Deception's Daughter (The Martha Beale Mysteries, 2)

by Cordelia Frances Biddle

  “Are you a recent resident of Blockley?” Kelman persists.

  “What if I was? And what if I wasn’t? It’s a free country, ain’t it? The last I heard it wasn’t a crime for a man to move about the city, no matter how full or empty his pockets.” He makes to turn away, but Kelman lays a cautionary hand upon his arm.

  “I’m asking if you know the boy—”

  “What do I care about a boy? I’ve enough trouble as it is. And I know no blond female, neither. Not living and not dead. So I’ll kindly ask you to leave me alone—”

  “I didn’t say that the woman in question was fair-haired, Stokes.”

  The response is a snarl. “Don’t you try to trap me with your fancy words, Constable, or whatever you are. I’m an honest man, I am. A harness maker who—”

  “How did you know the woman was blond?” Kelman persists, but the reply is a dogmatic continuation of the previous recitation:

  “A harness maker who never stole from his master. Me and him, we never cheated, nor sold shoddy. We did an honest day’s work. Not like you people with your cheating trades. Your snatch-and-grab bankers, and Erasmus Ungers, may he rot in Hell eternal. He couldn’t build a set of reins, or—”

  “What do you know about this suicide, Stokes?”

  “You didn’t hear Preacher Alsberg warning those foul schemers? ‘Their children shall be dashed to pieces—’”

  “The dead woman, Stokes!” Kelman tightens his grip on the smaller man, but he shakes himself free, then dodges into the crowd and out the other side, running faster than his legs seem capable of carrying him while Kelman shouts for the day watch and whatever constable is near.

  “I WILL NOT MARRY DORA”

  MARTHA SITS ON HER BED, not in it but upon it, although she’s dressed in her nightclothes and her lady’s maid has long ago brushed out her hair, put away her gown, her underskirts and pantelettes and corset, her earrings and bracelets, and then just as methodically prepared the chamber for sleeping. Martha can’t consider the placid refuge of repose; her mind is too full, her thoughts too turbulent.

  Did Dora elope with Percy? Or has she been abducted by someone seeking financial gain, or else who’s so full of loathing for the parents that he would harm the daughter? Is Crowther the overbearing parent Miss Lydia insinuates? If so, why did he permit the engagement if he opposed it? Or has his aunt invented a tale because it suits her to gossip and meddle …? But if the father approved the matrimony, and Dora had the blessing of both parents, why would she and Percy run away?

  Martha shakes her head. There are no answers to be found, only questions that coil back into one another. Then her thoughts veer to the elder Stokes and his denunciation of the rich, and in particular Erasmus Unger. She recalls the shouted oaths, and her shoulders hunch forward in perplexity. Could it be happenstance that Thomas attempted to question Stokes concerning the other matter—only to discover he’s involved with Dora’s disappearance? Or is my brain playing tricks on me?

  Martha sighs aloud, then rises and walks to a table near her chaise, taking up her Bible and immediately putting it down in order to light the lamp. When the flame burns clean, she opens to the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. “Amor,” she mutters under her breath, “the Latin word meaning love. So, let us see if we can find this Amor Alsberg’s message of compassion.” She reads the passages the preacher chose, then skips ahead until she comes to the close of chapter fifty-five: “‘For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.’”

  Why couldn’t he have recited that verse, instead of urging his followers toward hatred and censure? she wonders while her mind envisions Becky Grey clapping her hands with joy. The image promptly produces an accompanying vision of Nathan Weil, which casts Martha into confusion again. She can recall each glance he gave her, every word he spoke, the boldness of his smile, his probing eyes. The memory makes her groan. You don’t deserve a solid, high-minded man like Thomas. Indeed, you don’t. Not if a raft of pretty phrases can seduce you. Why, Weil may have no more substance than the paper upon which his books are printed.

  Thus feuding with herself, Martha tosses the Bible aside, and tosses her head and shoulders, as well, then glares at her room as if the place were the cause of her consternation. Finally, she takes up another book, a recently published collection of Tennyson’s poetry. She leafs through works she’s already read, The Miller’s Daughter, Mariana, and The Two Voices, until she comes to pages as yet uncut, and slits them with a vengeance. Then she draws in a quick, astonished breath at the title, Dora, and commences to read aloud.

  “‘I cannot marry Dora; by my life,

  I will not marry Dora …’”

  Martha slams the book shut, but not before the title page flips past her eyes. The publisher is Weil and Harte of Philadelphia. She drops the volume as though her fingers were on fire.

  IN ANOTHER PART OF THE house, up another staircase and down a narrower hall that fronts the children’s bedrooms and day-rooms and Miss Pettiman’s chambers, Cai hears a ghost. A ghost clanking and muttering in the chimney, moving down and down and down.

  He freezes in his bed; his eyes against the darkness grow very large and white, and his mouth opens in a wide O of fright. Despite his adoptive mother’s adamant disclaimer, he knows that Miss Pettiman is correct. Ghosts are everywhere, and they especially enjoy spiriting through cold chimneys and terrorizing small, defenseless boys. If Cai were less afraid, he’d leap from his bed, fly across the room, out the door leading to the day nursery, and so into Ella’s private chamber; but he’s too alarmed to move.

  Instead, he stares at the hearth and watches glinting shards of chimney stone tumble down amidst the velvety soot. Then two black boots appear, and two legs and a body, which wriggles free, bending into a crouch as a dark and streaky head ducks forth, and two arms and two hands slink down to untie a rope tied to the apparition’s chest. Spotting the small body that is Caspar Beale, the ghost puts a warning finger to its mouth, but the child gazes numbly back. He couldn’t scream if he wanted to. Besides, who can offer protection against a spirit from the netherworld? Not a living person, surely. Not even Miss Pettiman in her forbidding apartment across the passageway.

  “Where’s the girl?” the creature demands while Cai begins to tremble all over.

  “Cat got your tongue?”

  Cai only quivers in his sheets, so the specter walks to the child’s bed and peers into his face.

  “A Negro child, eh? Or mulatto, is a better guess. How did you come to own such a fine setup, then? Living like a little prince while the rest of us scrabble and starve … You’re not a bastard son of the lady’s, are you? Or her skinflint old dad? I heard all about him. Rich as Croesus, he was. They talk about him in a place where I do an odd job or two. So, yes, I guess you could be old moneybags’s love child. If he fancied one of the fancy ladies in the Negro houses.” The ghost chortles at his own play on words while Cai’s shivering intensifies.

  “What’s wrong with you? Got the falling sickness, is that it?” The ghoul bends closer. “Here now. You’d better stop your jouncing and jiggling. You’ll hurt yourself otherwise, and I won’t be held responsible if you do.”

  Despite the stern words, the tone is kindly. The wraith touches Cai’s face. “There was a little lad like you at Blockley. We learned how to bring him round when he got the palsy. Here, you keep your eyes open and you look at me. I won’t harm you. I’m your friend.” The ghost continues to stroke Cai’s rigid cheek. “There now … there now. You’ll be right as rain in a minute or two. Keep your eyes glued to me. There you go …”

  The fit begins to pass, but not before Cai does something unbearably shameful. He wets his bed, and not just a little. He soaks the entire horsehair mattress. The smell of this egregious accident fills the air, and Cai, now returning to cognizance, yelps out his distress, to which the ghost hisses a vehement:r />
  “Shut your mouth!”

  But Cai’s whimpering moans increase, which causes the specter to grab him by the shoulders.

  “Hush, I tell you! I mean you no harm.” The ghost stops speaking and listens, then flies back to the hearth, where he hurries to bind the rope around his chest before shooting his arms up into the chimney. “Tell the girl to take care,” he hisses. “Tell her I came to warn her that a bad man has evil designs on her. I’m the boy she met when she ran away from school. She’ll remember. I’m the fellow who keeps his ears to the ground. But she must tell no one I was here, and neither should you. Dangerous things will happen, otherwise.”

  IS IT THE DEVIL?

  CAI’S STORY IS SUCH A garble of fright and mortification that Ella can scarcely understand what he’s trying to say. Sitting on the floor beside her bed, his nightclothes still drenched and sticky, he sniffles and hiccoughs as he describes the ghoul who dropped into his room.

  “Is it the devil?” he asks as soon as he finishes his narration. “Is that who has designs upon you? Miss Pettiman says he’s powerfully evil.”

  “No. It’s a real person.” Ella clambers out of bed, pulls a blanket from the cedar-lined chest beneath the window, and drapes it over Caspar’s shoulders before perching on the edge of her mattress. “We must change your clothes—”

  “Do ghosts speak to living people often?” Cai interrupts.

  “It wasn’t a ghost that climbed down your chimney—”

  “It was! I saw it!”

  “No, Cai. It was a living boy. Like a chimney sweep.”

  “Sweeps don’t work at night.”

  Ella sighs. “I didn’t mean he was a true sweep. Only that he crept inside the chimney in a similar fashion: first securing a rope, and then—”

  “Ghouls and specters don’t creep. They fly and howl. Miss Pettiman says—”

  “Didn’t the boy say he’d met me the day I ran away from school?”

  Cai considers this. He’s of a more fanciful nature than Ella and is loath to relinquish his association with a dead person—no matter how hideous the encounter. When he responds, his words are cagey. “Miss Pettiman says that spirits from the netherworld—”

  “Cai, listen to me. That was a real boy who found his way into your hearth, and the man he spoke of is more terrible than any airy spirit… Do you remember Miss Pettiman warning us about a nest of burglars? And do you remember how upset Mother was when the day watch brought me home?” Ella eliminates any reference to Theodora Crowther; she’s certain Cai is missing this piece of information, for if he knew it, the story would be his sole subject of conversation. “And how she said that Mr. Kelman was worried about burglars, too?”

  Cai nods.

  “Well, that’s because they’re extremely bad people. And they work their crimes by climbing down chimneys. Boys slither through the flues—just like this one did—then they roam about the houses they’ve entered, and take things and pass them to other boys who wait outside in the dark near a window or door on the ground floor. Their master also waits, in order to make certain no one steals from him.”

  “But he’s stealing, too, isn’t he? The master, I mean.”

  “Yes. He’s taught the boys what is valuable and what is not.”

  Cai frowns in thought. “Well, if my ghost was just an ordinary thief, he didn’t take anything from me.”

  “You don’t have any possessions important enough.”

  “I do, too” is the staunch reply. “I have my stuffed dog with the genuine hair, and the lead cavalry, and—”

  “They want silver, Cai, and jewels.” And people, Ella thinks but doesn’t say.

  “Is the master like a pirate, then? Like the pirates Miss Pettiman said used to sail their ships up the Delaware River and dock near Front Street, and swagger around the town and hit people they didn’t like?”

  “Yes.” If Ella weren’t so engrossed in wondering what Cai’s peculiar visitation means, she would find this conversation vexing. As it is, her concentration is only half on her adoptive brother’s words. “Exactly like a pirate.”

  Cai considers her answer. The adjustment from spectral terror to flesh-and-blood danger was difficult to make, but having accomplished it, he’s now absorbed in the new menace. “We must tell Mother and Miss Pettiman,” he announces.

  “No” is Ella’s swift response. “The boy said to confide in no one, or it would be dangerous.”

  “We’ll explain that, too—”

  “No, Cai. We must keep what happened our secret for a while.”

  “But Mother—”

  “Mother and Miss Pettiman will only worry further, and perhaps not allow us to play in the park or go for walks. You wouldn’t wish that, would you?”

  “But—”

  “Cai,” a now exasperated Ella declares, “surely you don’t want that dirty creature coming back into your room and warning you again.”

  The maneuver works admirably. Cai shakes his head in abject silence while Ella rises and walks with measured steps across the floor. “We must get you some dry nightclothes. Then you may curl up with me so long as you don’t kick or suck your thumb. Or go into one of your funny fits.”

  “The ghost told me he knew a lad who—”

  “Never mind about your ghouls and wraiths now, Cai.”

  “He stopped my shaking sickness. I wet my bed anyway.”

  “Yes. Now, let’s get you changed.”

  Returned to bed, Ella squints in concentration at the dusky walls while Cai immediately falls into an exhausted and grateful slumber. She’ll remember me. I’m the fellow who keeps his ears to the ground. A bad man. Evil designs. The nameless boy’s pronouncements repeat and repeat themselves until they join his previous boastings and form a litany in her drifting mind: Help you hunt for your mam. I’ve got a scheme… Tell her… Mam … Remember … Bad man …

  DAWN BREAKS. THE LIGHT OF a new day sifts in through the nursery windows, illuminating the children’s sleeping faces as if it were merely checking to make certain they are well and happy. In parts of the house unprotected by curtains and shutters, the sunlight grows more insistent, waking the maids, the footmen, and the cook, while the sounds of the egg man pushing his cart and the bread seller beginning his rounds issue a louder warning.

  Soon those who serve the household are stirring, as are those in other households across the city. Fires are lit in stoves; water is heated and biscuits set to rise; coffee is ground, veal and ham pies prepared; collared and potted fishes are removed from the larder; cheeses are unwrapped from their cloths, and grape branches artfully piled in cut-glass bowls.

  And at the Crowthers’ residence another under-housemaid tiptoes through the front hall in order to sweep the outside steps before her mistress or the majordomo can find fault. When the girl opens the door, she spots a letter wrapped around an object she instantly recognizes.

  It’s the missing daguerreotype of Miss Dora.

  AMONG THE TALL PINES

  AS LUTHER IRWIN OF IRWIN’S Secret Service is summoned to the Crowthers’ house; as Martha finishes breakfast and ponders her sleepless night; and as Ella and Cai keep their pact of silence, another scene plays out far south of the city where the Delaware courses its fifty-one meandering miles toward the Atlantic Ocean.

  Now wide and undulant, now narrowing and reedy, dotted with uninhabited islands, or broken into coves that splinter apart into marsh grasses, the river is bordered on both banks by thousands of acres of land, most of which remain primitive and pristine. Some carry the names supplied by the original inhabitants, the Unami tribe of the Lenni-Lenape who gave Philadelphia its own distinctive labels: Shackamaxon, “Place of Eels”; Passyunk, “In the Valley”; Pennypack, “Still Water.”

  As it was before the advent of the earliest European settlers who hewed the first farms and fisheries in what would eventually become the states of Pennsylvania and Delaware, the area is rife with animal life: bald eagles, saw-whet owls, quail, downy woodpeckers
, opossums, deer, bear, and elk. Red maple, white ash, black oak and black walnut, sweet birch, blue-water birch, hop hornbeam, linden, and pawpaw serve as the creatures’ homes. The area is a garden of Eden, still.

  It’s to this natural paradise that Percy VanLennep has chosen to journey, and where he rests at the precise moment Luther Irwin begins reading the letter that accompanied Dora’s portrait.

  Percy’s voyage to the spot was more headlong flight than intentional design. The seeds of his hasty decision were sown on the night of his ignominious dismissal from his betrothed’s home. Naturally, he meant to inform Dora of his intentions, but being young and callow and more concerned whether his boots and newest Canton flannel coat were brushed, he forgot. He also intended to provide his servants with an itinerary, but as he hadn’t a clear one, he let that effort pass, as well.

  Instead, he embarked on a schooner lying at the foot of the Chestnut Street Wharf on September sixteenth, the very morning his betrothed was discovered missing. He was careful not to supply the captain with his name, not because he was trying to conceal his travels, but because he didn’t wish to cause Theodora undue embarrassment should some unkind gossip impugn the motives for his sojourn, and thereby suggest he was running away from his duties. Percy told himself he would be absent four or five days, certainly no longer than a week; he reasoned that an unmarried man—or even a married one—should be accorded that much privacy.

  His aim in sailing south along the river was to seek out the counsel of his reclusive friend Nicholas Howe at his plantation house in the state of Delaware some forty miles south of Philadelphia. By late afternoon of the same day, and a little north of Pea Patch Island, he found himself in a sailing skiff being maneuvered up Hamburg Cove toward Howe’s secluded estate. The man at the helm was a tenant of Nicholas’s who, by luck, had come down with goods to trade. Percy finally felt safely removed enough from the ogre Mother Crowther and her equally ferocious husband to confide his true name and the nature of his visit.