“Yes, well, that was an entirely different matter, wasn't it?” Ames had a slightly apprehensive look, as if he knew that he was in combat with her and was afraid she would win.
“So I think you ought to speak to him—”
“I will do no such thing. How can I possibly intrude myself into this case?”
She stared at him, implacable. “Why, because of Val, of course. Think what it will mean to her if she loses this marriage.”
“She will not lose it.”
“Yes, she will! You know the Putnams! They will cast her off and her heart will be broken! I am surprised at you, that you can be so unfeeling toward a member of your own family, a perfectly wonderful girl who has never harmed anyone—”
“Except herself,” he interjected.
“All right—yes—except herself. She knows she did a foolish thing, and she is certainly paying for it now. I don't understand why you want her to suffer more!”
“I do not want her to suffer more, Caroline, but aside from everything else, you seem to forget that next week I leave for Egypt.”
She stared at him. “Oh,” she said softly after a moment. “I forgot all about that.”
“Yes, well, I can assure you that I have not.”
This was a long-anticipated event: a journey to the Valley of the Kings, an archaeological expedition under the leadership of Professor Bartley Harbinger, one of Ames's former professors at Harvard. Ames had been preparing for it for months; he would be gone until the spring.
He swung around and came to sit beside her. As if to soften what he was about to say, he took one of her hands in his. MacKenzie watched enviously.
“My dear, we must let events take their course. We are dealing now not with the theft of some silver, not even with blackmail, which is bad enough, but with murder. The police must become involved—and we must not,” he added with heavy emphasis.
There was a brief silence. Then, to the consternation of both men, Caroline began to cry. She did it beautifully: a few soft sobs, a tear or two sliding down her cheeks. She removed her hand from her brother's; from the lace-edged cuff of her sleeve she produced a lace-edged handkerchief and proceeded, very delicately, to dab at her eyes.
“Now, Caroline—” Ames began. He wore that baffled look men had when they were dealing with a weeping female.
She shook her head. “No, Addington,” she sobbed. “Say no more. I understand. You have your own affairs, which are more important to you than—than—” She emitted a little gasping wail. “Oh! I cannot bear it! Poor, poor Val!”
Ames patted her shoulder ineffectually. It did no good; she wept on. Then she darted a look at him.
“Addington?”
“Yes, Caro?”
“You have one week before you leave, do you not?”
“Yes, Caro.”
“Well, then—” She dried her eyes one last time and turned to look at him. It was amazing, MacKenzie thought, how she could emerge from a bout of crying as pretty as when she began it.
“Then you have time to do something to help, after all,” she said.
“Now, Caroline—”
“Yes!” She stiffened her already ramrod-straight posture. “You must! Because if you don't—”
He waited, knowing—dreading—what she would say.
“I will!” she finished triumphantly.
“Never.”
“Yes! I will! Of course, people will talk. ‘How dreadful that Addington Ames lets his sister go down to Newspaper Row, where no proper lady should set foot,’ they will say. ‘How disgraceful that he does not exert himself to protect her, the way a lady should be protected, from all that is sordid and vile in the world.’ Yes, Addington, that is what they will say.”
He was not, ordinarily, a man who cared much about what people said. He had lived all his life secure in the knowledge that he was a Boston Ames, born into what Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes had dubbed the “Boston Brahmin” caste. Such a place in the world gave a man a certain self-confidence, a certain imperviousness to idle gossip.
But now, confronted with his sister's accusations, he weakened. It was a sight that MacKenzie, for one, had never thought to see.
He reached into his inside jacket pocket, withdrew his notebook, and handed it to her open to the sketch.
“Oh!” She looked at it with great interest, all weeping done with. “What is this? A pearl? Where did you find it?”
“On the floor of the Colonel's suite, underneath his desk. The filigree is gold. Do you recognize it? Or do you have any idea what it might be?”
She studied the sketch intently. “It is from a necklace, I think,” she said after a moment. “Or perhaps—it is hard to tell—perhaps it is an earbob drop.”
“Yes.”
She looked up at him. “And you think someone lost it—?”
“I do not know, but I believe it must have been dropped there tonight, or the daily chambermaid would have found it when she went in to clean this morning.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“You have never seen such a pearl before? As part of a necklace belonging to someone you know, perhaps?”
“Well, I—I don't know.” She thought about it for a moment. “I mean, everyone has pearls. Mine are from my mama, as I suppose most people's are.” She smiled at MacKenzie. “We don't buy our pearls, Doctor, we simply have them.”
“Yes.” He nodded and smiled at her in return.
“But this—” She turned back to her brother. “This is a very unusual pearl and obviously part of a very handsome set, whether it is necklace or earbob.”
“But you cannot recall seeing such a piece worn by anyone of your acquaintance?”
“No.” She shook her head slowly, thinking about it. “And I am sure I would, since it is so very distinctive.” Rather reluctantly she gave the notebook back to Ames.
“But at the Cotillion tomorrow night—” he ventured.
“Yes, of course,” she said, brightening. “Everyone wears their best to the Cotillion. I will keep a sharp eye—and you must, too, Addington.”
The Autumn Cotillion was not an event he ordinarily attended, and not an event he looked forward to attending now. But tomorrow night, he must escort Valentine to it, since she had no other male relative to do so. It was the post-debutante ball held every November for the previous year's “buds,” their last formal appearance together before the new season's debutantes came out at the Christmas ball. Caroline was on the committee; she had been frantic for weeks, arranging things.
“What is more,” she went on briskly, giving him a challenging look, “you have a week, as you say, until you leave with your expedition. You can do much in a week. And then, after you go—”
He shook his head emphatically. “No, Caroline. You must not become involved. I forbid it.”
She smiled sweetly. “Perhaps I will not need to. Perhaps by that time it will all be settled, and Val will have her letters back, and no one need be the wiser.”
“Don't count on it. The police will be very busy in this case, and the newspapers—” He shook his head, thinking of what the city's journalists would make of such a scandalous affair. And for Caroline to be mixed up in it!
He stood up. “We will discuss it in the morning, Caroline. I make no promises.”
He left them then, and went upstairs to bed.
MacKenzie thought that he, too, should retire, but he was so enchanted by the thought of having a brief moment alone with her that he stayed where he was.
They did not speak for a time, but it was not an uncomfortable silence. Already, in their brief acquaintance, they had become—within the bounds of etiquette—easy and friendly with each other.
At last, with a rueful smile that caught at his heart, Caroline turned to him and said, “Do you have any idea why this is so important, Doctor? Finding Val's letters, I mean.”
His pipe was nearly finished; he took a last couple of puffs. “Why, yes,” he said, “I imagine I do.”
“People do that,” he said. “I read in the papers only last week about some young American miss who married a duke in London.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Yes—and she will be separated from her family forever—marooned over there! How awful! Poor thing!”
He thought that many young women would not think it awful at all to marry a duke, but in the face of her vehemence, he kept his opinion to himself.
“No—Val must stay here,” she went on, “and she must marry George Putnam. She really is in love with him, you know.”
He didn't, but he nodded to show that he did, and, more, to encourage her to continue talking to him. He loved to have her talk to him; she was the only woman, aside from his long-dead mother, who ever had.
“It is not that George is so terribly wealthy,” she said thoughtfully. “I mean, he is, but it really is a love match. It is so sweet, isn't it, when young people are in love.” She herself was thirty-five. “I will give Aunt Euphemia this much: she has never been ambitious for Val in that pushy way. Not like Isabel Dane. Her daughter Alice is Val's best friend,” she added, aware that MacKenzie was still unfamiliar with the city's interlocking relationships. “Isabel says that she has quite a good catch for Alice nearly on the hook. ‘A very warm young man,’ she said. Rich he may be, but it is so very vulgar to speak of it like that.”
She stood up and began to pace the room; as she did so, she rerouted her meandering thoughts and came back to the point.
“I will speak to Addington again first thing tomorrow morning,” she said with some little asperity. “He must find those letters—he must! Val's entire future depends upon it.”
“Then we may hope that he will,” MacKenzie said softly.
She stopped and fixed him in her gaze. “And if he does not—why, I shall! Cousin Miranda never even need know about it.” Cousin Miranda was a cousin several times removed, a resident of the town of Magnolia on the North Shore, who had been promised the treat of a winter in the city if she came to stay at Louisburg Square during Ames's absence, thus preserving the proprieties.
Caroline took her seat by the fire once more. “You must be tired, Doctor. Even though you are recuperating so well, you mustn't think that you have recovered entirely.”
She was right, of course. He would be glad to go to his room, which was a comfortably furnished chamber at the back of the third floor. It faced the river and Cambridge beyond. On clear days he had a fine view of the sunset, and even in the rain he could see a far way down across the clustered rooftops of the houses that clung to the hill as it descended toward the water.
So he heaved himself up, knocked out his pipe into the fireplace, reached for his cane, and bade her good night. His last sight of her was as she sat by the fire, already lost in thought, the flickering, ruddy light gently playing over her gown, her lovely face.
As he made his way back along the hall to the elevator, it occurred to him, not for the first time, to wonder how a perfectly delightful woman like Caroline Ames, so worried about her young cousin's marriage, had never herself been spoken for.
Despite the previous night's fog, the morning dawned bright, and by eight o'clock they were in the dining room. Ames had opened the morning Globe that lay folded by his place and had begun to read the account of the Colonel's death. After a moment they heard the creak and thump of the dumbwaiter in the back passage, and then the maid came in with the breakfast tray and deposited it on the sideboard.
“Thank you, Margaret,” said Caroline. The servant bobbed down and up in a quick curtsy and went out, softly closing the door behind her.
“Tea, Doctor?” asked Caroline. “Or coffee? And do take your breakfast before—”
She was interrupted by the sound of the door knocker, followed immediately by a loud pounding.
“What on earth—?” Caroline exclaimed.
At once, Ames threw down the newspaper, rose, and left the room, muttering an oath as he went. Overcome by curiosity, Caroline and the doctor followed.
Ames had opened the front door.
“Yes?” he barked.
“Mr. Ames?” The man who spoke was so small that they could hardly see him over Ames's shoulder.
“Who are you?” Ames demanded.
“My name is Miller. I'm from the Post. We would like to have your story, sir—in the matter of Colonel Mann, I mean—and we are prepared to pay for it.”
Caroline caught her breath. The nerve of the man! She couldn't see her brother's face, but she saw him visibly stiffen and she could imagine his expression, rigid with anger.
“Get out,” Ames said curtly.
“But, Mr. Ames, if you would just give me a moment—”
“Get out!” Ames thundered. He seized a walking stick from the hall tree—it had been their father's, never used since that good man's death—and brandished it as if he would strike the interloper.
The little man retreated down the front steps. “Now, there's no need to take on so, Mr. Ames. I'm making you an honest offer. It will take only a few moments of your time, and you can profit—”
“Out!” thundered Ames, and now he struck at the reporter and missed him only because the man scurried back across the sidewalk to the curb. “And stay out! If you show your face here again, I'll have you arrested for trespassing!”
Caroline, on tiptoe, saw the reporter dart away along the square toward Mt. Vernon Street. Ames stayed where he was, standing in the open doorway, watching him go. Then, shaking his head, he slammed the door shut, returned the walking stick to the hall tree, and turned to see Caroline and MacKenzie.
“Damned scoundrel,” he muttered.
“How dreadful,” Caroline breathed. “Why did he come to you?”
“Because I gave the hotel manager my card.”
She looked a little ill. “You did? You didn't tell me that last night. Why did you do that? That means that you will be—you already are—connected to the case.”
“So it says in this morning's Globe.”
“But that is absurd! The police cannot believe that you of all people would commit murder!”
“Of course they can. And they probably will for an hour or two, until they come to their senses.”
“And the newspapers will hound you—”
“Not if they know what's good for them,” he glowered. She had seldom seen him so angry. “I brought it on myself, of course, by identifying myself to the hotel manager, but still. I don't intend to allow myself—or you—to be harassed by that pack of jackals.”
“They need sensation stories to build their circulation,” MacKenzie said as the three of them made their way back along the hall.
“Well, they can get them from someone else,” Ames fumed. “They'll get nothing from me. Damned prying journalists—offering to pay me, no less!”
At breakfast once more, trying to pretend that the unpleasant incident had not happened, Caroline poured coffee for MacKenzie. Then, wincing a little—his knee always ached in the morning—he went to the sideboard and lifted the lid of the silver porridge tureen and contemplated its steaming, glutinous contents. Oatmeal. Again. In the army, he'd been used to bacon and eggs and hash brown potatoes for breakfast, which here—minus the potatoes—were served only on Saturdays. Suppressing a sigh, he helped himself and returned to the table.
“Addington?” Caroline said, still holding the coffeepot.
No answer. Ames was buried in the newspaper. She longed to see it for herself, but she w
ould not have dreamed of asking for it before he had done with it.
“Coffee, Addington?” she asked a little louder.
“What?” He lowered the newspaper to peer at her. “Oh—no, no thank you, Caro. Tea, please.”
She poured, and as she handed him his cup, pounced on her opportunity. “What do they say about the Colonel?”
“Quite enough,” he replied. “They have some of the details wrong, but on the whole, they have the story. And yes, Caro, your friend Crippen is in charge of the case.”
Why her friend, in particular? MacKenzie wondered; but of course he could not ask.
Caroline rolled her eyes. “Can you imagine how many happy people are reading this news this morning?” she said. “Not that anyone's death is a cause for happiness,” she added quickly.
As she rose to get her porridge, Ames cocked his head as if he were listening for some sound that only he could hear. “Yes—I can hear the shouts of celebration now, all over the city.”
“Don't joke, Addington.”
“I am not joking. Merely—ah—using a little poetic license.” He studied the newspaper for a few moments more and then passed it to her. She devoured it avidly, ignoring her plate of porridge growing cold before her. Yes, there was Addington's name. It gave her a nasty little shock to see it.
Ames rose to get his breakfast, and for a time he and MacKenzie ate in silence. Then, from the front of the house, they heard the door knocker once more and, after a moment, Margaret hurrying to answer. The three of them waited tensely for the worst: another prying journalist. But in the next moment, Margaret knocked and entered the dining room, followed closely by a strikingly beautiful young woman.
“Miss Valentine, ma'am,” said Margaret unnecessarily. She looked a little put out, as if the young woman, by not waiting to be announced, had not followed proper etiquette—as, indeed, she had not. As Margaret left them, she closed the door unnecessarily hard.
“Why—Valentine—” Caroline had half risen at her cousin's entrance; now she sank back into her chair, while the men stood to greet the visitor.
The DEATH OF COLONEL MANN Page 3
