The Northbury Papers

by Joanne Dobson

  “Excuse me.”

  The voice was flat. I glanced up to see Gerry Novak carrying a glass pitcher of iced tea. My throat was dry from breathing in dust, and I smiled at the welcome sight. Gerry didn’t smile back. “Dr. Hart thought you might like a cold drink in the parlor.” His thin lips were pinched with disapproval. Had I done something wrong? Were you not supposed to smile at people who thought they were servants? I sighed. As always, the ways of the rich were a mystery to me.

  Shamega and Amanda were deep into the contents of the hatbox, sorting out letters and organizing them into separate piles, but I welcomed a break.

  Sitting in her armchair in the late afternoon light, Edith appeared refreshed by her nap. The vitality was back in her expression, and color had returned to her cheeks. She had changed from her flowered dress and wore dark green wool pants with a white knit pullover sweater open at the throat. The gold chain of her locket still circled her neck. Even though she was clearly not at her strongest, this lady managed to present herself with style. When she saw me, Edith smiled ruefully. “The most frustrating part of old age is that the body refuses to keep up with the mind,” she said.

  “That’s better than the other way around,” Will responded.

  “Oh, absolutely.” Edith’s tone was fervent. “I don’t even want to imagine what it would be like if the mind went.” Her next words were only half in jest. “Don’t ever let that happen to me, Will.”

  He took her thin hand between both of his. “You can count on me, Edie. You’ve always known that.” Next to Edith he seemed robust, his body stocky, his shoulders wide.

  She smiled up at him. “You’re right; I always have.” The look they exchanged spoke of decades of shared experience, and I realized that—in spite of Edith’s prickly treatment of her old friend—the affection between these people was mutual and warm. I sighed, enviously. A random thought flitted through my mind. Oh, Tony … What have I done?

  I’d been so interested in the scene before me that I’d forgotten about Amanda and Shamega and was startled when they burst into the room. “Professor Pelletier,” Shamega cried, “look what I found!” The sheet of paper she waved at me was covered with the careful rounded penmanship I’d seen on the two or three Northbury letters I’d looked at.

  “Mom,” Amanda cut in, indicating a bundle of identical pages snug in the bottom of the blue hatbox she carried, “we think this is the manuscript for one of Mrs. Northbury’s books.”

  “You’re kidding!” I took the sheet Shamega held out to me. They weren’t kidding. It was the opening page of a novel or story. “Child of the North Star, by Mrs. Serena Northbury,” I read aloud. “Chapter One.” I looked up. “I don’t remember a book called Child of the North Star. Do you suppose the publisher changed the title?”

  “Read. Read,” Amanda said. That had been one of her first commands when she was a toddler. Wead, Mommy, wead.

  “Do, Karen,” Edith Hart urged.

  I settled back on the love seat and began to read aloud. “The shrouded furnishings of the small attic room lent a dark and desolate air to Emily’s sanctuary, for sanctuary it was, in spite of webs which hung the windows with filmy drapes of poverty and desperation. Poor Emily Westford. To have fallen so far, and all for love. Yet she was grateful even for this gloomy room in this forsaken mansion. Soon the time would come when no woman could bear to be alone, and here at last, Emmy had found a friend. But such a friend! In such a time! In such a place!

  “This doesn’t sound familiar.” I broke off, staring at the paper in my hand. “And I’ve read all of Northbury’s novels, or at least all I could get my hands on—they’ve been out of print so long. And I’ve never even heard of Child of the North Star.” I raised my eyes to my small audience. Will sat in a straight chair he had pulled up next to Edith. Amanda leaned against the archway. Shamega had plopped down on the green Axminster rug.

  “Go on. Go on.” Edith seemed as enthralled by the tale as the girls were. Will simply looked bemused.

  “Yes, Professor Pelletier, don’t stop now,” Shamega pled. Amanda nodded vigorously.

  “You want me to read this to you? Aloud? Now?”

  “Please do,” Edith said, settling herself more comfortably in her chair. “A lost novel. What fun!”

  I slipped a second sheet from the loosely tied string securing the packet of pages. “Well—here goes.

  “There was a hesitant tapping at the ponderous door of Emmy’s gloom-filled chamber. ‘Enter,’ Emmy called, and a small, dark girl came through the door carrying a cumbersome valise. With care, the weary child—for a child rather than a woman she seemed in this dim light—placed the bag on the clean but threadbare cloth covering a table by the narrow bed.

  “‘Mrs.… ah … Mrs.… Westford, in your delicate condition you should not be standing. Let me help you off with that wet cloak and into clothes more suitable for this trying moment.’

  “‘Call me Emmy, my dear girl, for who but you should have a sister’s right?’

  “The color rose on the young girl’s dusky cheek. She stammered, ‘But Miss … Mrs. Westford …’

  “‘Emmy,’ restated our fair heroine. ‘And from this moment you alone know my true name, a name not now to be spoken otherwise than in this quiet room.’ Her tone was firm. Her fate was clear, and she would live with love and courage the hard, hard life that lay ahead. ‘And, perhaps,’ she continued, ‘nevermore in this terrestrial life to be spoken save but in a whisper. And never, never, to be borne by the poor innocent to be brought into the harsh world this very night.’ With those words she fell, insensible, to the bare garret floor.

  “My God,” I said. “I believe this is a lost novel. Maybe one that was never published. And I think it’s about an illegitimate birth. No one wrote about that in the nineteenth century. At least not respectable women like Mrs. Northbury—”

  “Edie?” Will rose abruptly from his chair. “Are you feeling ill?” Edith was staring at me, her face ashen and blank of expression.

  “Karen,” Will directed, “quick. Get Edith some orange juice. I think she’s going into insulin shock.” The old pages flew from my lap as I jumped to do his bidding.

  When I burst through the kitchen’s double doors, Gerry Novak was seated at a well-scrubbed pine table, deeply engrossed in writing in a small spiral notebook. He looked up, startled. “Yes?” His voice was not welcoming.

  “I need orange juice—for Edith. She’s going into shock.”

  He leapt up, knocking his notebook off the table, and grabbed a tumbler from a glass-fronted cabinet. He poured the juice, and I reached out to take it, but he pushed past me into the hall. Before following him, I retrieved his notebook from the floor. The small page was covered with the much-reworked lines of what appeared to be a poem. In the brief glance I gave it before I replaced the book on the table, the block-shaped verse looked like a sonnet. Huh, I mused, Servant Gerry is a poet. Who would have thought?

  Edith had recovered by the time I returned to the parlor. With Will’s help, she slowly pushed herself to a sitting position on the chintz-covered couch where he and Gerry had carried her. Her color was better, having progressed from gray to merely pale, but I knew our presence was tiring her. It was time to go.

  Sipping at the glass of juice, Edith said, “Karen, don’t let this incident frighten you away. Will overreacted a bit. I wasn’t really in shock; it was just a bit of a blood-sugar dip. Terrifying if you don’t know what’s happening—but manageable. And, as you see, Gerry knows just what to do for me. Don’t you, Gerry?” She smiled up at him, and, when she received no response, turned back to me. “You’ve brought a new interest into my life, Karen, and I so much want you to continue your work on Mrs. Northbury.”

  “You just let me know when you feel up to having me here again, Edith. I am anxious to begin my research.” I glanced over to where Gerry was gathering up the scattered pages of Mrs. Northbury’s manuscript. “And—I’d love to have a copy of that manuscript. It s
ounds like such a departure for Mrs. Northbury—a sensation tale rather than a sentimental novel. Maybe it would even be publishable. Do you remember a few years ago there was a huge hue and cry made about a newly discovered Louisa May Alcott manuscript, A Long Fatal Love Chase?”

  Edith nodded. Gerry stacked the manuscript pages neatly on the leather-topped side table.

  “Well, it sold for something in seven figures and was published by a commercial press with a good deal of fanfare. And then two more manuscript novels were found. The most recent was The Duke’s Daughter, which turned up in an attic in Concord. I’ve met Earl Wiggett, the guy who found that one, and edited it. He’s a researcher, a kind of ‘literary sleuth’ he calls himself. And he made a bundle on the sale of that manuscript—two million dollars, I think. So there is a market.” I laughed. “Of course, Serena Northbury doesn’t have Alcott’s ready-made twentieth-century audience. But, still—an unpublished sensation novel should attract some attention—a university press, at least.”

  “You’ve got me so intrigued, Karen,” Edith replied. “I’d like to finish reading this story before you take it to copy. Then—of course you can have it; it would be absolutely lovely if you could get it published.” She gave me an enigmatic smile. “A voice from the grave, so to speak. Telling the truth about a woman’s experience, after all this time.”

  I glanced back into the parlor as I shepherded Amanda and Shamega into the wide front hall. As Will bent over Edith with a second glass of juice, Gerry Novak was deep in perusal of Mrs. Northbury’s manuscript pages.

  The final weeks of the semester descended on me with their heavy load of papers and exams, and it was three weeks before I could take a deep breath and think about Serena Northbury again. I handed my final grades to the Registrar on a showery Tuesday morning, then strolled back to my office, taking time to savor the faint perfume of spring, the delicate mid-May green of leaves beaded now with rainwater. The wonderful, long academic summer was at hand and I was about to do what I loved best—dig into the long forgotten past and tease it into coming alive again. I had two phone calls to make.

  “Tess? It’s Karen Pelletier.”

  “Karen! How are you?” Tess Holmes was my editor at Oxbridge University Press. Oxbridge had recently published my book on American writers and the constraints of class, and, so far, the reviews were good. Tess said the reviews were “glowing,” but, of course, I’d never be immodest enough to repeat that to a living soul.

  “Tess,” I ventured, when we’d gotten past the greetings and the gossip, “I’ve got a project in mind that I’d like to run by you.” And I told her about my idea for a Northbury biography. “A cultural biography, of course,” I said, “looking not only at her life, but also at contemporaneous print culture and conditions of authorship.”

  “Hmm,” Tess said. “Hmm. I like the idea. I like it a lot. Write up a proposal, Karen, and I’ll run it by the Press Review Board.”

  I hung up with a smile. Tess Holmes always got what she wanted at Oxbridge; I had a publisher for the Serena Northbury biography. I picked up the phone again. Now I had good news for Edith Hart. The manuscript of Child of the North Star was enticing me back to Meadowbrook, but I was also looking forward to seeing Edith again; even in the short time I’d known her, I’d come to think of her as a friend.

  A flat male voice—vaguely familiar—responded after two rings. “Hart residence.” The greeting was abrupt. I remembered Gerry Novak’s rudeness.

  “Gerry? This is Karen Pelletier. Is Dr. Hart, ah, Edith available?”

  “Dr. Pelletier!” The voice now sounded even more familiar—and absolutely astonished. “What on earth?—” Then silence. With dawning, horrific recognition, I realized it wasn’t Gerry Novak who had answered the phone; rather it was someone I’d never—ever—expected to encounter in my life again.

  “Lieutenant Piotrowski?” I was as flabbergasted as he was.

  I had called the home of my new friend Edith Hart, and who had answered the phone but my old acquaintance, Lieutenant Piotrowski of the Massachusetts State Police, Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Homicide.

  Eight

  “I got your note about that radio program, Dr. Pelletier. I was pleased you remembered me.”

  At six foot three and a good eighth of a ton, Lieutenant Piotrowski would not be easy to forget. Even in his deliberately low-profile dark blue windbreaker, jeans, and Red Sox cap, he drew attention as he stopped at my booth in Fran’s Kountry Kitchen outside of Greenfield. The flat, high cheekbones, the watchful brown eyes, the cropped hair, the massive shoulders, and some far more intangible essence—the general air of attentiveness and physical power, I guess—all clamored police. I liked the lieutenant, but I hadn’t expected to run into him again. Ever. Academic life may be characterized by cutthroat competition, but I don’t habitually require the services of a homicide cop.

  “Hello, Lieutenant. Have a seat.” I dabbed at my eyes with a paper napkin; I’d cried all the way up Route 2 on my way to meet Piotrowski. Edith Hart was dead. She’d died at home, in her sleep, apparently of natural causes. That’s all Piotrowski would tell me on the phone. But there had to be more to it than that, or I wouldn’t have found my old pal the lieutenant on the scene.

  Piotrowski squeezed his bulk past the speckled orange Formica table and onto the orange vinyl bench. His gaze was speculative. “You were fond of the old lady, huh?”

  “Yes, I was. I’d only known her a short time, but she was a wonderful woman. So, tell me—what were you doing at Meadowbrook? Is there some question about the way Edith died?”

  But the lieutenant wasn’t giving anything away. “How’d you come to be acquainted with Dr. Hart?”

  I told Lieutenant Piotrowski about my plans to write a Northbury biography. “Edith was so interested—and so alive,” I concluded. Tears squeezed past the eyelash dams. I mopped at them, futilely. “I know she was sick and very old; I know we all have to die sometime.…” I wiped my eyes again. The soggy napkin was disintegrating. I reached for another from the metal dispenser, but Piotrowski got to me first with a small cellophane packet. I’d never known him to be without tissues; for a homicide investigator, tissues must be a professional requisite. “I don’t know why it’s hitting me like this, Lieutenant; I really barely knew the woman. But I felt such an affinity with her. I just couldn’t help thinking—if I’d had someone like her for a mother, my life would have been totally different.”

  “Yeah? Better?”

  “Who knows? Maybe better. Different, anyhow. She was so alive, so certain, so experienced. So—unafraid.”

  “Your mother was afraid?”

  Where was this conversation taking me? Nowhere I wanted to go. Especially not with this big cop. I sniffed, patted my cheeks dry with the tissue, made an attempt to pull myself together. “But I don’t understand, Lieutenant, what you were doing at Meadowbrook? And why do you want to talk to me?”

  Without responding, Piotrowski beckoned to the waitress, a skinny, raddled-looking woman in her early thirties with blond-streaked hair and an arrow-pierced heart tattooed on the back of her hand. The black letters on her white plastic nametag spelled Lucy. “Coffee,” Piotrowski said, “cheeseburger, fries.” He turned to me. “You had lunch, Doctor?”

  “No. But I couldn’t eat, anyhow.”

  “The same for her,” he informed the waitress. “Coffee right away.”

  “Piotrowski!”

  The waitress concentrated, her tongue between her teeth, as she laboriously recorded the order.

  “Ya gotta eat,” the lieutenant told me. “Ya can’t go around on nothing but beer.”

  I followed Lucy with my eyes past the knotty pine paneling and the wall-mounted wagon wheels. She was still writing as she disappeared behind the counter and through the kitchen door.

  “What’s got into you anyhow?” Piotrowski demanded. “I never remember you drinking beer. And in the middle of the day …” The expression on the broad, square face was disapprov
ing: Nice ladies don’t get boozed up before sundown.

  “It’s none of your business what I drink, Lieutenant!” Now I remembered how annoying this man could be. I was about to tell him in rude language to butt out, when my gaze fell on the cellophane tissue packet, and I realized I didn’t need tissues anymore. Piotrowski had me where he wanted me, irritated—and tear-free; I was now ready to talk rationally.

  “Lieutenant, please don’t keep me in suspense. I assume there must be something suspicious about Edith’s—ah—Dr. Hart’s death. What is it? Why are you involved?”

  “You know anyone else in that house?” He still wasn’t answering my questions.

  “Well—yes, I met a couple of people. Gerry Novak; he’s kind of a—I don’t know—handyman and housekeeper. And maybe a bit of a nurse as well. Edith said he made it possible for her to live there in spite of her diabetes, so I assume he took care of her. You know—medication and stuff.” I paused. “But he’s weird, this guy. Quite weird.”

  “Really?” Piotrowski’s expression was impassive. Only the infinitesmal lift of his beige eyebrows revealed any interest in what I had just told him.

  “The only other person I met there was Will Thorpe, her former medical partner. He seemed to have been staying at Meadowbrook indefinitely.”

  “Thorpe hasn’t been there for the past coupla days. Says he’s been in Manhattan—working at some clinic. But he’s the one who called us. Showed up at the house late last night and found the … er, and found Dr. Hart. Or so he says.” He shrugged. “We’ll follow up on all that, of course. So—this Novak guy’s ‘weird,’ huh? What d’ya mean by that?”

  “Piotrowski! I’m not saying another word until you tell me why you’re in on this!”

  The waitress deposited a heavy brown ceramic cup in front of Piotrowski. Steam curled off the surface of the coffee in a ghostly swirl. In front of me, she placed a second sweating mug of beer.