Beacon Street Mourning

by Dianne Day

  “Augusta isn’t going to like you giving orders to her maid in her house.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I broke a piece of toast in two and buttered it. Simple toast—and it tasted simply delicious.

  “What do you mean, Fremont?”

  “This is not her house anymore.”

  “Not her house.”

  “Father left the house to me, Michael. He left everything to me except enough of a legacy to provide Augusta with a living for the rest of her life—as long as she doesn’t live extravagantly.”

  Michael let out a long, slow whistle and reared back from the table, as if he suddenly needed to distance himself from me. “How long have you known this? Does Augusta know?”

  “Since last April when he came to see me; and no, I don’t believe she knows. Certainly she wouldn’t have liked it, and Father would have wanted to avoid unpleasantness—that was his way. He had a new will drawn up shortly before he came out to San Francisco, and I rather doubt he told anyone other than me. The bank is executor, and the document is stored in a safe-deposit box there. He used one of the bank’s lawyers. At the moment I do not recall the lawyer’s name but I have it written down.”

  “You are speaking of your father’s bank where he used to work, Great Centennial.”

  “Yes.”

  Mary returned with a pot of steaming coffee, and I gave her my most effusive thanks.

  “I don’t understand why he would do such a thing,” Michael said, “cut his wife out like that.”

  “He didn’t tell me. I don’t know either.” I shrugged. Every moment I was feeling better, stronger. The coffee tasted fine and was working its magic.

  “You must have asked,” Michael said, narrowing his eyes at me and bringing those dark eyebrows together until he looked a bit like a bird of prey. “You’re of too curious a nature, you can’t stand not knowing things.”

  I buttered more toast. I had already eaten all my eggs and bacon. “In general, yes, that’s true. But Father was a private man, and one did not question him. I inherited my, ah, rather uncharacteristic nature from my mother’s side of the family.”

  “Fremont, sometimes you are the most extraordinary person!”

  “Thank you,” I said, inclining my head with a small smile.

  “I’m not sure I meant that as a compliment.”

  “I’m sure you won’t mind if I take it as one.”

  “You never told me you were for all intents and purposes your father’s sole heir.”

  “What does it matter, Michael? You know I don’t care that much about the money. And while I acknowledge that this is a much finer house than I ever really understood when I was living here, it will only be a burden. I’ll have to figure out what to do with it. However—” I broke off to drink more coffee, as a new thought had just occurred to me. “However, I expect the house had a great deal to do with it.”

  “With your father’s virtually cutting Augusta out of the will?”

  “Yes. I expect he wanted to keep the house in the family. And I shouldn’t have been a bit surprised if Mr. Larry Bingham didn’t have quite a lot to do with that decision. Father didn’t like him. He told me so.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  A silence fell between us at the table while we each thought our own thoughts. Then Michael said:

  “I expect Augusta and Larry have gone to make arrangements for the funeral.”

  “Then in that case,” I said, putting my napkin properly draped on the table, “you and I should be on our way.”

  “Where are we going? I expect I should go back to the Vendome and change clothes, since I’ve slept in these, before I go anywhere else.”

  “We are going to Father’s doctor, Searles Cosgrove, to request an autopsy.”

  “An autopsy?”

  “Well, you needn’t look so shocked. I want to know the exact cause of Father’s death. Cosgrove will have filed a death certificate, I expect. I do not know exactly how these things are done in Massachusetts, but surely it cannot be too difficult to find out.”

  ELEVEN

  AT MY SUGGESTION we walked through the Public Garden and then up Commonwealth Avenue to Searles Cosgrove’s office. I did not call ahead to announce that we were coming, because I did not want to give him the benefit of prior warning. I was still more than a little angry with the good doctor for having drugged me without my permission. It is one thing to offer painkilling or sleep-producing nostrums to a patient in discomfort, but quite another to force the same on someone temporarily unable to refuse.

  I wanted to walk because I felt the exercise and the fresh air would serve to clear away what few cobwebs remained in my head. I’d chosen a good day for it: As often happens in New England at this time of year, the cold wind that ruled the weather a couple of days ago had served to clear the skies and make room for a balmy day. There was a hint of spring in the air, blue sky reflected in the puddles formed by melting snow, and I saw a robin hopping in a soggy brown patch that would soon be green with grass.

  There was no spring in my heart, however, nor was I inclined to ooh and aah over the tiny tips of crocuses pushing up through the snow, as some other strolling couples would stop to do now and again. Rather I was filled with a sense of all-consuming purpose—and the anger that I knew was justified, yet amplified by the loss of my father.

  Michael noticed, of course; he does not miss much. Sometimes I am glad of this and other times I am not. Today I supposed I did not particularly care one way or another when he said, “You’re very angry, aren’t you, Fremont? I’m assuming this anger has nothing to do with me, but is related to your father’s death.”

  It was not really a question, so I didn’t answer.

  “When someone dies, anger is a common response, Fremont. I’ve felt it myself in such a situation.”

  Still I did not answer; I thought it unlikely that Michael, although both his mother and his father were dead, had ever been in my precise “situation.” And I thought it best not to say so.

  “Are you going to tell me before we get to Cosgrove’s office why you want an autopsy to be performed on your father, or do I have to wait and hear it with him?”

  This time I responded with a question of my own: “What did he say was the cause of Father’s death?”

  “Heart failure. He called it ‘cardiac arrest.’ ”

  “That will be what he wrote on the death certificate, then.”

  I’d had some experience of death certificates and coroners and such a couple of years ago, when I’d been a temporary lighthouse keeper and had spotted a woman’s dead body rolling over and over in the waves breaking on the rocks along the shoreline of Monterey Bay.

  After thinking for a few moments I went on: “And did Cosgrove tell you that himself, or did you hear it from Augusta?”

  Michael glanced down at me. This day might be clear and sunny, but his blue eyes, which can change like the weather, were gray and foreboding. By that storm in his eyes I anticipated I would not like what he had to say in reply, and I was right. He said:

  “Actually it was neither. Larry Bingham called me at the hotel and asked me to come to the house because you weren’t well. It was Larry who met me at the door and told me what had happened.”

  “What time was this, Michael?”

  “Midmorning. Ten or ten-thirty, I should say. Cosgrove was no longer there, he’d left. And Augusta was in her room with the door closed. I didn’t see her until later, around noon, when Mary came to your room and told me luncheon had been set out as a buffet in the dining room. When I went down, Augusta was there and we talked. She confirmed what Larry had said, that your father died of heart failure.”

  “They waited a long time to call you,” I said. “What else did Augusta say?”

  Michael’s hand came out to cup my elbow as we stopped at the curb, waiting to cross Arlington Street. The wheels of passing carriages and autos spewed muddy water from the melting ice, but I daresay no one minded much. Muddy hems are a s
mall price to pay for a day that has broken the grip of winter.

  “Ah,” he said, “let me think. She said Leonard died sometime during the night, and his death had put you in such a state that Dr. Cosgrove thought it best to dose you with laudanum.”

  “What about the nurse, was she there?”

  “Not that I saw. Of course, by the time I arrived there would have been no need for her. Augusta had already called the funeral home and they came for your father’s body while I was sitting in your room with you in the late morning.”

  “Hmm,” I said, although that was usually Michael’s line.

  “You still haven’t said why you want this autopsy. You must have a very serious reason.”

  “Yes, Michael, I do,” I said grimly. “You may be certain I would not have some pathologist cut open my father’s body without good reason. Aren’t you the slightest bit curious yourself to know why, with no warning whatever, Father suddenly had a heart attack when up to then he’d been getting better? Not to mention that his problems were with his stomach and digestive tract, not with his heart.”

  “And his liver,” Michael added. “Watch your step.”

  “That too,” I said as we crossed Clarendon Street.

  Just when I thought he wasn’t going to say any more, Michael caught me by surprise: “To tell you the truth, Fremont, I was not so much taken aback to hear that your father had died as I was to have been told about it by someone other than you. Why didn’t you call me immediately? You know I would have come right away. You have the telephone number at the Vendome.”

  “Oh, Michael. When I found Father dead, it was the middle of the night.”

  “Fremont, the Vendome has a desk clerk on duty. I’m sure he would have summoned me no matter what the hour.”

  We’d reached Searles Cosgrove’s house and office in the middle of the block. I stopped at the foot of the steps, grasped Michael’s arm, and pulled him around to face me. “Dearest Michael, I don’t know why. The horrible truth is, I didn’t think at all. I wasn’t able to think—I wasn’t really myself. I’m sorry.”

  There was more, of course, and I’d tell him the rest soon; but not until after I’d confronted Cosgrove. If I said more now, particularly if I told him everything that was going through my mind, Michael might very well think he should talk me out of what I intended to do. I couldn’t let him do that. I didn’t have enough energy to deal with Cosgrove and Michael both.

  Michael’s eyes searched mine, and softened. He touched my cheek briefly but tenderly with the back of his hand, and I knew if we had not been standing on the street he would have bent his head and kissed me. He said gruffly, though in a soft voice:

  “It’s just that sometimes you’re too damn independent. With you I never know when I’m going to be left on the outside.”

  I might have said the same was true of him, with me, but I didn’t.

  I said instead, “Be patient,” which is another thing he always says to me—impatience being just one more trait we have in common; and then I began to climb the steps.

  Michael stayed with me until Nurse Bates had grudgingly agreed I could sit in the waiting room until the doctor had time to see me, then Michael went on to his room at the Vendome to change his clothes. As the Vendome was just half a block away at the corner of Commonwealth and Dartmouth streets, he should be back shortly.

  The cross streets in Back Bay run along in alphabetical fashion, from A for Arlington through H for Hereford. After that comes the tail end of the long sweep of Massachusetts Avenue, which originates on the other side of the Charles River and crosses it by means of a bridge by the same name. Beyond Massachusetts Avenue lie the Fens, which are all that is left of the swamp that once was Back Bay. I sat thinking of these streets and of how I’d planned to show Michael more of the Boston I’d loved as a girl. Not quite, of course, in the same way I’d fallen in love with San Francisco—but still there was so much here I’d wanted to do with Michael. I’d thought there would be time after our wedding. Before the wedding I’d wanted to be with Father, to keep encouraging him to get better, and …

  And to watch over him, said that inner voice of mine that compels and protects me, even from myself.

  “Doctor will see you now,” Nurse Bates said, startling me from my reverie, though she was not speaking to me. A man who was the only other occupant of the waiting room hauled himself out of his chair with difficulty and went off with the nurse.

  Alone now, I returned to my thoughts and to the comment of my inner voice. Yes, I’d wanted to watch over Father; and perhaps some of my unhappiness, my discomfort, came from the nagging possibility that I might not have been vigilant enough. But the two private nurses had been doing such an excellent job. Who would’ve believed the scrupulous night nurse, Sarah Kirk, would fall asleep and let Father die?

  She wouldn’t have, my inner voice said.

  Yet in my mind’s eye I could see her asleep in the chair where she always sat, beneath the reading lamp, her book open on her chest, rising and falling almost imperceptibly with each breath.

  “Oh, my God!” The words came out of me involuntarily, and I clapped my hand over my mouth as if to put them back in. But of course the horse was already out of the barn, so to speak.

  Nurse Bates had just returned from escorting the man she’d summoned, and was shutting the door that led to the examining rooms and to Cosgrove’s private office. She looked at me sharply and said, “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing,” I replied, too quickly perhaps, with the first thing that came to mind. I could only hope I didn’t sound as flustered as I felt. “It’s just something I forgot. To do, I mean. At home.”

  She gave me one more keen glance, then shrugged and sat back down at her desk. She returned to her task of writing notes in the patients’ charts.

  At home. The words echoed, running round and round inside my head …

  I hadn’t called the Beacon Street house my home for years, but ever so subtly, the ties of birth and ancestry had asserted themselves. Now Beacon Street felt like home again. Now the house was mine. I felt the stirring of some urgency for the necessary legal proceedings to confirm this—but, one thing at a time.

  A different man came out of the door to the examining rooms. He tipped his hat wordlessly both to Bates and to me, walked through the waiting room, and left. The doctor’s previous patient, I presumed. Interesting they’d both been men, similar in age and appearance to one another, though the one who’d just left had more of a jauntiness to his walk. Where were Cosgrove’s female patients? I could not recall ever having been in a doctor’s waiting room without at least one other female patient present.

  I worried over this a bit to no avail, and ended by deciding I must just have been in a suspicious mood.

  “Are you all right, Miss Jones?” Bates asked.

  “Yes, I am. Perhaps not quite my old self yet, but I’m all right.”

  “I expect it will take some time,” the nurse said.

  It was the first reference she’d made to my father’s death. She went on to be more specific, “If I didn’t say so before, my condolences on the loss of your father.”

  “Thank you.”

  “He was a fine man.”

  “Yes. Yes, he was.”

  Nurse Bates cocked her head to one side, as if considering, and then said something more: “Sometimes when men get older they make poor choices. Even fine men. Guess you can’t blame them.” She narrowed her eyes for a moment, pressed her lips into a firm line, and returned to her work. She’d said her piece, that was it.

  And I understood. You could have tipped me over with a feather I was so surprised, but I understood. And I knew she knew I’d understood.

  Bostonians, all Yankees in fact, will do that. They’ll go around with their lips tight shut for weeks, months, years even, minding their own business and keeping their opinions to themselves, but then one day they’ll bluntly state a truth as they see it. Bam, there, just like that—and
then those lips close tight again. Nurse Bates had just now given an excellent demonstration of this Yankee trait.

  No comment was required from me; the proper response to one of these verbal offerings is a curt nod of the head, or some nonverbal vocalization such as “mrmph.” So I nodded, whether with her head lowered to her work she could see me or not.

  But I had an idea. I waited; I paged through an almost new copy of Collier’s magazine without reading a word, barely even looking at the pictures. When I dared not wait any longer, for no one else had arrived to see the doctor and the man who’d gone ahead of me had been in there for some time, I said, “Nurse Bates, I wonder if I might ask you something?”

  “Hm?” She looked up, rather severely, but I fancied there was a softness in her eyes. I was beginning to like this woman, who was more than she had seemed on the occasion of my first visit to this office.

  “About the night nurse you arranged to look after my father, Sarah Kirk. She’s an excellent nurse, wouldn’t you say? The other one too, Martha Henderson, they were both very good, but Sarah was especially kind to me. And, I think, to Father too.”

  “Yes, Sarah’s good. A conscientious woman. Has two children, one sick all the time with something chronic. Costs a bundle to take care of that sick child, so Sarah works at night when her husband’s there to take a turn at looking after the children. Anything else you want to know?”

  “Yes, there is, and what you’ve just told me about Sarah makes it all the more important: I wonder if you’d be so kind as to give me her address. I’d like to write and thank her myself for taking such good care of Father and for her particular kindness to me the night he died. And of course I’ll enclose a little something in the way of extra appreciation—if you take my meaning.”

  Bates smiled. “That’d be a fine thing to do, Miss Jones. Here, I’ll write it down for you.”