Must the Maiden Die

by Miriam Grace Monfredo

  What was she to do with it? The small velvet reticule looped over her arm was not sturdy enough to bear its weight. Yet she could hardly just leave it there. It was not only valuable, it was also somewhat dangerous should a horseshoe or carriage wheel strike it. She transferred the paperweight to her left hand and, picking up the lantern with her right, again proceeded toward the house.

  As she crossed what had become a formal, brick drive, she spotted a small reddish glow—from a cigar or cigarette?—beside one of the Corinthian columns of the front porch, but then it disappeared. She gradually began to notice that she didn't smell lilacs and iris and lilies of the valley; the late spring had caused them to bloom concurrently, thus steeping the entire village of Seneca Falls in their perfume. No such scent was present here, nor were there any blossoming shrubs or flower beds around the house. Instead, thick evergreen yews crowded against the foundation walls.

  Then, coming from the darkness, a hand shot out to seize her left arm in a vise-like grip.

  Glynis braced her feet in an attempt, a futile one, to wrench loose from her captor, and in doing so nearly lost the paperweight. But when she managed to shakily lift the lantern, its light caught the glint of a gold belt buckle, which for no good reason she found reassuring. "Who's there? And please release my arm."

  The man let her go, but stood his ground. "What are you doing here?"

  Glynis could smell tobacco on his breath, he was that close to her, but her fear began to lessen, and she asked, "Are you the younger Mr. Brant?" This seemed a reasonable guess, as the man's pale, clean-shaven face looked fairly youthful.

  "Yes, I'm Erich Brant. I repeat, what are you doing here?"

  "I apologize for intruding, Mr. Brant. I'm Glynis Try—"

  "I know who you are," he interrupted, "but that doesn't answer my question."

  If he had recognized her, why did he seize her so roughly? And since she could see a half-smoked cigarette between the fingers of his left hand, he must have been on the porch and seen her approaching. In any event, he deserved an answer.

  "Constable Stuart asked me to come," she said. "He thought perhaps I might be of help. And I am sincerely sorry about your father." She had almost forgotten the crystal still clutched in her hand, and now, while her first impulse was to give it to him, some instinct made her conceal it in the folds of her skirt.

  Erich Brant gave her a curt nod. "I should probably apologize if I frightened you. I thought you were just someone intent on gawking. I imagine we'll have plenty of that in the next days."

  Glynis silently agreed he might be right. "I'm sure the constable will do what he can to prevent that," she began, then stopped as a door slammed, and a figure hurtled from the porch. She didn't see Zeph touch the ground more than once before he stood beside them.

  "Mr. Brant, I asked you to stay in the house," Zeph said brusquely. There was irritation on his face, dark as ebony wood beside the fair one of Erich Brant.

  Erich's face also held irritation when he said, "I came outside for a smoke, deputy. I assume I'm not a prisoner in my own home?"

  With the sound of horses now coming up the drive, Zeph was spared the obvious answer: Because Erich Brant's father had been murdered, the son was indeed a prisoner, at least until Cullen Stuart had finished questioning him.

  Moments later, the black Morgan, and a roan mare that Glynis recognized as belonging to Abraham Levy, were reined in beside the porch. Dr. Neva Cardoza-Levy's bobbed brown hair, damp with perspiration, clung to her forehead and cheeks, and though she looked tired, Glynis saw her dismount in her usual brisk manner. This was remarkable in itself, for Neva had lived most of her life in New York City and had never been astride a horse until several years ago. But she had no patience, she'd said, with the time and effort involved in readying a carriage, so had learned to ride despite her intense distrust of horses, describing them as "skittish equine dolts."

  Cullen, in an aside to Glynis as he tied his and Neva's reins to the hitching post, muttered, "Shouldn't have taken me this long to get here. But the doc was already abed and not eager about coming, to put it mildly."

  "I wouldn't imagine so," Glynis said under her breath. "And she's not the only one."

  Cullen obviously chose to ignore this. And Neva, with a quick glance sideways at Glynis that said she'd overheard the exchange, nodded shortly to the others and headed for the porch, carrying her black leather valise.

  "Just a minute!" Erich Brant said to her sharply, gesturing at the valise. "What are you planning to do with that?"

  Cullen started to say something, but Neva cut him off with, "I don't know that I'll do anything with it, Mr. Brant. But where I go, it goes!" Before Erich could further protest, Neva turned on her heel and marched up the porch steps.

  "Doctor," Cullen called, "before you go inside, there are some questions I want to put to Mr. Brant here."

  Neva paused on the porch and waited.

  Glynis held out the crystal paperweight to Cullen, telling him, "I found this back there at the edge of the drive."

  Glynis saw in his eyes the same incredulity she had experienced.

  Erich said, "That paperweight is my father's— he brought it back from a business trip to Europe."

  "Was it made by the Baccarat company?" Glynis asked him, reasoning she should know as much as possible about her serendipitous discovery.

  When Erich shrugged, Cullen asked her, "You found that along the drive?"

  After Glynis nodded, Cullen gave her a quizzical look, then motioned for her to go with Neva.

  Erich immediately objected, "I think my family's had about all the intrusion and questioning we can take for one night, Stuart. Why can't this wait until morning?"

  "Because your father's been murdered, Mr. Brant," Cullen replied in a conversational tone, although Glynis knew that the faint emphasis he'd put on Mister meant he was becoming provoked. "Murder makes privacy next to impossible—especially for your family."

  There had been no overt note of irony in Cullen's voice, but Glynis, growing steadily more uncomfortable, had heard it there nonetheless and could only assume that Erich Brant had heard it too. For a moment it seemed as if he would refuse to cooperate, but then with a slight twitch of his shoulders, he went up the steps to the porch and leaned against a pillar, his arms crossed over his chest.

  Cullen turned to Zeph, said something that Glynis couldn't hear, and a minute later the deputy mounted the Morgan and turned it toward the drive. As Zeph rode off, Cullen started up the steps. Glynis stayed where she was, hoping to think of some excuse to avoid going inside. The dark blue shingled exterior of the house had been given cream-colored trim that should have made it more hospitable looking. The heavy, elaborate dormers, however, which had been constructed like brows over windows that arched toward the roof line, had created the stare of a many-eyed gargoyle. She tried to push aside as fanciful her sense of foreboding, but her mind kept harking back to Macbeth's castle of death.

  As she looked up, a curtain suddenly fell across an open upstairs window, and the light behind it—a light not there some minutes before—was extinguished. The secretive gesture chilled her, suggesting as it did that someone who preferred not to be seen was furtively watching and listening.

  "Are you coming?" Cullen said to her over his shoulder.

  "I guess I don't have much choice," she answered. Still holding the heavy crystal paperweight, she reluctantly climbed the porch steps.

  6

  The time at length arrives, when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished.

  —Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818

  When Glynis reached the top porch step, Cullen motioned her on into the house. To refuse would mean arguing with him in public, so she left him with Neva and Erich Brant, passing beneath a fanlight window as she stepped over the threshold. This brought her into a spacious foyer leading to a massive, oak staircase and a first-floor
corridor that resembled a dark tunnel. What illumination there was in the foyer came from a glass-globed lamp on a low table, its light too dusky for her to pick out details in the framed daguerreotypes hung on the wall. After she set down the crystal paperweight beside the lamp, its facets reflected a warm golden glow. This provided small comfort, for while moonlight as white as frost crept through a window at the far end of the hallway, the darkness around her felt oppressive.

  The instruments of darkness tell us truths, quoth the hapless Banquo to Macbeth. Glynis decided that if her memory sent her one more of these macabre passages, she would leave here forthwith, regardless of Cullen.

  The bare marble floor seemed to amplify the click of her heels, distinctly announcing her coming to any who might care to know. And perhaps someone did care, because ahead of her Glynis saw the back of a hoop-skirted figure disappearing down the corridor.

  To her right was a castle-proportioned dining room, the only thing in it clearly visible being a silver tea service that shone resplendent on an extended mahogany table; around it lurked the shadows of high-backed chairs, but Banquo's ghost was mercifully absent. To her left was what must be the front parlor. Glynis paused before entering it, and then, with strong misgivings, went through an ornately framed archway. She stopped short just inside the lamp lit room.

  For a long moment she feared that she had somehow stumbled back into the woods, for in every corner of the parlor stood tall, thickly leaved rubber plants and long-fronded ferns in brass tubs, these set amidst statuary of nude nymphs and satyrs strategically draped with English ivy. Underfoot lay a thick, floral-patterned carpet.

  The wallpaper, what little of it wasn't concealed by massive gilt-framed paintings of flowers, consisted of dark green stripes alternated with thinner stripes of pink roses. Overstuffed couches to either side of the marble fireplace were upholstered in rose-patterned velvet, a number of plump chairs were covered with yellow and pink floral-decorated damask, and over the windows hung draperies of green velvet fringed and tasseled with pink silk, looped back and held by brass sunflower medallions. Numerous footstools bloomed with needlepoint chrysanthemums, throw pillows with needlepoint poppies. A nest of small tables held runners of crocheted daisies. Overhead, a candlelit brass chandelier dripped with leaf-shaped crystal baubles, and under it stood a round table draped with a damask cloth featuring pink and white peonies.

  The dizzying, overall effect, Glynis thought, was much as if a deranged gardener had tried to compensate inside the house for the absence of flowers outside. Admittedly, the furnishings only accentuated what had been for some time a popular decorating trend, but she couldn't help longing for her own relatively Spartan bedroom. And as a clock buried somewhere in the foliage chimed the hour of ten, she again reproached herself for allowing Cullen to send her to this house in the first place.

  Because of the cluttered furnishings, Glynis took another long moment trying to sort out individual items; the candle lighting made it difficult to tell if there was anyone else in the room. Then the sound of a smothered cough brought her gaze to a rosewood chair and the widow of Roland Brant. The woman sat stiffly upright with a pink crocheted afghan over her knees, and but for the black bodice of her gown, she might have been a chameleon, so well did she blend into her garden surroundings. Something stirred on the afghan, the cough apparently bringing to life a white, long-haired cat curled at the woman's side, and which Glynis had mistaken for a mohair pillow. The cat raised its head briefly to blink copper eyes at its mistress and received for its exertion a pat from a slightly palsied hand. It ignored Glynis altogether.

  Helga Brant, given her repeated illnesses, should have appeared frail. But Glynis thought the woman in some way, perhaps by her erect bearing, did not give the impression of frailty, although she did look wafer-thin. Her complexion was the yellowish white of old lace and her graying, ash-brown hair, swept back into a chignon, was caught in a black-threaded net caul. She lacked the rounded, hunched shoulders and slackened skin of the chronically ill, yet it was commonly believed that Mrs. Brant was a semi-invalid who seldom left the house. When she did venture out, as for instance to visit Emma's dress shop, she was accompanied in a four-passenger brougham coach by one or two of her servants. Glynis recalled Emma once saying that Mrs. Brant seemed to have no difficulty standing for the time it took a gown to be fitted or a hem to be pinned.

  The widow was now dressed in a high-necked, somber black bombazine gown. As befitted mourning, it was black unrelieved by so much as a trace of white lace at the sleeves or throat, or by even the silver chain with its small sterling and seed pearl cross that Glynis had seen her wearing at all other times.

  "Mrs. Brant, please accept my condolences," she said, crossing the room to extend her hand. "Constable Stuart asked me to come in case there was something I might do for you."

  Her hand was taken in a surprisingly strong grasp. The grasp instantly loosened as if Helga Brant had momentarily forgotten, and then remembered, her ailing condition.

  The faded hazel eyes that looked up at Glynis were dry, and when Mrs. Brant said, "That is kind of you, Miss Tryon," her words carried more than the usual hint of a German accent. "The servants are naturally rather unsettled," she went on, "but I believe they might make tea if you would care for some."

  Glynis didn't know what to think. Should she be reassured by the widow's display of remarkable self-control, or be concerned that Helga Brant might be in shock, and beyond comprehending the violent death of her husband? She was about to decline the offer of tea when Mrs. Brant reached for the braided cord that would summon a servant, and gave it a tug.

  "Maybe the lady would prefer something stronger, Mother," said a male voice at the far corner of the parlor. The voice was accompanied by the chink of glass.

  Startled, Glynis spun round to see Helga Brant's younger son, Konrad, standing at a richly carved mahogany pier table. Ash-brown hair curled over his linen collar, and while his coloring was similar to that of his mother, in voice and posture he resembled almost exactly his blond brother, Erich. Glynis, in fact, had initially been sure it was Erich who had spoken.

  At the moment, Konrad was pouring into a tumbler what the bottle's label showed to be the blended dark whiskey called Kentucky bourbon.

  "Care to join me, Miss Tryon?" Not waiting for a reply, Konrad briefly raised his glass to her before throwing back his head and downing the bourbon in several swallows. "Damn it," he unexpectedly muttered, "if Kentucky votes to secede, I'll have to stop drinking its bourbon. Certainly a deplorable hardship."

  Glynis couldn't sense which to him would be more of a hardship: Kentucky's secession or the want of its bourbon. Or possibly it was both, because bringing the tumbler down hard on the table, Konrad stretched out his right hand again for the bottle. "Once more for the Union and President Abe!" he forcefully declared.

  "Konrad, I'd prefer that you didn't indulge," Helga Brant objected, in a firmer tone than Glynis would have thought her capable.

  "That's right, Konrad, my sweet," came another voice, this belonging to a shapely, dark-haired woman, probably in her early thirties, Glynis guessed, who had just entered the parlor. She had slipped sideways through the doorway, to accommodate her wide, black hoop skirt. In so doing, she did not seem to note, or care to note, that her revealing neckline, not quite in keeping with the occasion, had edged down to reveal still more.

  She waved the wine glass in her hand at the bourbon bottle, purring to Konrad, "Mama thinks you've had enough of that. Remember, dear boy, you must mind your mama!"

  Konrad ignored them both by pouring himself another generous measure of bourbon.

  The woman, whom Glynis had belatedly recognized as Erich's wife, moved with lithesome grace to the table, where she brushed her hand slowly over her brother-in-law's cheek. And while the voluminous skirt made it impossible for her to brush any more than a hand over him, the gesture was clearly intended to be intimate. When it evoked no visible response from Konrad, his sister-i
n-law smiled up at him in a faintly taunting manner, and reached around him for a decanter.

  The decanter might have contained wine, although Glynis was too distracted by the unnatural atmosphere of the room to pay much heed. She had the sudden notion that these people were not the immediate relatives of a recently deceased man, but were a company of actors, or impersonators hired by a family too distraught to face outsiders.

  Erich's wife now looked over at Glynis with lustrous eyes, dark as jet beads in the ivory oval of her face. "I don't believe we've ever been formally introduced, Miss Tryon."

  "No, Tirzah, probably not," said Konrad. "I doubt you'd have much occasion to visit a library." He turned to Glynis, saying, "Tirzah doesn't read, you see. But no one minds this defect, particularly not my brother, for whom beauty is its own excuse for being. A mawkish defense if ever I heard one—and who was it wrote that?"

  Glynis, confused by this abrupt turn, and by the sardonic half-smile that he directed at her with brows raised in question, responded reflexively, "It was Emerson." Then felt a flush rise as, to her embarrassment, this earned a prolonged look of appraisal from Konrad.

  "Ah, yes, Emerson," he said, fingering a small, metallic American flag pinned to the lapel of his box coat. "And happily, unlike our Tirzah, you evidently read, Miss Tryon—which must be a decided advantage for a librarian."

  Again came the smile that was not a smile, and this time Konrad lifted his glass to his sister-in-law before tossing back the drink as he had the previous. Glynis wondered how long he had been at this.

  Tirzah, having cheerfully ignored him, now said to Glynis, "As you see, Miss Tryon, my brother-in-law has very bad manners. Would you care for a glass of port? Surely my venerable mother-in-law won't object to that! Then again she might, so we shall all have to beg her forgiveness."