Nell broke from his embrace and marched to the other side of the room, arms still folded.
“You can’t have it both ways, Nell,” he said, trying to speak with authority. “I can’t be here amusing you and be cultivating any other acquaintance or prospects elsewhere at the same time, can I? Do I have to account for the time when I am away from you?”
“When it’s time normally reserved for me—time I’ve amply compensated you for.”
He would happily have throttled her for that. She had never flung it in his face.
“What the hell does that mean?” He felt his body begin to tighten with anger, as if preparing to withstand a blow.
“You know perfectly well what it means.” She eyed him viciously and retreated farther and paced back and forth in short steps like a panther. “You don’t think I shell out that money for you to be entertaining your, your friends.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, maintaining his icy control.
“Don’t try that with me. What kind of a fool do you take me for?”
“I never thought you were any kind of fool, until now.” A thought struck him, far-fetched as it seemed to him. “Surely you can’t be jealous of Francesca? I am engaged to her, you know, a situation encouraged by you, if you recall. That does put some demands on my time.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t give a damn about that and neither do you. Marry her. Let her support you. I don’t give a damn about your time, as long as it isn’t time that belongs to me.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this. I’ve never seen you behave this way.”
“You’ve never betrayed me before.”
“Betrayed? Are you accusing me of disloyalty?” He had never been strictly faithful to Nell and was equally sure that she had seen other men besides him. She even seemed to take pleasure in watching other women be smitten by his good looks and Southern charm.
“What would you call it?”
“I don’t know what I’d call it because I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What a barefaced liar you are.”
“All right, then, how have I been disloyal to you?”
She stopped her pacing. “Blanche.”
Tracey tried to conceal his amazement. Was she just fishing?
“You can’t be serious.”
“Why don’t you just admit it? You and Blanche are old friends, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I told you that.”
“Dear old friends. Intimate friends, wouldn’t you say?”
“We did have feelings for each other once. But that was a long time ago. You seem to forget that her loyalty is elsewhere too.”
“Loyalty. A blind man could see that you two still harbor feelings for each other. You’ve started seeing her, haven’t you? I know you have.”
“You know nothing of the kind.”
“Then where were you? Whom were you with?”
“I’m telling you it’s none of your damn business. You don’t own me, Nell. I don’t care what you think about our arrangement. I don’t care about your timetables and your afternoon amusements. You don’t own me. You never have.”
“Oh, you’re wrong, sonny. You’re dead wrong. I own you from your felt hat down to the soles of your boots. And I can fix it so your loyalty to me will be guaranteed.”
“Don’t threaten me, Nell. It’s a waste of time.”
“Is it?” She leaned one hand against the back of the divan and placed the other hand on her hip. “Think again.”
“If you think it’s only the money, I’m perfectly capable—”
“Of finding someone else to support you? Yes, I’m sure you are, but you won’t dare. You’ll dance to my tune and like it. Or would you rather that your dear little Chickadee, your goose with the golden egg, learn a thing or two about her intended?”
“You mean about you? She’d never believe it. I’d only have to deny it.”
“Would you? Then maybe I can offer her a more potent bit of scandal. How do you think your Chickadee would receive news about Henriette?”
Tracey stood transfixed. Never in a million years would he have reckoned on such a threat from Nell.
“I’m sure you thought that little secret was safe. Oh, yes. That’s right. That little problem was disposed of long ago.” Slowly, Nell’s anger metamorphosed into a superiority that nearly crackled. She became more self-assured, the posture he hated most. She tossed her head back and stood with her weight on one foot. “You didn’t think I knew you were married, did you? Does Blanche know, by the way?” She waited.
He would admit or deny nothing. He wanted to stop his ears—or her mouth—yet he was dying to hear how she had dredged up that long-buried bit of his life.
“Who said I was?” His voice was steady.
Her words were blade thin. “Let’s not be coy.” She crossed the drawing room to the table next to the overstuffed chair, drew a cigarette from the silver box, and lit it so quickly it seemed to have been accomplished in a single motion. “You don’t cover your tracks as well as you think.”
“Why should I be covering my tracks about anything?”
“You can be tedious, Edmund.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“Stop it,” she said as she drew on the cigarette. She walked back to the fireplace and made as if to flick the ash into the hearth, but it fell onto the rug. She tossed her head back again. “You could at least do yourself the dignity of admitting it gracefully.”
“I admit nothing,” he said. A smirk curled itself in the corner of his lip as he considered the absurdity of his situation. He suddenly felt amazingly relaxed, like one who has just witnessed a fire destroy all he owns and feels a giddy release of an enormous burden before the shock sets in.
“I’m sure.” Nell guffawed. “I don’t know why I should expect any different tactic from you than the one you’ve employed for the last—how long have we been together now—four years? Five? You certainly haven’t done too badly in that time. Had yourself a comfortable affair—more than one, I daresay. Hooked yourself a rich woman. You’ve evaded the law quite prettily.”
“And why should I want to do that?” He felt silly and schoolboyish, but it didn’t seem to matter.
“Oh, come, come, Edmund. You may as well admit it or we’ll be here all day.” She crossed to the sideboard and lifted a glass decanter. “Drink? You may as well be comfortable.” She poured drinks for them both. As she handed it to him she said, “Now, let’s try it again. Surely you wouldn’t want me to go spreading ugly stories that aren’t true.” She crossed to her favorite chair. “I’d much rather spread ugly stories that are true.”
“To be married isn’t such an ugly story.”
“Indeed not. Marriage is such a fine, upstanding institution, don’t you think? At least I’ve always found it to be so.” She took another drag upon the cigarette and crushed it out. “Love, honor, and obey, you know.”
By a circuitous route that avoided Maywood’s plantation house and the crumbling village of the sugar refinery and the slave quarters, McNee and Shillingford picked up the road. In the years since Henriette’s death, it had become a disused and overgrown track that wound through wild stands of trees and long-untended fields, giving way to patches of open country, then closing again where Nature had reclaimed her territory. The dark sky threatened rain and the black-on-black clouds surged overhead. The air was thick and close in spite of gusts that freshened it. Finally they came to the tethering place of live oak trees whose twisted trunks rose like writhing spirits and spread their supplicating branches heavenward. The men slipped from their saddles and secured the horses, grabbing their rifles, lanterns, and bags of tools. They made for the edge of Maywood’s little city of the dead where the low box tombs were closest to the road. Stone slabs lay in weathered shards. Two headstones were barely distinguishable above the weeds.
They cleared away debris from one box tomb with a scrolled tablet a
t its head and raised the lantern’s cover long enough to read the inscription. A name, though worn and dirty, was clearly inscribed and did not belong to Henriette.
“I hope to God this isn’t it,” whispered McNee as they regarded a second with an obelisk atop it. “I wouldn’t put it past Henri Gerard to make entry nigh impossible.” But hasty examination of the obelisk’s inscription laid that cruel joke to rest.
“Your logic seems to have failed you,” taunted Shillingford after two more box tombs yielded no result.
“I thought they would have taken the first tomb nearest the road,” whispered McNee. “The priest didn’t say where, did he?”
“Not that I recall.”
Then McNee gestured toward the statue of an angel whose outstretched arms might have protected a grass-enshrouded box tomb, had the angel not been moved aside, as if rejecting whatever lay beneath the stone slab. The men applied their lantern’s light to the slab. No name appeared upon it. They jimmied it loose with pickax and crowbar and put their backs into moving the slab.
Shillingford’s spade hit something that was neither earth nor stone, that resisted but with extra force might yield. “Here,” he said, and McNee drew closer to concentrate their efforts. They felt their spades scrape this surface and Shillingford pulled up the cover of the lantern again to give McNee light while he continued to dig.
They both stopped to look. McNee dug away with his hands and exposed a much-deteriorated length of wooden plank. He stepped back along the muddy trench that they had made and took up the spade again to resume digging. The coffin lid, which had been made of two heavy planks joined in the center, had collapsed. One side of the coffin had come free and was filled with dirt and mud. McNee yanked at the lid. Six years’ burial was sufficient to ensure that whatever was buried in the coffin was well past putrefaction. Death is death nonetheless, and McNee was prepared to recoil at the sight and the dank smell. McNee pitched the planking out of the hole and Shillingford lowered the lantern. Both men bent to look.
At the side of the coffin that had caved in, up at the head, a tiny skull was just visible through the dirt, snuggled almost, at the shoulder of its companion in death. The larger skull leaned in toward the tiny head. Shillingford moved the lantern along the entire coffin’s length. Though Mother Nature had done her best to return the bodies to dust, it was clear that the figure was not the diminutive papillon. The large figure had worn a waistcoat with silver buttons and a man’s belt with a heavy silver buckle bearing the initials PRL.
“Jesus H. Christ,” muttered McNee.
“Indeed,” said Shillingford. “I think we have just found Philippe Letourneau.”
CHAPTER 27
The Plainest and Simplest Words
A man of good sense will always make a point of using the plainest and simplest words that convey his meaning; and will bear in mind that his principal or only business is to lodge his idea in the mind of his hearer. The same remark applies to the distinctness of articulation; and Hannah More has justly observed that to speak so that people can hear you is one of the minor virtues.
—Decorum, page 66
Epiphany Sunday came and went before Francesca Lund admitted into her presence the repentant Edmund Tracey. He was quick enough to call following New Year’s Day and brought flowers as a sign of contrition, but was greeted with the news that Miss Lund had taken ill and was receiving no one. Francesca retreated to her bedroom and lay upon the chaise, her brain playing again and again the dreadful event and each disapproving look. Amid prayers for guidance she cried herself to numbness. That she didn’t feel her usual eagerness to forgive bothered her almost as much as Edmund’s flagrant disregard. Ten days passed before she could bring herself to send word that she would receive him.
She had been cool and dispassionate as she stood in the drawing room. Edmund kept his remarks upon his behavior brief, applied the requisite apology—omitting a promise to do better—received her forgiveness, and departed, all in the space of fifteen minutes. The episode fazed her so little that she wondered whether she should have offered him tea.
She took the dogs and went out. It was a pale, gray mid-afternoon. Snow had begun to fall in fat, quiet flakes. She made her way up Sixty-third Street and stopped when she came to Fifth Avenue. As Chalk and Coal investigated the shrubbery, she stood stupidly at the corner and looked up and down, deciding where best to enter Central Park. Her habit was to enter at the south and walk the park from end to end, but life had proved so contrary that she crossed the street and walked up Fifth Avenue and turned in at the Zoo.
The drab trees arched overhead, welcoming her into a peaceful, gray cathedral, whose lacy spray of branches vaulted skyward to hold up the light granite-gray ceiling. Beneath the colorless sky and the silent shower of white Francesca felt anonymous, invisible. As she glided along the path, she watched the world from a safe inner vantage point. The dogs’ hindquarters swayed, tails erect, noses dissecting the air. Figures moved in the gray light as if in a dream. The world was muffled but for the crunch of her boots and the patter of paws on the packed snow, but troubled thoughts cut through unbidden.
When she reached the Bridle Path, she decided to make the Lake her destination to watch the skaters. A weekday when children were in school and men were at work would likely bring only a few ladies. She might skate herself if she was so moved. She hugged the fur muff to her and quickened her pace. The snow fell heavier and began to accumulate on the shoulders of her black woolen coat and hat. At the Lake, the skaters were indeed few and mostly ladies, with two gentlemen hustling to sweep the surface clear. She found a satisfactory vantage point and unsnapped the leashes and let the dogs run.
A heavy heart fired warmth into her extremities. She recounted to herself how much she had relinquished in the past few days. She had nearly relinquished the idea of marriage when Edmund proposed. Her acceptance, she thought, was a sign of her recovery, a desire to get on with the business of life. Perhaps in theory this was true, but her choice seemed to force her to relinquish other notions she held dear, especially marrying for love.
She pondered, for the hundredth time, what she might relinquish in becoming Edmund’s wife. It wasn’t so much the quarrel over money or his behavior, but how marriage to Edmund would change her. She was beginning to like herself less because she was less like herself around Edmund. Curbing her actions and words to keep him in an agreeable mood was taking its toll. She was anxious before each meeting and relieved when he was gone. Her endless mental recitation of their disagreements and the minutiae of his behavior left her sleepless and weary.
As Francesca watched the skaters, out of the corner of her eye, she detected the approach of a man, heralded by the odor of cigar smoke. She turned to see a dark mass of overcoat and top hat walking toward her. The infernal O’Casey approached warily (as well he should, she thought) and stood beside her. The only saving grace was that with him she needn’t pretend. She felt herself flush nonetheless.
“Alone at last,” he began, and was stopped by the unpleasant look she gave him. “No,” he said, “that was in poor taste. I apologize.” She said nothing. “I heard you were ill. I’m sorry. I take this as a sign you’re feeling better.”
“Yes, thank you.” They watched together in silence.
“I’m sorry about New Year’s Day. I had no right to speak to you the way I did.”
“No, you had no right.” She whistled to the dogs to bring them back within the tether of her call. “But your apology is accepted.” She searched for something light to say. “I’m surprised to see you out for exercise. You must be feeling better yourself. You looked slightly worse for wear when I saw you last.”
“I am, thank you. As to the exercise, I’m an avid walker. Keeps the limbs and joints limber. Stimulates the brain, too, don’t you think?”
“Yes, for better or for worse.” Francesca’s thoughts strayed for a moment as she looked out over the scene before her. “Do you really enjoy a cigar? Wretched thin
gs. I don’t like the taste myself,” she said, not thinking.
“So you smoke cigars on the quiet?” he ventured cautiously.
She smiled in spite of herself. “No, I meant on a man’s lips.”
“I didn’t think you’d tasted enough lips to know,” retorted Connor easily, with a slight tone of mockery. She flushed and darted him a narrow look.
“Pipes are a much pleasanter form of tobacco smoking.”
“For kissing?” Worse and worse.
“Yes, for kissing,” she said, regaining her composure by degrees.
“I’ll have to take up a pipe.”
“It doesn’t suit your—personality.”
“Just what do you think would suit my ‘personality’?”
“I’m afraid I’m at a loss to say, since I’ve not had the privilege of encountering anyone quite like you before.”
“A deficit I shall endeavor to remedy.”
“Don’t trouble yourself.”
“ ’Tis no trouble,” he said, pausing until she looked at him. In spite of her calm exterior, her pulse rose and the winter atmosphere prickled at the rising warmth in her cheeks. She stood transfixed by his gaze, then came to herself as the mockery returned to his visage and he blatantly looked her up and down. “No trouble at all.”
“And is this how you endeavor to make yourself agreeable to ladies?”
“I don’t know any ladies—”
“I’m not surprised—”
“So it really doesn’t signify, now, does it? You see, I don’t believe in ladies, not really.”
“What do you mean, you ‘don’t believe in ladies’?”
“Exactly what I said. I don’t believe they exist. They think they do. They make men and even other women—especially other women—think they do. It’s always been my belief that the idea of ‘ladies’ only exists to sell fashions and jewelry and all other manner of bric-a-brac to clutter up a man’s life and keep him from smokin’ his favorite cigar.”
Decorum Page 22