Beacon Street Mourning

by Dianne Day

  “Thank you. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. While you’re writing, if it’s not too much trouble, please put Martha Henderson’s address too—because of course I’ll also want to send her a note of thanks.”

  I HAD BEEN in Searles Cosgrove’s office not five minutes when there was a tapping at the door and Nurse Bates looked in.

  “This Mr. Kossoff says he’s to join you. Is that right?”

  Cosgrove looked at me, although I’d already told him I expected Michael to be along. I nodded, then the doctor said, motioning with his hand, “It’s all right, come on, come on, we don’t have a lot of time.”

  After shaking hands across the desk with Cosgrove, Michael took a chair and brought it up next to mine. As he settled in the chair I could smell the faintest whiff of Pears soap, and a vision of Michael in the bath flitted through my mind—all that dark hair, soap suds …

  Yes, I was glad to see him; I was also somewhat concerned at the way my mind was wandering—more than wandering, jumping—all over the place this morning. I resolved to focus, to get and maintain control.

  “Now where were we?” Cosgrove asked crossly.

  He wasn’t going out of his way to be sympathetic, that was for certain. If he was like this now, I hated to think how hostile he was likely to become before I’d finished with him.

  “You were saying how Father’s death was probably a blessing in disguise, et cetera, et cetera,” I said, “and I’m afraid I don’t want to leave it at that. I have questions.”

  I did not intend to come right out and demand an autopsy. I wanted to lead up to it. To wear away at him for a bit first, as it were, so that when I mentioned the word “autopsy” he would be inclined to think if he agreed to the autopsy it would silence me, and that would be a good thing. Therefore I had to be a bit of a nuisance first.

  I must say, I quite relished the role of nuisance.

  “What’s he here for?” Cosgrove rather rudely waved his hand in Michael’s direction. It was a dismissive gesture, and I bristled.

  Placing a hand on my arm, Michael answered for himself. “May I remind you, I am Miss Jones’s business partner. Now I am also, as I expect someone in the family has told you if Fremont herself has not, her fiancé. I am here in a supportive role, as I’m sure you’ll agree is perfectly proper.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” Dr. Cosgrove rubbed his forehead, closing his eyes for a moment as if immeasurably weary. “Well then let’s get on with it. What do you want to know?”

  “I’ve been told,” I said, “that you attributed Father’s death to heart failure. Is that right?”

  “Cardiac arrest. Yes. Same thing. Means his heart stopped.”

  “I know what it means.”

  “Eh? How’d you know medical terms, then?”

  “I have studied Latin in school, Dr. Cosgrove, and most medical terminology is derived from Latin. It is not so difficult, but that is beside the point. The point is: Why did Father’s heart stop?”

  “Could be any one of a lot of reasons. The man had been very sick for a very long time. His heart just gave out. It stopped beating. That’s all.”

  Yes, that had been all, quite literally, for Father.

  I persisted: “But he had been getting better. Every day he seemed stronger and more alert. He was beginning to talk of getting out of bed, getting some exercise by walking up and down the hall inside the house, and then going outside when the weather improved. We were planning to get one of those special chairs for him, the sort that would allow him to wheel himself, as well as to be pushed by others. Surely Augusta discussed all this with you? Father had not taken any downturn. So how could this have happened?”

  “Young lady, we don’t know how the heart decides when it’s worn out. But when it’s ready to stop, it just stops.”

  “You don’t know, you say. But after death if you look at that heart, you can tell if it was really worn out, or if something else caused that person to die. Can’t you?”

  “Well yes. Maybe I couldn’t, but a cardiac specialist could, or a pathologist. That’s—”

  “I know what a pathologist is, Dr. Cosgrove. I have a friend who is a pathologist in California. Not only that, he is the coroner for Monterey County.”

  “Is that so?” Searles Cosgrove stared at me, then repeated the stare at Michael.

  I’d stretched the facts a little—the pathologist was an acquaintance, not a friend. But I needn’t have worried, though, because Michael took this opportunity to become a part of the conversation by answering Cosgrove’s challenge.

  Michael said, “Yes, it’s so. Fremont Jones is no ordinary woman. Those of you who know her only from the days of her youth here in Boston may soon be in for a surprise.”

  “Is that so?” Cosgrove asked again, turning to me and sweeping his eyes up and down.

  As the doctor’s eyes swept over me I suddenly had a creepy, dirty feeling, and thought of all the things that could be done to a person rendered insensible by laudanum.

  I shuddered, repressed that unpleasantness, and held to my original thought.

  “We can come back to pathologists and so on in a minute,” I said, firmly taking hold and banishing everything from my mind except my own foremost purpose. “Now let me ask you something else: Who called you to report that my father had died, and at what time did that person call?”

  “Mrs. Jones, Augusta, telephoned. It was just after seven o’clock in the morning. I arrived at the Beacon Street house to pronounce death at seven-thirty.”

  “What about the nurse, Sarah Kirk?”

  “What do you mean, what about her?”

  “Weren’t you surprised that the nurse wasn’t the one to call you? Shouldn’t that have been a part of her duty?”

  “Well, no, I wasn’t surprised. Perhaps I should have been, but I didn’t think about it. She wasn’t there, she’d gone off home, I suppose.”

  “I see.”

  I didn’t want to pursue this with the doctor at the moment, I’d only wanted him to confirm what time he’d arrived and what the situation had been on his arrival. I intended to take these things up in much greater detail at a later time, with Sarah herself.

  “I might add,” Searles Cosgrove said, looking very stern, “that you, young lady, were hysterical when I arrived.”

  “I doubt that.” My chin came up. “You may have found me stubborn and uncooperative,” I admitted as a dim recollection of my behavior came to mind, “but not hysterical.”

  “You refused to get off the bed. Your father’s bed with him in it, stone dead. I call that hysterical.”

  Michael turned his head toward me a bit too sharply. This was the first he’d heard of that part of this whole thing. To his credit Michael kept quiet, but I saw the knuckles of his left hand go white where he gripped the chair’s arm.

  “I was upset, yes,” I said, “but I had good reason. Further, I am an adult, and I don’t recall that I gave permission for you to administer laudanum to me. Certainly I never asked for it! Are you aware, Dr. Cosgrove, that the dose you forced me to take was so heavy I slept around the clock? A full twenty-four hours?” Of course I wasn’t counting the one time I had awakened, but I didn’t think I needed to. I couldn’t have stayed awake then for more than a few minutes if my life had depended on it. Which I suppose I was quite lucky it did not.

  I held up my hand palm out, as if to stay any comments from Dr. Cosgrove, who had clamped his lips shut and wasn’t about to say anything anyway.

  “Nevertheless,” I went on with a deliberately exaggerated air of generosity, “I won’t hold you responsible for overdosing me, nor will I ask again what caused Father’s heart to stop.”

  I paused, and in that pause I fancied the tight line of Cosgrove’s lips relaxed a bit. But my pause was only a brief one, and then I let him have it:

  “Dr. Cosgrove, I want you to arrange for an autopsy to be performed on my father, Leonard Pembroke Jones. I want to know exactly why my father died.”
>
  Searles Cosgrove made his fingers into fists and did that annoying business of bumping them together at the knuckles. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but licked his lips nervously instead.

  Then he got up from his chair and, turning his back on me and Michael, walked over to his big double windows that looked out over Commonwealth Avenue. He stared out while I became ever more impatient.

  The more impatient I became, the straighter I sat; I stretched my spine until it would stretch no higher … until my tension became such that I feared my spine might shatter.

  Finally Cosgrove turned around and put his hands behind his back. Standing with the light from the windows behind him, he said two words: “You can’t.”

  Michael mumbled something under his breath.

  I said: “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  Now Cosgrove walked toward us, rubbing his hands together in a motion that in a different situation might indicate glee. He said:

  “You can’t order an autopsy, Miss Jones. You are not legally responsible!”

  TWELVE

  I’D LIKE TO know just exactly what you mean by that statement, Cosgrove,” Michael said, in a voice as close to a growl as it is possible for a human being to utter and, at the same time, form words.

  Meanwhile I was no longer seated, but standing, ready to leave without further ado and take my business elsewhere. Along with an accusation or two, perhaps. My cheeks were burning, I expected with a high color to match my high temper, but I did not care.

  “There is no point trying to communicate any further with Dr. Cosgrove, Michael,” I said, “since he has made it clear he does not wish to help, or indeed to do anything further in my father’s interest other than to see him buried.”

  “You misunderstand me,” the doctor said mildly, coming back to his desk and leaning against it, casually crossing one ankle over the other and stuffing his hands deep into the pockets of one of those white coats doctors always wear. To intimidate normal human beings, it seems to me.

  “I don’t believe so,” I said, “since you’ve just said I’m not responsible, which indicates you think me of unsound mind, and that certainly is not true.”

  Michael too was standing now, but he was staring intently at Searles Cosgrove as if the man were a puzzle to solve. I took up my cane, wanting nothing so much as to whack him with it; but instead I put it to the floor and turned toward the door.

  “Miss Jones, Mr. Kossoff, you misunderstand my intention,” Cosgrove said, “in much the same way you’ve obviously misunderstood my high standards of caring for my patients. If you will be seated again, I’ll explain.”

  I turned back to Cosgrove. Standing, I was taller than he; I had no intention whatever of sitting down again.

  “You can tell us as we are, or not at all, they are both the same to me,” I said.

  Michael said nothing, but moved to stand at my side, and he placed one hand at the small of my back as if to steady me. Perhaps I needed steadying; nevertheless, at that particular moment I did not want to be touched. I would have shaken off his hand if it were possible to do so without making a fuss. It was not, so I clenched my teeth, raised my chin, and endured.

  “When I said you, Caroline Jones—Fremont Jones as you prefer to be called these days—are not legally responsible, what I meant was that you are not the person responsible for making such a decision. You cannot do so because you are not your father’s surviving next of kin.”

  “I am his daughter, his closest living blood relation. Of course I am his next of kin!”

  Cosgrove shook his head slowly from one side to the other. “By legal definition, a wife precedes a child. Leonard Pembroke Jones has a living wife, who has survived him. In other words, Augusta Simmons Jones is his legal next of kin, the only person who can order an autopsy performed.”

  I was stunned. For just a moment I wished I had been sitting down. Then I felt Michael’s hand press more firmly at my back … but rather than the reassurance and support he no doubt intended, his touch sent my anger soaring. Immediately I thought he had known this was coming, that must have been why he’d placed himself just so, why he’d set himself up like that with his hand at my back, he’d anticipated a need to steady me; and if he’d known, why hadn’t he warned me before we’d come to this infernal doctor’s office? Why hadn’t Michael told me himself?

  Tension and anger had set my ears roaring. Over the roar, or perhaps under it, my inner voice counseled me: Listen, he’s saying something important!

  Searles Cosgrove, after observing the effect his words had on me, was continuing to speak:

  “Of course, if the death were from anything other than natural causes—that is to say, any sudden, unexpected death, or a death under suspicious circumstances such as murder, or if I as the physician in whose care the patient died had questions as to the cause of death—then it would be different. In the first two instances, the police would automatically ask for an autopsy. In the third instance I could do it, even overriding the wishes of the next of kin if I were callous enough to do so.”

  Michael glanced at me. Seeing my jaws clamped together like iron, he correctly concluded I had no intention of speaking. So Michael took it upon himself:

  “I should think it would be in your best interests, Cosgrove, to have the autopsy done. My fiancée’s points are well taken, don’t you think? Her father’s health had improved dramatically. His abnormal pallor had all but disappeared—you saw it for yourself, man! We’d set the date for our wedding and he was greatly looking forward to it. Leonard had many reasons to live, and a passionate desire to do so. Only the day before yesterday he and I had talked about how, with the aid of a wheeled chair, he could not only be present at the wedding ceremony but could do the double duty of escorting Fremont down the aisle and handing me the wedding ring.”

  I had not known that, about their having talked, or that Michael had in effect asked my father to be his “best man.” My anger deflated like a pricked balloon and tears came into the corners of my eyes. I blinked them away determinedly—this was most definitely neither the time nor the place to cry.

  My inner voice, which often remembers things I’ve learned the hard way even though the rest of me may forget them, cautioned me with something I’d heard from the nurses after the San Francisco earthquake: First too angry, then too sad—these are extreme mood swings due to having been under too much stress. Time to rest. Time to be alone for a while.

  By way of reply, the doctor challenged Michael: “Why can’t you two feel the same way Augusta feels? She is glad Leonard died in his sleep after having had a few happy days. Glad he died at home with his family around him. The last thing on this earth that poor woman wants is to have some stranger cut open her husband’s body.”

  Cosgrove hunched his shoulders, his eyes wide in either disbelief of or dismay at us; then he took his hands out of his pockets, folded his arms across his chest, and fixed his stare on me.

  “Fremont, if you’re so callous—or perhaps jealous is a better word?—as to be determined to cause Augusta more grief, then by all means try to persuade her to request the autopsy. But you’ll have to go through the police, or straight to the medical examiner yourself, because I’ll have no part of it. I trust I have made myself clear.”

  “Perfectly,” I said.

  I signaled Michael with a darting glance and he opened the office door. I wished I’d been wearing a longer skirt, one of those with a small train, so that I could have flipped it behind me disdainfully as I turned away; those long skirts are good for that, if not for much else. But my skirts just covered my ankles, as was better for walking, and so there was nothing I could do but make a dignified exit with my head held high.

  Dr. Searles Cosgrove meanwhile, cool as you please, went around his desk, sat down, and started to read through some papers there.

  Neither Michael nor I said goodbye; and certainly we did not thank him for his time.

  “YOU SHOULD REST for a whil
e,” Michael said as soon as we were again out on Commonwealth Avenue. “I suggest you come with me to the Vendome, since it’s only half a block from here. You can rest in my bedroom in complete privacy—I have a suite. Or I can try to find a cab and take you back to Beacon Street.”

  “I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to be seen going up to your room with you, suite or no suite. Nor do I feel like standing here and waiting for a cab to come by. Let us walk.”

  Michael was disturbed, I could sense all sorts of things rumbling around inside him like thunder. Well, I was disturbed myself.

  “When did you turn so prudish?” he asked. “The Vendome is closer, you and I are hardly strangers, and besides I’ve never known you to care so much about appearances.”

  “That was in California. Things are different here, especially now. I have to care.”

  I walked doggedly on, fueled by my angry energy, knowing perfectly well that I did need to withdraw for a while and be quiet, even to rest if I could make myself do it. But I didn’t like Michael telling me what to do, any more than I’d liked his hand in my back during Searles Cosgrove’s horrible speech.

  “You certainly are different here,” he said.

  “What do you mean by that?” I hurled the question sideways at him, then stepped off the curb without waiting for him to accompany me. I’d stepped a little too close on the heels—or rather the wheels—of a passing horse cart and so I got mud sprayed on my skirt, but I scarcely noticed.

  “Nothing,” Michael grumbled, catching up easily with his long legs. “I’m having a bit of trouble keeping up with you, Fremont, in more ways than one.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said hotly. “Far from having trouble keeping up, I think you were ahead of me back there in Cosgrove’s office. I think you already knew he was going to tell me I don’t have the right to require an autopsy to be done on Father. You knew, and you didn’t tell me!”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Never mind, I have my reasons. So tell me. I’m right, aren’t I? You did know!”