An Inconceivable Deception

by Sydney Jane Baily

  “Not here. In the coat room,” Rose urged.

  They ran down the polished floor and sequestered themselves behind the rack of the other ladies’ jackets and capes. Rose noticed Claire’s cream-colored silk dolman with its fetching fringe and felt at once reassured by its familiar beauty. Everything in the world hadn’t changed.

  “Have you mentioned our last conversation to anyone?”

  Claire’s eyes grew wide. “You mean about Phineas Bennet’s return?” she asked in too loud of a voice for Rose’s liking.

  Wincing, she shushed her. Finn Bennet and his return and his kisses! That was what she’d thought about all night long between fitful dreams.

  Then Claire giggled. “Don’t tell me he’s dead again.”

  “Claire!” Rose protested. “This is not a manner to make a jest over.”

  “Sorry, I was simply so shocked the last time that I can’t imagine what you could possibly say to astonish me further.”

  “Be serious, dear. You have said nothing to anyone, not even to Franklin?”

  “Of course not,” Claire said.

  Rose breathed a sigh of relief. “I knew you wouldn’t, but I had to be sure.”

  “Why? I thought you were going to tell William immediately.”

  “I can’t now. Finn thinks someone isn’t pleased that he’s back.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He thought the ship should never have been launched. He told me so before he left.” She paused, thinking of all the families who’d needlessly lost loved ones — young men in their prime. “And he was right.”

  Claire absently straightened a coat hanging nearby before running the silky sleeve through her fingers. “How does that cause a problem at present?”

  “He’s not certain,” Rose said, “yet after he went to his old shipyard to speak with the owner, someone may have followed him back. What’s more, he thinks some men tried to abduct him.”

  Claire frowned. “Abduct him?”

  What did that tone in her friend’s voice mean?

  “Now he wants you to keep him a secret from everyone?”

  Rose paused. “Well, yes, because it could be dangerous.”

  Claire’s lovely eyes narrowed. “Are you certain he doesn’t want you to remain silent because he wants you to stay married to him?”

  Rose wrinkled her nose. “That’s ridiculous. If he wants to stay married, he should give me an indication.”

  Claire tilted her head. “Or simply ruin your relationship with William.”

  “That may happen either way,” Rose pointed out. “If I tell William of my marriage, he may walk away. If I don’t, I’ll have to hide it, and then tell him eventually anyway.” She paused. “Oh, I see what you mean. You think it will be much worse if William learns that Finn has been here for a while and I didn’t tell him.”

  “Won’t it?” Claire had moved on to smoothing the collar on a long-forgotten, out-of-fashion gentleman’s frock coat.

  Rose pondered her friend’s words. Finn was not the devious type. He’d always been open and forthcoming. Before he pretended to be dead for nearly four years!

  “In case Finn is correct, dearest Claire, and someone does wish him harm, please don’t tell a soul. I would hate to have you in any danger because of me.”

  “It wouldn’t be because of you,” she remarked pointedly, “but I will not say a word. If there is a threat, then you mustn’t go anywhere near Mr. Bennet. If someone is indeed watching him and sees you in close quarters . . .” Claire trailed off with a shake of her head.

  Rose nodded. “I know and I’ll be—”

  The door opened and Mrs. Taylor came in with her fur stole over her arm.

  “Allow me,” Rose said, taking it from the older dame and hanging it carefully.

  “Thank you.” Mrs. Taylor eyed her up and down. “I didn’t realize you ladies had taken on the role of coat room attendants.”

  Claire and Rose laughed as if it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard, until Mrs. Taylor, assured of her own wit, left them.

  “All right, then,” Claire said, “back to work.”

  “So you promise to—”

  “Yes, yes! To remain silent. However, you must promise to keep your distance from Mr. Bennet until we are sure there is no risk.”

  “That is prudent,” Rose agreed though she’d never been cautious before. She certainly could not give the requested promise. Nor could she have kept it.

  ***

  As she hurried to India Wharf the following morning to the home of Reed and Charlotte, Rose acknowledged that she would throw herself in head first to do whatever it took to help Finn, whether he wanted it or not. Anything except let her brother know what she was doing.

  Most assuredly, she did not want to encounter him, for he would astutely get too many details out of her and then forbid her to do anything that even remotely seemed threatening.

  Luckily, Rose knew Reed would be at his office by that time of the morning.

  Charlotte welcomed her in. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said to Rose, and as always, Rose felt her gracious sister-in-law meant it wholeheartedly.

  It had to have been difficult for Charlotte when her life changed from being a busy journalist to a full-time mother. From being out in the world, sniffing out stories to staying at home sniffing soiled diaper cloths.

  Rose winced. It would be her turn next with William — to bear children and clean out the diaper pail. Yet in the space of a heartbeat, it was Finn’s face she saw as the father of her children.

  Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, she set down her satchel.

  “Whatever is all this?” Charlotte asked, as Rose opened her leather bag filled to overflowing with her collection of newspapers. These, she deposited onto Charlotte’s highly polished living room table, creating an unsightly heap in the clear gray light reflected from the ocean that spread out beyond the windows.

  “This is the little matter I mentioned on the telephone,” Rose said, wondering how she could really approach this subject without giving away her entire duplicitous story.

  “It doesn’t look like a ‘little’ anything. But first, the niceties. Would you care for some tea?” Charlotte asked, walking toward her kitchen door.

  “Of course,” Rose assured her. “I’m in no hurry.” After all, she’d let years of lying build up. She could use a few more minutes to discern her best course of action. “Though I’d prefer coffee,” she called after her, remembering Charlotte’s French housekeeper’s special way with the rich brew.

  Charlotte must have asked Jeanine to bring in the refreshments, for she returned to the living room even before Rose had finished removing her gloves and short embroidered cape.

  They took seats on the settee in front of the low table.

  “May I?” Charlotte asked, indicating the worn leather satchel.

  “Certainly,” Rose said. “That was my father’s, by the way.”

  “Mm,” Charlotte said, clearly uninterested in anything but the contents. She fanned out the neatly folded pile of newspapers that had managed to get tattered and creased at the edges, though they’d remained a long time in the bottom drawer of Rose’s dresser.

  Rose watched her sister-in-law. At one time, she’d read and reread each one until she thought she knew every image, every line of content.

  Jeanine came in carrying a fully laden tray. “Lovely to see you, Mademoiselle Rose,” she said with her thick French accent. Then she placed the tray at the far edge of the table where she could find room, and the strong aroma of the coffee chased away even the pungent scent of the salt air.

  How Finn would like this home, perched on the edge of the ocean, Rose thought. Then she reconsidered. Maybe after what he’d been through, that would be the last thing he’d enjoy, to wake up to rolling waves just beyond his bedroom. There was so much she didn’t know about him. How did he take his coffee, for instance? Did he eat green vegetables? How often did he bathe? Did he pr
efer fish or fowl? Spring or fall?

  It mattered not. All these things she already knew about William.

  Hiding her anxiety, she smiled at the pleasant-faced wife of Charlotte and Reed’s chef.

  “Thank you. It is always a pleasure to see you, too.” She glanced at the tray. “Are those Pierre’s fairy cakes, the same ones from my . . .,” she faltered momentarily, “from my engagement party?”

  “Oui, he has been trying a variation. With almonds and vanilla instead of orange zest. What do you think?” Jeanine knew Rose was attending a cooking school as she’d had a long discussion on the best flour for roux with Pierre one afternoon while visiting her brother.

  Picking up one of the small bite-size cakes, Rose was distracted by the rustling as Charlotte turned over one paper after the other. She took a hasty bite. Unfortunately, with the task ahead of her stealing away everything except anxiety, the sweet concoction tasted the way she imagined sawdust would. Still, Rose beamed a false smile and proclaimed them, “Delicious!”

  Satisfied, Jeanine poured them each a cup of dark roasted coffee before heading upstairs to check on the youngest children.

  “Do you want to tell me about the common theme I detect in your collection?”

  Rose detected no duplicity in the question. Reed had kept his word and had said nothing to Charlotte. How to begin?

  “I took an interest in the sinking of the Garrard a few years ago,” she began, deciding not to reveal too much if possible.

  “I remember it. A terrible accident,” Charlotte said, glancing past Rose’s head to the ocean outside their window as if some trace of the Garrard would be there now.

  “That’s exactly it,” Rose said quietly. “I can’t help wondering whether it really was an accident.”

  Charlotte’s astonished face made Rose try again. “I mean, obviously, it was not intentional. No one would want those men to die. However I wonder whether the sinking could have been prevented. If it’s possible the ship’s design was not up to standards.”

  “You mean whether someone, such as a shipbuilder, was negligent,” Charlotte asked, cutting right to the heart of the matter.

  “Precisely.”

  Charlotte frowned, glancing down at the papers on her lap then looked at her sister-in-law with narrowed eyes.

  “Why would you think that, Rose?”

  Why, indeed! “When Mama told me the ship had gone down that day, I was so shocked. I couldn’t believe it. In this modern age, for such a thing to happen.”

  Charlotte nodded. “Even in this age, terrible accidents happen that are no one’s fault. That awful train crash in Revere, do you remember? I think thirty people died and scores more injured, and all they were doing was riding a train. Or what about the Pemberton Mill in Lawrence.”

  They both took a moment to consider the four hundred souls who’d perished when the behemoth of a building crashed down in an undulating crest of bricks and machinery. People said the destruction was accompanied by a noise like deafening thunder on an otherwise normal day on the banks of the Merrimack River.

  “There are so many others unfortunately rattling around in my head, accidents I wish I could forget, but let’s not become melancholy like the last pea at pea time,” Charlotte instructed, picking up her cup. “Tell me why the sinking of the Garrard is of such interest to you.”

  Rose stared. Charlotte was pinning her with a particularly perceptive and questioning gaze. She had to either lie now directly or lay it all out in the open.

  She opened her mouth, then shut it. What if she endangered Charlotte in some way and her brother’s beloved wife, mother of his children, came to harm? Rose would never — could never — forgive herself. Plus her brother would murder her.

  She cleared her throat, then sipped her coffee and cleared it again.

  “I,” she paused, “I cannot tell you.”

  Charlotte rolled her eyes. “How did I know you were going to say that? That’s what every informant I’ve ever questioned has said right before he or she has spilled their innermost secrets.”

  Rose’s own eyes widened. Was that true? Would Charlotte somehow get her to reveal everything? Then Charlotte laughed and reached out touching Rose’s hand to reassure her.

  “I’m only fooling,” she said. “If you cannot tell me why you care about the men on this particular ship, then tell me what you are hoping I can do for you.”

  Rose nodded. That was more than generous of Charlotte, to offer to help without knowing why.

  “Perhaps if I explain first what I think, then you can tell me if there is a way to go about proving or disproving my theory.”

  “Yes,” Charlotte agreed. “Let’s put one flat brick under another.”

  Rose stared at her.

  “That is to say, that sounds like a good plan,” her sister-in-law clarified.

  Choosing her words carefully, Rose explained that she’d known one of the sailors — “Mr. . . . um . . . Mr. . . . Tim . . . Tim Bennet” — before he left and how he had told her the ship was top heavy. She also relayed how no one at the yard would listen because the expense to change the vessel’s construction once it had been started was too great.

  “After the sinking, if you read the papers,” Rose continued, “you’ll see that not a man interviewed from the shipyard mentioned any fault with the ship’s design. It’s Kelly’s yard, over in East Boston. However, ships have made it through far worse storms than that one. Why, as soon as the waves started to churn, the fore deck was swamped and under water.”

  Charlotte stared at her, and Rose realized her mistake.

  “I mean, it surely would have been if what my friend Tom said was right. Before he left, I mean.”

  “Tim, you mean.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Rose asked mystified.

  “You said his name was Tim.”

  “Did I? How silly of me!” She took a huge gulp of the brew and proceeded to choke and splutter.

  “Don’t have an apoplectic fit over a misremembered vowel.”

  Rose smiled weakly.

  “So you would like me to discover whether anyone at the yard knew of the faulty design and kept mum about it. In essence, you think someone is to blame for the sailors losing their lives, including this man Tom. Or Tim.”

  “I do. But I don’t know who. And it may be a conspiracy of more than one.”

  “It would have to be,” Charlotte said. “No one man designs and builds a ship, nor an ill-conceived mill building.”

  “Oh dear,” Rose exclaimed. “I almost wish I hadn’t said anything to you. You have to be extremely careful. Reed would never forgive me if anything happened to you. Nor would I forgive myself.”

  “Why do you think anything could come of my digging around a little?” Charlotte asked, and Rose saw she already had a journalistic twinkle in her green eyes.

  “Because men may have died needlessly.”

  “Yes, but people don’t commit mass murder on a whim. Why would anyone knowingly send men to their deaths? Usually money is involved if something nefarious is afoot. Perhaps someone benefited from the sinking.”

  “How could anyone benefit from that?” Rose wondered aloud.

  Charlotte looked thoughtful. “Believe it or not, people can make money over just about anything.”

  Rose shrugged.

  “I suppose my not telling Reed what I’m investigating is imperative?” Charlotte asked.

  Rose realized a sense of discomfort in asking a wife to withhold information from her husband, especially as, in this case, she’d already asked the husband the same thing. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words asking Charlotte to do that; she could do no more than look down at her hands, noticing only then that she was crumbling the rest of the fairy cake on her plate. She dropped the piece and brushed off her fingers.

  “Because you don’t want to explain your prior friendship with the deceased Mr. Bennet?” Charlotte asked.

  Rose flinched slightly. Hearing even Finn�
��s last name on her sister-in-law’s lips made Rose wish she’d had her wits about her to change it entirely. It was too late now.

  “Honestly, Rose, I cannot imagine Reed having a burr under his saddle after . . . what?” Charlotte glanced at the newspaper on top of the pile. “After nearly four years. He’s not such a stick that he’d begrudge you a little youthful flirtation.”

  No, Rose thought, but what about a little youthful marriage? Reed was not laughing that one off, she knew. And if he thought there was anything untoward to investigate, he would be beside himself.

  All she could do was shrug slightly. “I would rather keep this between the two of us if at all possible. At least for the time being.”

  Charlotte nodded. “May I keep these so I can refresh my memory on the details and learn some names of the significant people at the shipyard.”

  “Of course,” Rose said, noticing how Charlotte seemed to radiate with barely concealed excitement over having an assignment fall into her hands.

  “Give me a week,” Charlotte said, “and we’ll see what I can find out. For now, no more talk of secrets and disasters. Tell me about the upcoming wedding. Any new developments?”

  Rose took a deep breath. Secrets and disasters. Hm, that about summed up any thought of her engagement to William. What could she say? She launched into a discussion of her dress and of William’s mother’s idea for the celebration feast, all the while feeling as if she were acting a role — the part of the blushing bride, when in truth, she was already a beleaguered wife.

  ***

  Charlotte didn’t go to the shipyard to begin her investigation as one might expect. Rather, on instinct and from a keen sense of how the world worked, she drove her carriage up Atlantic Avenue from her home on India Wharf, straight to Commercial Street and to the offices of the Insurance Company of North America.

  Though its headquarters were located in Philadelphia, Charlotte was well aware of the prestigious and busy branch nestled in the heart of Boston’s wharves and shipping industry. If anyone had information on the sinking and any subsequent financial settlement regarding the Garrard, it would be the ICNA.