The Benedict Bastard (A Benedict Hall Novel) (29 page)

He had helped carry Preston’s case to his room when he was first installed there. He knew there was no outer window in the room, but the corridor was lined with them. Once he was out, he had his choice.

As a young man, little more than a boy, Blake had seen someone fall from a roof at the Chatham County Convict Camp. The image had haunted him for years, the hideous sight of mangled flesh and bone and a stunning amount of spilled blood. He tried not to think of Preston that way, but he couldn’t help picturing how it had happened—Preston smashing the window, balancing on the sill, drawing a final breath before launching himself into the air, falling to a terrible death on the path three stories below.

It was, as Mr. Dickson had said, doubly tragic. And it was sickeningly cruel to Mrs. Edith, to Mr. Dickson, and to Hattie, who had loved him despite everything.

Blake wouldn’t grieve for Preston. The world was a better place without him. But he could grieve for these people, who had been through so much at Mr. Preston’s hands.

This, he hoped, would be the end of it.

“We will make our plans in the morning,” Mr. Dickson said gruffly. “I hope you can all get back to sleep. Please tell Blake if a bit more brandy would help you.”

Dick said, “Are we going to have another funeral, Father?”

“Private,” Mr. Dickson said. He cleared his throat, and looked away. Blake thought, for one awful minute, that he might sob.

“Yes,” Dr. Margot said. “Everyone already believes he’s gone. We’ll leave it that way.”

Blake thought of the many trips to the cemetery, when he had driven Hattie and Mrs. Edith there to lay flowers on Preston’s grave. The empty grave, with no bones in it, and a meaningless headstone. He was sure Mr. Dickson could arrange things so that Preston could be buried there after all. It might give Mrs. Edith some comfort.

He said, “If you’ll permit me, Mr. Dickson, I’ll speak to the maids about keeping this—this sad event—confidential. Within the walls of Benedict Hall.”

Loena said, “Oh, we know that, Mr. Blake. Don’t we, Leona? We wouldn’t never say a word to nobody.” Thelma nodded along with the twins.

Mr. Dickson said, “Thank you all. Your loyalty is a great comfort to Mrs. Benedict and myself—to all of us.”

They began to disperse. The maids climbed to their attic rooms, and Mrs. Ramona went up to check on Louisa in the nursery. Hattie, steadily weeping, plodded off to her room behind the kitchen. Mr. Dickson said, “Well, Blake. I suppose that’s all for tonight. Nothing more we can do. We’ll speak about the arrangements in the morning.”

“Yes, sir. Allow me to say, Mr. Dickson, how very sorry I am for—for everything.”

“Of course. Thank you.” In a gesture that was wholly unusual for him, Mr. Dickson clasped Blake’s arm with his hand, and squeezed it. As he released his grip, Blake saw a telltale shine in his employer’s eyes. He suspected Mr. Dickson was taking this harder than anyone.

Mr. Dickson helped Mrs. Edith up from her chair, and kept an arm around her as they walked toward the hall, but Blake had the impression that, this time, it was the wife supporting the husband rather than the other way around.

They had just reached the foot of the staircase when he heard Mrs. Edith say, “We have to find that child, Dickson. Preston’s boy. As soon as possible.”

C
HAPTER
28

Margot and Dick went with their parents to meet the train that brought Preston home for the last time. Dick had arranged for the hearse, a long white vehicle with carved panels and fringed curtains shading the windows. The driver and Blake nodded to each other, and stood back as the coffin was unloaded from the train. It was far simpler than the one they had buried three years earlier. That one had been ebony, with brass handles and curlicues decorating the lid. This one looked as if it might be pine, or perhaps fir. It was a plain brown, with iron fittings.

Curious eyes followed it as the men Dick had hired lifted it on their shoulders and made their way through the King Street lobby with the family following in its wake. Edith had draped a black veil over her hat. Dickson kept his Homburg pulled low over his eyes. Dick and Margot trailed behind their parents. Margot felt drained of all feeling, as if the well of her emotions had run dry. Dick, grim-faced, spoke only when he had to.

When they had seen the casket safely into the hearse, they all climbed back into the Cadillac to follow the hearse to the cemetery. It was a parody of a funeral procession, nothing like the grand one of three years before. It felt hurried and a bit slapdash, but they had agreed that would be best, and would attract less attention.

“No reporters,” Dickson had growled.

“No, Father,” Dick said. “In fact, it might be best if you avoided the station and let me—”

“No. Your mother needs me there.”

“Do you want me to have a word with C. B., then, at the
Times
?”

“Yes. Just tell him—ask him—to make certain no one gets hold of this.”

Frank had offered to come with Margot, but she had assured him it wasn’t necessary. “Go to work, darling,” she had urged him. “It’s going to be a rotten day. It’s best all of us Benedicts just muddle through it, I think.”

He had kissed her, and gone off to the Red Barn with the unmistakable air of someone making good his escape. She watched him go from the porch, where she sat in one of the Westport chairs with her morning coffee. Hattie had come out, surprising her, and when Margot asked her to please sit down, she surprised her further by accepting the invitation.

Hattie lowered herself into the chair, and fanned herself with the hem of her apron. “Miss Margot,” she said after a moment, “I bin wantin’ to talk to you.”

“Of course, Hattie. Do you have something on your mind?”

“It’s about this chile. This bitty boy of Preston’s.”

“I think that’s on all our minds just now.”

“I think I ought to tell you, Miss Margot, that Mrs. Edith bin tellin’ me about that chile for a long time. I didn’t believe a word. I thought Mr. Preston—” As she spoke his name, her eyes welled, but she dabbed at them with the corner of her apron, and pressed on. “I’m sorry to say it, Miss Margot, but I thought Mr. Preston done made it up. I never said nothing to Mrs. Edith, but I didn’t think there was no chile.”

“Nor did I, Hattie. I don’t think anyone would blame you for that.”

“But now—now we know there really is one, and that pretty Miss Bronwyn is the mama—now what are we gonna do about it?”

“We’ve been discussing it.” Margot cradled her coffee cup between her fingers, savoring the familiar comfort. “I promised Preston, when I saw him last, that I would try to find the boy. Mother is insistent upon it. That doesn’t mean we’ll be able to, though.”

“That Mrs. Ryther, she’ll know. She wouldn’t tell Miss Bronwyn, but she’ll know.”

“Yes, Hattie, but—if the baby’s been adopted, what do we do? Take him from a family that has come to care for him?”

“I don’t know, Miss Margot. I don’t know. But I don’t see how Mrs. Edith ever gonna be herself again unless we find that chile.”

Now, at the Washelli Cemetery, Margot watched her mother’s face as the empty casket was hoisted out of the grave, and the one containing Preston’s body was lowered into it. Edith watched the coffin descend, and her face was utterly, chillingly blank. Margot’s feelings for her mother had always been complex, but pity overrode anything else at that moment. Her mother had lost her favorite child twice. She needed something to live for.

Was it fair to expect a little boy to be that something? It was a challenging ethical question.

The four of them stood beside the grave for a long time, until two laborers, with spades in their hands, crossed the grass toward them. Dick said, “I think we’re done here.”

Father nodded. Mother took his arm. Her veil fluttered against her face as she walked beside him back toward the gravel parking lot. As Margot and Dick followed, the sound of dirt clods falling on the lid of the coffin carried clearly through the summer evening.

Dick said, “God, that’s awful.”

“The whole thing is awful.”

“It was bad enough, but—suicide. Christ.”

“It doesn’t seem like a characteristic choice, does it?”

“To tell you the truth, Margot, I wouldn’t have thought Preston had the nerve.”

“He meant to do it last year, when he tried to—to cut me.”

“Yes, but—throwing himself out a window—knowing what it was going to be like—it’s not like Preston at all.”

“He wasn’t the same man, Dick. Living the way he has for the past three years took plenty of nerve, I think. He had nothing left. Nothing he cared about.”

“What about the little boy? It seems Preston cared about him.”

“I don’t know if I believe that. Preston usually had other reasons.”

“Maybe it was for Mother.”

“Possibly.”

“How do we find him?”

Margot said, “I’ll speak to Olive Ryther.”

“Do you think she’ll tell you, that Mrs. Ryther?”

“I don’t know. She’s not always cooperative. And she keeps terrible records.”

“Well, if you need to bring pressure to bear on her, we could speak to the mayor. She needs city licenses and so forth.”

They had reached the Cadillac, and Father heard Dick’s last sentence. He glanced up from helping Edith into her seat, and Margot felt a pang of fear for him. His face looked gray, with grief or fatigue, perhaps both. Blake had come around to hold the door of the automobile, but Dickson paused with one foot on the running board. “Yes,” he said wearily. “I’ll call the mayor myself. I promised Edith I’d do everything I could.”

Blake straightened abruptly, and fixed Margot with a gaze full of alarm. She said, “Blake?”

He shook his head, and didn’t answer, but she knew him too well. As they drove back into the city, she saw tension in the muscles of his neck, and in the hard grip of his gloved hands on the walnut steering wheel.

She rubbed her eyes with her fingertips, and wondered what new trouble was coming.

It was long past the dinner hour by the time the Cadillac returned to Benedict Hall with its paltry group of mourners. Blake opened the back door of the automobile, then opened the scrolled iron gate. He stood beside it as they trudged in silence up the walk to the porch. Hattie had been watching for them, and she opened the front door, nodding to Blake as she closed it.

He got back into the Cadillac, and turned up the drive to the garage. As he crossed the lawn to the rear of the house, he stripped off his driving gloves with deliberate gestures, and tucked his cap under his arm as he let himself in through the kitchen door. He tried to greet Hattie normally, but she took one look at him and said, “Blake! What’s the matter with you?”

He gave her a wry smile as he crossed to the wall pegs and hung his jacket and cap there. “I can’t fool you, can I, Hattie? Even today.”

“Maybe specially not today, Blake. I knew this would be bad, but you look as if you seen a ghost.”

“If so, it would be my own,” he said. He took his serving coat from its peg and began to put it on. He saw that Hattie had a platter of finger sandwiches ready. “That was a good idea,” he said, nodding to it.

“They think they’re not hungry, probably,” she said. “But they will be. People gotta eat, even when they’re feelin’ sad.”

“That’s quite true, Hattie. Very wise.”

“They in the small parlor, I expect. You could just take this here platter in, and a pile of little plates. I’ll send Loena with some napkins.”

“No, don’t bother her. I can put it all on a large tray.” He pulled on his white gloves, and smoothed down his sleeves.

“All right, then, Blake. You go and serve that, and see if they want anything else. Then you gonna come back here and tell me what’s wrong.”

She was an irresistible force, was Hattie. The thought made Blake smile despite his anxiety. She was the anchor that kept the ship of Benedict Hall steady in its harbor, no matter how cruelly the tidal waves rocked it. To Hattie, the kitchen was the heart of a house—and perhaps she was right. People gotta eat, as she often said. It was a piece of folk wisdom he couldn’t deny.

He settled the family with the drinks cart near at hand, and the platter of sandwiches in the center of the little piecrust table. They had started to take them even before he left the small parlor, which he knew would gratify Hattie.

He pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen, and found she had laid a place for him at the enamel-topped table. There was a thick sandwich of cold roast beef and sliced cheese, and one of her fat homemade pickles beside it, along with a glass of apple cider. He sat down, and opened a napkin across his lap. He hoped he could eat, because he knew she would cluck at him if he didn’t.

She sat across from him, a cup of tea before her. “Now,” she said, in the tone a mother might use with a naughty child. “You tell me, Blake. And don’t go tellin’ me it’s nothin’, ’cause I got eyes, and I know you.”

“All right, Hattie.” He picked up the glass, and drank half of it straight down. As he set down the glass, he said, “I could lose my job tomorrow. I have done something—outrageous, I think would be the word. Mr. Dickson is going to find out, and there’s no way I can stop him.”

Her eyes went round, and she leaned forward, her big apron crinkling around her. “Why, Abraham Blake!” she cried. “Whatever. . . ?”

“Oh, Hattie,” he said ruefully. “No one ever calls me Abraham except you.”

She would not be diverted. She put her elbows on the table and ordered, “Go on! Tell me.”

“Well,” he said. He touched the sandwich, but didn’t pick it up. “As so often happens, this particular road was paved with my best intentions. I didn’t see another way, and there was no time.” He shook his head. “It was Nurse Church, you see. And her family.”

As he explained what had happened, how desperate he had been to think of something, her eyes grew wider and wider, until the whites seemed enormous in the fading light of evening. “You pretended to be Mr. Dickson? Why, Blake! I can’t believe it!”

“Nor can I,” he said. Now he did pick up the sandwich, and took an enormous bite. Telling Hattie had somehow relieved the tension in his belly, and he found he was ravenous.

While he was chewing, she said, “So, did it work? Were the Churches able to stay in their home?”

He swallowed, and reached for the glass of cider. “I don’t know, Hattie. I can only assume. Mayor Brown said that development company can’t operate without his approval, so I hope and trust we were successful.”

“ ’Specially if you gonna get fired over it!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, indeed,” he said. “Especially if I’m going to be fired. I’d like to think there was a point to my subterfuge.” He took another bite of sandwich, and chewed it while Hattie gazed at him, her lips parted in amazement.

The sandwich was gone, and he had started on the pickle, when Hattie said, “You have to speak to Miss Margot. And do it tonight, before Mr. Dickson finds out some other way.”

“I don’t think this is a good time,” he said. “They’re all upset, and they’re tired.”

“You’re upset, too, Blake. And tired!”

He shrugged. “True. But there’s nothing to be done about it.”

“Oh, yes, there is.” Hattie sat back, smoothed her apron, then placed her palms flat on the table and pushed herself up. “I’m gonna fetch Miss Margot my own self. That girl loves you, Blake. She’ll be real mad if you don’t let her help.”

He was too weary to argue with her. She disappeared through the swinging door and in less than a minute reappeared with a frowning Dr. Margot behind her.

“Blake?” Dr. Margot said, crossing quickly to the table, pulling a chair close, and looking into his face. Automatically, she reached for his wrist, even as she said, “What’s troubling you? Do you have pain? Nausea—”

Blake, very gently, removed her hand from his wrist, then patted her fingers. “No, no, Dr. Margot. I’m perfectly fine.”

“But Hattie said you needed me.”

Above Dr. Margot’s head, he met Hattie’s unrepentant gaze. “Well,” he said. “Well. I suppose Hattie is right. I didn’t want to trouble you, but—”

“Don’t be silly,” Dr. Margot said tartly. “I’m awfully glad to find you’re not ill. Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”