“They do,” Longfellow had to agree, with a look toward the farmhouse where his sister now resided.
“Then, there is the book.”
“The volume of Pope?” Longfellow asked, remembering the scene when they had viewed Phoebe’s body.
“Hannah found it creased and on the floor, under the body. Has she said—?”
“The girl was tangled in the bedclothes, yes. But no one mentioned the book, when I spoke with Will and his mother this morning.”
“Hannah probably thought it of no importance. Yet last night, when I let the volume fall open, I saw a poem, ‘Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.’”
“‘Is it, in heaven, a crime to love too well?’ And there is something about acting a Roman’s part—referring to the opening of a vein, I suppose …”
Charlotte, who had reread the poem the night before, whispered its eerie beginning:
“What beckoning ghost, along the moonlight shade,
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?”
“You think she gave us a suicide’s message,” Longfellow concluded.
“I believe she lay down, stricken, holding the book to her breast—knowing someone would eventually find her. I suppose she hoped we would feel sorry, and forgive her. But when someone did come in while she was in this state, he cared nothing for her pose. Phoebe tried to save herself with the last of her fading strength, and slid from the bed; then, I suspect, he pressed a pillow to her face, after the book had fallen.”
“If the girl told Will Sloan more than he now admits, he may have returned in a rage….”
“But I feel we must go back and find the answer to one question, Richard. Why now did she tell Will she could not marry him, as he does admit—not now, or ever? Phoebe’s error occurred long before they made their contract. Could she not have imagined he might forgive her? For I think he would have.”
“Perhaps not, if she’d ended a child’s life, as well. If she feared Will would be warned by Tucker, or even Pelham—”
“That is possible, I suppose—but what if Phoebe had given herself again—to the same man?” For a moment, Charlotte recalled Dr. Tucker’s impassioned face as he held Phoebe’s hand, before she left them alone.
“I might almost believe it was Pelham, then—except that he would never have dared it, with Diana there. But you can’t suppose she and Ben Tucker—!”
For a moment Charlotte reconsidered.
“Will Sloan told us Phoebe would not marry him, but also that she could not marry anyone else, either. Dr. Tucker, of course, was married already … but why should Phoebe reject the idea of marriage entirely? With anyone?”
“Why, indeed?” asked Longfellow, having no idea.
“I can think of one reason, though it is unusual, and somewhat unrelated. In a few women, the thought of producing children can become a fearful torment … and she had lost one, we presume, already, however it happened. As her wedding approached, it’s not unlikely that Phoebe sought out Dr. Tucker to talk about the process of giving birth … on the very eve of her death.” Charlotte continued, losing momentum, “Yet she had at least appeared to be happy before that, when she imagined her life with Will. Why, now, would children … ?”
“Who can tell, with women?” Longfellow countered, growing impatient. “All we are doing is guessing, Carlotta, while we have no facts to build upon.”
“Yes, but why now, Richard? Does it hinge on something Tucker did … or possibly something he told Phoebe? What could she have learned from him, to so—Oh!”
Suddenly, she believed she knew. It was little more than an intuition, and yet—! At last, the pieces, like the spokes of a broken wheel, fit together to create a whole. She stood dumb as she tested several connections carefully. Then, Charlotte again put a hand into the pocket beneath her skirt, and brought out the item she’d brazenly taken from David Pelham’s room at the inn.
“What is this?” asked Longfellow.
“A buckle.”
“I can see it is. But why ‘Oh!’ Mrs. Willett?”
Her original, though vague, supposition of that morning now made far more sense, and Charlotte went on rapidly. “I went to Pelham’s room looking for this … as I believed it possible that he, too, went in to Phoebe, some time between the visits Will Sloan admits to. I blush to tell you, Richard, but I saw new marks on the windowsill the morning we found her. I thought little of them with so much else happening, and when no one else supposed them important. Still, they bothered me. This is a buckle David Pelham wore the afternoon we first met him at the inn—I remembered its unusual silver thistle, with the ruby points. They are quite hard and sharp.”
Longfellow took the buckle into his own hands, where its stones shone with the hue of heart’s blood. “And you think the spacing of the stones will match the mars in the sill’s paint? I did notice them, Carlotta, but I confess I assumed they were made by the claws of our friend Orpheus.” At the mention of his name, the dog thumped his tail, rewarded as last for his patient attendance.
“There is a simple test—”
“But why would Pelham climb in to see Phoebe in the middle of the night, when he is clearly interested in Diana’s favors?”
“If he had been the father of her child—”
“Even if that were true, I hardly think it would lead the man to murder her! Even if Phoebe had told Diana, do you think such an affair three years ago would be enough to utterly deter a woman of Boston, these days?”
“But what if Pelham gave Phoebe something … something more than a child?”
“More?” asked Longfellow, waiting for his neighbor to go on, which she suddenly seemed reluctant to do.
“Richard,” said Charlotte finally, “imagine, first, that there was an intimacy, and at least the suspicion of a child to come, when Tucker was called in by Phoebe’s aunt to treat the girl’s rash. Later, Phoebe’s child is lost, possibly after she had already gone back to Concord, but before her condition became obvious. But what if that loss was not by plan, as Mr. Pelham suggests? What if it came about only as a result of disease?”
“Disease,” Longfellow repeated.
“I think Dr. Tucker suspected Phoebe’s situation in Boston, though I doubt he was sure. But then, meeting him again in Bracebridge, she may have spoken of the lost child, as it related to bearing others during her marriage. What if he told her then that she must not try for more? Tucker surely saw Pelham’s strong reaction to Phoebe’s presence here, and that may have made him certain of what he could only have guessed before—that Pelham had been Phoebe’s lover. After all, Pelham was one of Dr. Tucker’s patients, and so Tucker would also have known his medical history—”
She stopped short as Longfellow stiffened.
“And, that he had contracted syphilis while he tramped, as Diana tells me, through Europe?” he asked.
“Would Pelham have had to go so far, if he were less than careful on our own shores?”
“Possibly not,” Longfellow admitted. “But why, then, would Tucker have allowed Pelham to see Diana? Why would he not have warned us?”
“About another of his patients? Could he, ethically? Although I believe he did try. But he could ill afford to lose a friend. And then, when Phoebe died suddenly, taking with her the knowledge of her disease and her disgrace, might not Tucker have feared for his own life? As the last who knew the secret, save one?”
“Do you now suppose, Carlotta, that David Pelham is a murderer? I can hardly—but if you are right, we must do something, and soon! If he has had the French Disease for this long, it may have come to affect his mind, and make him dangerous.”
“It is still no more than a theory,” Charlotte returned, sensing the wisdom of a temporary retreat, as she considered anew her lack of sure evidence.
“Yet one too deadly to dismiss—especially for my sister’s sake.” Longfellow gave back the buckle and caught hold of Charlotte’s other hand. “We will soon test how well facts bear out your conclus
ions.”
Led by Orpheus, they hurried down the side of the knoll, arriving at Mrs. Willett’s door a few minutes later.
Chapter 19
ACOMMOTION IN the doorway kept them from entering.
“I won’t stay here a day longer,” Will shouted, “and you can’t make me, even if you are my mother!”
“That I am, to my shame and horror!” Hannah exclaimed, holding on to a broom as if ready to swing it. “One whose pains gave birth to a thoughtless, cruel child!”
“Then why should you care, when I’m gone?”
“Because there are others to fear for! If you would think, for once—”
“You’re the witch here—not Mrs. Willett!” the boy accused, pointing a finger at his mother as he glowered.
“What is this row?” Longfellow finally shouted. Hannah put down the broom, and smoothed out her apron.
“I am sorry to tell you, sir, that this willful, selfish thing—”
“—would like to leave,” Longfellow supplied impatiently, “though he has been told I won’t allow it. Well, with his obvious recovery, it is safe to conclude, Hannah, that your young hothead has not taken the smallpox after all. Perhaps it would be wiser to be rid of him, rather than keep him here, for the safety of all concerned! But hear this, boy. You will spend the day, and the night, if you choose, in that lean-to of yours, as long as the weather holds fair—but you will go no farther, on pain of a speedy removal to Mrs. Willett’s root cellar! You will be as Mr. Crusoe on his island. This must last until we have settled the issue of illness. We will see how long you find a solitary life appealing. In the meanwhile, you may speak to no one, and none may speak to you.”
“Thank you, sir,” Will mumbled, while casting a malignant eye toward his mother. He went out of the kitchen, and they heard him climb the stairs to bid Lem good-bye.
Charlotte, too, quit the kitchen, intent on her own mission. She entered her empty study, looked about for a moment in puzzlement, and proceeded to the garden window. Holding out the buckle she inverted it, lowered it to the sill, and moved it until she saw that the stones did, indeed, exactly match the set of arcs already there. She traced the path once more, barely letting the buckle touch. There could be no doubt. Someone, certainly, had slipped in or out of the window with this buckle on his shoe. That someone, it was only reasonable to conclude, was David Pelham.
She turned as Longfellow entered the room, with Hannah close behind him. His look was answered with a nod. Then, she held out the buckle so that he might make his own trial. “He must have gone out in a state of confusion,” she decided.
“Who?” Hannah asked, mystified by the proceedings. Behind her they heard a clomping as Will came back down, and approached them for a final word.
“Mr. Pelham, we suspect,” Longfellow told her. It would, of course, be safer if all of them were to know. “We think he was here on the night of Phoebe’s death—and that he may have had a hand in it.”
“Mr. Pelham?” Hannah whispered in amazement, while Will, for once, said nothing.
“Where,” asked Charlotte, looking about her empty study, “are the others?”
“Lem is in a room above,” said Hannah, “but Miss Longfellow has gone.”
“Gone!” cried Longfellow. “Will she never listen? She has gone to my house, no doubt.”
“Yes, sir,” said Hannah, “with Mr. Pelham.”
“What!” Charlotte whispered, her eyes widening, but Longfellow’s thoughts had raced well ahead of her own. “Cicero is there,” he reminded her. “Still, we will go along.”
He turned on his heel, forming in his mind what he would say when he confronted Diana. Mrs. Willett, too, hurried forward, and Orpheus soon leaped at her side. Halfway through the rosebushes on the downward track, Charlotte gasped.
“Richard! Cicero is not there—he went off to fish as I left, and I doubt he’s had time to return!”
Before he could answer, Longfellow’s attention was captured by a figure coming through the stable door of the great stone barn behind his house. Edmund Montagu carried his saddlebags over one shoulder, his face grave. Seeing the couple approaching on the garden path, he altered his course and strode rapidly toward them.
“Well met,” Longfellow called out. “Come along, Edmund. Diana has left Mrs. Willett’s house for mine, accompanied by Mr. Pelham.”
“Pelham!”
“We think there may be danger—” Mrs. Willett began, but Montagu had already begun to speak.
“There is a good chance, Richard, that Pelham is not entirely in his senses. He may suffer from poisoning—from his treatment for the Great Pox.”
“We’ve already guessed as much—at least, of his affliction.”
“How could you—?”
“Ask Mrs. Willett—but later, I think. What else have you?”
“Tucker prescribed a compound full of mercury—a very great deal of it—enough to have brought on death eventually, and lesser symptoms long before—”
“He may be again taken by the syphilis, as well.”
“Quite possibly.”
“And yet, the mercury itself might drive him—”
Frustrated by this intrusion of Science, Mrs. Willett made up her mind to run ahead, just as a shriek came from the house.
“Diana!” her brother called out, while Orpheus began to bark. Captain Montagu spared no energy on speech; instead, he dropped the bags and ran into the house, his boots ringing across the floor as he raced from kitchen to front hail with the others close behind. On the stairs, they heard a scream of protest come from the open door of Dr. Tucker’s former room. Reaching it first, Edmund Montagu drew his sword halfway out of its scabbard, his pinched face hard as cold steel, his lips white with rage.
“Unhand her, sir!” Longfellow demanded. Even behind Montagu’s dangerously poised form, he could see his sister held against her will.
David Pelham did as he was told while he watched the three intruders press in at the door.
“Diana,” said Charlotte, making her way to the young woman’s side, “are you hurt?”
“I am furious,” Miss Longfellow retorted breathlessly, “for this monster has tried to force me—”
“—only to do what you have long desired, and even begged for,” David Pelham replied quickly, moving toward her again.
While the others remained speechless, Orpheus let out a sharp growl. No one stopped the old dog, whose advance on stiff legs soon made Pelham cower. At that, Orpheus sat with a grumble, awaiting a further move.
“Miss Longfellow did invite me here,” the chastened man insisted, his complexion reddened with excitement. “She can hardly deny it now!”
“To help by carrying my hatbox—but it was quite against my wishes, after I had retired, that the fiend came back!” Diana declared. “And I hope I never set eyes on him again!”
“That,” concluded her brother; “would be an excellent thing, for we have an idea Mr. Pelham might tell us a great deal about himself that will hardly be to his advantage—or to yours, Diana.”
David Pelham stood taller as he scanned the company. “I demand to know, sir, what you mean by that,” he challenged.
“I refer to your care by Dr. Tucker,” Montagu replied, “for the Pox.”
“The smallpox?” Diana asked, surprised at an obvious miss. “But we all know of that, Edmund!”
“The Great Pox,” the captain replied as he stared into Pelham’s face, daring a denial.
“How,” Pelham demanded, looking to Miss Longfellow while an aggressive hope lingered in his eyes, “do you come by this affrontery?”
“We have Tucker’s journals,” Montagu returned. “I have also spoken with Mrs. Mary Morris of Boston, as well as to her young servant, who believes you and Phoebe Morris were lovers—even while Tucker’s journal shows he treated you for syphilis!”
All eyes turned to Diana, whose face clearly displayed her horror.
“It is a thing,” Longfellow interjected, “that w
ould surely have closed my sister’s door to you, and which would have lost you the admiration of most of Boston’s society, as well—”
“Did Tucker’s journal say exactly that it was for this I received his assistance?” Pelham asked slowly and distinctly, gazing at Edmund Montagu. The captain’s eyes flickered briefly. “I thought not,” Pelham said, relaxing. “One, because it is not true; and two, because Tucker hid much about his activities from the world, having been stung for helping others before. It is also something that cannot be proved, you know … and I maintain that he treated me only for an eczema of the skin, which has long since disappeared. So you see, even though some may believe your little coterie, others will not—if you should broadcast what you suspect! Of course, there are also legal and moral prohibitions against slander. As for my being in this particular situation, I certainly wonder that you gentlemen are shocked, for anyone who knows of the coquetry of Miss Diana Longfellow—and there are a good many of us!—will no doubt believe I was given at least some encouragement!”
“Mr. Pelham,” said Charlotte softly, when no one else replied, “I don’t believe this is the first time you have invaded a woman’s bedchamber. You do know, I’m sure, that Will Sloan has returned?”
“I saw him only this morning, madam. And I can tell you he said nothing to me about any such thing—” David Pelham halted suddenly.
“As your late visit? Or what she said of you, to him? Will told us Phoebe vowed she could never marry … just before she attempted to take her life, by swallowing a large quantity of valerian.”
“Hah!” Pelham laughed derisively. “I know the herb, and there is no chance—” He paused as he watched her take something from her pocket.
“Did you notice,” she continued, “that Phoebe’s pillow was wet with her tears?”
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