by Nancy Geary
“Come in,” she said as she shut the door, undid the safety chain, and reopened it. Jack walked past her into the room, seeming not to notice her, Sam, or anything else about his surroundings, and with his hands in his pockets he began pacing back and forth in front of the television cabinet. She didn’t move. From the corner of her eye, she saw Sam slip out of bed and disappear into the bathroom. Then she heard a toilet flush and the sound of running water. When he emerged, he was dressed in a pair of wrinkled khakis and a T-shirt, his travel clothes, although they hadn’t planned to leave until seven that morning. He gave her a perplexed look, and she shrugged. They both waited for Jack to speak.
“Hope didn’t kill herself,” Jack announced after several moments. His voice was flat.
“I think—”
“Please,” he interrupted. “Hope wasn’t suicidal. She had problems—ones perhaps I wasn’t even fully aware of—but she wanted to live. She loved me. She wanted to get married. We had a lot of plans for the future.”
Frances stared at Jack, not knowing what to say. How was it possible to explain to this man she hardly knew that whatever dreams he had, his wife-to-be apparently didn’t share them? Despite his efforts and desires, his love for Hope hadn’t been enough to sustain her, to save her. Then she felt a tingle in the back of her throat, a physical reaction seeming to prompt her to ask questions. No, she told herself. You gave up being a prosecutor a year ago. Those days are over.
“You’re the lawyer, look at the evidence,” Jack continued, seeming to know exactly what to say to engage her. “The police say she might have taken some sort of pills because there were some loose ones lying on the floor, but no one knows for certain. Then she rigged up a noose to the light fixture and hung herself. That’s absurd. First off, Hope’s tolerance is zero. One glass of wine and she’s gone. If she’d taken anything, she wouldn’t have been able to function, let alone do something mechanical. She wasn’t about to set up that apparatus you found. And she couldn’t have done it in advance. Tons of people were in and out of that room, helping her get dressed and who knows what else. She always complained she had no privacy. ‘A huge house and not a single, solitary spot,’ she used to say.”
Suicidal people can be very resourceful, Frances thought. “Jack, this is probably not the time or the place to discuss the details, but it’s not at all clear what happened.”
“The other thing that you couldn’t know is that she was afraid of the dark. She wouldn’t have hung herself in a closet.”
“That doesn’t mean…” She let her sentence drift off.
“And there was no note. People usually write suicide notes. Don’t they?”
She didn’t respond.
“Hope was a compulsive writer. She wrote poetry. She kept journals. She would have wanted to tell us something about her decision. I know it.” His voice cracked.
Frances moved toward him and reached to touch his arm, but he stepped away to avoid contact. “If you still don’t believe me, take a look at the knot.”
“The knot?”
“Of the noose!” he yelled. “Didn’t you see it? You found her. I’ll never forget the sight of that knot, not as long as I live. It was a bowline. It’s a common nautical knot used because it tightens with pressure or weight. But Hope didn’t know anything about sailing.”
His powers of observation startled her. The discovery of Hope’s body had been so traumatic that she now struggled to recall even the most obvious details—the sight of Hope’s open mouth, the sense of white fabric enveloping the small space, and the sound of the light fixture as it crashed to the floor. Her inattention to the scene now angered her. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Practically everybody around here has boats. But she refused to go out on the water. She’d had some bad experience when she was little. She wouldn’t even ride in our Boston Whaler, and those things never flip.” Jack ran his hand through his hair. “I’d bet my life on the fact that Hope couldn’t have tied that rope, not like that.”
Frances squinted slightly and studied his face. He’d set his jaw and appeared to be grating his teeth, because she could see his cheeks undulate slightly. She knew what he was suggesting.
“There’s one more thing. Hope wasn’t wearing her engagement ring when you found her.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. It was a huge diamond. You couldn’t miss it. That’s what she had wanted.”
“Is it possible she took it off for the ceremony?”
“Maybe. But I looked in her room and couldn’t find it anywhere. Besides, I can’t imagine she wouldn’t have wanted to wear it to the wedding because I think it made her feel special. Somehow the bigger the stone, the more I loved her. Too bad her finger couldn’t hold a boulder or that’s what she would have gotten.” He looked away, and she thought she saw tears fill his eyes.
“Why would anyone want to hurt her?” Frances asked softly.
Jack said nothing. He walked over to the window and parted the drapes with one hand. Outside the light was gray. The blacktop of the parking lot was dappled with drops from the slight drizzle. “I need your help. You’ve got to find her murderer.”
“Why me?” she said, even though she could guess the answer.
“Because she’s your family and I think you care, and because you don’t owe my family anything.”
Frances paused for a moment, trying to digest the import of his words. “I’m really not sure—” she began, but cut herself off. She looked at him, wishing for once in her life she could mind-read. How could he be so certain about Hope’s death when the obvious signs pointed to suicide? Were the odd details that he’d recited the only bases for his conjecture, or did he know something else that he wasn’t sharing? If so, shouldn’t he be talking to the police? What did he mean by her not having an allegiance to the Cabots? She remembered her own question to Bill the previous evening and wondered for a moment whether some part of her subconscious had known this was coming. “I don’t know quite how to say this, in part because you and I don’t know each other well. But you need to realize you’re asking a lot.”
“I don’t care what I’m asking. I’ll get to the bottom of Hope’s death, her murder, with or without you. I just thought you could help. I thought you’d want to know who killed her, too.”
“Can you think of anyone who would want to?”
“Yes.” He stepped in to face her. They were only several inches apart, but Frances didn’t step back. “The question in my mind is who got to her first.” He turned and walked out, closing the door behind him.
“Fanny,” Sam said as soon as Jack had left. “I’m not trying to be unfeeling. Your aunt and uncle are going through hell. But you can’t do this to yourself. You agreed to leave this morning, and I’m taking you home.”
“What choice do I have?”
“You have to make the choice to protect yourself. You can’t make everyone else’s agony your responsibility.”
Frances had nothing to say. She knew he was right. When Clio, her stepmother, had been murdered, she’d felt compelled to seek out the killer even though it had cost her a job and at least one relationship. She’d done it for her father, thinking it would help him and their relationship, but it hadn’t. In fact, what she’d discovered during that investigation only made it worse for both of them. She feared a repetition of her errors. The Pratt-Lawrence clan had suffered enough, and she couldn’t bear to contribute to or magnify the pain.
“I saw what happened to you the last time. You lost confidence in yourself. You thought you’d failed. And you’ve just begun to get your life back together, back to a place where you experience joy and excitement and the things that make life worth living.”
Over the last twelve months, she’d relied on Sam and her position at the Coalition Against Domestic Violence to give her a new sense of stability and direction. Now just the thought of an investigation was enough to rekindle emotions she’d fought to suppress. “You heard what Jack sai
d. I can’t just ignore that.”
“He should tell everything to the police, then. You know that, and he does, too, Frances,” Sam reprimanded her. His tone, as well as his use of her formal name, reflected his seriousness. She knew he could tell her mind had already begun to race with possibilities.
“But why hasn’t he?” She walked over to Sam, tucked her arms around his slender waist, and rested her head against his chest. She could feel his heartbeat. “Just one more day,” she whispered. “Give me one more day here, and then we’ll leave. I promise.”
Sam softly rubbed her hair with his hand. “You and I both know you can’t make that promise.”
She smiled, a mixture of exhaustion and contentment. At last someone else knew her better than she knew herself.
“They’re expecting you,” said Kathleen as she answered the door. The Lawrences’ cook and de facto family member, given her decades of devoted service, wore a black uniform with a white collar and apron and balanced the dirty dishes of a tea service on a decoupage tray. Her eyes were swollen in her round face, and she swallowed repeatedly, struggling to keep her voice steady. “They’re in the library.” She indicated the direction with a tilt of her head.
“Thank you.”
The door was open and Frances could see a roaring fire, presumably lit to drive away the dampness. Although the heavy striped drapes were held back with velvet ties, the dense fog that had drifted in from the water obscured any view out the window. Adelaide sat in a winged chair, a partially completed needlepoint canvas on her lap. Bill stood by the fire, staring at a silver-framed portrait of Hope on the mantel. In his hand was a pipe, but he didn’t appear to be smoking.
As Frances quietly shut the door behind her, Adelaide looked up and extended a hand. The loose sleeve of her silk blouse slid up her arm, revealing her delicate wrist, bony elbow, and liver-spotted skin. Frances leaned over and embraced her.
“Can we offer you anything?”
“No thanks.”
“I hate to see you go. It’s been so long since we were all together. Now it’s hard to imagine…” Adelaide’s lips quivered. She stopped speaking and covered her mouth with her hand.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Hope always looked up to you. She said she was so proud to have a cousin doing such interesting work, helping so many people. You made quite an impression on her.”
“I wish she and I had spent more time together recently,” Frances said. Her family was small enough. It would have been wonderful to know her cousin better as adults.
“So do I,” Adelaide replied.
The room was quiet except for the crackle of the fire. Adelaide picked up her needlepoint but set it down without adding a stitch. Frances moved toward the mantel and settled herself in a chair opposite her aunt. She glanced at the coffee table piled high with an assortment of catalogs from the Museum of Fine Arts, several books on the secret gardens of Beacon Hill, and a pile of Patrick O’Brian novels. Her uncle was apparently a fan of Captain Jack Aubrey.
“I just want you both to know that I think this autopsy is important,” Frances began. There was no easy way to broach the subject. The mere word caused pain.
“Oh,” Adelaide exclaimed. “Oh,” she repeated, looking around and appearing to search for something.
“There’s nothing unclear about what transpired,” Bill remarked. His voice was flat.
Frances thought for a moment She wanted to be delicate, but at the same time she needed to explain to them that the results could be important. “So much was happening yesterday, the sorrow and sadness is so overwhelming, I think we’re all in shock. I’m not sure we focused on what actually happened.”
“I can’t bear—” Adelaide began.
“That’s absurd,” Bill interrupted. “What we need is to hold on to Hope’s sanctity, her integrity.”
Adelaide gasped again.
“I don’t know how to say this, and the last thing I want to do is upset either of you more, but Jack came to visit me this morning at the King’s Arms. And he pointed to very specific details from Hope’s bedroom, from her… condition.” Frances paused, hoping they wouldn’t ask for particulars. She couldn’t bear to repeat what Jack had relayed about Hope’s body.
“Look, I care about him. For God’s sake, he was about to marry my daughter. And I can understand why he wants a different explanation of her death. We all do. But…” Bill paused. “I think it’s intrusive and unnecessary. I’ve already contacted a litigator, someone I’ve used before who’s good. He’ll intervene.”
“Don’t. Let the police do what they need to do. Don’t try to stop them. The procedure can be done quickly. It won’t interfere with any funeral or memorial arrangements you want to make.”
“But if she didn’t kill herself, what happened?” Adelaide’s question hung in the air, because at that moment, the door opened and in walked Fiona Cabot. She wore gray linen pants and a black hat with netting that partially covered her face. Ignoring Frances and Bill, she swept through the room to Adelaide’s chair and knelt beside it with her Nantucket basket purse in her lap.
“My dearest, I’ve been up all night thinking of you and Bill and this horrible tragedy. At this morning’s service, Father Whitney led us again in prayer. Everyone was there for you. People are anxious to help if there’s anything they can do. Bunny Taylor offered to send over her cook. The Reardons said they have a friend with a lovely funeral parlor in Beverly who can help with quick arrangements.”
“That’s… very… kind. I think I can… manage,” Adelaide stammered.
“And we want to start a trust in Hope’s memory. We want you to pick the charity, whatever you and Bill think would have made Hope happiest.”
No one responded. Frances wondered whether her aunt and uncle were remembering Jim’s failure to appear the prior evening. Food poisoning or not, few parents would miss their child’s wedding. His marked absence was apparently being overlooked in light of all that had transpired.
“It’s the least we can do. Jack’s polo team plans to raise a million dollars for it. So between Jim and Jack, it will be generously funded,” she continued. She twirled her double strand of pearls around one finger.
“Has Jack told you he doesn’t think Hope took her own life?” Adelaide said.
Fiona leaned over and rested her hands on Adelaide’s knees. “Yes. But my dear, you mustn’t listen to Jack’s rantings. He’s distraught, as I’m sure you realize, and angry. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. I begged him to keep quiet, not to bother you. It’s the last thing you need.”
“He spoke to Fanny, not us.”
“Really.” Fiona looked up at Frances, acknowledging her presence for the first time. “You’re not going to allow an autopsy to take place, are you?” Even as she directed her question to the Lawrences, she glared at Frances in a manner she couldn’t read.
“I think they should,” Frances said.
“You know you’re making a mistake.” She stood up and pulled at her trousers to readjust the pleats. “You don’t know what box you’re opening. All the details of her personal life will be exposed. The sooner you lay her to rest, the more your privacy will be respected.”
“I’m not sure, frankly, that privacy has much to do with what we’re talking about,” Frances said, wondering why she suddenly felt so tense.
“We can’t permit it.”
“The procedure has nothing to do with you.”
Fiona turned back to Adelaide. “You’re wrong. It is my business because my son was involved with Hope. What she’s done, the damage, reflects on him. He doesn’t need to be embarrassed or humiliated any more than he has been. And we all have to keep on living here.”
“Bill shares your view,” Adelaide said softly.
“I’d imagine so.”
Frances was puzzled. An autopsy was a strictly medical procedure designed to determine the precise cause of death. What was there to hide? She looked at Fiona’s pursed lips, the lines
of agitation showing in her forehead. What secrets lay within Hope’s body that nobody wanted revealed? The subtext of this conversation was clearly something she knew nothing about. She thought again of the issues Jack had raised—Hope’s fears, her lack of whatever technical skills were involved in constructing a noose, the missing ring. Was he right in his assessment, or did he just want to close his eyes to the truth of Hope’s pain? And why did his mother think that pain was a better alternative to knowing something else? None of it made sense.
“We were fond of Hope, too.” She pushed her purse up on her forearm. “We’ll schedule a meeting with our attorney about the memorial trust as soon as possible. Please don’t hesitate to call if there’s anything we can do. Anything at all.”
“Tell Jack to come over any time. He’s always welcome here. I want him to know that. We consider him family,” Bill said.
“He’s home now. His father is with him. But I’ll let him know,” she said as she turned to go.
The father who couldn’t be with him at the wedding, Frances thought. He’d apparently had a miraculous recovery.
After the door closed behind Fiona, Frances saw Bill’s and Adelaide’s eyes meet. They seemed to communicate silently for several moments in a language undecipherable to those outside their orbit, one developed over decades of marriage. Then Bill spoke softly. “Tell the police we won’t interfere. We’ll authorize this procedure.”
14
The Church of the Holy Spirit was empty. Frances waited in the back as her aunt walked up the aisle, dipped one knee briefly, then slipped into a pew. As Adelaide bent her head in prayer, the thin fabric of her scarf slipped off her head and dropped to the floor, but she made no effort to replace it.
