by Marlowe Benn
Winterjay’s face went hard and gray as Vivian’s role in her sister’s death became clear.
“Darling, please. You must understand. Of course I hated it. Everything about that business offends all that’s sacred to me. It was awful! I had to go to a disgusting, squalid place in Harlem for instructions on where to find the reptile who would do it.”
Wearing Naomi’s sweater to protect her fine clothes. It was a small detail, but Julia slotted it into place.
“And I suppose she forced you to find the filthiest place possible?” Russell said.
Vivian’s eyes filled with angry tears. “Don’t you dare lecture me about moral niceties. I know about those other places, so fashionable, so tidy. Quick and simple they make it, hardly a bother. A spot of discomfort, then right as rain, back to normal. No worse than a toothache. Terribly modern. No, I couldn’t allow that. She needed to understand the consequences of her reckless life. A woman ought to suffer for what she did.”
“So you dragged her off, witless, to let that reptile gouge—” Russell choked.
“No!” Vivian screamed. “Edward, please!” She pleaded for her husband to meet her gaze, but he only clenched his jaw more tightly and turned away from her. She spun toward the others. “I couldn’t do it. Even after all she did to torment and provoke me, in the end I couldn’t do it. God tested me to the very brink of my endurance, but I finally found the strength to resist that awful temptation. I’ve confessed these terrible things so you’ll understand the hell she put me through, the horror of what she did to me and my family. I swear by everything that’s holy we never kept that appointment. I brought her home instead. The last time I saw her she was woozy but fine, resting right here on this sofa. I swear it.”
Julia’s heart collapsed into her shoes. She had banked on Vivian’s principled honesty, trusting that she would take up the guilty narrative as Julia spooled it out to her. It had worked beautifully thus far, Vivian admitting everything as Julia had conjectured it. But if she lied now, balking at the last brutal scene, Julia had no way to prove otherwise. If Vivian claimed she’d left Naomi unharmed, the full story of those last hours would never be known.
Glennis gave another scornful honk. “That’s a slick one. Sounds pretty and all, your high-minded morals kicking in just in time, but you would say that, wouldn’t you? Seeing as how Naomi can’t tell us what really happened.”
“Glennis! Think. If I had harmed her, would I admit these terrible things? I swear I did nothing more than give her a muzzy head for a few hours. Ask our driver if you don’t believe me. He stayed in the car with Naomi while she drowsed, and I went inside for instructions; then he drove us straight here from that disgusting place. Your gardener saw me helping her down the steps. Ask them. Did you think of that? Or were you too determined to fit me into your nasty scenario? Ask Mary, for that matter. She can tell you I was home that afternoon in plenty of time to get ready for that awful party.”
Glennis pulled her mouth to one side. “I don’t care. It still doesn’t square. Naomi didn’t die for no reason. All that blood didn’t just pour out on its own, Viv.”
“You think I wasn’t shocked too? But when Chester told us she took her own life, I could understand it better than any of you, knowing her terrible shame. I thought most likely she meant to destroy only that poor baby. I figured she decided a child was too much bother after all. That would be just like her. Oh, I don’t know. None of us does or ever can. It doesn’t matter now. You’ve heard every last scrap of my part in this wretched business, and now that’s the end of it, at least if this Clintock person wants to see any of that money.” Vivian gulped a deep breath of air, both hands calming her abdomen.
Julia rattled the empty water glass over her lips in search of something to ease the battering crescendo in her rib cage. It couldn’t end like this, not at the very edge of truth. To her horror, she believed Vivian. Julia had made a frightful mistake. Her imagination had jumped too quickly from what she could prove—an appointment made—to what she could only surmise—the appointment kept. That mistake left her now with a throbbing throat and fading conviction.
But Glennis was right too. And Alice had insisted she’d found no instrument, no toasting fork or knitting needle, to suggest Naomi undertook the gruesome task on her own. Everything Russell said belied that possibility too. Either both were lying, or something else happened that day. Something Julia had overlooked entirely.
The room was suddenly crowded with two discoveries, not one: Naomi had died from a ruthless determination to destroy her pregnancy, and Vivian Winterjay was not responsible. The second revelation did not undermine the first but rendered it needlessly anguishing. Here among Naomi’s family, lover, and dearest friend, all Julia had done was expose Naomi’s agonizing death to those who would feel it most keenly. She brought them pain without any salve of understanding, much less justice. Worst of all, the person responsible—likely in this room—would remain forever unknown.
“I trust you’re satisfied, Miss Kydd,” Nolda Rankin said into the thickening silence. “Your sore throat’s nothing compared to the injuries you’ve inflicted here tonight. You’ve hurt a good and honorable family with your deplorable insensitivity.”
Vivian sobbed, spent of all anger. She turned to the consoling embrace of her husband, but he stiffened and stepped away. Nolda gave a soft cluck at this rebuff. “Vivian doesn’t see your suffering, Edward,” she murmured. “Always her own, never yours.”
Julia stared, listening to Nolda try to soothe away the man’s shock and pain. Her pulse began to thrum. What a colossal fool she had been. How many times had she witnessed that subtle touch, that tightly marcelled head bent in a private word for Winterjay, that small smile nuzzling at his back or sleeve or collar? It was the missing piece of the puzzle, and it had been in plain view from the start.
Julia heard Glennis’s voice leap in loyal protest of Nolda’s criticism, but none of it distilled into words. Julia’s own recollections clamored for attention. The mysterious story of Naomi’s death was not a story at all, but a tangled sequence of furtive actions by different players for different reasons. Vivian had drugged Naomi, intending to get rid of the child she feared would destroy her family. Alice disguised Naomi’s death as a suicide and fabricated threats to preserve her legacy as a martyr. Chester stole what he took for Naomi’s suicide note to avoid a scandal. Each acted independently and at cross-purposes, yet each deception prompted another.
However ignoble and self-serving, each subterfuge was also ultimately ineffective. Julia had unraveled that tangled series of actions—driven by love, ambition, pride, and self-defense—but she’d missed the one deep malevolence that caused Naomi’s death. Julia had never seen, until that moment, yet another powerful motive: jealousy.
“Naomi didn’t change her mind,” she said. “Neither was she mutilated on some wretched backstreet table. It happened right here. Didn’t it, Mrs. Rankin?”
Nolda’s eyes opened. They’d cooled into drowsy disregard, as if Julia were a chatty nuisance beside her at a salon, waiting for her nail lacquer to dry.
Chester’s seize of air was so great that Julia braced for an explosion, but he released it in a hearty laugh. “Nolda! Going around the room now, accusing us one by one, is that it?”
“You promised to hear me out.”
“How much more of this lunacy do we have to stand for, Coates? She’s talking out of her backside now.”
“I don’t think we’ve heard the last of it, not quite yet,” Russell said. “Go on, Miss Kydd—but our patience is wearing thin.”
Julia nodded. Each moment the picture became clearer. Nolda idolized her brother-in-law. How many times had Julia witnessed her turn to Winterjay, not Chester, for answers, for comfort? Nolda’s resentment must have been building for years. What agony she must have felt to witness Winterjay’s affections toward not only Vivian but also Glennis and even Naomi, while her own yearning for his notice went unheeded. She would have sought
nothing untoward, only the fond embraces and affectionate gaze he so readily bestowed upon the others. But she was married, and propriety erased her from his view. As another man’s wife, she was no longer a woman to be cheered with appreciative regard. No wonder his admiring overtures to Julia the night of the Children’s Aid gala had triggered such frosty resentment. Nolda hadn’t been angry at Julia for breaching the Rankin family’s privacy but for interrupting her rare moment alone with Winterjay, for stealing his interest.
Julia raced to formulate what must have happened the afternoon Naomi died. “Mrs. Rankin keeps a sharp eye on everything that goes on under this roof,” she said. “She watches at windows, listens behind doors, always paying keen attention. Naomi was faint with laudanum that day. Vivian must have struggled to get her down those steps outside and into the apartment. Nolda wouldn’t have missed it.”
“That’s your big discovery?” Chester said. “My wife runs a tight household? It’s her duty to know what goes on under this roof.”
“She came downstairs that day after Vivian left, let herself in through the basement door. Perhaps she was only curious, though I imagine she already suspected the truth.”
Nolda, the daughter of a famous obstetrician, lifted her eyebrows. Do tell, the gesture said to Julia. If you feel you must.
“Yes, she realized the situation even then.”
Winterjay edged away from Nolda’s hovering touch. She folded her hands below her waist and sighed, a bored queen obliged to hear a complaint. Burn the sofa, she had demanded. Destroy the filthy thing—full as it was of Naomi’s blood.
“The knowledge of Naomi’s pregnancy stung like salt in an open wound,” Julia said. “You remembered that night last summer, didn’t you, Mrs. Rankin? Dr. Winterjay had been upstairs with you earlier, hadn’t he? Probably restless, a little melancholy with Vivian away. You clearly prize his company above all else. Did you urge him to stay, hoping to lift his spirits, only to be brushed away? It must have pained you to see him slip back for a bottle from your husband’s cabinet to take down here to share with Naomi. Did you listen at the cellar door or from the kitchen stairs? Did it pain you to hear her fighting him off, abusing the one man you most revere?”
Chester slapped his thigh in derision. “Utter rubbish. Nolda? Absurd.” He babbled objections under his breath as the others listened for her reply.
Nolda smoothed her cuff. “He should have stayed with me. I’m the one who understands him. I see his worth more than any of you.”
She met Vivian’s bewildered gaze with raised, impatient eyebrows. You failed him, they chided. I understand him, as you do not.
“But he wanted Naomi’s company, not yours,” Julia prompted. “Never yours.”
“And it was his downfall,” Nolda snapped. “Yes, I listened that night. I feared for him, for what might happen to him, caught in this nasty lair of hers.” She surveyed the room. “She had her ways, her slick little ways of arousing his lust. She lured him with her smutty ideas and godless talk, then treated him like muck. I heard everything. Not an ounce of feminine modesty in anything she said, some of it crude as a sailor, I’m sorry to say. How could he not be aroused by such rough talk and behavior? And then when he did what nature demands, you should have heard the names she called him. She had the cheek to curse him, the finest man she or any of us will ever know. She wasn’t fit to wash his laundry, much less bear his child.”
Julia fought to keep her face bland, her voice mild. Into the shocked silence she said with a knowing nod, “When you saw Vivian struggle to help her down to the apartment, you recognized your chance. If you acted quickly, you wouldn’t need more laudanum to keep her quiet.”
“Nolda can’t tweeze a sliver,” Chester protested. “Couldn’t pop a blister to save her soul.”
“You remembered stories you’d heard growing up, didn’t you, Mrs. Rankin? Stories your father told of the desperate ways women tried to end their pregnancies. Stories you’d never forgotten.”
“She’s helpless as a jellyfish with any of that nurse-y stuff.” Chester’s bluster faded to a squeak.
Nolda stared at Julia for a long moment, then shrugged. “I did see them return, and anyone who knew what I did about Naomi’s trickery could have figured out the truth behind that little drama stumbling down the steps. I understood at once. That baby would destroy Edward’s career, his fine and important work. Naomi would have shamed him, shamed us all, every day that child drew breath.”
“So you stopped her. You destroyed her child with such vehemence that you took her life as well.”
There it was. The final piece to the grisly puzzle. Julia’s heart was throbbing as if she’d scaled a steep rock face. She’d finally reached the truth, shaking but triumphant—if one could call anything about her task triumphant. Her words lingered in the stifling room until they disappeared under a crescendo of horror and disbelief.
Nolda, however, remained impassive.
“I, Miss Kydd?” she said when the room quieted. “On what grounds do you accuse me? I see no proof. You can badger my poor sister-in-law into spinning a tale that suits you, but you’ll find I am less suggestible. Where is your evidence for this flight of ghoulish fancy?”
The words nearly tangled in Julia’s throat, but she spoke them as calmly as she could. “The evidence is in your heart, your conscience. You know you left her here, bleeding and insensible. You took away your tool and your gruesome prize, and then you left her here to die.”
Glennis caught hold of Alice’s arm as she lunged forward with an angry growl. Vivian covered her eyes. Chester’s mouth hung open, all resistance spent.
“I’m still waiting,” Nolda said when Alice had been restrained and guided into a dining chair. “Your proof?”
Julia scoured her mind for something more to say, some way to pry from Nolda the only proof there could ever be. Ten more seconds passed.
“All right then,” Nolda said. “You have none. Because the truth is that God took Naomi’s life. Not me, not Vivian, not anyone in this room. God alone took her life. Her fate was harsh but just.”
The silence was unbearable. Glennis gripped Alice by the shoulders. Russell pressed his forehead against the wall, the cords in his neck raising thin shadows in the lamplight.
“Oh, please,” Nolda demanded, suddenly fierce again. “Naomi tormented us. Admit it. None of us is sorry she’s dead. She brought nothing but trouble and pain to this family for years.”
She reached for Winterjay’s arm. He stiffened and clenched it to his side. She smiled and patted it instead. “It’s time to remember what Edward told us. He said we must bury the memory of all she did to hurt us. He said we should console ourselves, take comfort in each other.”
Somewhere upstairs a door closed. Glennis took a great noisy sniff. On either side of Russell’s bent head, his palms pressed hard against the faded plaster, fingers wide, nails bloodless.
Vivian raised her head. “He’s right,” she said, her ashen face streaked and smeared. “I can’t go on another minute like this. I’m sorry for Naomi’s troubles and desperately sorry for what I did. I grieve for what you did too, Nolda. And I’m sorry we’ve all had to be exposed like this, our fears and our terrible failings. But that has to be enough. This suffering has to end.”
How did she think it could end? Julia saw only terrible years ahead for this proud and loveless family. To protect Naomi’s new will, she’d relinquished any chance of legal justice for Naomi’s death, but it would not go unpunished. There would be little consolation here, less comfort. It took more than skillful oratory to summon such graces. Julia expected (or perhaps she only hoped) they’d do what the law could not: punish each other, possibly forever.
Vivian mustered the small, gracious smile Julia had first witnessed during that mutinous party a few long weeks ago. “I’ve struggled to forgive your foolish weakness, Edward, as you must now forgive mine. For our marriage and for our children’s sake, we must put this awful thing behind us. Mayb
e now, at last, we can finally live at peace.” Reaching for her husband’s hand, she declared their ordeal over.
But Winterjay’s arm exploded from his side. His elbow caught her below the ear, spinning her backward. “Don’t touch me. You’re vipers, both of you.”
Glennis leaped to guide her sister’s fall onto the afghan-shrouded sofa. Vivian wept as Winterjay strode from the room. His pounding steps up to the kitchen echoed like gunfire, in chilling counterpoint to her tiny frightened pants.
CHAPTER 26
At three o’clock the following afternoon, Julia sat in the reception lobby at Feeney, Churchman, Kessler, and Rousch, toying with the pale-pink silk wrapped loosely around her neck. Tucked beneath the brocade collar of her chestnut day suit, the slithery thing was anchored, more or less, by an amber cabochon. Julia rarely wore scarves because of that beastly slipping and sliding. Miss Baxter peered over her typewriting machine. She had already apologized twice for Jack’s tardiness.
Philip waited in the opposite chair, a picture of calm preoccupation. Sketch pad across his knee, he skittered and swished his pencil in a rendering of the bowl of asters on the window ledge. He studied the flowers for an instant, then drew some droop or shadow, a bent petal or crowded leaf. His absorption suited Julia well. After a sleepless night, she felt weary and spent. For her as for the Rankin family, there was no true resolution, no clear and satisfying justice. Today’s final reckoning with Philip felt equally flawed, and it weighed just as heavily on her spirits.
At the sound of Jack’s greeting from the hallway, Julia cleared her throat. “Well, Philip,” she said in a low voice. “Shall we end this sibling charade at last?”
Not even a blink. A few weeks ago, she would have fumed at the slight. Instead she touched his wrist to lift his head. “You should have told me,” she said. “That you’re deaf.”
Philip frowned and sparked his fingers at his left ear. “A touch. Puny thing.” He pressed a knuckle to his lips for secrecy. “But my vision is keen. I rarely miss a word. Don’t give it another thought.”