poetry. He had marked two telling lines by
Byron:
Maidens like moths, are ever caught by glare. / And
Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair.
Mammon means
wealth, and specifically the wealth that creates evil. Roland
Brant."

"And the girl was the caught—trapped—moth," Cullen
added. "Trust a librarian to make that connection," he said, giving
her a dry smile.

"Not that it was what Byron had in mind when
he wrote those lines, but it was what Konrad read into them. So it
was probably not long ago," Glynis went on, "that he discovered
what his father was doing to Tamar. And it was the gunrunning that
then pushed him over the edge."

"But why stab his father, if Brant was
already dead from Konrad's blow to the temple?"

"Perhaps, as Helga Brant said, it was to
make sure he
was
dead. But that was another reason I didn't
believe her story—why would a kitchen carving knife be in her
bedroom? A knife that was part of a set, and certain to be missed?
I think Konrad did it after he used the dumbwaiter to take his
father's body downstairs to the library—and found those names that
Derek Jager wanted. Names of the two men in the South who were to
receive the rifles. The kitchen was close by, and that knife to the
heart could have been an act of pure rage."

"And then Konrad went after those men."

"Well, they're both dead, according to the
newspaper."

"Before Konrad was fatally wounded
himself."

"Another victim of war, to my mind," Glynis
responded. "On a field of battle Konrad would have been considered
a hero. And, in that sense, he was."

Sighing heavily, she rose and went back to
the window, saying, "Those of us here in the North who think we'll
remain untouched by this war had better take another look." She
glanced back at the newspaper. An item on an inside page reported
that a cannon had exploded just outside Washington, killing three
Union soldiers. One of them was the young man with whom, only a
week before, Faith Alden had been standing at the rail station.

Cullen's expression was thoughtful as he got
to his feet. "It's a war, Glynis, that has to be fought."

"I wonder. Does any war
have
to be
fought?" she questioned while she walked with him to the door.

They went through the library proper, and
stepped outside into a brilliant, sun-warmed day.

***

The girl sat on a bench in the side yard of the
refuge with Keeper lying at her feet. She looked down at her
bandages and thought how strange it was that her heart hurt more
than her arm.

Early this morning a large man with
spectacles had come to see her. He said he was a judge. He wanted
to talk about something that was important.

"Miss Jager," he had said, which startled
her because no one had ever called her that. "Miss Jager, I have
just spoken with your friend, Miss Glynis Tryon. She told me some
things about you—things I was very sorry to hear. And now I need to
know if you wish to be with your mother. To go to the Oneida
Community where she lives. It's not a place where I would want to
live, but I believe
you
should make the decision about
it."

She told the judge she did not want to live
with her mother. That she wanted to see the man Gerard, but the
constable had put him in jail. Gerard was not a killer, but the
constable must think he might be.

Before the judge left, he told her that he
would look into it.

It didn't matter what the judge did, though.
Even if Gerard got out of jail, why would he want to see her? She
was the reason he went to jail to begin with.

So she would never see Gerard again.

She felt tears, always there behind her
eyes, start going down her face. To stop them she pushed the heels
of her hands against her eyelids. So she didn't see the dog leave
her. But she did hear him barking. Barking and barking, and through
a blur she could see him running around in circles. She wiped her
eyes and looked up.

Gerard was coming across the grass. And he
was smiling at her.

***

"Before I forget," Glynis said to Cullen as they
stood in front of the library., "Did Rhys Bevan learn if the Oneida
Community knew where their steel bayonets were going?"

"He said John Humphrey Noyes absolutely
denied it," Cullen answered. "Hell, naturally he did. Noyes is a
degenerate scoundrel. Bevan told him that Treasury would be
watching him. I don't know about Bevan, but I sure won't be on that
watch!"

As they walked up the steps to Fall Street,
the scent of village roses reached them and silken clouds floated
before the sun like white balloons. Hay wagons rumbled past, soon
to be weighted down with the harvest of winter wheat. A glorious
summer was promised, and the great storm gathering in the South
seemed distant from Seneca Falls. But what would the morrow bring?
A morrow, Glynis feared, that would fast be upon them.

Cullen took her arm. "Miss Tryon, may I have
the pleasure of your company at lunch?"

"You may indeed, Constable Stuart."

Seize the day, she thought This day is the
one we have.

But to you, women, American women, a few
words may not be addressed in vain. One here and there may
listen.

—Margaret Fuller

The fears of Emma proved to be valid, and
the predictions of Orrin Makepeace Polk all too accurate, when, in
a chilling lesson for women of all times, the New York state
legislature, in April of 1862, adopted "Chapter 172:
To Amend
the Act Entitled 'An Act Concerning the Rights and Liabilities of
Husband and Wife."'

With this amendment, the Eighty-fifth Session of the
male legislature effectively nullified Chapter 90.

Ballooning
Western New York State has
a long tradition of ballooning and for 125 years has been a hot
spot for the sport. Its tradition began with the Civil War when Ira
Allen of Dansville met Thaddeus Lowe (see
Lowe
) and assisted
in Lowe's reconnaissance balloon flights for the Union. After the
war Allen went home to Dansville and developed, among other things,
the smoke balloon. The Allen name is still one of the best known in
the history of ballooning. It was my pleasure to meet one of his
descendants, Florence Allen Wood, of the renowned "Flying Allens,"
who began her ballooning career when in her early teens. This
intrepid woman, when relating a number of her flights, told of
being shot out of a cannon as part of the Allen repertoire.

Carr's Hotel
This tavern and inn,
originally called the Clinton House, was built in Seneca Falls in
the 1850s. Thomas Carr, an Englishman, purchased the property in
1856 primarily to serve travelers on the stagecoach, railroad, and
canal. After changing hands again in 1866, the hotel burned in the
"Great Fire" of 1890. It was rebuilt by Norman Gould of Gould
Pumps, and, as the Hotel Gould, subsequently changed hands a number
of times. Although the building still stands on a corner of Fall
Street, its future as of this writing remains uncertain.

Coman, Charlotte Buell
(1833-1942)
Born in Waterville, Oneida County, New York, Coman studied in Paris
and is often cited as one of the artists responsible for bringing
the Barbizon landscape tradition from France to the United States.
She created misty landscapes, usually done in greens or blues,
influenced by the tonalist movement. By the time of her death, she
was considered to be the dean of American women landscape
painters.