by Barbara Ross
“The Black Widow!” Marguerite’s eyes danced. “It’s been missing for almost a hundred years.”
“What’s the Black Widow?” Rose asked.
“It’s a necklace that belonged to our family. The main stone is a black diamond, seventy carats.”
Rose’s fork clattered onto her appetizer plate. “That’s crazy.”
“I think Hugh had it all along,” I told them.
“He couldn’t have had it all along,” Marguerite pointed out. “The necklace went missing in 1928.”
I turned to Rose, who’d picked up her fork and dug back into her calamari. “Could he have taken it from your grandparents’ house when he helped you clean it out?” I asked.
“I suppose.” She sounded unsure. “He never said anything, and he took so little. Trinkets, really.”
“The Black Widow is in an inventory of his personal property that Mr. Dickison has,” I added. “So Hugh thought it was his to leave to someone.”
“Then he meant it to go to your mother.” Marguerite stated it as a fact.
“It came with a note that said, ‘For Windsholme, ’ and the package was mailed before Hugh died,” I told them.
“Someone in the house mailed it,” Marguerite concluded. “And your mother is meant to use the money to repair Windsholme.”
“Yes, I think so too, though everything else about the necklace is a mystery. Who sent it and why they sent it instead of leaving it to be distributed as part of the estate.”
Marguerite studied her silverware and said in a low voice, “Whoever sent it didn’t trust that it would get to your mother safely after Hugh was gone.”
I could understand her embarrassment. She was casting suspicion on her own family.
“I don’t understand how Hugh could have been the legal owner of the Black Widow,” I said. “If it was stolen by Hugh’s grandparents from your mother, Marguerite, then it must be yours. Or, if it legitimately belonged to Hugh’s family, then it should have been in his parents’ estate. He was officially dead and couldn’t inherit when they died, so it would be yours, Rose.”
There was silence around the table while the waiter cleared the salad dishes and served our entrees. Marguerite dug into her monkfish marsala with gusto. “You girls are in for a treat.” After she’s finished her first mouthful, she said, “I can clear some of this up. There was a dispute about the ownership of the necklace. Your great-great-grandfathers, William and Charles, believed the necklace was a gift from Lemuel Morrow to their mother, Sarah, and as such should have been a part of her small estate, which was left to them when she died in 1906. They said their father had no right to give the necklace to my mother in the first place. My mother firmly believed the necklace belonged to her, a gift from her husband during their loving but tragically short marriage.
“When there was plenty of money around, my half brothers were content to let my mother keep possession of the necklace and wear it, though they always saw her as a temporary custodian, with the necklace coming to them or their heirs on her death. But by 1928, all three families were desperately short of cash and the arguments grew angrier. Lemuel had left the ice business and Morrow Island to his sons. My mother got only the house on Marlborough Street and some money to run it. Most of the money was in the form of shares in Morrow Ice Company, which were worthless by then. William had no money and was likely to lose Morrow Island because of unpaid property taxes. Charles’s family had not yet hit it big in San Francisco.
“The night the necklace disappeared, Windsholme was full of guests, every room occupied. It was Prohibition, but the booze flowed. My mother still maintained her role as hostess at Windsholme, even though the house belonged to her stepsons, and she knew how to give a good party. The next morning, I heard my mother scream. When I reached her room, she was in hysterics, holding up the empty jewelry case.
“The rumors started that day. Some people said it was a maid who took it. Other people blamed a houseguest. William, Charles, and my mother, Clementine, blamed each other. They all needed cash, and the necklace, while beautiful, didn’t provide any. After the houseguests left there was a terrific, multigenerational row with everyone screaming accusations at everyone else. Things were said that couldn’t be unsaid. The relationships, always tense after William lost the ice company’s money, became irreparable. Charles’s family packed up and left that day. Mother and I left early the next morning.”
“And they never resolved who owned the Black Widow, your mother or your half brothers?” I asked.
“There was no need. The necklace was gone.” Marguerite looked off into the middle distance of the restaurant, which was nearly empty. “I would so love to see it again.”
Rose spoke quietly. “Someone in my branch of the family, Charles or his son, must have stolen the Black Widow. Over the next decade, my ancestors built a fortune in shipping. My grandfather told me the family bought ships when others sold them cheap during the Depression. They built up a huge fleet. They must have used the Black Widow as collateral over and over. Otherwise, how could they have bought that first ship and expanded so quickly?”
“Shipping,” Marguerite said, “was the engine of the ice business. Charles returned to something he knew.”
“Then, your grandparents must have had the Black Widow and Hugh must have taken it,” I said to Rose.
“If Hugh left it to your mother, she should have it,” Rose said to me. Marguerite nodded her agreement.
“It’s worth over two million dollars,” I told them.
Rose said, “Wow.”
“Well, it would be, wouldn’t it,” Marguerite responded.
The table fell silent as we concentrated on our meals. I tried to think through the problem of the ownership of the Black Widow. No one knew whom it belonged to then or now, exactly the mess Cuthie Cuthbertson had predicted.
The lobster fra diavolo grabbed my attention, pulling me back into the moment. I consider myself something of an expert on lobster, and the fra diavolo at the Daily Catch was the best I’d ever tasted. It was served in a sauté pan, the pieces of lobster, shrimp, clams, and calamari gently distributed over a bed of pasta. The sauce had a velvety consistency that absorbed the savory taste of seafood. The shellfish was perfectly cooked, tender and briny. The heat, the “diavolo” came at the end, adding a pleasant warmth, but not overpowering the flavors.
“Have some monkfish.” Marguerite put a piece of flaky white fish on her bread plate and passed it over. I admit I was skeptical. Marsala was a sweet wine, and I thought it would overwhelm the light fish, but the combination was delightful. Each flavor enhanced the other.
“It’s wonderful,” I said.
“Now you understand why this is my favorite restaurant.”
“Why is the necklace called the Black Widow?” Rose asked. So, she too had been unable to get the necklace out of her head, despite the delicious seafood.
“It wasn’t, originally.” Marguerite chuckled. “My mother was of French descent, from Louisiana. Her father had been a local partner in the Morrow icehouse there. She was the belle of high society in New Orleans, but when Lemuel brought her to Boston, her olive skin and her Catholicism made her exotic. She was forty years younger than my father. Her origins plus the tremendous age difference made their marriage scandalous. He died less than eighteen months after they married, before I was born. The rumor was that she’d ‘worn him out,’ though I didn’t understand what that meant until I was much older. She was called the Black Widow behind her back. She wore the necklace so often, eventually it was referred to as the Black Widow as well. After it disappeared, the name stuck to the necklace. Everyone called it that.”
The waiter came and cleared our plates. “Dessert?” he asked.
Marguerite didn’t hesitate. “The usual, and three forks.” Rose and I ordered espressos.
The usual turned out to be a lemon mascarpone cake so creamy, tart, and sweet, I was disappointed I hadn’t ordered my own piece, even though I was
stuffed from the lobster and pasta.
“Do you really intend to leave your house to Tallulah?” Rose asked Marguerite.
Marguerite sighed. “No, probably not. Tallulah is fiercely loyal and would feel she had to keep it. A big house like that, in need of constant maintenance, is more of a curse than a blessing for a young person. I want Tallulah and Jake to tour the world with their act. I don’t want her anchored by an albatross of a piece of property.”
I nodded my agreement. At times, Windsholme felt like an albatross to me.
“Vivian loves the house and really seems to want it,” Rose chided softly.
“I know,” Marguerite admitted. “But I’m determined Clive won’t get it. Or any future Clive. I think some sort of a trust should do the trick. It should be in a trust for tax reasons now that Hugh’s dead. I’ll call Adam Dickison tomorrow to talk over options.”
The town car driver walked into the restaurant, snow on his shoulders and cap. “It’s really comin’ down,” he said. “There’s a snow emuh-gency in effect at midnight. Everybody off the roads. The city wants to get ’em cleared before the second stawm comes in tahmahra.”
I looked around the restaurant. We were the only table still occupied. The waiter and hostess sat in a far booth folding napkins while they waited for us to finish. Outside the big windows, the streetlights along the harbor walk reflected swirls of big-flaked snow, like the angels were having a pillow fight.
“Time to go!” Marguerite chirped, and whipped out her credit card.
Chapter 30
The espresso turned out to be a bad idea. I lay in the unfamiliar bed, unable to sleep. Paolo’s door opened and soft footsteps moved toward the bathroom. I waited, wakeful, until I heard him go back to his room. The pattern was repeated on the second floor. Someone was up, but that person, too, returned to a bedroom. I heard the click of a door. From outside, the wind shook the windows, quieted down, but then whipped up again into great gusts. I got up and looked out into the side street. The snow flew sideways from the river. Looking carefully, I could discern a single lane plowed in the street below, but even it was rapidly filling in with drifting snow.
The old iron radiator creaked and sighed in the corner of the room. So much had happened. It was strange to think it was my first night in the house Lemuel Morrow had bought for Sarah, and where he’d lived as a widower, and later with Clementine. None of my ancestors, surely, had slept in this little attic room, where the mansard roof created odd angles in the walls. I listened to the sounds of a strange house and wondered if I would sleep at all. Eventually I dozed.
A scream. Someone in my dream screamed and wouldn’t stop. But it wasn’t a dream. I heard footsteps pounding down the stairs, running in the hallway.
“Help, help! She’s not breathing!” Tallulah shouted. Paolo had run down the stairs ahead of me. Rose was already in Marguerite’s room, breathing into her mouth and rhythmically compressing her chest. Marguerite was prone on the floor, so tiny and so thin, I flinched with each chest compression. Tallulah and Vivian clung to each other, faces twisted in terror.
“Paolo, help me with her. Someone else call nine-one-one,” Rose commanded.
“I’ll do it,” Jake said.
“Go down, turn on the front porch light, make sure the EMTs can find us,” Rose continued.
“Got it.” I ran downstairs, jumped into my boots, and pulled my down coat over my T-shirt and pajama pants.
“The ambulance is on its way,” Jake called, “but the roads are bad. They’re keeping me on the line until they get here.”
Despite the wind, the front stoop had more than a foot of snow on it, and Marlborough Street held even more. I didn’t see how an ambulance could get down it. I found a shovel in the front vestibule and went to work knocking snow off the stoop into the little garden below and then started on the steps. The falling snow piled up on the back of my coat and wicked down my neck.
I had shoveled half the length of the walk when at last I saw flashing lights, coming not down Marlborough Street, but down the side street, Dartmouth. The first yellow lights belonged to a slow-moving plow, followed by the blue lights of a Boston Police Department cruiser, the red lights of a fire truck, followed at last by an ambulance. They slowed to a stop, idling in the road.
A police officer was the first to reach the walk. The snow on the unshoveled part was above his knees. By the time I let him in and directed him up the stairs, there were people in heavy outerwear everywhere, carrying big bags and running up the front steps. When they were all inside, I stepped into the hall. From upstairs, I could hear Rose give the EMTs a calm recital of Marguerite’s condition and what had been done so far.
I went back outside. Some of the firemen shoveled a path between the curb and the ambulance. The plow moved snow out of the intersection so the vehicles could turn around. I bounced up and down in my boots, anxious to help but determined to stay out of the way.
The cop came outside. “They’re taking her to Mass General.”
She must be alive! A tear welled over my eye and slid down my frozen cheek. I had known Marguerite only three days, but she was already dear to me.
Four men carried the gurney to the ambulance. There was no way to wheel it. Rose stayed by Marguerite’s side, holding her motionless hand. She was waxen and still, and so, so small. I ran after Rose. “At the hospital, you need to have them test her for drugs that might have caused this.”
“I’ve got her medications with me.” Rose didn’t stop to look at me. All her attention was on Marguerite. “Vivian got them for me from the medicine chest.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. You need to make sure she wasn’t poisoned.”
Rose stopped and turned while the EMTs loaded the gurney into the ambulance. “What are you talking about?”
“Last night, I had an attack when I couldn’t breathe. I’ve had panic attacks before, so I didn’t say anything, but now, I think maybe it was caused by a poison of some sort.”
One of the EMTs shouted something that was carried away by the wind, but the urgency was obvious. “I’ve got to go,” Rose shouted. “Call Detective Salinsky. Have him meet me at the hospital.” She turned and ran along the snow-covered street.
I ran beside her, yelling in her ear. “Have them check for feathers and fibers in her throat too.”
She nodded at me and was gone.
They let Rose ride in the back. She was a doctor, after all. And then, more quickly than I dreamed possible, they were gone—the plow, the ambulance, the cop car. The fire engine turned laboriously to go back the way it had come, the wrong way down the street. Though their sirens wailed, the vehicles left at a creep.
Just inside the threshold, Vivian and Tallulah clung to each other, weeping, barefoot, and in their nightclothes, all animosity between them evaporated by their fear.
Chapter 31
Tallulah, Jake, and I decided to hike to the hospital. After we’d dressed and bundled up, we stood on the front stoop and surveyed the street. The snow was still coming down, though it had lightened. The cars parked along a single side of the street were covered. From the look of the quiet, night-time landscape, it could have been 1888 when Lemuel moved Sarah into the house, or 1919 when Clementine arrived, or anytime in the last hundred and thirty years.
“Let’s walk around to Beacon Street,” Jake said. “It’s more likely to be plowed.”
We trudged down the middle of Beacon Street to the end and then around the corner of the public garden to Charles Street. The wind had stopped. The city was silent. It was only a little over a mile from Marguerite’s house to Mass General, less than I’d walked to the police station that afternoon, but even staying in the partially plowed roads, the snow made for slow going. It took three-quarters of an hour to reach the emergency room door at Mass General.
The receptionist couldn’t give us much in the way of an update. We huddled in the quiet waiting room. The snow had kept the city’s emergencies in check, just as Det
ective Salinsky had predicted. The sun came up, shadowy at first, but then lighting up a dazzling blue sky, the calm between the storms. A new shift came in. They stomped snow off their boots and complained about the travel conditions.
“How did you find your grandmother?” I asked Tallulah.
“When I got up to go to the bathroom, her door was open, which was strange. I went to check it out and found her lying on the bedroom floor, like she was trying to get out the door when she collapsed.”
“Thank goodness you found her, Lulah,” Jake said.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Thank goodness.”
Rose emerged from the back a few minutes later. “She’s still unconscious. I broke two of her ribs doing the compressions, but she’s come through. Nothing to do now but wait. They’ll move her upstairs once they’re confident she’s stable.”
“Can we see her?” Tallulah asked.
“Soon, but you mustn’t expect a response for a while.”
Tallulah grimaced. “I just want to see her.”
“Do you need coffee?” Rose pulled on my arm, steering me toward the vending machines at the other side of the room. When we were there, she bent her head toward mine and whispered, “Salinsky’s here. He wants to see you. It looks like you were right.”
“She was poisoned?”
“They don’t have the lab work yet to confirm it, but the way she’s coming out of this, it’s not like a physical episode, more like some substance is working its way through her system. No sign of feathers or fibers, by the way.”
“When I thought about it later, I didn’t think there would be. Marguerite is so small, if someone wanted to smother her, they would have succeeded.”
* * *
They let Tallulah see her grandmother at a little before eight. Jake went with her, saying he’d wait nearby in case he was needed. I knew he meant needed by Tallulah, not Marguerite. Tallulah had much better taste in men than her mother did.