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

by Cordelia Frances Biddle

  He doesn’t interrupt, however, but permits the surgeon to gather his thoughts. Around them in the hall outside Harrison Crowther’s rooms a muffled flow of servants hurries back and forth, eyes averted and scared, footsteps hardly seeming to touch the floor. All appear exhausted, for it is now approaching two in the morning.

  “I’ve dosed him with magnesia in milk-and-water and applied leeches to the exterior of his throat in order to ease his breathing, but it’s still dangerously labored. It’s a wonder the man didn’t suffocate owing to the swelling that undiluted oil of vitriol can induce upon the tongue, larynx, and epiglottis. Of course, he has expectorated flesh as well as blood, which has further damaged the trachea. I’ve also applied leeches to his abdomen—”

  “You’re positive the acid could not have been administered accidentally?” Kelman finally interrupts.

  “Accidentally?” the surgeon repeats. “Perhaps. But not swallowed erroneously, for the merest sip would warn a reasonable man that he was imbibing something poisonous. Then, too, we must consider the missive Mrs. Crowther recovered at her husband’s side. Despair at losing his daughter and only child is the recurring theme—”

  “Or intentionally poisoned by someone else’s hand?” Kelman persists. Although he’s only given the letter a brief perusal, there’s something in the present circumstances that troubles him, and it’s not the overt message of a father’s overweening grief.

  “Murder’s not my province, I’m relieved to say, Mr. Kelman. Besides, who would commit such a repulsive deed? Not Mrs. Crowther, surely, or the elderly and diminutive Miss Lydia? And how would you imagine anyone—man or woman—forcing Crowther to drink a concoction so foul?”

  Kelman’s initial response to the queries is silence. “I take it Mrs. Crowther identified the handwriting as her husband’s?” he asks at length.

  “It didn’t occur to me to ask. Before your arrival, it was all I could do to persuade her not to throw the missive into the fire Poor lady. What a sight to behold. Her spouse in what she assumed were his death throes—” The surgeon’s words cease as he sighs anew, his white-gray hair and beard standing out in contrast to the dusky walls. Dawn is a long way off, and until it comes, the house will remain in fitful chiaroscuro with puddles of bright lamplight pushing against the enveloping shadow. “I’ve left instructions as to how to remove the leeches when they begin to fall off,” he states, returning to the cool comfort of scientific fact, “and how to apply a poultice of warm poppy fomentations in their stead.”

  “And Mrs. Crowther and Miss Lydia? I assume the servants are aware of special medical needs their mistresses may have?”

  “Miss Lydia has a strong will for self-preservation. Quite a remarkable determination, in fact. I offered her a sleeping draught, but she refused it, saying she would profit from using her waking hours in prayer. Mrs. Crowther I dosed with laudanum, as her behavior seemed as potentially self-destructive as her husband’s. I doubt she’ll awaken till midday. I suggest you question her in the gentlest fashion when you begin your inquiry, Kelman, for her psyche, understandably, is in a perilous condition. Indeed, it may be impossible for her to endure should Crowther perish. To have this loss added to the first…” He leaves the thought unfinished, then adds an unexpectedly hesitant:

  “However, during the course of your investigation, if you do determine that this is a case of attempted or actual murder, I must repeat that the means are barbaric, because the agony Crowther suffered and is continuing to suffer is almost unbearable. It would take a callous soul to inflict such anguish. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I feel I’ve done all I can at present. You, too, I would imagine. I’ll call again at breakfast time.”

  “Yes, of course. Good night, sir.”

  “Or good morning, as the case may be. You should get some rest, too, Kelman, for the hours and days ahead may bring worse news rather than better.”

  AS KELMAN CONCLUDES THIS CONVERSATION, the younger Findal Stokes opens his eyes and finds himself staring at the few and distant stars that gleam down upon Blackberry Alley. For a moment he can’t remember how he came to be lying here on his back in what he assumes is the middle of the night. Then the throbbing of his head recalls the argument with his father and the blow that sent him crashing into the street.

  He pulls himself into a sitting position so his hands can prod his skull. They come away sticky with blood when he finds the tender place. “What a fine parent I have,” he mutters, then all at once retches with pain, spewing out only bile because there’s nothing in his belly. Unwelcome tears streak his clammy cheeks as he heaves again, then groans again while his eyes flicker shut against the ache in his skull. “What an honest, upstanding gent!”

  But these caustic words, and the tight-lipped bravado with which they’re delivered, can’t match the misery etched on the boy’s face. Not that anyone is there to read the expression, for the alley is long abed and only the scuttling creatures of darkness are present: a long, hairless tail slithering along a gutter, a snarl from a tomcat protecting its turf, the grunt of a thin and feral pig. Listening, Findal bows his head and presses it against his knees, letting the shameful tears well up and fall where they may.

  “Oh, what a prince you are, Da. What a living, breathing saint.” Then he swipes at his nose and eyes with an angry hand, and stifles another groan when his heaving chest and swelling eyes cause his head to shoot with renewed pain. Well, I won’t let you harm that girl Ella. Or the little mulatto, neither. You won’t be “abducting” them or holding them “hostage” or whatever blasted thing you’re scheming. Not if I can help it.

  Findal stands, shaky and nauseous still, but also filled with a ferocious energy. And who will you call an idiot then? his thoughts demand. For that Mr. Kelman was on me like glue back at Kat’s place. And he’ll stick to you, too. Just like the stink of curing leather when you worked an honest trade. I may be smaller than you, but I’m smarter. I’m far, far smarter.

  For good measure, the boy wipes his eyes again, noting how curious it is that his sore head should cause such a ceaseless and silly flood of tears.

  DESPITE HER PROMISE TO JOURNEY home immediately, Martha remains rooted in place long after Kelman and his sergeant are gone. If she’s aware of the singularity of her circumstances, of her shoes resting on sloping and unfamiliar pine floorboards, of the whitewashed ceiling beams and the uneven plaster of the walls—or the fact that she is in Thomas’s chambers—she doesn’t reveal it. The paraffin lamp he left lighted shines upward into eyes that are staring not outward but inward. Harrison Crowther, she repeats in silence, not Georgine. The father tried to take his own life, rather than the mother. The flatness of Martha’s expression divulges nothing further than these simple pronouncements; what other opinions her brain is examining are as yet too unformulated to disclose.

  Then, as if an external force is impelling her into action, she relinquishes her statue-like pose, finds her mantle, sets her bonnet upon her head, and retrieves her gloves. The father, she reiterates, not the mother. The father, who was instructed to deliver his daughter’s ransom monies to a brothel—and who insisted Thomas keep his distance.

  By the time she hurries up the steps to Dutch Kat’s house, Kelman is concluding his conversation with the surgeon.

  “AND WHAT IS IT YOU wish to inquire of me, Miss Beale?” While the madam poses the question, she closes the door to her “private parlor,” a small and claustrophobic space whose entry is on the landing between the first and second floors. Martha suspects the room was once reserved for the storage of household linens and the housemaid’s carpet brooms and brushes, as it barely fits a desk with its account books and a narrow upholstered chair squeezed in beside it.

  Kat gestures Martha to the chair while she seats herself upon a three-legged stool that was hidden beneath the desk. “It’s an unusual hour for a grand lady such as yourself to be abroad—if my timepiece is correct.”

  Martha can feel the madam’s suspicious eyes appraising her. I must
appear precisely what I am, she decides, a woman who has just left a gentleman’s lodgings. The notion produces a sense of rebelliousness rather than guilt, so she smiles instead of bowing her head in humiliation.

  “I have no doubt your timepiece is correct,” she states, then continues with a lie so seamless it might as well be the genuine reason for her visit. “In truth, I chose the hour because I thought it might be less taxing for your establishment and therefore a better hour to pose a number of questions I need answered. I have every intention of paying you for your assistance. Let me be forthright, madam. I hope to ascertain some history of a girl from the streets I took into my home. She’s now eleven. Or so I believe—”

  “Not born into this house, I trust?” Kat interrupts. Martha can see both avarice and alarm splotching true pink on the rouged and powdered cheeks and knows the ruse is working.

  “Alas, I’m afraid I can’t answer that,” Martha says in a voice that sounds remarkably free of subterfuge. Her newfound proficiency at deception makes her want to laugh aloud; instead, her expression remains composed and serious. “With you to help me, madam, perhaps we can discover the truth together.”

  Kat thinks. Martha intuits that the fancy house’s owner is considering demanding her payment in advance but also questioning the wisdom of the action. It wouldn’t do to aggravate someone with the name of Beale. Especially a lady so obviously on a mission of charity. “I do my best watching over the girls who earn their livelihood while in my keeping,” she grumbles in her most wheedling tone, “but you can’t spend every waking moment guarding their activities. Some of them are sly, you see. They sneak off, saying they’re going to visit a relative they’ve never spoken of before. The next thing you know they pop back again, thin and exhausted and unwilling to work. So I suppose your ward could be one of those unwanted babes. Eleven years of age, you say?”

  “Yes.” Martha pauses again, considering what her next maneuver will be. She touches her reticule as if the activity were merely reflexive, but the gesture isn’t lost on Kat, who now begins to regain a little of her composure.

  “I don’t like inferring that a lady like yourself might be wrong about a subject, Miss Beale, but misunderstandings do occur,” says Kat. “If the child weren’t of this house, then there’s no need for us to be yammering away in the dead of night, is there?”

  “You’re right, of course.” Martha opens her purse, retrieving notes and two gold coins. “My apologies. In my haste to accomplish my task, I came out without additional funds. Perhaps you’ll accept this as an initial offering? In case my Ella was clandestinely born to one of your ladies.”

  Kat’s meaty hand covers the stash almost before Martha has finished speaking. “I’m glad to help in any fashion I can, Miss Beale. In fact, it does my heart proud to think that a child who might have been born to a lowly lass in my employ could rise in the world.”

  “Your thoughtfulness will be amply repaid,” Martha tells her with a feigned and courteous smile.

  “Let it be the child you reward, Miss Beale. That’s all I ask.” Kat sighs as though her deepest wish in the world has been granted.

  “And the lady who may have also aided her parent.”

  “If it pleases you, Miss Beale, who am I to argue with generosity of spirit? Ella is the girl, you said?”

  “She escaped from another fancy house in the vicinity because she believed a customer intended to harm her.”

  “Not last winter, was it?” Kat’s eyes widen until they’re no longer greedy slits sunk into her ample flesh but owlish orbs of fear. “When that lunatic was strangling the youngest girls and slicing out their tongues?”

  “Yes.” Martha leans forward in her chair while Kat simultaneously slumps back.

  “He was here,” she mutters at length. “Killed one of my most promising young pieces. It got the other girls in such a state: an investigation with a sergeant and that zealot Thomas Kelman who works for the mayor. You wouldn’t know the man, I imagine, but he appears when a crime is of consequence, as they say in the penny press. We were scared for our lives after that night. Thought the monster might return because he’d found such easy pickings here. So your ward had traffic with that devil? And survived to tell the tale? A charmed life, she must lead.”

  “Yes, she was very fortunate.” Martha explains no more, neither her own part in the rescue nor the murderer’s identity.

  “You never know, do you, Miss Beale, who’s going to walk through your door?” Kat states, still preoccupied with her anxious musings. “Gentlemen can be odd creatures and have peculiar tastes. You wouldn’t be familiar with such things, but it’s true.”

  Martha makes no answer while the madam begins to compose herself, fluttering a hand through her ringlets as if dispensing with the past were as easy as brushing off dirt. Something in her demeanor has changed, however. In place of servility, there’s resolution and vigor. Martha remembers everything Thomas has told her about the madam’s associations with the city’s crimes but can’t comprehend this altered behavior. “The name Ella is an unpromising start to this search, I’m sorry to tell you, Miss Beale. Those who work for me choose saucier sobriquets. Clients like a bit of spice when they’re paying for female companionship. Especially our more refined gentlemen. We’ve had Gabriellas and Josephines and the like. So no, I can’t imagine one of my girls dubbing her infant Ella. It would be too bland and ordinary, you see. In my experience my employees, like the gents they service, admire a modicum of illusion. Once they’ve established a taste for it, that is.”

  “Ah …” Martha realizes she’s underestimated her adversary. Kat is going to prove difficult to entrap. Even if Martha knew the correct questions, the madam probably would be adept at deflecting them. “So nothing as plain as Dora, either?”

  “Gracious me, no, Miss Beale! Theodora, perhaps. Although I doubt it will become popular anytime soon, don’t you? What with that young person of quality being murdered. May God rest her tortured soul.”

  Martha nods as if only considering the likelihood of Theodora becoming a fashionable name. “Your house was connected to that tragedy, was it not?”

  “By happenstance solely, I’m relieved to say. The gazettes and journals invented a number of melodramatic tales—how the criminal band chose the spot, how a beggar lad served as an accomplice, even how I conspired to obstruct justice. Well, that’s a reporter’s business, isn’t it? To make mountains out of ant heaps. I’m glad to tell you that nothing came from the palaver. My customers don’t appreciate the constabulary’s presence, so it’s fortunate my house never came under scrutiny from the authorities.”

  Oh! Martha thinks, the first falsehoods I’ve uncovered, but the discovery is followed by the recognition that she doesn’t know what course to follow next. How does Thomas manage this? she wonders. All I’ve managed to learn is that Kat is lying about his investigation. But wouldn’t that be her normal behavior? To pretend her house was as free from taint as possible? “It’s fortuitous your business wasn’t adversely affected. I imagine having the day watch in sight while you’re open for commerce might be detrimental.”

  Kat regards her. Martha can feel the scrutiny, the shrewd eyes probing hers, the brain gauging her dress, the time, the amount of money exchanged. The woman almost seems to sniff as though she were an animal scenting prey she couldn’t quite identify.

  “On the contrary, Miss Beale, some folks like a whiff of danger. I daresay, now that the situation is past, I may see a rise in trade. Especially among those who look the most staid and humdrum, or the better class of customer who fancies dipping into treacherous terrain.” With that, Kat lurches forward, leaning hard upon her desk. “Why are you here? If hunting a vanished mother is what you’re about, I’m sure you could find professionals to help you. Secret service gentlemen and such.”

  Martha considers her response. The madam may have been fooled by flattery and monetary gifts for a while, but she’s too clever for the trick to last. “You’re correct.
A secret service agency would better serve my purposes than this random inquiry. In fact…” Martha also bends over the desk, lowering her voice as if to share a private confidence. “I believe you may have guessed my motive. I’d hoped to discuss some of these ‘staid’ gentlemen to whom you refer. And their desire to ‘dip into treacherous terrain.’ “Martha’s ears burn as she speaks, but she keeps her speech level and prays her cheeks haven’t colored in mortification. “Some wellborn ladies keep lovers, as I’m sure you know. And it… it behooves us to be as pleasing as we can … and … to anticipate particular desires.”

  Kat barks out a laugh, then sits up straighter, smoothing her flounced and beribboned gown into a tighter line as if she’s contemplating a business acquisition. She’s now very much the mistress of her terrain. “So, you didn’t come a-hunting this Ella child’s mother? Or is your ward an invention, too?”

  “The girl is genuine, but I’m not looking for her natural parents at this moment.”

  Kat considers this answer. A grin stretches across her pudgy cheeks. “And did she or did she not escape the murderous fiend of which I just made mention?”

  “She did.”

  “Ahhh … Now I begin to understand. You should have been plain with me earlier, Miss Beale, and not squandered these late minutes in idle discourse. You want to learn the gory details, is that it?” Kat’s left eye winks with a sinister leer. “How I found our lass with her severed tongue lying on a pillow and all the blood soaking into the bed linens. Is that the sort of dark tale you’re after, mistress? Some folks crave those ugly facts, I know.”

  Martha stifles a gasp while forcing a conspiratorial smile. “No. Not those particular details … other unusual and disturbing fancies your clients might have. As I mentioned, I have a personal need to know more.”