“An hour,” Avilla said. “A few minutes beyond, at most.”
My eyes flicked to the mantel clock. It wasn’t ticking, and the hands were stopped at twenty-five past three.
“Father had decided to sleep here, in the guest room, tonight. He hasn’t left it since we came upstairs to read.”
Abercrombie’s head rose from the pillow. “I should have stayed with Belinda. If I had, she’d…” He sank back again. “My fault. It’s all my fault, she’s gone from us.”
Avilla smoothed the hair from his brow. “Hush, now. That’s just grief talking. How could you—how could anyone have known she was in danger?”
“She was ill. I shouldn’t have left her alone.”
Avilla looked at me, tears rising in her eyes. “I don’t mean to be rude, Miss Sawyer, but I must ask you to go. My father and I have had a horrible shock, and his health is far from good.”
“Of course.” I repeated my condolence, then paused at the doorway. “One last thing, Mr. Abercrombie. I couldn’t help but notice the bruise on your left hand. I’d be happy to fetch a cold cloth, to keep down the swelling.”
He blinked at the darkening contusion equidistant from the base of his thumb and index finger. Avilla caught his hand in hers and lowered both to the bed. “That’s very kind of you, but Father has suffered from anemia since he was a boy. When his blood is thin, a fly lighting on him would leave footprints.”
Nodding, I turned away and started down the corridor. Was Avilla’s protectiveness of her father understandable, or diversionary? A bit of both, I decided, giving quarter to the circumstances. She had, after all, answered my questions in a straightforward manner. Had I been in her place, I’d have likely put aside my sorrow and taken charge of the situation, too.
My relief at seeing the closed door to Belinda Abercrombie’s room was momentary. While the coroner would remain ignorant of my presence, the thick, four-paneled oak door denied any possibility of eavesdropping on the conversation within.
Five
“I’m Glover Rudd,” said the perspiring young man at the foot of the staircase. His checked suit was frayed at the lapels and cuffs, and his shirt collar ringed his neck like a barrel stave around a fence pole. “Who are you and what can you tell me about the robbery/murder?”
I brushed past him.
“Madame, please. I’m a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News. The public has a right to know the facts surrounding this tragedy.”
Greed slowed my stride. Attaching Sawyer Investigations to a crime of this magnitude could rate more attention than a paid advertisement. Then, as if Confucius—in the guise of Won Li—were astraddle my shoulder, I heard him say, Cultivated people seek from themselves; small people seek from others.
At times such as these, I sincerely wished I’d devoted more study to the culinary arts than philosophy. Without a word to Mr. Rudd, the aroma of brewing coffee guided me to the kitchen.
Pansy and Jules were making finger sandwiches for the constabulary and associated officials. I declined to partake of them but gratefully accepted a cup of strong, black coffee. I’d never tasted better, nor needed a stimulant more.
To Pansy, I said, “Busy hands occupy the mind, but I don’t think I’d have your strength of will.”
She chuffed. A sidelong glance affirmed my sincerity. Her expression registered surprise. Quietly, she said, “I’ll see Miss Belinda, layin’ there onna floor likes a broken doll, in my sleep till the day I die.”
“What drew you to her room, Pansy? Or were you just securing the house for the night?”
“Me an’ Jules were already abed.” She hastened to add, “Mister Abercrombie tol’ us nothin’ needed doin’ the rest of the evenin’. Heard a terrible crash, I did. I laid there a minute, listenin’ real hard. Wasn’t sure if ’twas a dream that woke me.”
“That’s when she roused me, for a look-see,” Jules said.
“Huh. Wasn’t like you jumped up and went a-runnin’, ol’ man.” Pansy filleted the seeds from a cucumber.
“Snorin’ loud as thunder, he was. Bein’ nigh deaf in his good ear, I had to thunk him a lick or three, ’fore he paid me any mind.”
Jules grunted and moved to pour coffee from an urn into a serving carafe. “The front doors was standin’ wide open. It a-frighted me—that pretty vase in shards on the floor and flowers strewed ever’ which-a-way.”
“Poor man, thought he’d forgot to lock up and the wind had shoved that jardiniere clean off’n the table.” Pansy pointed the knife tip at her bosom. “Me, I knew in my heart it wasn’t no wind that done it. Whilst Jules went about the downstairs rooms, I took myself upstairs.
“‘Twas peaceful as a churchhouse on a Tuesday, up yonder. I was near onto believin’ it was the wind, but reckoned I’d best tell Miss Belinda ’bout the mess, or the master, if she was sleepin’.”
Her voice faltered. Head bowed, she braced her fists against the worktable. Fat tears meandered from the corners of her eyes. Jules gave me an angry look as he wrapped an arm about his wife’s trembling shoulders.
As gently as I could, I said, “I know how it must hurt to talk about what happened, but Mrs. Abercrombie can no longer speak for herself. If her killer is to be found, everything you saw and heard is of utmost importance.”
“My wife already tol’ you, ma’am,” Jules said. “Whoever done it was long gone before we got out’n our bed.”
Pansy shrugged off his arm. “See to the cups and saucers, ol’ man. Napkins, too. The lady’s only tryin’ to help Miss Belinda.”
Grumbling under his breath, Jules stalked off to the back kitchen.
“He’s as heartbroke as I am,” she said, “but mens, they don’t let their feelin’s show. Worse for it, too, if you ask me.”
I thought of Papa, Jack O’Shaughnessy, and, most especially, Won Li. “They’re raised to believe it’s a sign of weakness.”
Pansy nodded. “They’re raised to believe a lot of things that’s wrongheaded and twists their innards inside out. Maybe that’s how the Lord intended, them being created in His image and all, but even a grizzly bear lets out a howl when a thorn’s stuck in its paw.”
I smiled at the reminder that wisdom wasn’t unique to Confucius. Taking up a table knife to spread butter on the bread she’d sliced, I said, “I was under the impression that Gertrude Hiss was a live-in cook.”
“She is.” Pansy glared in the direction of the servant’s quarters at the back of the house. “Mind you, I’m not one to carry tales, but this ain’t the first time Gert’s snuck out of an evenin’ to meet up with Sam Merck. He’s the gardener by day and plays faro, most nights. From what I’ve seen, Sam’s no better at cards than he is with a rake and shovel.”
Even when faro was dealt fair and square, and it rarely was at Denver City’s gambling hells, “bucking the tiger” was a fool’s game with the odds stacked well in favor of the house.
The layout consisted of a beaded rack, similar to an abacus. Beneath the strung beads were painted reproductions of the nine numeric four face cards, and ace in a standard deck. The pattern was duplicated on a boxlike frame.
The beads tracked the cards played, regardless of suit, revealed by the dealer’s every two-card draw. Wagers were placed on what card would be turned next, or against a card’s appearance. Simple as it sounded, few left the game with their pockets weighted with coins.
Pansy said, “Gert’s later comin’ home tonight than usual. If Miss Avilla or Mister Abercrombie ask after her, I won’t give her up, but I won’t lie for her, neither.”
“What time did she leave?”
“I don’t rightly know. Before supper is as near as I can say. The family was s’posed to eat with the Estabrooks this evenin’.”
Meaning the cook wasn’t aware those plans were cancelled at the last minute. Could she be the burglar’s accomplice? Reminding myself that gender shouldn’t exclude half the population from suspicion, Gertrude Hiss could be a cook by day and a thief by night.
&
nbsp; “Does Sam Merck work here every day?” I asked.
“Not on the Sabbath.” Pansy began arranging the finished sandwiches on a doily-covered tray. “As if Sam’s prone to bend a knee, ’lessen he spies a nickel shining in the street.”
“If someone wasn’t acquainted with Sam Merck and Gertrude Hiss, how would you describe them?”
As I’d hoped, the answer painted disparaging portraits. Ask a person to describe a close friend, and physical flaws and abnormalities will be minimized, if mentioned at all. The less a person admires another, the more accurate the verbal picture—minus strokes of exaggeration.
Gertrude Hiss’s hair was stringy, short-cropped as a boy’s, and tinted a bright henna. Of average height and sturdy build, she had a bulbous nose, weak chin, and a raspy voice due to the corncob pipe she smoked behind a mulberry tree when she thought no one was looking.
As for Sam Merck, he was barrel-chested, broad-shouldered, and had dishwater blonde hair combed back from a widow’s peak—when it wasn’t hanging in his narrow-set eyes. Snaggle-toothed and hame-jawed, he wasn’t exactly ugly, but Pansy said if she didn’t know Sam, she’d hold her purse tighter to her chest if she passed him on the street.
“I keep it hid in my room as it is,” she added. “Jules pokes fun at me for it, but I don’t trust a man that throws hard-earned money away at a card table.”
“Do the Abercrombies trust Sam Merck?” I asked.
“All he does is keep the grounds, miss. He ain’t allowed inside the house.”
I waggled my head in confusion. “Then why do you hide your purse from him?”
“That’s perzackly what Jules says.” Pansy sighed as though both of us were daft. “Just ’cause Sam ain’t supposed to come in, don’t mean he won’t ever.”
Some of us perceived can’t, won’t, and don’t as dares. In my youth, if Papa hadn’t been so enamored of all three, whippings might have been fewer and further between.
I flipped back to the page with Sam’s and Gertrude’s descriptions. I’d seen them somewhere. At the restaurant? The minstrel show? Oh, well. The sooner I stopped thinking about it, the sooner I’d remember.
“After Jules found the front doors open, was Avilla reading to her father when you went upstairs?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You saw them.”
“Yes’m.” Pansy took a cucumber from the stack and munched it, absently. “Well, now I think on it, the door was shut, just like Miss Belinda’s. They was there, though. After I saw Miss Belinda had gone to Jesus, I ran down the hall and pounded on the door, screamin’ for help.
“Miss Avilla rushed out, and Mr. Abercrombie, fast as he’s able. Jules came, too, then he went back downstairs. He hailed a buggy passin’ by and tol’ ’em a murder had been done and to go for the police.”
Crockery tinked together as Jules reentered the kitchen. “Shows how good you remember. The master stumbled and near fainted away when he saw Miss Belinda like that. Me and Miss Avilla took him back down the hall, ’fore he tol’ me to fetch the po-lice.”
“The police,” I repeated. “Not a doctor.”
Jules removed a stack of ironed napkins from a drawer. “If he’d asked for a doctor, that’s what I’d have sent those people to fetch.”
“Did he check Mrs. Abercrombie’s pulse? Put a mirror under her nose? Did anyone?”
Jules’s and Pansy’s eyes met. Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, no. We didn’t, did we? I never…Oh, my Lord.”
“No need for it,” he snapped back, “and I’ll thank you kindly not to upset my wife. Miss Belinda was dead where she laid. I can promise you that.”
I sipped my coffee and entered a few notes to allow the tension to subside. Pansy was sniffling again. I was sorry for the doubt I’d planted, but the question wasn’t mean-spirited or frivolous.
I listed the four people who’d entered the room at least once: Pansy, Avilla, Hubert Abercrombie, and Jules. In that instance, a physician would be remiss to declare death by sight alone. Besides, wasn’t it instinctive to check for life-signs?
Could the shock of seeing his wife strangled with a string of her own pearls have unhinged Hubert Abercrombie that badly? Possibly, yet moments later, he had the presence of mind to send his manservant for help.
A thought stilled my hand. What if Abercrombie didn’t check his wife’s pulse or respiration because he knew she was dead before he entered the room? Knew even before Pansy screamed? That would explain those lapses and why the authorities were summoned instead of a doctor.
But not the burglary, dash it all.
Without cognizance of it, Rendal LeBruton’s cruelty to his wife must be influencing my deductions in this case. And how tidy it would be to wangle the earlier robberies into decoys, albeit lucrative ones, for a LeBruton/Abercrombie conspiracy. Rendal murdered Belinda, Hubert will return the favor by killing Penelope a few days hence, thus each has disposed of a problematic wife and ensured himself against the other’s betrayal or blackmail.
“You got any more questions, miss?” Pansy startled me from plotting what might be the perfect double-homicide.
“Just a few,” I stammered. “What did you do after Avilla and Mr. Abercrombie returned to the guest room and Jules went downstairs?”
“Sat myself down on the steps and bawled.” Pansy swiped the back of a hand under her eyes. “That’s what.”
“Do you know where Sam Merck lives?”
“Not perzackly.”
Pansy’s demeanor had taken a hostile turn. She wanted me gone. I didn’t blame her.
With reluctance, she said, “A boardinghouse on Blake Street’s all Gert ever tol’ me.” She glanced up. “I swear.”
“Everything you’ve said has been the truth, to the best of your memory. I know that.”
The dining room door, through which Jules had exited, cracked open a few inches. “Best you bring them sandwiches, woman. The po-licemen is coming down from Miss Belinda’s room.”
I ripped a leaf from the notebook and wrote:As advised, I’ve hied for home. JBS
To Pansy, I said, “Do you remember the constable that arrived a moment before I did? A tall man in a black frock coat?”
“Yes’m.”
“His name is Jack O’Shaughnessy. Will you please give him this message for me?”
Pansy slipped the ragged paper in her pocket, then hefted the tray. Whether she heard my expression of thanks, I wasn’t sure.
The mansion’s service entrance had a brick walkway leading to a side drive partially overhung by a porte cochere. Beyond it was a sandstone block and clapboard stable. Lifting my skirts, I wandered across the lawn to the rear of the house.
Cows lowed in the pasture beyond, their night sounds less pronounced than the odor of fresh droppings. I jumped at voices raised in argument, then realized they were drifting from the front lawn, not closing in from behind me. From the overheard snatches, it seemed a constable was giving the reporter, Glover Rudd, a heave-ho out the front door. The French doors were closed, but the rope still hung from the balcony rail outside Belinda Abercrombie’s bedchamber. To my dismay, crushed walnut hulls lined the flower beds adjacent to the exterior wall. In the darkness, it was impossible to tell whether the shrubbery had any broken branches. I dared not strike a match.
To my right, a shadow moved across a wan rectangle of light on the grass. I shrank back, peering up at the source. A silhouette loomed at the window in the room next to Mrs. Abercrombie’s. By the height and shape, I surmised it to be Avilla. She couldn’t see me, but it didn’t keep my heart from pounding.
When I reached the buggy, Izzy was dozing, his head a-droop in the harness. An undertaker’s wagon with black-draped isinglass side windows, a few saddled horses, and another buggy had joined the parked cavalcade.
Constable Hopkins stood guard at the entrance. The spectators had been shooed away or quit the scene of their own accord. I departed with more questions than answers.
As I’d expected and dreade
d, Won Li was waiting up for me. Jack was the unknowing recipient of a series of Occidental insults for abandoning me to my own devices at such a late hour. Mentioning my obviously unscathed condition did naught to stem the tide. While I waited for Won Li to lose his voice, or a lung to collapse, I stoked the woodstove and put on the kettle. Rifling the pie safe devoted to his herbal pharmacy released fragrances both pleasing and noxious.
The long, complicated day had sapped my energy. Sleep was the sensible antidote, but there was research to be done, requiring a lively, agile brain. In addition, if Jack perchanced to retrieve his horse from our stable in the wee hours, slumbering through his visit would not achieve an informational exchange in regard to the Abercrombie case.
He’d proven himself egregiously tight-lipped about police matters. Coming at him from ambush and a subtle application of friendly enticement should alleviate that minor character flaw.
Won Li watched as I measured gotu kola, red clover, damiana, ginseng, kava kava, red raspberry, peppermint, and cloves in a teapot.
“Have you taken a chill?” he asked. “Or are you desirous of plowing a field by moonlight?”
I laughed. Changing out of my rumpled suit into my thinnest cotton gown before the elixir fired my blood was imperative. However, his remark confirmed I’d remembered the recipe correctly.
We took chairs at the kitchen’s round, pine table, where I discoursed the rudiments of the LeBruton divorce and Abercrombie robbery/homicide. His interest was as plain as a spinster’s shimmy, but he said, “Your father would not approve. I do not approve.”
“Neither do I.”
In my experience, no race of people on earth could scowl as menacingly as those of the Chinese persuasion.
“I do not approve of men who thrash women physically and emotionally,” I said, “and I do not approve of a life being extinguished for a pillow slip full of jewelry.
“Furthermore, I don’t give a fig whether what’s happened to Penelope LeBruton and Belinda Abercrombie is my bailiwick, my duty, or my responsibility to resolve. They deserve a champion. I may not be equal to the task, but I can’t turn my back and hope for the best.”
A Lady Never Trifles with Thieves Page 6
