These Shallow Graves (3 page)

“People pass. It happens every day,” declared Mrs. Cornelius G. Aldrich III. “That's why it's so important to make more of them.”

It was Charles Montfort's funeral luncheon, a somber and decorous affair—or at least it had been until Mrs. Aldrich arrived.

“Another cup of tea, Grandmama?” Addie Aldrich asked, lifting a teapot off the low table in front of her.

“No, confound it! You've asked me three times! Go ask young Beekman over there if he wants something. I don't see a ring on
your
finger yet, miss!” Grandmama barked.

Addie colored and put the teapot down. Grandmama, seated in a wing chair in the Montforts' drawing room, returned her attention to the woman sitting across from her—Madeleine Montfort, Jo's aunt. Addie and Jo sat together on an overstuffed settee between the two older women.

“I understand the family's bereaved, of course I do. But I don't see why it should delay an engagement,” Grandmama said petulantly. She took a cookie from a plate and fed it to the spaniel on her lap. “Girls these days. I don't understand them. Waiting until
twenty
to marry and then having such small families!”

Jo, staring blankly ahead, vaguely understood that Grandmama was talking about her, Bram, and marriage. Apparently a proposal had been imminent, but would now be delayed because of her father's passing.

Should I be excited?
she wondered. It was hard to be, given the circumstances, but it would've been hard to be excited not given them. A proposal from Bram Aldrich would hardly have been a surprise. For as long as Jo could remember, there had been an expectation that they would marry. Just last summer she'd overheard her mother and aunt talking about it in the conservatory.

“An Aldrich match would be most advantageous, Anna,” Aunt Madeleine had said. “Bram is a fine young man, and the family is very well off. More so—”

“Than we ourselves?” Jo's mother interrupted, an arch tone to her voice.

“Yes,” Madeleine replied. “Forgive me, but these things must be said. However, that is
not
to imply they are new money. My only point is, that if Jo were to marry Bram, she would never want for anything.”

“I agree, Maddie, and I'm leaning toward the match, but keep that between us. It wouldn't be wise to let Grandmama think she's gotten her way,” Jo's mother replied. “Not until I have some idea of what Bram's father plans to settle upon the couple. Grandmama married beneath her, you know. She had no choice. Her father squandered his inheritance. She's been trying to restore the blue to her bloodline ever since. She married her son to a Van Rensselaer, and wants a Montfort for her grandson. The Aldriches are a fine family, yes, but nowhere near as old or distinguished as our own. Jo could easily marry a Roosevelt or Livingston, and Grandmama would do well to remember that.”

Theakston, the butler, had chosen that very moment to walk down the hall with a tea tray, and, to her chagrin, Jo had to hurry off before he caught her eavesdropping. Had she stayed a moment more, she might've found out what she most wanted to know—did Bram love her?

Jo's mother and aunt
had
kept their thoughts about the match between themselves—at least, they hadn't shared them with her—but that hadn't stopped the rest of society from talking. Especially Grandmama.

Then again, Grandmama was
always
talking about marriage. She was the reigning matriarch of the Aldrich clan, and a Livingston herself before she married. The blood of many of New York's best families ran through her veins. She was related to everyone who mattered, and everyone who mattered called her Grandmama. Deeply attached to Herondale, a Hudson River estate given to her by her father as a wedding gift, she only set foot in Manhattan when absolutely necessary, preferring Herondale's woods and meadows to tall buildings and traffic.

“And
another
thing I don't understand, Maddie, is the younger generation's total disregard for bloodlines,” Grandmama continued now. “Margaret DeWitt's youngest is marrying a Whitney. Why, I've never even
heard
of them! I understand the boy's father is a political man. He'd do for some new-money girl, but a
DeWitt
?” She shook her head, disgusted. “Fine set of hips on that girl, too. She'll breed as easily as an Ayrshire heifer.”

Madeleine blanched. She lost her grip on her teacup; it clattered into its saucer. “Tell me, Grandmama,” she said, “how
is
that other spaniel of yours? Suki, I think she's called. I see that she's not with you. I hope she's not ill?”

“Not at all. Didn't I tell you? The bitch caught!” Grandmama said happily. “Mated her four times with Good King Harry, Alma Rhinelander's dog. I'd almost given up on her, but she'll whelp next month. If only it were that easy with daughters, eh, Maddie? Take a sturdy bitch in season, put her in a pen with a keen stud, and two months later, there you are with six strapping pups!”

Madeleine clutched her pearl necklace. “Addie, I do believe Mrs. Hollander is leaving,” she said. “I know she'll want to say goodbye to Jo. Would you be a dear?”

“Of course,” Addie said. She took Jo's hand and pulled her off the settee. “I'm so sorry, Jo. I don't even know what to say. She's
impossible,
” she whispered when they were out of earshot. “Papa used to be able to control her, but now that he's so poorly, no one can.”

“It's all right, Addie,” Jo responded in a dull voice. She didn't care what Grandmama said. Her father had been buried that morning, and with him, a piece of her heart.

His funeral service had been held at Grace Church on Broadway and Eleventh Street and every pew had been packed. The old families still attended Grace, though few lived within walking distance anymore. Commerce, industry, and the rising tide of immigrants had forced them out of lower New York to the city's upper reaches. Grace's graveyard was as full as its pews, so Charles Montfort had been buried at the church's northern cemetery. Alive or dead, wealthy New Yorkers now sought their accommodations uptown.

Addie led Jo to the foyer, where Theakston was handing Mrs. Hollander her wrap, then bustled off to offer a cup of punch to Andrew Beekman. Jo made small talk with Mrs. Hollander, then kissed her goodbye. She started walking back to the drawing room, but on her way, she was gripped by a sense of unreality so strong, it made her dizzy. She put a hand on the banister to steady herself.

“This is my house,” she whispered. “There is the ebony bench Papa brought back from Zanzibar. Above it is a portrait of Grandfather Schermerhorn. Beyond it is the drawing room, which contains a piano, a fireplace, a clock, and my mother.”

But how could all these things be here, and her father not be? How could the clock still be ticking? How could there be a fire in the grate? How could her father be
dead
?

Killed by a gun. His own gun. Accidentally. That's what everyone said. But it just wasn't
possible.
Her father was a sportsman. He'd known his way around guns and had kept several in the house, for he'd always been cautious about his family's safety. To a fault, her mother said. He'd often walked the house at night, checking doors and windows.

“Dearest Jo, how are you holding up?” a voice asked. But Jo, lost in her grief, didn't hear it. The voice spoke again. “Josephine, are you quite all right?”

Jo heard it that time and turned around. It was the Reverend Willis, her family's pastor. He was peering at her with an expression of concern. She forced herself to smile.

“I'm fine, Reverend. Thank you. Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked.

“No, my dear, I've had plenty. Perhaps you should sit down. You look pale.”

“I will,” Jo said. But not here. She had to escape from the sad faces and hushed voices. Excusing herself, she hurried off to her father's study. As she climbed the stairs to the second floor, the skirts of her black silk mourning gown rustling around her legs, the reverend's eulogy came back to her.

Charles Montfort was a man who was genial to all. A pillar of society. A man whose professional dealings were forthright and fair, and whose generosity to those less fortunate was unparalleled. He was a devoted husband and father, kind and loving to family and friends. …

Yes, Papa was all those things,
Jo thought. And yet, the reverend hadn't captured him. Not entirely, for he could be so
different
at times. So quiet and remote.

Jo reached the study and slipped inside. In here, she could almost believe he was still alive. She could smell him—his cologne, his cigars, the India tea he drank. She could feel him.

“Papa?” she whispered.

Emotion welled up in her. For two days, ever since Addie and Bram had given her the news, she'd been unable to cry. Now she would. Finally. Here, all by herself. She waited, but again the tears didn't come. What was
wrong
with her? She'd loved her father. Why couldn't she cry for him?

Frustrated, she walked to the large bay window and looked out at Gramercy Square. It was a beautiful September afternoon, and the park was filled with children and their nannies. She leaned her head against the window frame, crumpling the voluminous draperies. As she did she felt a hard bump under her toe. The draperies were so long that their excess fabric puddled on the floor. Moving a panel aside, she peered down and saw something small and copper-colored tangled in the fringed ends of the carpet. It was a bullet.

Jo shuddered as she picked it up, wondering how it had gotten here. Her father kept a loaded revolver in a cabinet in his study; it was the very one that had killed him. She wondered now, as she had a thousand times in the past two days, how the accident had happened.

Perhaps he'd started to unload the chamber and had put the loose bullets on his desk, but was distracted by something. He closed the chamber to attend to the disturbance, then picked the revolver up again, forgetting that it wasn't empty, and somehow it went off. That was the only logical explanation she could come up with.

“But it doesn't explain you,” she said, frowning at the bullet. She turned it over and looked at the bottom. The letters
W.R.A. Co.
arched across it. Under them was stamped
.38 LONG.

Maybe Papa collapsed across his desk after the gun fired, sweeping the loose bullets off as he fell to the floor,
she thought.
And then Theakston or a policeman kicked one across the room.

Her eyes traced a possible trajectory from the desk to the window.

It must've been kicked with quite a bit of force, though,
she mused,
to travel over a thick rug all the way to the other side of the room.

“Oh, what does it matter how it got there?” she asked herself, sighing. “He's gone. And no amount of puzzling will bring him back.”

She opened the cabinet where the revolver had been kept—her mother had made the police take the gun away—and placed the bullet on a shelf next to a box of ammunition. Her mother sometimes came in here, and Jo didn't want her to see it. It would make her even more distraught than she already was.

Jo slowly walked around the room, touching the mantel, then her father's humidor. The edge of his desk. His chair. Images came to her. She remembered him handing her a kitten with a pink bow. And twirling her around at a skating party. She remembered him dancing with her mother, the two of them so handsome together: her mother a cool blond beauty, and her father with his strong Montfort features—his thick black hair and gray eyes like her own.

Often, those eyes had shone with mischief and merriment. But under the laughter, Jo had sometimes glimpsed a shadow. Her father had spent hours here in his study standing at the window, hands clasped behind his back, gazing down at the street—as if expecting someone.

Jo recalled the first time she'd found him that way. She was little, and was supposed to have been asleep, but she'd gotten out of bed, snuck up on him, and said, “Who are you waiting for, Papa?”

He'd spun around and she'd seen that his face was as white as chalk, and that his eyes were filled with emotion: fear, which she knew, for she was afraid of many things—spiders and thunder and circus clowns—and sorrow, which she did not know. Not then.

“Oh, how you startled me, Jo!” he'd said, smiling. And then he'd told her he wasn't waiting for anyone, just thinking over a business deal.

Even then she hadn't believed him, and as she'd grown older she'd wished he would confide in her about whatever troubled him. But he hadn't, and now he never would.

For a moment, Jo saw her father again standing at the window. Watching. Waiting. And suddenly it was there—the word she hadn't been able to come up with. The one word that best described him.