The Northbury Papers

by Joanne Dobson

  The lieutenant bought me coffee and a fish sandwich at a Friendly’s down the street from BCI headquarters. As I ate, he stared into his white ceramic mug, unresponsive to my attempts at conversation. I thought perhaps he was still saddened by the tragic love story we’d just uncovered. Cops are sentimental people—another thing I’d learned from my relationship with Tony. Scratch the most hardened officer of the law: You’ll often find someone who can handle a three-day-old corpse without barfing, but who’ll get all teary over the plight of an abandoned kitten. Well—maybe not Sergeant Felicity Schultz. Schultz was different. She was the hard-assed bastard macho cop from hell.

  But, no, as it turned out, Lieutenant Piotrowski didn’t have heartbreak on his mind. “I haven’t been completely honest with you, Doctor,” he announced when I’d finished the last succulent bite of my sandwich and was licking tartar sauce off my fingers.

  “No?”

  “No. There was one more item in that box. A document that maybe brings that sad story you just told me a little closer to our homicides at Meadowbrook. But I’m not sure how.…”

  “What?” Damn this man. What did I have to do to prove to him that I could be trusted to handle evidence? That as a literary historian I did it all the time? “Show me.”

  “This.” From a small manila envelope in his jacket pocket he took a sheet of ragged-edged cream-colored stationery. He slid it to me over the tabletop. It had been folded and unfolded over and over again, so many times that the paper was worn, and torn at its corners. The handwriting was Mrs. Northbury’s now-familiar curlicue script. I glanced up at Piotrowski. “Read it,” he said.

  In lieu of a legal instrument of adoption, I hereby swear on all I hold most dear that I give my child Carrie, for whom the laws and customs of society and the circumstances of my own life leave me unable to care, to Gerard and Kate MacMahon to be treasured as their own dear child for as long as they shall live. I promise to provide support for her care and schooling and pray that these good people will allow me the right to watch over her from afar. Serena Pinkworth Northbury, 12 September 1861

  Speechless, I stared at the old document in my hands. Piotrowski’s deep voice seemed to come from another era, through a long, narrow tunnel of years. “Serena Northbury gave her little girl to the MacMahons, who raised her as their own, Carrie MacMahon. According to Eastbrook town records, one of Carrie’s descendants—a granddaughter named Carolyn—married Gerry Novak’s father. Gerry Novak was—”

  “Mrs. Northbury’s great-great grandson,” I breathed. “And the only living descendent of Joseph Monroe Johnson.”

  Twenty-eight

  Felicity Schultz and I climbed Meadowbrook’s steps in the gathering summer dusk. The porch light flashed on, and unexpectedly Willis Thorpe appeared in the front door. Schultz stopped short, and her hand dropped to her gun. I froze where I stood. It was eight o’clock that night, five hours after Lieutenant Piotrowski had dropped his bombshell about Gerry Novak’s relationship to Serena Northbury, and nobody was supposed to be at the Meadowbrook estate but Sergeant Schultz and me.

  “You realize the possible legal ramifications of this news, of course,” Piotrowski had said, as we’d lingered over our coffee at Friendly’s.

  “What legal ramifications?” I clutched my half-empty mug so the waitress wouldn’t whisk it away.

  “Well, I’m not really up on inheritance law,” he said, thoughtfully. “But if Novak really is descended from Mrs. Northbury, then he might have certain inheritance rights.…”

  “But Novak’s dead—”

  “Yeah. And we don’t have a motive, do we. Until—maybe—right this minute.” He pulled a notebook from the pocket of his white shirt, and began writing.

  “Money.” I set my empty cup on the clean, damp table and sat back with a weary sigh. “You told me that at the beginning: Money’s always good, you said.”

  “Yep.” Looking troubled, he cut off his scribbling abruptly, slipped the book back in its pocket, pushed his bulk up and out of the booth, slapped a ten-dollar bill on the table, and said, “Novak’s dead, all right. But Jill Greenberg is carrying his kid.”

  At his words, I stopped stone-still in my tracks; a curly-haired eight-year-old with a Rocky Road ice cream cone barreled into me as I swiveled, speechless, toward Piotrowski. The lieutenant took me firmly by the arm and steered me out the door. “Come on, Doctor. You and me, we got work to do.”

  It had taken Piotrowski the rest of the afternoon to obtain a warrant for Schultz and me to enter Meadowbrook, where I was supposed to search through the boxes of books in the storeroom off the kitchen.

  “Karen,” Will said, as he peered now from the dim hallway, startling Schultz and me, “what are you doing here?” Then, ever the gentleman, “Not that it isn’t lovely to see you.” The ruddy hue had returned to his complexion, and his shoulders were once again squared. For a man in his late seventies, he appeared amazingly resilient.

  “What are you doing here?” Schultz barked. “That’s what I want to know.” The sergeant seemed to recognize Dr. Thorpe, but she didn’t remove her hand from her gun.

  Will acknowledged the officer. “Sergeant—ah—Schwartz, is it?” he ventured, seeming puzzled by her presence.

  “Schultz,” she muttered. Then louder, “Just answer my question, please.”

  “Well, Sergeant Schultz,” Will gave me a quizzical glance, “this place is a second home to me; I’ve had a key for over fifty years, and I come up from the city whenever I can.” Even in the half-light of dusk, I thought I could detect the pain in his eyes. “At least I used to. Call it an old man’s folly, but I wanted to come here tonight and sit by the window in Edith’s room one last time and look out over the mountains. I thought that at twilight I might feel especially close to her.” As if to dislodge some too-persistent memories, he shook his head. Then he smiled, sadly. “Well, we can’t bring back the dead, can we? Come in, Karen. Sergeant. Come on in.”

  Schultz held her ground, peering past the elderly physician into the shadowy hall, hand still on gun. “Anyone else here?”

  “Ah … just Miss Greenberg—”

  “Jill?” I broke in. “What the hell?” I remembered Piotrowski’s words, and my heart began to race.

  “Dr. Thorpe,” Schultz said in a level, emotionless voice. “I want you to do two things for me. First turn on the hall light so I can see you, then step away from the door.”

  “Schultz!” I objected. “You can’t treat Dr. Thorpe as if he were a criminal—”

  “Mind your own business, Dr. Pelletier,” Schultz snapped.

  “It’s all right, Karen.” Will reached for the light switch. “Legally, I guess, I shouldn’t be here. It’s just that I’m so used to belonging in this house, I didn’t even think about it. And I wanted to show Miss Greenberg—” The small Tiffany chandelier went on, illuminating the hallway, but not completely banishing the dark corners that had spooked Schultz. Halfway down the curving staircase, Jill Greenberg paused, blinking. She was dressed in something white and gauzy and, with her flyaway hair and startled eyes, resembled nothing more than some delicate Pre-Raphaelite specter.

  “Jill!” I exclaimed, taking a step toward the staircase.

  Schultz halted me with an abrupt motion of her hand. “You all right, Dr. Greenberg?” she asked.

  “Yes—of course I am.” Her pale brow furrowed with perplexity, Jill glanced over at Will. “What’s going on here?”

  Willis’s sturdy shoulders rose, then fell. He spread his hands. The elderly doctor appeared to be the picture of innocent bafflement, but I was grateful for Schultz’s presence—and her gun. Try as I might, I couldn’t come up with a legitimate reason for Edith’s old friend to be here alone in this godforsaken place at this godforsaken hour with the mother-to-be of the late Gerry Novak’s child, a possible Northbury heir.

  “Anyone else here with you?” Schultz asked again. They both shook their heads: no. “Then let’s all sit down and have a little talk, okay
? As I recall, the living room is in this direction.” She gestured to the left, and then preceded Thorpe, Jill, and me into the front parlor, switching on the overhead light as she entered. Meadowbrook, unlit when Schultz and I had pulled into the driveway, was now half dark and half blazing with light, as evening turned into full night. I imagined how the big house would look from a distance if we were climbing the steep, deserted mountain road at this moment: riding the ebony hills like some ocean liner with a circuit outage, I thought. Like the Titanic, half submerged. I shuddered, as the gloom outside the windows began to invade my always too susceptible imagination. Jill’s presence here, in her vulnerable state, made me uneasy; I had to resist an impulse to run through the house and turn on every lamp I could find. Someone was out to get Serena Northbury’s fortune, and in my mind that someone was aligned with the forces of darkness. I shuddered again, and it took Schultz’s slit-eyed look to bring me back to reality: I was in an elegantly appointed Victorian parlor with a pregnant girl, an aged man, and an armed police officer. What could happen?

  “Willis has just told me the most amazing story.” Jill gazed up at me from her perch on a needlepoint-covered ottoman. “And after I heard it I just had to come and see this place. Karen, you’re not going to believe this, but my baby—Eloise—is a descendant of your Mrs. Northbury.”

  My mouth fell open with astonishment. Schultz and I turned simultaneously to Will Thorpe. I spoke first. “Will? You knew this all along?”

  “Yes.” His heavy eyebrows rose. “You know?”

  “We just found out today. In some old papers. Who told you?”

  “I’ve known forever.” He sat back in Edith’s bulky mission chair. “Such a romantic family story: How could Edith resist sharing such a tale with me? A dark stranger. A forbidden affair. A forsaken love child! Pure Northbury.”

  I recalled Edith’s shocked reaction when I’d speculated that Child of the North Star was about a birth out of wedlock. “Edith knew about Gerry all along? That he was her relative? A Northbury descendent? And she never told him?”

  “Well,” Will countered, defensively, “she always took care of him. Saw that he got the best education—and any other opportunities he needed: writer’s conferences, introductions to literary people in the city. It was just that she … Edith never really trusted Gerry—as a person. From childhood he was hostile to her, resentful of whatever Edie did for him. Always trying to take the easy way out. She honest-to-God believed that—given his character—money in the quantity he might inherit if his bloodline were known would be disastrous for him. She felt that he needed to keep working in order to keep himself … grounded.”

  “So she let him remain a grounds keeper?”

  Sarcasm dripped from my nasty pun. Will winced. “It wasn’t that Edie didn’t care. We argued about it endlessly. She was genuinely certain that she was doing what was best for Gerry—given who he was.”

  Patrician, I thought. What had—what’s her name—Kendell Brown—said about Edith at the funeral? A lady of the manor, she’d said. High-handed. Always thinking she knew best.

  “But you told Dr. Greenberg?” Schultz anticipated my question. “So you don’t have the same qualms about Gerry Novak’s child?”

  Jill stared incredulously at Schultz. How could anyone in the world ever conceivably have qualms about little Eloise?

  “I wanted to stop the lie,” Will replied evenly. “Here and now. I don’t even know if an inheritance suit would hold up in court. No one knew other than Edith and me, and as far as I can tell there’s no documentation.”

  “Hmm,” the sergeant said. “And, anyhow, if I remember correctly from my jurisprudence courses, the degree of relation is probably too distant for inheritance.”

  “That’s right,” Willis added, rubbing his eyes. Suddenly every year of his age showed in his weary face. “Or too many years may have elapsed—”

  “In any case,” Jill broke in, having followed our speculations with bemused attention, “I don’t want the money. My child won’t need it. My family and I …” She let the thought trail off; it should be understood that little Eloise would want for nothing. Then she jumped up from her footstool, and began roving around the room. “But the ancestry! That’s a different thing. It thrills me that my child will have such forebears! Imagine! A heroic fugitive slave and a best-selling novelist! Eloise’s great-great …” She glanced over at Will, who was smiling sadly.

  “Great-great-great grandparents. And a fine ancestry indeed. I only wish Edith could have had a chance to know you. And Eloise. She would have felt so much better about—” He broke off abruptly. “She would have felt so much better,” he concluded, somewhat brusquely. I assumed he was referring to the continuation of the Northbury family.

  “Dr. Pelletier, I think it’s time for us all to leave.” Schultz had remained standing by the door. Her gun hand was now cradling her chin, and I thought the hard look had left her brown eyes. She had obviously decided to trust Will Thorpe. “It’s too late to do anything here tonight; we’ll come back in the morning. And these two aren’t supposed to be here in the first place. I’m gonna check in with the lieutenant, and then we’re all gonna vamoose. So, Doctor Thorpe,” Schultz’s lips curled in an indulgent smile, “if you want to make one last visit to Edith Hart’s room, might as well do it now, while I’m on the phone. I can’t see as that would hurt anything.” I gaped at her.

  “Thank you, Sergeant. Thank you very much. I think I will.” He gave her his tired, melancholy smile, and headed for the stairs.

  Schultz turned to me as Will Thorpe’s steps, slow and heavy, mounted the steep staircase. “You know where there’s a phone?”

  “In the kitchen,” I replied, gesturing toward the back of the house. “Sergeant Schultz,” I said, as she turned to go. She swiveled toward me, macho-cop expression firmly back in place.

  “Yeah?”

  “That was a nice thing you just did. Who would have thought there was a soft spot under all that bluster?”

  Deadpan, she stared at me. Then she turned and left the room.

  Jill plopped herself down into Edith’s armchair. “This whole situation is so unbelievable. Just think about it: A hundred years ago I would have been shunned in polite society—screwing around, getting myself knocked up. But what happens today? I end up with a kid who might be an heiress! Who says life ain’t fair?” She flashed me her outrageous grin.

  I grinned back. Will was right; Edith Hart would have loved Jill. In my wacky colleague she would have instantly recognized her own indomitable life force. I thought of Edith at my last visit, sitting squarely upright in the commodious chair with its bulky chintz cushions, her soft white hair framing her classic features, the gold locket on the fine chain at her throat. Nudged by the memory, I suddenly gasped, then jumped up from my perch on the love seat. “Jill,” I blurted, “get up!” Edith, I remembered. The chintz-covered armchair. The photograph of Carrie. Edith slipping the portrait between the cushion and the frame.

  “What?” Jill asked, but as I lunged toward her chair, she bounced out of it. On my knees, I slid my hand between the chair’s cushion and its slatted side. Nothing. I wiggled my hand further back. Nothing. My fingers touched the chair’s solid back. Nothing. Damn. Oops, not nothing! An edge of stiff paper protruded from behind the cushion. Aha! Pinching the corner between my thumb and forefinger, I carefully withdrew the stiff square. Yes! Just as I thought—an old photograph! Thinking how nice it would be for Jill to have little Carrie’s portrait to show her own child, I glanced down at the picture.

  “Karen? What did you find?” Jill’s questions cut through my bewilderment; this was not the photograph we’d seen before.

  “Jill,” I breathed, “look at this.…”

  The picture in my hand was almost twin to the ones I’d found in the Brontë book and the old candy box. The same size, same setting, same sepia tones. Even the same baby. But in this photograph, the beruffled, beribboned infant wasn’t alone. She was cr
adled in the arms of a fair-haired woman dressed in severe black. Serena Northbury. I recognized her from her portrait in the Encyclopedia of American Women Authors: the straight nose, the square chin, the delicate mouth. In this photograph, she gazed down at the beautiful child, and her look of loss and longing was enough to break your heart.

  Heart! I stared at the picture. “Jill,” I said again, still on my knees, “if there is ever any doubt that your child is descended from Serena Northbury, you only have to show this picture. Look, there are two lockets! Carrie is wearing one and so is her mother. The one you have was Carrie’s. The one Edith wore belonged to—”

  “What do you have there?”

  The new voice caused my heart to leap and sent me scrambling to my feet. Jill spun around. Thibault Brewster stood in the wide doorway, gazing coolly at Jill and me. He wore his usual attire of navy blazer, white golf shirt, tan cotton slacks, and appeared very much at home in this elegant setting. “And what are you doing in Aunt Edith’s house at this time of night, anyhow? I saw the cars when I pulled up, and couldn’t imagine who on earth had any business here besides myself.”

  “Mr. Brewster,” I managed. “You startled us.” And indeed he had. Although there was nothing threatening about his pose, stocky frame now leaning casually against the door frame, hands loose at his sides, his presence made me nervous.

  And, irrationally, I felt socially intimidated. This was Brewster’s ancestral home, after all, and I had barged in without so much as a by-your-leave. A trespassing yahoo. Riffraff with a Ph.D. Then I shook my head briskly. Edith had made it clear in her will that she wanted me in this house. Her house. I had more right to be here than Brewster did.

  “Perhaps I should ask you the same question, Mr. Brewster. Just what are you doing here? At this hour of the night?” I leaned against the quaint half-keyboard piano, slid my right hand, with the photograph, in the pocket of my denim jacket, and tried to emulate the Enfield manner of patrician aplomb. When you grow up in a factory town, you learn how to fight, but your weapons tend to be a little blunter than the cutting hauteur I was beginning to pick up in the Enfield College environs.