MURDER AT BERTRAM'S BOWER

by Cynthia Peale

  Caroline had a brief image of Euphemia speaking to Cousin Wainwright, and, worse, upbraiding Elwood Crippen. If Euphemia scolded Inspector Crippen, he would simply arrest Garrett O’Reilly all the more quickly.

  “They need a little time, aunt—”

  “Time! Don’t talk to me about time, my girl.” Caroline would turn thirty-six in May, but to Euphemia she was and always would be a mere slip of a girl, giddy and heedless and needing a firm hand to guide her.

  “In my day,” Euphemia went on, “such a situation would never have been tolerated. Why, it is only because we have a man with us today that I agreed to go to Symphony. And I am not easily intimidated, as I don’t have to tell you.”

  She didn’t. Over Euphemia’s bonnet, Caroline and MacKenzie exchanged a smile. Euphemia Ames was a legend in her own lifetime, a fervent abolitionist in her youth, a perpetrator of lawless acts like shepherding escaped slaves along the Underground Railroad, one stop of which was on the back of Beacon Hill. Aunt Euphemia had been a scourge of all that was proper and sedate, and had never been intimidated in her life as far as Caroline could tell. It was strange to hear her now, going on about her fears.

  As they waited to cross at Tremont Street, Euphemia suddenly turned on her. “I trust that Addington is not involved in this case,” she said. “I know you have some connection to the Bower, Caroline, but that needn’t mean he must get mixed up in it.”

  For all Euphemia’s lawlessness in her youth, she was grimly law-abiding now, the most proper of Bostonians; she had reared the orphaned Valentine with what Caroline had thought was far too heavy a hand. Nevertheless, Val had turned out splendidly, and Caroline seized upon her now as a way out of any discussion of Addington’s activities.

  “I had a letter from Val the other day, aunt,” she said brightly. An omnibus lumbered by, followed by two more and a steady stream of carriages and cabs following.

  “And how is she?” Euphemia asked. “I haven’t heard from her in two weeks. I hope she isn’t in with a fast crowd. You never know about those foreigners, but one thing you can be sure of is that they’re not reliable.”

  “Oh, she’s very well. I think she’s having a grand time.”

  Having a grand time was not Euphemia’s notion of the way to recover from a broken heart. “There, we can cross now,” she said. “Worth your life to go out these days. I never come downtown anymore.”

  Safe across, Euphemia paused to settle her bonnet, which had come slightly askew. She cast a shrewd glance at Caroline. “Someday, niece, you must tell me the real reason why Valentine threw over George Putnam.”

  It was a shot intended to stun, and it did.

  “Why—aunt—I believe that she—ah—”

  “Never mind about it now,” Euphemia said. “But he always seemed to me to be a perfectly good match for her. I grant you, he is a trifle dull, but there are worse qualities in a man than dullness. And his people are as steady as a rock. Not a weakness anywhere in that family tree. So why did she decide to create that little scandal by giving him back his ring?”

  To avoid a larger scandal, Caroline thought, but she could never have said so. Euphemia knew nothing about Val’s being blackmailed by the late, unlamented Colonel Mann, and let’s keep it that way, Caroline prayed.

  At the Music Hall, people were streaming in. In this crowd, Caroline did not see the anxiety abroad on the city’s streets, for this was a solid Brahmin crowd, the Friday afternoon regulars, safe and secure in their tight little world. Not even the advent of Jack the Ripper himself could unsettle these folks.

  Nodding left and right, for both she and Euphemia knew nearly everyone here, she led the way in. They settled themselves in their seats and began to peruse their programs.

  MacKenzie stifled a sigh. Truth to tell, he was not overfond of classical music. Before he came to Boston, he’d never even heard any, and since he’d been to Symphony a few times with Caroline, he couldn’t say he was any the better for it.

  Except for the fact of her company: for that, he was very grateful. But the music—heavy, lugubrious stuff produced under the energetic baton of the Symphony’s German maestro—no, he wasn’t terribly fond of that. He preferred the martial tunes of John Philip Sousa, or the lilting melodies of the Waltz King, Johann Strauss.

  As if on cue, the audience quieted. Herr Nikisch strode onstage, bowing to the applause that greeted him. He lifted his baton, and with a mighty crash of sound, the afternoon’s concert began.

  I WILL HAVE YOU YET, REVEREND, AMES THOUGHT AS HE strode down Commonwealth Avenue. He passed a woman he knew, tipped his hat to her, and kept on going. He seldom stopped to chat, and just now he certainly would not do so. He needed to keep going lest his nerve—his steady, steely nerve—fail him. Ordinarily he was the coolest of men, always calm while others grew excited, always quiet and thoughtful while others chattered without thinking.

  Now, however, he was disconcertingly unsettled.

  He didn’t need—he really didn’t need—to see Serena Vincent again, and unannounced at that.

  No matter. He was sure she had something more to tell—something important—and now, having geared himself up to it, he meant to find out what it was.

  She did not seem surprised to see him. She wore a tea gown of flowing green velvet, and her glorious hair was not completely up. Seeing it halfway down her back was like seeing her partially undressed.

  “Mr. Ames,” she said in her low, seductive voice.

  She gave him her hand and let it linger a bit in his. Then, motioning him to a seat, she arranged herself gracefully opposite and smiled at him. “And to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” The Yorkie was growling at him, and she snapped her fingers to quiet it.

  He hesitated. Chitchat was not his style, and yet what did he expect her to say? Something rude—dismissive?

  “I am sorry to trouble you again so soon.”

  “No trouble. I was just reading manuscript plays. It is a tedious job at best, and this week’s offerings are worse than usual. You have no idea how difficult it is to find good material.”

  No. He did not.

  “Might you try some of the classics, perhaps?” he ventured.

  “You mean Shakespeare? Oh, but that is not my forte. Even the comedies are beyond my reach, I fear. His plays always seem to have—how shall I put it? Too many words.”

  This was not Ames’s opinion of the Bard of Avon, but he let it pass. He had not come here to discuss dramaturgy.

  “About Miss Montgomery—” he began.

  “What is the news from the Bower?” she broke in. She seemed genuinely interested.

  “Not very much, I am afraid.”

  “And all this business about Jack the Ripper does not help, I am sure.”

  “No. It does not. My sister entertained that fellow Chadwick at dinner on Wednesday evening, and his thanks to her was to publish that irresponsible piece in the Star.”

  She did not quite smile at that. She was wearing face paint, he was sure, but on her it did not look cheap and artificial but exactly right. Her beautiful eyes lingered on him, and he saw a question there beyond the one she had voiced.

  “My cousin, who sits on the board of police commissioners” (and how pompous and stuffy that sounded) “asked me at first not to involve myself in the case. But then, when he saw the degree to which the public has become exercised over the matter, he changed his mind and asked me to—ah—make such inquiries as I can.”

  “That was very clever of him.”

  He felt himself flush a little. “And so, since you asked me also, I have come back today to say—”

  “What?” She leaned toward him as if she wanted to help him sort out his thoughts. He had a sudden, startling glimpse of her bosom, and he felt himself flush more deeply.

  “To say that when I spoke to you before, I went away with the sense that perhaps you had not told me all that you might.”

  She lifted one exquisitely arched eyebrow. “How very percepti
ve of you.”

  “Then you do have something more—”

  She sat back, and suddenly her beautiful face—the face that had thrilled a thousand male hearts—ten thousand—went blank.

  “I am not sure that I do,” she said. “Have something more to tell you, that is.”

  “Because?”

  She contemplated him. “Because it is not the kind of thing you might believe.”

  “I believe all kinds of things, some of them very strange.”

  She went on looking at him. A man could drown in those eyes, he thought.

  “Mr. Ames, you know this city as well as I do. Better, perhaps. You know what Boston people are like. They are a starchy lot, with very definite ideas about what is proper and what is not. I am living testament to that. No—you needn’t make excuses, not for them, and certainly not for me. But what I am trying to say to you is that people believe what they want to believe. And here in Boston they want to believe that I am a—what? A loose woman, a woman who has gone upon the wicked stage, a woman who was cast out of decent society—oh, yes, I committed the sin of adultery, I do not deny it, but the fact that there were extenuating circumstances never seemed to have entered people’s minds. They cast me out, and that was that. The fact that I have survived has probably offended some of them. Not that I care—of course not. But you understand what I am trying to tell you. People’s minds are set in a certain way, and it is very difficult to change them.”

  She paused to offer him a cigarette. As before, he declined; as before, she took one and allowed him to light it for her.

  She inhaled deeply two or three times, staring into the fire. Over the murmur and hiss of the flames, he heard rain spatter against the window. He felt as if he were caught in the spell of some enchantress. Because it was this particular enchantress’s spell, he did not want to break it.

  “It is … the Reverend Montgomery,” she said at last.

  He felt no surprise. It was almost as if he had known what she would say.

  “What about him?” he asked, but he knew what she would say next as well.

  “He is … a predator.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know that? How?”

  “I—my sister has her own informants.”

  She nodded as she tapped off the ash from her cigarette. “If they told her that he makes advances,” she said, “they have informed her correctly.”

  “He made advances to you?” He felt a sudden stab of anger.

  “Advances—yes.” She frowned at the memory. “More like an assault. And most unwelcome, I can assure you.”

  The sight of it in his mind’s eye sickened him. “When?”

  “Years ago, back when Agatha took me in. I suppose he thought I was vulnerable—which I was, but not to him—and therefore, like all men of that kind, he made his move.”

  “And what did you do?”

  She smiled. “I sent him packing, of course. Fortunately I was not wearing corsets at the time, and I had full freedom of movement. I gave him a knee in the place where he would feel it most.”

  Such plain talk from most women would have appalled him, but from Serena Vincent it did not. Because she has been coarsened by her years in the theater, he thought, and therefore I expect her to speak coarsely? Or because she has paid me the compliment of speaking frankly, as if we were much better acquainted than we are?

  “Did you tell Miss Montgomery?”

  “No, of course not. She worships him. She would never believe anything bad about him. But when I read of Mary Flaherty’s death, I thought of him at once. If he made advances to Mary, and perhaps more than that—do you know if she was in the family way?”

  “Yes. She was.”

  “Well, then, perhaps—do you not think—the reverend may have been responsible for her condition?”

  “I think it is quite possible. I even think it is possible that he may have killed her. Unfortunately, what I think and what can be proved are two different things.”

  “And then there is the matter of the second girl,” she said.

  “Yes. Even if the case could be made against the reverend for Mary’s death, we would still need to account for that other one.”

  “Unless she was killed by someone else, an imitation crime?”

  “That is not likely, I think. I believe the same man killed both girls.”

  She extinguished her cigarette. “And I believe that you are correct. So what will you do now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She stood up, and he did also.

  “I am glad to have seen you,” she said. “I have been wondering, ever since I spoke to you the other day, whether I should have told you what I know about the Reverend Montgomery. It is almost as if you read my mind, coming here this afternoon.”

  She was walking him to the door. When they reached the little entrance hall, he saw her maid hovering in the background. Mrs. Vincent held out her hand and he took it.

  “I cannot imagine what will become of Agatha if it turns out that the reverend is the man the police—and you—are searching for,” she said. “I adore her, and her work is so terribly important. She must continue it. But to have that man by her side, supporting her with his fund-raising and yet betraying her in that dreadful way—it is a difficult thing, Mr. Ames.”

  “Very difficult.”

  “Good luck,” she murmured.

  She had allowed her hand to remain in his, and now, for an instant, he gripped it so hard that her eyes widened in surprise as, reflexively, she tried to take it back.

  At once he released her. She stood so close to him that he was nearly overcome by her heavy, sensuous scent. He didn’t know what to do. He’d been in the act of leaving, but now, if he’d had one word from her—only one—he would have stayed.

  And she seemed to understand that—his sudden, devastating need for her.

  She lifted her hand and with her fingertips lightly traced the line of his cheek—an amazingly daring gesture far beyond the bounds of propriety. Deep within himself he felt his body—his very soul—respond to her touch. As delicate as it was, it nearly scalded him. She was looking deep into his eyes, but he could not read her expression.

  “I will be thinking of you,” she said.

  And I of you, he thought. But when he tried to speak, he could do no more than utter a curt—too curt—farewell.

  In minutes he was out on the street once more. It was raining hard now; he looked for a herdic, but of course there was not one to be had, not in this weather.

  It was mid-afternoon. Caroline and MacKenzie would not be back from Symphony for another two hours. Usually he wouldn’t mind being at home by himself, but today the last thing he wanted was to sit in his study, his mind going around and around, picking over what Serena Vincent had told him, her words like a festering wound on his soul. And, worse, to remember the brief, intoxicating sensation of her touch—No.

  He was on Boylston Street now, across from the Hotel Brunswick. He sheltered for a moment in the doorway of Boston Tech. Pulling out his pocket notebook, he flipped through the pages until he found the address he sought; then he set off again in the rain.

  Fayette Street was a street of small brick houses, miniature houses really, set along its narrow length behind the Boston & Providence station. Here the air was thick with smoke, and the city sounds of horses’ hooves and iron-rimmed wheels on cobblestone streets were drowned out by the cacophony of the engines, their shrill whistles, their ear-shattering snorts and chuff-chuff-chuff explosions of sound.

  Halfway along, Ames stopped. Yes, this was it: the address he’d gotten from the fellow’s employer. He yanked the bellpull and heard, faintly, the corresponding sound within. After a moment, the door was opened by a slick-looking young man in shirtsleeves and without a collar; a sparse growth of hair decorated his upper lip.

  “Yes?”

  “I am looking for Fred Brice.”

  The young man looked him up and down. “And who are you
?”

  “My name will mean nothing to him,” Ames replied coolly. “Is he in?” He is you, he thought.

  “He might be. What’s it about?”

  “Are you Fred Brice? We might speak more comfortably inside, if you could give me a few moments of your time.”

  Ames had been standing on the narrow granite stoop. Now he moved in, and the young man backed away.

  “Say, mister, I didn’t—”

  “Just a moment or two is all I need.”

  Ames pushed the door shut behind him. They were standing in the front hall of what appeared to be a boarding-house; he could see a list of rules and regulations framed and hanging on the wall. The wallpaper was faded and stained, the air stale and reeking of burned potatoes. From somewhere above, he heard a woman’s scolding voice.

  The young man had assumed a belligerent look, but he made no further protest as he opened the door to a small parlor furnished in a cheap suite of horsehair sofa and chairs. The grate was cold, the air only marginally less offensive than that of the hall. Although the light was dim, the young man made no move to turn up the gas.

  “Now,” he said, shutting the door. “What’s this about?”

  “It is about the murder of Mary Flaherty.”

  The young man’s gaze wavered for a moment and then held steady again. “And what does that have to do with you? Who are you anyway? The police? Let’s see your badge, then.”

  “No, I am not the police. You know about her death?”

  “I saw it in the papers in Worcester. And your name is—”

  “My name is Addington Ames. Although I am not the police, I am working with them.” A small untruth, not stretched too far.

  “And?”

  “You knew Mary Flaherty, did you not?”

  “Sure. I knew her.”

  “We have been told that you visited her at Bertram’s Bower last Saturday, and that you argued with her.”

  The young man’s narrow eyes narrowed further. “If you’re trying to stick me with what happened to her, mister, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”