Beacon Street Mourning

by Dianne Day

  “No?” I asked. “She would have.”

  “Fremont,” he said, all the color draining from his face, “you didn’t shoot Augusta, did you?”

  “Oh honestly, William, of course I didn’t. The police think it was someone from outside the house, who had a key. Their theory is quite sound, really. I suppose you could have done it, if she’d spurned you for Searles Cosgrove. I’m sure she gave you a key to my house on Beacon Street. Well, did she or didn’t she?”

  Now he looked uncomfortable again, and the color once more began to build in his face until he had red blotches on his cheeks. This was William Barrett’s medium stage of embarrassment. It came to me that I had known this man too well for too long—but there are advantages to that, too.

  “Are you going to answer me, or not?” I was merciless.

  “Very well. It’s not the kind of subject I would think a lady would want to discuss, but I do owe you a great debt and so I will answer any question you wish to put to me. First off, I didn’t have to be jealous of Cosgrove, it was the other way around. Once she met me, and we became—er—involved, he … Dammit, I can’t talk about this with you.”

  “Yes, you can. I am a grown woman soon to be married, and I am not inexperienced, shy or squeamish. We’re talking about a woman who at the very least slept with, had sexual relations with … You might as well not look so shocked, for I believe it is better to call a thing by its right name. Where was I? Oh yes, Augusta had sexual relations with other men while she was married to my father. You’ve just admitted you were one. You’ve also suggested that Searles Cosgrove was another, and that does not surprise me in the least.”

  “Well, it certainly surprised me, I can tell you that!” William said very grumpily. “The man hates my guts because I took her away from him.”

  “I don’t see how that’s possible. How could you take her away from him when you both met her at about the same time? In fact, you must have introduced them! You wrote to me about it, how you went to the house first, and were so shocked by what you found that you called in Searles.”

  “Yes, that’s true. What I didn’t know then, but figured out later through something I overheard, was that Searles and Augusta had been lovers for at least a year before I ever came on the scene. I gather their, uh, liaison had nothing whatever to do with Searles treating your father—they didn’t have their meetings at Beacon Street, so it’s quite possible he really didn’t know how ill your father was. Unless, of course, Augusta told him, which apparently she didn’t.”

  Hah! I thought, bitterly.

  The waiter came back. Just for spite, because I wasn’t the least bit hungry anymore after having consumed more food than I normally eat in a whole day, I ordered the Sultana Roll for dessert.

  When we were alone again I said, “William, it would be very helpful if you could explain something to me—you said this luncheon was about explaining, remember. What it is about Augusta Simmons that attracts men like you and Cosgrove? Not to mention Father. Cosgrove is also married, isn’t he?”

  “He’s married, but nobody ever sees his wife. I suppose she’s ill, or shut up in an insane asylum or something. What is it about Augusta? you ask.”

  He mulled for a while, and then said, “I think, in the main, it’s this: When she’s with you, you feel there is no one else in the whole world who matters to that woman but you. She hangs on your every word. She will do anything you ask, anything. In fact, most of the time you don’t even have to ask, she just … somehow … knows what you want. Something extraordinary happens. It’s like anything, everything you want she gives you—and then all of a sudden it’s turned around and you’re wanting to give everything to her instead. Do you see?”

  I did, but yet I didn’t.

  William had been right, it was hard to talk about this, hard for me to listen to it. I nodded, just to keep him talking; and all the while I was cutting up Sultana Roll into little pieces, rather viciously, and not eating a single one.

  EARLY IN THE EVENING Martha Henderson came to the house, after calling first. She had entertained Anna Bates, Dr. Cosgrove’s nurse, at some length when the latter got off from work.

  Anna, it seemed, was in love with her boss—the old cliché, the nurse in love with the doctor. She had run his office for years, and had been having an affair with him quietly for almost as long. She had passed up opportunities that might have led to marriage in favor of continuing her relationship with the married doctor.

  This story, like that waiter at Locke’s, was older than God. And it always ends the same. Poor Anna.

  I heard out the end of the story from Martha, but I already knew from what William Barrett had told me how it would end. At some point in the last couple of years, Cosgrove met Augusta Simmons Jones, and he preferred her, and Anna was just out of luck.

  “Martha,” I said suddenly, as the idea occurred to me, “you don’t suppose Anna shot Augusta?”

  Martha was silent, thinking. “I don’t like to believe a good nurse would do that, and she is a good nurse. But I can tell you, she’s still in love with Searles Cosgrove. She’s relieved that Augusta Jones, her competition, is dead.”

  Now I was silent, thinking too. I had a bit of a problem seeing how everything I had learned today might come together in a way I could use. Finally I said, “How did Anna find out in the first place that Cosgrove was having an affair with my father’s wife?”

  It was odd how the very thought of that hurt me. I hadn’t liked her, yet the idea that she could betray my father, who had loved her so much, was like a knife to the heart.

  “Apparently Anna figured it out in part from the medical record. Soon after your father stopped coming to see Cosgrove, the doctor began taking off certain blocks of time that he had not taken before. What Anna thinks is that when Dr. Cosgrove decided your father’s impotence was incurable, he made overtures to Augusta, and she accepted them. You see, in a sense he preyed upon her, Fremont. She must have been ripe for the picking, if you’ll pardon my saying so.”

  “No, with that pair, I do not believe either one preyed upon the other. I think they were well suited, and his caring for my father—once I began to insist from afar that Father needed to be cared for—was nothing but a sham. Oh, Cosgrove got Father into the hospital. But I think he also helped kill him.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I HAVE NOTICED before in the working of an investigation—and both Michael and Wish confirm that this is true also in their much greater experience—that there comes a time when the obstacles to truth just seem to fall away, until suddenly the truth stands revealed.

  So it was that no sooner had Martha Henderson left than Father’s other private nurse, Sarah Kirk, rang the doorbell at Beacon Street. Mary Fowey had already gone upstairs, as it was after 8 P.M. and the Porters were presumably happily ensconced in their room, so I answered the door myself.

  “Sarah!” I said, recognizing her. “What a pleasant surprise. I had not thought I would see you again.”

  This was not quite true—I’d had every intention of seeing her again, but I thought I would have to be the one to go to her. I had certainly not expected her to come to me.

  “I work nights, you know,” she said, “because that’s when I have someone to watch Edwin. And I have a new job up the hill on Chestnut Street, so I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind too much if I just stopped by, even at such an hour?”

  “No, of course I don’t mind. Please come in.”

  Sarah was formally dressed in her white nurse’s costume, complete with an elaborately pleated cap and a blue cape that appeared to be part of the outfit, for it had a little insignia on the collar that matched the one on her cap.

  “May I take your cape?” I offered, closing the inner front door.

  “No, thank you,” she declined. “I won’t stay long. It’s just—I have something to tell you.”

  “By all means. Let us sit in the library, where I have a fire going.”

  Poor Sarah looked exh
austed. My heart went out to her and I said impulsively, “I know you didn’t come here to talk about your own situation, but I wish there were something I could do to help with your son.”

  She nodded gravely. “I know you have a kind heart. That’s one of the reasons I’m here. The other reason is, it’s the right thing to do. About my son, there’s nothing to be done—the only merciful thing would be to hasten the end of his life so that he doesn’t suffer any more. But—”

  Suddenly she bit her lips together in the manner I’d come to know from our previous visit, and she turned her face away. I witnessed her painful struggle to hold back tears, wishing there were something I could do, even just to ease her speech, and helplessly knowing there was not.

  “That was why I did it, you see,” she said, despair stark in her eyes. “They promised me, Dr. Cosgrove and Mrs. Jones did, that if I helped your father end his suffering by giving him the powder in his drink, Dr. Cosgrove would give me the means to end poor Edwin’s suffering too. And I did give it to your father, and Dr. Cosgrove did give me enough of the powder for my son, but then I couldn’t bring myself to give it to Edwin anyway!”

  Sarah broke down, sobbing. I sat stunned and dry-eyed.

  Finally my voice came back to me. I don’t know how long we’d been like that, me stunned and the nurse sobbing; it could have been seconds or it could have been much longer.

  “What was the powder?” I asked.

  It took Sarah a few tries before she was able to pull herself together enough to answer. “Digitoxin. It’s a distillation of digitalis, from foxglove. In a large enough dose it stops the heart.”

  I digested this information. “Is it … a relatively merciful way to die?”

  My question unleashed another flood of tears. “I’d thought so, but then when it was my turn to give it to my Edwin, and I couldn’t do it, I—We don’t know, do we, what’s right! We don’t want them to suffer, but life itself is—it’s—it’s so hard to let go! And to make that decision, to let go, for another person …! I couldn’t do it for my Edwin. I don’t know how Mrs. Jones could do it for your father.”

  “So you believed it was a mercy killing?”

  “Yes, of course. And I said I would do it because if I did, then Dr. Cosgrove would give me the same medicine to, to kill my son.”

  “You didn’t think Father would ever get well, even though he was so much better?”

  “Not well, no. He might have lived on like he was for much longer, though. Didn’t I tell you that when you came to see me, didn’t I agree with you how much better he was?”

  I didn’t reply; I couldn’t. I just bowed my head in an acquiescence of sorts.

  “Oh, Miss Fremont, the truth is I was so upset that day, I can’t even remember what I said to you. I was eaten up with guilt!” Sarah cried. “What I did was wrong, and I know it, and I’ll take the punishment. It’s just that Edwin will die soon, I know he will, but until then he needs me. Could you please wait and not tell the police what I did until my boy is gone?”

  I lifted my head. “I just have one more question. You were asleep when I came into Father’s room and found him dead. If you were the one who gave him the fatal dose, why were you sleeping? I thought they’d drugged you so that one of them could get to Father.”

  For a moment Sarah Kirk covered her face with her hands. Her voice began as a whisper: “I’m so ashamed.”

  Then she raised her head, sat up straight, and the strength one must have to follow her profession took over and sustained her: “I had to give your father the dose in his nighttime drink. That way he wouldn’t think anything was different. It took him first with vomiting—I’d expected that—and I cleaned him up, sat him up for a minute to put a clean nightshirt on him. The sitting up, that sudden change of posture, made his heart drop out; he convulsed once and died. So it’s fair to say he didn’t suffer long. I made sure he was clean and peaceful, tucked him in, all the sheets were clean too, and I put a clean spread on the bed.

  “But then I had to sit there in the room until Mrs. Jones could come in and find him, because that was what we’d agreed. It was to look as if he’d died in his sleep, the two of us witnesses that he’d died quietly between the last time I looked at him and whenever she came in. Oftentimes she’d look in late, around midnight, but that night she didn’t. I don’t know why she didn’t. And I—well, I just couldn’t stand it, being there alone with your father dead in the bed. I think I’d already begun to realize how wrong it was, not the act of mercy it was supposed to be. So I gave myself a sedative, and that was why you found me sleeping.”

  She looked at me, her eyes pleading, and I nodded, not quite sure yet what I was going to say. But a conviction was growing within me.

  “I’m sorry,” Sarah Kirk said. “I know it’s not enough, but I am sorry, and I will take my punishment. If only we could wait until after my Edwin is gone.”

  I went over to Sarah and placed my hand on her shoulder. First she jumped, and then, as she felt the warmth of the message I wanted to convey through my touch, she began to relax.

  “Sarah,” I said, “I don’t blame you for my father’s death. You were only the instrument, you gave him the fatal dose the same way a gun delivers a bullet. Nobody blames the gun when a person is shot. The real killer, that’s the one who ordered the dose, or the one who pulled the trigger—that was someone else, not you.”

  I drew her to her feet and put my arms around her, just briefly. “Go now, and try to forget. Take care of your boy as well as you can. Don’t worry—I’ll never tell anyone what you’ve just told me. Dr. Cosgrove won’t tell anyone because he’s more to blame than you are, and he knows it. And Augusta Simmons Jones—shall we call her the one who pulled the trigger?—is dead herself. There has been enough of death, and of killing, and of sorrow. Let this be an end to it.”

  IMMEDIATELY, before I could lose my resolve, I called Martha Henderson on the telephone.

  “Since you left I’ve been thinking,” I said, “and I’ve decided to be satisfied with what you learned about Dr. Cosgrove. That, plus the information I had from my friend Mr. Barrett, is enough for me. I think it would be best now to leave this matter in the hands of the police. They do seem to be doing a good job of investigating the murder, and who knows what they’ll turn up in the process.”

  After a slight pause Martha said, “If you’re sure.”

  “I am.”

  At the other end of the line, she sighed. “In that case, I think leaving this to the police is the wise thing to do. Good night, Fremont. I hope we will see each other again soon.”

  I echoed the same sentiments, and then we both hung up.

  * * *

  AROUND MIDNIGHT I dressed in my full mourning gear, the long black cloak over the black dress I’d worn all day long, black shoes and stockings, black leather gloves. I took my small revolver out of hiding, spun out the cylinder to check that all the chambers were loaded even though I didn’t think I’d have to use it. I weighed it in my hand for balance—I had not fired this type of gun except in training with Michael, but it was actually easier to handle than the antiquated Marlin I’d left back in San Francisco. Then I shoved the gun into the right-hand inner pocket of the cloak. Lastly I put on the black hat and pulled down the veil. A glance in the mirror assured me that I could not have been more shrouded and live.

  I went down the front stairs because the Porters were less likely to hear me, their rooms being at the back. I assumed they were asleep and hoped they would stay that way. After letting myself out the back door as quietly as possible, I settled down to wait invisibly on a bench in a shadowed corner of the walled garden.

  “Let this be an end to it,” I’d said to Sarah Kirk. But it is not so easy to let go of anger, and the desire for revenge. I had found the perfect antidote, though, if any such thing existed: Every time I felt my anger rise up and I wanted anew to find a way to avenge my father’s death, alongside these feelings there also rose up a vision of Sarah Kirk
with her tragically ill son wrapped around her, his huge head lolling out of control and her thin-boned yet strong hand going up to support that head. I would never have my revenge—I could not, because if I brought down Cosgrove, he would bring Sarah down with him. I wasn’t going to allow that to happen.

  No, it was a much better decision to let my anger go. But oh how hard it was to do. If Augusta were still living, I knew I couldn’t have done it.

  I was not particularly cold inside my warm cloak. The night was a little foggy. Wispy tendrils of mist drifted up the Charles, worked their way around the base of Beacon Hill, and crept over the garden wall. In Boston as in San Francisco, a misty or foggy night is warmer than a clear one.

  I’d waited for a while, I don’t know how long but probably more than an hour, when scrabbling sounds from the other side of the garden wall broke through my reverie. I reached inside the pocket of the cloak and brought the gun out into my lap, just in case. If my hunch was right, I would not need it.

  He came over the wall slithering like a snake, on his belly. No thuds tonight—he’d learned his lesson the other night, when he’d seen my face at the window just as I’d seen his. Had he recognized me then? Or had he thought what I’d thought, that I was a ghost?

  He crawled along in the shadow of the wall toward the house, his eyes fixed on the doors and windows. It never occurred to him to examine the corners of the garden—and even if it had, he might not have seen me.

  Sometimes burglars or thieves will blacken their hands and faces so that their white skin does not reflect light at night. As I watched Larry Bingham crawl closer to the house, I did not think he had blackened his skin on purpose; rather I thought he’d been living rough, extremely rough.

  I watched him crawl up the back steps and try his key in the door. I wondered at the tenacity of desperation—what is it in the mind that brings a person back to try again where he has failed before, hoping against hope? The key did not work of course, any more than it had worked on any other night he’d tried it.