“Only maybe he didn’t wait all that time to leave,” said Eddie.
“But he couldn’t have left any earlier. My mother was there, and the servants, and Officer Buckley,” Jo countered.
“Not the entire time,” Eddie reminded her. “After Buckley declared your father dead, everyone left the study. Dolan went to get Dr. Koehler. Mrs. Nelson took your mother to her room. The maids went back upstairs to get dressed. Theakston and Buckley walked through the house, checking doors. The killer would have had a few moments to escape, if he was bold enough to take them.”
They both fell silent then but continued to stare at each other. No man had ever looked at Jo that long or that intensely. It’s not proper. He ought to stop, she thought. But then she realized she was doing exactly the same thing to him.
“Well, now we have a theory, at least,” she said awkwardly, breaking the silence and Eddie’s gaze.
“And two suspects,” Eddie said. “Eleanor Owens and the strange man who was staring at your house.” He picked up Charles Montfort’s agenda again and paged through it. Pointing at the notation under October 15—Kinch, VHW, 11 p.m.—he said, “I’m going to go down to Van Houten’s Wharf on the fifteenth to sniff around.”
“But my father’s dead. He won’t be boarding the Kinch,” Jo said, confused.
“But the ship will still be there, presumably. And someone else might be boarding it in his stead. That someone may know something.”
“I’ll come with you,” Jo announced.
“No, you won’t,” Eddie said. “The waterfront’s not a nice place.”
“But how will I know what happened?” Jo asked, disappointed—and annoyed. A moment ago, they’d been equals, and working to solve a crime together. Now he was forging ahead without her. “How will we communicate?” she continued. “I can’t suddenly have visits or letters from a young man my mother doesn’t know. And I can’t send letters to your home with my name on them. What if your landlady gossips?”
“We’ll write each other, but we’ll use false names on the return addresses,” Eddie said. “I’ll tell you everything I find out.”
“I suppose that would work,” Jo said, somewhat mollified. It wasn’t what she wanted, but at least she wouldn’t be totally left out of the proceedings. “I’ll be … Joseph. Joseph Feen. You can be Edwina Gallagher. I’ll even have to explain that—a letter from a girl my mother’s never heard of. I’ll say you’re a dressmaker my friend Trudy told me about.”
The clock on Eddie’s mantel chimed the hour—one a.m.
“I had no idea it was so late. I have to get home,” Jo said, worried about the daunting task of getting back into her house without being detected.
“I’ll take you,” Eddie stood.
“But there’s no need,” Jo protested.
“Save it, Jo,” Eddie said, and Jo saw there would be no arguing with him.
Eddie stood. He took his jacket off the back of his chair and shrugged it on. Jo didn’t need to do the same, as she hadn’t removed hers. She cast a last glance around the room, sorry to leave it. It was small, yet it didn’t feel confining. Just the opposite.
I can breathe here, she thought. Instead of suffocating among the potted palms and porcelain.
They found a cab on Broadway. Jo told Eddie that she was getting out on Irving Place and that he wasn’t to follow. If she got caught coming in through the kitchen, she might be able to explain herself by saying that she couldn’t sleep and went outside to get some air, but she’d never be able to explain him. Eddie reluctantly agreed. He tried to pay the cabbie, but Jo wouldn’t let him. She paid the man for Eddie’s return trip as well.
“Every time I see you, it’s an adventure, Jo Montfort. You’re a very unusual girl,” he said as she got out of the cab.
“Oh, not really. Most girls are a lot like me. Wanting answers to their questions,” Jo replied. “They usually don’t seek them at the morgue, however. I’ll give you that.”
Eddie smiled, but then turned serious. “It was a very hard night for you. I’m sorry for that. I hope you know what you’ve gotten yourself into. What’s coming won’t be easy. I doubt tonight will be the last time you cry for your father.”
Jo looked up at him, into his incredible blue eyes. She’d seen annoyance there on several occasions. Arrogance. Amusement. Even anger. For the first time now, she saw something else—a deep, abiding kindness.
“No, it won’t,” she said sadly. “But it was the first.”
“Girls, bitches, and mares … it all comes down to the same question: Will she catch?”
“Grandmama … ,” Mrs. Aldrich said, a warning note in her voice.
“Take my Lolly here. … She’s a sturdy little bitch and keen in the field, but she won’t catch. I’ve tried stud after stud. She’s a pretty thing. Smart, too. But if a bitch won’t breed, she’s useless.”
Jo looked at Trudy and Trudy looked at Jo. Their eyes grew large in their faces. They were standing in the foyer of Herondale, outside the closed doors to the drawing room, waiting for Addie, Bram, Gilbert Grosvenor, and Jo’s cousins, Caroline and Robert. Neither girl had realized anyone was in the drawing room, but then they’d heard Grandmama’s voice. Trudy, grinning, had crept close to the doors, motioning for Jo to follow. They knew they shouldn’t eavesdrop but couldn’t resist.
“You are far too used to having your own way, Grandmama, but you are going to have to allow Anna Montfort to have her way in this,” Mrs. Aldrich said.
Trudy grabbed Jo’s arm. “They’re talking about you and Bram!” she whispered. She made a kissy face. Jo elbowed her.
“We’ll see about that,” Grandmama said. “If Anna’s unwilling to make a match, there are plenty of others who will. Let’s not forget that she was a Schermerhorn before she was a Montfort.”
“Meaning what, exactly? The Schermerhorns are a very fine family.”
“Anna’s from a cadet branch of the family, and their women don’t exactly throw off pups,” Grandmama said. “She only had two babies and lost one a few days after its birth. Pity, too. It was a boy. What about that pretty Harriet Buchanan for Bram? She has a fine figure, and she’s one of seven herself. Her mother was one of eight. Though Hannah Buchanan, Harriet’s grandmother, was as crazy as a loon. That sort of thing passes down, you know.”
“What about Bram? Does he get a say in this? He doesn’t wish to marry Harriet Buchanan. He doesn’t care for her,” Mrs. Aldrich said heatedly.
“Passion is for the lower orders,” Grandmama sniffed. “We Aldriches are not clerks and shopgirls. We make matches with our heads, not our hearts, in order to preserve our families and our fortunes. Love comes in time. And if it doesn’t … well, we have our dogs and gardens to console us.”
There was a pause in the conversation while a dog was admonished; then Grandmama spoke again. “My son is failing,” she said, and Jo could hear the sadness in her voice.
“I don’t wish to speak of it,” Mrs. Aldrich said.
“But we must speak of it,” Grandmama insisted. “Peter has a year left at most, and then Bram will become the head of the family. How is the boy to live? As a bachelor in some dreary city apartment? How is he to shoulder the burdens of business with no helpmate? How is the Aldrich name to endure with no new sons? He might’ve proposed already if this dreadful business with Charles hadn’t happened. How long are we to wait?”
Jo caught her breath, afraid of the answer. She tried to leave, but Trudy pulled her back.
“I’ve sounded Anna on this topic. She’s not for a proposal yet. She feels it would be premature,” Mrs. Aldrich said. “Especially now, with poor Charles’s passing.”
Jo exhaled with relief.
“Premature my foot. What Anna Montfort wants is time to solicit better offers. She means to see her daughter well provided for, and she’s only going to entertain the highest b
ids.”
“Grandmama! What a dreadful thing to say!” Mrs. Aldrich’s voice rose with indignation.
Jo was mortified. Grandmama’s words made her feel like a sack of flour or a bolt of cloth.
“It’s also true,” Grandmama said. “The Montforts have money, but not as much as we do. What they have in abundance, however, is breeding. Their bloodlines are some of the best in the country. All the money in New York can’t buy that, and Anna knows it. My grandson is a fool if he dillydallies. He should snap that girl up before someone else does.”
“Jo is only seventeen. Anna feels eighteen is the correct age for an engagement.”
“Fiddlesticks! There’s far too much delicacy in the proceedings these days. I was married at sixteen. My mother at fifteen. Girls have lost sight of their first duty: marriage and motherhood. How do you get up a good-sized family unless you start young? Bram should take Jo to the Young Patrons’ Ball.”
Mrs. Aldrich burst out laughing. “Jo’s in mourning for her father. She can’t go to a ball!”
“She can if she doesn’t dance.”
“Says who?”
“Me.”
The Young Patrons’ Ball was the social event of the season. It was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to raise funds for acquiring art. Girls were given dance cards, and they sold their dances to boys. The monies collected went to the museum. The ball was known to be an accurate barometer of the younger set’s affections. Many engagements were announced in the weeks following it.
“Have Bram buy Jo’s entire card, even though she can’t dance. It’ll make a statement—that Miss Josephine Montfort is spoken for,” Grandmama said. “She can wear a black gown and sit to one side of the room. That way, the gossips will have nothing to say about it.”
“Anna will never permit it.”
“She will. I intend to speak with her myself,” Grandmama said ominously. “Come on, Lolly, jump down. We’ve a new foal to visit.”
Jo and Trudy heard Grandmama get up. They hurried out of the foyer and into the music room before they could be discovered.
Trudy plunked down on a settee, giggling. “If a bitch won’t breed, she’s useless!” she said, mimicking Grandmama.
Jo, not giggling, walked to a mirror, where she adjusted the brooch at her throat. “She makes the whole business sound like something that happens in a kennel,” she said crossly.
“If Grandmama gets her way, you’ll be married next year, and a mother the year after,” Trudy said. “What a catch Bram Aldrich is. He’s smart. Handsome in his way. And even richer than Mr. Gilbert Grosvenor.”
“Yes, he is,” Jo said distractedly.
“You’ll have to have a stylish wedding, so you’d better whittle down that waist.”
Jo stuck her tongue out in the mirror.
Trudy saw it. “Do you want to look like a beer barrel in your wedding dress?” she asked.
“A twenty-inch waist hardly makes me a beer barrel,” Jo retorted. “And besides, being too thin isn’t healthy. All the dress reformers say so.”
“Yes, they do. And they’re all spinsters,” Trudy shot back.
Trudy’s waist was seventeen inches around. Jo knew that she tight-laced, wearing and even sleeping in a corset so close-fitting that it was painful, to give herself an hourglass figure. Jo refused to tight-lace, much to her mother’s chagrin.
“You’ll honeymoon in Europe, too,” Trudy continued, excited, “and live in a smart new mansion on Fifth Avenue. Right next to mine. You’ll spend summers at Newport and have loads of dresses and jewels. Oh, Jo … this is such good news after you’ve suffered such a terrible loss. You must be the happiest girl in the world!”
“Yes, I must be,” Jo said. She knew she should be. The thought of a proposal from Bram Aldrich, one of New York’s most sought-after bachelors, would make most girls giddy, even if they were still in mourning.
Trudy eyed her closely. “Why, Jo Montfort, you’re not happy, are you? Why on earth not?”
Jo, still looking in the mirror, didn’t reply. Yes, Jo, why not? she asked herself. Mrs. Aldrich had invited her to the country for the weekend to lift her spirits. Her uncle had prevailed upon her mother to let her go. She’d arrived yesterday evening—Friday. It was only Saturday morning, and all she wanted to do was go back to town. The company of old friends, the excitement of a possible proposal—these things should have been enough to gladden her heart. Once they would’ve been, but not anymore.
Everything had changed after her visit to Reade Street. She’d wanted the truth about her father’s death and she’d gotten it, and now her life was divided into a Before and an After. She was restless and unsettled and couldn’t stop thinking about her trip to the morgue and what she’d learned there. About Oscar Rubin and his science of death, Eleanor Owens, the ship Kinch, the strange man staring up at her father’s windows …
… and Eddie Gallagher.
She’d wept in his arms. She’d ruined his shirt. She’d never cried like that in front of anyone. Not even her mother. She didn’t understand why she’d shown her heart to a boy she barely knew. Or why, after she’d taken her jacket off in her room that night, she’d pressed it to her face just to inhale the scent of him again.
“Josephine Montfort, the son of one of the richest men in New York is going to propose to you. Why aren’t you happy about that?”
“Because, Trudy,” Jo said testily.
“Because why?”
“Because I’m not a spaniel! And I don’t want my whole life to be about”—she lowered her voice—“breeding!”
“It won’t be, silly girl. There will also be parties and outings. Wallpaper. China patterns. And upholstery.”
Jo groaned.
“Well, if those things don’t suit you, either, what do you want?”
“Something other than three puppies—I mean, babies—before I’m twenty!”
“It won’t be so bad. You just pop them out and hand them to the nanny.”
Jo sighed.
Trudy gave her a searching look. “Are you having your monthlies, my darling?” she asked.
“No!” Jo said, reddening.
“Then what is it? Oh! I bet I know.”
“You do?” Jo said, alarmed. She and Trudy were sharing a bedroom. Had she talked about Eddie in her sleep?
“It’s about your scribbling, isn’t it? You don’t want to give it up.”
“No, I don’t, Tru,” Jo said, relieved to admit it. “And it’s not scribbling. It’s journalism.”
“You may not have to. See if Bram would let you do a column of some sort. On flower arranging or decorating. Under an assumed name, of course,” Trudy advised.
Jo flopped down on the settee and leaned her head on her friend’s shoulder. “What do you think it’s like? Do you think it’s very dreadful?”
Trudy patted Jo’s hand. “Getting married? Of course not. A bit nerve-racking, perhaps, with all the preparations, but not dreadful,” she said.
“No, not getting married. The thing that makes all those babies Grandmama’s so eager for me to have.”
“Ah, that. Is that what’s bothering you?”
“Among other things.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for you, as I have kept myself pure for Mr. Gilbert Grosvenor. Below the waist, at least.”
Jo raised her head and looked at Trudy. “What do you mean by that?”
Trudy giggled. “That dreamy boy who delivers the apples at school? Well, his lips aren’t the only thing that’s nice about him. His hands are nice, too. I let him touch me. Under my blouse.”
“Trudy, you didn’t!” Jo whispered, shocked. She bit her lip. “What was it like?”
“Wonderful,” Trudy sighed. “If only his last name were Grosvenor.” She lowered her voice and said, “I’ve asked around a bit
about the rest of it. The woman who does our laundry says you just close your eyes and say Hail Marys until he finishes his business. But Maggie, our scullery maid, says if you fancy the boy—if he’s handsome and he washes—then it’s the loveliest thing ever.”
Jo tried to picture it, but all she saw in her mind’s eye—thanks to Grandmama—were two dogs, one on top of the other, and it didn’t seem lovely at all.
“What if you don’t fancy him? Can you imagine it? Being naked in a bed with a man you don’t like?” she said.
“All the time,” Trudy replied, grimly eyeing her engagement ring. Gilbert Grosvenor had proposed to her a week ago. Their wedding was set for May.
“Oh, Trudy,” Jo said. “How will you—”
“I don’t know. Somehow,” Trudy said briskly. “But you do fancy Bram. How could you not? So it won’t be a problem for you.”
“No, of course not,” Jo said quickly, looking away. She stared into the fireplace. “But I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about you. What if you broke off your engagement?”
Trudy snorted. “To do what? Marry the apple boy and live shabbily ever after? No, thank you. I won’t be poor. Or a spinster. Or some bluestocking in a bow tie. Apples and kisses are nice, but this is nicer,” she said, gesturing to the music room with its painted ceiling, silk upholstery, and priceless statues.
It’s a business transaction for Trudy, Jo realized. She was a stunning beauty, and would trade that beauty for money—Gilbert Grosvenor’s money. Love was not part of the bargain. The understanding chilled Jo a little. The chill deepened as she recalled Grandmama’s assertion that her mother was doing the very same thing for her.
“What if we had our own money, Tru?” she asked, suddenly gripped by a sense of the unfairness of the whole arrangement. “What if we were the ones with jobs and bank accounts and investments? Can you imagine how different things would be?”
“What a strange girl you are today,” Trudy said. “Stop talking rot.” She took Jo’s hand. They were both staring into the empty fireplace now. “And don’t fret so much over the wedding-night proceedings. I’m going first. I’ll tell you all about it so you’ll know exactly what to expect. You can come see me in my new and very grand home as soon as I’m back from my honeymoon. We’ll have a delicious luncheon, just the two of us. Prepared by my cook and served by my maid.”
These Shallow Graves Page 9