9. Why had Mrs. Baines and Captain Starrett pretended not to know one another?
10. Were they having an affair right under John Baines’s nose?
11. What was the real reason Captain Starrett returned to Galena after so much time?
12. Where was the picture of Captain Starrett taken?
A pattern had developed to my questions. Everything seemed to revolve around Captain Henry Starrett. But it was of no consequence what my questions were. I was merely performing an exercise in order to find mental peace. Lieutenant Colonel Holbrook’s death, the burglary, the poisoning, these were all matters for the police.
None of this has anything to do with me, I reminded myself as I prepared for bed. My job was to type Sir Arthur’s manuscripts, organize his research material, take any dictation, and get his household prepared for Christmas. I pulled the sheet of paper from the typewriter and climbed into bed. I looked at my questions again; the type was blurry as I tried to stay awake. I had organized my thoughts, but the peace I’d sought didn’t come.
Maybe I should show this to Officer Corbett, was my last thought before falling asleep.
“Stepping out with your Verehrer again, Hattie?”
I jumped at the sound of her voice. Ida had startled me as I tried to quietly open the kitchen door. She was setting more coals on the fire and I hadn’t seen her there in the dark.
“My Verehrer?” I asked. I didn’t know what Verehrer meant, but I could guess. “If you mean Dr. Grice, yes. He agreed to meet me in Grant Park.”
“But it’s still dark, ja?”
“It’ll be light soon. I don’t normally go out when it’s this dark, but Walter wants to go up to the top of the hill behind Grant’s home and watch the sunrise.”
“Ah, sehr romantische, how romantic.” She batted her eyes at me teasingly. “But cold, ja? You will have to hold him close for warmth, ja?”
“Oh, Ida,” I said, dismissing her teasing with a wave of my hand and heading out into the cold. Despite my heavy wool cloak and fur-lined gloves, I shivered after leaving the warmth of the kitchen.
If I still had my felt hat . . . , I thought, adjusting the inadequate straw one I was wearing. I’ll have to buy a new one, I guess.
With that happy thought, I rubbed my hands quickly up and down my arms and then set off at a rapid pace; a brisk walk would warm me up quicker than standing in the doorway. I headed to Grant Park but took the long way. I took High Street over to Franklin and down the hill, which was tricky. Patches of ice hid beneath the snow. I had to take small, carefully placed footsteps to avoid slipping. With my tender ribs, if I fell I might not be able to easily get back up. And then what would Walter think? At Main, the sidewalks had been cleared, with the snow piled in the middle of the road. Mrs. Monday recalled winters when the snow piles were so high, it was difficult to cross the street and impossible to travel by sleigh at all. Imagining how amusing that would be, I turned onto Meeker at the end of Main, passed the smelters, and took the wagon bridge.
On the northwest side of the river, I was passed by several sleighs and an occasional person on foot heading to work. Now the sidewalk I decided to take along this edge of the river was deserted. It was so still and silent I could hear myself breathe. The only other sound was the crunching of snow beneath my boots. I took a wooden staircase up to Park Avenue. The houses I passed as I made my way to Grant Park were mostly dark, with the occasional faint glow of a candle or lamp in an upstairs room. General Starrett’s house was still dark too, though several tracks in the snow suggested that Frederick Reynard, as usual, had already left for work. But whose were these other tracks? Had the dairyman already delivered the morning’s milk? Were Gertie and Ned disobeying their parents and sneaking off to the river again? I hoped not. I knew many a maid and cook were already working by the dim light from kitchen fires not visible from the street. Maybe Mrs. Cassidy or Mrs. Becker had already been out on an errand this morning. How many other souls were up and about on this peaceful morning? I wondered. I was never one to lounge in bed but was grateful that many preferred to. It gave me the chance to enjoy the illusion that for a few minutes I had the town to myself.
Like the street, the park was empty. On the northern end of the park was the soldier’s monument, a limestone obelisk with the sites of Civil War battles inscribed on all four sides. The names of the dead, inscribed on the pedestal and steps, were only readable when I stepped up close. Next to the monument was the cannon that only a few days ago was aimed at Enoch Jamison’s house. I reflected on the contrast between the chaos and noise of that evening and the silence and solitude that surrounded me now. I preferred the present, the anticipation of seeing Walter only adding to the moment. I leaned on the cannon and gazed across the river, unable to distinguish Sir Arthur’s house from the other buildings on the hill in the dark. I lingered as lights appeared, the town preparing to wake. First, high on the hill like a beacon, light streamed from St. Matthew’s church, then the Methodist church, where President Grant had attended services when he lived here and where Sir Arthur, despite being Anglican, insisted on going and sitting in Grant’s pew. Then other churches lit up, Grace Episcopal, St. Michael’s where I attended Mass, and South Presbyterian. And then light blazed from the riverside warehouses and shops on Main Street. Windows in the DeSoto House Hotel flickered on, first one, then another. Was one of those lit rooms Walter’s? I hoped so. I left the cannon and monument and followed the curving path that transected the park toward the bridge where Walter would cross. I passed the fountain, gaslight reflecting off its cherubs and female statuette encrusted with ice. I crested the small hill where Grant’s statue was prominently installed, his back to me. As I rounded the statue to look at the front, I suddenly realized I wasn’t alone. Someone was sitting at the base of the statue.
“Good morning,” I said. The man didn’t reply. He was wearing a fur coat but no hat and leaned with his head resting back against the pedestal steps. He looked exhausted or ill.
The ground all around him had been trampled so much that blades of grass stuck up through the snow.
“Are you all right, sir?” I said, taking several steps toward him and laying my hand on his shoulder. Oddly, he had a slight scent of lily of the valley about him.
I looked down at his face. It was one of a monster. He’d been beaten brutally. His nose was crushed unnaturally toward one side of his face and his lips, cut in several places, were swollen. His cheeks were red with bruises, and trickles of blood from his nose and swollen lips had seeped into his mustache and beard. But his eyes were the worst. One eye was swollen shut and ringed with red bruises; the other looked directly at me, unblinking. I jerked my hand back and screamed!
It was Captain Henry Starrett and he was dead.
“Hattie!” I could hear him running across the bridge.
“Over here, Walter, over here!” I shouted. When Walter reached the statue, all I could do was point.
“What happened?” Walter immediately picked up the man’s hand and felt for a pulse at his wrist.
“I don’t know. I found him this way. Did someone beat him to death?” I pointed to the trampled snow. “You can tell a struggle went on here.”
Walter did a cursory examination of the man’s head and found nothing. “No blunt-force trauma to the head that I can tell, despite how badly his face appears.” Then he began examining other parts of the dead man’s body. He bent the man’s arm at the elbow and then his fingers. “No rigor mortis,” Walter said, almost to himself. He next pulled off the man’s boots and wool hose. Captain Starrett’s feet looked normal. “No visible liver mortis either.”
Then, after replacing the dead man’s boots, Walter pulled back Captain Starrett’s coat.
Oh my God!
Blood drenched the dead man’s entire chest: vest, shirt, and skin. Two tiny white pearl buttons dangling from a thread, all that remained from when Walter ripped open the shirt, glowed in stark contrast to the red stain. Walter peeled back the sticky, bloody
clothes, revealing a wound in the man’s chest, a roundish gaping hole straight through his heart. The earth moved beneath my feet and I turned my back on the gory scene. Nausea threatened to overwhelm me. I bent over, resting my hands on my knees and ignoring the pain in my ribs, and took a few deep breaths of the crisp morning air. I thought I was going to get sick or faint but did neither. My experience in Eureka Springs had obviously steeled me for discovering dead bodies.
“Are you all right?” I looked over at Walter, who was mercifully closing the man’s eye. I nodded. “How long had you been in the park before you found Captain Starrett, Hattie?”
“Ten, fifteen minutes. Why?” The tone of Walter’s voice unnerved me. What did my being in the park have to do with Captain Starrett’s death?
“Did you see anyone or hear anything usual?”
“No, why?” Walter still hadn’t answered my question.
“Good thing,” Walter said, draping the flaps of Captain Starrett’s shirt and vest back over the wound. “This man’s been shot within the past hour.” I shuddered at the thought that Henry Starrett could’ve been murdered as I strolled along the river or about the park.
“Shot? Who would’ve done this?” I asked out loud.
“I have no idea,” Walter said, scooping up some snow and rubbing away blood from his fingers. It’d been a rhetorical question, but Walter had no way of knowing that I was already compiling a list of suspects in my head. After trying to run me down on the bridge, Enoch Jamison was first on my list.
“It’s barbaric, beating up a dead man,” I said, slowly standing upright. I was shaking but tried not to let Walter see how upset I was.
“The size, shape, and color of the bruises indicate they occurred before the man died. Someone beat him up first and then shot him. With so little blood in the snow, he was probably already in this prostrate position.”
“It’s so horrible,” I said, wrapping my arms around my shoulders to stop myself from shaking.
“Yes, it is,” Walter said. “We have to notify the police.”
“And Sir Arthur.”
“Sir Arthur?”
“Trust me. I’ve worked for dozens of wealthy, influential people and one common thread that ties them together is their desire to control: control their own money, their own families, and definitely their own fates. They hate scandal and rarely involve the police. And since General Starrett is in no shape to be here, Sir Arthur’s going to want to be here in his stead when the police arrive.”
“You’re joking?” Walter said.
“No, I’m not. If Lieutenant Colonel Holbrook hadn’t died suspiciously, General Starrett would never have involved the police when his home was burgled.” I could tell by the expression on Walter’s face that he was seeing me in a new light, one that I was afraid wasn’t flattering. “Why do you think I’m successful? Granted I’m good at what I’m hired to do, but I’m also discreet. I once told you I keep my employer’s secrets to myself the same way you keep your patients’. I was in earnest. You’d be shocked what I could tell you about some of this country’s most prominent citizens.”
“But a man’s been murdered, Hattie.”
“Believe me I know,” I said, trying desperately to keep the nausea down. “And I’m agreeing with you, Walter. We have to telephone the police immediately. I’m merely suggesting that we call Sir Arthur first. In fact, I may lose my job if I don’t.”
“I had no idea, Hattie. You once tried to tell me, but I didn’t fully understand until now. You do work at the whim of these people.”
Does he truly understand? I wondered. Does he think less of me because of it?
“Sir Arthur is generous and fair, but he doesn’t abide disloyalty of any kind.”
“All right. I’ll stay with the body. You go to the DeSoto House and telephone Sir Arthur and the police.”
I ran toward the bridge, relieved to put some distance between me and the dead man. I stopped to look back at Walter, who had covered Henry back up in his coat. If I hadn’t seen the wound, I would’ve thought Henry Starrett had simply fallen ill and Walter was tending him. But I knew different. It was a tableau out of a nightmare, by gaslight. Walter, the man who I was becoming more than fond of, stood in blood-splattered, trampled snow at the base of the statue of a war hero next to the body of a dead Santa Claus. I didn’t look back again.
CHAPTER 20
“You did right, Hattie.” Sir Arthur was at the reins as the sleigh flew across the Green Street Bridge. I’d telephoned him first. Sir Arthur had departed immediately, instructing William Finch, the butler, to telephone the police after he’d left, ensuring he would have a few minutes before they arrived. Sir Arthur saw me returning from the hotel and drove me the rest of the way. “I knew I could trust you to think of my interests first.”
“Dr. Grice,” Sir Arthur said with a nod as we alighted from the sleigh. He looked down as the sunrise Walter and I had planned to watch together caused our shadows to cross Henry Starrett’s beaten body. “Hattie says the man’s been shot.”
“Yes, though I’ve looked around a bit and haven’t found the gun,” Walter said.
“No, I wouldn’t expect that you would. How long has he been dead?”
“I’d guess less than an hour, but the medical examiner will be able to give us a better idea after the autopsy.”
“And you think that the man was beaten before he died?”
“Yes,” Walter said. “Again the medical examiner will know more, but my guess is that he was beaten but still alive when he was shot, and that’s what killed him.”
Sir Arthur looked up from studying the prone figure on the ground. “Hattie, what are you doing?” I was on my knees at the base of the statue.
“Looking for anything that might help,” I said, “like this!” I held up several small green leaves in the palm of my hand. I’d found them in a footprint a few feet away.
“Leaves?” Sir Arthur said. “How are they going to help?”
“No disrespect, Sir Arthur,” Walter said, “but Hattie used cedar needles in part to solve the Eureka Springs murder.” Sir Arthur looked at me expectantly. I hoped he didn’t expect me to solve this murder as well.
“So what are they?” Sir Arthur asked impatiently.
“I don’t know,” I conceded. “They look like oak willow or black willow tree leaves, but the former doesn’t grow anywhere near Galena and the latter is deciduous; the leaves wouldn’t still be green. Beside, these leaves don’t have closely toothed margins. See?” I pointed to the edges of the leaves. Sir Arthur frowned. “Maybe they’re from a houseplant or a tropical tree, like those that Frederick Reynard grows in his greenhouse.”
“Then how did they get to be in the snow next to a murdered man?” Walter said.
I shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“Maybe Frederick Reynard can answer that,” Sir Arthur said. I nodded. The same thought had occurred to me. “Find anything else, Hattie?”
Before I could answer, Officer Corbett and two other policemen arrived on a sleigh. Their horse snorted, his breath steaming out in a cloud in the cold air. They stopped on Park Avenue and, leaving one man holding the bridle of the horse, ran up the hill.
“Don’t anybody move!” Corbett shouted. He held his fellow officer back with an outstretched arm as he gingerly walked toward us. “We don’t want to disturb the footprints.”
At his admonition, I looked about me again at the myriad of footprints I’d noticed before, some coming from the direction of the bridge, others from various points in the park, but all converging on Grant’s monument. Since it only stopped snowing early this morning, they must’ve all been made since then. Who were all these people? Besides mine, Walter’s, and Sir Arthur’s, at least three, maybe four other sets of footprints were distinguishable, one or two large enough to be that of Henry Starrett and one that was definitely made by the boot of a woman. Could a woman have done this? I wondered, looking down at the dead man. I immediately dismissed th
e idea. No woman I knew was capable of beating a large, strong man like Henry Starrett almost to death, even with a cane or a pan in her hand. Then why? Why was the woman here that early in the morning?
Officer Corbett stopped and knelt down next to the body, repeating Walter’s action of trying to find a pulse. The harmonica was not in its usual place in Corbett’s breast pocket.
“Is he dead, Archie?” the policeman minding the sleigh shouted.
“Yes!” Corbett shouted as he lifted up one side of Henry Starrett’s coat and revealed the blood-splattered vest. Corbett stood up and regarded us all for the first time. “Thank you for notifying us, Sir Arthur.” He tipped his hat slightly. “Miss Davish?” he said, surprised. “I didn’t expect to see you here.” He smiled. It was an odd reaction as we stood next to a murdered man.
“She discovered Starrett’s body,” Walter said, putting his arm around me. I was still shaking. Corbett flinched. “Oh, Miss Davish, I’m sorry to hear that. And you are?” he said to Walter.
“Dr. Walter Grice.”
“Oh,” Corbett said, nodding but anticipating further explanation. When he didn’t get it he looked me in the eye for a moment, then dropped his gaze to the man lying in the snow. “I’ll get detailed information later, but if you could tell me briefly, Miss Davish, how you came to find Henry Starrett?”
“I walked to the park for my usual morning hike and found him as you see him,” I said.
“Why are you here, Dr. Grice?” Corbett asked.
“Miss Davish and I had arranged to meet this morning in the park. I arrived moments after she discovered the body.” Corbett’s gaze shot up to meet mine.
“Oh,” he said, biting his lip, his face slightly flush. He quickly averted his eyes back to Henry Starrett’s body. “And you, Sir Arthur? What brings you here?” Sir Arthur bristled at having to explain his presence. He wasn’t used to having to explain anything.
“Damn it, man! Why do you think I’m here? Having a picnic? My secretary had just found a dead body. Of course I accompanied Hattie back after telephoning you.”
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