Antique Secrets

by Libby Howard

  “Would there be a record if this married man left his wife for Lucille?” I asked the judge. “I know a lot of records were lost in the courthouse fire, but was that sort of thing reported in the paper?”

  “The courthouse fire was before that, and most of the records were preserved off site since they were outgrowing that building by that time. And yes, there would be a record, and such a scandal would have made the papers unless her family had the money to squash the story. Even if the man hadn’t filed for divorce, his wife would have filed for abandonment.”

  I made another note. “Are those records online?”

  “Not those. We microfiched all the records back in the seventies and eighties, but only bothered to put the last twenty years of records in an electronic format. You’ll need to go into Milford. And it will take some time unless you know exactly when the man or his wife would have filed. Or even their names.” He shook his head. “You’re better off checking the paper first. They’ve archived everything electronically and it’s all available online. Milford County Historical Society had a series of fundraisers to pay for it all as part of their preservation project.”

  I grimaced. “Mabel was expecting a proposal from Harlen Hansen right about then. I know her family wasn’t well connected, but there’s a chance the whole story wouldn’t have seen the light of day.”

  “Not necessarily. If the gossip was public knowledge, then there wouldn’t be much they could do. Plus, I don’t know if the society and gossip columnists would be easily silenced about something like that. Harlen Hansen driving drunk into a light pole—that they may have hushed up and not reported. Harlen Hansen’s almost fiancée’s sister being caught by the chief of police with her skirts up in the company of a married man would have been gleefully reported.”

  He was right. And the paper would have been more than happy if Harlen had broken things off with Mabel and gone back to being the county’s most eligible bachelor. But he hadn’t broken things off. In spite of his reputation, had he really loved Mabel? Loved her enough to overlook a wild twin that most likely ran off with her lover?

  I wasn’t particularly tired, but it was late and I had an early morning tomorrow with Daisy’s and my sunrise yoga, then work. So I slid a bookmark into the journal, hoping that Evie documented what had happened to the prodigal Stevens sister, wished Judge Beck a good night, and headed upstairs to lie in bed, wide awake with all the drama of nearly one hundred years ago running through my head.

  A shadow formed in my peripheral vision and sat in the lounge chair, this one a welcome visitor to my bedroom.

  “What do you think, Eli?” I asked the ghost. “Have I been wrong? Maybe Mabel’s guilt isn’t something to do with her daughter, or with her marriage to Harlen. Maybe it’s about her sister.” I thought once more of Lucille. She’d been disowned. If she’d run off with her lover, only to have him ditch her, what would she have done? It had been late 1925 and women without any family connections, women who’d been tossed from their home for sleeping with a married man wouldn’t have had many opportunities in terms of a job or ways to support herself. Had she come back and asked Mabel for help? Had her sister refused, or been pressured to refuse, driving a wedge between husband and wife and causing Mabel’s guilt? If they’d turned Lucille away, and the woman had been forced into prostitution to support herself, perhaps even dying young because of it, wouldn’t that be enough to cause Mabel to beg the Lord for forgiveness of her sins?

  Yes, it would. But in order to know what really happened, I’d need to discover what happened with Lucille.

  Chapter 12

  “I’m so angry about that young woman’s father kicking her out,” Daisy sputtered. “I could do sun salutations all day long, and I’d still be furious. How could anyone do such a thing and call himself a parent? And where was that girl’s mother? Because she should have taken a frying pan to her husband’s head.”

  “She died when the girls were about five. And I’m not defending him at all, but Lucille sounds like a wild child. She was eighteen and sneaking out of her home, drinking and smoking, and evidently screwing around with a married guy. It wasn’t like they had a military school for girls to ship her off to, and she was eighteen anyway. We don’t know how many warnings he gave her, or if he told her he’d kick her out the next time, or what. All we have is Evie’s note in her journal.”

  “And Evie clearly didn’t like Lucille.” Daisy glared at me, as if I were the one who had turned a young woman out onto the streets. “What if that guy had raped her and no one believed her? What if he’d gotten her drunk, or slipped her something? And why isn’t he in the gutter with his bag in hand? He’s the one breaking marriage vows, not Lucille.”

  “I know, I know,” I assured her. “I hate it too, but this was over ninety years ago, Daisy. We can’t do anything about it now. Maybe there weren’t shelters and places to help women in those situations then like there are today.”

  “There aren’t nearly enough of them even today,” she grumbled.

  I knew that Daisy worked with young at-risk girls, that she probably saw more than her fair share of rape victims, homelessness, and wrongful blame. It made me even more determined to find out what happened to Lucille.

  “And why didn’t her sister stand up for her?” Daisy demanded. “If my father had kicked my twin out of the house, I would have gone to that rich influential guy who supposedly was on the verge of proposing and asked him to at least make sure my sister had the resources to live independently and not starve to death.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. Evie had described Mabel as kind, shy, and reserved. Maurice had described her as strict and unbending. Which was right? Had the woman changed that much over her life? Perhaps Mabel had gone to Harlen and promised to marry him if he helped her sister, although from what Evie had implied in her journals, Mabel was set on marrying him anyway.

  “Let me dig a little and find out what happened,” I told Daisy. “I’ll tell you what I find out. For all we know, Mabel sent her a check every month to help her out. For all we know, the married guy left his wife, ran off with Lucille, and the two of them lived in sin happily ever after.”

  “I hope so,” Daisy said as she rolled up her mat. “I hope that Lucille had her happily ever after and didn’t end up having to turn to prostitution to make ends meet, or died from starvation in an alleyway somewhere.”

  I hoped so as well, but that ghost in my dining room made me fear that Lucille hadn’t had her happy ending.

  J.T. had me researching some potential bail clients from Milford, so I wasn’t able to get to the Stevens’s family drama until late in the day. Since I had a date for the married-man-scandal, it was fairly easy to find in the newspaper archives—and it was there, in the social column, with as many lurid details as were probably permissible to print back then.

  The police chief had heard some noise in a small public park downtown and gone to investigate. There he found Silas Albright seated against a tree, pants down to his ankles, with a woman straddling him, her skirt around her waist. It had been night, but she’d turned slightly when the chief had called out, and he’d recognized her. Silas had done the only gallant act of the evening, pushing Lucille off and behind him as he stood, pants still around his ankles. Then he confronted the chief, ensuring that Lucille could slip away, and refused to name her.

  I was flabbergasted. No one had known besides the two lovers and the police chief. If that big jerk had just kept his yap shut, nobody else would ever have known about it. If the chief had really been so appalled at the immorality of the two, he could have taken Lucille aside privately and warned her about the possible consequences of her actions. She was not even nineteen yet. An eighteen-year-old girl. And I had no idea how old Silas Albright was, but maybe the chief should have scolded him about public exposure and honoring the sanctity of his marriage vows as well. Then he could have gone home to his own wife, and let it all go.

  No. He’d gone to his buddy and to
ld him what he’d seen. And Lucille’s father had kicked her out of the house, yelling at her while Mabel stood by and cried, the whole neighborhood witnessing the spectacle. He hadn’t done it to protect Mabel’s reputation, or potential engagement to Harlen Hansen, he’d done it because he was angry at his daughter. And instead of doing it quietly and keeping everything hush-hush to preserve reputations, he’d branded her a loose woman in front of the entire neighborhood.

  Daisy was right. This guy was the worst sort of human being. And now I really was concerned about Lucille. A young woman, out on the streets alone. With the story splashed all over the town, would even her friends have taken her in? And Silas…. Yes, he’d cheated on his wife, and I wasn’t at all excusing him for that, but he’d also tried to shield Lucille and refused to name her. He’d taken the heat with the chief, and tried to keep a young woman’s reputation intact.

  I hated this police chief. And I hated Hugh Stevens. Both had died long before I was born, but I still wanted to drive down to the cemetery and spit on their graves.

  In spite of searching until well after quitting time, I couldn’t find anything further on Lucille or Silas. The ‘incident’ had occurred in October of 1925. The girls had turned nineteen in December. Mabel’s engagement announcement was in the paper in January with a June wedding planned. I gathered up some files to take home with me. Then just before I left, I checked one more thing.

  The Stevens-Hansen wedding had taken place June 2, 1926, as planned. There was a picture of a stern Harlen with his bushy mustache and potbelly standing next to a beautiful Mabel. The bride had a beaded sheath dress with a stylish handkerchief hem, a beaded headdress accessorizing the beautiful, wavy, jaw-length bob that Evie had so envied. But it was her eyes that caught my notice. Earlier society pictures of Mabel had shown a sweet, happy beauty. This picture showed a beautiful woman, but one who looked more like she was at a funeral than her wedding.

  It wasn’t until I’d gotten home and settled in a comfy armchair with several of Evie’s journals and cup of hot tea that it hit me. Mabel was married in June of 1926 at the age of nineteen. Her daughter, Eleonore, was born in December of 1926. Either Mabel had given birth to a very premature six-month fetus, or she’d been pregnant at the time of her wedding.

  A pregnant woman would need to get married, especially after she’d just seen what her father had done to her sister. Either Harlen had jumped the gun and decided that an engagement ring was sufficient promise for him to begin intimate relations with his intended, or Mabel had gotten pregnant by another man.

  And if she had, Harlen would have done the math just as easily as I had. And he would have been cold and resentful of both his wife and the daughter he had to raise as his own. Judge Beck was right, except Mabel hadn’t cheated on her wedding vows—she’d deceived her fiancé into marrying a woman pregnant with another man’s baby.

  If that was the case, then Mabel was more like her twin than her friend Evie had thought.

  Chapter 13

  “Makes sense,” Judge Beck said, offering me another piece of pizza. It was a risky dinner for us to be sharing, given that the dining room table was covered with his paperwork and Evie’s journals. As glad as I was that he’d brought home food, I was wishing it was something less messy. “Although I’d rather think that Harlen consummated his marriage before the vows than believe that his fiancée was running around on him.”

  “Did people really do that?” I asked, licking sauce off one of my fingers. “Consider engagement as good as a wedding vow, I mean, not cheat on their fiancés.”

  “Yeah to both. The latter means that Mabel wasn’t that nice, sweet girl that her friend thought she was. Cheating on your fiancé and trying to pass off another man’s kid as your husband’s is pretty reprehensible in my eyes.”

  In mine too, and I just couldn’t see the Mabel from Evie’s journals doing that. But I was only getting Evie’s view of the woman.

  “Maybe Mabel came clean to Harlen before their marriage and he stepped up to the plate and helped her out?” I conjectured. It didn’t seem in keeping with his reputation, but at least it would make Mabel less of a horrible woman.

  The judge shrugged. “If he was really obsessed with her, he might have married her anyway, then when the glow faded, he ended up resenting that he was stuck raising another’s child as his own and with a woman who’d married him to save her reputation.”

  “Or for his money,” I suggested. “If she was pregnant by someone else, then why hadn’t she run off and marry that guy? Given what I’ve learned about her, I’m thinking she probably loved the man if she was sleeping with him. The only reason to stay and marry Harlen instead was that she wanted the money and status that went along with being his wife.”

  Which would be so cold. Evie was most likely painting a glossy picture of her friend, but how could sweet, loyal Mabel leave the man she loved and deceive another just for money and social status? Had her sister’s plight frightened her? Was she worried that she’d wind up like Lucille if she didn’t marry the man her father wanted her to marry?

  And what had happened to Lucille after getting tossed out of her home?

  “Maybe the father of her child was a jerk and didn’t want to marry her. Or maybe Lucille wasn’t the only one having sex with a married man.”

  I winced, thinking that Judge Beck could be right. Deceiver. A party to adultery. Money-grubbing. None of these were things I wanted to believe about Mabel. I shook my head, thinking that Mabel’s motives might be something we never discovered. “What I don’t understand is how they could have kept Eleonore’s actual birth date a secret. It was correct on the county death certificate that I saw. I couldn’t find a birth certificate online, but I just assumed it was too old to be scanned in, or that it had been lost.”

  “Maybe because she’d had the baby out of state?” Judge Beck guessed. “Birth certificates weren’t as big a deal then as they are now. You could go through your whole life and not need one for anything. Heck, lots of rural people with home births didn’t even have a birth certificate. The family bible was accepted as a record of birth date, death date, and wedding date in most counties. If she had the baby in Pennsylvania and stayed there for a few months, she could have just announced the birth as later than it truly was.”

  The society pages had not been abuzz with Eleonore’s early birth. Mabel had given birth out of state and the announcement hadn’t shown up in the paper until March—claiming the baby was born in March 1927. Then the three-month-old baby that arrived home was actually a six-month-old baby. Throughout it all, Evie, pregnant herself, had helped Mabel stay away as long as possible to keep the deception. Evie had lived apart from the husband she’d loved for nine months to help her friend.

  But had Harlen been fooled? It was unlikely given how he’d treated both his wife and daughter going forward. But he hadn’t kicked them out—no doubt saving himself the humiliation of letting the world know he’d been suckered into marrying a woman pregnant with another’s child. It was doubtful that he’d have let his young, beautiful wife remain in the country from September of 1926 to June of 1927 without visiting her. Mabel was a slim, petite woman. Even with a first pregnancy, she would have clearly been a trimester further along than she should have been.

  “So, Mabel heads out of town before she gets too big, claiming she’s having a rough pregnancy. She has a baby in December. Makes the announcement in March, when she should have had the baby. Gets a faked birth certificate if she needs one, then comes back to Locust Point in June with a baby that’s actually three months older than anyone thinks.”

  I was pretty sure some of the experienced moms would have suspected, but all Mabel had to do was claim continued poor health and concern over the health of her baby, then keep most visitors away until the baby was old enough to pass for the age she claimed it was.

  But Evie had known. At the end of the 1925 journal, she was engaged to Howard Pratt. She’d exchanged vows with him in January
in a whirlwind marriage, and she’d also given birth in December of 1926, out of state with her friend. The two girls had grown up together, and at some point, the actual date of Eleonore’s birth had come out because Suzette made it clear that her grandmother and Eleonore were the same age, both born in 1926, not 1927 as Mabel had no doubt told the town.

  Eleonore at some point had found out the truth about her birthdate. And she’d most likely had done the math as well. What had she thought about her parentage? Had she ever asked her mother?

  It was something I needed to ask Matt and possibly his father about.

  “Sounds like this Mabel had a lot to feel guilty about,” Judge Beck commented as he grabbed another slice of pizza.

  I nodded. She did. But there was so much more I needed to find out. Who was Eleonore’s father? Had Mabel really been as materialistic as I was thinking, or had she been a scared, panicked young woman who felt she had no other options? And what had happened to Lucille?

  I kept reading Evie’s journals, my vision blurring with the huge entries that detailed her wedding dress, how handsome Howard looked, and who was at the wedding. There were a few missed journal entries the days after their marriage that prompted a knowing smile from me. Yes, Evie had loved Howard, and it was very obvious that they were keeping each other too busy for lengthy journal entries. For the first few months of 1926, there was little mention of Mabel and none of Lucille as Evie waxed poetic about married bliss.

  Then in June, I read something that had me reeling. Right before Mabel’s extravagant wedding to Harlen—the day before, in fact—Lucille’s body had been found floating in the Hostenfelder pond.

  I choked back a sob, tears in my eyes as I put the journal down, needing a break. Actually, I needed a glass of wine and a good cry.