The Turquoise

by Anya Seton

  Nor did she understand more clearly after she had found Fey, who was sitting in a chair by the window in the huge bedroom she had shared with Simeon, and was still dressed in the golden satin evening gown.

  ‘Doctor Rachel!’ she whispered as the door opened. She got up in a dazed way, came over to Rachel, and laid her head against the strong shoulder. ‘ It couldn’t be anybody else but you, could it? ’ she said. ‘ Because I haven’t any other friends at all. You should have seen the way they looked at me last night—afterward. At me and Simeon. They were so frightened, and they ran so fast to get away—like the servants, too.’

  ‘Fey,’ cut in Rachel, ‘I want to know exactly what happened. You’re strong, and I’ve seen you handle many emergencies. I know you’re exhausted and suffering from shock as Lucy is, but I want you to pull yourself together and give me a collected account.’

  ‘Lucita!’ cried Fey, the vague stare focusing. ‘She’s with Miss Pringle. She doesn’t know anything about this. She was asleep. I’ve been afraid to go to her for fear she’d guess from my face.’

  ‘Miss Pringle has gone like the others,’ said Rachel dryly, taking off her bonnet and shawl. ‘And that poor child was not asleep last night.’

  ‘She saw—? ’ whispered Fey.

  Rachel bowed her head. ‘No, don’t go to her now—she’s sleeping.’

  And she continued, in her carefully unemotional tone, ‘The papers didn’t say so, but I assume, from what Lucy says, that Mr. Tower shot your first husband, and the child knows it.’

  ‘She doesn’t know who Terry was—that he was her father—~’

  ‘She does,’ said Rachel.

  Fey sank down in the chair again. ‘He told her,’ she said, half-aloud. ‘He did tell her. I’m glad he’s dead.’

  ‘Fey! You mustn’t talk like that! ’

  ‘He was blackmailing Simeon. He betrayed me. He betrayed Lucita.’

  Rachel frowned. There was something here that she did not understand, some obliquity anterior to and outside even the ghastly fact of murder. She knew the dead man only through Fey’s descriptions, but she had thought to recognize the type, a drifter and a scamp, wholly graceless, but easily influenced and not vicious. And there was Lucy’s attitude; when and how had that come about?

  ‘How does it happen, Fey, that Terry came back into your life and managed to gain such an influence? Tell me from the beginning.’

  After a while Fey talked in nervous, jerky sentences. She told the bare facts. Terry’s appearance at the Valentine Ball. The three clandestine meetings in the park. Then she stopped, raising her eyes to the wise, listening face in front of her. She got up from the chair and, walking to the centertable, straightened a magazine which had slipped askew from the rest. ‘That’s all,’ she said. ‘Everything of any importance.’

  Rachel frowned, watching the small white hands leveling and smoothing the pile of magazines. She saw that Fey had not faced the tragedy yet, nor its inevitable consequences; that she was still groping through some protective mist of compromise and self-deception, as she nad been for years. A child or a weakling might shield itself behind the excuse of shock, but Fey must not be allowed to.

  ‘Where is your husband—Mr. Tower—now?’ Rachel asked sternly.

  Fey turned from the table, the hardness, a defiance so subtle that Rachel was not certain of its nature, left her strained face. ‘They took him away. He wouldn’t speak to me. I tried to tell him—to tell him——’ Her voice broke, and for the first time she began to cry. The tears ran down her face, staining the golden satin bodice. ‘The dinner party was going so well—it meant so much to him—how could he have——’

  Rachel made a sharp sound of pity and impatience. She went to the girl and held her by the shoulders. ‘Fey!’ It was a command, and she waited until the gray eyes raised reluctantly. ‘Wake up!’ said Rachel. ‘You’ve drugged yourself long enough. This is real. You’ve got the strength. Now use it! For the salvation of your own soul and your child’s and Simeon’s—you’ve got to find the Inner Truth!’

  A quiver shook the shoulders under Rachel’s hands, response flickered and was gone.

  Rachel compressed her lips, and released Fey. But her voice was very gentle. ‘Take off that dress, child. Wash your face and hands, and then we’ll go look at Lucy.’

  For the next weeks of confusion and cumulative disaster, second only to the tragedy itself, Rachel stayed on in the Tower mansion. Even her strength was barely able to withstand the blows which battered down the house of cards so hopefully erected by Simeon and Fey. With the withdrawal of the guard on the third day, the house was besieged by panicky creditors. And two days after that, the newspapers trumpeted forth new headlines. Simeon Tower was bankrupt! His entire stockholdings had been put up as collateral and he owed enormous sums to most of the merchants in town. Gulf and San Diego and Transic broke in half. Gould, who had been waiting, though anticipating no such fortuitous assistance as this, quietly negotiated with Stevens at the Continental Trust, with whom unknown to Simeon he had an understanding—and stepped into control.

  Neither Fey nor Rachel knew anything of finance, but they did not need the headlines to tell them that the Tower fortune had crashed as deafeningly as the social scaffolding on which the Towers had precariously balanced—simultaneously crumbled into a heap of dust.

  With averted eyes and a terrified unanimity they closed ranks—the Van Vrandts and the Bulls, Mrs. Astor and Ward McAllister, indeed, all the guests who had attended the Valentine Ball. Van Vrandt and Bull would have to appear as witnesses, witnesses in a murder case! Admit that they had been dinner guests of the murderer! Had Simeon or Fey been one of themselves, born and bred amongst them, they might have rallied around, they would certainly have exerted their power and resources to muzzle the press. But as it was, each morning’s paper brought new revelations which proved how duped they had been. Murder! Bankruptcy! And that was not all.

  All the papers, but particularly the Chronicle, which had made the case its own, speeded ravening young reporters hot-foot on the scent of the alleged blackmail. It was not long before they encountered Lemming.

  Noah Lemming had been momentarily aghast at the murder. His first instinct had been to fly as far away as possible and hide. Saner reflection showed him how silly this was. No one|now living knew of his connection with Dillon, and he told himself that he was in no way responsible for the unfortunate outcome. So he received the reporters suavely, and presented the perfect picture of a loyal and distressed employee. He parried their questions with extreme subtlety, denying any knowledge of Dillon——And inadvertently, as it were, to provide them with a red herring—he set them on the Danbury trail. The Chronicle spent three days in tracing Simeon’s remote past, and blazed out with the result. Simeon Tower had no connection with the Hingham Towers at all. He had been born Simon Turmstein, son of a mill hand and a Jewish peddler. The old parents were still living, and, said the Chronicle quite untruthfully, were bitterly hurt by their son’s desertion. What manner of man was this—cried the Chronicle, trying the case in the newspapers—that would murder a man because he was going to disclose humble parentage? ‘The gallows alone can atone for this ignoble crime,’ said its editorial. And the other papers—with more or less vehemence—agreed.

  Lemming sat outside of Simeon’s empty office listening to the hue and cry and waiting for the summons from Gould, for which he had now indicated that he was ready. But Gould had not and had never had the remotest intention of employing so disloyal and devious a man. All the flattering little conferences and marks of interest stopped. Gould looked through him on the street. And Lemming, frenziedly busying himself with the dolorous tag ends of the Tower interests, would not recognize that he was sinking as fast and as inexorably as the man he had helped to ruin.

  Through all this, Simeon had made no statement except the one sentence he had uttered to the first policeman who rushed into the library. ‘He was blackmailing me,’ Simeon had said, in the ha
rsh, toneless voice which all the reporters later emphasized, and he had handed over the little pistol which he was still holding.

  He had been taken to the Tombs and put on the second tier of cells, the so-called ‘Murderers’ Row,’ next door, as it happened, to the cell once occupied by Fisk’s assassin, Edward Stokes.

  As counsel Simeon had designated the firm of Williams and Day, who had been handling his affairs, but when old John Williams, the senior partner, visited him on the morning after the crime, he found an unco-operative and baffling client.

  He entered cell Number 6 to see Simeon, coatless and unshaven, but still wearing the black trousers and white ruffled shirt with diamond studs of the evening before. He was crouched on the iron cot, staring at the noisome slop-bucket, and he did not change his position as the guard unlocked the grilled door, then locked it again behind the lawyer.

  ‘Dear, dear! Tower—this is dreadful! ’ said the old man, pushing aside the sleazy gray blanket and seating himself gingerly beside Simeon. He dealt in corporation law, and since his salad days had neither handled nor wished to handle criminal procedure.

  ‘I was appalled, simply appalled when I heard,’ he said, waggling his gray head irritably. ‘Whatever made you do a thing like that?—I suppose you did do it?’

  Simeon lifted one hand, let it drop again palm upward. ‘He was blackmailing me.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But what about? And who was he?’

  Simeon raised his eyes from the slop-bucket; they rested with the same vagueness on the lawyer’s grizzled whiskers. ‘I won’t tell you.’

  ‘But man—that’s ridiculous! I’m your counsel. How can I help you if I don’t know the facts!’

  There was no answer. Simeon hunched his shoulders.

  ‘Do you want to be hanged?’ cried the old man; then controlled himself, for the look on his client’s face jolted him out of exasperation to a reluctant pity. He had never particularly liked Tower, though he had very much liked such of the Tower fees as came his way. He had thought the financier pompous and not nearly as shrewd as many people supposed. But like or dislike had nothing to do with this matter, for the man was clearly abnormal at the moment and presented such a picture of bleak suffering as would disturb anyone.

  ‘We must make you more comfortable,’ he said, looking with disgust at the verminous cot, the worm-eaten stool, and the tin slop-bucket. ‘I’ll arrange to have some furniture sent in, and some decent food. By the looks of you, you need a doctor, too. Who’s your own man? ’

  ‘I’m all right,’said Simeon. ‘Leave me alone.’ He turned his back on the lawyer.

  John Williams shook his head, dusted himself with his gloves and called the guard, who let him out and followed him along the narrow open portico which surrounded the four sides of the central skylighted well.

  ‘Ain’t had such a big bug in here since MacFarland or Stokes,’ remarked the guard complacently. ‘ Millionaire, ain’t he? I seen the papers.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Williams, for nobody yet knew of Simeon’s bankruptcy.

  ‘What’s he want brought in?’ asked the guard, his eye gleaming. ‘ I know a firm’ll fix him up mighty cozy, bed, desk, carpet, even a lamp. Doylan’s ’11 do the food and wine at ten per day, and I can take care of the other little accommodations a gent might be wanting.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to be wanting anything right now,’ answered Williams, gloomily buttoning his greatcoat for the fetid air was dank.

  ‘De-pressed like,’ assented the guard. ‘They often are at first. I’ll order him a good strengthening dinner—ersters and a roast.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Williams, and he dropped a gold eagle into the eager hand. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow.’

  He descended the iron stairway to the ground tier. I don’t want the firm to handle this, he thought wearily. Tower ought to call in someone like John Graham or Webster. With all Tower’s money they’d jump at it. But he was reluctant to split the fees, which would certainly be colossal, and he temporized for a while, each morning visiting Simeon, who each morning refused to speak. Then, by the end of the week, Williams along with everyone else discovered that there was no Tower money. And this shocked him even more than the murder had.

  He and his partner, Day, held many uncomfortable consultations, and finally came to the conclusion that they would withdraw from the case, suggesting to Tower that he call in one of the best trial lawyers in New York, such as Thaddeus Webster, ‘and hope,’ said old Williams gloomily, ‘that Tower’ll do it, for he seems to have lost all sense of self-preservation, and I don’t know whether Webster’ll touch it either, unless he thinks the publicity’ll make up for the lack of fee. The defense stinks, anyway. Client won’t talk, nobody knows anything except the damned newspapers, and they’ve got the whole thing tried and Tower convicted before anybody can get started.’

  After three weeks the newspapers had temporarily exhausted themselves, and turned their attention to the mysterious death of a baby in Brooklyn. The district attorney’s office was silently and meticulously beginning to assemble the evidence for the prosecution.

  In cell Number 6 of the Tombs, Simeon’s special perquisites had ceased. Doylan’s countermanded the flow of oysters and roasts and champagne, which Simeon had hardly touched, anyway. The new furnishings remained for the present because Williams had paid the first month’s rent from his own pocket, but Simeon seemed indifferent to them, indifferent to everything. For three-quarters of the time he lay on the bed with his eyes closed, and the prison doctor, who had forcibly examined him, gave it as his opinion that there was a touch of brain fever—a convenient and popular term which covered all shades of mental abnormality. The doctor also recommended a suicide watch. The prisoner was deprived of tie, handkerchief, and belt; his eating implements were reduced to a wooden spoon; and the disappointed guard, naturally exasperated that this millionaire had turned out to have less ready cash than most of the other inmates, emphasized his hourly inspection by curses and furtive kicks.

  And at the end of this three-week period, Doctor Moreton moved Fey and Lucita from the Fifth Avenue mansion to a small brick house on Thirty-Sixth Street at Kip’s Bay. Since it was obviously impossible for Fey and the child to return to the Infirmary, and equally impossible for them to remain in the enormous, servantless house which had been taken over by the trustee and was in process of forced sale, Rachel had found the solution in one energetic morning of search. The little house on Kip’s Bay was old and inconvenient, and it was so far uptown and out of the way that nobody wanted it. The owner had been delighted to rent it and its sparse furnishings.

  Rachel returned to Fey and told her to pack, though the few personal belongings released by the trustee scarcely filled a small trunk. Most of the jewels and furs had never been paid for, Madame Loreste’s bill alone ran into thousands, and earlier purchases to which there was clear title must be held for the final adjustment.

  Fey obeyed without question. She had been living in a shifting maze of shadows. But she had had Rachel, and she had depended on the quiet strength as blindly as Lucita did. At first people came and went incessantly; detectives, reporters, creditors, even morbidly curious strangers. Fey saw some of them and Rachel handled others, but both of them gave the same answer to all questions. ‘I don’t know.’ This was Rachel’s decision—arrived at after painful heart-searching. It was not entirely true, for they did know the real reason for the blackmail and the victim’s identity, but with a man’s life at stake, and conscious as she was of ignorance of all other facts, Rachel decided as best she could. She was exhausted by responsibility, and feminist though she was, dismayed by the extraordinary lack of a strong masculine helping hand. There seemed to be no one. The faces which did appear were all hostile or indifferent, and Rachel realized that, during those years of feverish self-aggrandizement, the Towers had made no real friends.

  Rachel moved them to Kip’s Bay on a Monday morning, Fey and Lucita, and they took Molly, the little housemaid, with th
em. The hackney cab held all of them and the one Saratoga trunk was lashed on the roof.

  As the horse trotted off toward Madison Square, Fey looked back at the house. Two carpenters were already busy boarding up the windows, but otherwise it was the same bulky brownstone pile which she had stared at nine years ago: stared at with longing and fixed purpose. Nine years ago there had been someone else on that sidewalk, who also gazed up at the house with a very different longing. Pansy Miggs...

  Fey made a muffled sound and jerked her head around.

  ‘What is it, Fey?’ said Doctor Moreton from the other corner of the carriage—‘ Memories? ’

  ‘Memories,’ repeated Fey. Lucita, who was sitting between the two women, gave her mother a frightened look and shrank toward Rachel. This had happened several times lately and added pain to the confused nightmare. Fey bent over the child. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘won’t it be fun to live in a new little house by the river? ’

  Lucita’s big-eyed tenseness did not change. ‘Aunt Rachel’ll be there too, won’t she?’ she said anxiously.

  ‘Of course,’ said Rachel, patting the child’s hand, but she shook her head. Somehow the child was identifying her mother with Simeon’s guilt and repudiating her, too. But Lucita had never again mentioned the tragedy, and Rachel was afraid of doing more harm than good by trying to straighten the confusion in that child mind.

  She sighed, and so rare was any sign of discouragement from her that Fey was startled into awareness.

  ‘Doctor Rachel!’ she cried. ‘But how can you stay with us? What about the Infirmary?’ She looked at the calm big face, really seeing it, and she saw the age and the tiredness. ‘You’re worn out. I’ve let you do everything. We’ve needed you so.’

  ‘You still do, I’m afraid,’ smiled Rachel. ‘The Infirmary can do without me for a while. I’m taking a vacation.’

  ‘Vacation!’ said Fey bitterly. ‘You ought to go South, or to the country——’

  ‘The brick cottage will do for a substitute, you’ll see,’ said Rachel, and when the cab crossed First Avenue and stopped before a rusty iron gate, Fey and Lucita both gave cries of surprise.