by Oak, B. B.
“Is he in good health?”
“Yes. As strong and spirited as any boy his age. Intelligent too.”
“What joyful news that is!” Tears streamed down Mrs. Trescot’s face, and it seemed they magically washed away the ravages of illness. She could not stop talking, so infused was she with newfound energy. “I cannot wait to tell my brother when he returns to Boston! He is my only other living relative, and now he shall be an uncle.”
“Did you tell your brother that you were searching for your lost son?” Henry asked her.
“I am sorry to say I did not tell him right off,” Mrs. Trescot said, “for my lawyer advised me against it.”
“And why would your lawyer give you such advice as that?”
“I suppose because I changed my will after my husband died, making my son, if he were ever found, my primary heir instead of Orlando.”
“Perhaps your brother guessed that is what you would do if ever you became a widow,” Henry said.
“Indeed he did! And when he asked me outright about it, I could not lie to him. He was most sympathetic and understanding. Why, he even offered to help find David himself! As vain and selfish as Orlando can be at times, he has always been a loving brother, and he knows I shall always take care of him.”
“Is your brother, perchance, an actor?” Henry said. “I recently heard the name Orlando mentioned at the Howard Theater.”
“Oh, I am sure he is much talked about there for he is one of the Howard’s best actors. Orlando can play any part ever written.”
Henry nodded. “Both male and female, according to Mrs. Perry.”
“Mrs. Perry?” Mrs. Trescot turned her nose up. “Is that blowsy bit player still strutting the boards?”
“She paints the actors’ faces now,” Henry said. “She is the one who directed us to you.”
“Then I am grateful to her. Tell me more about my son.”
“You have the rest of your life to get to know him,” Henry said. “Let us continue talking about your brother for a while longer, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, I never mind talking about Orlando. He has so much charm! But so few scruples. I have found that to be so with most handsome men. And Orlando is very handsome. He is a perfect Adonis.”
“Perfect but for his left eye?” Henry said.
“Well, yes. He lost sight in that eye as a boy when he caught the measles from me. I have always felt guilty about it. Perhaps that is why I indulge him so.” Mrs. Trescot studied Henry a moment. “How did you know about Orlando’s eye if you have never met him?”
“But I have.”
“Then why did you not tell me so right off?”
“I was not sure that your brother and the person I met in Plumford were one and the same until now,” Henry said and looked at me.
I stared back at him aghast. “Mrs. Swann?”
He nodded. “It all fits.”
“Who is Mrs. Swann?” Mrs. Trescot asked.
“Someone who is residing in the same house as your son,” Henry replied, maintaining a calm demeanor.
My own face flushed with rage at the realization that Swann was in actuality Mrs. Trescot’s brother. All I wanted to do was race back to Plumford and expose the vile fraud. But rather than upset poor Mrs. Trescot, Henry and I took our leave most civilly, promising to bring her son to her very soon.
Nurse Dibble insisted upon showing us out and slowly led us down the stairs. She further detained us in the foyer by blocking the door with her large frame. Her blunt countenance appeared most kindly now that she regarded us with a smile instead of a scowl.
“Pray deliver the boy here as soon as you can manage it,” she told us, hands clutched against her starched apron bib. “It will save dear Mrs. Trescot’s life. And dear she truly is, as good and generous a soul as you could want, but pining for her son all these many years has made her heartsick.”
“The calomel makes her sicker still,” I said. “Will you help me wean her off it?”
“I will! And I assure you that her son will have the best of care from me and his mother.” She gave my hand a strong, hard shake, and then shook Henry’s. “Forgive me for my initial rudeness and distrust, gentlemen, but I feel it my duty to protect Mrs. Trescot. We go back many years, and I have seen her through many troubles and sorrows. Her selfish husband was the cause of most of them, and her worthless brother only made matters worse. All Orlando Revere has ever cared about was getting his greedy hands on the Trescot fortune.”
“Revere is Orlando’s surname?” Henry asked sharply. The nurse nodded. “Then there is no time to lose! Move aside, my good woman.” Out the door he went, me right behind him. It was clear to us both that Swann was a murderer.
We ran all the way to the station only to see the train to Concord pull away from the platform. There was no other course of action but to leap on the tracks and race after it. I jumped down an instant before Henry did, so I ran afore him in the narrow space between the parallel tracks. A conductor stood in the open door of the end car and placidly watched us as we neared the train just as it began to pick up speed. I poured it on and managed to grasp the handrail of the car and twist myself onto the lowest step. Leaned back over the tracks as far as I could with my arm extended. Henry’s first try at grasping my hand near ended in disaster as he stumbled and almost plunged down the side of the rail bed. He just managed to regain his balance by wildly wind-milling his arms, but that caused him to lose speed. He made a desperate lunge at me, and our hands forged an iron grip. I hauled him up beside me. We had made it just in time, for in the next few seconds the train attained a speed faster than any man could run.
“Tickets, gentlemen,” the phlegmatic conductor intoned behind us.
I paid the man, and we found the last seats in the last car. The stove smoked and gave little heat, but we were mighty hot under the collar already.
“Revere, not revenant,” Henry said after we had caught our breaths. “That was what Mrs. Lyttle was writing on the wall. The last name of her killer.”
“She must have known Orlando Revere from the Howard Theater,” I said. “If he is capable of killing a woman so viciously, he is capable of anything.”
“Such as killing a child to protect his inheritance,” Henry said.
I recognized how true that was. “He has already attempted to do away with Noah at least twice. First fire, then ice.”
“Pray we get back to Plumford in time to stop him before he tries again,” Henry said.
My heart squeezed tight. “Or harms Julia.”
We arrived in Concord, ran to the stable, harnessed Napoleon, and jumped into the gig. I lightly touched the horse’s flank with the whip, and he surged away. Napoleon never needs more notice than that to bring out the best in him, and like all good doctors’ horses, he senses when there is an emergency. He flew over the hard ground so fast I had to pull him in on a few bends in the road or we might have rolled right over. Never covered the distance between the two towns so fast.
’Twas not fast enough, however, to keep my beloved Julia and that poor boy out of harm’s way. I shall never forgive myself for leaving them at the mercy of such a fiend as Revere/ Swann. And now Justice Phyfe and Constable Beers are pounding on the door, no doubt to question me about the fatal stabbing.
JULIA’S NOTEBOOK
Friday, 24 December
Here I am a professional artist, yet it took a child to draw the truth for me. Noah had been sketching so intently yesterday afternoon that I held back from instructing him, not wanting to interfere with the creative spirit that seemed to have seized him. Occasionally I would look up from my own work to observe the back of his spindly neck and little round head bent over his drawing pad, and so tender a picture this appeared to me that I began sketching Noah sketching.
At last he brought me his drawing, and I sensed that my reaction would be most important to him. Apprehension was evident in his expressive eyes, and I smiled to assuage his concern.
“I
am sure I will like it,” I told him before looking at his work.
I had not expected what I saw. Most of Noah’s drawings have been of ordinary household objects or depictions of horses and dogs, and the only person he has ever attempted to portray is me. But this was a drawing of a naked man, unpolished in execution, yet painstaking in detail—the most obvious detail being a male organ. The man’s face was too inexpertly drawn to attribute to a specific person, but again there was a telling detail—a cigar stuck in the mouth. Behind the figure were drawn, not in proper perspective but still recognizable, a hip bath and a highboy with a distinctive bonnet top.
Noah, most likely, had seen naked men on occasion, but I ventured to ask him if his drawing was of a real or an imaginary man.
“It is Mrs. Swann,” he said softly but emphatically, looking at me with a worried frown.
I could not help but smile at his mistake. “Do you mean Mr. Shrove?”
He shook his head impatiently. “Mrs. Swann.”
I had heard Mrs. Swann ready a bath this morning, employing Noah to aid her in bringing up the cans of hot water, and I thought perhaps this occurrence had become confused in his mind with another bath taken by another person of another sex. Surely the excessively modest Mrs. Swann would not have exhibited herself naked to the boy. I had never seen her otherwise but fully clothed.
“Now, Noah,” I said, “how could you possibly have seen Mrs. Swann bathing?”
“The keyhole,” he said.
His blush indicated he knew this intrusion into another’s privacy was wrong, yet he had made a drawing proving his own guilt. For this reason I began to believe that he had drawn exactly what he had seen through that keyhole. The bonnet-top highboy, with eleven drawers carefully delineated, was certainly true to the one in Mrs. Swann’s bedchamber. Was Mrs. Swann true to life too?
“You have drawn Mrs. Swann as a man, Noah. Do you know the difference between a man and a woman?”
Indeed he did, for with the tip of his pencil he pointed at the figure’s male member. I sat back, stunned, and regarded Noah. It was obvious that he knew something was deeply wrong and wanted me to know too.
Had I not already felt that something was amiss with the way Mrs. Swann comported herself? I recollected all her touching and caressing and staring at me and the Phyfe sisters, and all her bawdy talk in a low, insinuating tone. But would a man go through all that trouble to pass himself off as a woman just to take such liberties with us? Was he a perverted peeper? A potential rapist? Or simply a male who enjoyed dressing up as a female? I had seen men such as that strutting the streets of Montmartre. But why would a man with such tendencies wish to reside in Plumford of all places, where his penchant would hardly be tolerated?
“Shall I make us some tea, my dears?” a cheery female voice asked, and I looked toward the doorway to see Mrs. Swann standing there.
My first reaction was to turn Noah’s drawing facedown upon the desk. My second was to gape at Mrs. Swann most intently. She looked as she always did—a woman who was doing her utmost to make herself appear more attractive. The simplest explanation of Noah’s drawing was that he had made a childish mistake.Yet how could he have made such a mistake as that? I had to find out for certain.
“May I beg a favor of you, Mrs. Swann?” I said. “I have just discovered that I’ve run out of linseed oil, and I need it to mix my paints. Would you mind going to Daggett’s store right now, before it closes, and getting me some?”
“Why, I do not mind at all,” she replied kindly. “A brisk walk in the cold evening air will do me good, I am sure. And whilst there I shall pick up a supply of whale oil, for we are running low.”
The moment I heard the front door close I left Noah in the studio, ran up the stairs to Swann’s chamber, and knelt down before her massive leather trunk. ’Twas padlocked, as I’d fully expected it to be, but I had disengaged locks before with the most common of womanly devices. I pulled two hairpins out of my chignon and slipped one in the bottom of the keyway for tension, whilst using the other to push up the tumblers. In a thrice the lock fell open.
I lifted the trunk lid and searched inside. I found several blond wigs and fake curls of the same brash shade attached to bonnets and caps, along with jars and bottles of face paint. That Swann wore false hair and painted her face came as no surprise to me, and I’d even suspected that she amplified her bosom with India rubber or some such padding. Many women use such artifices to make themselves more alluring. But how many women shave their faces with an eight-inch straight razor? I stared at the blade a moment, feeling an inexplicable revulsion, and then folded it back into its ivory handle. At the bottom of the trunk I found even more proof that Swann was indeed a man—a pair of trousers, a frock coat, a black cape, a compressed top hat, and a white linen shirt with blood on one sleeve.
“How now, Julia? What a naughty girl you are,” a man’s voice said.
I looked up and saw Swann, and it was as though blinders had been removed from my eyes. Although still dressed as a woman, he had lowered his mask of deception and was clearly a man. He held Noah to him, a pistol pointed at the boy’s head.
“Scream and I will shoot him.”
“I will not scream,” I assured Swann in a quivering voice. I put the bloodstained shirt back in the trunk and at the same time slipped the razor up my sleeve.
“Put the razor back, my dear, or I will use it on you as I used it on poor little Kitty. I do not care to get myself all bloody again, for I must be leaving soon. And if you give me no trouble, I will trouble you no more.”
Hearing him so callously admit to killing my friend filled me with fury, and my first impulse was to leap up and attack him with the razor. I did not stand a chance of getting to him from my kneeling position, however, before he pulled the trigger and killed Noah. And I wanted to believe, with every atom of hope within me, that if I did what he said, he would go away and trouble us no more. I returned the razor to the trunk.
“May I get up?” I asked him.
“I rather like you on your knees,” he replied in a suggestive tone, “but yes, do rise to the occasion, Julia, for the show must go on. And we are in the last act.”
I stood and my legs almost buckled, my horror of him was so great. How macabre he looked to me now in his paint and his wig. “What do you want of us?” I asked him.
“At the moment I want nothing of you but your obedience, Julia dear.”
“Why did you come to Plumford?”
“Blame it on the boy.” Swann smiled down at him. “Such a handsome fellow, isn’t he?” He tapped the pistol against Noah’s temple.
“Let him go, Swann,” I said. “He has caused you no harm.”
“His very existence causes me harm! I should have killed him when his father handed him over to me the day he was born. Instead, I put him in the care of a couple who actually wanted the little beast. So he has me to thank for a good twelve years of life. But he can have no more than that if I am to have a good life myself.”
“You will never have a good life,” I told him, “if you murder this child.”
“I will if I don’t get caught at it. The trick is to make it look like an accident. And I would have already succeeded but for that meddlesome doctor you are so fond of, Julia dear. My first plan was to dose the brat with laudanum and leave him to die in the burning barn, but damn it if Dr. Walker didn’t come along just in time to save him. I then tried to get that lunatic Solomon Wiley to do the killing for me by convincing him the boy was an evil entity. But once again Dr. Walker came along in time to save his life. My third attempt was my most bold and daring one. I tricked the little imbecile into skating onto thin ice, and he would have drowned for sure if you hadn’t gone in after him.” Swann shook a finger at me. “That was very foolhardy, Julia dear. You might have drowned along with the boy if not for Dr. Walker. I should have done away with him, but he would have been far more difficult to kill than a helpless little kitten like Kitty.”
“W
hy did you murder that dear young woman?” I sobbed.
Swann sighed dramatically. “Alas, I had no choice. I feared the silly twit would have eventually recognized me from the theater. Fortunately she had not yet done so when I rapped on her back door and announced myself as Mrs. Swann come a-calling. Much to Kitty’s surprise she opened her door to a vampyre instead. That was my disguise in case her neighbors spied me. I am such a versatile actor!”
Realizing that Noah’s life and mine depended on my own ability to act, I stifled my tears and pretended acquiescence. “I will help you in any way I can to get away from here, Swann,” I said. “Just tell me what to do.”
“How kind of you, Julia. You may start by walking slowly down the stairs and into the kitchen. The boy and I shall follow, and you may be sure my Derringer will still be at his head.”
How I wished his razor were still up my sleeve! It had become clear to me, through my fog of fear, that Swann could not allow us to live after confessing so much. Yet every moment I could forestall our deaths seemed utterly precious.
We entered the kitchen and all stood together for a moment. I saw Swann was puzzling through how best to deal with the two of us at one time. His solution was to suddenly punch me in the jaw.
I next awoke lying face downward on the floor, tightly bound hand and foot with clothesline cord, my mouth stuffed with rags. I tried to rise, but could not. Swann had passed one of my arms round a leg of the kitchen stove before he had tied my wrists. Noah lay beside me, similarly bound and gagged. That he was still alive gave me hope we might survive our ordeal. Hope truly does spring eternal. It is all we humans have in the end.
“My Juliet awakens,” Swann said, looking down at me. He was smiling. “I would have much preferred to put you to sleep more gently. Indeed, I had always planned to drug you with laudanum, as I have been drugging the boy all these weeks, and have my way with you. I regret there is no time for that now, but I assure you, my dear, that the drawing Noah made of me does not do my manliness justice by half.” He began pouring the contents of all our whale oil lamps around the kitchen, concentrating most of it on the wood in the bin and then drenching our clothes. “I never did go to the store for more oil,” he said. “Now I rather wish that I had. But this should suffice.”