by Scott Mackay
‘Yes, I’ve learned from Leach that your brother was very particular about his office.’
‘Little did Billy know that my brother was out of sorts that night with his chronic dyspepsia. Ephraim came into his study and caught Billy red-handed. I can assure you, doctor, there was much hullabaloo.’
‘I’m sure there was.’
‘My brother apparently had Billy surrender the promissory note at gunpoint and vowed to have him in front of Judge Norris before the week was out. An offence like that carries a good many years, up to twenty. That Saturday, my brother was murdered. I believe Billy might have done it in response to the promissory note threat. And if this promissory note evidence isn’t enough, there’s everything else: the eyewitness, the suicide of Cecil Fray, the shutting down of the smithy, and so forth. I cannot countenance it any longer! We must prosecute Billy immediately! He is our man! I know he is! We shouldn’t be waiting for some Indian fellow to return from the wilds of Upstate New York just so we can test-fire his rifle!’
The professor took a third sip of his brandy. He had worked himself up into such a state again that I thought it best to let him sit for a few moments. So I made a pretence of attending the fire, squatting with the poker and adjusting the logs.
I was puzzled by the account. I couldn’t see Billy as a man to come up with such a scheme. It would require knowledge of how the monetary world worked, and Billy came from the world of bellows, forge, and hammer.
Once I had the logs adjusted, I stood up and surveyed Professor Purcell. ‘And so Marigold found out after the fact?’
‘She did.’
‘She loves him.’
‘Apparently so.’
‘And yet she surrenders him so readily now?’
Herschel’s lips tightened and he frowned. ‘And by this you infer?’
‘If she loved him, you’d think she would have continued to deny everything.’
‘Why would she do that? She’s a good girl.’
‘I don’t know. But after keeping it from you so diligently in the first place, why would she so suddenly admit to it now, especially when there’s so much to lose? She’s essentially sending the man she loves away to prison for twenty years. It doesn’t make sense to me, not when she first tried to hide it.’
He seemed to grope for an answer, then said with some uncertainty, ‘She realized the error of her ways and came to her senses when Johnstone and I confronted her.’
‘Yes, but she was safe. She didn’t have to say anything, and the matter would have been dropped. It seems to me she volunteered the information rather too readily.’
He stared at me, jaw now slightly dropped. ‘Are you suggesting a plot?’
‘Maybe she doesn’t love Billy as much as we think she does.’
‘Sir, speak plainly.’
‘She has access to your brother’s office as well. Maybe she herself devised the promissory note.’
‘To what end?’
‘Perhaps it’s as you first suggested.’
‘You mean in retaliation for the Swiss bank account matter?’
I nodded. ‘And then once she was confronted, she needed a convenient scapegoat so blamed Billy. Or perhaps she devised the note for a more nefarious purpose. Perhaps she’s trying to hide her own guilt in her stepfather’s murder and was trying to deflect blame elsewhere.’
In other words, more cayenne pepper.
‘But that’s absurd, sir! She would never do such a thing! She has better breeding than that!’
Yet I couldn’t help thinking how I still hadn’t received my consult note from the Sisters of Charity Hospital in Buffalo.
TWENTY-FOUR
With this promissory note incident, the matter of Marigold now became pressing.
I put a call in to Sisters of Charity immediately after Professor Purcell had left.
I was told by a different clerk that the original clerk had recently quit and had left her desk in upheaval. ‘I’ll have to sort through her chart requests and get back to you as fast as I can, doctor.’
Curses! Another Adirondacks hunting expedition.
Not to be put off, I thought it best to question Marigold personally about the Daniel Hepiner forgery episode.
So when the surgery closed for the day, I saddled Archimedes, giving Pythagoras a rest for a change, and rode west on Culver Street until I came to the Cherry Hill Road drawbridge. The drawbridge was up and I had to wait. A small coal barge was passing upriver toward West Shelby. It was either that or ride all the way to the span bridge at Tonawanda. I waved to Wilmer Barner, the bridge-keeper, a hale septuagenarian, and he waved back from the bridge tower. Once the barge had passed and the bridge was down, I crossed the river and headed up to the Purcell mansion on Cherry Hill.
Flora Winters, Marigold’s maid, let me in. ‘She’s in the music room, sir. She’s already told me that she’s accepting visitors, so you can go right in.’
I found Marigold practicing the recorder, playing ‘My Wild Irish Rose.’ As I came in, she glanced at me, but didn’t stop playing, stumbled a bit as she crossed registers, looked suddenly furious with the instrument, her face reddening, then quietly, and with a great deal of stiff control, put the instrument on the music stand and turned to me.
‘I don’t know why I try to play that ditty. I hate it. I always have. And the flûte à bec has such vexatious half-hole fingering.’ She glared at the instrument one last time, then turned her attention to me. ‘What can I do for you, doctor?’
‘How are you feeling, my dear?’
‘I’m much better, thank you.’ Her fury at the instrument quickly dissipated and I now sensed some nervousness. ‘Miss Wade has made house calls to attend to my dressings.’
‘Oh. I didn’t know that. Henny was not to your liking?’
‘I don’t know her, do I? And I know Miss Wade.’
‘And how is Miss Wade?’
She had to think about this. ‘Distracted. Not her usual self.’
As I didn’t want to pursue the subject of Miss Wade further, I steered to the matter at hand. ‘I was speaking to your uncle earlier in the afternoon, Miss Reynolds. About the promissory note?’
She looked away, her nervousness intensifying. ‘And what did he say?’
I gave her a rundown of what I had learned from the professor.
She looked pitifully downcast once I had finished. ‘It’s true, doctor.’
‘And you knew of the scheme?’
‘Not until after the attempt.’
I observed her. ‘Why didn’t you divulge this information when I first came to you?’
Tears formed in her eyes. ‘I was protecting poor Billy, of course. I now realize I must have broken some law or other.’ With more tears, she offered her wrists to me for cuffing. ‘And I’ll understand if you’ve come to take me to jail.’ She got even more emotional. ‘But I was doing it for love.’
I frowned. ‘Yes, for love.’ Though her manner seemed genuine enough, I couldn’t exclude the possibility that she was a skilful actress and so decided I must give her a jolt. ‘I find your whole story unlikely, Marigold. The timing is badly off.’
She stiffened. Her arms went down. She seemed hurt by my accusation. ‘What’s so unlikely about it, doctor?’ She peered at me more intently, her eyes as green as fresh sod. ‘And why do you doubt the timing?’ Her voice had grown tremulous, her nervousness now verging on panic.
‘Knowing what I do of Billy, I don’t believe he’s crafty enough to devise something like this. I’m not even sure he knows what a promissory note is.’
Her lips tightened and her copper-colored brow settled. ‘He’s a lot smarter than people give him credit for. He was trying to save the smithy any way he could.’
‘Perhaps. Only I find it odd that you should initially take pains to hide the business, then be so suddenly forthcoming about it with your uncle and Mr Johnstone. I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, Marigold, but if I had to guess, I would say you’re trying to
facilitate Billy Fray’s conviction any way you can to save your own skin.’
She was stunned. ‘But I love Billy. Don’t you understand that?’
‘I’m trying to. But I’m having great difficulty.’
She grew even more flustered. ‘They had me in tears! They threatened jail!’
‘Your uncle said he handled the matter delicately.’
‘Hah! If you call browbeating delicate.’
‘I believe you orchestrated the whole thing to direct attention away from yourself. I believe you might have been the one to kill your stepfather.’
Her voice grew tremulous, high. ‘But I was in the hospital the whole time.’
‘That remains to be seen.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Hospitals keep records, my dear. They haven’t been able to find yours.’
Her shoulders sank, and all nervousness disappeared. In an unexpectedly controlled tone, she said, ‘If that’s what you think, then please go.’
I frowned. We stared at each other. I could tell that a line had been drawn between us.
‘When you’re ready to cooperate with me, Marigold – truly cooperate – call me at the surgery. In the meantime, be advised, I have my eye on you. You have every reason to want your stepfather dead. And if you personally didn’t do it, you certainly have the womanly wiles to get Billy to do it for you.’
I left her.
I stood in the front hall. No servants were about.
After a moment, I heard Marigold crash her fists against the piano keyboard. A dissonant chord rang through the house. The chord itself was a clue, an unresolved harmony that resonated of Marigold’s possible involvement in her stepfather’s murder.
I listened to the chord fade, and was about to ring the bell for Flora to bring my hat, gloves, and coat when, on the one-inch heel of Marigold’s boot in the boot rack, something caught my eye.
I went over, knelt by the boot rack, and had a look.
I saw a tack. I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure, but it looked like the kind of tack I myself had stepped on the day I had passed Flannigan’s Stationery Shop on my way to the Grand Hotel to deliver my offer of employment to Miss Gregsby. I lifted the boot. The tack was sunken right into the heel, perhaps not yet discovered because Marigold would never feel it through the one-inch material the heel was made from. And walking in the snow that was all about, she wouldn’t hear it tapping on the pavement either.
I worked the tack free and held it to the light of the electrical lamp. Yes, definitely similar, if not downright identical. I pondered the meaning of the tack. I remembered how a day after the murder all the tacks had been cleaned up from the thoroughfare, and how use of the tacks had commenced only on the afternoon before the crime, when Ernest and Oliver Fitzhenry had quickly pinned up the tarpaulin to guard against approaching snow. Which meant if this was indeed a tack from the Flannigan carpentry job, it would have become lodged in Marigold’s heel only in and around the time of the murder.
I stood up and rang the bell.
In the music room, Miss Reynolds had gone back to playing the recorder, this time managing to navigate successfully between registers.
Flora appeared from the back in her gray and white uniform. ‘I’ll bring your coat directly, doctor.’
‘Thank you, Flora.’
She retreated, and a moment later came back with my derby, riding gloves, and blue serge cheviot coat. She helped me with my coat. I discreetly slipped the tack into my pocket.
‘Flora, could I have a word with you? On the front step? I won’t take up much of your time.’
She peered at me from under the frill of her servant’s cap, her great and sudden misgiving suspiciously disproportionate to my simple request. ‘Of course, doctor.’
We stepped on to the stone stoop.
The snow-covered grounds were arranged prettily around us. Dozens of grackles fussed with the last of the frozen crab-apples in the crab-apple trees on the other side of the drive.
‘Miss Winters, you understand that I’m investigating Mr Purcell’s murder?’
‘I do, sir.’
‘And that it’s my job to ascertain the truth, and that it’s a criminal offence to lie to an officer of the law, and that if the lie is eventually detected, the officer might arrest the offending individual on an obstruction charge?’
Her face now turned pink. ‘I must defer to your authority on the subject, doctor.’
I regarded her gravely. ‘Then answer me truthfully, Miss Winters. Did you in fact take Miss Reynolds to Sisters of Charity in Buffalo on the night she came to my surgery?’
The young servant looked away, the movement startling the grackles out of the crab-apple trees.
I grew more insistent. ‘No one is above the law, Miss Winters.’
She started breathing quickly and I saw that she had now become fairly frantic. ‘She sometimes screams at me, sir.’ This was indeed a revelation. I could scarcely picture Marigold Reynolds, a woman of better breeding, as her uncle had it, screaming at the help. ‘She sometimes hurts me.’
This was even more startling. Here was a secret side of Marigold I hadn’t yet seen.
‘Was she, or was she not, in Buffalo on the night her stepfather was killed?’
Flora cringed at my sharp tone of voice. She craned, looked through the door, then turned back to me as tears came to her eyes. ‘Sir, please, I beg you. She will dismiss me.’
I pressed the matter. ‘And I will arrest you.’
After fretting for several moments, the maid finally gave me the truth.
‘She insisted we turn around at West Shelby, sir. She wanted to be with Billy. She wanted to be with Daisy Pond. She didn’t want to go to Buffalo. I told her she must, that it was doctor’s orders.’ Flora was now so frightened, she was having a hard time speaking, and her hands were shaking horribly. ‘But Miss Marigold threatened to dismiss me on the spot. So I arranged to get the return train in West Shelby. Miss Pond took us in. We went to her house on Finch Street. Miss Pond brought us up the back stairs so that her family wouldn’t know. Her house is at least as big as Miss Marigold’s, and she has the whole third floor to herself. Her parents never go up there, so it was quite private.’
I turned this over for a few moments. ‘And so she stayed at Miss Pond’s?’ I couldn’t help remembering how Miss Pond had been assaulted by Mr Purcell in October.
‘Yes. I stayed there with her. Billy stayed with her as well. But then he went to the Pleasant Hotel when he found out you were looking for him.’
‘When did Miss Reynolds return to the mansion here on Cherry Hill Road?’
Flora fought to control herself. ‘A few days later.’
‘Before her stepfather was murdered?’
‘I believe it was a day before master was murdered.’ She grew frantic again. ‘Please don’t tell Miss Marigold. I’ll lose my position.’
I did what I could to reassure the girl. ‘I’ll maintain strictest confidence, Miss Winters. Do you know if Marigold was in the house on the night her stepfather was murdered?’
‘I retired at eight, doctor. She didn’t ring for me after that.’
‘Did anybody call?’
‘Not until you did to inform Mr Leach of the murder.’
This puzzled me. ‘Why didn’t Leach tell me your mistress was home?’
She looked at me with desperate eyes. ‘We all had strict orders from Miss Marigold about you, doctor. She can be quite a despot when she wants to be. She didn’t want you to know she hadn’t gone to the hospital. She was afraid she might incur your displeasure. Mr Leach is terrified of her. So am I. Only after you had left did Mr Leach tell her the news of her stepfather’s passing.’
‘Anything else unusual happen that night?’
She struggled some more. ‘There was one thing. The household received a telephone call at eight forty-five. We usually don’t receive calls that late.’
‘Any idea who it was?’
�
��No. Only that Miss Marigold must have answered it because all the servants were upstairs by that time, and she was the only one out and about in the house.’
At home, I withdrew the tack I’d found in Miss Marigold’s boot from my pocket. I then went to the hallway closet, reached in my clay worsted overcoat, the coat I’d been wearing the day I had passed Flannigan’s Stationery Shop, and withdrew the tack I had pulled out of my own boot. I compared the two. They were a match – three-quarter-inch clout tacks made of soft iron.
I went to the Sheriff’s Office, where I confronted Billy about the promissory note.
He looked confused by what I was telling him. I had to explain carefully to him exactly what a promissory note was.
‘Doc, I sign my name with a’ X. My readin’ and writin’ ain’t the best. And I’m not even sure how to spell Mr Hepiner’s name.’
‘So how do you explain this promissory note?’
‘I don’t, doc. I don’t know nothing about it.’
‘Billy, this is an extremely serious matter. If you didn’t sign the promissory note, who did?’
‘If I had to guess, I’d say Ephraim Purcell. He’s such a miser, he’ll do anything to get his hands on more money.’
‘But that’s not the story Marigold gave me. Stanley, tell him the story Marigold gave me.’
Stanley looked up from the mountain of paperwork on his desk. ‘Marigold says you forged the note. She says the reason you came into her stepfather’s study in the middle of the night was so you could copy Mr Hepiner’s signature from one of his shipping office waybills because you wanted to save the smithy. You got caught red-handed by Mr Purcell and he made you surrender the promissory note at gunpoint. He then threatened to turn you in. Herschel Purcell thinks you killed his brother before he could do that.’
This silenced him for several moments.
I finally said to him, ‘Here’s what I think happened, Billy. She needed a dupe, so she charmed you with her feminine powers. She induced you to do her dirty work. Then, once you were arrested, she got nervous when we were taking so long to indict you, so she came up with this promissory note idea to further incriminate you. She was the one who devised the promissory note. And she’s using it as a coffin nail against you.’ I shook my head. ‘I know you love her, Billy, but start thinking it through. Then ask yourself if you really want to sit in the electric chair for Marigold. We’re starting to think she’s the one behind it all, even though a witness places you at the scene. Who knows? We might be willing to make a deal with you if you give her up. We could even spare your life.’