Murder at Marble House (A Gilded Newport Mystery)

by Alyssa Maxwell

  “I thought I would marry Winty,” Consuelo said without looking up. “I believed it with all my heart until Mother blatantly informed me otherwise. Winty believed it, too.” She glanced up. “He’d have been a good catch, I think. Not much money, relatively speaking, but a good man from a good family.”

  I nodded. She was speaking of Winthrop Rutherfurd, an older gentleman past thirty, whom she had known most of her life as his New York family belonged to the same circles as the Vanderbilts. In many ways the Rutherfurds boasted an even more sterling pedigree that could be traced back to Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch director-general of New Amsterdam before the city was sold to the British and renamed New York. Many families like the Rutherfurds considered the Vanderbilts to be upstarts—new money gotten through trade. But poor Winty didn’t have a title and the family coffers had been a bit depleted through the years, which in Aunt Alva’s book made him a most unsuitable suitor.

  “I could have accomplished just as much as Winty’s wife as the Duke’s,” Consuelo went on stubbornly. “After all, the Duke’s hardly got any money either. It’ll all be mine. Why couldn’t I take that same money and settle in New York with a man I . . . I . . .”

  I stroked my palm up and down her back, my fingers tripping over the tiny buttons securing her frock. I was searching for something consoling to say when she spoke again. “Winty wasn’t good enough for Mother, and now, apparently, I’m not good enough for Winty.”

  My hand went still. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, Emma, he’s dropped me completely. Just stopped trying to see me.”

  “How can you know that? Maybe he’s been here and turned away. For all you know, he might come calling every day.”

  Consuelo was shaking her head. “It’s true, Mother wouldn’t have let him in. She’s been sending away all of my friends ever since we arrived in Newport. B-but Gertrude came by a few days before her coming-out ball. Mother didn’t dare turn her away for fear of what Father and Uncle Cornelius would do. Gertrude wanted to apologize for the fact that I couldn’t be invited to the ball, not with Mother and Father’s divorce and all.” She paused for a shaky breath and dabbed tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. The fingers of her other hand combed through Muffy’s lush fur. The cat closed her eyes, then opened one and winked up at me. For an instant I was reminded of Alva, gratifying her own ambitions while selfishly ignoring her daughter’s pain.

  “Did Gertrude say something about Winty?” I prodded gently.

  “She said . . . he’d b-been seen at the Casino and the Yacht Club and all a-around town—laughing and indulging and h-having a splendid t-time. While I’ve been here, trapped in this room I loathe with every fiber of my being.”

  At that she broke into a fit of tears and choking sobs. She slumped onto my shoulder again and reached her arms around me, holding on for all she was worth.

  “Oh, Consuelo, darling, I’m sure Winty isn’t having a splendid time.” I stroked her back as I tried to reassure her. “It’s just that men behave differently than we do. They throw themselves into their daily activities when they’re unhappy. It’s their way of keeping their minds off their distress. And I’m sure he’s very distressed right now.”

  She poked her head up from my shoulder, turning her tear-streaked face to mine. “You really think so?”

  I nodded.

  “Oh, but still. It’s impossible for us to ever be together. Mother will never allow it. She’d rather see me dead than give in.”

  “No, darling, that isn’t true.”

  She was inconsolable, so I held her and let her cry herself out while Muffy, who had become squished between us, crawled off her mistress’s lap with a grumbling meow and headed for the beribboned pillows propped against the headboard.

  Some ten minutes later Consuelo’s tears showed signs of slowing, so I slid my hands to her shoulders and set her at arm’s length. “Listen to me, Consuelo. You are a beautiful, strong, intelligent young woman, and whatever happens, you will prevail.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “I’m positive of it. Now, you can go into this marriage with tears and regrets, or you can stride into it with your head held high and your shoulders squared. Do you know what my aunt Sadie would say to you?”

  Consuelo shook her head and sniffed, but her chin inched higher than it had been.

  “She’d say marry the damned duke if you have to,” I improvised, wondering if Aunt Sadie would have said anything of the sort. The twitching of my cousin’s lips when I swore encouraged me to continue. “She’d say marry him and be every inch a duchess. Let him and everyone else know you’re a force to be reckoned with. Map your battleground and determine a way to be happy in the life you must lead. Soldier on. That’s what Aunt Sadie would say.”

  “I always liked your aunt Sadie,” Consuelo murmured with a weak chuckle, “no matter what Mother said about her.”

  “I can only imagine what that was.” I grinned at her. “Come now. Let’s freshen you up and go downstairs. Let’s show everyone you’re not going to hide away in your room anymore. Let’s show them Consuelo Vanderbilt isn’t afraid of anything.”

  She gave a decisive nod. “Let’s. Help me fix my hair, Emma. I’m going down.”

  “As a duchess,” I said.

  “As a duchess,” she repeated, then looked uncertainly into my eyes. “Is it all right if I’m still a little afraid?”

  “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  Some forty minutes later my cousin and I descended Marble House’s Grand Staircase. When my help fell short we’d called in her maid to work her magic on Consuelo’s hair, choose a new frock, and pinch some color back into her cheeks. She’d emerged from her bedroom sanctuary in a silk sapphire-blue tea gown that made her eyes sparkle, indeed looking every inch the young duchess. Even I felt some awe of her, this beauty of the Vanderbilt family and the belle of every ball she’d attended since her coming-out a year ago.

  It wasn’t that Consuelo took on airs. It was that, along with her lovely features and dark, lustrous hair, she’d been blessed with a natural grace that never seemed to fail her, that made her appear self-assured and elegant, at least to those who didn’t know her well. I, however, perceived the tension in her slender neck and the repeated balling of her hands into fists.

  “Stop that,” I admonished gently. “Never let them see you doubt yourself.”

  “Never let them see the whites of your eyes,” she countered.

  “Exactly.”

  “Soldier on,” she repeated from earlier.

  “Always.”

  Voices from the rear veranda echoed lightly in the main hall. We made our way outside, whereupon Aunt Alva hurried over to us issuing a delighted exclamation, as though we had just returned from an extended journey away.

  “Consuelo, Emmaline—oh, how delightful that you’ve both decided to join us. Emmaline, I have guests I’m longing to introduce you to. And, Consuelo dear, I have a special surprise for you. Oh, how very lovely you look, my dear.” She ran her hands lightly over the billowing, elbow-length sleeves her daughter wore. She spared a cursory glance at me, then looked away, but not before I caught the “Well, what can one do?” assessment as for a second time that day she took in my simple coiled braid and Aunt Sadie’s hand-me-down carriage dress.

  “Ladies, I’d like to introduce you to . . .”

  As Consuelo and I approached the wrought-iron garden table where the guests sat, she whispered out of the corner of her mouth to me, “A surprise? Do you know anything about this?”

  I had all but forgotten about Aunt Alva’s surprise to coax Consuelo from her room. But we’d reached earshot of the four ladies sitting round the table, so I only shrugged and pasted on a smile.

  They were quite varied, those houseguests. Two of them looked to be about Aunt Alva’s age and from similar circumstances, as each sported the latest summer fashions of leg-of-mutton sleeves, knife-pleated underskirts peeking out from lace-edged overdr
esses, and curving, wide-brimmed hats trimmed with a colorful array of silk flowers. Like Aunt Alva, these women were on the stout side, the kind of figure that comes from childbearing and an unlimited supply of rich food, and their hair, though meticulously dressed, bore a faded sheen where gray had encroached on the natural brown. Their names were Miss Edwina Spooner and Miss Roberta Spooner, sisters, as it turned out. Which explained how immediately after learning their names, I couldn’t have said which was which. I found them pleasant but rather interchangeable.

  No, it was the other two women who held my attention. Lady Amelia Beaumont spoke with an uptown New York accent despite the European roots suggested by her title. My estimate put her somewhere in her mid-thirties. Where the Spooner sisters wore their pleats and flounces and tufts of lace, Lady Amelia was sleek and tailored with a minimum of fuss, but in fabrics even I could see were of the very finest quality to be had. Burnished green silk hugged her figure in the very latest, almost scandalous fashion, outlining her bosom, hips, and thighs before spilling away in voluminous folds to a trailing hemline; gold embroidery embellished the cuffs and collar, echoing the brightness of the golden curls piled high on her head. A tiny chapeau sporting a glittering emerald and a shiny green feather completed the outfit.

  I noticed Consuelo eyeing this woman with a gleam of envy; we both knew her mother would see Consuelo dead before she’d allow her to wear such a daring ensemble.

  Our attention was next drawn to the elderly woman sitting at the far side of the linen-covered table. “And this is Mrs. Calvin Stanford,” Aunt Alva said. “Or Mrs. Hope Stanford, I should say, shouldn’t I, Hope, dear?”

  “Indeed,” the woman shot back in a no-nonsense sort of way. “I might be married, but I am still my own person.”

  There was little to envy about Hope Stanford’s person. I guessed her age to be somewhere around seventy. She wore her white, wispy hair pulled back in a simple bun beneath a straw boater-style hat that might have been sat upon a time or two; her eyes looked sunken above her prominent cheeks, her nose was long and her mouth thin, and her serviceable cotton day dress displayed nothing of the latest fashions, might have been a year or a decade old; the garment hung limply on a frame one might almost call gaunt. And yet, upon hearing her name, both Consuelo and I gasped.

  “The Mrs. Hope Stanford?” I whispered reverently.

  “In the flesh, missy,” the woman replied with a force that belied her frail appearance. “I take it you’ve heard of me? Are you a supporter of women’s suffrage?”

  “I-I . . .” I nodded rapidly several times. “My aunt Sadie was a huge admirer of yours, Mrs. Stanford. Huge,” I repeated stupidly. I was aware of Consuelo staring at me, her mouth open. “She even wrote to you right after you went before the Rhode Island legislature. You might not remember her letter, but—”

  “Does she support the temperance movement?” Mrs. Stanford brusquely asked.

  “Oh, well, Aunt Sadie passed away a year ago, but ah . . .” Now that I thought about it, this had been a point of contention between Aunt Sadie and many of her friends who supported the suffrage movement.

  “A woman’s right to vote is surely not an end in and of itself, young lady.” Mrs. Stanford sent an angry glare around the table, as if any of the small group had dared to argue with her. “We have a moral obligation to see that alcoholic spirits are prohibited in these United States before they rip our society apart at the seams.”

  “Yes, I . . . I see.” Aunt Sadie had never been averse to a glass of wine or sherry in the evening. And then there was dear Nanny, who claimed those wee splashes of whiskey in her tea—and occasionally in mine—were for medicinal purposes only.

  I mentioned neither to Mrs. Stanford.

  “Well, well,” Aunt Alva interrupted. “Isn’t this lovely. Emmaline, Consuelo, sit and have some tea, dears. The surprise should be here any moment.”

  I realized, too, that under normal circumstances Aunt Alva might have served tiny glasses of chocolate or cherry cordial to her afternoon guests, but today there were no crystal decanters in sight. Did that mean Aunt Alva favored prohibition? I doubted it. And I wondered if her sudden interest in women’s suffrage was simply a way to mortify her ex-husband and the rest of the Vanderbilt family.

  As Consuelo and I took our places, the other ladies continued conversing. The sudden rise of Mrs. Stanford’s voice drew my attention. “And so I walked into that tavern last night,” she was saying, “the one near the corner of Long Wharf and Thames Street, and I pounded away at the bar top with my sledgehammer.”

  Lady Amelia plucked a fan off the table and snapped it open. “You walked in with a sledgehammer and no one stopped you?”

  “I don’t believe they quite knew what to make of it,” the older woman replied with a chuckle, “until I started hammering.”

  “Didn’t a shout go up for the police?” This came from one of the Spooner sisters. Roberta, I think, the more square-jawed of the two.

  “Yes, and where was your husband at the time?” the other sister asked. She looked scandalized, and as if she could use a flutter or two of Lady Amelia’s fan. “Didn’t he go to town with you? Surely he can’t have been in favor of you—”

  “Calvin is entirely in favor of me driving the demon spirits out of American society. He was standing right behind me, making sure none of those drunken heathens dared accost me as I did the Lord’s work.”

  “But I don’t understand what purpose it served to—”

  Mrs. Stanford cut off Lady Amelia’s words by striking the table with her fist. My gaze flew to her hand, crisscrossed by blue veins and raw at the knuckles. “My action served notice that the time for sobriety has arrived. It also sent a good number of those men running for cover. If nothing else, their drinking for the night ended early.”

  “They probably crossed the street and slipped into the next closest tavern,” Lady Amelia said under her breath. I appeared to be the only one who heard her, and I stifled a laugh.

  “What an inspiring story,” Alva exclaimed. “Such a good, loyal man, your husband. Why, I wish . . .” She trailed off with a sideways glance at Consuelo, whose cheeks reddened. Yet Consuelo met her mother’s gaze with a lift of her eyebrow, as if daring Alva to say one unkind thing about her father. For once, Alva seemed disinclined to meet the challenge.

  As the conversation drifted, my cousin raised her teacup to hide her lips and whispered to me, “So Aunt Sadie was a suffragette?”

  “In a way, yes,” I whispered back. “But not in favor of temperance. And in her view it was hardly worth voting anyway until women were able to run for office.”

  Consuelo had taken a sip of tea and at my words she sputtered. “Good heavens, Emma. No wonder you’re the way you are.”

  I opened my mouth to demand what she meant by that, when Grafton stepped through the terrace doorway, a figure swathed in varying shades of plum half-hidden behind him.

  “Madame Eleanora Devereaux,” he droned with the slightest curl of his lip, and then stepped aside.

  A woman came forward, her jeweled turban, beaded necklaces, and countless bangles glittering in the sunlight. Clattering as she moved, she bobbed a little curtsy, holding both arms out with a theatrical flourish. She wore a shapeless frock with arm slits rather than sleeves, and the sides of the garment caught the breeze like violet sails. Her eyes were lined with kohl, her skin powdered, her lips and cheeks rouged—almost shockingly so. She reminded me of a tropical bird, from her flashy attire to the penetrating look in her eye as she surveyed us without blinking.

  From across the table came a breathless murmur, almost too low to be heard. “Ellen Deere.”

  I peered over at Mrs. Stanford, but her face was a blank, her lips the same thin line as usual. I swung back toward the newly arrived guest to find her staring daggers across the table, straight at Hope Stanford. But only for the briefest moment. Then her expression cleared, became serene and cordial.

  Aunt Alva came to her feet. “Cons
uelo, darling. This is your surprise!”

  Chapter 3

  “Come, Consuelo!” Aunt Alva held out a hand as she urged her daughter to stand. “Come meet Madame Devereaux. She is here to read your fortune. Isn’t that exciting?” She turned her attention to the rest of us. “Madame Devereaux will read all of our fortunes in the garden pavilion just as soon as she has set up for us.” She gestured to the bit of curving roof just visible above the tall hedges lining the garden path. “Her instruments for divining the future were delivered earlier, and in a little while we’ll all head across the garden to hear what life holds in store for us. Remember, ladies, choose your questions wisely!” She ended on a note of laughter, but the women around the table traded wary looks, myself and Consuelo included.

  My better sense proclaimed the medium a charlatan. Such individuals typically preyed upon the elderly, the bereaved, and the desperate. But even if the woman could genuinely divine the future, did I really want to glimpse what lay in store for me? An uneasy sensation told me I didn’t, that such things were best allowed to unfold as they would. Consuelo’s troubled expression mirrored my sentiments.

  But her mother wasn’t about to let her daughter demur. “Come here, dear,” she said with barely suppressed impatience.

  Consuelo stood and approached the medium. Though Madame Devereaux had seemed tall standing beside Grafton, I realized now that was merely an illusion conjured by the height of her turban. Her dress consisted of layers of draped fabric in shades of amethyst, violet, lavender, and lilac, flowing unbelted from her shoulders to the floor, essentially hiding her figure and making it impossible to determine if she were slim or stout.

  Her numerous bracelets jangled as she held out her hand to Consuelo. “Miss Vanderbilt, a great pleasure.” Her voice was deep, throaty, and held a hint of an accent that wanted to be French, but wasn’t quite. At least, not the French accent I’d learned at school.