Dawson's Fall

by Roxana Robinson

  At four o’clock the detective arrived at Ahrens’s rooms at Waverly House. McManus was six foot three and thin as a whip, black-haired and blue-eyed, with a thick black mustache, a broken nose, and protruding ears. He stood very straight, and had a stern, official manner. He wore a big tarnished star pinned to his lapel. He was imposing except for the ears.

  Ahrens showed him the letter. He wondered aloud if Thomas could have had a connection to the robbery. McManus read it and nodded: it did seem like an inside job, he said. Nothing had been broken, nothing else was taken, and the thief knew just where to go. Now Thomas’s brother had turned up.

  “It was curious,” McManus said. “It might have been this fellow.”

  “I don’t want to see him in here alone,” said Ahrens.

  McManus looked around the room. A low round table was in the center of it; to one side was a big armchair and a lamp. Against the far wall was a tall bureau.

  “I could conceal myself,” McManus said formally, “behind that piece of furnishing. I’d hear whatever he has to say, with no risk to you.”

  At five o’clock the two men were waiting, McManus hidden behind the far side of the bureau, Ahrens in his armchair, holding the newspaper. He was scanning it, but he couldn’t actually concentrate. When McDow knocked on the door Ahrens went to it and let him in.

  Arthur stepped inside quietly. His eyes flicked around the room. He was on high alert.

  “Mr. Ahrens,” he said. He ran his tongue over his dry lip and looked around again.

  “Mr. McDow.” Ahrens gestured at a straight chair and then sat down in his armchair. “You’re the brother of my son-in-law, I believe. What can I do for you?”

  “Yes,” Arthur said. He didn’t like the way he was standing and Ahrens was sitting. There was something wrong with that, as though Ahrens were his superior, but he didn’t know how to fix it.

  “Please have a seat,” Ahrens said, nodding at the straight chair. But now Arthur didn’t want to sit down. He didn’t want to obey orders from Ahrens.

  “I’ll stay up as I wish.” His eyes flicked again around the room.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. McDow?” Ahrens repeated. He folded his hands on his lap.

  Arthur studied him, the small blue eyes and sandy lashes, the heavy lower lip.

  “It’s more something I can do for you,” Arthur said, pleased with this presentation.

  “And what is that?” Ahrens asked pleasantly.

  Now he felt there was something wrong: Ahrens was too comfortable, too composed. Arthur meant his presence to be disturbing, but the old man acted as though Arthur were nothing, merely a deliveryman. Ahrens leaned back in his armchair, legs crossed as though he were at a tea party. He spoke loudly and slowly, as though he wanted someone else to hear.

  Arthur looked around again, wondering if someone else was there. Under the bed, or beyond the big wardrobe. He could feel the gun in his pocket. Instead of answering he stepped forward, moving quietly. He could feel his heart beating. Now he was on the job. He felt energy gathering within him, he became hot and molten, huge.

  At this—at Arthur moving across the room—Ahrens turned alert, pale eyes now attentive. Arthur walked past him, across the room to the big wardrobe. He peered around the end of it to see a man staring directly into his eyes.

  Arthur leaped back and bolted for the door, McManus after him. Arthur had a head start, but McManus jumped over the low table and passed him in the air, knocking off the newspaper, reaching the door first and throwing himself across it. He turned to face McDow, back set against the closed door.

  “Mr. Arthur McDow,” he said loudly, his face thunderous. “Detective McManus.”

  “I done nothing,” Arthur said, furious. He’d been double-crossed. The air in the room had become black and turbulent. “I don’t know why you’re here. You can’t arrest me. I done nothing.”

  “This gentleman requested police protection,” McManus said. “I’m here as an observer. You may continue your conversation.” He folded his arms across his chest, his shoulders against the door.

  Arthur said nothing.

  McManus urged, “Go right along. Tell the gentleman what you wanted to tell him. What you said in the letter.”

  Arthur looked around. No window, no other door.

  “You wrote Mr. Ahrens a letter, told him you had something to say,” McManus reminded him. “Here he is. Tell him what you come to say.”

  “Why I come,” Arthur said to Ahrens. “To tell you you’d better leave this city.” He’d brazen it out.

  “Why would I leave?” Ahrens asked. “I have my business, and my daughter.”

  “Your daughter, too. You both stand to meet danger.”

  “What sort of danger?” Ahrens asked. “What is this about?”

  Arthur shook his head. “I can’t say under present circumstances.” He cut his eyes toward McManus. “All I can say is you should leave Charleston.”

  “Why can’t you tell me?” Ahrens asked.

  “The fact is,” Arthur said sulkily, “I won’t tell you with this gentleman here.” He lifted his chin at McManus. “Ask him to go out and I’ll tell you.”

  “Absolutely not,” said Ahrens.

  “I’m not leaving,” McManus said. “In fact, Mr. Ahrens, I’d like to ask you to leave, sir. I’d like a few minutes alone with this fellow myself.”

  Ahrens stood, buttoning his jacket. McManus took hold of Arthur’s shoulder as Ahrens walked past. When he was gone McManus locked the door.

  “Arms up.” He searched Arthur, finding the gun.

  “Against the law, Mr. McDow,” he said. “You’ll get a warrant for carrying a concealed weapon. Loaded, too.”

  “I’ve done nothing,” Arthur said.

  McManus pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from his breast pocket. “I charge you, Arthur McDow,” McManus said, “for stealing jewelry from your brother’s house on the eighth instance.” He read out, “One set of diamond earrings, one gold watch, one gold chain, one diamond brooch, one gold ring, one set of gold bracelets, one gold five-dollar piece.”

  It was the way McManus lifted his eyes and stared at him that silenced Arthur. McManus was much taller than Arthur, and the cold blue stare was somehow unanswerable. McManus stood again with his back to the door, his big star hanging off the bottom of his lapel, the law behind him. Even his big ears, glowing red and flaring, carried the threat of the law. Arthur felt all the blood drain down in a deadly rush from his heart, from his chest. He was chilled, cowed. He was in the hands of the law.

  When Ahrens came back Arthur had confessed. He put the blame on his brother. “If you don’t believe me,” he told McManus, “come to my room at the boarding house. I’ll tell Thomas to call on me. I got a bureau you can hide in. It’s all his idea,” Arthur said.

  Ahrens sent for Katie, and when she arrived her father told her everything. She heard all of it, the robbery, about her husband’s plan to put poison in her tea, but what she said was, “Thomas has my jewelry? He has it?” She rubbed her plump wrist, as though feeling for the bracelets. She stared at her father. Her pale blue eyes were watery. She couldn’t seem to address the poison.

  “You and Gladys must come and stay with me,” her father said. “I want you out of that house.”

  “Yes,” she said, but they could all see she didn’t want to leave.

  * * *

  IN THE DAWSON KITCHEN they heard rumors about the McDows. They heard all the neighborhood rumors. The servants all knew one another. Every few blocks was a little corner store; there was one at Bull and Rutledge, where everyone stopped in, everyone talked. In the kitchen they heard the doctor’s family had left him. Katie, her father, and the little girl—they’d all moved out. They heard the doctor was living alone. Then they heard the wife and child had moved back in. But the doctor was seen outside, alone in his garden, at all hours. Scandal spread from the kitchen into the parlors; the servants mentioned what they’d heard to their employers. Their
employers listened with half an ear; it was kitchen gossip and they didn’t approve; certainly they didn’t join in. But they heard. Sarah heard the rumors from other people’s parlors. She told Celia she was not to use Dr. McDow again. No one in the household was to have anything to do with him.

  But Dr. McDow was popular with the coloreds, so when they talked about him in the Dawson kitchen Isaac took his side. The other servants, who liked gossip, took the Dawsons’.

  “He drinks,” Jane said. She grimaced and sucked at her thumb where she’d burned it on the teakettle. “His wife has left him.”

  Isaac had just come in from serving. He wore a white jacket when he waited on table, a black frock coat when he drove. He set down the tureen.

  “He ain’ drink,” Isaac said. “He a good doctor.”

  But Jane shook her head. She’d seen him walking unsteadily, staring over the fence.

  “Not only does he drink,” she said, “he’s got mixed up with the police.”

  “Not the police,” Isaac said, shaking his head.

  “The police,” said Jane. “So I heard. An insurance fraud. A deception.” She pronounced each syllable with precision. “They dig up a dead body and they say he just died in an accident. A doctor signs a death certificate and they file a claim. The insurance companies pay, and they all share the money. The doctors do it. He’s one of them.”

  “He never,” Isaac said.

  “What do you mean?” Celia asked.

  “It was in the paper,” Jane said. “A woman called her neighbor to come in, and there was a dead body on her kitchen table. The woman said it was her husband. She told the neighbor it was very sad, that they’d been estranged and then her husband had finally come home. But as soon as he came home he slipped and fell on the stairs and died. She wept and all. But the neighbor said she’d never seen the man before. And she said the smell was very pronounced. Very of-fen-sive.” Jane looked around at them. “He was lying there on the kitchen table.” She tapped the table with her finger.

  “On the kitchen table!” Celia was shocked.

  “How could she lift him alone?” asked Jane. “It’s not easy to lift a dead body onto a table. That’s a heavy load. It’s help she had.”

  Isaac shook his head. “Dat a lie,” he said.

  “It was in the paper, so,” Jane said, not looking at him. In that household, the newspaper was sacred.

  Hélène was not part of this discussion. She was in the dining room, with the Dawsons.

  27.

  February 27, 1889. Charleston

  THE AIR WAS SOFT, earth-smelling, the morning cool and misty. The cobblestones shone with damp. Spring was imminent. Sarah was on her way to visit Celena Fourgeaud, who was dying. Isaac was driving Brownie, who shook his head. Sarah leaned back in the swaying carriage and thought of Miss Celena, the mother of Frank’s first wife.

  Frank had a photograph of Virginia in his desk. Sometimes when she was alone Sarah used to hold it close to her face, examining the high rounded forehead, small bow mouth, dark confiding eyes. Sarah tried to make her out, this young woman who thought she’d share Frank’s life. Frank had only kind words for her. Sarah was sure she was all those things—sweet, loyal, loving—but she wondered what else Virginia was. She’d never know: death ends the conversation. Afterward, you couldn’t call someone a fool, or remember his grating laugh. Death beatifies.

  She wouldn’t say a word against Hal. Not that he had no flaws, but they were irrelevant now. The dead were beyond criticism because they were beyond change. They had lived their lives, they were fixed forever. She imagined the dead, motionless and somber, lying in long ranks in the earth, while the living chattered.

  She knew for a fact that Virginia had poor taste in music: Frank wouldn’t play the sentimental songs from her sheet music, still in the piano bench. Sarah suspected that Virginia wasn’t intelligent enough for her husband. She didn’t like the idea of Frank trapped in a marriage without conversation.

  She felt pity for Virginia, thinking she was setting out on a long path, only to find her footing give way, the earth begin to slide away beneath her. Fading strength, lessening breath, blood on her pillow. It made Sarah feel guilty at her own good fortune.

  The Fourgeauds treated Frank as a son, his children as their grandchildren. Miss Celena used to play hide-and-seek, Warrington crouched behind the sofa, she with her hands over her eyes, counting. Frank had taken care of both of them, first Eugene, as he failed, and now Miss Celena.

  The trees along the lower end of Rutledge Avenue were now softened by rain. Her first visit here had been with her mother, when they’d first moved to Charleston. When she and Frank became engaged, he brought them to meet Miss Celena as though she were his mother.

  “We’re so happy for Frank,” Celena told them, in her whispery voice. Miss Celena sat in a little chair by the fireplace, and each time she sat down her cat jumped into her lap. It was a big ginger cat, and when Miss Celena stood up she had to lift him down onto the carpet, where he stood crossly, lashing his tail. She gave Sarah a brooch that had been Virginia’s, a cameo with a Greek goddess in profile. She’d used to wear it, but the front half of the face had fallen off; the beautiful profile had dropped, just like that. It lay now in the back of a drawer. The thought of it made her feel guilty, as though she’d been living her life at Virginia’s expense, and hadn’t valued it properly.

  Isaac drew up before the house. The walk was edged with hellebores, their dark glossy leaves half hiding the flowers. Miss Celena had given Sarah seedlings; they flourished along the edge of her path.

  Nancy, the maid, opened the door. She was long-faced and lean, with trembling hands and fine gray hair. When Sarah asked how Miss Celena was, Nancy shook her head.

  “Tolerable,” she said. “Just tolerable.”

  In the bedroom, Miss Celena, tiny and wasted, lay propped up on pillows. The air was close, smelling of eucalyptus and something else, something darker and softer, less pleasant.

  “Good morning, Miss Celena.” Sarah sat down and took her hand. It was fragile and light, as though the bones had become hollow.

  “Sarah.” Miss Celena spoke with difficulty.

  “How are you feeling?” Sarah asked.

  “Moderate,” Celena whispered, as always.

  “I’ve come to say goodbye for a little while,” Sarah said. “Tomorrow I’m going to Washington to see Miriam, my sister. And Jem, my brother.”

  “A family visit,” said Miss Celena. Her breathing was audible.

  Nancy brought in the tea tray.

  “Coming over here today,” Sarah said, “I remembered how kind you were, when I first came here. And to my mother.”

  “You were Frank’s wife,” Miss Celena said.

  “Not yet,” Sarah said. “You made us feel welcome. I’ve always been grateful.”

  “Frank took care of us,” Miss Celena said. “We were grateful.” She tried to swallow; something struggled in her throat.

  “You had a big cat,” Sarah said. “He kept jumping into your lap.”

  “Archimedes,” whispered Miss Celena. “He shed so.”

  “I’ll only be gone for a week,” Sarah said. “I’ll come and see you when I get back.”

  “I may not be here,” she whispered.

  “Of course you will,” said Sarah, though she was doubtful.

  Miss Celena’s eyes were pale, the irises rimmed unevenly with white. The small seamed face was colorless. It was her soul, quick and living, that illuminated her gaze.

  Here was the end of her own life with Miss Celena, Sarah thought. This tiny lined face, the pursed, lipless mouth, the hand plucking at the sheet. Here was the end, Nancy standing outside the door, long mouth turned down with anxiety. Miss Celena was worn out; life had had its way with her.

  When she said goodbye Sarah kissed the back of Miss Celena’s hand and placed it against her cheek. There was nothing she could do, the current that would carry her away was gathering force. She could feel
the pulse, rapid and uneven. It was like holding a bird in her hand.

  In the carriage Sarah wept a little, out of sorrow for Miss Celena, but also with a guilty surge of gratitude, for her own husband and children, vivid with life. Brownie, who knew he was going home, threw up his head and tried to trot. Out of respect to Mrs. Fourgeaud, who was dying, Isaac held him sternly to a walk.

  In the afternoon the weather darkened. Clouds moved in low, muffling the city. The trees turned vague in the desultory rain. The trunk had been brought upstairs, and Sarah was packing. She already missed the children. She thought of Warrington’s luminous eyes, his weak chest. And this was the dangerous season, winter melting treacherously into spring, damp air seeping into lungs. She moved between armoire and trunk, laying out her clothes on the bed, smoothing out the wrinkles, folding them carefully. She stepped around Bruno, Frank’s giant Newfoundland. Dark-pelted, white-pawed, he was always underfoot. Turning back from the armoire she stumbled onto his paw. He yelped and yanked it back. Exasperated, she whispered, “Bruno.” He looked up, his moist eyes earnest, thumping his tail in apology.

  Presents for Miriam: lemon soap, perfume; and for her daughter Lucille a beaded purse. A tiny white lawn nightgown for Jem’s new baby. She was looking forward to being surrounded again by her family, swimming in that thick Morgan soup. All those years in Baton Rouge there were cousins up and down the river, at every party, every holiday, every wedding and funeral. Now it was just her and Miriam and Jem. She thought of Jem settling his chin into his neck when he laughed. She thought of Hal’s face, though it was dim now. It seemed as though the house on Church Street were still there, and if she went there she could step inside and find everything the same: the red lantern in the hall, her father reading in his study. The polished table in the dining room, Tiche pushing through the swinging door. The mockingbird singing in the middle of the night, high in the magnolia tree.