A Death of No Importance--A Novel

by Mariah Fredericks

  We reached the back door, which William had left open as promised. Rose Newsome frowned. “That’s not safe.”

  She was right, it wasn’t. Someone was threatening to kill the Newsome children—and there was still one left. Two, if you took the jokes about Rose Newsome being young enough to be Mr. Newsome’s daughter seriously.

  Mistaking my guilt for anxiety, Mrs. Newsome said, “We have security men watching the house. You don’t have to worry. We’re ridiculously protected.”

  It occurred to me that they had had security the night of the Newsome ball, but it had not been enough. I did notice she was careful to lock the door once we were inside.

  Then, as if unable to resist a last indiscretion, she said in a low voice, “My mother-in-law seems to be coping by unleashing bile in all directions. I long to apologize to Charlotte; she’s been particularly poisonous to her. After dinner, I did say to the elder Mrs. Newsome, ‘You realize Charlotte Benchley didn’t actually kill Norrie.’ Do you know what she said? ‘Didn’t she?’ You see—insane. But you can’t argue with those old women.”

  I swallowed the sudden, hard lump in my throat. “No.”

  As we made our way through the cramped downstairs, I wondered if Mrs. James Newsome could be aware of Town Topics’s snide references to Pep Pills. It seemed insane that anyone would suspect Charlotte of murdering a young man who had offered her such a glittering future. But some people might think it insane that she would presume to marry that young man.

  Passing the laundry room, I remembered that whoever murdered Norrie had likely had bloodstains on their clothes.

  I said, “Mrs. Newsome?”

  She turned.

  “Did you ever find Miss Charlotte’s dress? The one she wore to the ball? It’s embarrassing, but I forgot to bring it back with us.”

  Rose Newsome’s eyes widened. “No, I don’t believe we did. You might ask Mrs. Farrell.”

  10

  The following day was much like the one that preceded it. Gray winter skies, silent rooms, animated only by the crackling of the fireplace and the relentless tick of the clock. Louise tried to make herself pleasant, but she often “forgot” things in her room and had to retrieve them—sometimes taking quite a while. It was perhaps out of kindness that Lucinda Newsome asked her to walk. Louise hated exercise, but gratefully accepted.

  Charlotte gave the elder Mrs. Newsome nothing to criticize as she read and murmured to Rose Newsome about the weather. (I had the distinct impression that lady was yearning for her Gauloises.) But I could tell the older woman’s dislike was as strong as ever. Did she really believe Charlotte guilty? Or had she simply meant that by marrying beneath him, Norrie had invited some kind of cosmic destruction? I thought of Mr. Behan and the Pep Pills story. He had hinted there were other stories he could tell about Norrie; anything about his romantic entanglements would be bad for Charlotte. Between newspaper innuendo and society gossip, Charlotte might well be finished in New York. Not to mention tried for murder.

  The missing dress disturbed me. A household as well run as the Newsomes’ would not discard an expensive dress. So where was it now? I didn’t feel I could ask the formidable Mrs. Farrell—but there was someone else. The very woman who had ruined the dress in the first place.

  I took Louise’s walk as my opportunity to ask Charlotte for permission, if I was not needed, to pay a visit to the Tylers. I said her mother had loaned Mrs. Tyler something and now wanted it back.

  Located closer to the center of Rhinebeck, the Tyler summer house was not nearly so grand as the Newsome house. In comparison, it felt almost like a cottage. The front hallway was snug, but richly furnished. One side led to a cozy dining area and kitchen; the other took you down a hallway that branched off to Mrs. Tyler’s tiny study and the parlor. I knew the upstairs bedrooms to be small, but pleasant and airy.

  I was a little apprehensive of my welcome, but Mrs. Tyler greeted me with the same slightly predatory good cheer she had always shown me. “Oh, Jane, it is good to see you. But I’m afraid if you’re here to ask for a job, we’re in no position to offer you one.”

  “No, thank you. I’m very happy with the Benchleys.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, that makes one of us.” She let that hang in the air a moment, before saying, “I hope you’re not here to bring William’s head back on a platter to the Newsomes. I’d give it to you, but he left this morning.”

  “I’m actually here to ask a favor of Miss Beatrice.”

  The expression on Mrs. Tyler’s face told me I would have had better luck asking for William’s head. “You can try. Anything to take her mind off things.” With an airy hand, she encompassed Norrie’s murder and her daughter’s broken heart. “She’s upstairs. Third door down. Oh, and I wouldn’t mention Charlotte if I were you.”

  The upstairs of the house was even more humble than the downstairs, with plain wood floors covered in rugs that were threadbare in patches. The roof was angled, and I had to be careful of my head. Going to the third white painted door, I knocked. Hearing, “Yes?” I called, “It’s Jane, Miss Beatrice.” In the pause, I prayed that Beatrice would remember I had worked for her great-aunt and not associate me entirely with the Benchleys.

  From her manner when she opened the door, I saw that she did remember … in both cases. Once her mother had told me she found “my Bea heavy going,” and I responded, “It’s those dark eyes, Mrs. Tyler. They look right through you.” Those eyes were looking right through me now. But she let me in and shut the door behind us. She was dressed in a drab blue day dress and looked as if she were not sleeping well. Her hair was brittle, her skin dull.

  “I wanted to offer my condolences for Mr. Newsome’s death, Miss Tyler.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why would you say that to me?”

  “Because you were fond of him.”

  “I wasn’t fond of him—I hate that phrase. I loved him.”

  Startled by her candor, it took me a moment to say, “Yes, I see that.”

  “Do you? Most people seem to have missed it.” She got up and then sat on a wooden chair near a small desk. “I can’t believe she has the gall to wear black.” She glared at me. “You know better than that, Jane. You should never have let her.” Then, with affected indifference, she asked, “Do they mean to go after the money? I would have thought they had enough of it already.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said.

  She looked at me. “Really? Isn’t that why she’s here? Playing the part of the bereaved widow? I don’t know how the Newsomes can stand it.”

  Taking a deep breath, I said, “I came about Miss Charlotte’s gown. The one she wore to the ball. The one that was damaged.”

  Beatrice shrugged one shoulder. “What would I know about it?”

  “Because you damaged it.”

  “I … damaged? Oh, for God’s sake. It’s hardly anything. I’m sure you can cope.”

  “I was told the dress was soaked.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “With red wine.”

  “With…” Beatrice turned in her chair to face me. “Do you imagine I would be swilling red wine at the Newsomes’ ball? Which I then, what, hurled at Charlotte Benchley? Is that what she’s saying?”

  I had to think. It was not only Charlotte who said the dress was ruined. Mary had seen it as well. And Mary had no reason to lie. “One of the maids said the dress was ruined.”

  Beatrice turned away. “Well, I didn’t ruin it.”

  “But you did quarrel with Miss Charlotte.”

  “If you mean I challenged her insane fantasy that Norrie Newsome was going to marry her, and she turned shrew, then yes, we quarreled.”

  I chose my words carefully. “Surely, Charlotte Benchley was not the only person with that fantasy.”

  “Oh, she managed to talk some people into it. So much so that Norrie was almost considering going through with it—can you imagine? It rattled people, he liked that. But I knew he would never actually do it.”


  “That would be a very callous way to treat a young lady who’d never done him harm.”

  “Never done him harm?” She took up a penknife on the desk, tapping its slender blade on the surface. “Who do you think leaked all those awful stories about them to the press? Charlotte Benchley, that’s who. Who kept at him all the time? Asking when was he going to tell his father? When was he going to give her a ring? When could she tell everyone? Honestly, how he kept from slapping her, I’ll never know.”

  I could hear Norrie’s voice in Beatrice’s account. Obviously, he had soothed Beatrice’s feelings with complaints about her rival.

  “Are you saying he never actually proposed to her?” I asked.

  The penknife stilled. “He might have. Maybe she led him into it. ‘You should marry me, Norrie.’” Her imitation of the voice Charlotte used with men was cruelly accurate. “‘Then you’ll never have to listen to your father again.’ Norrie probably liked that idea—until he realized it would mean listening to Charlotte Benchley for the rest of his life.”

  I had said Beatrice Tyler had eyes that looked right through a person. Apparently I didn’t, because I couldn’t tell: Was this the truth? What she hoped was the truth? Or a flat-out lie to conceal she herself had reasons for wanting to harm Norrie Newsome? What if, on the night of the ball, he told her that while he might not enjoy the sound of Charlotte’s voice, he intended to marry her and her money anyway?

  Trying to sound as simpleminded as possible, I said, “I admit, I was surprised when Miss Charlotte told me she was engaged to Mr. Newsome. Mrs. Armslow had always told me he would ask you—”

  I broke off, as if shocked by my own impertinence. But it was enough to provoke Beatrice, who said, “Maybe he did. Maybe I said yes.”

  Curling her arms around the back of the chair, she added, “And maybe that’s what he told Charlotte Benchley on Christmas Eve. And maybe that’s why she killed him. Because she did, and you know it.”

  “I don’t know that at all, Miss Beatrice.”

  “Don’t you? Well, I know for a fact that Norrie was not going to announce his engagement to Charlotte Benchley. He told me so himself. I know that’s why he’s dead. And that’s why it’s an obscenity the Newsomes have Charlotte Benchley under their roof.”

  * * *

  It was a long, cold walk back to the Newsome estate. Shoulders hunched against the biting air, chin buried in my scarf, hands deep in my pockets, I thought about what Beatrice Tyler had said. I wondered if she believed it. If she had told the police her suspicions. Or the tabloids. God knows the Tylers needed money.

  But Beatrice was nowhere near the library when the murder had taken place, so she couldn’t have been the person who told Behan about the Pep Pills. And why had she been so insistent that she hadn’t ruined Charlotte’s dress? The answer came to me with startling clarity: the dress was viciously expensive. If Charlotte demanded compensation for the damage, it could wipe out the Tyler girls’ clothing allowance for years. Perhaps Beatrice had hidden the dress, so there could be no proof that it was destroyed.

  The servants’ entrance was on the north side of the house. As I walked the gravel path, I scanned the grounds for signs of Louise and Lucinda out walking. Or Rose Newsome taking her husband for a stroll in his wheelchair. But I saw no one. Until I approached the mausoleum.

  She stood alone, a black-velvet-clad Antigone before her brother’s tomb. Instinctively, I stepped from the gravel to the grass so she would not hear me. But Lucinda’s gaze was fixed on the bronze door, its image of an impassive angel hovering over a man, lost and despairing, his hand reaching for paradise, even as he fell.

  I went on my way.

  * * *

  Beatrice Tyler had denounced the obscenity of Charlotte’s presence under the Newsome roof. It did not continue much longer. The next day, a newspaper clipping arrived in the mail, forwarded from the house in Manhattan. It read:

  BATTLE OF THE BEAUTIES! DID NORRIE NEWSOME’S ROVING EYE COST HIM HIS LIFE?

  This newspaper has faithfully reported the secret engagement of Robert Norris Newsome Jr. and nouveau nymphet Charlotte Benchley. But was Miss Benchley the only rose in his garden?

  An eyewitness who was present at the ill-fated Christmas Eve fête tells us that a contretemps de coeur broke out the night of the murder as two delicately reared young ladies unsheathed their claws and had at it over the affections of young Mr. Newsome. The words “promise,” “marriage,” and “liar” could be heard quite clearly.

  What did Norrie Newsome promise? And to whom? And did those promises have anything to do with the grisly discovery made later that night?

  Everyone thought it best for the Benchley girls to return home that afternoon.

  11

  We returned to the city to find the Benchley home under siege. Reporters crowded the pavement, peering in windows, knocking on neighboring doors, and shouting questions at any individual who emerged from the house. Was it true that Miss Tyler had struck Miss Benchley? Had Miss Benchley known of Norrie’s affection for Miss Tyler? The throng of newspaper people was magnified by the idly curious, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the woman at the heart of the city’s most notorious murder case.

  Inside the house, it was chaos. A recently hired housekeeper had quit. A hysterical Mrs. Benchley was under the care of Matchless Maude, who seemed to be partaking of the brandy and doling it out to her mistress in equal parts. Mary dawdled by the back door, being charmed by a bucktoothed young man with a notebook. Jack, Mr. Benchley’s valet, was chatting in a low voice on the downstairs phone, and Bernadette and the cook were goggle-eyed over a spread of papers in the kitchen.

  I placed a finger on the phone to cut Jack’s connection, pulled Mary from the door, swept up the papers, and instructed the cook to make lunch before Mrs. Benchley started singing sea chanteys. Then I went upstairs to unpack.

  Charlotte was sitting on the edge of her bed as if it were the only safe spot in the house. She had been strangely calm when the elder Mrs. Newsome told her it would be wise for her to go home—and stay home—until this latest unpleasantness was over. When Louise tried to show sympathy on the ride home, Charlotte said, “I won’t have it talked about. It’s a lie, of course. There’s no need to say another word.”

  Now her fists were tight, her eyes bright with anger. As I came in, she murmured, “I’ll bloody her.”

  “Miss Charlotte?”

  “Beatrice Tyler. I know she’s the one who went to the newspapers. She’s desperate for money, and she’ll do anything to humiliate me.”

  I took a deep breath. “Miss Charlotte, forgive me for mentioning it, but do you remember the dress you wore Christmas Eve?” I could see she knew exactly the dress I referred to. “The one that had wine spilled upon it.”

  She shrugged. “I’ve no idea. Anyway, what does it matter now?”

  “I only wondered if it could be saved.”

  “It was beyond saving, believe me.”

  “Then we should present the Tylers with a bill.”

  She stood and went to her bureau, an act of irritation—and avoidance. I said, “So strange. I never knew Miss Beatrice to lose her temper when I worked for Mrs. Armslow.”

  Charlotte turned. “Don’t you take her side. You should have heard what she said to me.”

  “What did she say, Miss Charlotte?”

  For a brief moment, she wrestled with herself. But the need to blame was too strong. “She actually grabbed my arm and said Norrie and I couldn’t possibly be engaged. I said she could judge for herself whether we were engaged or not at midnight, and that she’d look pretty silly when, forced to make a choice between her and my money, Norrie chose my money.”

  “And that’s when she threw the wine?”

  Charlotte hesitated, then admitted, “No—I did that myself. She’d torn the dress when she’d taken hold of me. There was no time to fix it, and she’d made me late. I didn’t want Norrie angry with me. So I thought, let her take th
e blame. Let him see what a harridan she is.”

  It was possible she was telling the truth; the fabric had been exceptionally delicate, and a rough hand could damage it. “What did you do with the dress, Miss Charlotte?”

  She flushed. “I stuffed it under the bed. In a far corner so no one would find it. I could see from the dust the maids didn’t clean the guest rooms.”

  “Do you think it’s still there?”

  “It might be.” She looked at me. “Why on earth do you ask?”

  Because some might say you spilled wine on the dress to cover up the blood.

  I smiled as if it really didn’t matter. “No reason.”

  The next day, Town Topics revealed that Charlotte had never received an engagement ring, hinting strongly that the ring might be on the hand of another lady, presumably Beatrice Tyler. As a result, Charlotte became more determined than ever that the world see her as Norrie’s intended, and so I was sent to Macy’s for more mourning attire.

  Herald Square was a place I detested at the best of times, and a wet, bone-chilling afternoon hardly came close to best. An icy drizzle had started, and despite my efforts with the umbrella, rain ran off the brim of my hat and down my neck, dampened my coat, and left my feet cold and wet. The Sixth Avenue train clattered overhead, rattling my nerves. Crowds of harried shoppers shoved me this way and that. I was thankful to get under Macy’s awning.

  The grand windows had been made festive for Christmas. One displayed a red-cheeked Santa soaring through a painted night sky in a sleigh packed high with brightly wrapped presents. In another a model train raced up and down a dizzying array of metal track set against a daubed backdrop of Herald Square. A sign implored shoppers to GIVE THE BOY SOMETHING HE WANTS!

  Another showed a beautifully decorated tree, surrounded by rows of dolls, still in their boxes. All the dolls were of the same size, dressed in the same white pinafore; only their hairstyles differed. Some were blond, some dark. Some with curls, others bangs or long straight tresses. They lay with arms at their sides, open eyes staring upward. Louise would enjoy this, I thought, but I found the little bodies in their boxes unnerving.