Murder at the Breakers

by Alyssa Maxwell

  I might have won over Jesse to our side, but if the prosecutor insisted on bringing charges, there was little Jesse could do to stop him, not without hard evidence. I even wondered if Uncle Cornelius had used his influence and his considerable resources to persuade the authorities—not Jesse, of course, but others—to ignore any leads that led away from Brady . . . and perhaps to one of his own sons. Would he go that far? Betray me that way?

  I didn’t like to admit it, but yes. To save one of his own, he very well might.

  Balancing my cup on the boulder where I sat, I spread out the piece of paper I’d brought outside with me—not the telegram, but the list I’d made the night before. As I studied it, new plans formed in my mind, my resolve bolstered as never before by the anger and indignation burning inside me.

  I had four suspects: Neily, Reggie, Jack Parsons, and Theodore Mason. All right then, I would systematically investigate each of them. And I intended to start that evening, when people would least expect a woman to be out alone. True, I’d been followed at dusk by someone threatening my very life . . . but two could play at that game. Retreating into the house, I put a call through to Peterson’s Livery to reserve a hired carriage.

  A bright moon hung over the island that night, a good thing for me as it meant I wouldn’t have to light the carriage lamps hanging from the corners of my vehicle. On Victoria Avenue, some twenty yards or so away from The Breakers’ wrought-iron gates, I sat parked in my rented carriage, looking like a hackney driver waiting for his charge to exit the mansion to my right.

  Earlier, I’d collected the horse and buggy from Stevenson’s, telling the man a little white lie to prevent his tongue from wagging. “Nanny is mending the seat on my own buggy,” I’d confided, “and I don’t want my relatives to know or they’ll feel obligated to pay the leasing fee on this carriage. And they do so much for me already . . .”

  In truth, it was money I could ill afford to spend, and I cringed a little as I handed the bills over, but I couldn’t risk being seen in my own rig tonight. Mr. Stevenson had agreed to silence on the matter, and with Barney tied behind the leased carriage I’d returned home to prepare for my evening outing.

  Would I have long to wait here on Victoria Street? Or would I sit here for hours for no good reason. It occurred to me that I was following a rather blind plan when a metallic rattle from down the street snapped me to attention.

  The gates opened and a carriage, a sleek, well-sprung curricle, rolled through. A deep voice briefly thanked Shipley, the Vanderbilts’ gatekeeper. Through the darkness I strained my eyes to catch the moon-silvered outlines of the driver, though my rapid heartbeats told me I already knew. I watched Neily turn onto Ochre Point Avenue, waited a few moments, then set off after him, keeping a safe distance behind and maintaining a leisurely pace. Unlike my own dark lanterns, his swung back and forth in bright arcs at the corners of his carriage, lighting my way.

  My wager had paid off. I had known that Neily had moved back into The Breakers and attempted to make peace with his parents; I also knew that it was his habit to go out most nights, and that not even his parents would interfere in that. He was a young heir on holiday, a Newport summer dandy, and it was considered his right to sow some wild oats.

  I kept well to the side of the road in the shadows cast by the overhanging branches. But even if Neily had looked back, he would only see a smallish young man in denims, corduroy jacket, and a plaid cap, all of which had once belonged to Aunt Sadie. That venerable lady had deemed it ridiculous that women should perform outdoor work—planting, weeding, mucking the barn—in petticoats, dresses, and flowered bonnets. Tonight I thanked goodness for her rebellious spirit.

  Neily turned onto Narragansett and proceeded toward town. I tried to anticipate his destination, but he stopped at none of his usual haunts and kept going. The sidewalks grew quieter, the road less congested with evening traffic. A new likelihood occurred to me: a clandestine meeting with Grace Wilson.

  Finally, he turned into the Point, the oldest section of town and the neighborhood where Brady and I had grown up. The houses here dated back to the seventeenth century; a few were even older than that. Though most held a colonial charm, these were modest homes and often cramped inside, with small rooms, narrow staircases, and bedrooms whose ceilings sloped beneath the eaves of the roof. In short, not the sort of places one would expect to find a man like Cornelius Vanderbilt III.

  The briny scents of the harbor assaulted my nostrils. A buoy bell tolled mournfully, a lonely sound muffled somewhat by the evening mist that swathed the cobbled lanes. The air was warm, heavy with humidity, yet I shivered. A carriage drew up close behind me and the hairs on my nape stood on end. Had I been followed—the hunter now hunted, as I’d been the other night? But, no, the driver turned left and headed down toward Washington Street, which ran along the harbor front. I sighed in relief and returned my full attention to Neily.

  On Third and Poplar he pulled his curricle to the side of the road in front of a blue clapboard saltbox. After setting the brake, he jumped down and looked quickly around before bounding to the front steps of the house. With another glance over his shoulder, his eyes lighting on me briefly but obviously dismissing me as inconsequential, he opened the door and slipped inside.

  He’d neither knocked nor called out before crossing the threshold. I wondered who owned the house, and who waited for Neily inside. As I passed the structure, I noticed a single glow of lamplight in one of the downstairs rooms. All else lay dark. I kept going all the way to quiet Walnut Street, where I had grown up. Turning onto it, I pulled past the house my parents now rented out, except for the top floor where Brady lived. I didn’t spare a glance at the house; I especially didn’t want to look up and see the third-floor windows gazing back dark and empty. Instead, I continued to where the road ended at the railroad tracks, set the brake, and hopped down, my feet swallowed by the low-crawling mist.

  By the time I returned to the blue saltbox, the downstairs lamp had been extinguished. Neily’s curricle still sat outside, his horse dozing lightly. Careful not to wake him and set him snorting, I crossed to the far side of the street, stepped into the shadows between two houses, and waited. . . .

  The upstairs windows were open. Suddenly, sounds drifted down—voices, laughter, a high-pitched squeal that was quickly stifled. That last was definitely feminine, counterbalanced by a man’s deeper tones. My cheeks began to heat. I couldn’t make out the words, but something in the general timbre of the voices suggested intimacy . . . sensuality. A glow filled one of the upper rooms and I glimpsed a pair of entwined shadows against the sloping ceiling, and then a bright flash of Grace’s vivid auburn hair being pulled from its pins. A pair of masculine hands shoved the window closed and pulled the curtains together.

  I felt like a voyeur standing there, for what had I learned but that Neily and Grace yearned to be together but must always do so on the sly. Though Neily was still a year from his majority, he was a man who obviously knew what he wanted, and Grace, a few years older, was an adult with the right to choose her destiny.

  But did that also give them a reason to have murdered Alvin Goddard, who would have interfered in their happiness? I couldn’t discount the possibility, yet the voices I’d just heard echoed in my mind. They hadn’t sounded like the voices of co-conspirators. They’d sounded simply like the voices of lovers, joyful at finding a stolen moment together.

  Feeling ashamed for spying, I started to move out of my shadow when the sound of another carriage held me in place. My disguise was a good one, but why take chances?

  An enclosed brougham, its curtains drawn, pulled up behind Neily’s curricle. The driver sat stiffly in the box, facing straight ahead. I waited, watching to see who would descend from inside, but the vehicle’s doors remained closed.

  With a start I spotted the outlines of stenciled numbers on the rear bumper, indistinct in the mist. I squinted to make them out, but smears of mud further obscured the identification numbers. I
inched out from my hiding place, craning my neck and straining my eyes. Was that a three or an eight? A nine or a seven? Had the carriage been leased from Stevenson’s Livery?

  Suddenly the front door of the house opened and a figure in sweeping skirts, cape, and a concealing bonnet came down the steps and moved toward the carriage. The feminine figure was almost to the vehicle when she paused, gazing over her shoulder at the front door that stood open still. She blew a kiss to someone I couldn’t see from my angle. The coachman made no move to come down and assist the woman, nor did she seem to expect him to as she reached her hand for the door latch. A gust of salt-tinged wind thrust back her bonnet back from her face. A few blond curls spilled forward and the moonlight caught her features.

  I gasped. “Adelaide?”

  I whisked a hand to my mouth. My surprise at seeing her there was so great, her name had tumbled out before I could stop it. Had she heard me? Would she attribute the sound to the breeze or the lapping of the water against the nearby docks?

  Righting her bonnet, she stared in my direction, and for a fleeting instant I could have sworn she looked right in my eyes, that a trace of recognition flared her nostrils. But her gaze swept quickly past me; then she disappeared into the carriage.

  I waited for the sounds of hooves and grinding wheels to fade before stepping out from my hiding place. The front door of the house now stood closed. Pulling my cap low over my brow, I hugged my sides and began making my way back toward Walnut Street. Exactly what sort of house was this unassuming blue saltbox? Even I, in my naiveté, recognized a tryst when I saw one. But Neily and Adelaide? Could it be?

  I shook my head. I’d distinctly seen Grace Wilson’s vibrant red hair in the lamplight. And anyway, it wouldn’t have made sense. Neily risked his entire future by courting Grace; why on earth would he compound his difficulties by being untrue to her . . . and with Adelaide, no less?

  No, Adelaide and Neily could not have stolen to the Point tonight to see each other. But they obviously knew of each other’s activities and were in collusion together, sharing this modest house for their illicit affairs. Who owned the place, I wondered, and who had Adelaide come to see?

  My throat tightened around a lump. I don’t know why it should make me sad that my old friend might be having an affair, but I kept thinking of the girl she’d once been, and all the dreams she’d had. And I thought of her husband, alone in that big house of theirs, ailing and confused. . . .

  A noise behind me drew me to a halt. I turned and scanned the dimly lit street. I saw nothing but low swirls of fog. A dog began to bark, a high-pitched, erratic sound that grated on my nerves. I continued walking. I’d no sooner taken three steps when I heard it again, what sounded like a crunching footfall. I whirled about, arms ready at my sides, fists curled.

  “Who’s there?”

  Only a sharp breeze, the barking dog, and another clang of the buoy answered. That last reminded me that the sound I’d heard could be a line slapping against a mast or the creaking of a hull. Sounds carried strangely along the harbor, seemingly close by when they might be a quarter mile out on the bay.

  Hurrying my pace, I made it to Walnut Street and turned the corner. My buggy loomed not far away, a black hulk amid the surrounding darkness. I wanted only to be up on the seat and heading for home.

  From behind me a hand clamped my shoulder in a grip that sent instant pain speeding down my arm and across my chest. A solid weight slammed my back and sent me face-first onto the walkway. I might have cried out; I don’t know. I landed half on the bricks and half on a bed of grass and flowers. My shoulder struck a rock, fresh pain zigzagging through me with nauseating sharpness.

  I tried to rise, tried to pry myself from beneath the weight pinning me down. And then something cool slid across my throat . . . and pressed. An icy edge cut against my flesh until I couldn’t breathe.

  Didn’t dare breath.

  “You can’t save your brother,” a voice rasped in my ear. “So save yourself and leave well enough alone.”

  Chapter 12

  From somewhere behind me, running footsteps echoed off the houses, and a shout pierced the muffling fog.

  “What’s going on here?”

  The dagger yanked away from my throat. My attacker pushed off me and scrambled onto his feet. A corner of heavy fabric slapped my cheek, and I managed to raise my face off the ground in time to see nothing more than a billowing black shadow racing away, the misty darkness swallowing him as he disappeared between the houses across the street.

  A distant clatter of overturned trash cans accompanied the urgency of a new voice in my ear.

  “Miss Cross! Emma! Are you hurt?”

  Hands gripped my shoulders, trying to turn me, but the past several seconds of being thrown to the ground with my face in the dirt and a knife threatening my very life’s breath came crashing down on me. I fought the hands, tried to claw my way to my feet, to my carriage, to freedom.

  “Emma, I’m not going to hurt you. It’s me, Derrick Anderson. You remember me, don’t you?” The reporter from the Providence Sun rolled me over and pinned me down, his hands clamping my shoulders almost painfully. “Please calm yourself!”

  As I continued to struggle, he knelt over me, straddling my legs. His face hovered over mine, his features shadowed, eyes fiercely catching glints from the streetlamps. My heart pounded as if to escape my chest, and my breath came in ragged gasps. But as I stared up at him without blinking, I detected a softening of his expression, a relaxing of his features, and somehow this set me at ease.

  His hands came away and he sat up on his haunches. “Are you all right?” Before I could form an answer, he turned his head to stare in the direction the attacker had gone. “I should have gone after him. Might have been able to catch him, too, but . . .” His jaws clenched. He stared a few moments longer, ears obviously pricked. I listened as well, but the cloaked assailant gave no further hints to his whereabouts. He could be anywhere by now, either hiding in a dark yard or walking calmly down a street back in town.

  Mr. Anderson looked down at me again, his face determined and set, but his mouth once more softening. “I couldn’t just leave you here, not without seeing if you’d been hurt.”

  I nodded, spitting bits of grass and dirt out from between my lips. He offered me a hand. I hesitated as the half-cloudy, half-starry sky above me slowly spun in my vision. I shut my eyes and laid my hand in his. His palm was warm and smooth, his fingers strong and lengthy as they enveloped my own. I felt immediately safe, yet suddenly shaky again. I opened my eyes and clamped my teeth over my bottom lip.

  As he helped me sit up, my hair fell around my shoulders and down my back. My cap sat some few feet away, in the gutter. After helping me to my feet, Mr. Anderson held on to my hand until I assured him I wouldn’t fall over. Then he bent to retrieve the plaid fabric hat that had held my hair in place.

  “Did you see who it was?” he asked me.

  “No, he came up behind me. I never saw anything until he ran away, and then only his cloak. What about you?”

  “Pretty much the same.” He let out a sigh. “Damn, but I wish I’d gotten here sooner.”

  “Sooner or not, I owe you a great debt, Mr. Anderson. Thank you. If not for you happening along when you did . . .” A shudder traveled my shoulders as I considered the alternative. “But . . . you called me Miss Cross even before you saw my face. How did you know it was me?” Stiffening, I backed up a step. “You were following me again, weren’t you?”

  “Actually, no. Not you. But when I saw you drive your carriage by and then return on foot . . . well, Miss Cross, it didn’t take much observation to see that you’re no boy.”

  Something in his voice, some slapdash note of . . . appreciation . . . made me cross my arms and hug my cap against my bosom. I narrowed my eyes at him and gritted my teeth. “If not me, then who were you following?”

  “Who were you following, in your elaborate disguise?”

  “That’s none of
your business—”

  “Let’s not argue here.” He cupped my elbow in his hand and turned me toward the railroad tracks. “Is that your carriage up ahead?”

  When I nodded, he wasted no time in herding me toward it. He helped me onto the seat, climbed up beside me, and took up the reins. We drove in silence for some minutes, leaving the Point taking Thames Street along the waterfront.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Home, Miss Cross.”

  As before, I stiffened my back. “I will not go home with you, Mr. Anderson, wherever that may be.”

  “Not my home. Yours.”

  “Oh.” Silence descended again as the horse trotted a few more paces. “Don’t you want directions?”

  He merely shook his head. Was that a slight smile curling his lips?

  “You know where I live?”

  “More or less.”

  Yes, that was definitely a smile. My insides began to boil. “Stop the carriage. Stop right here and not an inch further.”

  We were at King Park, just after the turn where Thames Street turned onto Wellington Avenue. Mr. Anderson directed the carriage off the road and onto the grassy verge that marked the edge of the small, waterside park. “Yes, Miss Cross?”

  “I want to know why you always seem to turn up in odd places. And why you seem to know so much about me. And I want to know whom you were following tonight. And why.”

  He shifted to face me and slung an arm across the top of the seat, which brought his large hand unsettlingly close to my cheek. I tried to create more distance between us, but as I was already on the end of the seat there was little room to maneuver.

  “As far as turning up in odd places, Miss Cross, one could say the same for you.”