Death of a New American--A Novel

by Mariah Fredericks

  “What I said last summer. That I want her to be my wife.”

  “And?”

  Before he could reassure me that he had more planned, Louise appeared at the door.

  “I was just taking Mr. William’s hat,” I explained.

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Louise.

  Courtesy dictated I return William’s hat to him and escort him out. I held it uncertainly in the space between him and Louise. After a moment, William took it.

  But he did not leave, saying to Louise, “I thought we might walk in the park? Perhaps we’ll run into Mrs. Abernathy and Wallace.”

  Louise smiled ever so slightly. “I do miss Wallace.”

  “Then … for Wallace’s sake?”

  We heard the creak of floorboard and I smelled lily of the valley. Her sister approaching, Louise took matters into her own hands and said, “Jane, would you get my coat and hat?”

  “Of course.”

  For a moment, it seemed she would ask me to come as well, as she so often had. William glanced anxiously at me. I prepared an excuse.

  But then Louise said, “Thank you, Jane.”

  William and Louise were gone quite some time. They took their luncheon elsewhere and so missed Mrs. Benchley’s arrival home. But they returned just in time to find her in tears in the parlor.

  “Mother, what on earth is wrong?” said Louise.

  Mrs. Benchley was weeping by the fireplace, a newspaper in her lap. She paused for a brief moment to register the presence of her newly reinstated son-in-law-to-be, then cried, “It’s a disaster!”

  “What is?” asked William.

  “There,” she cried, pointing. “There, there, there…”

  GOWN WORN IN WEDDING OF THE YEAR TO BE DESIGNED BY WORTH!

  All details revealed, down to the last pearl!

  I swallowed sharply. Michael Behan had an excellent memory. He hadn’t forgotten a thing. Last night, giving him the dress details had seemed like an excellent way to thank him for his discretion. Now it did indeed seem a potential disaster. I looked to Louise, worried as to how she would react.

  She was smiling, a finger curled at her lips. Then a giggle escaped. Then a guffaw.

  “Louise!” cried her mother.

  “I know, I know. It’s … terrible. Just … awful. It’s…”

  But laughter overtook her and she fell sideways into a chair, laughing uproariously. William had a hand over his mouth; you could read his expression as concerned, but I could see he was laughing as well.

  That evening, Louise announced that the wedding would take place as planned. We would return to Pleasant Meadows the next day.

  * * *

  Despite having to repack Mrs. Benchley’s things as well as Charlotte’s, who, despite protest, was returning to Philadelphia, it was an easy trip back. I couldn’t help but marvel at the difference between our first journey and our second. William assisted only one elderly woman and Louise did not retreat into silence at any point. And of course, Mr. Grimaldi met us at the train.

  I assisted him in taking the cases off the charabanc, despite his objections. I asked how his spirits were. He smiled sadly but didn’t answer beyond that. When we had settled Louise’s cases in her room, I went back to get my own. The chauffeur insisted on taking my case down himself. Then he said, “Miss Prescott?”

  “Yes, Mr. Grimaldi?”

  “You remember that night?”

  “It’s difficult to forget.”

  “Yes.” He pressed his lips together, then said on a sigh, “I don’t know if this is right, to tell you this.”

  Oh, Lord, I thought, not something else about William. Still I said, “It is.”

  “One thing bothers me. That night, I look at the house and I see…”

  “The window open at eleven, yes.”

  I had interrupted him and he looked puzzled. “No—I didn’t say that.”

  “But you did. Mr. William said you told the police that.”

  “I never spoke to the police.” He saw my astonishment. “I talk to Mr. Tyler. I don’t … trust regular police. And I was upset, so he says, Aldo, you tell me and I tell them. No need for you to go through that.”

  And no one, I thought, would dare question the deputy commissioner. “So, you never saw the window open before the murder?”

  “No. But I saw the light was on.”

  “In the nursery?”

  He shook his head. Pointed. It took me a few moments to understand.

  “And it was almost midnight. I am sure because at the time, I think, No, they should be asleep.”

  I thought back over the events of that night, when I had been awoken, when Mabel said she first heard her brother crying. “But Mabel…”

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s why I tell you.”

  19

  As a child, I said my prayers before bed. I never liked saying the words “And if I die before I wake,” feeling it was somehow giving permission to God to cut my life short. But when I got up the nerve to complain to my uncle, he said gently, “He doesn’t need your permission.”

  I had fallen out of the habit of nightly prayers. But that night, I made a strange request of the Almighty: Please, God, let Mrs. Briggs not be troubled with insomnia. Amen.

  The steps I took from my room and down the hall of the servants’ quarters seemed endless and no matter how lightly I set my foot down, the floor creaked with protest. But there was no sound of bedclothes pushed back, no sudden lamplight gleaming under the doors, no call of “Who’s there?” And once I was at the end of the corridor, I exhaled in relief.

  Now I only had to hope that Charles Tyler did not lock the door to his study.

  Wrapping my hand in the sleeve of my robe, I twisted the knob. It turned easily and the door opened. I heard the squeal of old hinges and slipped inside as soon as there was enough room. Then for a few minutes, I stood in a dark corner, just in case I had been heard and Mr. Tyler came to explore.

  But he did not.

  Darkness and silence let the imagination loose, freeing it of the mundane realities that are so clear in daytime. In the moonlight, the elk head with its long, curled horns looked uncomfortably like a biblical demon, the bear seemed ready to roar back to life, and I gave the vulture with its cruel beak and raised wings a wide berth as I passed. There would be only one place I might find what I was looking for, and that was Mr. Tyler’s desk.

  Creeping behind his desk, carefully moving the chair back, I tugged first at the center drawer. It was locked. As were the three side drawers. And I strongly suspected Mr. Tyler carried the key with him. No wonder he did not bother to lock the door. Disappointed, I sat on the desk chair, clasped my hands, and looked.

  Mr. Tyler’s desk reflected his character: busy—and disorganized. Clearly Mrs. Briggs was not allowed to tidy here. Books and papers crowded every inch of the desk’s surface. An inkwell sat open, a pen lay on an unfinished letter; it had dripped, leaving a blot. Mr. Tyler would have to rewrite that one, I thought. The days since the murder had been so frenetic, he probably had not had time to attend to his affairs.

  Then, puzzled, I looked closer. People didn’t suddenly drop pens dripping with ink—not even someone as boisterous as Mr. Tyler.

  My dear Graves,

  It is late as I write this, well past midnight. The household has gone to bed. Perhaps that is why I can confess that the recent statements by Moretti’s lawyers concern me. I refuse to hide. I will not be cowed. But I wonder: should I send Alva and the children abroad? That plan presents some difficulties, which I will not go into here. But I worry …

  Here the letter trailed off in a rivulet of ink. Had Mr. Tyler grown disgusted with what he might have seen as cowardice on his part and tossed the pen aside? Or had something interrupted him?

  I had told Michael Behan that Charles Tyler was nowhere near the nursery the night of the murder; he had been asleep in his bed clear on the other side of the house. Now I knew otherwise. He had been in his study—we
ll within earshot of his son’s crying. Of course, no man would pay attention to that. But surely Sofia had called for help. Why hadn’t he answered that call?

  Or had he?

  And why had he lied to the police about where he was and what he must have heard? To protect himself? Or … someone close to him?

  Heart pounding, I told myself for the hundredth time that William could not have killed Sofia. No matter if their … encounter … had been repeated, no matter if she threatened to tell Louise. At any rate, what would he have used? William was not in the habit of traveling with weapons. He had no knife. Yes, he might have gotten one from the kitchen, but to kill a woman, then calmly clean the knife, go quietly back downstairs, and put it in its exact place, so that the all-seeing Mrs. Briggs noticed nothing amiss? William simply wasn’t that cold-blooded. Or that efficient. His mother was, but she would never have seen a servant as a genuine threat to her security. Dismiss them, pay them off, make sure your friends knew never to hire them—yes. Murder? More trouble than they were worth.

  Charles Tyler thought more of his staff. More important, he had lied. More important still, he owned weapons.

  Well, he owned guns. But it wasn’t easy to cut a throat so cleanly. You needed a particular kind of knife for that. Behan had said so when he looked at the blood spray in the room. I looked around the moonlit study. For all the grotesque remnants of death, I saw no knife. Just animal heads, framed newspaper articles, and family photos. One framed portrait showed a young Charles Tyler in uniform, standing alongside other men in front of a large pit. He held high a feathered headdress as he beamed at the camera. At the bottom of the picture, he had written, 7th Cavalry, Wounded Knee, 1891. Clearly Mabel was not the only ardent chronicler of Charles Tyler’s career.

  That made me think of Mabel’s scrapbook, the one she had shown us the night of the murder. Image upon image of her celebrated parents, ending with the most recent, most splendid, to use Charles Tyler’s words, episode: the rescue of the Forti boy. Little Emilio sitting happily on the great man’s lap, brandishing a knife recovered from the foul Black Hand.

  * * *

  If you did not have a telephone, you headed over to Snouder’s Drug Store, which had installed the area’s very first telephone. Realizing that telephones brought young people, the far-seeing owners built a soda fountain, making the store a popular gathering spot. Charles Tyler had his own telephones. But none where I could be sure I wouldn’t be overheard. And so the next day, to Snouder’s I went.

  I told the operator whom I was calling and waited while we were connected. When I heard, “Behan,” I said, “It’s Jane.” Then added, “Prescott.”

  There was a pause. Then he said, “It was all right about the article, wasn’t it? You still have a job?”

  “Yes, that was fine.” I had to talk fast. “Do you remember the child in the Forti kidnapping?”

  “Little Emilio of the dark eyes and gap-toothed grin? Sure.”

  “Do you think the family’s still in New York?”

  “I can find out. If I find them, then what?”

  “I need you to ask them something about the kidnapping.”

  “His parents might not like that. Poor kid’s been through a lot.”

  “I know. But it’s important.”

  “What’s your question?”

  I told him.

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  “And … hold off on the headline?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  * * *

  It was William’s mother who had the idea for a garden party. Alva Tyler seemed unenthused by the notion of dozens of people on her front lawn, just two weeks before it was to be trampled again by the wedding party; her husband even went so far as to indicate mild disapproval of his sister-in-law’s proposal. But she promised that it would be a small gathering of friends and neighbors and that she and the estimable Mrs. Briggs would be solely responsible for its execution. Alva Tyler’s energies would not be taxed in the least. And, she said, perhaps the children might be brought back from Saratoga. The danger was past, and it would be pleasant for them to return to a festive occasion. The boys could even come home for the weekend. At that, Charles Tyler—who had never liked sending the children away—gave his full and noisy support.

  And so it was a week after my return that tables were set outside, a light luncheon prepared, and croquet competitions organized on a day of blue skies and sunshine. I had worried that a demanding social event might wilt Louise’s good spirits, but she had a new confidence these days. As I watched her walking arm in arm with her fiancé, I couldn’t help thinking that oddly, facing her worst fears had achieved what William’s smiling support had not: she was now … rather splendid.

  When I asked Louise why she had decided to become Mrs. William Tyler after all, she said that she had always felt on some level that William had been pushed into courting her, that it had not been his idea to begin with. (Here, I kept silent.) Taking the initiative to follow her into the city had shown her he was now more his own man—and that that man wanted to marry her very much indeed. Besides, they had Wallace to think of.

  “And,” she said, “I can still go to the South Pole or down the Amazon as Mrs. William Tyler. William’s very excited by the idea, in fact.”

  The Tylers being allergic to anything “grand,” the style for the afternoon was informal. I dressed Louise in a simple but lovely dress of blue-green silk. The V-neck broadened her shoulders, giving her the appearance of a waist; the folded collar was embroidered with violets, and there was a row of beaded violets at the point where the bodice gave way to the skirt. The sleeves met her white gloves at the elbow. The final touch was a gorgeous straw hat, circled with pink silk roses. The entire effect was fresh, lively, and hopeful. More hopeful than I felt.

  As I straightened the back, she said, “You should come, too, Jane. I’m sure the Tylers wouldn’t mind. In fact, Mabel asked me this morning if she might see you. Poor thing. I think she misses Sofia. Alva Tyler doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with her.”

  “I’ll make sure to see her,” I promised.

  Before joining the party, I went to my room to fix my own hair. Peering into the mirror, I thought of the last time I had thought of my appearance. It wasn’t such a bad appearance; maybe I ought to pay more attention to it.

  There was a knock. I said, “Come in,” and Mrs. Briggs opened the door, a piece of folded paper in her hand.

  “Message for you,” she said, and handed it to me.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Briggs.”

  When she had gone, I opened it. The message was brief, lacking Mr. Behan’s usual style. But it was illuminating. Tragically so.

  20

  I took a walk. I had things to think about, and I wanted to be away from the house. As I wandered the grounds, I stared into the stretch of woods that surrounded the property and thought back to that indistinct figure making its way in the dark. And that open window, the intruder who’d crept into the house …

  Or so I’d thought. But the danger had been inside the house all along.

  Charles Tyler had indeed given little Emilio the knife taken from the Black Hand. But whether because his parents thought it dangerous or wanted no reminders of their ordeal, the knife had been returned to the police. Who, according to Mr. Behan’s message, had no idea of its current whereabouts.

  I had at least one idea. One of those three locked doors in Charles Tyler’s desk.

  And yet I could think of no earthly reason for Charles Tyler to murder the young woman responsible for his greatest triumph. A woman he had saved from danger. I thought of Michael Behan’s point about horses and blinders. But Charles Tyler did not just love his wife, he adored her. And he loved the image of himself as his family’s protector almost as much. Had he been on the Titanic, he would have lifted Alva and the children into the boats, smoked a cigar, and gone down laughing. Of that I was sure.

  But it was impossib
le that he had not heard the struggle in the nursery just one floor above. And he had lied to the police, saying that the window was open before the murder. Yes, the window had been open when I found Sofia, but in all likelihood, he himself had used it as an exit. No doubt his nephew, wanting to impress him, had told him how to use the windows and ledges as footholds.

  But why? What was happening in this house?

  Kicking the grass in frustration as I went, I found myself at the tree where I had sat with Sofia that warm spring day. In the distance, I saw the makeshift family graveyard. Approaching, I saw a clumsily built wooden cross sticking out of the ground, with the name “Bunkum” in blue paint. A wilted bouquet of daisies lay at the foot of the cross. This must be the dog Mabel had talked about. No doubt she had left the daisies. I hadn’t gone much farther down the hill when I came across the second grave marker, very different from the first. This one was a small solitary cube of marble, about the size of a box you might stand on to make a speech. The inscription was:

  Beloved Son

  John Algernon Tyler

  Born March 14, 1910

  Died April 17, 1911

  It was impossible not to look at these pitiful dates and not feel the breath-catching spasm of grief. So small a span, so brief a life. He had barely begun to live. And if tears came to my eyes at the thought of a happy toddler whose ambling explorations were cut so painfully short, what must his mother feel? Perhaps that was why the gravestone was placed so far from the house. Easily visited, but not in plain, everyday view.

  And yet someone had been here recently. A bunch of bluebells tied with a black ribbon rested on top of the grave.

  That visit, which from the look of the flowers would have happened a week ago, pulled at my thoughts. With everything that had happened, someone had made a point to come to this grave. Of course, I realized, it was the one-year anniversary. But so close to Sofia’s death—