“No,” she said. “She was not. Let it be a lesson to me, never again to allow a girl to be so free. I thought I could trust her.”
“But she betrayed you.”
“If what you say is true—yes, she did.”
“With whom, Miss Montgomery? That is what I need to know. Who was the man?”
She shook her head. “It seems impossible. For her to—” She caught herself. “What about that typewriter salesman? He was hanging around, making a nuisance of himself. If anyone got Mary into trouble, I would wager on him.”
“I agree with you that at first glance he would seem a likely candidate, but I have spoken to him, I have asked him that very question, and he denies it. For the moment, at least, I am inclined to believe him.”
“Well, then, who?” She thought about it. “There is a boy who works here—”
“Garrett O’Reilly? I don’t believe it was he.”
“Why not?”
“I have character references for him which lead me to believe that he would not be so rash as to—ah—become intimate with one of the girls here.”
Miss Montgomery’s mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “Because they are not good enough for him? An Irish boy?”
“For the moment, at least, let us eliminate him. Can you think of anyone else?”
“No.”
“And your brother—?”
She sucked in her breath with a loud hiss. “My brother! My brother? Are you suggesting that my brother, who is the very heart and soul of this establishment, had anything to do with Mary’s condition? You come here to insult me, to insult him—”
A sedative, thought MacKenzie; she needs a strong dose of chloral hydrate and twenty-four hours in her bed.
“I am not trying to insult anyone,” Ames retorted. “I beg you to believe that. I am merely trying to help the police—”
“Where you are not wanted! I told you before, I do not want you interfering—”
“Miss Montgomery, do you realize the seriousness of this situation? The Bower is in danger of losing its support if Mary’s killer—and Bridget’s as well—is not swiftly apprehended.”
“Then go and apprehend him, and leave my brother out of it! It is outrageous that he must be dragged into this affair when he is the best man in the world, devoted to us, to our work! He has been my strong right hand from the beginning, and to have you insinuate such things about him is more than I can bear!”
She turned her head away from them. When, after a moment, she had quieted a little, Ames said, “He might, in fact, know something that can help us.”
“If he does, he would have told it to you—or to the police—already.”
Although she had calmed, still she twisted her hands, hard, until MacKenzie thought they must hurt her.
“My brother, Mr. Ames, is a very different person from me. Yes—I know it. I accept it. He was always, from the time he was born, a charming, personable boy. Everyone always liked him. They didn’t like me particularly—charm is not one of my virtues—but they liked him. He has always made his way in the world on the strength of that charm—his ability to bring people over to his side. That is why he is so successful at raising funds. People naturally want to help him, and, by extension, the Bower.”
She paused, distracted by her thoughts. For a moment, the ghost of a smile flitted across her face.
“It is not Randolph’s fault that people find him attractive,” she went on. “Women in particular seem to throw themselves at him. Oh, yes. More than one woman has tried to befriend me in the hope that I will connect her to him. I never do, of course. Why should I?”
“And yet, one woman has—ah—connected herself to him on her own, has she not?” Ames asked. “Just the other evening, at Caroline’s dinner party, we learned that he is engaged to be married.”
Miss Montgomery’s face darkened, her mouth tightened—with anger, MacKenzie thought—but she made no reply.
“Did we not?” Ames persisted. He felt, just then, like a bully—something he never wanted to be—but he was coming close to something, he didn’t know what, and he needed to keep on until he found it.
“We did—yes,” Miss Montgomery replied reluctantly.
“You were not aware of it before Wednesday evening?”
“No.”
Why not? Ames wondered. Why did your precious brother keep it secret? To avoid your wrath?
“You do not know the lady?”
“No.”
“Nor anything about her?”
“No. Except that she is a widow. Randolph told me that later. And quite wealthy.”
“I see.” Ames’s pulse quickened at the thought of the Reverend Montgomery, a wealthy widow within his grasp. And if a girl from the Bower—a girl who was inconveniently in the family way, and perhaps by him—threatened to be an impediment to that match, what would the reverend have done to get rid of her?
“It will be a splendid marriage for him.” Miss Montgomery seemed to have forgotten her anger, her distress. She spoke now in a singsong voice, her eyes gazing into the middle distance, seeing, perhaps, the advantageous match that her brother had achieved. “And when they marry, they will live here in Boston, they will not go to New York. Randolph would never leave me here alone. He always promised me—”
“He promised you what?”
They had not heard him open the door. Now he came in, closing it behind him.
Miss Montgomery started. “Randolph!”
“Good morning, sister.” His eyes raked Ames and MacKenzie, but he did not greet them.
“We were just—Mr. Ames came to—” Suddenly, she was afraid. Of the reverend? Ames wondered. And if so, why?
“Mr. Ames came to—what?” Montgomery’s voice was soft, but they heard the threat in it.
“To ask Miss Montgomery—” Ames began.
“To harass her, you mean.” Montgomery was breathing hard, as if he were trying to contain anger he did not want to reveal. “To hound her—to pester her once more, when in fact you have done enough pestering already, sir.”
He glanced at his sister, who sat immobile. Only the rapid blinking of her eyes showed that she, too, labored under some considerable stress.
“And so, Mr. Ames—Doctor—I ask you to leave. At once.”
Ames rose, and MacKenzie did likewise. “Of course,” Ames said. “Since you request it. But as long as you are here, Reverend, I wonder if I might prevail a trifle more upon your patience—”
“My patience is at an end, sir! I told you that last night! I order you to leave. Now!”
They were moving toward the door, and the reverend stepped aside to allow them to go out. But as Ames passed by, he murmured, “Only a moment, Reverend.”
In the hall, Ames and the doctor continued on to the front door, opened it, and went out. Montgomery stood by the office door, glaring at them. At last, as if he had come to some difficult decision, he joined them.
The three men went down the tall flight of brownstone steps to the sidewalk. At first glance, the square was deserted, only a lone grocer’s wagon trundling down the opposite side. Then MacKenzie saw a rather slovenly looking man leaning against a tree, facing the Bower. A neighborhood tramp? Doubtful, he thought. The fellow seemed to be waiting for something—or someone.
“Well?” Montgomery demanded.
Ames walked a few doors down, MacKenzie and the reverend behind. Then Ames stopped and turned to face Montgomery.
“I have spoken to Lawrence Norton,” he said.
Montgomery’s eyes, meeting his own, did not waver. “And?” he said.
“And he told me that last Sunday evening you left his house shortly after seven.”
“Perhaps he is mistaken.”
“I do not believe so.”
A dull red had begun to spread over the reverend’s fleshy face, and his eyes, so pale, so cold, seemed no more than two chips of flinty stone.
“What business of yours—I ask you, Ames—what earthly business o
f yours is it at what hour I left the Nortons’? You barge into my home, you come here, you harass my sister, you poke and pry—”
He raised his clenched, gloved fist and shook it under Ames’s nose. “Get out!” he said, his voice choked with fury.
“This is a public walkway, Reverend.”
The man leaning against the tree straightened.
“I do not care what it is! Get out! Or by God I will have you arrested for trespassing at the Bower!”
“The Black Sea, Reverend.”
This threw Montgomery off guard. “What?”
“The Black Sea. I believe you know it. They certainly know you.”
Montgomery’s face was bright red now. “Get out!” he shouted. A woman just emerging from an areaway across the square stopped in astonishment as she heard him.
“I warn you, Ames!” Montgomery advanced, fist raised. “Once and for all!”
Ames held up his hands, palms out. “We are going, Reverend. Do not excite yourself further. Good morning to you.”
He turned and walked swiftly toward the end of the square. MacKenzie, hurrying to keep up, saw out of the corner of his eye the man who had been leaning against the tree begin to head in their direction. And now he thought he recognized him.
“Excuse me—”
Ames looked around, but he did not pause. He knew this man: Babcock, from the Globe.
“Mr. Ames, is it? I wonder if I could have a word—”
“No.”
“But I’ll pay—”
“No.”
“Make it worth your while, sir, if you’d just give me—”
With a snarl, Ames dismissed him. The journalist stood in the middle of the sidewalk, staring after them, shaking his head.
It was not until they had turned into Columbus Avenue that Ames spoke. His face was taut, his eyes flashing with anger.
“A—what would you call him, Doctor? A mountebank? I don’t mean that damned scribbler back there. I mean the reverend. Yes. That is what he is. A perfect charlatan. I smell fraud about his person—stinking fraud, and worse besides.”
“Nevertheless, he has his prospects,” MacKenzie replied.
“Indeed he does. And, having them—her, rather, that wealthy widow—he would not want his plans spoiled by the inconvenience of a poor girl at the Bower who presented herself to him in a scandalous condition.”
“You mean a condition for which he was responsible?”
“Exactly, Doctor. A condition into which, if I am not mistaken, the good reverend put her.”
“His sister will never believe it.”
“No, she will not. Her faith in him is absolute.”
“To the point that if that faith were destroyed, her world would come crashing down around her.”
“Yes. Precisely.” Ames lifted his arm, and a herdic-phaeton veered toward them. “I have another errand, but you, I imagine, will be glad to go home. Tell Caro that I will be back at some point, I do not know when. She is not to worry.”
The last MacKenzie saw of him was his tall, dark-clad figure loping at a rapid clip down the avenue in the rain.
MacKenzie gazed through the lavender glass at the purplish winter-dead greenery behind the black iron fence of the oval. The rain continued unabated, the gray skies emptying sheets of water onto the square. Already now, at two o’clock, the afternoon was growing dark. Soon the streetlamps would glow, casting their pale illumination through the downpour. Lights would go on in the windows of the houses ringing the square; people would hurry home to the peace and comfort of their firesides.
But not here. Here was tension and worry, no hope of peace. As he turned back to the room, he saw that Caroline had picked up her knitting. After completing a row or two, she put it down, took up one of her beloved Diana Strangeways novels, and tried to read. He did the same, seating himself in his Morris rocker and opening the pages of the life of Lincoln that he seemed unable to finish. The words danced before his eyes in a senseless jumble, and he kept going over the same sentence, the same paragraph, without understanding what he read. A half hour passed; three-quarters. At last he put the volume aside and looked up to find her watching him.
“Where is Addington?” she said.
He saw the worry in her eyes, he heard the tension in her voice, and he longed to find the words to reassure her that her brother was safe.
“I don’t know.”
“But surely he should be back by now? I wish he’d told you where he was going. It isn’t prudent to go who-knows-where, and possibly—”
A knock at the front door interrupted her. She broke off, her hand flown to her bosom, listening—hoping—for a friendly voice instead of word of some disaster. They heard Margaret hurrying to answer. When, after a moment, she did not announce the caller, Caroline stood up.
“Who do you suppose—” she began, but just then the pocket doors slid open to reveal Margaret, her face unwontedly grim.
“Yes, Margaret? Who is it?”
“It’s an Irish, miss,” the maid said disapprovingly.
“Well, who, Margaret? Does he want to see Mr. Ames?”
“Him—or you, miss.”
Caroline pushed past her. The vestibule was empty, the front door closed. She opened it.
On the front step, shivering, hatless, wearing only a thin jacket and soaked to the skin, stood Garrett O’Reilly.
“Garrett! What on earth—come in, you’ll catch your death!”
He dripped puddles onto the tiled vestibule floor, and his teeth were chattering so badly, he could hardly speak. When Caroline turned to lead him into the hall, she confronted Margaret’s scowl.
“It’s all right, Margaret. Would you bring tea, please?” But tea hardly seemed adequate to Garrett’s condition, and so she added, “And would you go up to the fourth floor, to the box room, and see if you can find any of Mr. Ames’s old clothing?”
Not that there would be much to choose from, she thought; Addington, like so many men of his class, wore his things year in and year out. He didn’t have many castoffs.
“Yes, miss. But you remember—”
“What, Margaret?”
“I’m catching the train, miss. To my sister’s.”
“Oh, yes. I’d forgotten. But the train doesn’t leave until nine o’clock, does it?” Even in the present emergency, Caroline hadn’t the heart to forbid Margaret’s long-anticipated visit.
Margaret disappeared, and Caroline led the shivering young man into the parlor, where MacKenzie was pulling up a side chair to the fire. He shoveled more coal onto the low flames, stirred them up, and said, “Well, my lad, you’re a candidate for pneumonia. Come here and warm yourself.”
“Yes, sir.”
Caroline introduced them, and Garrett limped across the rug, shedding water as he went, to take MacKenzie’s outstretched hand—with no hesitation, the doctor noted. Once seated, Garrett held out his thin, chapped hands to the flames. He couldn’t seem to stop shivering.
Caroline gave him a moment, and then, unable to contain her curiosity, she said, “What is it, Garrett? Why have you come?”
He looked up at her. He was trembling, MacKenzie thought, from more than cold.
“It’s the police, miss.”
“What happened?” Caroline asked. “Did they question you?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Just now?”
“Yes. It was that inspector—Crippen, is it? He thinks—” His voice broke, and he swallowed hard. “He thinks I did it. He was that nasty, miss.”
“I’m sure he was.”
“He wanted to know—like, did I know the girls. Did I talk to them. Where was I on Sunday night.”
“Well?” said MacKenzie. “And where were you?”
Garrett shot him an inscrutable look. “At home, sir. Where else would I be?”
“Any number of places, I imagine. Did Crippen believe you?”
“No, sir. He said family alibi isn’t good enough. Any mother would lie to save her
son, he said.”
“Hmmm. True enough, I suppose. What else did he want to know?”
“Just—things,” Garrett muttered, shaking his head.
Like whether you had intimate relations with Mary Flaherty, MacKenzie thought. Hardly a topic to discuss in front of Caroline Ames.
Margaret came in, then, with the tea tray. She was still scowling with disapproval, and she put it down with an unnecessarily loud thud and left the room without her usual curtsy.
Scalding hot as it was, Garrett greedily drank the full cup that Caroline gave to him and accepted another. She waited until he had stopped shivering somewhat, and then she said, “Garrett, what did you tell Inspector Crippen?”
“I told him the truth, miss. That I didn’t do it—didn’t have anything to do with either of ’em.”
“But you did,” she said.
He looked away.
“You sometimes spoke to Bridget, didn’t you? I have been told that you sometimes asked her questions. Is that so?”
And now they saw the first hint of truculence in him. He stared at them as if he were trying to judge the degree of danger they posed to him, instead of being the source of help he’d sought.
“What if I did?” he said at last. “What difference does that make?”
“None,” she replied, “except that it gives the lie to your statement that you had nothing to do with her. And that makes people suspicious. Surely you can understand that.”
That, and a good deal more, MacKenzie thought. He could almost see the rapid workings of Garrett’s mind as the lad considered what to say next.
After a long moment, Garrett said, “I had my reasons to speak to her. It doesn’t mean that I—that I did her in.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” said Caroline warmly. MacKenzie could see that she was genuinely troubled about this boy, and he was touched by her compassion.
“Why did you?” he asked Garrett. “Speak to her, I mean.”
Garrett hesitated. Then: “Because I was asking her about the new girl.”
“New girl? Who was that?”
“Peg Corcoran.”
“And why were you asking about her?” Caroline said.
“I wanted to see if she was getting along.” It seemed a tremendous effort for him to get out the words. “She’s my cousin,” he added, obviously with great reluctance.
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