by Anna Maclean
I rose, and could not resist a smile of victory.
He rose, too, keeping his desk between us, as if he needed restraint.
“Maybe her eyes and ears and concentration failed her for a moment,” Cobban offered.
“I think not. She is elderly, but her faculties are sharp enough to witness a public quarrel.”
“And she is not so busy selling cakes that she would miss an event of that nature were it to take place near her kiosk and in a manner that caught the attention of others,” Sylvia added.
His blush had died down, but now there was harshness in the set of his mouth, and he tapped impatiently on his desk.
“Miss Alcott, do you really believe him innocent? What is he to you, that you seek to defend him?” A brief flash of jealousy in Cobban’s placid blue eyes . . . and then composure again, official indifference, professional distance. I thought, at that moment, that he was a man of great passion, and such men can easily be moved to violence.
I took a deep breath before answering his question.
“He is innocent till proven guilty,” I answered. “That is what he is to us all.”
WE WALKED BACK to Beacon Hill. The first stars were already out, and clouds moved over a slender moon, making of the night a theatrical event of flickering light and shadows that came and went. We could hear cats rustling through the hedges, dogs barking as their toenails tapped on the cobbles. Sounds of a piano, a polka, came dimly through the darkness. Sylvia and I passed a house where voices were raised, a man shouting, a woman weeping. . . .
“What course now, Louisa?” Sylvia asked.
“Now we must determine the condition of that marriage,” I answered. “It is not enough to speculate on individual natures, since once merged in matrimony, nature changes or is at least enhanced. We must discover Mr. Wortham’s nature, and Dot’s, and the nature of their union.” I gazed up at the moon, which was playing a disappearing act with the clouds.
“Preston is vain and foolish,” Sylvia said. “Dorothy was gentle and, I must say it, a little slow, and in rich abundance of those instincts termed maternal. Their union was based on her love and his greed, with perhaps a little friendship thrown in.”
“You simplify, Sylvia. We must both try to look past the superficial and examine the subtleties.”
“I am trying, I’m sure. But it is my nature to take things at face value.”
“Ah, Sylvie. You don’t yet even know yourself. I predict that when matured, when tempered with time and experience, you will look back and see yourself for what you already are . . . a woman of many layers, many purposes.”
“You describe yourself, Louy.”
CHAPTER TEN
The Weird Sisters Plot a Voyage
THE NEXT DAY I called on Edith and Sarah Brownly and their aunt, Alfreda Thorney, at the Brownly Beacon Hill mansion. It was not far from my own modest home, but the few blocks made a firm demarcation, a Mason-Dixon line, separating the very wealthy from the not wealthy. Each step from my own little Pinckney Street home toward the Brownly home brought forth disconcerting change: The houses grew larger until finally they were nothing less than palatial mansions; the front gardens grew more elaborate, sprouting daily trimmed yews shaped into peacocks or green versions of the Mayflower; the servants dashing to and fro grew more numerous and more finely uniformed.
By the time I arrived, I felt that I might as well have arrived on another planet. Neither Sylvia nor I had often visited Dorothy at home, though the Brownly family had regular calling hours on Wednesday afternoon. Even Dorothy had been uneasy in that large, intimidating redbrick version of a Georgian town house.
In a way, I had arrived in an unknown world: The information that the Brownlys owned shares in a plantation had affected me deeply, and now I could not but help view this manifestation of wealth as the most ill-begotten of gains, since it had been won upon the backs of slaves. Till that news had been proffered, I had believed the very rich Brownlys, though eccentric and often self-absorbed, were capable of reasoning and moral reliability. Now I had my doubts, and those doubts affected the interview that was to follow.
The Brownly sisters and aunt were at home, the lacecapped servant who answered the door announced solemnly. My coat was taken but not my hat. This was to be a formal call, which meant it must be limited to half an hour or less. The rules of etiquette were very strict on that matter.
The three women sat in the front parlor before a blazing fire, though the afternoon was not all that chilly. This was one of the prerogatives of the rich: a fire even when not needed. They wore black crepe for Dorothy, and had replaced their pearl earrings with jet, but that seemed the extent of any grief they felt or exhibited for their sister and niece.
When I arrived at the front parlor, Sarah was pasting last summer’s pressed violets and daisies into a scrapbook. She looked rather pretty and girlish, with dried violets strewn over her lap and a rose petal stuck to her cheek, though the dab of white paste on her nose somewhat spoiled the effect. Edith was polishing a pair of walking boots to a high sheen. She rubbed with such gusto that she reminded me of those curious movements of locomotive machinery. Alfreda Thorney was reading a novel, which she hastily buried under a pillow when she saw me, just announced, standing in the doorway. Women in mourning generally did not read the popular press, but devoted their time to sermons and uplifting poetry.
The overall impression was that these three had quite successfully managed to restrain their burden of grief for the deceased Dot.
“Oh, Louisa, isn’t it exciting!” Sarah cooed, looking up from her scrapbook and pushing her little spectacles further down her nose so she might look over them. “We are to go to the Matterhorn! The Matterhorn! I have always wanted to go to France. It was so unfair of Mother to take Dorothy. . . .”
“That is exciting,” I commented, still standing, for no one had offered me a chair. “Perhaps, though, you should visit Switzerland as well, since I believe that is where you will find the Matterhorn.”
“No. Really? Edith, you never . . . Oh, you are such a tease to have let me go on like that, believing we were to visit France when all along you knew . . . Oh, you are a tease.” And she threw down her little paste brush in a temper, so she could wag her finger at her grinning sister. I knew from my own experience in service that the dab of paste on the polished table would take half an hour of polishing to remove, but since Sarah did not even know that tables must be polished but were looked to by servants . . . Oh, spoiled, spoiled!
“We shall visit France, too,” was Edith’s cool response.
“I am relieved,” I said—and if there was a tone of irony and disappointment in my voice, the weird sisters did not hear it—“that you are not overcome with grief.”
Edith looked up from her boot polishing and pushed her spectacles higher up on her nose. “We never liked you, Miss Alcott. I feel free to break this connection, now that your friendship with Dorothy has been severed,” she said in her deep, booming voice.
“Now, girls,” lectured Alfreda Thorney, shifting on the sofa and rearranging the pillows over her buried novel. “Remember your manners.”
“Thank you for your honesty.” I addressed myself to Edith. “And for the courtesy you showed me while Dorothy was alive. It was a convenient pretense that we enjoyed each other’s companionship, and it pleased your sister. May I sit?”
“Do get to the point, Miss Alcott. We are rather pressed for time. There is much packing to be done.”
“Oh, Edith.” Sarah sighed. “Try to be a little friendly. Miss Alcott, would you like us to call Mama? She is just upstairs in the nursery with Agnes. Will you take tea?”
“No tea, thank you.” I chose a straight-backed wooden chair far from the fire, for the day was damp, though warm, and my dress dripped ever so slightly. I had no desire to stain one of the formidable velvet-upholstered chairs or settees. At my own home there would have been towels and hot-water bottles to greet me, and no concern at all for a chair;
but this was the Brownly mansion, where lace tablecloths, knotted rugs, carved chairs, bouquets of ferns and hothouse flowers seemed of more consequence than people. I shivered, and not from the dampness. I carefully turned in my chair so that I might see all three women at once.
“There is no need to disturb Mrs. Brownly,” I answered mildly. “I have already offered her my condolences. As I now offer them to you. How is Agnes, by the way? Is her congestion improving?”
“Agnes is much too delicate, as is often the case with these change-of-life babies,” said Edith coldly. “How Mother ever—”
“Now, Edith, you know women have no say in these things. We must take as God sends. . . .”
“Bollocks,” muttered Edith, resuming her boot polishing.
I stifled a smile. I agreed with Edith on that issue. The day before I had shown Queenie a packet of sheaths, and given her instructions on their use . . . instructions that were all too often pointless for girls such as Queenie, whose babies began in nights of forced rather than willing sex.
I could not discuss such matters with the Brownly girls, of course. If legs could not even be referred to in polite society except as vague and sexless limbs, how to refer to other, more secret parts of the body? No, and that was not the purpose of my visit.
“I hope Agnes grows stronger,” I said, pretending to look at a vase of roses but surreptitiously studying the women, waiting for their response. “It would be heartbreaking for you to lose two sisters.” I leaned closer to the vase and inhaled the fragrance.
Sarah started, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to her.
“Dorothy had grown apart from us,” Edith explained in her strange, booming voice. “We hardly thought of her as a sister anymore.”
Alfreda Thorney stared into the flames, a dreamy expression on her face, and said nothing.
“Because of her marriage to Mr. Wortham?” I asked, again studying the vase of roses.
“Oh, ever so long before that, when . . .” Sarah bubbled, but did not continue. A look from Edith made her clamp her lips in a thin, tight line.
“She was an unsatisfactory sister,” Edith said.
“And an unsatisfactory niece,” Alfreda Thorney added. “I do not believe in harsh punishment, but . . .” And she, too, finished in midsentence. “Well, some girls mature too soon for their own good. Are you sure you will not take tea, Miss Alcott? Will you be staying long?”
“No tea, thank you. I’ll not stay long.” When had this cold distance between Dorothy and her siblings begun? Why? Could I discover the roots of this enmity in the ten remaining minutes allowed for this very formal visit? Oh, the deviousness of society’s ridiculous rules on paying afternoon calls! A day, a week, a month would not be long enough to reveal the heart of this bizarre family. I tried to imagine my beloved Anna, so far away in Syracuse, saying of me, “She is unsatisfactory.” No. God willing such enmity would never exist among the Alcott brood.
Edith put down one boot, now polished to a high sheen, and picked up its mate. I was now used to the heat of the room, and the clutter, and noted with surprise that the sole of that just-polished boot was quite worn. Surely Edith would want new boots?
With that thought came other perceptions about Edith. Her gown was quite out of fashion, and while Edith was not the kind of woman to pay undue attention to the mode of ribbons and frills, surely she knew that her black crepe was moth-eaten in the sleeves? For a woman of great wealth, she was, when closely examined, rather shabby.
“And now Dorothy’s quarterly funds will be divided among you, I understand?” I kept my voice low. “I suspect that will add to your funds for a trip abroad.” I knew I had broken one of the cardinal rules of society, which was never to mention income, bank accounts, or family finances, but the circumstances of my visit and the need to investigate Dot’s death surely trumped the artificial code of the drawing room. Yet, even as I thought this, I realized that about the only people who would agree were my parents—the Brownlys had always acted as if they believed the rules of politesse superseded in moral importance the Ten Commandments and indeed the golden rule as well.
“Considerably,” Edith admitted, so unused to hearing this question that she answered without thinking.
Sarah, for the first time, blushed and looked startled. “Why, Edith, I never thought . . . Are we to travel on poor Dorothy’s allowance?”
Edith impatiently threw down the rag she had been using on her boots. “Yes. Don’t you think we are entitled?” She grew silent again, casting an evil glance at me.
I stared into the flames of the hearth, holding my breath, waiting.
“Well, there will be so much gossip about us now that Dorothy has gotten herself murdered, I’m sure this will be brought up, too,” Edith continued. “Several years ago, when Dorothy turned eighteen, she inherited an uncle’s share of the Colby Company, as well as a landholding. In the South. That stupid man left a most curious and inconvenient will, indicating that . . .” Edith faltered.
“He did not believe Edgar would provide suitably for Dorothy, after Father passed on,” Sarah said. “Isn’t that strange?”
“Sarah!” exclaimed Aunt Alfreda, shocked to the core by this most unsuitable path the conversation had taken.
The Colby Company, as I and most of the country knew, was one of the largest cotton mills in New England, and the managers of it were famous for their proslavery position. It was not uncommon for Northerners to own Southern property and the slaves that accompanied such property. But that information, along with insane aunts kept in the attic, uncles with gambling debts, and the first child that arrived five months after the honeymoon, was never, ever spoken of in polite society.
“Dorothy became the major shareholder.” Edith picked up an already shining boot and began polishing again with such vigor that I feared the leather might disintegrate.
“Then Dorothy would also have insisted on rearranging the management of your Southern property,” I said quietly.
Of course Dorothy would do that. Of course the sisters would resent her, I realized.
The room grew so still I was sure the three women had stopped breathing and were about to swoon.
Simple Sarah was the first to break the silence. “She would have, I’m sure, except . . . well, there was the accident. She died. We had kept the Colby secret so long. Edgar kept saying, ‘Don’t tell Dorothy, don’t tell Dorothy’. So we didn’t.” Sarah, with an additional rose petal now clinging to the other cheek, smiled disingenuously. “I wonder how she ever found out.”
“It was Wortham, of course.” Edith glowered. “Sniffing around the lawyers and bankers. He found out and told Dorothy. Just as he has apparently thought fit to speak of family business with Miss Alcott.”
“Surely Louisa isn’t interested in all this,” Alfreda bristled. “No young woman should be. Really. Most inappropriate. Louisa, I see you no longer wear a wide-brimmed hat but a cloche. Do tell me . . .”
The three younger women ignored Alfreda’s attempt to steer the conversation into more genteel waters.
“But really, I never thought we were to travel on Dorothy’s allowance; it seems . . . ghoulish.” Sarah, still pouting, shivered, and the two rose petals fell from her cheeks to her lap, where they joined the strewn violets. She brushed them away, onto the carpet, and I watched them fall onto a bare patch where years of footsteps had obliterated both pattern and texture.
“It is only fair that we use whatever was left of Dorothy’s income,” Edith insisted coolly. “Unless you would prefer to give the money to a charity. The Charles Street Home for Unwed Girls, perhaps?”
“Edith!” Sarah exclaimed. “Wicked women should be punished, not aided. Yes, perhaps Dorothy would want us to have her allowance, to see all those cities and sights in Europe she saw with . . .”
“With Mr. Wortham,” I finished, deciding to do away with any further subtlety and get to the point. “Tell me, Sarah, do you think Mr. Wortham could have murdered Dorothy?”
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“Well, the police certainly think so. I’m sure they are ever so much cleverer than I. Close the curtain, Aunt Alfreda, will you? Those gloomy clouds are upsetting,” Sarah complained.
Alfreda Thorney rose and did as she was bidden.
“But do you think so?” I persisted, leaning forward now that the Brownly sisters’ faces were partially obscured. Indeed, most of the room was now obscured.
“No. He is foolish and greedy, certainly, but I never saw him as a violent man,” Sarah said, gently closing her scrapbook and brushing the leftover leaves and flowers onto the carpet for the maid to sweep up. “He could be sweet sometimes.”
“Be quiet, you foolish girl,” Edith muttered.
“I will not, Edith.” Sarah sat up straighter, pleased with herself. “I am free to speak, am I not? No, Louisa, Dorothy sent us letters and cards when she was traveling and she never complained that Mr. Wortham was cruel. Just the opposite, I would say. She complained that he would not leave her alone with her thoughts, that he wanted to know all her emotions, all her reflections, all the stories of her girlhood. He was jealous that she had been to Rome before he could take her there. No, she never complained that he was violent toward her; just the opposite.”
“Dorothy wrote all that to you?” Edith looked devastated. “I did not know about this correspondence. She never wrote to me. . . .”
“I suspect she knew you would not write back, Edith,” Sarah said in a small voice.
“I understand husbands can be quite possessive in that way.” Alfreda Thorney clasped her thin hands together in her lap. “I once considered—”