MURDER AT BERTRAM'S BOWER

by Cynthia Peale

  “Enough!” Wainwright shot to his feet, startling them all. He stared down at Caroline, momentarily speechless with outrage. “I did not come here to listen to such drivel,” he said at last. “I came here to warn you—all of you—to stay out of this business once and for all. I would advise you to heed that warning. Good day to you.”

  And before she could answer, he stalked out of the room, pulling the pocket doors shut behind him with unnecessary force. They heard him in the vestibule, and then the front door slammed and he was gone.

  “Well!” Caroline said, managing a little laugh. “I certainly didn’t keep my promise to you about dealing with Cousin Wainwright, did I, Addington?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He emptied his lukewarm tea into the slop dish, poured a fresh cup for himself, and stood at his accustomed place before the fire. “He will calm down soon enough. I suppose Crippen complained to him, although I must say, Crippen seemed happy enough to see us.”

  “What did he say?” Caroline asked. “Did he tell you anything useful?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, he did.” Briefly, Ames recounted what they had learned. MacKenzie was shocked when he spoke so matter-of-factly about Mary’s pregnancy, but Caroline seemed neither shocked nor surprised at that particular piece of news.

  “Agatha has had to deal with something like that before,” she said. “There have been at least two girls who have had to leave because they were in the family way. One of them, I believe, was already enceinte when she came to the Bower, and the other—well, they have pretty close supervision, but some of them manage to evade it all the same. You have met Matron Pratt, Doctor, and you can see for yourself how strict she is. She must be, under the circumstances—strict, and always vigilant. Agatha went through two or three matrons before Mrs. Pratt came to her, and none of them was satisfactory. Those girls need a good, strong hand to guide them, and whatever else you may think of Mrs. Pratt, her hand is very strong indeed.”

  MacKenzie nodded. “Too strong, do you think?”

  “Why, how could she be too strong? It is a houseful of girls—there are twenty at least, and sometimes more—many of whom have never had proper guidance in their lives. And she has only three months to guide them, don’t forget, before they must go back into the world, with all its temptations and possibilities for error. Even if she must sometimes seem unfair—the way she did yesterday, for instance, with that poor girl who answered the door—I have no doubt that she has the best interests of the girls at heart.”

  MacKenzie was not so sure about that, but he let it pass.

  “Look at this, Caroline,” Ames said then. He took out his pocket notebook and showed her the jumble of letters he had copied in Crippen’s office.

  “What is it?” she said, staring at it.

  “Some kind of note found on Mary Flaherty’s person. It wasn’t written—it was letters cut out and pasted together.”

  “How very odd,” she said, handing the notebook back to him. “Some kind of code, or cipher?”

  “Yes. Crippen thought it was either that or some esoteric language. But it isn’t any language I’ve ever seen. And so much for Cousin Wainwright’s pique,” Ames added. “Crippen was planning to come to me for help, so I don’t see how Wainwright can object if I call on him, in turn, to find out what he knows.”

  Caroline met MacKenzie’s eyes and smiled. “Did you have an interesting day, Doctor?”

  “Indeed we did. And not the least of it was our excursion down to the waterfront.”

  “The waterfront! Why did you go there?”

  MacKenzie deferred to Ames, who told her of their visit to the Green Harp Saloon.

  “Garrett O’Reilly!” she exclaimed. “Yes, I know him. I see him sometimes when I go to teach the girls. He’s a good boy, very dependable.”

  Ames contemplated her. “Is he the kind of boy, do you think, who would—ah—get Mary Flaherty in the family way and then murder her to keep her quiet?”

  She went a little pale as she set her cup and saucer onto the tray. “No, I don’t think he is,” she said.

  “Crippen seems to think he might be,” Ames replied.

  At that, she blazed up. “Then Crippen is wrong!” she said vehemently. “Again! He was wrong before, and he is wrong now! Why, Garrett O’Reilly is a perfectly wonderful boy, Addington! He is as nicely mannered as any young man over at the College—better, in fact—and bright and capable. I cannot believe he is involved in this business. Oh, dear! And Inspector Crippen will arrest him, and he will charge him with the crime—”

  “Crimes,” Ames interjected. “There have been two deaths, remember.”

  “Yes, and all the more reason to believe that Garrett had nothing to do with them! Why would he kill Bridget if it was Mary whom he—”

  Her vocabulary failed her, and she broke off as a knock came at the pocket doors.

  “Excuse me, miss,” said Margaret, looking in, “but Cook is wanting to speak with you about the dinner.”

  She meant, Caroline knew, not tonight’s repast, which would be something plain and easy to prepare, but the dinner for the following night, when a dozen people were coming to meet her “lion,” the British journalist. Caroline had thought every detail of the menu was settled, but apparently not.

  “All right, Margaret. I’m coming.” And when the maid did not immediately withdraw: “Is there something else?”

  “Yes, miss. When I took out the big serving platter, I found it cracked right through.”

  The potted grouse, thought Caroline. Potted grouse was heavy—too heavy to risk a disaster. Fortunately, they had twenty-four hours to repair the damage.

  “The recipe for china cement is in my household book,” she said. “I will be down directly, but you can begin to prepare it. Beaten egg white, quicklime—and it will need some old cheese, well grated.”

  The maid withdrew. She’d been with them for more than ten years, with never a day off more than her half-Sunday every other week. When she’d asked permission to visit her sister in Fitchburg, Caroline hadn’t had the heart to refuse. She was to take the train on Saturday night, and somehow they’d survive until she returned.

  “I must go to Cook,” she said to the men, “before she works herself up into a state. And tomorrow is hopeless. I must be here all day, getting ready. A hired girl is coming in to help, and the pastry cook arrives at dawn. And you, Addington—”

  He smiled at her, understanding. “I will be well out of your way as soon as I finish breakfast. And Dr. MacKenzie will be with me.”

  “You will go to the Bower,” she said, and it was not a question.

  “Yes, Caro. I—we—will go to the Bower.”

  At breakfast the next morning, Caroline sifted through her letters—the bills went first to Addington, although she was the one who dealt with them in the end—and extracted one, a thick pale blue envelope with a stamp far too beautiful to be American.

  “At last!” she exclaimed, smiling. And, at MacKenzie’s quizzical glance, “From Val in Rome. I haven’t heard from her since she sent me that one brief note just after she arrived. Oh, I do hope she is having a good time! You don’t mind if I read it, Addington?”

  He waved a hand at her, his face hidden behind the morning Globe. MacKenzie made do with his oatmeal, resigning himself to a breakfast without conversation, but, after a moment Caroline said, “Listen to this, Addington!”

  Ames put down his paper. “What?”

  “Val and her set have taken up with the crowd that visits the artists’ studios, and they go two or three times a week to the museums. They even went to Florence last week. I am so glad she went abroad after that horrid episode with George Putnam. His mother passed me in the street the other day and cut me dead.”

  Their cousin Valentine, recovering from a broken engagement, had fled to Italy for the winter. She had invited Caroline to join her in the spring, in the South of France, but MacKenzie, realizing his selfishness, hoped Caroline wouldn’t go.
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  “Good,” said Ames, returning to his newspaper. But after a moment he put it down with a small tsk! of irritation. “They are bungling it,” he said.

  “Crippen?” MacKenzie asked.

  “Of course Crippen. Who else? He promises the public that the killer of the Bower girls will be apprehended ‘swiftly’—his word. Meanwhile he promises—as he has done for weeks now—that the Copp’s Hill Boys will be behind bars any moment.”

  Caroline left off reading Val’s letter and tucked it back into its envelope. She was too busy to fully savor it. Tomorrow, she thought, when I have more time.

  “You are going to the Bower this morning, Addington?” she asked.

  “Since I promised you that I would—yes.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” she went on.

  At once he was on his guard. Caroline, thinking, was always problematical.

  “I want to invite Agatha for this evening,” she said. “And her brother.”

  “Really? Are you sure that would be wise?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Won’t people think it odd for a woman in Miss Montgomery’s situation to show herself at a social occasion?”

  “But that is the point, Addington. It is important for people to see that she has not been banished—that the people who have supported the Bower have not turned away from her. Don’t forget that Imogen and Edward Boylston are coming. He sits on the Bower’s board of trustees.”

  He grunted, still skeptical.

  “So I will write a note to Agatha,” Caroline said, “inviting them both, and if you would deliver it to her—?”

  Ames rolled his eyes and retreated behind his newspaper once more, and Caroline met MacKenzie’s glance with a little smile of triumph.

  Half an hour later, Ames and MacKenzie made their way down the steep slope of Mt. Vernon Street to Charles. Pedestrians hurried by, tilting their umbrellas against the rain, while delivery boys and errand boys hurtled past, dodging in and out. Over all rose the strong odor of the sea and the ever-present smell of horse dung.

  They found a herdic in front of the S. S. Pierce grocery store, and at last, with a crack of his whip, the driver found a way clear and they set off.

  “As Caroline says, Miss Montgomery is a most admirable woman,” Ames said. He did not look at MacKenzie as he spoke but gazed out at the row of brick and brownstone town houses along Beacon Street.

  “Yes, she seems to be.” MacKenzie put a hand on the seat to steady himself as they took a sharp corner at Arlington.

  “And unfortunately, her work at the Bower is sorely needed,” Ames went on. “Down near Crabbe’s, at certain hours of the evening, it is becoming impossible to walk twenty paces without being set upon by some poor drab in search of a customer.”

  Ames’s wide, thin mouth drew down in an expression of distaste, and MacKenzie had a brief mental glimpse of the austere, proud and proper Bostonian who was Addington Ames being accosted by a woman of the streets.

  They crossed the railroad tracks near the Boston & Providence station and came into the South End. A newsboy was crying a late edition at the corner of Columbus Avenue: “Read all about it! Bertram’s Bower! Vicious crime!”

  “The journalistic community seems to be making a good profit out of this affair,” Ames said sourly.

  “That is their business, I suppose,” MacKenzie replied. He had a memory of his landlord threatening bodily harm to a prying reporter, two months before, in the case of Colonel Mann.

  At length the herdic turned into Rutland Square and they alighted at the Bower. As Ames paid the driver, MacKenzie looked up at the tall brownstone. All the blinds were drawn, giving it the look of a house of mourning—which it was. No wreath adorned the front door, however. Probably they did not deem it wise to draw attention to themselves, he thought.

  They mounted the steep steps, and Ames lifted the knocker and brought it sharply down.

  No answer.

  He tried again, but still no one came. Just as he raised his hand to try a third time, the door flew open, and they were confronted by the forbidding figure of Matron Pratt. MacKenzie had come to think of her as a dragon matron, hostile to all outsiders.

  “No visitors allowed,” she snapped.

  “I beg your pardon, madam,” Ames said, “but we are not visitors in the usual sense of the word. I am a friend of Miss Montgomery’s. Is she in?”

  Over the past four months of his acquaintance with the Ameses, MacKenzie had learned that Addington Ames could be curt to the point of rudeness, but he could also be the image of controlled, ever so slightly condescending courtesy, as he was now.

  Matron Pratt looked them up and down as if they were the most disreputable type of interloper—traveling salesmen perhaps. “No, she is not!” she snarled, and before Ames could speak again, she slammed the door in their faces.

  “Well, Doctor, it seems that we are not welcome here,” Ames said mildly. He was not offended, or even surprised, at Matron Pratt’s behavior. He’d never met her, but he’d heard a good deal about her from Caroline.

  “Shall we try again?” he said, once more lifting the brass knocker and bringing it down hard.

  Instantly, the dragon matron confronted them for a second time. “I said—”

  “We heard what you said.” Ames braced his hand against the door to prevent her from slamming it shut. “I understand that you are in crisis here,” he went on. “I simply want a brief moment with Miss Montgomery, and I promise you—”

  “What is it, Mrs. Pratt?” came a voice from within.

  As the dragon matron turned, they could see beyond her the tall, angular figure of Agatha Montgomery.

  “They want to talk to you,” Matron Pratt said.

  “Who does?” Miss Montgomery advanced. “Oh—Mr. Ames.”

  “My sister would have come again herself,” Ames said, “but she was unable to. So she asked me—us,” he corrected himself, “to come instead, to inquire if there is anything we can do to help.”

  Miss Montgomery shook her head. “She is very kind to worry so about us,” she said. She seemed about to say more, but she was interrupted by the sound of a crash from the rear of the house, followed immediately by a loud wailing.

  Miss Montgomery turned to Mrs. Pratt. “Matron, will you—No. Never mind. I will go myself.” She left them and hurried back along the hall.

  Ames took this opportunity to step into the vestibule. Matron Pratt stared at him in amazement. Obviously, thought MacKenzie, stepping close behind, she is not accustomed to having her dictates opposed. Ames shut the outer door, and then he moved into the hall and MacKenzie followed. The place seemed as deserted as it had been the day before, and it carried the same institutional smell. They would never rid themselves of that, MacKenzie thought; probably the girls carried it with them when they left.

  “You are trespassing!” snapped Matron Pratt, recovered from her astonishment. “I will call the police!” There was a telephone on the wall outside the office door.

  “Please do,” Ames said smoothly. “They are friends of mine. I would be delighted to see them.”

  Miss Montgomery was approaching them from the back of the hall. “It was an accident,” she said distractedly, as if she were speaking to herself. “Coughlin dropped some plates.”

  Matron Pratt narrowed her eyes, no doubt calculating the cost of the breakage, MacKenzie thought.

  “Now, Mr. Ames,” Miss Montgomery said, “you wanted to speak to me.”

  “If you can spare the time.”

  “At the moment, I cannot. But Matron will help you, and then perhaps I can—”

  “I have the schedule to attend to,” Matron Pratt protested.

  “Yes, well, that can wait,” Miss Montgomery said.

  A look passed between them. Then Matron Pratt said nothing more, merely muttering an assent and opening the door to the office. “In there,” she said sharply, but then, as if she remembered something: “I haven’t had my paper returned to me!” s
he called to Miss Montgomery.

  They heard the reply: “I have already spoken to everyone except O’Donnell and Fletcher. You might question them yourself, Matron, at the noon meal.”

  Matron Pratt slammed shut the office door and turned to face the visitors. Her face was rigid with anger, and her mouth worked for a moment before she spoke.

  “They are thieves, here, along with everything else,” she said then.

  “Thieves?” Ames replied. “How do you mean?”

  “I mean, they steal things!” she snapped.

  “You have lost something?” Ames asked.

  “No! I didn’t lose it! Someone stole it! My tract—one of my papers from my Sunday evening meetings.” As she came into the room, she flexed her broad, thick hands.

  “And you think that one of the—ah—young women here has taken it?”

  “I don’t think it! I know it! How else could it disappear?”

  Surely, thought MacKenzie, the “Mrs.” in Matron Pratt’s name was a courtesy title, for what man would marry such a harridan?

  She went to the front windows and peered out from behind the blind. “There he is again,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “One of those newspapermen. They are like a plague, worse than the police. They haven’t left us alone for a moment.”

  She came back to them, but she did not take a chair. Neither, therefore, did they.

  MacKenzie looked around. It was a fairly large room, linoleum-floored, with a good-sized desk facing the door. Rows of oak filing cabinets and glass-fronted bookcases lined the walls. On the bookshelves, neatly arranged, was a set of what looked like account books, each with its year stamped in gold on its spine. On the desktop were stacks of bills and correspondence, an in box and an out box, a glass pen tray and two bottles of ink, a sheet of green blotting paper—fresh, unmarked—and a tall spindle impaled with a thick stack of notes. The top one had the notation: “Mr. Boylston, 10 A.M.”