by Dianne Day
“Is that what I think it is?” I asked.
He arched one black eyebrow, in a way he does better than anyone else I have ever known. “That depends, my dear Sherlock, on what you think it is.”
Then, immediately his tone changed and the eyebrow came back down where it belonged. “I apologize if you think I was making light of something that concerns your father’s death. That was not my intention. It was … merely habit, I suppose. Please forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive, think nothing of it.”
Over breakfast Michael had encouraged me to tell him all my suspicions, and my grounds for them; he had also acknowledged that my hunches were usually right—with, however, the caveat that sometimes where one’s nearest and dearest are concerned, hunches can go wrong or be harder to interpret. With this last I could not find fault.
So I said further, “We’ve agreed you and I will work on this matter as if we were investigating it together for J&K, and so we shall … Watson.”
I dared to grin at him.
“Do you know,” Michael stopped in his tracks, and stopped me too, “that’s the first smile I’ve seen on your face in a very long time.”
I was still smiling, though perhaps not as broadly as was my usual wont.
“Michael,” I said, “your willingness either to believe me about Augusta or at least to suspend your disbelief long enough to help me with this investigation is the first thing I’ve had to smile about in a very long time. So now tell me: Is that bottle what I think it is, a patent medicine designed to, uh, take care of that problem you told me about when sometimes it just doesn’t work?”
Michael nodded.
A squirrel running across the path in front of us dropped a huge acorn it had dug out of hiding. Michael bent and picked up the acorn, then threw it after the squirrel.
“It’s not too surprising that your father would have this … concoction,” Michael said, “considering what Cosgrove told us about his medical history. But, Fremont, I hardly think Augusta would poison your father just because he couldn’t, if you don’t mind my saying so, give her sexual satisfaction.”
“But the bottle says strychnine. That’s a poison!”
“It also says ‘fresh testicle.’ Now maybe that’s not a poison, but I for one would have to be pretty desperate to drink it!”
“That’s the point, Michael. Apparently Father was pretty desperate. Come now, you know a thing or two about poisons, I know you do.”
“How do you know that?” He shot me a suspicious glance.
Oh, dear! I had almost let an old cat out of the bag.
Fortunately, at that moment we passed a tree, beneath which I spied something that might have been a clump of new-sprung crocuses; to hide my sudden dilemma I bent to inspect them. My face was burning: the truth was, I’d never told Michael about the time four years ago when I hid under his bed and discovered his journal about poisons. Especially mushrooms, but there had been other poisons—organic poisons, now that I thought of it—in that book too.
“I’m sure you were bragging to me at one time or another about your expertise,” I said, straightening up, then pointing. “Look, Michael, crocuses. Let’s hope it doesn’t snow too hard, so that they will survive.”
I do not think my diversion had fooled him, judging by the expression on his face, but he let it go. We had now walked as far as the Frog Pond, and by unspoken agreement we turned and began to walk slowly back.
I leaned on my cane a little, more tired than I cared to admit, and I heartily wished I did not now have to go try on dresses and coats and such. But I did. We would go next to R. H. Stearns Department Store, and after that I could go back to Beacon Street for a most welcome nap.
“Come now,” I urged, “don’t be coy. Tell me about this so-called tonic in light of what you know about poisons.”
Michael rubbed thoughtfully at the white streaks in his beard. “Well,” he said, “strychnine is very bitter in taste. Small doses are considered to be therapeutic, the theory being that in a tiny dose the poison may go to whatever is poisoning the larger organism. The person, the host, is presumably large enough to remain unaffected by such a small amount of poison. Many herbal medicines work that way.”
“So it is supposed to work on the principle of ‘what doesn’t kill you will heal you,’ is that correct?”
“Something like that.”
“But if Augusta, or someone else—I still think it almost has to have been Augusta—were to add more strychnine to this tonic, who would know? I mean it would be bitter already, yes?”
“I don’t know, Fremont. It seems far-fetched.”
Michael remained quiet for a while, thinking. Then he continued:
“I agree with you that the fact that your father’s dressing room had been searched right down to the farthest corners is suspicious. But a man would’ve had to be taking this tonic in very large quantities for it to be an effective way to deliver enough poison to sicken, and eventually to kill him. Even if she—or someone—did increase the amount of strychnine.”
“I think he was taking it in large quantities,” I said grimly, hating the mental picture that fact brought to my mind.
“I do not believe, though, that Leonard’s symptoms were at all consistent with strychnine poisoning. I shall have to go to the library and do some research.”
“I wondered what you’ve been doing with your days,” I commented.
“Yes,” Michael said with a smile, “I’ve been spending some time in your excellent Boston Public Library.”
“It’s nice to know you’re doing something constructive.”
“I can also find a chemist to analyze the contents of the bottle,” Michael offered, “and to tell us if there’s anything there that should not be, or in quantities that should not be present. Shall I?”
“Yes,” I said, “I want you to do that. And, Michael?”
“Yes?”
I stopped walking, waited until I had his full attention, and then lowered my voice to make certain no one could overhear: “I want you to buy me a gun. A revolver, the kind you wanted me to have before, when I refused and chose the Marlin instead.”
He studied my face, and apparently was satisfied with what he saw, for all he said was, “If you’re absolutely certain.”
“I am. Absolutely.”
EIGHTEEN
SNOW FELL OVERNIGHT, not in a storm but softly, like a late-winter blessing. In the morning sun, the streets, the hills, the bare-branched trees, the frozen river Charles, all were covered with a clean layer of white.
Our funeral cortege, by contrast, was all in black, even to the black plumes on the heads of the matched pair of black horses that pulled the carriage in which Augusta rode alone. Michael and I followed her in our own hired carriage, our one horse sans plumes; behind us were others. I did not know how many, but I knew they too were all in shades of black.
I, who detest hats, wore a hat with a brim and a heavy black veil and I was grateful to have it hide my face. Not that I really cared a whit to have my face all swollen and blotchy from crying, but I could not seem to stop and I did not want people watching me do it.
The previous night I’d kept vigil with Father’s body at the mortuary. Michael was with me. That was when he gave me the gun I’d requested, a revolver small enough to hide inside my fur muff. And so I sat with my dead father and my hidden gun and let all the emotions I’d been holding back wash through me, the sorrow and the rage.
Some of the time Augusta had been there, accompanied by Dr. Searles Cosgrove. But most of the time she was not; I thought her visit was perfunctory, but for all I knew she had been at the mortuary before, whereas I had not. I felt some guilt over that, but I told myself Father would understand; more than that, he would approve of my attempt to discover the real cause of his death, and perhaps to bring a murderer to justice.
One hears that the police, in their attempts to find murderers, will attend the funeral services of the vic
tim on the theory that the murderer may be present and may do something to give himself—or herself—away. If that were the case today I should never know it, because grief had become my whole world.
Mount Auburn Cemetery is a beautiful place; if one must lie in the ground to fulfill that grim prediction in the Bible—“dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return”—then I can think of no better place to do it. At least one is in good company here, with Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Justice Holmes, not to mention my mother. With the new snow over everything, it was particularly beautiful, everything so white and pure; here and there among the gentle curves of its hills one could see a tiny temple in the style of Greek Revival, and the mournfully graceful droop of a willow, no less weeping without its leaves.
Father’s grave lay gaping and ready, undisturbed by the snowfall; I supposed the gravediggers, not wishing to have their hard work ruined, would have covered it overnight. There were many flowers, all in muted colors and white or cream. The wooden coffin when it was brought down from the wagon, which we had followed from the mortuary, was covered as I’d wished with a funeral spray of pink roses and white lilies. Standing at the head of the grave, where one day a marble marker would be, was a three-foot-tall arrangement of ivy and carnations twisted, tortured, and twined into the shape of a large heart. Augusta’s ironic tribute, no doubt; the sight of it sent me into another paralyzing paroxysm of anger and tears.
The clergyman who said the words over Father, and over us all—for it was impossible to escape the grand resonance of his voice—seemed familiar to me somehow though I couldn’t recall his name. At any rate he was a good choice for the task of laying Leonard Pembroke Jones in the ground, because he read little from Scripture and much from the Transcendentalists; later, at Beacon Street after the funeral, I met the man, whose name turned out to be Hawthorne—a fine old New England name, whether related to Nathaniel or not. He was a minister of the Universalist denomination, not from Boston but from Cambridge, and he claimed long friendship with Father—but this was rather curious, as I still had no specific memory of him.
The at-home after the funeral was a kind of necessary nightmare: necessary because one must do it; nightmare because one seemed trapped inside it, unable by force of will to make the misery come to an end. I could not, of course, wear my hat with the veil inside the house, and so I presented my naked, grief-ravaged face to all comers without much grace but also without shame. Michael provided some distraction, as over and over again I introduced him as my intended husband. He liked this a great deal; when I was able to come out of my own trouble from time to time, I could feel him quietly glowing by my side.
The light through the windows looking out on Beacon Street had the purpling cast of late afternoon by the time people began to leave. Only a handful of guests remained when Augusta made her shocking and vindictive move.
She came over toward me where I sat with Michael near those front windows, a cold and drafty place we’d chosen for its proximity to the door from the parlor into the hall, where we could most easily accept condolences and say our hellos and goodbyes.
I must say Augusta looked fine, considering the circumstances—even in my distraught and distracted state I could see that. She was, as I have said before, a handsome woman, with most excellent skin for a female her age, and a lot of only slightly graying, docile hair that would take a curl, stay in place, do whatever she wanted. Her clothes were always of good quality and becoming to her fashionably full but small-waisted figure. Further, she had a certain charm, which she displayed for men and on social occasions; this worked well for her since neither men nor society are particularly good at detecting superficiality.
All of Augusta’s best qualities had been in evidence today, whereas I was at my weakest and worst. I knew, as I watched her approach, that I could not deal with her. I think she knew it too.
I believe she had planned this for days, lining up her witnesses and asking them to stay on when others left. Except for the minister, Hawthorne, who had stayed on to talk to me and Michael, they were all her allies: Dr. Searles Cosgrove, William Barrett, a man whose name I could not recall at the moment but who’d spent considerable time with her tête-à-tête, and the two silly Forrest sisters—relative newcomers to Mount Vernon Street who will social-climb anything and anyone on Beacon Hill. Mary Fowey was also present, no longer passing sandwiches but now picking up empty plates.
I suppose I smelled the scent of battle on Augusta. I was so ill prepared for it that the intelligent thing to do would have been to surrender and try for an escape later, but some instinct drove me to my tired feet when she was perhaps a yard away. Standing I have something of an advantage, for I am several inches taller than she.
Mr. Hawthorne, perhaps sensing a sort of current like an electrical charge between us in the air, stepped back out of the way. Michael remained seated where he was.
Augusta clasped her hands together and took her own stand then, when she was still far enough away so that she did not have to look right up at me. She inclined her head slightly to the right and the man whose name I couldn’t remember took that as a cue. He came up and stood beside her … and he was very tall indeed.
“Fremont, I don’t believe you know James Carraway,” she said.
“We met this afternoon for the first time. Thank you again for your condolences on this sad occasion, Mr. Carraway,” I said. My manners were in place at least, and if I sounded rather stiff—well, it had been a long day.
He simply nodded his head. His expression was grave and he had the face for gravity: large ears with pendulous earlobes, a long nose that flared into large nostrils at the tip, loose skin covering a narrow jaw, a high forehead marred midway by a thick, unruly shock of stark white hair.
“Mr. Carraway is my lawyer,” Augusta said, emphasizing the word “my.”
She turned to include the others, her witnesses as I later would think of them, in her next statement even though she addressed it straight to me. “Caroline Fremont Jones, daughter and only child of Leonard Pembroke Jones, so-called businesswoman, bluestocking, and runaway whore, did you really think I would allow you to get away with your elaborate plan to pass off that so-called new will in which my dear Lenny left everything to you?”
“I beg your pardon,” I said, my head reeling from her accusation and my ears burning from the word “whore,” “but he did not leave me everything. Father left you a more than adequate settlement, enough to buy a house of your own where you may live in comfort for the rest of your life. And to suggest that Mr. Elwood Sefton, or anyone at Great Centennial Bank, would collude with me in the perpetration of such a trick is … is disgusting!”
“I beg your pardon,” said Augusta, “but what is disgusting is taking care of an old man through long, long months that turn into years of a nasty, messy illness, only to have his whore of a daughter come interfering at the last minute. Listen to me, you tall skinny bitch, I earned that inheritance and I won’t allow you to snatch it right out from under me!”
I was stunned. Had Michael not shot to his feet and put his arm around my waist to support me, I do believe I might have collapsed. I felt physically assaulted.
Now William Barrett, that sterling employee of Great Centennial Bank, the very man my father had hoped would succeed him, stepped up and said, “I am willing to testify that Mr. Sefton is getting along in age and his mind is not quite what it should be. He could be easily manipulated by a clever person, even a woman. Though his reputation has remained untarnished until now, there is always a first time.”
And here I’d thought this man, William Barrett, was such a great friend not only to me but to Father. Of all the people to whom I could have written, I had chosen him. It seemed the poor judgment for which I’d been noted before Michael took me in hand had returned to plague me once again.
The Forrest sisters tittered. For lack of anything else I could think of doing at the moment, I glared at them and they stopped, just in time to hear Augusta’
s final declaration:
“You are hereby put on notice in front of these witnesses, Caroline Fremont Jones: I intend to break that will. In court. With James Carraway as my lawyer. Your enormous inheritance will not stand!”
THERE IS AN EXPRESSION “to sleep like the dead,” which well describes how I slept the night after Father’s funeral. Ordinarily I am not so heavy a sleeper, but I suppose it came on me from sheer exhaustion and to pay back a sort of deficit of sleep, since I’d not had much for the past several nights.
Thus I did not hear Mary Fowey’s knock at my bedroom door, and woke more because she had entered and was standing by the bed, than because she was calling “Miss! Miss!”—a form of address I scarcely recognize. People are not generally so formal in San Francisco, at least not in my circles, thank goodness.
To have someone in your bedroom unexpectedly is not a pleasant way to awaken, and so I came out of sleep with a most unpleasant jolt, and I expect I grumbled as I asked her what she wanted and what time it was.
“It’s just after seven in the morning, miss, and there’s a policeman downstairs. He said I was to say would you please get dressed and come down.”
She was already at the wardrobe, opening its doors so that I might choose a dress, but I stopped her. “Mary, go back downstairs and tell him I’ll be there directly. I can manage on my own.”
“Yes, miss. If you’re sure.”
“I am.” I swung my feet out from under the covers and put them on the cold floor, always an effective first step toward awakening. Thus jolted I called out:
“Oh, Mary, wait. Do you have the slightest idea what he wants? And are you sure he wants me, not Augusta?”
Her eyes seemed huge in her face. My addled brain finally realized the poor maid was afraid of something. “What is it, Mary?” I prompted.
“I’m sure I don’t really know, but Jem next door told the cook on her way in just now, a few minutes before seven that was, somebody’s dead in the park across the street. Begging your pardon, I mean the Public Garden. And Mrs. Augusta, she’s not in her room. And that’s all I know.”