Monument to the Dead

by Sheila Connolly

  “Well, I do, but . . .” Why was I hesitating? For one thing, I’d hoped to have both a little quality time with James, and some time to let my subconscious work on the pile of new information we had already assembled. For another, ever since some unpleasant events this past spring, I was reluctant to be alone in the building. I knew it was irrational, and I knew we had an adequate security system, and I knew that lightning seldom strikes twice, but still . . . “Can’t it wait until Monday?” I said plaintively.

  “Nell, there’s a killer out there. If you have access to information that could help us identify him . . .”

  I felt like a wimp, but I resented James putting me in such a position. “Where will you be?”

  It finally occurred to him why I was hesitating. “I can work from the Society if you’ll give me a desk and a phone. I’ve got my laptop in the car.”

  “In that case, no problem,” I said, much relieved. “You can drive.”

  “No problem,” he echoed.

  “By the way, remember I said I’d go to Edith’s funeral tomorrow. Will you be going?”

  “Why?”

  “Why should you go? How about, to honor Edith? To help your cousin Harby get through this?”

  James shook his head. “I’d be more useful at the office. Why are you going?”

  “Edith was a former Society board member, and I’m supporting Marty, who’s doing the bulk of the work setting this up. If you aren’t going to be there, I’ll report back on who did show up.” I realized I had no idea how many people that might be. Given Edith’s age, it could be only a handful, but given the many and varied Terwilliger connections, it could be a hundred, most of whom I probably didn’t know. I’d have to enlist Marty to complete the list, once she had Harby settled.

  “Are you finished eating?”

  My plate was empty, but I had been looking forward to a leisurely second cup of coffee. Not happening, apparently. “Let me put some appropriate clothes on. Give me fifteen.”

  “Hand me the front section of the paper, will you?” James said.

  I showered very quickly, dressed in something a cut above ratty blue jeans, and we set off for the Society. We both fell silent for the rest of the drive into the city.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Society and its massive collections are housed in a building more than a century old, built solidly of stone and brick, with high ceilings and large windows. It oozes history and permanence. It’s also a heck of a scary place to be alone in. Like any old building, it creaks and pops and shifts. There may even be some nonhuman presences—and I don’t mean vermin—although I’ve never met anyone or anything unexpected in the stacks. Well, maybe once.

  Which was why I was happy to have James watching my back and glad he hadn’t ridiculed my fears. I wondered if there was anything that scared him, a trained agent with a badge and a gun. If so, I hadn’t seen it yet. Or maybe I had: he was really suffering now, feeling that he was powerless to stop these murders from happening, due mostly to bureaucratic red tape. I could understand why the Bureau didn’t want individual agents haring off on their own; order and process were necessary in law enforcement or we’d be back in the Wild West. But James was a respected agent, one who had demonstrated good instincts and judgment in the past, and I thought his superiors might cut him a little slack if he said he thought he had a serial killer in his sights. As it was, my trusty duo and I were doing all the legwork, trying to put together enough credible information to persuade the FBI to take us seriously.

  At the top of the steps, I inserted my keys, pushed open the heavy metal door, and hurried to punch in the code to disarm the alarm system. James followed, making sure the door was shut behind us. Inside, no lights were on, and everything was silent; all was as it should be. I led the way to the elevator. While we waited, I looked up at Edwin, who as usual looked over my head and beyond me. James followed my glance, then smiled. “This is the guy who started all this?”

  “Yes, this is Edwin. I’m sure he never envisioned that his good intentions would result in a string of murders.”

  When the elevator arrived, I inserted the key that would allow us access to the third floor, which was not open to the public. We stepped out into more dim quiet.

  “Why don’t we set up in the development office?” I suggested, my voice sounding surprisingly loud to my ears. “That’s where all the files are.”

  “Your call,” James said.

  I led him into the offices at the bend of the hall and flipped on some lights. The room was lined along one wall with tall four-drawer filing cabinets—all full, as I knew. They held files on individual members and prospective members, board profiles, copies of grant guidelines and past applications, histories of the events we had held here, going back a decade, and more. The paper files went back much further than the electronic versions, but I decided to start with what we had about the Forrest Trust board members in our computer database.

  I sat behind our data administrator’s desk, booted up the computer, and logged in. Then I pulled out Shelby’s list of Forrest Trust board members. Now I recognized all the names, and could guess at their average age—easily past seventy, often past eighty. But as Louisa had suggested, being a Forrest trustee was not particularly demanding or difficult, so there was no reason for members to retire.

  It occurred to me, belatedly, that I could actually look at the terms of the original trust. I’d never paid much attention to Edwin Forrest, apart from saying hi to the mighty statue in the hallway, but maybe there was something in his will or the trust documents that might be useful. I ran a search online and came up with a link to a massive biography of the actor written not long after his death that included as appendices both the will and the legal document by which the city had established the Edwin Forrest Home under the terms of the will. Each document was blessedly short, and on first glance, clear and simple. In his will, Edwin had made a few small bequests, and the rest of his estate, which was substantial, went into trust for an institution to be named the Edwin Forrest Home. He had then outlined in detail what the purpose and makeup of the institution should be. There was one key clause, at least for our purposes:

  The said corporation shall be managed by a board of managers, ten in number, who shall . . . be chosen by the said trustees, and shall include themselves so long as any of them shall be living; and also the Mayor of the city of Philadelphia for the time being; and as vacancies shall occur, the existing managers shall from time to time fill them, so that, if practicable, only one vacancy shall ever exist at a time.

  I read on, charmed by Edwin’s lofty hopes for his actors’ home: he spoke of preserving the happiness of the inmates (an odd choice of term, by modern standards); offering lectures on all manner of subjects; promoting the love of liberty and country. He outlined plans to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday each year. As far as I knew, the trust had lived up to his wishes, until the world had spun too far to make his dreams relevant.

  The city’s charter, dated a year after Edwin’s death, copied his terms almost verbatim. The only real departure from the original plan was choosing to place his Home in his former residence, Springbrook, which he had sold but which happened to become available at an opportune time.

  So I had confirmed one piece of hard evidence: there should be ten trustees at any one time, plus the mayor. It seemed likely that the mayor played a purely symbolic role and had little involvement with management. According to the agreement, if the number of trustees fell too low, the mayor could request that the Orphans’ Court appoint replacements. I made a mental note to see if that process had been initiated, but if the trust was to be dissolved, it seemed kind of moot. And I really didn’t think the mayor had anything to fear from our unknown killer. Should I be warning judges for the Orphans’ Court? Ridiculous!

  With a sigh, I turned away from Victorian eloquence—or did I mean grandiloquence?—to look at our records for the trustees past and present. The digital files were not detailed
enough for my current purposes, as I had suspected, but Shelby had pulled information from a range of sources. The paper files more often included press clippings and records of personal conversations, which yielded more information about offspring. While I was at it, I checked for best estimates of what the trustees had contributed to the trust, and the answer was nothing in terms of dollars, merely a little of their time. No kids or grandkids could complain that the Forrest Trust was draining their inheritance.

  In short, I came up with nothing new. I had eliminated some possibilities, but we were no closer to pointing a finger at anyone than we had been when we started.

  But maybe I needed to dig deeper or go back further. I understood that there had been challenges to the will, most of them resolved quickly, and without financial settlement. Then, of course, there was his wife, with whom, as Shelby had said, Edwin had held vituperative and prolonged divorce proceedings that probably had left them both reeling, with their individual reputations in tatters. No doubt Edwin had made sure that her claims were long settled when he drew up the will.

  Was there someone else who might have had an interest? A century was a long time to hold a grudge, but at the Society we dealt in long periods. Maybe it was worth checking. As Shelby had also noted, only one claimant, a very distant cousin, had been given any sort of settlement; all other supplicants—and the bulk of those had been before 1900—had gone away empty-handed.

  I went back to the will once again. At the very end, Edwin had added a pair of codicils. He had given cash gifts to a few friends, and also to someone identified as “my beloved friend Miss Elizabeth, sometimes called Lillie Welsh, the eldest daughter of John R. Welsh, broker, of Philadelphia.” I had to wonder who Lillie Welsh was, and why she had inherited the bequest. In the second codicil, Edwin changed the cash legacy he’d originally left to his friend James Oakes (any relation to Louisa, I wondered? Would it matter?) to an annuity that would end with James’s death. Then he shifted that cash to Miss Elizabeth, making her total gift worth ten thousand dollars—a hefty sum now, and a fortune when the will was drafted. Now I was even more curious about Lillie. I wondered what a little genealogical snooping would turn up. As far as I knew, Edwin had had no children—at least, no legitimate children with his actress wife, Catherine. But from what I’d read about him, I could easily picture him as a randy devil, and he had traveled far and wide, no doubt with plenty of opportunities to “sow his seed.” Was Miss Lillie one such result? Was there any way to find out?

  I indulged my curiosity and looked up the 1870 census for Philadelphia. Yes, there was John Welsh, on Olive Street, with his wife, Elizabeth; eldest daughter, Elizabeth (twenty-nine at the time); a few more children; and two domestics. And there was Edwin at his home, with one sister and three domestics. Edwin had been worth a hefty $150,000 that year, or so said the census. I made a quick Internet detour, just out of curiosity, and found that the $150,000 Edwin declared would amount to well over $2 million in current dollars—not too shabby for an actor then.

  I resisted the impulse to dig any further into the mysterious Elizabeth Welsh. It would be a nice diversion, but there were more pressing issues to chase down.

  “You know, you’re sighing a lot,” James called out. He’d settled himself in Shelby’s office, where he had a clear view of me at the desk as well as down the hall. “No luck?”

  I stood up and stretched. “Not a lot. I’ve been looking at Edwin’s will and how the trust was set up, but it all seems clear enough. The trust is currently in violation of its own terms, now that so many of the trustees are dead, but I’m not sure what the implications of that are. It would probably mean a court battle to sort it out, by which time the remaining trustees would also be dead. I wonder what the internal process for disbursing funds is.”

  James came out as far as the doorway and leaned on the jamb. “Are you asking if someone has been skimming funds, hoping no one will notice?”

  “Or making sure by picking off the trustees, one by one? It’s possible. We’d need a forensic accountant to figure that out. What I need to do is talk to the attorney who’s been handling the trust, and Rodney told me that he’s the one who oversees the accountant, so I can kill two birds with one stone. I’ll see if I can set that up tomorrow.”

  “Is that a good idea?” James said. “If he is involved, you’d tip him off.”

  “Maybe, but since the firm handles the Society’s legal affairs, too, and we are custodians of parts of the Forrest collection, I have a perfectly legitimate reason to be asking about what’s happening with the trust.”

  “Maybe.” He didn’t seem satisfied.

  I didn’t pursue it. “Oh, and it seems the mayor of Philadelphia is an ex officio member of the board.”

  “And why does that matter?” James asked.

  “Because the mayor has the authority to force the trust to shut down, under the terms of the original trust.”

  “Oh, great. Maybe he’s eyeing the money for his next campaign.”

  “Somehow I doubt it would flow directly to his coffers. But maybe someone in his administration is looking to curry favor and thinks this would impress him? By the way, the trustees were not required to add any money to the trust, merely oversee it. So no motive for grabby grandkids. Skimming funds is a better bet.”

  Marty appeared in the hall doorway, and I jumped at the sound of her voice. “Any progress?”

  “Marty, what are you doing here?” I demanded. “And how . . . oh, never mind.” I had long since learned that Marty Terwilliger regarded the Society as her own personal kingdom, and that she had inherited her father’s and grandfather’s keys to almost any door in the place and knew all the alarm codes.

  She eyed me curiously. “A little jumpy, eh? I don’t blame you. But that’s neither here nor there. I came in a while ago to work on the Terwilliger collection, of course. What about you two?”

  “I filled James in on what we learned yesterday, and we were wondering if there were any offspring of the board members who might have a personal interest either in seeing the trust dissolved or in seeing it go on as before without too much poking around in the books. The short answer is no, unless granddad was siphoning off money.”

  “As far as I know, most of the board members were comfortably off,” Marty said, “so they wouldn’t have any need for funds. Of course, things can change fast. I suppose you have to consider it.”

  “I’m not sure I buy into it, either, but I thought it would be a good idea to check.” I leaned back in my chair. “Marty, we’re running out of places to look. Unless someone shows up at the funeral and lurks furtively around the edges.” I turned to James. “The remaining trustees seem to be clean. Their offspring have no vested interest in what happens with the trust. I can’t see the mayor hiring hit men to wipe out the trustees just so he could get his hands on a very small pot of money with a bunch of legal strings attached. Maybe the law firm will lose a little income if they’re no longer managing those funds, but they’re rock solid and they won’t miss it. What’re the odds that it’s a random stranger who thought that this would be a good group to mow down, just for the hell of it?”

  “Considering that most of the world doesn’t know this trust exists,” James said, “that’s unlikely. How about from your end? Any museum managers who are itching to get their hands on Edwin’s memorabilia?”

  “Like you said, I think most of the world doesn’t know it exists. And it would cost a pretty penny just to move the statue, which would eat into the trust proceeds.”

  He smiled. “I have it: you have a mad crush on Edwin, and you want to keep the statue here for yourself.”

  I smiled back. “Well, I do find him a rather entertaining figure, but I draw the line at cross-generational romances, especially when there’s more than a century involved—and one party is made of stone.”

  “You do know he’s dead, don’t you?” Marty piped up.

  I had another brainstorm. “Maybe he’s a zombie and
he’s risen from his tomb—which, by the way, isn’t all that far from here—because he’s afraid his name will be forgotten. James, would you recognize the signs of a zombie killing?”

  “Not offhand, but I’ll take that idea under advisement.”

  Marty and I burst out laughing, and James joined in as well. After our moment of levity, though, we all fell silent. It was Marty who finally said, “You know, it all sounds ridiculous, until you remember that several people are dead. That’s real.”

  “I know,” I said softly. I looked at James. “What now? Our only possible suspect so far is a youngish, educated, personable male who tried to visit Louisa. Not exactly a smoking gun. Whoever this is, is a very subtle serial killer, and has some unspecified connection to someone or something involved in the Forrest Trust. And wants them dead, for a motive we can’t see. Not a lot to go on.”

  “Wait—what young man?” Marty demanded.

  “Somebody tried to see Louisa after hours last night, and the night desk person turned him away, and then called me, bless him. His description was pretty vague, but it’s better than nothing.”

  “Young pleasant man,” Marty said, shaking her head. “Yeah, that helps a lot.”

  “Keep digging,” James replied, holding my gaze. “If it’s not random, which seems statistically improbable, then there must be some evidence somewhere.”

  “One thing we haven’t tried,” I said, talking more to myself than to the others, “is checking who has requested Forrest material from the collections over, say, the past year. I was going to ask Felicity to check for me. It would take a little time—it would be a manual search, because we use physical call slips, so the information is not digitized, although we’re working on that. But we do keep them. Maybe someone has been looking for something specific about Forrest. I’ll admit I’ve had trouble finding some documents that were his. It could be poor filing, or it could be that someone has been making off with them. That’s still too easy to do, as long as we don’t perform full-body searches of our patrons.”