Mysteries of Winterthurn

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “Then again,” Xavier distractedly said, “he may be guilty: for I have often been astonished, in both my limited experience with crime and my somewhat more ambitious reading in the history thereof, at where guilt may reside: and cannot claim omniscience.”

  At this, poor Thérèse fell miserably silent: for though she desperately wanted to retain Xavier’s wavering interest, so sensitive was she to every shade and nuance in his manner, and every flicker of expression in his face, she understood full well that he wished for nothing more than to escape her: that he might, with a shameless greed of his own, read the doubtless slapdash letter Perdita had penned. (For Perdita was not in the least “indisposed,” nor had she retired early to her bed-chamber, though this was given out to Willela Spies as the reason for her absence from tea, and from the evening meal: nay, on the contrary, the flighty miss had been unable to decline an invitation, made in careless haste, from Valentine Westergaard and a few of his circle,—amongst them Mary-Louise Von Goeler, and Calvin Shaw, and Felicity Peregrine, and, it may have been, Xavier’s own brother Wolf—that she join them for a midsummer eve’s excursion on the river, on Valentine’s lavender-sailed sloop, beyond Sandusky Island: very likely to partake of a lavish supper at one or another of the riverside inns. Ah, what bitterness gnawed at Thérèse’s heart!—what righteous ire, what childish spite! For while a sense of simple justice urged her to disabuse Xavier of his trust in the deceitful Perdita, a more profound,—and, indeed, most numbing—sense of Christian charity forbade her to utter a word. “For I dare not trust my own instincts in this matter,” the unhappy girl admonished herself, “as my love for Xavier must blind me to all that is low, and petty, and degraded, in my own female nature.”)

  So it was, Thérèse bit her lip; then proffered the subject of Perdita’s health, as a kind of bait, which had the desired effect of ensnaring her companion,—though she could only reiterate, with blushing emphasis, that her sister was “feeling not altogether herself, as a consequence, doubtless, of the unusual humidity,” but would surely regain her customary vivacity upon the morrow. This assurance did seem to gratify Xavier; who had no more pride than to make further inquiries regarding Perdita: whether she did not find it a strain on her delicate nerves, for instance, to take up residence again in Winterthurn, after the divers tragedies of her girlhood: and whether it was a matter of worrisome distraction, that so many suitors,—as the gossip-mongers would have it—were competing for her hand.

  “Ah, there are not so very many,” Thérèse stiffly rejoined.

  Yet, as this topic drew Xavier’s extreme interest, poor Thérèse was obliged to develop it: hoping that her interrogator,—so uncommonly observant, it seemed, in other regards!—should fail to take note of the commingled pain and adoration in her face, and the significance of her faltering voice. She spoke of Mr. Osmyn Goshawk, who had long been attentive to both the sisters, after their father’s death, and who had,—ah, most considerate of gentlemen!—applied for both their hands, at different times: his first choice being Perdita (so the blushing Thérèse was obliged to say), and his second, herself. She spoke of the Reverend Harmon Bunting, who, with his widowed mother, had been assiduously attentive to them both, years ago; and who, as a bachelor minister, was much in need of a wife: whether Perdita (again, the gentleman’s first choice) or Thérèse. An upstanding man of God, sure to rise in the ranks of the Episcopal Church, painstaking, exacting, utterly scrupulous in every matter, large or small; his prim, pinched, rather waxen face verging, it sometimes seemed, upon the sternly attractive; and the rare power of his sermons from the pulpit—!

  Thérèse then hesitantly supplied the names of a half-dozen other rivals for her sister’s hand, amongst them Henry Peregrine’s nephew Angus, who was making such a name for himself in Boston, where he practiced law; and Calvin Shaw,—albeit he was a fickle sort of gentleman, addicted to gambling and horses, and doubtless destined to bachelordom. As to the young Annapolis graduate of whom Xavier had heard, and the Versfield heir, and Valentine Westergaard himself,—Thérèse grew close-mouthed, and said that such rumors were baseless; indeed, most disagreeable. She paused,—seemed about to speak further,—shyly raised her eyes to Xavier’s face,—murmured that, as a Latin tutor for Jody Shaw, and Roddy Spies, and one or another boys in their teens who were acquainted with the circle to which Valentine belonged, she was in a position to say that,—ah, she knew not precisely what: and had best hold her tongue.

  By degrees the mist-shrouded sky had begun to lighten; and a gauzy moon, of singular luminosity and proportions, made its belated appearance; and the creatures of the night, invisible in the tall grasses of the churchyard, and in the wild wooded area farther up the hill, began their dolorous song. Perdita’s missive pressed against his breast, and its subtle lavender fragrance rising to his nostrils, what wonder that the young detective wished heartily to be gone, that he might all avidly peruse it?—despite the fact that, in the moon’s pale glow, with a white radiance suffusing her skin, and her great haunted eyes affixed to his own, Miss Thérèse Kilgarvan struck a most compelling picture, indeed. Alas, that her beauty was so somber, so chaste!—and so easily mistaken for plainness!—the greater injustice being her identity as Perdita Kilgarvan’s older sister.

  Xavier took care to escort the trembling Thérèse to the rear of Mrs. Spies’s garden, where the narrow wooden door yet stood suggestively open; and scarcely noted that, in her sudden shyness, the arm she slipped through his was wooden indeed, and every movement of hers stiff and ungainly. It seemed too that, of a sudden, she had gone mute, where a scant moment before she had been very nearly chattering,—a most puzzling, most mysterious young woman, who shrank from him even as she required his assistance in descending the hill, and in extricating thorns and brambles from her heavy skirt. At the garden door Xavier bethought himself to inquire of her what she had intended to say regarding her tutorial charges,—or had it something to do with Valentine Westergaard?

  For a pained space of time the agitated young woman stood quite tongue-tied, as if desirous both of scurrying away and of acquiescing to her companion’s question; her gloved fingers plucking nervously at one another, and her shadowed eyes fairly shrinking from Xavier’s penetrant stare. Then, as Xavier was about to bid her goodnight, and turn away, she murmured, in a voice so tremulous Xavier could barely hear: “Only that,—dear Cousin!—you must be ever vigilant against Valentine Westergaard, as he has conceived an intense dislike of you—or so Roddy Spies has said,—and,—and—you see, I cannot comprehend why,—only that it seems to be so,—in which case,—O dear Xavier!—do not go riding or boating with him, or dining, or,—I know not—whatever sorts of diversions gentlemen might do,—for it seems—Nay, you must excuse me, Cousin: Mrs. Spies will be asking after me—”

  Whereupon the pallid young woman betook herself, in some haste, into the garden,—leaving Xavier Kilgarvan to stare after her speechless.

  “. . . Your Adoring Cousin”

  As to Perdita’s secret missive, I shall waste no time in coy subterfuge, or authorial procrastination, but record it, herewith,—

  Dear Cousin Xavier:

  “Give Woman wings & she is either angel or beast,”—thus Father oft said—& Dear Xavier can he have been mistaken with his wisdom!—Nay it is doubtless so,—for I have broke my promise to you—& seemed to know beforehand that I should do so—Alas must do so,—being not abed these many hours but upon my knees, affrighted & shamed!—I mean of my own Passion, sweet Cousin,—as well of yours—& You.

  In a weighty old tome smelling of dust & time, my Guardian Angel Thérèse (for thus I playfully chide her,—ah, she is so good!—& hath a beauty in her soul that makes mine quite sullied, as Iago would know),—my Angel Thérèse discovered & read scoffingly to me, of the cruel things claimed of our Sex thro’ the ages. Such as,—

  Woman has not a soul (this, the Chinaman’s fancy)

  Woman is barred from Paradise (the Mohammedan)

  Woman is but half human
(Aristotle & Hippocrates)

  Woman is so foul,—nay a very bunghole of pestilence & rot!—’tis better the human species lapses to extinction, than that Man succumb to her wantonness (thus say Ambrose & Tertullian & many another elder of the Church)

  Woman is all that man is not: Woman is not all that Man is.

  Thus, dear Xavier, you must agree, ’tis impossible that you & I shall ever know each other, across this dread Abyss. When I recall how boldly you squeezed my hand (& I but an ignorant girl of 12!) & pressed your heated lips against my cheeks, in Glen Mawr’s enshadowed cellar, why, my Virgin heart quakes, & my conscience shrinks away, in appalled shame! So fierce & hotblooded & intemperate are you, & so Kilgarvan, I dare not trust you even in the Quaker churchyard, where ’tis said tiresome dour-faced ghosts troop about amidst the mosquitoes & the bats! Nay, sweet Xavier, I dare not trust myself in your embrace, who has vowed to be Virgin on her wedding day.

  (& if God will grant me thus, VIRGIN THEREAFTER.)

  Nay, I jest. My fevered pulses jest. ’Tis the moon’s sly tide. I mean the secret Female tide. I mean,—but I dare not whisper what I mean, for fear of making you blush. Thus, these jests. Feeble ploys only. For, were you here with me now, secreted away in my bed-chamber,—

  (Alas, old Willela summons me, that I must simper, & sigh, & oversee her endless prattle, & settle her cushions behind her, who might be better served,—thus the Devil counsels!—by having them mashed hard & firm against her face! But Nay.)

  Well,—she calls; & the pauper Perdita must obey; & shall break off with (dare I whisper it?) a kiss,—’til such time as we will meet again. Sweet Xavier, you dwell already in my heart,—as I pray I dwell in yours—& shall murmur Farewell; with this warning,—

  DO NOT VENTURE ALONE INTO THE DEVIL’S HALF-ACRE

  UNTIL SUCH TIME AS YOUR ADORING COUSIN

  Perdita

  WILL ACCOMPANY YOU HAND IN HAND,—& ARMS ENTWINED,

  —LIPS SEEKING LIPS,—ETC.

  This remarkable billet-doux, of a licentiousness and daring scarcely imaginable in any young woman, let alone one of good breeding, our amazed hero read with trembling alacrity, by one of the flickering gas-lamps of Volpp Avenue. And as the multifarious thoughts, desires, and low impulses that flooded his being, for hours thereafter, are not fit to be recorded in print, I shall forbear doing so,—and leave the overwrought young detective to his folly.

  The Doomed Man

  It was on the overcast and singularly hot afternoon of July 1 that, after hearing vehement testimony by a motley assortment of witnesses, and such crucial persons as Sheriff Frank Shearwater, and Chief of Police Hiram Munck, and District Solicitor James William Hollingshead, a county grand jury unanimously moved to hand down an indictment of murder in the first degree against Isaac Rosenwald: being, as it was afterward explained to newspaper reporters, “distinctly prejudiced” by said suspect’s feeble defense of himself, and his “sullen,” and “craven,” and “uncooperative” demeanor throughout: and having been, in any case, under great pressure to arrive at this verdict, as a result of vociferous urgings by men who gathered daily outside the Courthouse,—whether actual members of the noisome Jericho Brethren (though unrobed, and unmasked), or hot-tempered citizens, or mere idlers, of the sort that oft congregated in Courthouse Green in the more hospitable months of the year, for want of worthy employment. And, when news of the long-awaited indictment quickly spread through the square, how jubilant a chorus of voices arose!—and wound its way from block to block, through much of the city, and across the river to South Winterthurn, where a like clamor of triumph sounded, most particularly in the Cadwaller Street area; where, it seems, numerous ill-informed persons believed that an actual trial, and an actual verdict, had transpired, and that the Jew would be soon hanged.

  (All this, it scarcely needs be said, was duly reported in the newspapers; and even the Winterthurn Gazette saw fit to emblazon the verdict in two-inch headlines, and to include a crude pencil sketch of the accused man by a local artist, which emphasized a low brow, a rapier-like nose, and lewdly thick lips.)

  Following the grand jury’s announcement, a flurry of interest in the case again arose, and it became most problematic to determine whether the campaign of the Sun, and the Nautauga Falls Bulletin, against Mr. Rosenwald’s attorney (a gentleman, it was noted, of “New York City training and Hebrew alliance”) was the crucial factor in the unfortunate violence done against him, in his hotel room on Union Avenue; or whether, roused by public sentiment that any lawyer, of any persuasion, should have the audacity to defend a murderer of such proportions, a small mob of men acted on their own volition, in beating him so badly, he had to be hospitalized straightaway,—and was obliged to make the prudent, though belated, decision, to withdraw from the Rosenwald case.

  At this time too it began to be reported, in the Valley papers, that a group of Utica students,—including, it seems, several young men from the Baptist seminary—formed a secret fraternal organization, friendly in spirit to the Brethren of Jericho (whose membership in recent months, through the entire state, had increased most remarkably), but narrower in their interests: an organization not named in any of the papers, though its title,—the Kill Kyke Klan—was by no means a secret.

  SO DISGUSTED WAS XAVIER KILGARVAN with the newspapers, he had long since ceased provoking a headache, and gastric upset, by too thoroughly perusing them, with the occasional exception of the Gazette: thus it was, he knew of these matters only indirectly, and by way of what was mentioned to him at home,—though Mrs. Kilgarvan never spoke of the “repulsive” case, and Mr. Kilgarvan, being much caught up in the designing and fashioning of his toys, seemed but dimly aware of developments outside the workshop. When Bradford came to dine, bringing with him his fiancée,—the pretty Miriam Burke, Mayor Burke’s daughter—he spoke with careful neutrality on the matter, as, while he believed the case against Rosenwald was insubstantial indeed, the Mayor was “all fired up about it”; and he did not wish to offend his prospective father-in-law, who was inclined to be hot-tempered. Wolf rarely dined with the family, but sometimes dropped by, at about tea time, on his way elsewhere,—upon which occasion he could not resist chiding, and teasing, and very nearly abusing, his youngest brother Xavier, by inquiring why he looked so morose and dissatisfied of late, for, after all, was not the “Cruel Suitor” safely under lock and key, and prevented from further slaughter; or was it the case,—ah, how wickedly innocent this query!—that Xavier had fallen in love—?

  “I hope the lady is not Miss Thérèse Kilgarvan, our ‘bluestocking’ cousin,” Wolf said, with a stroking of his curled mustache, and a provoking comradely wink, “for I should be most fearful of a sister-in-law possessed of such intemperate piety, and skill at ancient languages; not to mention her questionable history as an heiress of Glen Mawr.”

  To this tormenting observation, Xavier did not condescend to reply; though a dark flush of his face surely signaled the malevolent Wolf that his words had found their target.

  As to Colin, who had, for some years now, been the despair of his parents,—at thirty-one years of age, he gave rather more the impression of being a hulking youth of indeterminate sensibility than the cherished son of genteel parents; and from his way of life,—whether at the Barraclough estate, where he sometimes found employment, or in the waterfront area, or in South Winterthurn—he had picked up numberless coarse mannerisms, and coarser habits of slang, which could not fail to distress his mother in particular. Xavier, who had long pitied him, and wondered at him, and felt an obscure guilt over him, now deemed it a mercy that Colin so rarely troubled to visit Wycombe Street, and yet more rarely succumbed to Mrs. Kilgarvan’s invitation to dine with the family on Sunday. That Colin’s alteration was a mystery of sorts, Xavier supposed, given the happy promise of his youth, and his early enthusiasm for helping Mr. Kilgarvan in his business; that it was at best but a commonplace mystery, and one which would yield no especial reward if pursued, Xavier did not doubt. And, ah!�
��what a crude, queer, half-comical and half-threatening appearance Colin lately presented, being most days but carelessly shaven, with strands of grease-stiffened hair falling into his eyes, and a wide slack grin, and the blunt bluff insouciance of a Hereford bull that pushes and nudges where he will, with no fear of being stopped. Not the least of Colin’s queerness had to do with his outlandish carnival air, for, while attired primarily in soiled workingman’s clothes, with overalls, and hobnailed boots, and a much-notched leather belt, and shapeless “railroad” caps, he sometimes added touches of an improbable dandyish sort,—an embroidered vest that fitted his muscular chest like a girl’s bolero jacket, being far too small for him; a silk ascot tie in peacock tones, which he knotted in slovenly fashion about his neck; and a perfumed lace handkerchief that peeped, as it were, from out an overall pocket! (It was Xavier’s optimistic opinion that his brother retrieved these cast-off items from the trash, perhaps in the back alleys off Parthian Square, or Berwick; or that he had been given them by a kindly gentleman for whom he ran errands. Bradford, however, confided worriedly in Xavier that he feared Colin was a thief: that he stole these things, and doubtless others: and that he would one day bring great shame and humiliation on the family. “As if I have not had to struggle, since boyhood,” Bradford sullenly said, “to overcome the prejudice against us, as sons of the slandered ‘half-breed’: nay, as innocent bearers of the very name Kilgarvan!”)

  Xavier chose to share with no one his growing fear of Colin, and what Colin’s future might yield: since the husky young man evinced no embarrassment at accosting Xavier on the street, if he chanced to see him, to ask mockingly of him that Xavier “lend” him money; or buy a tip regarding the horses, or even the murder mystery,—as Colin called it. (For Colin hinted strongly that he knew of persons, who knew of persons, who might be of aid to the young detective in sniffing out clues, or whatever; yet the several times Xavier fell for this bait, and was rewarded with a mumbled name and address, invariably of South Winterthurn, his mission came to naught.) It was Colin, however, who told Xavier of the Kill Kyke Klan of Utica, New York; and Colin who averred, in a rare moment of brooding solicitude, that he should not want to be the luckless Rosenwald, subjected every day, it was said, to interrogation by the police; yet holding firm; and antagonizing his enemies the more by his refusal to “crack.” When Xavier queried Colin of all that he knew, or had heard, regarding Rosenwald, and his “enemies,” and the new-formed Klan, and the Brethren of Jericho, he rarely received a satisfactory answer: for the nettlesome Colin then changed his tone, and his manner, and laughingly commented that he could not be dragooned into joining such tedious organizations, and be required not only to swear pledges (to preserve the Christian family, and liberty, and white supremacy, and the Constitution, et al.) and to wear hoods and vestments, but to pay actual dues for the privilege of doing so—! “Damned fools, they are,” Colin said, with his wide jeering grin, “and nobody shall talk Colin Kilgarvan into joining them, unless dues are paid to him.”