“That's right. But I should tell you also that he is Mrs. Trask's brother.”
Ames's mind raced as he heard MacKenzie's exclamation of surprise. “I didn't know she had a brother.”
“Since he's hardly ever in the city, there is no reason why you should know it. There was some family disagreement, I believe, so he hasn't been back in years. This visit, so he says, was an attempt to reconcile.”
They followed Delahanty to the members' room. Sitting alone by the fire, slumped in a wing-backed chair, was a man whose red-rimmed eyes and disheveled appearance announced a soul if not in torment, then at least in severe pain.
“Mr. Orcutt?” said Delahanty as they approached. “Here is Mr. Ames, as I promised. And his friend, Dr. MacKenzie.”
Godfrey Orcutt made a futile attempt to rise; failing that, he slumped back into his chair and raised bleary eyes to his visitors. “Good of you to come,” he mumbled. “Help yourself.” He waved a hand toward the table next to him, on which were a half-empty bottle of whiskey and one empty glass.
Delahanty had fetched wooden Windsor chairs from a row along the wall, and he and Ames and MacKenzie seated themselves in a little semicircle around the wheezing, perspiring Orcutt.
“Mr. Orcutt,” Delahanty began, “tell Mr. Ames what you have told me.”
Orcutt blinked, trying to focus on Ames. “My sister,” he said hoarsely. “My poor sister is dead.”
“I know she is, sir, and you have my deepest sympathy,” Ames said.
Orcutt blinked; a tear dribbled down his unshaven cheek. “Dead,” he repeated. “My dear girl. And in such a dreadful way—” He broke off in a sob; after a moment he put his fists to his eyes like a crying child.
Delahanty said in a low voice, “Give him time, Ames. He's really cut up, poor fellow.”
Ames pressed his lips together in annoyance. To be cut up was one thing; to show it, quite another. Particularly, to show it in public. After a moment, Delahanty produced his own clean, white cotton handkerchief to replace Orcutt's sodden ball of silk. Orcutt took it, wiped his eyes, blew his nose loudly, and took a deep breath.
“Such a dreadful way, Mr. Ames,” he said again. “Can you imagine—shot dead on the street? Who would do such a terrible thing? She was the sweetest, kindest person in the world, everyone loved her—”
That was not what Ames had heard. He had heard that Mrs. Trask was a voyeur—and a blackmailer. More, he had seen her husband's name in Colonel Mann's ledger next to a staggering sum of money.
“It was not a random killing,” Orcutt went on, and suddenly he sounded quite sober.
“The police think—” Ames began.
Orcutt waved his hand in annoyance. “Don't talk to me about the police,” he said. “I have lived and worked in some of the most backward, corrupt places in the world, and I can tell you that the police are the same everywhere. They need to preserve public order, and to do that, whenever they are confronted with a murder that might outrage the public's sensibilities, they claim to solve it as quickly as possible, whether or not that solution is the correct one. The police are saying that Marian's death was a random street crime. What nonsense!”
“Why do you say that?” Ames leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.
“Because I believe it. For one thing, I went to Bertram's Bower today. The police had not even been there yet, can you imagine?”
“And what did you learn there?” Ames asked.
“That Marian was puzzled when her carriage did not come for her. Someone sent a telegram to her house yesterday afternoon, canceling it. But that someone was not Marian. According to the people at the Bower, she expected her carriage to call for her at five o'clock, just as it always did.”
Ames nodded. “I should probably tell you, Mr. Orcutt, that while your sister may not have sent the telegram canceling her carriage, she did send one to me, asking to call on me at around five-thirty yesterday afternoon. Or at least it purported to come from her; whether in fact she actually sent it, we may never know.”
Orcutt struggled with it. “All the more reason why she would not have canceled her carriage.”
“There is the thought that perhaps she would not have wanted her coachman to know—because servants do gossip—that she was coming to me. But if, as you say, she wondered why her carriage did not come, we may assume that she did not send the telegram canceling it.”
“After I went to the Bower today, I visited every Western Union office in the South End,” Orcutt said. “They all had their signed receipt books, but I found none with Marian's signature.”
“The telegram will have its point of origin noted,” MacKenzie put in. “So you need not have troubled—”
Orcutt, who had been fixed on Ames, now swung around heavily to stare at the doctor. “Who are you?” he demanded.
MacKenzie cleared his throat, thrown a little off balance by Orcutt's hostile tone. “I am—”
“Dr. MacKenzie is my close friend,” Ames cut in. “You may speak freely in front of him, and be assured of his discretion.”
Orcutt made a gasping sound that was, they saw, an attempt at a laugh.
“Discretion,” he repeated. “Yes, that is what we must have, is it not? Here in this tight little world of Boston Society. Let us have discretion by all means. We may have nothing else, by God, but we do have our discretion!” With his last words, he slammed his hand down on the table next to his chair, making the whiskey bottle and empty glass jump. He seized the bottle and lifted the glass to pour. His hand was so unsteady, however, that he missed, and whiskey went spilling all around their feet, making Ames exclaim in annoyance.
“We can do no good here,” he said to Delahanty, rising to step back from the alcohol-drenched carpet. “You should get him to bed upstairs and hope that he awakens relatively sober tomorrow morning, and with not too bad a hangover.”
Orcutt seemed not to have heard; he had managed to get a little whiskey into the glass, and now he was gulping it down, his eyes closed.
“Don't go yet, Ames,” Delahanty begged.
As they settled down again in front of Orcutt, Delahanty reached out and none too gently prised the glass from his hand. “Mr. Orcutt,” he said, “we have summoned Mr. Ames away from his dinner so that you could tell him what you have told me. And you haven't told it all yet.”
Orcutt peered at him. “It's no use,” he said after a moment. “What can he”—and here he waved his hand at Ames in a dismissive gesture—“do for me, after all? What can he do for Marian? She's gone—my poor little sister—” He broke off, threatening to dissolve into tears again.
“You must tell him,” Delahanty said firmly. “He may be of help.”
Orcutt blinked. Visibly, he was trying to make his brain work, and it seemed a painful process. “Yes,” he said at last. “You are right. Summoned from his dinner. My apologies to you, Mr. Ames. And to you, too, sir,” he added, nodding at MacKenzie.
“What you told me, Mr. Orcutt,” Delahanty prompted.
“What I told you. Yes.” Orcutt shifted his heavy body in his chair; then, as if his head had suddenly cleared, he leaned forward, his small, bleary eyes fastened on Ames.
“I have just returned from the Argentine, Mr. Ames. A most interesting country. Revolution, massacre, assassination—everything. I traveled a good deal. I met people from all walks of life. They would often approach me with their stories, which they felt might be of interest to my readers back here in the United States.”
He paused, as if remembering.
“You were saying that people approached you,” Ames said.
“Yes. Approached me. Well, one day a few months ago, a gentleman came to call. I was in a provincial capital in the interior. A pleasant place, with some rather wealthy landowners. This man was one of them. He had heard that I was not only from the United States, but from Boston. He asked me to do him a service. It seemed that he had a daughter— and a grandchild, as well. This young woman had married an Ameri
can man some years ago. An American man from Boston, in fact.”
Ames waited.
“For a while,” Orcutt went on, “they were a happy couple, at least to all appearances. But then things began to go wrong. I got a sense of money embezzled, the girl's father— the man who came to see me—realizing that his son-in-law was less than honest, gambling debts, and so forth. And then, one day, the American disappeared. Vanished. Gone without a trace. They tried to find him, but without success. The odd thing is—” And here Orcutt broke off as if he was considering it. “The odd thing is, this American never bothered to assume an alias. Apparently, he kept his own name the entire time he was in Argentina.”
He paused. Then: “Can you guess what that name is, Mr. Ames?”
“I can.”
“Then you tell me.”
“No.” Ames saw in his mind's eye the anguished face of an old man speaking with evident pain of his wayward son—a son who had failed in Argentina as he had in Boston. Mrs. Vincent had told him that Longworth was being blackmailed. She hadn't known why, but Ames, now, did. “I would rather hear it from you.”
“Very well.” Orcutt hiccupped; then he leaned forward so far that MacKenzie, fearing he would topple to the floor, put out a hand to steady him.
“His name, Mr. Ames, is Richard Longworth.”
For a moment, no one said anything. Delahanty shot a glance at Ames, but Ames did not return it; he stared intently at their informant as if he were trying to read that whiskey-soaked mind. Then: “You told this to Mrs. Trask.” It was not a question.
Orcutt blinked. “How did you—”
“But to no one else, I take it.”
“Correct. I told only Marian.”
“Why?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said, why? Why did you tell her at all? If it was none of her business—”
“A little harmless gossip—”
“Did you know that Mr. Longworth is married? Here in Boston, I mean.”
Orcutt shook his head. “No.”
“Your sister did not tell you that?”
“No.” Again, Orcutt seemed to be painfully exercising his brain. “Married? Here in Boston?”
“Yes.”
“But—” It was too much for him; he couldn't work it out. Ames helped him.
“It occurs to me, Mr. Orcutt, that if your sister let it be known to Longworth that she had this information about him, that would have made her a marked woman, would it not?”
“What are you saying?” Orcutt was breathing heavily, with an audible wheeze.
“I am not saying anything. I am merely hypothesizing that if—I repeat, if—your sister was so unwise as to approach Longworth with this extremely interesting bit of information, it might have put her in danger. Since Mr. Longworth has married—for a second time, apparently— since returning to Boston, and married a fortune at that, I cannot imagine he would be happy to have it known that he has in fact a previous wife, alive and well in Argentina.”
As the implications of what Ames said began to sink in, Orcutt uttered a low moan; he brought up his hands to splay them over his face, as if to hide himself from all the world.
“No,” he moaned. “No. No. You are saying that I was instrumental in my sister's death. Oh, no.”
“Mr. Orcutt—” Delahanty began.
Ames silenced him with a quick motion. “Wait,” he said softly. Then he turned back to Orcutt. “Mr. Orcutt, have you told this to the police?”
Orcutt slid his hands down from his face and dropped them into his lap. “I told you my opinion of the police, Mr. Ames. What good would it do for me to go to them with this information?”
“I don't know. It might do some.”
Orcutt shook his head. “No. I do not believe that. I believe—I believe that we must find this man—this cur—this cad—Longworth!” He shouted the name, and simultaneously he heaved himself up out of his chair, nearly pitching forward onto his trio of visitors.
Hastily they moved out of his way. Propelled by inertia, Orcutt kept going until he came up sharp against a massive ebony table near the center of the room. Jolted by the impact, he stood panting, his head hanging, his hands spread flat on the table's surface.
“Time to get him upstairs,” Ames murmured to Dela-hanty. “And while you do that—MacKenzie will help you— I will just go and see if our friend Longworth is staying here tonight.”
As Delahanty and MacKenzie each took an elbow to steer Orcutt out of the room and into the lobby, the journalist had one last thought for Ames.
“That fellow,” he said, speaking once more in the too-careful enunciation of the inebriate, “is bound to be trouble, Mr. Ames. Have a care if you speak to him. And tell him I will call on him tomorrow.”
No, thought Ames. I will not tell him that. And you, Mr. Orcutt, do not even know the worst of him. You do not know that he betrayed his second—albeit illegal—wife by having a liaison with Serena Vincent. You do not know that he fattened his purse by working for Colonel Mann.
As MacKenzie and Delahanty coaxed the sodden journalist up the stairs, Ames went to the desk. Was Mr. Long-worth staying here tonight? he asked.
He was not, the desk man said.
“Could he have gone upstairs to one of the rooms reserved for members' use without checking in?”
No, the desk man said frostily. Surely Mr. Ames must know that every member who took an overnight had to sign in.
Ames could think of two or three occasions when that particular rule had been honored in the breach, but he did not argue. “Cards in the back?” he asked.
The desk man nodded. “Yes, sir. The usual.”
Ames made his way along the corridor to the small, smoke-filled room. He looked in, nodded to the one man who looked up to see who had come, and ascertained that Longworth was not present.
So where are you, desperate man? he wondered as he went back to the lobby to wait for his companions. The one with the most to lose. Was it Serena Vincent's voice he heard, or Professor James's?
From the rear of the building, people were still arguing loudly. There would be bad feelings, no doubt, long after the Art Show had opened and closed; the members of the St. Botolph Club could hold a grudge as well as anyone.
Delahanty and MacKenzie were coming down the stairs.
“Safely tucked in?” Ames asked as they joined him.
“Dead to the world,” Delahanty replied. “If you'll pardon the expression.”
“He'll be miserable in the morning, no doubt,” MacKenzie added.
Delahanty, looking weary from his evening's ordeal, said, “How about a bite to eat? We can still get something from the kitchen.”
“No, thank you,” Ames replied. Unease nagged at him, driving away what little appetite he had. “I must go. Stay if you wish, Doctor, although I would be glad of your company.”
MacKenzie thought longingly of the boiled beef and scalloped potatoes waiting for them at Louisburg Square. Then he put that thought aside and said, “Of course. Where are we headed?”
“To the Park Theater,” said Ames.
They found a herdic at the door. The nighttime city was quiet, the horse's hooves making what seemed an unusually loud clatter. Ames sat quiet, gnawing his lip. The one with the most to lose—and who had more to lose than Richard Longworth?
And if Longworth had in fact killed Mrs. Trask, and the Colonel as well, what would stop him from killing again? He had given Serena Vincent ample evidence of his desperation. He had threatened her, had let her see in no uncertain terms his willingness to perform desperate deeds.
Because he loved her so much?
Or because now, at last, he saw the end of his own reckless life looming before him?
“Hurry, man!” Ames called to the cabbie.
But the cabbie was already hurrying, the horse trotting along at a fast clip. It was only Ames's growing sense of disaster that made the journey seem so long. He would go to Mrs. Vincent, yes, and he wou
ld tell her what he had learned about Longworth, and—yes—he would see her home safely, warn her to lock her door, warn her not to admit Longworth under any circumstances, warn her to hire a guard for herself, never to let herself be alone for a moment until this affair was at its end.
At the corner of Boylston and Tremont streets, they alighted and Ames thrust coins at the driver. The theater district was quiet, the evening's entertainments not yet over. They hurried around into the alley, to the stage door. Ames pounded on it. After a moment it opened a crack, and the elderly attendant peered out.
“I need to see Mrs. Vincent,” Ames said. “It is an emergency. I will wait for her in her dressing room.”
“She's not here.”
“What do you mean, she's not here? The play is still going on, is it not?”
“It is not.” The old man opened the door a little wider, and now they could see that the backstage corridor, ordinarily well lighted and filled with people, was dim and deserted.
“What's wrong?” Ames said. He stepped forward and pushed the door open. “Where is she?”
The attendant shook his head. “No performance tonight, sir. She's gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean?”
“With the police, sir. They came tonight and took her away. She's been arrested for Colonel Mann's murder.”
“AT LEAST SHE IS SAFE,” SAID AMES.
“Safe!” Caroline exclaimed. “How can she be safe when she is arrested for murder?”
“Arrested she may be, but at least, in the Tombs underneath City Hall, she is protected from Longworth.”
They were in the dining room at No. 161/2. Ames and the doctor had returned from their fruitless visit to the Park Theater, and now, past ten o'clock, they were having their supper at last.
“That poor girl,” Caroline said after a moment.
Ames looked up at her from his plate. “What poor girl?”
“Lydia Longworth.”
“The second Mrs. Longworth, you mean.”
“Yes. She is such a lovely person, and I know how dearly she loves him.”
“More fool she.”
The DEATH OF COLONEL MANN Page 22