by KB Inglee
Contents
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
DEDICATION
THE LOTHROP BRIGADE
EMILY’S FIRST CASE
INDIAN AFFAIRS
THE DUKE OF CRIME
DECORATION DAY
LEWIS BLUNDERS
THE WANTED MAN
A LITTLE MURDER
RULE OF THUMB
CAMDEN REQUIEM
NOVEL ENCOUNTER
CHRISTMAS IS FOR CHILDREN
THE MAGIC BULLET
TICKET OUT
A HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS
MURDER IN A POSH HOTEL
EMILY VISITS THE FAMILY
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2016 by K.B. Inglee
Published by Wildside Press LLC.
www.wildsidepress.com
*
“Rule of Thumb” originally appeared in Mysterical E, July 20, 2012. “Camden Requiem” originally appeared in Deadly Ink, 2009. “Novel Encounter” originally appeared in Death Knell IV, 2007. “The Magic Bullet” originally appeared in Death Knell V. “Murder in a Posh Hotel” originally appeared from Orchard Press.
DEDICATION
To Roy
THE LOTHROP BRIGADE
Cambridge, autumn 1859
Something was wrong in the Lothrop household. Emily could see the signs of it clearly, in spite of her parents’ attempts to hide it from their girls. It had been building for weeks and finally became unbearable the night Mr. Higginson came to dinner. Thomas Wentworth Higginson was one of Father’s good friends and an ardent abolitionist. Emily looked forward to the nights he joined them for dinner. He teased all three of the Lothrop girls unmercifully and with good humor. This night was different.
He had last dined with them in the spring, the week after Emily’s birthday. He had brought her a small volume of poetry, hand written, by a friend of his from Amherst. As he handed it to her he asked, “Do you know how to read, Miss Emily?”
How offensive! Drawing up her shoulders stiffly, Emily answered with the wisdom of her seven years. “Of course I do, Mr. Higginson. I read very well indeed.”
“Are you sure?”
What did he mean? Of course she knew how to read. She was the daughter of a professor after all.
His whiskers twitched ever so slightly, oh, a joke. Why did he think it was funny?
Mr. Higginson teased all the Lothrop girls, but there was always a sharp edge to the teasing. It was some days before she had the courage to ask her father what he had meant.
“There is more to reading than recognizing words on a page. You will need to learn how to read critically, to balance the things you read against each other and against the world in which you live. Do you remember the newspaper articles I showed you about the Fugitive Slave Act? How each appeared to be telling the truth, but they contradicted each other?”
Emily nodded, remembering how he had cut the articles out and arranged them on his desk for her.
“Reading this way will become natural and easy for you in time, as it is now for Anna. Susan, I’m afraid, will never learn how.”
Professor Lothrop said of his three daughters that Anna was talented, Susan beautiful, and Emily intelligent. Of the three compliments, Emily enjoyed hers most, though sometimes she wished she, too, were talented and beautiful.
* * * *
On this particular evening there had been no teasing between Mr. Higginson and the Lothrop girls. Father sat in thoughtful silence. Mother made vain attempts at conversation but always gave up mid-sentence. Mr. Higginson was filled with a nervous energy and could hardly keep still in his chair. Almost as much food went back to the kitchen as had been brought to the table.
After dinner Mr. Higginson and Father shut themselves up in the study until long after Emily was in bed.
* * * *
The next afternoon Father returned early from classes and took Mother to his study. When Mother and Father had a disagreement about household details or the girls’ education, they would go to the kitchen and settle it over coffee, jokingly referring to the problem later by the number of cups it took to settle. Where to get the money to keep all three girls in school had been a three cup problem, while deciding to send the professor to Europe for the summer and fall semester without his family two years ago had been a five cup problem. Why had they chosen the study this time if not to keep Emily and her sisters in the dark?
The girls waited nervously in the parlor while their parents argued above. From time to time they could hear their mother’s raised voice, but not her words.
When the adult Lothrops finally left the study, they went to the attic rather than coming down to talk to the girls.
Emily had finished knitting the cuff of a white linen glove before her mother finally joined them, brushing the dust off her apron.
“Susan, Anna, your father would like to see you in the study. Emily, you stay here with me. Father will talk to you later.” Mother took the cuff and looked at it critically.
“Look here, you have lost count. Rip it out and begin again.”
Emily ignored her mother’s harsh words and curled up beside her on the sofa. “Mother, what is happening? Why are you so afraid? Does it have to do with Mr. Higginson?”
If Emily had not been so afraid herself, she would not have dared to be so forward. Adults were never afraid of anything, and always knew what was best for children. It was not a child’s place to question that.
“I know it upsets you girls when your father and I disagree. What your father is trying to do is important and we have no disagreement there. We argued only over how to keep our family safe. Your father will tell you the rest after he finishes with Anna and Susan.”
The two sat quietly hand in hand until Emily’s sisters came down the stairs.
“Emily,” said Anna grimly, “Father would like to see you now.”
Susan’s excitement was in marked contrast to Anna’s solemnity.
“Mother, there will be soldiers in Cambridge, isn’t it grand!”
“Hush, Susan,” said Anna sternly, “you don’t know what you are talking about.” Anna went to her mother and took Emily’s place beside her, holding her hand as Emily had done. Something truly terrible must be happening.
The flight of stairs to Father’s study had never seemed so long as they did at that moment. It seemed an eternity before she reached the room where her father waited to tell her what he had already told the others.
Emily did not wait for her father to begin. “Father, why is Mother so frightened?”
“Sit down, Emily. I spoke with your sisters before you because they are older and understand things differently. Do you know what slavery is?”
“Yes, Father, people own people like they own horses or oxen.” This was not the first time she had discussed slavery with her father in this room.
“And war, do you know what that means?”
“Susan says there will be soldiers in Cambridge. She seems pleased. But she is wrong, isn’t she? War is very terrible.” Everyone knew war was coming. Now and then the family attended sermons by the abolitionist Theodore Parker in Boston rather than their own First Parish in Cambridge. She knew her father went to meetings with every prominent anti-slavery speaker in Boston or Cambridge. Once, her father had come home late from a meeting with blood on his face.
“Father, will you be a soldier?”
“No, not with a gun and a uniform.” He paused as he often did before he answered her questions. “We will all be soldiers
in our own way. That is what we must talk about now. I cannot be a soldier if my women will not be soldiers as well. We Lothrops must stand together in this enterprise or it will go hard for us all. Your mother and I have talked about this very seriously and I have agreed with her that we must all do this together. I will not be able to do it alone. We will be our own little troop of fighters. The Lothrop Brigade.” He smiled to himself at the words as though they pleased him.
Emily wanted very much to be part of the Lothrop Brigade, and nodded her assent.
“You must listen carefully to what I tell you and then think about it before you decide. It will be very difficult for us all. I think it will be most difficult for you because you are so curious about everything.”
Emily sat silently waiting for her father to tell her what he wanted of her, trying to keep her hands still in her lap, but they betrayed her fear and excitement by winding themselves into a ruffle along the front of her skirt.
“Sometimes,” her father continued, “when something is right, one is willing to do anything to help, even break the law. Do you remember when Mr. Parker broke the Fugitive Slave Law by marrying that couple?”
Emily thought Mr. Parker was very brave. She could imagine him standing with a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other to fend off the police.
Father went on. “Mother and I have made a hiding place in the attic. People will come in the night, stay a day or two and be gone, all in secrecy. We will take them food and give them as much comfort as we can, but we will never see them, nor talk to them or know who they are. They in turn will not know who we are. Most important, we will never tell anyone that they are here. Not so much as a hint. No bragging to your friends, no telling the Stevenses next door about it. We will not even mention it among ourselves. It will be as though it isn’t really happening. Do you understand?”
If Father would not tell his friend Henry Stevens, Emily could keep it a secret as well.
“What we are doing is against the law. It might even be considered treason. Do you know the punishment for treason?”
“Death.” She could hardly say the word, it terrified her so. “Would they hang you, Father, for protecting these people?”
“Not very likely, but we must consider it as a possibility. Do you understand how important this is, Emily?”
“Yes, Father, I do. I want to be part of the Lothrop Brigade. I will be the best soldier I know how to be.”
Emily stood, squared her shoulders and marched out of the room.
* * * *
None of the Lothrops mentioned this again, but as soon as she was able to, Emily snuck up to the attic to see what her parents had done there. Blankets hung from the rafters defined a small square room with a mattress on the floor, a small writing table with a chair, a wash stand with mismatched basin and pitcher, and a chamber pot. An old oil lamp with a crack in the chimney graced the table. Linens and blankets were folded on the mattress. Emily sat on them. What would it be like to live in a room like this? Thick curtains covered the windows so one could not see out, nor could anyone in the attic be seen from outside.
The room seemed barren and cheerless. Emily found a discarded bureau scarf with a brown stain which she put on the table to give it a more festive and elegant look. Behind a trunk she found a framed print of Durenstein Castle where Richard I of England had been imprisoned. It had been given to them by Mother’s maiden aunt. The print was water stained, the frame chipped. Mother and Father had accepted it graciously, and had taken it to the attic almost as soon as Aunt Kate left. Emily hung it from a nail that had been driven into a beam for some long forgotten purpose. Hand on hips she surveyed the room with its newly added amenities. They didn’t seem to help much.
* * * *
Within days of the formation of the Lothrop Brigade, news of John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry reached Cambridge. Men discussed it in the streets, women in their parlors. Emily and her sisters held their peace about the room in the attic. They openly discussed their family’s views on abolition and the coming war. Harvard students began to drill on the Common. Professor Lothrop called them children playing at war. Did he mean that the Lothrops were the real fighters, even without guns?
Emily, who usually slept well, lay awake nights listening for the sound of cannon fire in the Cambridge streets. She had studied her father’s maps and understood how far Harpers Ferry and “the South” were from Cambridge, but she knew in her heart that the distance was hardly anything and that wars went where they would, heedless of what might be in the way.
* * * *
So it was that one night, as she lay awake, a carriage pulled up, not in front of the house on Dana Street, but around the corner on Cleveland Street. There was only the briefest pause before it rattled away in a hurry. She heard the back door open and the sound of footsteps on the stairs. No one spoke, but the attic door creaked and someone hurried up the stairs to the room above. She fell asleep to the drone of men’s voices from Father’s study.
Emily was the first of the girls in the kitchen in the morning. She had been trained well enough by her parents to keep quiet about what she had heard, but such an occurrence could not be ignored entirely. On the table was deep basket into which mother was putting the earthenware pitcher that she used to take coffee to Father in his study when he was working on a manuscript. It kept the coffee hot longer than the beautiful silver pot did. She laid a napkin over the top to conceal the contents.
“Emily, take this to the attic stairs, set it on the third step up, then close the door and come back at once.” Her mother sounded tired, and her eyes were red.
The narrow basket would fit on a step, while a tray would have to be carried up the stairs. Anyone seeing Emily carrying a basket up the stairs would never think she was carrying up someone’s breakfast. Her mother stopped slicing bread and gazed at her. Was she trying to decide if Emily were capable of such a dangerous task?
When she opened the door at the foot of the attic stairs, Emily fully intended to do as she was told. She set the basket down on the third step. Surely it would be easier for the person in the attic if she carried it to the top. When she reached the top step, she could not see the occupant of the makeshift room. She would not be able to go back down until she saw the face of the stranger, so without another thought she carried the basket around the edge of the blanket that served as a wall and set it on the table.
The man in the attic was not an escaped slave. She stared into clear blue eyes above a blond beard.
She was even more surprised to find herself staring into the barrel of the blond man’s revolver.
“Do you have to kill me because I have seen you?” asked Emily. She sounded braver than she felt.
“It’s not considered polite to kill the children of the man who is trying to save your life. You must be Emily. Your father said I might be seeing you, but I didn’t expect it to be so soon.”
He tipped the gun so that it was aimed at a spot above her head and she heard a click rather that the resounding boom she had expected.
Emily set the basket on the table and started unpacking it. Did the man know how much he had frightened her? As she poured coffee her hands shook. Did he notice?
“Now that you have seen me,” said the man, stuffing a biscuit into his mouth, “it won’t hurt if you stay a while. There isn’t much to do in an attic, even one as comfortable as this.”
“What’s your name?” she asked.
The man paused for a long time and, glancing at the picture she had hung on the wall, said, “Why don’t you call me Richard.”
“Coeur de Lion,” whispered Emily.
“Thank you very much, Miss Emily. You know that the trouble with hiding like this is that not only are you kept safely away from your enemies, you are kept safely away from everyone else as well. I’m glad you came.”
Father said Emily was never at a
loss for words, but what could she say to the man? She refilled his coffee cup. Dozens of questions hovered in her mind. Where had he come from? Did he have a family? Where was he going? What had he done that had caused him to need hiding? Did he know Father, or was he a stranger to everyone here?
She had broken the trust her parents had in her by bringing the basket up the stairs instead of doing as she was told. She must not carry the disobedience any further.
“Are you comfortable in our attic?” That would be all right to ask.
“It’s a fine attic. By far the best I have ever seen. Will you come and visit me again, Miss Emily?”
“I am supposed to pretend you are not here. Father said that would be my part as a soldier in the war. I wish to be a good soldier, but, yes, I would like to visit you again if Father says I may.”
Emily refilled the basket and carried it back down the stairs. What would her punishment be for her disobedience? At the bottom of the stairs her father stood with his arms folded and a very stern expression on his face.
“What have you done, Miss?”
“Father, I disobeyed.” She looked at the tip of her shoes.
“Take the basket downstairs. Remember your promise to hold your tongue. I will decide what is to be done and talk to you when you come home from classes this afternoon. You might make a start by cleaning his chamber pot, so your mother doesn’t have to.”
* * * *
Emily’s punishment was to act as maid to the man in the attic. She would carry him his food and clean his room each morning before she went to school. She struggled to carry the heavy pitcher of hot water up the stairs and the pail of waste water down again. After each visit, her father questioned her to make sure that she had neither told the man anything about the Lothrops nor found out anything about him.
Emily and Mr. Richard discussed the things she was reading, what she studied in school, and the mood of the Cantabrigians.