“They don’t look much alike, other than being of a similar age,” he said at length, and then added, “and Mathison was in coal as well.”
“But that’s assuming our culprit is well acquainted with the identity of his victims. In this case, he might have read Alexander Agassiz’s name somewhere, knew of his scientific interests and photographic endeavors, learned he would be at Castle Hill, and came here to kill him. When he saw an older man strolling down the path toward the lighthouse with camera in hand, he believed he had his victim.”
“Yes, I agree Agassiz needs to be warned, but not alarmed.”
I nodded. “I’d bring my concerns to the detective, but it’s highly doubtful he’ll listen to me. But,” I continued with sudden inspiration, “he might listen to you.”
“Not if he knows of my affinity for a certain nosy, interfering lady reporter.” He showed me a lopsided grin and ducked when my hand came up, threatening a smack. I placed my palm against his cheek, instead, and he turned his head to nuzzle it with his lips. “There’s one problem with your plan,” he said, sobering. “With Ernest Kemp behind bars, Myers will believe Dr. Agassiz to be out of his reach and therefore safe.”
“That’s why the good doctor must be warned.”
“I just thought of a way we can do so before we leave.” Derrick patted the breast of his coat, and the pocket sewn inside. It was a symbolic gesture, as his next words proved. “Agassiz is no doubt shaken by a murder in his own backyard, but I assure you he still has the good of his museum in mind. He’ll be more than happy to accept donations, and I intend to give him one. While I make my pledge, he and I will have a blunt discussion.”
“Tell him the best thing for him would be to return to Cambridge and his museum, and not to come back to Newport until this business is resolved.”
* * *
We left Castle Hill a short time later. Despite our resolve not to alarm Dr. Agassiz, Derrick’s warning had done just that. But perhaps it was just as well. The man planned to leave Newport the following day.
“I only wish it were as easy to speak with Imogene Schuyler,” I mused on the way to Gull Manor in Derrick’s carriage. “More and more, I feel her answers to certain questions are vital, but with her in mourning, it’s virtually impossible to approach her. Surely, the Schuylers’ servants have been given orders not to admit any but their closest acquaintances.”
“A pity my mother couldn’t be swayed to act on our behalf,” Derrick mused aloud. We rounded Brenton Point, turning into the crisp breeze blustering in off the ocean. Though the sun continued to shine, the temperature had dropped in relation to the rising of the wind, and I sensed a coming storm, probably by that evening. We both raised a hand to hold our hat brims, while narrowing our eyes against a wind-borne assault of sand and grit.
I had to laugh at the absurdity of his suggestion, yet a wistfulness tugged at my heartstrings. On rare occasions, I allowed myself to imagine a life where Lavinia Andrews approved of me. She had approved, for an all-too-brief time, but my actions—in my efforts to trap a killer—had convinced her I could never be good enough for her son, or the Andrews family.
With a sigh, I released my regrets to a draft of air and remembered that Derrick didn’t allow his mother or anyone to dictate his life.
“You could always sneak in dressed as a maid again.” He flashed me a grin that told me not to take this suggestion seriously.
I didn’t, yet I shook my head and explained why that wouldn’t suit my intentions this time. “I had planned to snoop that time, and what better way than disguised as a maid? This time, if the opportunity arises, I intend to be direct. Speak my mind, confront her with what I’ve learned, and gauge both her answers and her reactions.”
“Still believe she could be responsible?”
“No, I don’t, actually. For her father alone, perhaps. A woman could have fired that arrow as easily as a man. Miss Schuyler has good aim and a strong arm when it comes to handling a bow. But taking Felix Mathison into account, along with the attempt on George Gould?” I shook my head. “I don’t think Miss Schuyler is responsible. At least, not directly.”
He turned his head and met my gaze. “Then she is not to be exonerated?”
“Not completely, not yet,” I said steadily. “Nor her mother. But then, there’s Jerome Harrington. Where has he been hiding?”
“Actually, he’s been moving around, from what I’ve heard, staying at the homes of different friends and avoiding his parents.”
“Avoiding his parents, or anyone who would like to ask him questions about that night?”
As we turned onto my drive, the front door opened and Patch came loping out. Katie followed and shut the door behind her. While Patch’s yips expressed his happiness to see us, Katie’s more urgent expression seized my attention. Derrick brought the carriage to a halt and I jumped down rather than wait for his assistance.
“Something is wrong,” I said, stating the obvious.
“No, Miss Emma, everything here is all right. I think.” Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes glittered almost feverishly as she glanced over her shoulder at the parlor window. She turned back and spoke in a whisper. “I didn’t want you to be taken unawares. You have a visitor. Miss Imogene Schuyler. She’s waiting for you in the parlor.”
“What?” I tossed a glance at Derrick, who had alit from the carriage. This news clearly puzzled him as much as it did me. “Did she say why she’s here? And how she got here?” I saw no other carriage waiting on the drive.
“To answer the second question, she didn’t wish her carriage to be seen here, so she had her driver drop her off. As for why she’s here, she said only that she wishes to speak with you. When Mrs. O’Neal told her we had no notion when you’d be home, she sat right down on the parlor sofa and announced she’d wait. Mrs. O’Neal has been supplying her with tea and pound cake for the past half hour.”
I turned to Derrick and took his hand. “Perhaps you should go. It might be better if I speak with her alone.”
He was nodding before I’d finished the suggestion. Leaning, he planted a kiss on my cheek, wished me luck, and said he’d be back later. Katie and I went into the house, with Patch excitedly racing in ahead of us. As if wishing to announce our guest to me, he sauntered into the parlor and sat facing me at Miss Schuyler’s feet. To her credit, she placed a hand on his neck and absently stroked his fur. Nanny rose from one of the chairs across from our guest. I wondered if Imogene Schuyler had been taken aback with what she must have perceived as Nanny’s presumption in keeping her company until my return.
“Good afternoon, Miss Schuyler. This is a surprise.” As I spoke, Nanny gave me a look of relief and slipped from the room.
Miss Schuyler remained seated. Dressed in black, her hair dressed sedately beneath a small matching hat with a veil, an onyx brooch at her throat her only adornment, she had been utterly transformed from the bejeweled, frivolous girl of the Elizabethan Fete. Her blue eyes regarded me somberly. “I’m sorry to intrude, Miss Cross, but it is important.”
“It’s no intrusion, I assure you.” I pondered for a moment whether to sit beside her on the sofa or across the low table from her, in one of the easy chairs. I decided on the familiarity of the sofa. “Tell me what I might do for you.”
“First I’d like the truth.” Her delicate nose flared, and an ominous sensation came over me, not wrongly, as it turned out. “Did you pose as a maid to enter my home?”
Mrs. Andrews. Having been unable to achieve my arrest, she had obviously gone to her friend Mrs. Schuyler, perhaps to urge her to press charges. With a sigh, I nodded. “Yes, I did.”
I expected an angry rebuke, a threat to report me to the police. Instead, she compressed her lips and continued to study me. “And did you learn anything significant?”
“Not much,” I admitted, and then decided I had little to lose in revealing at least part of the truth. “I found your bedroom to be particularly unrevealing. You leave few, or make that no
clues lying around as to the kind of individual you are.”
“Were you hoping to find evidence of a murderess?”
How calmly she asked that question. I answered her in kind. “No, I was not hoping that at all.” I almost added that I understood her lack of personal effects now, but that would have been to reveal my conversation with Eliza Denholm earlier. If Miss Denholm wished to apprise her friend of what we discussed, it was up to her.
Would Miss Schuyler next ask me what I discovered in her mother’s room? I readied myself to give a reply, which never came, for Miss Schuyler changed the subject. “I heard of that man’s arrest. Kemp, is it?” She waited for my nod. “Well, it’s ridiculous. The police should let him go.”
This surprised me, to say the least. “Why do you say that?”
“The detective told us the man is a foreman at some mining company back home in Pennsylvania. My father tried to help the miners, not hurt them. What reason would any of them have to murder him?”
“I’ve been wondering about that myself,” I conceded. “And I’m guessing you have another idea.”
She turned more toward me, as if preparing to confide. “I’ve heard about you, Miss Cross. I do understand why you’ve been making inquiries and sneaking about. That’s why I’m here. I want you to catch my father’s killer, and I believe I know who it is.” Without waiting for me to urge her on, she said, “Clarice O’Shea. She’s an actress and was one of the players at Wakehurst. The woman has been having an affair with my erstwhile fiancé, and I fully believe she murdered my father to ensure Jerome and I never married.”
She left off and pulled back a few inches, but her gaze never left mine. She was measuring my reaction to this news, a revelation, or so she obviously believed. I hated to disappoint her. “I’ve already spoken with Miss O’Shea.”
“You have? How did you know . . .”
“I have my ways, Miss Schuyler.” I certainly didn’t feel the need to tell her I’d been eavesdropping on her and Jerome Harrington that night. “According to Clarice O’Shea, her affair with Mr. Harrington lasted only briefly and ended nearly two years ago. She claimed to have had no contact with him until they saw each other at Wakehurst.”
“And you believed her?” A bit of the arrogant Imogene emerged as she pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes.
“She also said you would be a fool not to marry him.”
A look of mystification came over her, but only for an instant. “Why would she say that?”
I shrugged. “Because she believes it. But she didn’t elaborate, so I can’t give you specifics.”
“Perhaps she enjoys being the mistress, rather than the wife.”
“That’s very cynical, Miss Schuyler.”
“Is it? We’re discussing the man who wished to marry me for my money, or have you forgotten?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten. But are you sure that’s all he wanted?”
“What else could there be?”
I regarded her beautiful face, her golden hair, and considered her obvious intelligence despite her haughtiness. Yes, Imogene Schuyler was a spoiled young woman, but how could she help being otherwise, given her upbringing? How often had I seen it—an indulgent mother, an imperious father. Or sometimes vice versa. Yet the results were usually the same: a sense of entitlement that obscured the individual’s better qualities.
“You sell yourself short if you believe that.”
She started to rise. “I’ve said what I came to say. If you won’t take me seriously, perhaps I should go to the police with my suspicions.”
I had it on my tongue to wish her luck getting Detective Myers to take her—or any woman—seriously. Instead, I blurted out a question before I could think better of it. “Where were you when the joust began?”
She dropped back down onto the sofa cushion. “Why do you ask that?”
Again I tempered my words so as not to reveal my having eavesdropped. “A little before it began, I noticed you heading toward the house. Your father tried to stop you, but you evaded him and kept going.”
An eyebrow went up, forming a disdainful little peak above her eye. “Accusing me of murdering my own father, are you?”
“No, I’m asking where you went.”
She leaped up from the sofa. I feared I had driven her away and fully expected her to toss the front door open and march directly out. But she only went as far as the front window. Her back to me, she said, “I went upstairs to one of the guest rooms. I wished to be alone.”
“I see.” Yes, I saw more than she thought I did. Despite her stony exterior that night, the argument with Jerome must have upset her greatly. If I’d had any doubts about that, the tears suspended in her eyes, when she turned back to me, banished them.
“Jerome was a cad to me that night. I caught him flirting with that actress and then he had the gall to tell me I had no choice but to endure it. I threatened to tell my father just what kind of man he was, but he only laughed and told me it was my father, after all, who was insisting on this marriage. So, I . . . I ran inside like a little coward and hid. My mother followed me. You may ask her if you wish.” She hung her head. A tear dripped from her cheek and splashed onto her dress.
“Your mother was with you?”
She nodded. “Not that she was able to provide much comfort. She was as powerless to stop the marriage as I was.”
“When you learned your father had been murdered, you broke down. Yet, there were no tears, Miss Schuyler, were there?”
“No, there were not. Upon hearing that news,” she said with an almost trancelike calm, “I felt as a prisoner does when the door of his cell is suddenly opened after many years, when he doesn’t know if he is being set free or walked to the hangman’s noose. He knows only that his sentence has come to an end, and in either case, he is free of his constraints. I cried out because only in that moment did I realize how much of my life he had destroyed, including my chance of a happy marriage with J—”
She broke off, but I heard the beginning of a name. My heart went out to her, and I suddenly understood something that had eluded me previously. “Miss Schuyler, please come and sit.” She hesitated, but finally returned to the sofa. I waited for her to resettle herself before leaning slightly toward her and saying, “You care for him, don’t you? For Jerome.”
Her face contorted and I feared a flood of tears. It took her only seconds to recover her composure—shaky, though it remained. Folding her hands on her lap, she gazed down at them. “I did. I would have been very much for this marriage, had it happened for the right reasons. We’ve known each other for some years, but last spring, in Paris, I came to see him, not as a boy, but as a man, and I admired what I saw. He had . . . principles. He was different from men like our fathers. Forward-thinking, fair-minded. Or so I had believed. I was ultimately proven wrong.”
“How so?”
She looked at me incredulously. “By being the same as every other greedy man. Marrying for money. The notion galled me, humiliated me. It reduced me to a means to an end.” She shook her head. “I tried to get him to deny it. Tried lashing out, accusing him, hoping he would deny wanting only my money, but he never did. He couldn’t, because it was the truth.”
Could Jerome Harrington be the very man Reggie had spoken of, the one Imogene had secretly set her cap for back in the spring, in Paris? “Did you ever try letting him know the truth of how you felt?”
“What? And risk the humiliation? No, never. And a good thing, as it turns out. I was terribly wrong about him.”
“Perhaps not. Don’t you see? Clarice O’Shea told me you’d be a fool not to marry him. Perhaps because he confided in her that he felt the same way about you.”
For a moment, she looked stricken. Then she shook her head. “Then why has he not admitted as much to me?”
“For the same reason you didn’t. It was too much of a risk.”
“I don’t know . . .” Again she shook her head, sadly. “It’s too late now. Too much
has been said.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Schuyler.”
“Are you? Aren’t you the least bit satisfied to see a woman of my social standing brought low by her circumstances?”
“I take no pleasure in that at all,” I said earnestly. Those two young people might have found happiness together, if only Imogene’s father had left well enough alone.
She searched my face. “No, perhaps you don’t.” From outside on the drive came the sound of carriage wheels. She looked toward the window. “That will be my driver come to collect me. Please, Miss Cross, don’t discount my theory about Clarice O’Shea.”
We both came to our feet. She held out her hand to me, and we shook as if we were old acquaintances. I cannot deny that my opinion of her had softened considerably in the past few minutes. “Miss Schuyler, before you go, perhaps you can answer one other question for me.” I waited for her nod, then asked, “Did you see anyone hovering on the veranda when you went into the house? Or when you came back outside?”
She immediately shook her head. “No, only the footmen. You don’t think one of them murdered my father, do you?”
I assured her I didn’t and walked her out. The footman opened the carriage door for her. Taking his hand, she placed her foot on the step, but then hesitated and turned. “There was someone else on the veranda when I returned to the garden. I’d almost forgotten. That annoying fellow. The one in bright colors and bells who was always tumbling in people’s way. Do you think he could have murdered my father?”
* * *
Burt Covey had lied.
Or perhaps Imogene did. But if the latter, why would she have chosen the jester, of all people, to place on the veranda that night? If she was protecting someone, herself included, why admit to having seen anyone at all? To create a scapegoat?
I didn’t think so. Her revelation might very well explain the thefts Mr. Van Alen had reported following the fete. It might explain more than that.
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