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The DEATH OF COLONEL MANN

Page 24

by Cynthia Peale


  “Somehow, Colonel Mann found out about it,” Miss Henshaw went on.

  “Did she ever learn who it was who told him?”

  “No. She had her suspicions, but she didn't know for sure. It was one of two people, she said.”

  “But she didn't tell you their names?”

  “No.”

  “And the man she—the man who—”

  “You mean, who was her lover?” Miss Henshaw shook her head. “That name will not help you, I fear. He is dead now, in any case.” She paused, thinking about it. “Well, they are both dead now, aren't they? So perhaps it doesn't matter if I tell you. His name was Winston Sprague.”

  That name meant nothing to Caroline beyond the fact that the Spragues were an old Boston family like her own; there had been a Sprague girl in the debutante circle a year ahead of Caroline's who had—Caroline searched her memory—married a man from Philadelphia and vanished from the Boston scene.

  “And he is dead, you say?”

  “Yes. He died last year in London, of pneumonia.”

  “I see.”

  “I wonder if you do. Can you imagine what Marian's life was like these past few years?”

  “Well, I—”

  But Miss Henshaw, having begun, was not now to be stopped until she had unburdened herself completely.

  “Her husband paid off Colonel Mann, to be sure, but he took his revenge on Marian all the same. Oh, yes. Her life was a living hell ever since. There is no other way to describe it. William wouldn't speak to her, you know. And he cut her allowance to nothing, so that she had to come to me to beg money just to pay her seamstress to alter what clothing she had. New ones were out of the question. He wouldn't allow her to entertain, he wouldn't allow her to see her friends, he even forbade her to go to Newport the summer after he paid the Colonel's blackmail. But last summer—this past summer—we outwitted him, Marian and I. I have a friend whose sister is married to William's uncle. The uncle has a place at Newport. He was persuaded to invite Marian for the summer season. Since the invitation came from family, William could not refuse. So Marian had her time at Newport, after all.”

  During this recitation, Miss Henshaw's face had become suffused with an emotion that could only be called fury. Yes, Caroline thought: fury—and hatred. For William Trask, who had discovered his wife's adultery, who had paid dearly to cover it up, and who had, afterward, exacted his revenge on her.

  Had Marian gone to work, so to speak, for the Colonel— who had ruined her—to get the money her husband would no longer supply? Or had she simply taken a leaf from the Colonel's book and tried a little blackmail of her own?

  It was possible. Caroline didn't know how it would help them to retrieve Val's letters, but she would tell Addington all the same. Perhaps he would see something in it that she herself did not.

  Miss Henshaw had begun to cry. “I will miss her so,” she said. “We were always very close, and ever since that awful business with Colonel Mann and his blackmail, we grew closer still. And now she is gone, and it is all his fault!”

  Whose fault? Caroline wondered. Her husband's? The Colonel's? Or this Winston Sprague's, whoever he was?

  Miss Henshaw put her face into her hands and sobbed and sobbed. Caroline felt tears come to her own eyes as she stood up; she hesitated for a moment, and then, just as Dr. MacKenzie had done for her last night, she put her hand on Miss Henshaw's shoulder.

  “I am so sorry,” she said softly. “Please believe me when I say that I apologize for disturbing you this morning. And I thank you for seeing me—for confiding in me.”

  Miss Henshaw turned up her tear-stained face. “I am glad you came, Caroline. And if there is anything more I can do—anything at all—do not hesitate to call on me. If Marian's death was not a random street crime—if it was somehow connected to Colonel Mann's—why, then, I will do whatever is in my power to help you and your brother.”

  “WINSTON SPRAGUE,” AMES REPEATED. HE STARED AT Caroline, his dark eyes alight with interest. “You're sure?”

  “That was the name she gave me, Addington. He died last year in London, of pneumonia. Who was he? Did you know him?”

  He'd been pacing the parlor; now he moved to the lavender-glass windows. He stared out at the fog-shrouded square; the houses opposite were obscured, and the evergreen shrubbery inside the high iron fence was a blur of misty, purplish gray-green.

  “He was Richard Longworth's law partner.” The photograph in Longworth's room, he thought, with its dates: 1843–1890.

  “Oh.” Caroline absorbed it. “Addington, Susan Hen-shaw said that Marian thought that only one of two people could have betrayed her to the Colonel. And if Winston Sprague was Mr. Longworth's partner, then—”

  “Yes. Longworth probably knew of the affair, and so he was undoubtedly one of the people she suspected. Hence her eagerness to get her revenge by blackmailing him after she heard Orcutt's story. In fact, Longworth may well have betrayed her to the Colonel. On the other hand,” he went on, “I find it difficult to believe that after her nasty experience with the Colonel, she would have gone to work for him. But if she did, she might have told him Longworth's secret after Longworth refused to pay her the blackmail she demanded. In which case, Longworth was being pressed from two sides—thus making his situation all the more desperate.”

  He turned to face his sister, but it was MacKenzie who caught his eye.

  “And how did your morning go?” the doctor asked.

  “Badly,” Ames replied.

  “You did not see Mrs. Vincent?”

  “No. Nor Inspector Crippen, either. The man is out chasing his tail somewhere,” he added gloomily, “while she sits in that miserable dungeon.” He did not know for certain that the Tombs was a dungeon, but he imagined that it was. Yes, she was safe there—from Longworth, at least—but to think of that lovely woman immured in such a place disturbed him more than he'd thought possible.

  He'd gone to Longworth's office, then, but he'd failed there, as well. The door was locked, the room beyond it dark and silent. In the end, to work off the nervous energy that was building up strongly enough to choke him, he'd gone to Crabbe's for an hour of fencing. He'd come out of it drenched with sweat and hurting from a pulled muscle in his thigh, but no less anxious.

  But now—yes, now he must see Longworth, must hunt him down no matter what the difficulty. Longworth held the key to his search, he was sure of it.

  Margaret announced lunch just then, but as they sat down at the table, the door knocker sounded. In a moment, Margaret appeared with a telegram—for Caroline.

  “Oh, dear,” she murmured, gingerly accepting it. “Whatever can this be?”

  Feeling as though the thing would explode under her fingers, she slipped out the folded yellow sheet and opened it.

  “Oh,” she said, and they heard the relief in her voice. “It is nothing. I mean, nothing connected with— It is from Dr. Hannah. She wants me to come to her this afternoon to help out.”

  She glanced up to see MacKenzie's face, and she laughed. “Don't look like that, Doctor! Yes, Dr. Hannah—Dr. Hannah Bigelow—is a woman, a female physician. She runs a free clinic over on Columbus Avenue, and Saturday afternoon is her walk-in time.”

  Ames allowed himself a smile. “You do not approve of female physicians, Doctor?”

  “Well, I—” MacKenzie reminded himself to go carefully. He was, in fact, offended mightily by the notion of a female physician. He had heard that such creatures existed, but he had never met one and never wanted to. The knowledge that the delightful Miss Caroline Ames not only knew such a one but intended to go to assist her (and what form that assistance might take, he did not allow himself to consider) upset him profoundly.

  He coughed and took a sip of water to buy himself a few seconds. “It is not a matter for my approval or disapproval,” he said when he could speak again.

  “No,” Caroline said gently. “It is not. I will go immediately after lunch, Addington. Dr. Hannah's receptionist has und
oubtedly been taken ill or called away for some reason, and she needs someone to direct traffic, as it were. People come to her by the dozens on Saturday afternoons, since aside from the City Hospital it is the only place they can get care free of charge.”

  MacKenzie waged a little struggle with himself. Then: “Miss Ames, if you will permit me—has it not occurred to you that you might catch some disease in such a place? I would be happy to substitute for you, if I might be so bold as to offer my services, and perhaps I could even—ah— assist the lady in her work.”

  “Why, thank you, Doctor.” She smiled at him, and he was relieved to see it, glad that his obvious distress at the idea of a female physician had not turned her against him. “That is very kind of you. Very kind indeed. But I think— well, I will tell Dr. Hannah of your offer, of course. But I think today I should go on my own. Most of her patients are female, and they go to her rather than to the City Hospital because they do not want to be treated by a man. No offense,” she added quickly, “but they are poor people, and they are not used to doctors in any case. They wouldn't see one at all if they couldn't see Dr. Hannah.”

  So it was settled that MacKenzie would join Ames, as arranged, at the St. Botolph Club at four o'clock for the opening reception of the art exhibition, and he went upstairs to rest while Ames took himself off once more.

  Caroline had meant to spend the afternoon finishing Diana Strangeways' new novel. She'd felt guilty about it, particularly since she'd missed the discussion of more uplifting work at the Saturday Morning Reading Club, but she was longing to see how the story came out.

  Now, however, she mustn't even think of opening it, because once she did, it would be too painful to stop before the end. No, she must leave at once for Dr. Hannah's. If she left the clinic by five o'clock, she could be home in time for Val, should Val need to see her after the interview with George Putnam.

  George Putnam. Caroline's heart had briefly lifted at the thought of spending a few hours at Dr. Hannah's clinic, for she was fond of her, and more than that, she admired her very much. Dr. Hannah had had a bad time of it in medical school, faced as she had been by the prejudices of the men in her class; since passing her qualifying examinations, she had devoted her life to the poor. Caroline knew herself well enough to admit that she had none of the iron determination that had enabled Dr. Hannah to persevere, but she was grateful for the opportunity, now and then, to help her.

  But now George Putnam had intruded once more into her mind, and her thoughts turned dark. George Putnam was going to break Val's heart, if he had not done so already. Caroline's supply of improper words was pitifully slim, but as she cast about for a name bad enough to call him, one came to mind.

  He is a dastard, she thought. Really he is!

  She went into the parlor. Beyond the windows she saw the lavender-tinted fog, thicker now than ever. She would walk to Dr. Hannah's, she decided, since to take a herdic or a hack cab in heavy fog was always dangerous. Sound was muffled, horses ran into each other, people were injured. Far safer to take one's chances by walking, dangerous though it was at the crossings. Even this morning, coming back from Susan Henshaw's, she'd narrowly missed—

  Susan Henshaw.

  Who was Marian Trask's sister.

  Caroline's thoughts raced, stumbling over themselves.

  In that tempting Diana Strangeways novel that she was not to finish this afternoon, there was a moment when the heroine, desperate to disentangle herself from the twisting coil of Miss Strangeways' truly enthralling plot, came upon a photograph.

  And in that photograph—a group sitting, a dozen people at least—she found the answer to the question upon which her life depended.

  A photograph.

  It was odd, Caroline thought, how the mind worked. Professor William James had spent his entire professional life studying the mind. One day soon, she thought, she must find—or make—the opportunity to talk to him about it. Assuming that such a learned man would take the time to talk to her, a mere woman, about anything other than the most trivial subjects.

  A photograph. A photograph. Where, in the past few days, had she come across a photograph that might tell her—what?

  Yes. She remembered now. On Tuesday afternoon, searching for her ivory fan on the closet shelf in the guest room, she'd come across an entire album of photographs. She'd been so intent on finding her fan that she had hardly noticed the album, had just pushed it aside.

  She heard the grandmother clock strike the half hour. It was one-thirty. She needed to hurry if she was to reach Dr. Hannah's clinic in time.

  But now that she had had the memory of that photograph album—a memory jarred by the inestimable, the incomparable Diana Strangeways—she could not leave the house without seeing the particular photograph she remembered. Or thought she did, at any rate. She hadn't opened that album in at least a year, and the photograph in question dated to well before that, if her memory served.

  She hurried up the curving staircase, her hand skimming the carved mahogany balustrade, her heart pounding hard. She closed the guest room door softly behind her and fetched the footstool from before the fireplace. The closet smelled of lavender; it was filled with her summer dresses, all neatly wrapped in muslin bags. She pushed them aside and stepped onto the stool. A box of summer gloves, another of lightweight summer underthings, petticoats and chemises— Yes. There it was.

  For a moment she was afraid, because now she knew what she would see when she opened that album; her memory was clear now, and complete.

  From overhead, she heard the muffled thump of Dr. MacKenzie's footsteps as he made his way across his room. He was supposed to be resting; she hoped he wasn't going to come downstairs looking for her. Just now, she did not want to see Dr. MacKenzie.

  Get on with it, she thought.

  She stepped down from the stool and carried the album to a small writing desk by the back window. The white light reflected from the fog was more than enough to see by; she didn't need to turn up the gas.

  The album's thick pages were stiff with glue and the heavy rectangles of photographic paper pasted onto them. Her hands were cold, her fingers reluctant to do her mind's bidding. She knew what she would find; how could she have forgotten it? Here were page after page of photographs, some going back to her girlhood, of parties and picnics and all the happy occasions of her life, pictures of the charity galas she'd had a part in, and the Fourth of July celebrations, and a costume party one New Year's Eve.

  Her hands were still; she stopped turning the pages. Here it was: the photograph she'd sought. And for a moment, she thought perhaps she'd been wrong; perhaps this fading sepia-toned image would tell her nothing.

  She bent to look more closely.

  Yes. It was what she'd remembered—exactly.

  For a long moment she scrutinized it; then, gently, she closed the album. She was trembling. She stood up, carried it to the closet, and replaced it on the shelf. Then she returned the stool to its place and paused for a moment, resting her hand on the white-painted mantelpiece. The clock in the hall was chiming the quarter hour. It was late. She needed to hurry if she was to get to Dr. Hannah's in time.

  AMES STRODE DOWN WINTER STREET, PAST LOCK-OBER'S, half hidden down its little alley; past jewelers' windows, and haberdashers'. The narrow sidewalk was thronged with Saturday afternoon shoppers, people jostling him, now and then someone polite enough to say “Beg your pardon, sir.”

  He jostled back. His errand was infinitely more important than any of theirs. His errand was life-and-death, literally.

  At Washington Street he crossed and pressed on toward the doorway he sought. He went in, climbed the long, narrow flight of stairs, and walked down the dimly lighted corridor. His footsteps were loud, echoing in the silence. The building was empty. But one person, perhaps, had come in: to tend to some crucial final business before locking up and leaving forever.

  The office was dark, seemingly deserted as it had been earlier. Ames put his hand on the knob and tur
ned it. He hadn't expected the door to open, but to his surprise, it did.

  The little reception room was gloomy, the only light coming from the one dim gas jet in the corridor and, faintly, from the office beyond.

  “Hello?”

  No answer. But still, he told himself, the door had been unlocked just now; this morning, it had not been.

  The door of the inner office was slightly ajar. He pushed it open.

  Richard Longworth sat at his desk as if he'd been waiting—for whom?

  “Mr. Ames,” he said.

  “Mrs. Vincent has been arrested,” Ames said.

  “I know.”

  “Well, for God's sake, man, you must give yourself up now! You cannot allow her to be taken for a crime she did not commit!”

  Longworth looked ill, Ames thought; ill—and haunted, as if his mind harbored secrets that soon would drive him mad.

  “Which crime would that be, Mr. Ames?”

  “Why—the murder of Colonel Mann, of course.”

  Longworth shook his head. “No,” he said. “She did not do that.”

  “The police believe she did.”

  “She was with me that night.”

  “You said you were at the St. Botolph.”

  Longworth shrugged. “I lied.”

  Ames bit back the angry words that sprang to his lips. This man before him was a man in crisis; he needed to go carefully lest Longworth freeze up and refuse to tell him anything.

  “How long had you been working for the Colonel?” he asked in what he hoped was a less accusatory tone.

  “Why do you want to know that?”

  “Because I cannot understand why Mrs. Vincent would have taken up with you if you worked for the very man who ruined her.”

  “I didn't work for him when she and I first met.”

  “Where was that?”

  “In New York.”

  “When?”

  “About three years ago. She was—” He broke off, as if a sudden memory had distracted him.

  “She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen,” he said softly. “She still is. I fell in love with her instantly, I don't mind telling you. You think something like that can happen only in books, but believe me, it can happen in life as well.”

 

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