Murder at the Breakers

by Alyssa Maxwell

  “This place is charming,” Adelaide said as she placed her embroidered purse on the table beside her. She looked happy again . . . relieved. “I can’t believe I’ve never been here.”

  “It’s popular with locals and with the more modest of our summer visitors, but not a place Aunt Alice and her society friends would tend to patronize.”

  “No, our sort are consigned to places like the Casino or the country club. And teahouses and private gardens, of course.” Adelaide sighed. “It’s taxing sometimes, the unspoken rules the wealthy must live by.”

  “It is what you always wanted, Adelaide,” I reminded her gently.

  Her reply was quiet, wistful. “I thought it was . . . once.”

  “And now?”

  “Now . . . nothing turned out as I thought it would.”

  Pushing the candle aside, I reached across the small table and placed a hand over hers. “I’m sorry you’re not happy,” I said with sincerity.

  “Oh, Emma, I don’t deserve anyone’s sympathy, least of all yours. I wasn’t . . .” Her breath trembled in her throat. “I wasn’t always the nicest or most loyal of friends, was I?”

  “Children are children,” I answered lightly, moving my hand away but leaning closer to her over the table. “We had our differences at times, certainly, but we’re friends now, and you can confide in me . . . if you ever wish to.”

  Those words prompted me to grit my teeth and look away. True, Adelaide hadn’t always been the warmest of friends. She’d been a rather selfish, vain child, one who’d resented her family’s lack of resources, their loss of a once-significant fortune made in the hotel business. And she’d made it no secret that she resented my connection to one of America’s wealthiest clans. Sometimes I’d had the feeling she only tolerated me for the occasional invitations to visit my cousins.

  But we were adults now, and it was me being disloyal, deceptive, and taking advantage of our friendship for selfish purposes. I wasn’t proud of it.

  “I’ve been so lonely, Emma,” she suddenly said. “More lonely than you can imagine.”

  I didn’t say anything; I barely breathed, waiting for her to continue.

  “At first Rupert doted on me. He was kind and patient, rather like having a second father. But from the first his sister, Suzanne, hated me. She suspected me of being a gold digger—and I suppose she was right. But I’d fully intended being a good wife to Rupert. I never meant him harm.”

  “Of course not,” I quickly agreed.

  “But then the society dragons closed forces against me. Invitations never arrived for society teas or ladies’ club meetings. Even events where Rupert and I were invited as a couple became fewer and farther between. I believe it got Rupert rethinking our position in society . . . resenting me possibly.”

  “Oh, Adelaide, you don’t really think so.”

  “I do, Emma. I believe he began to regret marrying me. He became colder, began avoiding me. I began to fear . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “That Rupert might divorce me.”

  “No!”

  Adelaide nodded vigorously. “Yes, I truly believe he would have. And, oh, Emma, I didn’t want a divorce. The shame of it. Why, I’d be more of a social pariah than I already am.”

  Pausing, she opened her purse, pulled out a handkerchief, and dabbed at her eyes. “And then when he became ill, Rupert literally pushed me away in favor of old memories of his first wife. I’ve been alone ever since, Emma. I might as well be divorced. I’m all alone in those big, echoing houses, with no friends to speak of. Well, until you came along, that is. And until . . .”

  She trailed off and compressed her lips. A torrent of red flooded her face.

  “Are you all right?” I reached across the table again.

  Before she could answer, the waitress came with our tea and platter of tiny sandwiches. I pulled my hand back, and Adelaide stared down at her lap while plates, cups, and saucers were set before us. The last word she spoke echoed in my ears: until. Until what—or who—had come along like I had? Had she been about to confide about her affair? Impatiently I willed the waitress away.

  When she finally left us, Adelaide let out a mirthless chuckle. “I don’t feel so hungry anymore.” Her eyes glimmered in the candlelight. “Poor Emma, you wanted an afternoon of fun and I’ve spoiled everything.”

  “You haven’t spoiled anything. I wanted an afternoon with my friend, and that is exactly what I have. You can speak freely with me, Adelaide.” My conscience struck with particular fierceness at that, for I knew if she confessed anything incriminating, I’d promised to share the information with Derrick.

  But she didn’t. After sipping her tea, she picked up a chopped salmon sandwich and nibbled. “Hmm . . . good. Try one, Emma. This reminds me of the delightful little meals Mason used to bring us when we played at The Breakers’ playhouse.”

  Her lack of appetite forgotten, Adelaide tucked into our repast with enthusiasm, and I learned nothing more about her current troubles.

  Chapter 15

  That night, I sprang upright from my pillows, instantly awake. Reggie’s words from the other day, child’s play, coupled with Adelaide’s innocent observation at the tea shop yesterday, echoed in my ears while an image flashed in my mind’s eye.

  The playhouse—where my cousins and I had enjoyed countless games of make believe when we were children. Good heavens, I’d stood on the porch a day ago and hadn’t even thought to go inside. . . .

  We always hide our treasures in the playhouse; no one ever thinks to look there. . . .

  So had Gertrude confided in me so many years ago. Two loose flagstones, a hole hollowed out beneath. It was the one secret the Vanderbilt children shared that none of them had ever betrayed to the adults. At least not as far as I knew. As young children we’d stashed shells and stones gathered at the beach to keep the governess from tossing them away. Gertrude had once secreted a stack of letters from a beau there to guard against her mother finding them. I had hidden my earliest efforts at article writing. If any of my cousins had ever read them, they’d never let on, and I’d always believed they respected the sanctity of our shared cache.

  Did any of them even remember about it now? Did they still hide things away? I wondered about the bottle I’d caught Reggie drinking in the playhouse. What else might he . . . or Neily . . . have concealed beneath the floor near the big stone fireplace? The candlestick found near Brady could not have killed Alvin Goddard . . . at least, it could not have caused that dent beside the balcony door in Uncle Cornelius’s room. So what had, and where was it?

  Didn’t it make sense that the guilty party would have wanted a convenient place to hide his weapon? The cliff was too far a walk across the back lawns; he might have been seen. But the playhouse sat at the front of the property, along the service drive halfway between the house and Ochre Point Avenue. And that night, both the main and the service driveways had been lined with posh vehicles. No one would have thought twice about someone strolling in the direction of the playhouse.

  It crossed my mind that Theodore Mason might very well know about our hiding place, for there was little the man hadn’t known or suspected about us children. For the most part, he never betrayed us to the adults as long as we hadn’t been about to hurt ourselves.

  But, yes, Mr. Mason might also know about the hole beneath the flagstones.

  Tomorrow, I vowed as I stretched out and rested my cheek against my pillow. Tomorrow first thing, I would return to The Breakers and see what, if anything, lay hidden beneath the playhouse floor.

  As it turned out, I didn’t go anywhere first thing in the morning.

  “He’s nearly broke, Emma,” Derrick Anderson said without preamble when we stepped beyond the kitchen garden and approached the dampened edges of my property.

  He’d arrived just as I’d finished breakfast, causing a good deal of eyebrow raising and lip pursing from Nanny when Katie announced him. I ignored Nanny’s pointed stares, met Derrick in the pa
rlor, and promptly ushered him through the house and out the kitchen door. After his last visit here I hesitated to be alone with him in the privacy of a closed room. Derrick Anderson . . . did things to me . . . distracting things . . . things I might come to regret. I wanted open air and the vastness of the ocean surrounding us; maybe then that compelling energy of his wouldn’t seem so overwhelming.

  We reached the boulders that separated my yard from the Atlantic Ocean and halted. “Jack is nearly destitute?” I asked, not because there was any question in my mind as to whom he referred, but to give myself time to think. Jack broke and possibly involved in the corrupt business practices that had been driving the New Haven-Hartford-Providence line into bankruptcy—could it be true?

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” I said with a burst of hope. “How can he be nearly out of money, yet have been skimming off the railroad’s finances?”

  “His bank accounts are so empty, they’re all but echoing, and he’s sold off a good deal of stock lately. As to where the money might be . . .” Derrick was silent a moment, staring out at the tossing waves. “Either he’s damn bad at finance or he’s got a stash hidden away somewhere, probably in the hopes of fooling his creditors into thinking he’s a stone.”

  “A stone?”

  “As in ‘you can’t make a stone bleed.’ ” When I continued to stare at him blankly, he clarified, “They can’t squeeze payments out of someone with no money to give.”

  “Oh.” I gathered my skirts and perched on the flattest boulder, my thinking rock as I liked to call it. Drops of ocean spray splattered my dress, but I didn’t care. I drew my legs up and hugged them, and let my chin fall to my knees. Jack was in financial trouble. He was connected to the New Haven-Hartford-Providence line. And he might very well be the owner of the pocket watch I’d found in Uncle Cornelius’s safe.

  My stomach churned, and my heart ached.

  I felt rather than saw Derrick arrange himself beside me, not quite touching but somehow imbuing my limbs with the steadiness of his own. “It doesn’t mean he’s guilty, Emma. We need more information.”

  “But he might be.” I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “He certainly had a motive, just as much as Brady did. And . . .” I swung my head upward. “Oh, Derrick, his affair with Adelaide. Do you think he initiated it to try to coax money out of her?”

  “Are we sure they’re even having an affair? Have you spoken with her?”

  “We had tea yesterday. She didn’t come right out and say it, but at one point she told me she believed her husband had decided to divorce her before he became ill. She said she’d felt all alone until I came into her life, and until . . . until something else happened, but she never said what. But she could have meant her affair with Jack.”

  “That might be stretching things. She thinks Halstock was going to divorce her?” It wasn’t a question so much as Derrick thinking aloud and processing the information. His forehead pulled into a tight frown and he reached over, absently tracing a pattern of moist splotches on the hems pooled around my feet. “If he did, I have no doubt she’d have been left virtually penniless. Men like Halstock protect their fortunes. It’s unlikely he’d have been willing to give her much of a settlement, especially after only a year of marriage. I don’t suppose your friend would have liked that very much.”

  Sudden anger rose up and I tugged my skirt out from beneath his trailing finger. “Now you sound like Mr. Halstock’s sister, Suzanne. I’ll have you know Adelaide is more than some greedy monster looking to cheat an old man out of his fortune. Much more. That sort of judgment is unfair and I won’t tolerate it, not here in my home.”

  I swung my feet around and, placing them on the grass, stood up to make my way back to the house. Derrick stood and caught me by the wrist, stopping me, and as he gently turned me back around I’d already begun to wonder why I’d taken him to task like that. Hadn’t I suspected Adelaide of un-praiseworthy motives not all that long ago?

  “I’m sorry,” we both said at once. Then we both let out a nervous laugh and looked away self-consciously. And then looked back, our gazes meeting, and for a time that might have been seconds or several long minutes, we stared at each other, that strange energy of his coursing around and through me until my insides heated. Derrick’s hand slid downward and our fingers twined. The next thing I knew, he tugged me closer. We stood toe-to-toe, our bodies touching, mine trembling, his steady and hard against me. He dipped his head; I tilted mine upward, and the next moments were a blur of sensation as the ocean and my own heart roared in my ears.

  The kiss ended with the curving of Derrick’s lips against my own; his smile persisted as he raised his face and looked down at me. “Sorry. Again.”

  “I’m not,” I whispered, but I stepped away. He didn’t try to pursue me, but let me open a respectful distance between us. Unspoken words hung in the salt-laden air. Now was not a time for ourselves or for each other; we had too many important things left to do.

  “I have some errands to run back in town,” he said, suddenly all business. “If you need me, call my hotel and leave a message. It’s the Atlantic House on Pelham. I check in periodically. For now, stay away from Jack Parsons.”

  I nodded, not entirely trusting my voice.

  As soon as Derrick left me, I hurried to change into my carriage jacket. Katie harnessed Barney to the buggy, and as I readied to leave I pondered why I hadn’t told Derrick about my intended trip this morning. Was it because I didn’t expect to find anything, and because searching an old childhood hidey hole seemed ridiculously far-fetched? It might have been, but I intended to leave no stone unturned—literally.

  Some ten minutes later I approached The Breakers’ main gates. They already stood open, and a carriage came barreling out from the drive. As it veered onto Ochre Point Avenue it nearly rose onto its two right wheels and kept going, without so much as pausing to see if there might be other carriages traveling the road. If I’d come along a minute or two earlier, he might have broadsided me.

  Shipley, the gatekeeper, swore under his breath and watched the vehicle recede—a vehicle that bore a leasing number on its rear bumper. The flash of blond hair I’d seen from beneath a black derby left me gaping as well.

  I proceeded to the gate and brought Barney to a halt. “Was that Mr. Parsons?” I asked the servant.

  “It was, Miss Emmaline. Don’t know what’s got into him. Seemed calm enough when he arrived a little while ago.”

  “How strange.” Ignoring a warning sensation at the nape of my neck, I drove on toward the house, but I didn’t go inside. Instead, I turned down the service drive and stopped in front of the children’s playhouse. The door was closed, but I found it unlocked as it usually was.

  I pushed it open. “Anyone here?”

  Silence.

  Cautiously, I stepped inside. “Hello?”

  Not a sound came in response. I closed the door behind me.

  A gasp spilled through my lips. I’d been right. There had been something hidden beneath the floor, and Jack hadn’t even attempted to cover his tracks; the flagstones had been hastily shoved back into their approximate places, but where they met their edges overlapped and protruded from the surrounding tiles. I bent and dragged them aside, and my stomach fell. The hidey hole lay empty.

  My first thought was to take off after Jack, but I didn’t want to be overhasty and go running off blindly. I returned to the main house, where I found my uncle lounging in his smoking room.

  “Just a social call,” Cornelius replied to my query about what Jack had been doing there. Jack hadn’t sneaked onto the property, but had come on the pretense of visiting. Uncle Cornelius studied me from over the book he’d been reading. “Invited me to tennis tomorrow. Nice fellow, that Jack Parsons.”

  “And he didn’t mention anything else? Any other business here?”

  “Didn’t have time to. Didn’t stay but a few minutes. Wouldn’t even sit down and have a brandy.”

  “He was i
n a hurry,” I said, more to myself than Uncle Cornelius. He only shrugged. “Sorry to bother you, Uncle Cornelius. Oh,” I added suddenly, “is Reggie at home?”

  “Of course he’s home. Somewhere. Keeps to himself quite a bit these days. Quite the brooder, that boy is. It’s a stage I’ll be glad to see him grow out of.” His eyes returned to his book.

  A warning sat at the tip of my tongue that Reggie’s phase might not be grown out of but could dog him the rest of his life if his family didn’t pay attention and straighten him out. But now wasn’t the time. I needed to find out if indeed Jack had gone into the playhouse and taken—what? And why? Was he protecting someone? I’d asked about Reggie because it had suddenly occurred to me that if Jack had tried to protect my cousin from falling into an illegal gambling scheme, he might also be trying to protect him from something far worse.

  And right that moment, Jack could be disposing of evidence—against Reggie . . . against himself . . . against Neily . . . or even Mr. Mason. What would he do with it? Throw it into the ocean? But, no, he couldn’t risk being seen, and in Newport on a summer’s day, that risk loomed all too large.

  The Point. He could hide whatever it was in his little blue colonial and toss it into the harbor tonight, with the darkness and the inevitable mist to conceal him.

  I headed down Bellevue Avenue toward town before coming to a halt and turning Barney in an abrupt half circle that headed us back toward home. What was I going to do—track down Jack and force him to answer my questions? When he might have the murder weapon in his possession? If he was the murderer, chances were good he was the person who had attacked me the other night. I’d foolishly placed myself in danger twice and didn’t need to be warned a third time. No, what I needed were reinforcements.