“Mr. Hathaway came by this afternoon. I didn’t invite him in,” she hurriedly added, knowing that as a young woman, being alone with a gentleman in her mistress’s house would ruin her. “I stepped outside on the porch, in plain view.”
Elisabeth imagined at least one of her neighbors would soon inform her of this meeting between her maid and the elegant new caller. She was glad Annie had told her first so she wouldn’t be taken by surprise.
“That’s when he asked if I might spend the afternoon with him on Sunday.” She smiled shyly. “He said he didn’t want to send a note and have to wait for a boy to return with my answer. He needed to know right away whether his attentions would be agreeable to me.”
“I’m pleased for you,” Elisabeth said. “But I think now you’d better go down and stir the soup. The butter for the rolls is in the icebox.”
“Yes, ma’am.” With that, Annie flew out of the room, leaving the parasol behind.
She smiled as she shook her head, then folded up the lacy white parasol and left it at the foot of the attic stairs for Annie to take up later.
CHAPTER 32
For once, Titus was happy to see Owen Campbell lounging in his office, drinking a cup of coffee. That meant he must have something to report. Elisabeth sat in her usual place at the corner of his desk, engaged in some lively conversation with the detective.
“It sounds as if Mrs. Yates expects a profitable summer.”
“She does. Now that Rose Baldwin has booked a vaudeville show instead of the burlesque troupe the theater had last year, she’s optimistic families will return to her boardinghouse.”
“I’m glad for her.” Elisabeth looked up and noticed his arrival. “Good morning, Titus. Coffee?”
“Of course.” He strode to his desk in order to sit at it, which led to an awkward moment when he almost bumped into his secretary on her way to the parlor stove. If Owen hadn’t been watching, he might not have tried so hard to avoid her. Once furnished with his morning beverage, he said, “I assume you have news to report?”
Campbell put down his coffee cup, straightened from his slouch, and pulled a notebook from his inside jacket pocket. “I do indeed.” He cleared his throat. “It appears Warren Chapman owed money all over Boston. He’d taken out a mortgage on his house there to cover his debts, which tided him over for a while, but he was behind on his payments. The bank was threatening to foreclose.”
“I never imagined things were that bad for him,” Titus said. “Here in Whitby, he appeared to have no financial troubles at all.”
“It was all a façade. In fact, he seems to have come to Shipwreck Point with that exact goal in mind. He hoped to hide from his creditors here and recoup his stock market losses before returning to the city.”
“Surely, he wasn’t that naïve,” Elisabeth said. “Everyone knows the elite come down from Boston every summer. It wouldn’t be very easy to hide.”
“Ah, but that’s why he came in the spring. He hoped to recover financially before the summer started,” Campbell explained.
“If I’m not mistaken,” Titus said, “his situation did not improve here.”
Campbell shook his head. “Not at all. In fact, not only did his exposure in the copper market get worse, he duped a number of our leading citizens into falling for his schemes, leaving several of them in dire straits.”
This news caught Titus’s attention. “Who?”
“Well, there’s Ranson Payne, who can certainly weather the loss, and others like Franz Dietrich and Philo Peck who can’t.”
“But Peck said he’d made money based on Chapman’s financial advice,” Titus said.
“Ah, that was in the beginning. I’m not sure how this all was supposed to work, but Chapman somehow sold some of that short sale stock to investors here in Whitby, or held it for them with the promise of greater riches in the future, but when faced with covering his margin to his broker, he insisted on the same from them.”
“And so, instead of profiting from the stocks, they suffered the same economic disaster as he did,” Elisabeth said. “Which fits in with what Pauline Chapman told me yesterday.”
Forgetting all about whatever else the detective had to report, Titus focused on her. “What was that?”
“She was doing her own shopping at the Whitby Grocery because she’s had to let most of the servants go. They couldn’t afford them, you see.” His secretary took a deep breath. “She also confessed that she sold the cuckoo clock to Mrs. Muir. She needed the money to cover household expenses.”
“Do you think she’d testify to that in court?” Titus asked, immediately seeing the advantage to his client if she would.
“I’m sure of it. The poor woman knows there’s no way to disguise her situation now, and she feels terrible about the grief Mr. Muir has gone through over the clock.”
“Hmm…” Titus steepled his fingers in front of his face and tapped his forefingers on his lips as he thought. “So that removes most of the motives Arthur Muir would have had to kill Chapman. But would his son have known that?”
“You don’t still think Duncan is guilty?” Elisabeth objected.
“The fact that he’s run away makes it look that way. As well as our client’s confession as soon as I told him about that. Warren Chapman stood between him and the woman he loved. That’s a powerful provocation to eliminate him. And, as if to fortify that belief, it appears the two young lovers have gone off together.” He lowered his hands to the desk and addressed Campbell again. “You haven’t heard anything on that front, have you?”
“No.”
“What about you?” he asked Elisabeth. “Did you ask Mrs. Chapman if she’d heard from her daughter?”
She sighed heavily. “I didn’t think of it at the time. I’ll never be as good a detective as Owen is.”
“Ah, but you’re an excellent secretary, which is what I expect from you,” Titus said. He was glad when she gave him a tentative smile.
Elisabeth barely ate any of her supper that night. The murder of Warren Chapman continued to trouble her long after she left the office. Somehow, she felt as if she had all the clues to solve it, but the puzzle pieces weren’t coming together.
“I’m going to take a walk on the beach,” she told Annie.
“Was there something wrong with the brisket?” the maid asked.
“Not at all. I’m just not very hungry.”
Annie’s brows drew together as she asked, “Would you like me to come with you?”
“Not tonight. I need some time alone, I think.”
“It will be dark soon.”
She smiled, hoping to reassure the girl. “I’ve lived here all my life and never has anyone bothered me while taking a walk on the beach. We’re far from the pickpockets and the hustlers here. I’ll be fine, Annie.”
Her maid still looked doubtful, but that didn’t deter her. Resolutely, she strode to the front door, exited, and headed toward the water.
When she came to Rose’s house, she remembered her promise to ask after Melissa at the tea this past week. She paused to inquire and learned Rose had been no more successful than herself. Making her excuses, Elisabeth continued to her destination.
A cool breeze tousled her hair and made her skirts dance around her legs as she walked. The smell of the ocean had already started to clear her head, but the presence of the houses on either side still pressed in upon her. It was as if she could hear the chatter of the souls within. The constant murmur of their conversation chased away the gossamer strands of the ideas inside her brain that were trying to take on substance.
At last she reached the path that led over the dunes. She climbed over the hummocks, and immediately relief flooded through her. Just as salt water healed physical wounds, the lapping of the waves healed those of the spirit. When she got to the spar that had washed up on the sand from one of the periodic wrecks, she sat on it and removed her shoes and stockings. Carrying them in her hand, she lifted her skirt with the other as she approached t
he surf so as not to get the hem wet. She walked north toward the lighthouse, knowing the houses along this stretch of beach would still, mostly, be unoccupied.
Her breathing slowed, and she inhaled as the wavelets lapped over her feet, exhaled as they receded. Her body had taken on the rhythm of the tide, and she imagined her heart’s blood pulsing through her veins with the same cadence as the sea.
Eased by the recurrent ebb and flow of the water, her mind drifted like the flotsam that often washed ashore on Shipwreck Point. A lone seagull circled overhead, every once in a while giving a cry as if asking her what she was doing here. The same as the bird, she imagined. Drifting on the currents until it was time to go to sleep.
She didn’t notice when the gull left her. The sun had gone down, and stars were peeking through the darkening sky. She should head back before Annie sent the police looking for her. She smiled at the thought.
When she reached the spar again, she sat to put on her shoes, but as she bent over to draw on her stocking, she stopped. Annie. The police. What was it about Annie that made her think of the police? An idea tickled at the edge of awareness. Elisabeth closed her eyes and let it appear.
And suddenly she knew. She opened her eyes wide and her mouth formed an O. It was so obvious now that she’d thought of it. She couldn’t wait to tell Titus in the morning.
CHAPTER 33
The next day, Elisabeth showed up in his office, clutching a folded-up parasol. “I thought you didn’t own one of those?”
“I don’t,” she said as she put it on his desk. “This now belongs to my maid, Annie.”
He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with the thing, so he merely stared at it, expecting his secretary would explain herself if he waited long enough.
“We’ve been looking at things all wrong. Chief Morgan concluded Warren Chapman was killed by the invoice spike because it was sticking out of his neck when the body was found.”
“Yes, and I pointed out that the hole was too large for the spike to have made it.”
She nodded. “You suggested that something else might have been used, like an épée. But what if it wasn’t an invoice spike or a sword? What if it was some other instrument?”
He followed her gaze as it moved to the parasol. It was then that he noticed the wooden shaft with a handle at one end was topped by a pointed metal ferrule at the other. Elisabeth extended a well-manicured finger and touched it to the lace just below. He leaned closer to get a better look.
“I have to bring this to Dr. Wood right away,” Titus said as he rose from his chair.
Dark clouds rolled in from the west as Titus, accompanied by Elisabeth, made his way to the courthouse. They were barely halfway there when big splats of rain began to pelt his body. He raised his umbrella, pulled his secretary, who carried an object wrapped in canvas, closer so she’d be covered by it, and quickened his step. The last thing they needed was to be soaked through while the hearing went on.
Fortunately, the two of them made it to the door before the storm intensified. After shaking the raindrops off the umbrella, he placed it in a stand in the vestibule before entering the courthouse proper. As he walked down the center aisle, he scanned the seats to make certain one particular person was in attendance. He’d been sure curiosity would have brought them, but he’d told Owen Campbell to be there, just in case. The detective caught his eye and gestured toward a chair three rows in front of him. Relieved that his assumption had been correct, he continued down the aisle and took his place at the defense table on the left side of the room. Elisabeth took the seat at the other end of the table, leaving the seat between them vacant.
Garner was already seated at the prosecution table, deep in conversation with his law clerk, Albert Stratton. Or shall we say, lecturing his law clerk, since poor Stratton’s only part in the exchange seemed to be to nod his head every once in a while.
The clerk of the court was nowhere in sight, and Titus could only assume he’d gone off to fetch his client from his cell. He removed a stack of papers from his briefcase and placed them on the table in front of him. He’d spent so much time reviewing the arrest report and the autopsy report yesterday, he’d practically memorized them, but he had made a few notes on the pages with questions he wanted to ask on cross-examination.
Arthur Muir entered the courtroom from a door that was the outside entrance nearest to the police station, the clerk, Zimmerman, right behind him. Muir’s wrists were bound in handcuffs, which the clerk unlocked and removed once they reached the defense table. Titus noted that, unlike some of his previous clients, Muir was dressed in a neatly pressed suit that must have been delivered by his valet. Undemocratic as it might be, wealth entitled those who possessed it to better treatment than the average man.
“Good morning, Arthur,” Titus said.
His client sat beside him, his demeanor stoic, his jaw set, eyes staring straight ahead.
“I’m sorry I didn’t meet with you yesterday, but I needed every minute I could spare to prepare for this hearing.” A not quite truthful statement. He hadn’t wanted to hear his client tell him he was guilty again and stayed away on that account. Blast Duncan! If the boy had only stuck around, guilty or innocent, at least Arthur wouldn’t have insisted on putting his neck in the hangman’s noose. “This hearing will most likely be a brief formality, with Edgar Garner, the prosecutor, presenting evidence from a small set of witnesses. Unless one of them says something that is clearly untrue, we’ll have little part in it. Do you have any questions?”
Finally, his client turned to face him. He shook his head.
“All rise.”
At the clerk’s command, Titus looked toward the door to the judge’s chambers where Jasper Crane had made his appearance. He and Arthur Muir rose to their feet and, from the sound of chairs scraping across the floor, so did everyone else. The judge took his seat on the raised dais and lifted his gavel, then struck it once on the sounding block. The report of wood on wood echoed in the silent courtroom. To Titus’s ears, it sounded like the crack of doom.
“You may be seated,” the clerk of the court announced.
With no introductory statements since he’d laid out the ground rules in their prior meeting, the judge intoned, “The court calls the State of Massachusetts versus Arthur Muir on a charge of felony murder. Is the State ready to proceed?”
“The State is ready, Your Honor,” Garner said.
“Is the defense ready to proceed?”
“Titus Strong representing Arthur Muir. The defense is ready, Your Honor.”
“You may proceed, Mr. Garner.”
The Assistant District Attorney rose to his feet to make his opening statement. “On the morning of April 30, 1895, Warren Chapman’s butler found his master’s body on the floor of his study. He promptly called the police, who confirmed that Mr. Chapman had been murdered. A key piece of evidence was found by Officer Timothy Kelley at the crime scene that incontrovertibly pointed to Mr. Muir as having been in that room in the recent past. Mr. Muir and Mr. Chapman had taken part in several violent disagreements in the weeks preceding the murder. It is the State’s contention that in a fit of anger, Mr. Muir grabbed an invoice spike from Mr. Chapman’s desk and stabbed him in the throat. We will present a series of witnesses who will testify to the events that occurred immediately before Mr. Chapman was killed.”
“Mr. Strong, would you like to offer an opening statement?” the judge asked.
Titus stood. “I would, Your Honor.”
“Go ahead then.”
“It is true that Mr. Muir was in Mr. Chapman’s study the night he was murdered. However, as Mr. Garner can attest, there is no proof that he ever touched the means of Mr. Chapman’s demise, much less used it to kill him. There are no witnesses who saw him commit murder, or even confront the victim while he was there. The defense contends that Mr. Chapman was murdered by a person or persons unknown prior to Mr. Muir’s arrival at the Chapman cottage.”
“Mr. Garner, pleas
e call your first witness.”
“I call Officer Timothy Kelley,” Garner announced.
After Kelley was sworn in, Garner walked him through his arrival at the crime scene, the discovery of the bicycle charm, which was introduced into evidence at that point, and the fact that Mr. Muir admitted the charm belonged to him. “Your witness,” the assistant district attorney said to Titus when he was through.
“Officer Kelley, is there any way of knowing when the bicycle charm was left in Mr. Chapman’s study?”
“Not directly, sir, no.”
“So you can’t tell the Court whether it was left that morning or the day before or even a week before?”
“No, sir.”
“What size is the charm?” Titus asked.
The police officer looked startled, then held up his right hand with his thumb and forefinger a short distance apart. “I’d say about that big.”
“Please state the measurement for the record,” Judge Crane said.
“It is small, perhaps an inch long and a half inch high. Certainly no larger than that.”
“So it was of a size such that it might have been overlooked by a maid cleaning the room?”
Kelley looked thoughtful. “I suppose that’s possible.”
“It might even have laid on the floor under Mr. Chapman’s desk for several days.”
“Yes…”
“Or even a week.”
“I don’t think it would have been overlooked for that long.”
“Can you say for sure?” Titus asked.
Kelley shook his head. Then, remembering he had to testify out loud, he said, “Not for sure, no, sir.”
“Thank you, Officer Kelley.” He felt satisfied that he’d introduced some doubt as to when Muir had lost the charm.
“Re-direct, Your Honor?” Garner asked.
“Go ahead.”
“Didn’t Mr. Muir admit he must have lost the charm in Mr. Chapman’s study the night of the murder?”
The Case of the Troubled Tycoon: A Gilded Age Historical Cozy Mystery (Shipwreck Point Mysteries Book 5) Page 17