The DEATH OF COLONEL MANN

by Cynthia Peale

She silenced him with a look that she prayed was proud and haughty, a look that George's mother herself—even Isabel Dane, that most proud and haughty matron—would have given in like circumstances. “And tell her, too, that this is your loss.”

  He started at the insult. “Well, now, I don't know about that—”

  “Yes,” she said; she heard the coldness in her voice, and it gave her courage. “Your loss, George. You know as well as I do it is not my fault” (here she mentally crossed her fingers) “that Cousin Addington was in the newspapers. And that's what this is all about, isn't it? Your mother doesn't want you to marry me because she is afraid of scandal. She doesn't want the Putnams associated with someone like me, someone who has a notorious relative who gets involved in a messy business like murder. From the way you're behaving, you'd think Addington killed the Colonel, for heaven's sake!”

  George had grown sullen under this assault, and now he glared at her. “You have to admit, it was a nasty thing for poor dear Mama to see,” he muttered.

  “Oh, George, grow up! You have to get free from your mother's apron strings eventually, you know.” Not that Mrs. Putnam had ever worn apron strings in her life, but that was neither here nor there. As Val spoke the words, she realized they were true. George was—probably irrevocably—a slave to his mother's bidding. His wife, whoever she was, would be a slave to it as well.

  Suddenly, surprisingly, she felt a tremendous sense of having freed herself from some overwhelming burden. She turned and tugged the bellpull hanging by the mantel. Instantly (had he been listening outside the door?) the butler appeared.

  “Mr. Putnam is leaving,” she said.

  Without a word of farewell, and still clutching what had been her ring and was now once again his, George turned and went out.

  Alone in the parlor, Val sank onto a small brocade sofa. She realized she was trembling. It was over: that splendid match, the engagement to a young man everyone had said was so perfect for her. But she saw now that he was not, had never been perfect. How could people have been so blind? How could she?

  Aunt Euphemia, thank heaven, had not been witness to the scene just past. Aunt Euphemia, thank heaven, was still in bed with la grippe. She would have to be told, of course, but not just yet. Telling her could wait—until tomorrow, or the day after that. When Euphemia had her strength back, and when she, Val, did as well.

  Despite the blazing fire, she was cold. Tea, she thought; and soon, perhaps, she would go to Caroline. She would tell Caroline all about it, and Caroline would understand, just as she always did.

  Val wondered if Caroline would understand the most astonishing thing, the most appalling thing: that she, Valentine Thorne, was not devastated by what she had just done. Far from it, she felt nothing but relief. Liberating, almost joyous relief. She was no longer engaged to George Putnam. It was as if an enormous weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

  Would Caroline understand that?

  Val stood and tugged the bellpull again. She wanted her tea. More, she wanted to think about what to do with her life. Addington had not found her letters, true, but perhaps that wasn't so important now.

  She could go abroad, she thought. Mary Leicester was leaving soon to spend the winter in Rome. Perhaps, Val thought, I could go with her. Yes, winter in Rome, spring on the Riviera—why not?

  As the maid came to answer her summons, she heard the door knocker once more. Surely it was not George come back for some final parting shot? She'd nerved herself up just now and had carried it off, she knew, remarkably well; she didn't know if she could do it again.

  But it was not George's card on the butler's tray this time, but Dr. John Alexander MacKenzie's.

  “Yes, of course,” she said. She smiled. She didn't know Dr. MacKenzie very well yet, but Caroline seemed fond of him, so he must be a worthwhile person.

  “Dr. MacKenzie!” she said, going to greet him. But then, in the next moment,“What is it? What's wrong?”

  “Nothing, I hope.” He stood before her, solid and foursquare, his broad, honest face a study in worry and concern. He hadn't given his hat to the butler but held it, along with his cane, and didn't shake the hand she offered to him.

  “What do you mean?” she said. “Is Caro—has anything happened to her?”

  “Not that I know of,” he replied. “She went to help out at that female physician's clinic, said she'd be back in time to see you.” His expression had soured when he'd mentioned Dr. Hannah, Val noted.

  “Miss Thorne, I'm here because your Cousin Addington told me to come. He wants me to take you to Louisburg Square. I'm to keep you safe, he said, until he gets back.”

  Val stared at him. “What do you mean, keep me safe? From what?”

  “I don't know. I'm just telling you what he told me. Could you get your things? We'd better be off.”

  He did know, of course—or he had a notion, at any rate. He'd seen the portrait, seen the pearls that matched the one in the Colonel's suite.

  But what that meant—the full implications of it—he had no idea.

  Val's thoughts whirled as she did his bidding, but she made no further protest. She instructed the butler to tell Caroline to follow them to No. 161/2, in case Caroline came here straight from Dr. Hannah's clinic. Then she took her cloak and hat from the hall tree and, with MacKenzie behind her, went outside.

  Fog shrouded the familiar street so that it was a wilderness of white, and she hesitated for a moment on the little flight of granite steps as she realized she could hardly see. But Dr. MacKenzie's reassuring presence was beside her, and so after a moment she ratcheted up her courage and went down the steps to the narrow, uneven brick sidewalk. Carefully they made their way along. The slimy damp on the bricks made walking even more treacherous than usual, and so, throwing propriety to the winds (and not for the first time this afternoon, she thought), Val offered her arm to the doctor in deference to his knee.

  “Should be the other way around,” he observed, “but I thank you for it, Miss Thorne. I don't want to be laid up all over again.”

  Beyond that, they did not speak. Val's thoughts were in turmoil. What had happened? Why did Addington believe she needed to be kept safe? He had learned something, that was obvious—was it something about her letters, the cause of all the trouble? Those stupid, foolish letters that her younger self had written in the first bloom of false love.

  They turned into Louisburg Square and came at last to No. 161/2. In the vestibule they saw the empty hall tree and knew they were the first to arrive. As they divested themselves of their hats and outerwear, Margaret appeared from the back of the hall and Val asked her to bring tea—which, now, she wanted very much. Her face and hair and skirts were damp and chilled; at this moment, the thought of a cup of hot, reviving tea was the most alluring thing in the world.

  They went into the parlor, where Margaret had already turned up the gas. A low sea-coal fire burned in the grate. Beyond the lavender-glass windows, whose shutters had not been closed nor the curtains drawn, Val saw not the familiar streetlamps strung out around the square but only blank darkness, a lavender-colored darkness pressing in. She should ask Margaret to close the shutters, she thought; and then she thought, no, leave them open. It will light the way home for Caro and Addington on this bad night. She had not yet begun to worry unduly about either of them, but she soon would, she knew.

  Margaret entered with a laden tea tray, and Val sat down to pour. “This will do us good,” she said to MacKenzie, smiling up at him, and he managed a smile in return and said that, yes, it would. He would rejoin her in a moment, he said; he needed to fetch something from his room, and—

  The sound of the door knocker, very loud, startled her so that she jumped and spilled a little tea into the saucer. She heard Margaret's voice and another—a woman's voice also. Not Caroline; she would not have needed to knock, not unless she'd lost her key—

  The pocket doors slid open, but before Margaret could say a word, the woman behind her pushed past her
and came into the room.

  It was Isabel Dane—but not the woman Val had known all her life as the mother of her dearest friend. This woman was as different as could be from that dignified, rather chilly, rather intimidating figure. This woman was someone else altogether: someone desperate, someone close to panic, someone who had abandoned all pretense of normal civility and decorum.

  “Why, Mrs. Dane—” Val began, but before she could say anything more, Isabel Dane interrupted her.

  “I am looking for Alice,” she said abruptly. “Have you seen her?”

  THE DRIVER CURSED LOUD ENOUGH FOR CAROLINE TO HEAR and with an audible crack! brought his whip down on his horse. Seated on one of the small sideways seats in the back of the stalled herdic-phaeton, Caroline uttered a little cry of her own. Dreadful, cruel man, to vent his frustrations on the poor dumb beast!

  She must get out, she thought, even though they were only at Boylston Street. She'd been wrong to take a herdic. Repeatedly during the journey from Dr. Hannah's clinic the driver had pulled the horse up short, narrowly avoiding a collision with vehicles coming at him out of the fog; once, Caroline had been jolted so hard that she had nearly been thrown off her seat.

  Now she could bear it no more—being stuck in traffic, waiting, powerless to act, when all the while she had a desperate need to see Val, to speak to her, reassure her that all would be well.

  And more: to warn her.

  She raised her clenched, gloved hand and rapped hard on the little window that separated her from the driver. He slid it open and peered in at her.

  “I will get out here,” she said. She thrust a half-dollar coin at him through the opening and turned away from his angry glare.

  “What about me, lady? I'm stuck here,” he growled.

  “I'm sorry,” she said; already she was opening the door and climbing down. “This is an emergency!” She slammed shut the door and immediately needed to dodge out of the way of a pair of grays lashed by their driver, trying to get through the narrow opening.

  Somehow, she managed to reach the sidewalk. Traffic was at a standstill, the sound of the drivers' cries muffled by the fog, nothing to be seen beyond the length of a few paces.

  There. She had made her way across Clarendon Street. Now get down to Berkeley, down to Arlington, the tall brownstone spire of the Arlington Street Church lost in the darkness and swirling fog. Yes, she could manage well enough for that, and she could traverse the distance much more quickly on foot.

  The raw, bitter air seared her lungs as she crossed Arlington Street and entered the Public Garden. The streetlamps strung out along the walkways were dim, pale, misty moons that gave no light to see by. Still, she knew the pattern of the paths; she could navigate here well enough. Crossing Beacon Street at Charles would be another matter.

  Does your mother know you're here, she'd thought when she saw that pale, trembling girl in Dr. Hannah's waiting room. But what a ridiculous idea. The girl was Alice Dane, and of course her mother hadn't known.

  She'd collected herself and made Alice welcome. Alice had recognized her as well, of course, and for that one bad moment, Caroline had thought Alice would panic and run away. She was in pain, that much was obvious. She'd stood stock-still for a long moment, and then, with an agonized little cry, she'd sunk down on the nearest empty bench and moaned softly, bending over, clutching herself around her middle.

  Caroline, as she knew she must, had put her into one of the examining rooms and sent for Dr. Hannah. The doctor would come in a moment, the harried assistant had said. The assistant was a female medical student from Boston University, and not for the first time, Caroline had thought that the experience of working for Dr. Hannah might put the young woman off doctoring for good. Alice had collapsed onto the examining table, sobbing as if her heart would break.

  “It hurts,” Alice had moaned, pressing her hands over her abdomen. “And I'm bleeding a lot. A lot.”

  Caroline had put her arms around the girl and tried to soothe her. “Dr. Hannah will be here in a moment,” she'd said. “Hush now, you'll only make it worse.”

  “How could it be worse?” Alice had sobbed. “Miss Ames—you don't know what has happened.”

  I can guess, Caroline had thought.

  “Mama was so intent on my making this match,” Alice went on. She spoke rapidly, as if she feared she would faint and not be able to tell it all. “She said I had to go to New York for a—an operation. She—someone gave her a name,” she added as if Caroline must not think that a proper Boston lady like Alice's mother would know where to procure such a service.

  “I was desperate,” Alice continued. “I didn't know what to do. We had to keep it a secret or I would have been disgraced for life, I would have had to go away, I never could have married anyone. And it hurt so much, Miss Ames—that dreadful woman there cut me up inside so that I thought I would die of the pain. She said I would heal, but I never did. I've been bleeding ever since, and hurting— ah!”

  She writhed away from Caroline's embrace and wept, shuddering; then she turned back, her face streaked with tears. “No one would ever have known,” she said, “if it hadn't been for Mrs. Trask. But she—saw me.”

  “Saw you,” Caroline said. “What do you mean?”

  “In the woods. At Newport. With… Harry Morgan.”

  Ada Morgan's youngest: a charming youth, but wild.

  “And…” Caroline saw once again the scene at the Cotillion: Marian Trask's bright, malicious eyes raking over Alice. That moment of seemingly innocuous social pleasantry had been, in fact, as good as a spoken threat: not only do I know your secret, Alice Dane, but I am prepared to reveal it.

  “You told your mother that fact, told her the night of the Cotillion, after you fainted—?”

  “Yes.” It was no more than a whisper from Alice's pale lips.

  “She hadn't known it till then?”

  Alice shook her head.

  And yesterday, thought Caroline, you saw the news of Marian Trask's murder. And you suspected—

  A rap on the door; the assistant looked in. “Doctor's coming now,” she said, and pulled the door shut again.

  Alice looked up. “Will you stay with me, Miss Ames?” she said piteously.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I'm frightened.”

  “You don't need to be frightened, dear. Dr. Hannah is very gentle—very kind.”

  But all the kindness and gentleness in the world could not help damage like this. Caroline had seen women here before, injured in this way, butchered and infected; even if they lived, they could never have children. Not to have children seemed, to Caroline, the worst of fates, probably since it was, she thought, her own.

  What had Isabel been thinking of, to subject Alice to such a procedure?

  But even as the thought came to her, she knew the answer: Isabel had been thinking of Alice's prospects. To have the girl spirited away to bear her fatherless child in some foreign place would have put an unacceptable crimp in Isabel's ambitions. And even worse, perhaps, would have been the prospect of Alice's marrying Harry Morgan—the cause of her trouble, a feckless ne'er-do-well, not at all the kind of son-in-law Isabel had planned to acquire.

  Another knock at the door, and Dr. Hannah Bigelow came in. She was a small, thin woman with graying hair and wide, luminous eyes; her face was worn and lined, and yet, Caroline thought, it was a face far more beautiful than that of many society beauties. She gave no greeting to Caroline— none was needed—but went directly to Alice and took her hands.

  “Well, my dear,” she said softly. “And what is your trouble today?”

  Caroline stepped aside but made no move to leave the room. Dr. Hannah glanced at her inquiringly; this was not standard procedure.

  “She asked me to stay,” Caroline murmured in explanation.

  “I think that won't be necessary,” Dr. Hannah said. And to Alice: “Will you let me see you alone?”

  Alice gazed into those shining, all-seeing eyes, and suddenly
it seemed as if the girl's burden had been lifted. She visibly relaxed; she nodded. “Yes,” she whispered.

  But then, as Caroline turned to go, she said, “Miss Ames! Wait!” She removed her hands from Dr. Hannah's grasp and fished in her reticule. She paused for a moment; then she seemed to come to some decision, and she withdrew something she had carried there.

  “Take these, Miss Ames. They belong to Val. I—I found them in Mama's room. I don't know how Mama came to have them.”

  EXCUSE ME.” IN THE FOG, A LARGE, FAT GENTLEMAN HAD almost knocked her down. She was at the corner of Charles and Beacon. The street was jammed solid with horses and vehicles. From out of the fog she could hear the cries of frustrated drivers—”Make way there! Out of the way! Coming through! “

  But no one moved. Impossible for her to get across. For a woman alone to try to make her way through that solid mass of horseflesh and carriage wheels was an invitation to disaster. Three or four other pedestrians—all men—stood at the curb beside her, all looking as desperate as she must look herself.

  “Link arms!” The voice came from one of the men. As he spoke, he seized the arm of the man next to him, and that man, muttering an apology, seized Caroline's. She understood: they were going to form a human wedge and try to batter their way across.

  And somehow they did. Breathless, her hat knocked askew, she found herself safe on the other side. She gasped her thanks to the men who had helped her and stood for a moment safe on the sidewalk in front of the S. S. Pierce grocery store. There were a few late customers within, but already the boys were drawing heavy canvas covers over the display cases preparatory to going home.

  “I don't know how Mama came to have them.” Caroline's hands clutched her bulging reticule; she felt the clasp to make sure it still held.

  She had been so surprised when Alice had given the packet to her that she'd not been able to speak. She'd taken it reflexively, and then Dr. Hannah had begun her interview with Alice and Caroline had gone out, carrying the packet with her.

  Val's letters.