Shrouded In Thought (Gilded Age Mysteries Book 2) (15 page)

“Why, Martin, what a surprise.” Her voice held the degree of enthusiasm one would expect from a lady who had just discovered a spider crawling up her parasol.

“I might say the same.” Martin’s tone was equally enthusiastic. “Calling on my wife, are you?”

Evangeline nodded curtly. “Yes, I thought I might drop by to belatedly thank her for the dinner party you gave a few weeks ago. I haven’t been able to tear myself away from obligations in the city until now. I do hope she’s not engaged.”

Martin opened the door and gestured for her to precede him.

Neither was prepared for the spectacle that the open door revealed.

Servants were running to and fro to no apparent purpose. Roland stood back against the wall, looking vaguely off into space, his hands in his pockets. Serafina sat in the hallway, slumped forward in her chair. Doctor Fowler hovered next to her, vainly attempting to check her pulse.

Garrison scurried forward with a cold compress for the medium’s head, while two other servants were carrying a heavy object covered by a sheet through the front hall.

“What in God’s name is going on here!” Martin exclaimed in shock.

“What indeed!” Evangeline echoed.

The two servants nervously dropped the object on the floor with a loud thud when they heard the tone of their master’s voice.

Doctor Fowler looked up from his ministrations long enough to recognize who was addressing him. He relinquished Serafina’s hand and took Martin aside.

“I’m afraid I have some unhappy news for you, Mr. Allworthy. I believe your wife has been poisoned to death.”

Chapter 13—Suspect Behavior

Desmond Bayne wove his way unsteadily up the stairs to his apartment building. He had achieved a mellow state of intoxication in which the world looked much more pleasing as it grew more out of focus. He looked up briefly at the foggy corona surrounding the streetlight outside his door. It afforded him little assistance as he conducted a thorough search of his person, endeavoring to locate his latchkey. Once having found it, he made a fierce attempt to focus his eyes as he held the object up to the light, striving to establish which end was up. His scowl deepened into a look of fixed attention as he then tried to fit the key into the lock—an operation far trickier than it might seem to a teetotaler by the sober light of day.

Hunched over the lock, deep in concentration, he did not see the shadow glide up next to him and put a stealthy hand on his shoulder.

“Saints preserve us!” he yelped, dropping the key in the process.

“Keep your voice down!” The shadow placed a warning finger over Bayne’s lips. “I’ve been waiting for you for hours!”

Bayne squinted in the gloom, trying to identify the man who had accosted him. After several seconds his feeling of terror was replaced by one of mawkish pleasure. “Faith, if it isn’t Marty himself! Marty, what’re ye doing here? Come to pay old Desmond a visit in the wee hours of the morning?”

Allworthy ignored the greeting. “Where were you this afternoon?”

“This afternoon. This afternoon?” Bayne repeated thickly. “Let’s see, what day is it now?” He began to count on his fingers. “Monday, Tuesday...”

“It’s Saturday! This afternoon you were to come to my house in the country. Where were you?”

Desmond took off his derby and scratched his head. The fog was parting, albeit slowly. “Was it today I was to come to the country? Faith, was it really today?” He sat down heavily on the front stoop to ponder the matter further.

“Yessss!”

“How did the day get away from me?” Desmond asked in wonderment.

Allworthy, clearly not in a mood to reply to rhetorical questions, plucked Bayne impatiently by the elbow and attempted to raise him. “We don’t have time for this now! I need to talk to you. Something has happened!”

Bayne made a superhuman effort to follow the movement of Allworthy’s lips as they mouthed the words. “Talk?” he echoed hazily. “Why, Marty, I’m all ears. Whatever you have to say to me—”

Allworthy cut in. “Not here. I don’t want to discuss this in the middle of the street. Besides, I need a drink. Are there any saloons in the neighborhood still open at this time of night?”

Desmond laughed and slapped his knee in delight. “Now, that’s the spirit. I can name two or three right off the top of me head. Just help me up, and I’ll be showing you the way.”

***

Allworthy refused to answer any of Bayne’s incoherent questions until they had found shelter in a dark corner of one of Desmond’s favored establishments—the Green Mill. At two in the morning, there were few other patrons left and those few were too deep in their cups to bother to look up as the pair slid through the door. Before Bayne could saunter up to the bar and resume his drinking bout, Martin led him straight to a booth in the back corner.

As the two settled themselves, Bayne asked magnanimously, “What’ll ye have? Say the word and I’ll fetch it. Nothing’s too good for me old friend Marty!”

Allworthy looked furtively around the dim, smoky den. He squirmed in his seat trying to find a comfortable position, but the plank booth was unyielding. It creaked and groaned at each move but offered no relief. The sole of his shoe had come into contact with something sticky on the floor, but he had no desire to inspect the area beneath the table for fear of what he might find. He sighed in resignation. “You may bring me a bottle of whiskey and a glass. Get yourself a cup of coffee.”

“Paugh!” Bayne spat. “Vile witches’ brew, that is!”

“Nevertheless, you’ll drink it this evening. I need you to be sober for what I have to tell you.”

Martin could see that Bayne’s intoxication had subsided to the extent that he could smell an opportunity in whatever Allworthy was about to disclose. An opportunity that he might be able to translate into cash. Without further objection, he retrieved the order from the bartender.

Allworthy waited until Bayne had grimaced his way through three cups of coffee and begun to show signs of returning mental activity. He also waited for the two shots of whiskey he himself had drunk to have their effect in calming his own rapid heartbeat.

Eventually, it appeared as if Bayne’s vision had lost its ability to multiply copies of every object it perceived. His head no longer bobbed and weaved like a cross-eyed cobra. As his ability to focus improved, he was evidently struck by the expression on Allworthy’s face. “By all the saints, Marty! You look pale as a sheet, that you do. Something terrible must have happened. What is it, boyo? Tell old Desmond and we’ll set it to rights.”

Lowering his voice to a barely audible whisper, Martin began. “My wife is dead.”

“Wha... what’s that you say?” Bayne must have thought his ears, as well as his eyes, were playing tricks on him.

“My wife is dead and I am suspected of killing her.”

Any vestiges of inebriation that remained prior to Martin’s last statement were effectively banished. Bayne stared at Martin with a look of cool appraisal. “And did you do it, lad?”

Allworthy grew flustered. He stared down at the table. “Well... I... uh... I...”

“Which is it then? Yes or no. Tisn’t the sort of question that can be answered by a maybe.”

Allworthy looked askance at Bayne. He took a deep breath and tried again. “It’s terribly complicated and I really can’t explain.”

“Oh, ho!” Bayne laughed. “So that’s how it is. Say no more, Marty, say no more. Ye needn’t tell me aye or nay. I can guess right enough. Let’s us just talk in hypotheticals for now. Tell old Desmond what may have happened.”

Allworthy nodded. “Suffice it to say that it was an accident. An unfortunate accident. I was in the process of pouring a glass of sherry in the dining room, but I felt a bit dizzy and set it down. I needed a breath of fresh air and so I left the house. To clear my head, you see. Just to clear my head. After I left, someone served the sherry to Euphemia with poison in it. When I got back to the house, she was dead and the doctor was already there, and he suspected foul play and ordered an autopsy, and that insufferable LeClair woman showed up to witness it all.” Martin’s voice had taken on a panicky note.

Desmond seemed mystified. “But how did the doctor come to be there so quick, and how did he know it was poison?”

Allworthy rubbed his face distractedly. “Because of a wretched chain of events that shouldn’t have occurred, that’s how. Euphemia had gone to see this Doctor Fowler in Shore Cliff only a few days ago. For her nerves. I knew nothing about it. She told this doctor she was upset about business matters at the factory, and she needed something to calm her. He recommended laudanum, but he also examined her and pronounced her to be physically healthy as a horse. So when he arrived and found her in convulsions, he knew she had no physical condition that would cause such symptoms.”

“But the poison, man, the poison? How could he know of it?”

Allworthy squirmed about uncomfortably once more in the rigid wooden booth. “Because there were witnesses who saw her fall into a fit immediately after she drank from the cordial glass. And because there is a particular type of poison, cyanide, that gives off a faint odor of bitter almonds. As fate would have it, the doctor detected it.” Martin hastily gulped down another shot of whiskey. “Before I knew what was happening, the doctor had already given orders to take the remaining contents of the sherry glasses and decanter for analysis. My sherry glasses! My decanter! From my liquor cabinet which is kept under lock and key! It’s bound to look bad for me.”

“But nothing’s proved, man! You were out of the house when it happened. You didn’t hand her the glass. That’s the one to pin it on.”

Martin equivocated. “An argument could be made that I left the sherry in plain sight intending that she should drink it, or that I intended to serve it to her but was interrupted on the way. Besides, none of the people milling about in the house had any reason to kill her.”

Bayne scratched his head in perplexity. “But neither had you, boyo. You’d no reason to go killing your own wife now.”

Allworthy’s face took on a pinched expression. “In the normal course of events, one might assume that to be true. But there were certain aspects of our marriage agreement that were rather unconventional and might be construed as a motive.”

“Construed? Who’d be construing them?”

“Ah, that’s the worst part of it. Let me finish and you’ll see who.”

Bayne put a cautionary finger to his own lips. “Aye, aye, I’ll shut pan. Go on and tell me the rest of it, Marty.”

“As I was saying, by the time I got back to the house, the doctor had already called the sheriff. He arrived shortly and began asking everyone questions.
 
And Evangeline LeClair was still hovering around.”

“LeClair?” Desmond repeated the name. “Is it somebody I know?”

Martin regarded Bayne with a feeling of cold disgust. “Yes, you’ve seen her on at least two occasions, though I think you were too intoxicated to notice either time. She’s a beady-eyed spinster who makes a habit of sticking her nose into other people’s business and lecturing them on how they ought to conduct their affairs.”

“Oh.” Desmond stared off at the back of the booth behind Martin’s head, obviously still trying to match a face to the name as Allworthy continued.

“Well, I attempted to point out to the sheriff that she really wasn’t involved and had just arrived at the same time I did, but he would have none of it. Insisted on taking statements from everyone. Garrison, Ingrid the maid, Doctor Fowler, that medium Serafina, LeClair, and myself.”

Desmond, presented with this new barrage of names, began to mumble to himself and count on his fingers—presumably in the hope that enumerating the number of witnesses would help him remember who some of them were.

“Ahhh!” Martin waved his hand in disgust and fumbled in his coat pocket for his cigarette case. After he had soothed his nerves by drawing in as much smoke as his lungs would hold, he continued. “I kept watching her out of the corner of my eye—”

“Who’s that, Marty?” Desmond’s brain evidently had trouble containing the number of characters introduced into the narrative.

“Why that pestilential LeClair woman, of course! Every time the sheriff let one of the others come out of the parlor, she’d pounce and start whispering her own questions. Insinuating things that never happened, you can be sure. Jogging their memories to fancy all kinds of suspicious behavior in me. Mark my words, she won’t be content until she sees me swinging from the gallows!”

“Marty, Marty, me boy!” Desmond adopted a conciliatory tone in an effort to reassure him. He eyed the whiskey bottle enviously.

Martin scarcely registered the direction of Bayne’s interest. “Do you know what she did next?”

“Indeed, I don’t.” Bayne’s hand crept across the table toward the object of his desire. “But I’m hangin’ on every word, that I am. Here, let me fill yer glass again.”

Too caught up in the outrage perpetrated against his good name, Martin hardly noticed as Desmond decanted the whiskey into the shot glass and then his own coffee cup.

“After the sheriff announced that he wanted everyone to remain available for more questioning, she piped up and said it was unsuitable to allow an unmarried woman to remain as a house guest in the Allworthy villa now that the lady of the house was deceased.”

“Who’d she mean?”

“Why, that Serafina woman, of course! That charlatan of a medium! She was our house guest. She was having tea with Euphemia when the whole thing happened!”

“Serafina?” Desmond rubbed his forehead. “Do I know her?”

Martin steadied his nerves, not having the strength to remind Bayne of the circumstances of their prior meeting. “No!” he said flatly. “I know what she’s up to. She doesn’t give a tinker’s dam about propriety. It’s just a ruse.”

“Who doesn’t give a tinker’s dam?” Desmond appeared to be completely muddled by Martin’s dexterity with pronouns.

“Evangeline LeClair, of course! How often must I repeat myself?” Allworthy sighed and tried to elucidate matters more plainly to the simpleton seated across from him. “She just wanted to get Serafina out of the house so she could siphon out every detail of what happened and turn the facts against me. That’s all.”

“Oh...” Desmond trailed off, his concentration broken, no doubt, by the aroma of whiskey emanating from his coffee cup.

“Well, she succeeded. The sheriff ordered Serafina’s maid to pack an overnight bag for her, and LeClair whisked her off for safekeeping to her own house.”

“Hmmm.” Desmond attempted to sound ponderously intelligent when in fact he had lost the thread of the story yet once more.“...but she couldn’t resist one parting shot. The final nail in my coffin.”

“Eh, what’s that Marty, I didn’t catch that last bit.”

Martin ground out his half-smoked cigarette and lit another. “LeClair. Perdition take her! She turned to leave, but just before she went, she wheeled around as if she’d forgotten something. Forgot, my foot! She had it planned. Innocently, almost casually, she turns to me in the presence of the sheriff and says, ‘Oh Martin, I understand that the family fortune was held by Euphemia in her own right. Now that she’s gone, who stands to inherit?’ You could have heard a pin drop in that room. Everyone was standing there looking at me. I decided to put a bold face on things. ‘I do,’ I said. She looked like the cat who swallowed the canary. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Is that a fact,’ the sheriff said. You could tell from the way he was looking at me that she’d done a proper job of making me the prime suspect! It’s the same as if she had just stood up and announced ‘Martin Allworthy is the only person in this house who had a motive to kill Euphemia!’”