by Etta Faire
An audible gasp fell over the table.
“Bessilyn Hind,” her father yelled. “If this rudeness is what we have to look forward to with the women’s movement then no wonder it’s failing.”
“It’s not failing,” Bessie began then stopped herself when she looked around the table at the older faces who all seemed dumbstruck by her boldness. “You wish it were failing, but wishing won’t make it so. And that’s what scares you all the most.”
The woman Bessie had been talking to could not seem to take her eyes off her lap. “I hear you’re going on a trip, Bessie. That sounds lovely.” She pretended to lower her voice so only her husband would hear. “I can see why they’re sending you off.”
Bessie’s eyebrows scrunched. “A trip?”
“It was a surprise, Doris,” Bessie’s father said, standing up and reaching into the pocket of his dark suit jacket. “I was going to make an announcement, but now that the cat’s out of the bag…”
He waved an envelope in the air as he addressed the table. “Not exactly perfect timing, but then I’m starting to believe perfect timing doesn’t exist in life. At least not in mine.”
The table awkwardly chuckled.
“Happy birthday, my dear. Your present.” He handed Bessilyn the envelope, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. His smug smile, the curve of his chin, there was something very familiar about the man. But how on earth could there be anything familiar about a man from 1906?
Bessie opened the envelope while talking to me. “Their table already knew what I was getting. My parents were tired of their embarrassing daughter living close enough to their friends that they couldn’t lie about her.”
She pulled the ticket out and held it up for the table to see. “A ticket to Europe.”
“An all-expense-paid trip,” her mother chimed in. “She’ll be traveling all around Europe for a bit. Great Britain, Ireland, Germany… So this will be farewell for a while for our dear Bessie, I’m afraid. But don’t feel sorry for her. Oh no. She’s about to have the time of her life. Her uncle Frederick in London has even offered her a job at his dress shop, so if it works out, Bessie may want to stay.”
Bessie dutifully walked over to her father and kissed him on the cheek then did the same for her mother, her eyes welling up into tears as she thanked them.
“The poor girl’s choked up,” Doris said.
Bessie could barely get her mouth to form words. “Thank you, really. I’m so grateful, but I can’t. Not now. I’m in charge of the meetings at my women’s club. I have one coming up this month.”
“Not anymore, you don’t,” her father replied. “And you’re welcome. Enough said.”
The people at the table all seemed happy for her. Voices rose over the music. “Europe? What a splendid idea.”
“Maybe she’ll find a husband of an exotic nature. That’s what my cousin did. And she was almost as old as Bessilyn.”
“I heard from Henry Bowman that Australia’s beautiful. You should go there too.”
Bessie smiled at each guest before excusing herself. She was holding in tears when she left.
Bessie’s voice was loud and quick through the channeling, though. “They didn’t know how to answer questions about me anymore. That’s why they were sending me off. That’s what hurt the most. They were tired of the jokes around town. The awful, threatening letters to the suffragist movement, and the hard glances during dinner conversations. It would’ve been better for them if I committed suicide. I see that now.”
“What are you saying? Being sent to Europe and being murdered are two very different things,” I reminded her. “We’ll figure it out, but it might not have been your parents.”
“A suicide wouldn’t cost them a dime.”
“Except a daughter.”
“Pleasant’s the daughter they always wanted. My friends from the women’s club… My mother wouldn’t even let me invite them to my party. She said they were a ‘dowdy and sad lot’. I don’t even like anyone here.”
She looked down at her boots and rushed off through the crowd.
“And the worst part? I didn’t even eat at my party. My corset had been too tight.”
Damn it. My own stomach rumbled louder, realizing it wouldn’t get to sample anything after all.
Then my focus turned to my waist. The thing wrapped around my middle suddenly seemed especially tight as it squeezed at my rib cage. Had there always been this dull ache along my diaphragm? I almost felt like I couldn’t breathe properly now.
I’d really wanted to eat everything here. The pudding. The tiny sandwiches. Whatever it was in that burgundy sauce. I didn’t even care if it was squirrel. I just wanted that sauce.
I also felt this incredible need to dance. Feel my feet tapping along the wooden planks of the dance floor while listening in on the people from 1906, see what they smelled like, talked about besides cars and hourglass figures. Maybe even flirt with one of the men milling about, pretending not to be smitten with Bessie.
We wouldn’t be doing any of that now. “Focus, Carly. You’re here for the clues,” I reminded myself. I needed to be objective and aware. This was not about me.
Bessie crumpled the envelope in her fist and rushed across the dance floor, straight into the arms of one of those 1906 men I was just thinking about. I looked up to see the twinkling hazel eyes of a light-haired man in a suit with a perfectly trimmed mustache and beard. He was carrying a hat as he gently held my shoulders. Bessie’s knees wobbled a little, and she didn’t have time to think.
“Walty,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“So…,” I said in my head as we continued staring at him. “You did call him Walty.”
Chapter 7
Never Let Them See You Care
Sir Walter Timbre was gorgeous, all right, even better looking in person, tall with broad shoulders and a chiseled chin. And there was also something familiar about him too, just like with Bessilyn’s father, but I couldn’t place it.
Bessie’s gaze went from the bow of Walter’s lips to his eyes then back again. I could tell her heart was racing and she was sweating in the ridiculous get-up she had on.
She quickly got it together enough to give him an awkward, obligatory hug. He smelled like he’d just stepped out of a shower.
“I shouldn’t have come,” he said. His accent was British, something I should’ve expected given his title. But I was still surprised.
“No, it’s fine. I just didn’t know.”
All eyes turned to us. People stopped mid-dance to look over and gawk. One woman dropped her plate. Bessie didn’t seem to notice.
“I want to talk to you,” he said, lowering his voice. “Alone.”
“Go ahead. Talk.”
“Not here. Everyone’s staring.”
Bessie’s voice rose. “Of course they’re staring, Walter. You broke up with me. They want to know why you’re here. We all want to know why.” She turned to the stunned spectators standing around the dance floor with their mouths open. “Don’t we?”
He grabbed a couple of champagne glasses from off a nearby tray and pulled Bessie outside. The chatters of gossip rose up in the house as soon as the door closed.
The night air was surprisingly warm, calming almost. Frogs croaked all around us. A horse whinnied and rustled in the front lawn where horse buggies and cars were lined up, festive lanterns surrounding the driveway, lighting the roped-off area.
He handed Bessie a glass and she took a long sip, champagne bubbles tickling her nose as she stared off at the parking lot, pretending she didn’t want to be staring at Walter.
I tried to get Bessie to look at him, this gorgeous man who was probably trying to apologize and maybe even ask us to dance or something. She never looked up.
Walter cupped her chin in his hand and gently brought her face up to catch his gaze. For what seemed like a full minute, they just stared at each other, or he stared at Bessie, and Bessie tried not to look like she cared.
“Do you?” Bessie’s voice was curt. “Because it seems as if you only realized this last week, when my father broke up with you.”
She rushed down the porch stairs and into the night, heart racing, fists clenched. I tried to stay calm and detached, concentrating on the way the wind blew softly along my neckline and the smells that went with it, mostly horse manure. Walty didn’t immediately follow us and Bessie leaned against a large oak tree on the side of the house, her body wanting to take a large breath, her corset not allowing it.
There were a lot of clues and suspects. And I took a second to try to think things through. Bessie’s parents were certainly suspicious. The poor girl had also been getting anti-suffragist death threats from someone who could easily have been her parents’ friends. Or her parents.
“I was angry,” Bessie said to me in her head, through the consciousness we now shared. “My parents told me all along Walter was only showing me interest in order to seal the deal on the business partnership. His family owned a frozen vegetable business not too far from my family’s cannery. It was a perfect merger for both families, and they were suspicious.”
“What do you think?”
“I didn’t want to believe my parents, but they were right. Walter and I dated for six months, got engaged at about a year. Then, when they’d all agreed to the business, and it was too late to back out, he broke up with me.” Her voice lowered. “But my parents got the last laugh. There was a little-known clause built into the contract for them to back out, and they used it. It’s why he’s here.”
Footsteps crunching through sticks and grass grew louder as someone approached, and Bessie looked up, watching the shadowy silhouette of a man in a dark suit coat.
“Do you remember,” Walter began when he reached her. He bent down to catch Bessie’s attention, shooting her a smile. A strand of her hair had fallen free from its perfect placement in the up-do, and Walter swept it away with the light touch of his pinkie. “When I’d climb that horrible trellis to your window? You’d leave it half-unlatched just for me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I’m afraid the old window’s always been that way. It wasn’t installed correctly.”
“You are a stubborn woman.”
“You used to say my stubbornness was endearing. Of course that was before my parents made the deal with your family. As soon as that happened, your true colors came out.”
He was pinching his hat now, almost grabbing at it. He took a deep breath, looked up at the dark sky then back down at Bessie. “When I told you we should end our engagement, and you didn’t seem to care, I… I realized I did care. I do care. I love you. And I don’t give a damn about business.”
She didn’t say a word.
He went on. “I let the opinions of others cloud my thoughts.”
“What opinions?” Bessie’s mind raced. “Your mother’s?”
“I’m her only son. She wants to see me have children.”
“And I’m too old for that.” Bessie gripped the tree tighter, its rough bark digging into her fingernails, sending a little pain up along our hand.
“I don’t give a damn about children either. I love you. Only you. I should never have let my mother… It won’t happen again.”
She finally looked at him, his strong chin and pointy nose. He put his hand on her cheek and my heart just about stopped. If I had any control over this situation we would’ve been making out with this Disney prince already. But Bessie was stubborn.
She pulled away. “The opinions of others will always matter to a weak person.”
Ouch. I doubted there’d be a kiss now. Way to blow it, Cinderella.
His face dropped. “I came here to apologize.”
“Not necessary,” she spat. “What’s done is done. I’m leaving for Europe next week.”
His face fell, eyes widened. “I’ll go too.”
“Don’t bother. I’m well aware of the real reason you came here tonight. You thought I’d be too stupid in love to realize it. But I’m not. This is just another sad attempt to get the business deal going again.”
“It’s not.”
“Only because I’m not allowing it. I played the part of the stupid girl once. That part can go to someone else now.”
He chugged the rest of his champagne and threw his glass into the parking lot area, watching it crash along a rock somewhere.
Shoving his hat on, he stormed out to the field of cars and buggies, kicking pebbles and rocks along the way. He didn’t look back.
As soon as he was out of sight, instead of walking inside, Bessie downed her champagne and set her glass on the rock by her feet. It was surreal seeing it there, knowing there was a photo of it hanging in the bed and breakfast. There would soon be a mysterious driving glove joining it later after her death. The distraught party guest.
Her eyes watered. Her chest heaved in short bursts.
“That must’ve been very hard to do,” I said.
“Pretending you don’t care always is,” she replied. “It was better for the both of us, really, even if he was telling the truth. If we’d have married, he’d have spent every waking moment wondering what it was like to have children.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, mostly because it was all I could think to say. “You weren’t too old to have children, though.”
She went on. “Truth is, I didn’t want them. I was afraid of them. Worried I’d be a horrible mother, like my own mother and sister. I resented my mother because she let the housekeeper raise us. My sister resented her own children because she didn’t have a housekeeper to raise them and had to do all her own work.”
She looked out at the darkened trees around us, illuminated only by the lantern decorations surrounding the front lawn. Nothing seemed very festive anymore.
Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a dark figure dart through the trees beside us. It looked like an animal, or a man. It was too fast for me to see anything but a shadow. It was heading toward the back of the house.
“Did you see that?”
“See what?” she asked.
“Is your room back there?”
“Of course. Why?”
“I saw someone or something running back there. Let’s go see if it was your killer,” I said, even though I knew that investigating dark figures was an impossibility. I was reliving a memory, not creating one. And all Bessie could do at this moment was lean against the oak and gulp in as much of a deep breath as her corset would allow. She did not look over toward the woods again.
“Who knew about the window not latching right?” I asked Bessie, as we trudged inside, our heavy footfalls echoing off the planks of the porch.
“I’m not sure. Only family and Walter, I think,” she replied.
As soon as the door creaked open, the music stopped. All eyes were on us, causing the announcer to clap his hands vigorously. “There’s our guest of honor now. Who’s ready for cake?”
Bessie was taken by surprise. She dabbed at her makeup and sniffed back her tears, searching the crowd for a familiar face, anyone to turn to, to lean on.
In less than a minute, three men in tuxedos wheeled a large three-tiered cake lit with candles across the dance floor. Thirty-five long candles sparkling in the dim room. Bessie’s parents, and her sister joined her by the cake.
Before she could say anything, her father aimed her attention to a man behind a tripod where an unusually large black camera had been positioned. Bessilyn forced her mouth to smile.
As soon as the flash popped, I felt an odd connection to the photo along the back wall of the bed and breakfast where everyone else but Bessilyn had been smiling. Now, I knew the story behind her sadness.
Someone began singing “For she’s a jolly good fellow…” and Bessie’s face felt hot, flustered.
“I knew I was expected to make a speech,” she said to m
e in her head as she stared at the burning candles. “All I wanted to do was run up to my room and hide.”
But at the end of the song and the applause, she turned dutifully to the audience.
“Thank you all for coming,” she said, making a wish and blowing out the candles. “As you all know I’ll be going on a very long trip soon, so this is also, I suppose, farewell for a while…”
“Proving that the Hinds will pay whatever it takes to get rid of their disgrace,” a loud drunken voice rang out from the crowd. A few people in the crowd giggled awkwardly. Bessie turned toward the outburst. It was Troy. He staggered across the dance floor and over to the cake.
Chapter 8
Final Moments
Bessie swallowed. “Ladies and gentlemen, the man I’ll miss the least when I go on my European trip, my sister’s husband, Troy Brillows.”
Troy teetered. His sunken face contorted in a smug sort of snarl. “At least Pleasant’s married.”
“Congratulations on being the least part of everyone’s life.”
Bessie’s mother, a small, frail woman whose dress looked like it weighed more than she did, grabbed Bessie by the wrist and pulled her down to her height, whispering into her ear. “Go on up to your room now, Bessilyn, and wait for your father and me. We have a lot to discuss with you. The party’s wrapping up, anyway.”
Bessie gave her mother a look. But her mother’s face, which had almost no color left, told her she should do as she was told.
“This is when they kill me,” she said to me in her head. “I’m almost certain now. They blamed me for the deal falling through, even though they were the ones who ended it. I should’ve played my fiancee part better: contrite, well spoken, dainty.”
She looked around at her party. “Thank you all again,” she said out loud. “I’m feeling tired now. My mother just reminded me that I should really rest up for my long journey. Enjoy the cake.” She tried to get herself to look around the room, to meet the eyes of the people who were not really her friends. No one looked back at her.