Whiskers in the Dark

by Rita Mae Brown

  “How beautiful,” he muttered as Chief flicked his ears. “Miracles do happen.”

  37

  May 5, 2018

  Saturday

  Robins hopped along the ground, mockingbirds taunted everyone from their perches, goldfinches flew about—it was an avian party. Mrs. Murphy and Pewter walked with Harry as the birds complained about their intrusion into the birds’ territory.

  “I have every right to be at St. Luke’s,” Pewter huffed.

  “Oh, ignore them. They have to make a big show of it,” Mrs. Murphy advised as Tucker and Pirate ambled along.

  In just one month from the spring equinox, the grass had turned emerald green and the buds had opened so the color of spring green floated above the grass. Some trees, like willows, fully opened. Others took their time, but the spring green would soon turn to darker green until fall, when the leaves reached their fullest amount of chlorophyll. That’s what Harry thought, anyway.

  Harry passed through the quads, reaching the lone tree with the single grave. A simple wooden cross stood at the head, with no birth date or death date, as no one knew.

  “Forlorn,” Harry muttered.

  She didn’t know that the blackball on paper that had been slipped into her St. Luke’s mailbox was about this grave. Given all that was happening at Aldie, she pushed the unknown murder victim to the back of her mind as best she could.

  A car door closed at Reverend Jones’s house. Pamela Bartlett, seeing Harry, headed in her direction, as the grave rested beyond the formal graveyard. In her late seventies, Pamela regularly attended her yoga classes four times a week. She moved with suppleness and ease, her shape that of a much younger woman. Only her shining silver hair hinted at a longer life.

  Turning to see who shut the car door, Harry smiled when she beheld Pamela. She’d always liked the lady, but working with her on the Dorcas Guild enlarged that emotion.

  “Mrs. Bartlett.” Harry walked toward her.

  “And what is our building and grounds woman doing?” Pamela extended her hand for Harry to lightly shake, then walked with her a few paces to the grave.

  As Virginia women they needed to touch each other. Southerners tend to be more demonstrative physically and otherwise than, say, those north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Touch provided a reassurance that words never did.

  “I wanted to see if the grass was growing on the grave.”

  “Doing nicely,” the older woman replied. “I see you have brought your team.”

  “I’m the smart one.” Pewter rubbed on Mrs. Bartlett’s stockinged leg.

  Tucker looked upward at the lovely face, deciding not to tell Pewter what she thought of her. Pirate did what Tucker did. The half-grown puppy really was learning the ropes.

  “You know, they really are my team.” Harry’s attention returned to the grave. “This wooden cross won’t last but so long given the weather. Maybe a few years. I was wondering if I could convince someone in the men’s guild to perhaps carve a cross on a large stone.”

  “What a good idea.” She looked upward as a mockingbird flew tantalizingly close. “I do hope this will prove a quiet grave.”

  “Me, too,” Harry responded.

  “I’ll break your neck,” Pewter threatened as the daring fellow swooped low.

  As if hearing her cat, Harry enfolded Pamela in her thoughts, for she trusted her completely. “Whoever lies here had a broken neck. The Taylors’ grave, as you know, was somewhat disturbed. All these two centuries later, who knows about this murder? Pamela, it’s on my mind because of the two deaths at Aldie, and it was my misfortune to see both bodies. I can’t shake it. I mean, I’m not horrified. I have seen bodies before, and the deaths were fresh. But why? Why Aldie? I’m being drawn in. I can’t help myself.”

  “Well,” the silver-haired lady said, “you’d be an odd duck if you weren’t affected.”

  “Affected. She’s obsessed. I have to live with this.” Pewter complained loudly.

  “Pewter.” Harry bent over to scratch the cat’s ears, which irritated the others so Harry petted them for a moment.

  “She’s not shy.” Pamela laughed.

  “What would you do?”

  “I wouldn’t try to block the feelings. Never works. I’m sure you’ve considered why those two people died, husband and wife, at Aldie, one murdered. It’s in the papers and is odd, to say the least. This murder, even though long, long ago, also casts a spell. The pearls alone would cast a spell. Janice Childe and Mags Nielsen seem under their spell.”

  “I wonder if either of them knows something?”

  Pamela’s eyes crinkled. “Do you think Mags could keep from spilling the beans?”

  Harry laughed. “Well, Janice is drawn to the jewelry. Then again, who wouldn’t be?”

  “The killer was not.”

  “True, but had to be a man.”

  “Now what does that explain? A man would surmise the value of that necklace and the earrings. He wouldn’t wish to wear them but he’d surely wish to sell them. Yet he did not.”

  “It’s something, isn’t it, to think that they lay under the ground—fabulous, fabulous jewelry—for centuries, since 1786 or so? I take the Taylors’ death date as the date close to when she was tossed on their caskets.”

  “Why?”

  “Ground would have been soft. Turned up. So digging in, throwing her down, covering up the body, tamping it down wouldn’t arouse suspicion.”

  Pamela crossed her arms across her pale peach cashmere sweater. “You have thought about it. What have you thought about Aldie?”

  “Strange that you should ask. Although they were married and business partners, I think this has nothing to do with that profitable car dealership.”

  “Inheritance wasn’t a motivation?”

  “No. Granted, a wife or husband is always the first in the line of suspects, then comes family and friends, but I think, like this murder here, it goes back to something else.”

  “Fascinating.”

  Warming to someone interested in her ideas and not telling her to forget it, Harry went on. “He was in the foreign service, had a good career, became a communications expert, and she rose in the Navy. They met in Paris, hit it off. They were on the same wavelength. Obviously, they built a successful business together in a competitive field. But I believe this is connected to their language skills.”

  Pamela blinked. “What languages?”

  “He was fluent in Turkish and she in Russian. I know this is important. I know it. I don’t know why.”

  “It’s a volatile part of the world,” Pamela volunteered.

  “Isn’t every part of the world volatile eventually?”

  A smile crossed Pamela’s lips, a light coating of coral lipstick. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. Makes me wonder if we’re due.” She held up her hand. “Don’t get me started. Turkey and Russia. Two hereditary enemies.”

  “My other idea does involve the dealership, maybe a sour business deal. But their company’s record is awfully good.”

  “I see. Back to whoever is underground in front of us. Murder, as we know. Why are people killed? Well, the old motives are dragged out. Love. Money. Revenge. Drugs, but that gets to money. What else? Well, sheer perversity and sadism, I guess, but I doubt any of our considered victims would qualify.” Pamela, an educated woman, rarely strayed into her own emotions when considering a problem.

  “Information. People will kill for that. We know money wasn’t a motive for this woman. The jewelry would have been taken. What kind of information would someone have at the end of the eighteenth century? Our forefathers delighted in accusing one another of sexual peccadilloes. I doubt she was killed for that, even if she was a kept woman. For her I believe it was love or revenge.”

  “Possibly.”

  “This sounds damning in a way, but I do
n’t think either Jason or Clare would arouse another human being to the heights of amorous recrimination. Not love. So I come back to money, and I don’t know why, information. Clare was Naval Intelligence. She may have stumbled on something.”

  “Now? Her career was over.” Pamela didn’t argue, merely presented the idea.

  “Maybe not. Russian, remember. Whatever is happening over there, they are poisoning people in other countries.”

  “Harry, that’s a terrible thought.”

  Harry waved her hand somewhat dismissively. “I know. I’m out in left field. I’ve got to let this go. But I think I’ll drive back up to Aldie, look around again. I have missed something. Then I can let go.”

  “Well, don’t drink the water.” Pamela half teased her.

  Harry smiled. “Do you think we will ever know about this mystery?”

  “I’m not sure, but given that the Taylors’ grave was oddly disturbed, perhaps. But I don’t think any of us will reason this one out. I think whoever poked around the Taylors’ grave will make a mistake or simply come forward. No crime has been committed in our time.”

  “Speaking of coming forward—” Harry inclined her head and Pamela turned. Janice and Mags approached them, carrying a pot of unbloomed something.

  “Hello,” both Harry and Pamela said to their sister Dorcas Guild members.

  “How about finding you two here?” Janice cradled the pot.

  “We’ve brought marigolds, will soon open up. The big ones, orange and yellow. Thought they might brighten this grave. It’s rather sad.” Mags carried a hand trowel. “Harry, you don’t mind if I plant these, do you? I’ve been nurturing them in my kitchen window.”

  “Of course not.”

  “You are in charge of building and grounds.” Janice cited her title. “We want to stay on the good side of you.”

  “It’s a lovely idea. I was here to see how the grass was doing. Good, I think, and Pamela joined me.”

  “What about me?” Pewter pouted.

  Pamela checked her watch. “Off I go. The reverend is expecting me. Has more ideas about the homecoming. He’s fallen in love with the idea.”

  As she left, Harry thanked Janice and Mags and she, too, walked up toward the church, as her old truck was parked in the side parking lot. As she walked, it occurred to her that Pamela, in her good-natured way, had warned her indirectly, as Geoff Ogden had done directly.

  She also remembered that May fifth was the Kentucky Derby day, and Harry walked a little faster. She wanted to watch the Run for the Roses.

  38

  October 29, 1787

  Monday

  The sprinkling of sand over wet ink, allowing it to dry, then tipping the fine-grade paper into a wastebasket focused Ewing’s attention. The sound of the sand, tiny granules, moving across the paper always made him feel that he was properly working, not wasting time.

  His quill, goose, of course, was perched in its stand. The ink bottle had been carefully closed. The odor from the fire infused the room. With two days remaining in October, late fall nudged toward winter. Outside a cold mist enveloped Cloverfields.

  Bettina and Serena sang in the kitchen. Every now and then he could hear a pot tapped with a spoon. Even on the coldest winter day, those two women kept warm in the kitchen. Catherine and Rachel were in there, too. They wanted to talk to Bettina. Also, Rachel was determined to see how Bettina tenderized a large loin of pork. Small pottery bowls, filled with herbs, sat in a row like little culinary soldiers.

  Ewing knew his girls were in there, but he didn’t know what they were doing. For the most part he believed in the gender division of labor, with particular gifts being accounted for such as Catherine’s gift with horses, Rachel’s with people. But men did not belong in the kitchen and he kept his distance.

  The letter, concisely expressed in his quite good penmanship, concerned Bettina’s manumission. He could have simply written a document in his own hand freeing his cook, but Ewing did not trust to lawyers but so much now and he had no idea what they would be like in the future. As to those men who had gathered in Philadelphia, members of Congress, he’d heard enough over time, starting with the prosecution of the war, to fear them all with the exception of Washington. He began to entertain good thoughts of Hamilton. However, wherever men gathered to discuss affairs, to make laws, a citizen should be cautious. Then again, no matter how well educated, how well meaning, no one, not one single human being, can see into the future. We can feel things, Isabelle surely did, and those things can be prescient, but to behold the whole picture and the temper of men, no.

  Here he was in his late forties, he didn’t care to be too precise about the date; he had observed a great deal and the trip to Europe when he was young gave him valuable insights, at least he thought it did. Exciting, new as the United States was, in many ways it had much in common with England or those nations on the Continent that he had visited.

  He held up the paper again, ink dry, knowing he was doing what his wife would have wanted ultimately but wondering was he truly doing Bettina any favors? What was freedom anyway? Was it the opposite of bondage, of physical slavery? That question, hazy at first, sharpened over his lifetime. As a young man in France the money, the manners, even the way the royals walked, the nobility spoke, dazzled him. But they weren’t totally free. Each one of those people had to preserve and advance the family’s fortunes through the King. No one could be honest with the King and Queen or with one another. Perhaps at night before the fire with family members after yet another ghastly, expensive soiree, they could tell the truth. Still it was better than physical bondage.

  Each country he visited flourished in its own way, its habits, its arts, but all endured what he felt were inhospitable governments. And what if one were the King? One needed intelligent advisers, never a certainty. One needed to pander to and be pandered to by those of great wealth, the old noble families.

  Here? Well, he had believed himself a good and productive subject of George, King George III, even if he was a Hanoverian, not truly English. England had done all right but he believed that was because England had a Parliament, a real argumentative, discursive body whether King George liked it or not. In its way, that body represented the people, maybe not those on the bottom, but the ever-growing middle classes had a voice now. He thought that good.

  But then King George levied more and more burdens on this colony. Not all the burdens were financial, although those were the worst. Finally, like many men of his generation, educated, of means, he believed a break with England politically necessary.

  “We won,” he said to himself. “We created the Articles of Confederation, frightened of nurturing a despot. They were a disaster. I pray this Constitution will hold.”

  He again read the paper to his lawyer concerning proper manumission papers for Bettina and that she should be registered as a free black in court records. Since representation, the crux on which the Constitutional Convention had nearly hung itself, was so important he believed it was important that every citizen and Bettina, though not a full citizen, would be counted in some fashion if this Constitution was ratified by all the states in the time frame. He was keenly aware that the word “slave” was not in the Constitution, only the word “persons.” Slave that she was, Bettina, legally, was a person. His daughters, all the women, free or slave, must be protected by their men. Every woman’s status should be clear. Ewing knew that men usually only protected women that were theirs: mother, relatives, wife, daughters. It didn’t trouble him that things were otherwise any more than slavery troubled him. It was the way of the world. Still, he wanted to make certain that this excellent woman who had tended and loved his wife would never be challenged. Bettina would be free.

  No point in telling her until all the paperwork was done and recorded.

  He turned his chair, with effort, toward the fire. His mind wandered back
to representation. A true census had to be accomplished. He wondered how easily those numbers could be corrupted. According to the new document, seats in the lower chamber relied on such numbers.

  Looking outside the windows, his mind felt like that cold mist. He could see the outlines. No more. Maybe that was just life. Then again, he valued clarity, logic, reliability. For a flash, he wondered if this new world was passing him by. Were younger men up to the sacrifices?

  As Ewing asked himself questions, his daughters absorbed Bettina’s teaching. Catherine tried. Some of it got through because she did like to delight her husband, and John, a muscular, tall man, liked to eat. He never complained about her cooking but Bettina sneaked him tidbits, for Catherine’s shortcomings as well as her virtues were known to all.

  “Maybe it will be an early winter.” Serena, too, looked out the window.

  “That’s why I want that pea soup thick,” Bettina told her. “You keep stirring. I’m running down to Bumbee’s with the girls.” She always called the daughters “the girls.”

  “Yes, Bettina.” Since all Serena had to do was stir, she was relieved, plus she would enjoy some time alone.

  The three women, wrapped in shawls, left the house, but they hurried to Rachel’s. Bettina didn’t want Serena to feel anything important was being kept from her, hence the little fib about Bumbee and the weaving room. If Serena inadvertently mentioned something to Bumbee, Bettina could always say she got sidetracked, somewhat true.

  Once inside, Rachel arranged chairs in front of the fire. The three, shawls hanging on pegs by the door, sat down.

  “Father visited Maureen Selisse. He gave her the happy news.” Catherine started the discussion. “She pretended to think all was well but, as you might imagine, she dug her heels in concerning DoRe. Right now she has put such a price on him, she knows this will delay things.”

  “I knew it.” Bettina folded her arms across her ample bosom.

  “All is not lost.” Catherine looked to Rachel, better at these things.