Mysteries of Winterthurn

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Publicly chided for bringing “fresh grief” to the Westergaards, and “fresh scandal” to Winterthurn, Xavier had suffered the infirm Mrs. Spies to rap sharply at his wrist with her folded fan, while a number of persons covertly observed: and did no more than murmur, in a neutral voice, that, surely, he brought neither grief nor scandal hither, but only wished to uncover what was already in their midst. Whereupon the elderly lady gripped both arms of her wheelchair tight, and cast a flushed and indignant gaze upon him, and exclaimed, for all to hear who wished: “Ah, then!—you are even more of a disgrace to us than we had dared suppose: not only a low detective, but a traitor to your class.”

  FROM WHENCE CAME Xavier Kilgarvan’s unusually rancorous energy?—his intemperate zeal for Justice? It was supposed by those who knew him best that the death of Rosenwald had been the “final blow”; and, indeed, he was to say frequently, in the weeks and months to come, that he wished as passionately to clear Rosenwald’s name as to bring Westergaard to his knees.

  True, certainly: and admirable, indeed: but true only in part,—that Xavier sought revenge against Valentine Westergaard for having been, amongst other things, responsible for an innocent man’s death. For we are privy too to the fact that Xavier held Westergaard responsible for his own death, as well,—in a manner of speaking.

  “Let Your Light So Shine . . .”

  As a consequence of various shrewd stratagems employed by Valentine Westergaard’s defense counsel, Mr. Angus Peregrine of Boston (whom, it was said, the Colonel had essayed to contact, while the grim police carriage, bearing Valentine to police headquarters, was yet clattering down Union Avenue!), the case of The Commonwealth vs. Valentine Westergaard was to be postponed to late November; and then again,—as the defendant suffered so protracted a malaise, a tertiary species of brain fever was feared—to shortly after the New Year: a tactical maneuver not zealously opposed by the District Solicitor, James William Hollingshead, as, it seems, the trial was approached with great uncertainty, and apprehension, on both sides.

  Thus it were practicable for me, in this space, to speak briefly of a miscellany of pertinent matters, before summarizing the trial, and presenting the reader with its unlook’d-to outcome: for several things, I believe, require clarification,—Xavier’s evident escape from near-certain death; Xavier’s new-energized investigation, and its gratifying results; and Xavier’s success, at last, in persuading the Law to take Valentine Westergaard in hand, and deal with him most forcibly. (It should be remarked upon, however, that, even before the aggressive young Angus Peregrine arrived in Winterthurn City, posthaste from Boston, Valentine had been most discreet in his replies to police questioning: murmuring naught but, “Ah!—I don’t any longer know, you know,” or “Why, is’t so?—but I cannot, you know, recall: and must not prematurely agree,” or “No,—yes,—but then again, no: for memory boggles, so many months later: and, you know, my dears, you must not press me to concur, and take advantage of my compliant nature!” and the like, while dabbing at his forehead with a perfumed handkerchief, gripped in a trembling hand; and essaying to fix his interlocutors with a stare of unwavering and baffled innocence,—quite the manner, as the police officers afterward agreed, of one who has murdered savagely, and with not a whit of remorse. Yet, even then, taken by surprise as he was, and, as it were, trapped, the wily Valentine managed to contrive some deliciously inspired replies, pertaining to damning testimony by “witnesses,” the bloodstains in his house, the lethal weapon, etc.,—the which will be provided by the defense, at his trial, as there is not sufficient space here.)

  It was true that Xavier had hired an expert pathologist from the staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital to perform the tasks that no one in Winterthurn was willing, or able, to do: with a number of significant discoveries (that each of the murdered girls, and not only Eva Teal, had been strangled as well as stabbed to death; that Effie Godwit appeared to have suffered previous beatings, contusions, knife wounds, and the like; that Tricia Furlow had died bearing a three-month fetus in her womb; that a semen detection test, so belatedly performed, yet appeared to be positive in the instances of Florette Sparks, and Eva Teal,—indeed, as the perplexed Dr. Dunn reported, it might be the case that two distinct semens were yet present in the body of Miss Teal: though he would not wish to swear to it; that, judging from information supplied by Mrs. Teal, and the condition of the victim’s duodenum, she had died at approximately 3:00 A.M.,—which is to say, long after Isaac Rosenwald had been reported in his bed). It was true too that Xavier had felt obliged to suspend certain niceties of conduct, for temporary pragmatic purposes, in not only proffering “cash incentives” to one or two strategic persons (including of course the canny mother of the deceased Eva), but, by a subtle employment of language, suggesting to them, they might very well be in danger of their lives,—if the “Cruel Suitor” was not apprehended.

  (“But, dear God, he is dead!—he has been hanged!—surely everyone knows, he cannot harm us any longer!” Thus Mrs. Teal exclaimed, while fixing Xavier an emboldened, though somewhat apprehensive, look: whereupon Xavier drily replied that, as she must sense, an innocent man had been hanged in his place: and it was her obligation, as a Christian woman, to help him name the man who was guilty. Being not altogether sober at the moment, and, doubtless, sickened with a long-lingering guilt of her own, Mrs. Teal could not speak for some wracked moments; then murmured, with a sudden grasping of Xavier’s arm: “Alas, do you mean,—the other? For, perhaps,—well, I know not,—it has been so long,—and he,—I mean, the other,—why, he has been most generous,—in his grief, as he says, as well as ours,—or so he has said,—the fine gentleman,—and very different,—ah, you would think so too!—very different from,—why, from what one expects—Surely, Mr. Kilgarvan,” the confused woman said, yet gripping Xavier’s arm, and peering into his face with both anxiety, and a forlorn trace of coquetry, “surely he would not wish to harm me, who has promised generosity to me, for the remainder of my life?” Whereupon Xavier quickly said: “Of whom do you speak, Mrs. Teal,—Valentine Westergaard?” and the reply came as quickly: “Dear God, Mr. Kilgarvan, I hope there is none ‘other’—!”)

  For many an arduous day, and a goodly proportion of the night, Xavier, disguised, had made his way afoot through South Winterthurn, daring to venture into the most opprobrious of “haunts,” there to learn what he might of the fine gentleman,—so handsomely dressed, so scented with cologne, so unfailingly good-natured—whose practice it had been, until recent months, to frequent them: and to indulge in what diversions might be available: with not a whit (so it was many times reiterated) of stinginess, in his expression of gentlemanly gratitude. Elsewhere, he contrived to speak with girls and women,—ranging between the ages of twelve and seventy-three—who toiled, for a modest wage, some twelve or fourteen hours daily (Sundays naturally excepted), in the textile mill owned by the Shaws, or in the glove factory owned by the Peregrines, or in the canning factory owned by the Von Goelers, or in the paper pulp mill owned by his very kinsmen, the De Forrests: by degrees assembling a disjointed, but wondrously illuminating, narrative of Mr. Valentine Westergaard’s role as a sort of fairy-tale prince, amongst a certain segment of the younger female population south of the river. The heartfelt, impassioned, beauteous songs Valentine sang at the charity Musicales, accompanying himself on his dulcimer; the attentions he paid to this girl, and to that; the compliments, the excursions on the river, the small pretty gifts, the lengthy idle strolls in the park, the exhilarating rides in his two-seater, out into the countryside,—now Effie Godwit being favored, now little Dulcie Inman, now Tricia Furlow, now Florette Sparks, and now, not least, but, as it seemed, last,—Eva Teal herself: who quite roused jealousies amongst her girl friends for having managed to charm Mr. Westergaard for an unusual number of weeks: and for having received from him rather more than her share of nosegays, trinkets, items of apparel, and the like. As much perplexed as outraged, Xavier asked of the girls why they were not more cautio
us of their “suitor,” particularly after the first of the murders; why they were not more frightened, of his very graciousness, and honeyed charm, and “that horrific stare of his,—which possesses all the warmth, animation, and humanity, of green glass.” But the majority of the girls replied, all artlessly, that Mr. Westergaard was such a gentleman, once one was actually in his presence, and the dazed recipient of his attention,—and never seemed to mean harm, in losing his temper, or pinching, or slapping,—and was so unfailingly apologetic afterward, and so generous in retribution,—why, it was difficult to believe anything unpleasant about him. And, of course, such queer things were whispered, and were always whispered, of the attentions one or another of the girls was receiving from this, that, or the other gentleman from across the river,—whether with the name of Westergaard, or Goshawk, or Shaw, or Kilgarvan, or, indeed, with no name at all—it was a puzzle as to which information was true, and which not.

  “Yes, I see,—I suppose I see,” Xavier concurred.

  Nonetheless, a number of these young persons had, all bravely, volunteered to tell their abashèd tales to the police; but had been, as we have seen, sent unceremoniously away; and had not dared to protest,—not even when Isaac Rosenwald was arrested, and given out to be the killer, and everyone knew, ah, absolutely knew, that he was innocent.

  “But I had thought it was known that the ‘Jew’ was guilty,” Xavier drily observed. “Else why all the hubbub raised against him,—and the numberless testimonies?”

  To this, the majority of the girls could supply no coherent explanation. For it was invariably other girls, or women,—“spiteful sorts”—who had borne witness against him, and had even signed their names to affidavits, in the passion of the moment and, perhaps, to win praise from Mr. Munck and his assistants: albeit certain of these affidavits had been later retracted, at the command of a priestly confessor.

  “So it was known that Rosenwald was innocent, rather than that he was guilty,” Xavier said, taking care to keep his voice from betraying any disgust, or despair. “Yet nothing was done. I mean,—to prevent what happened.”

  “What would you have had us do?” Thus Xavier was more than once interrogated, with an expression of great perplexity.

  In making his systematic inquiries of the mill-girls, Xavier took care to disguise himself as a much older gentleman, yet not too pointedly a gentleman: not, assuredly, of Westergaard’s social rank. With meticulously gray-powdered hair, and trim goatee, and wire-rimmed glasses, and a studied and avuncular manner of speech, Xavier gave himself out to be “of the healing profession”; and had never a moment’s worry that he might be questioned,—for the naïveté of the great majority of the girls was such, they no more suspected Xavier of subterfuge than they had Valentine before him! (Indeed, it crossed the young detective’s mind upon several alarming occasions, and sorely plagued him through many an insomniac night, that any of these young females might oblige him,—ah, how prodigiously!—as, it began to seem, Perdita would never. From that young woman so very little: from these others, so much: though of course Xavier should feel quite sickened afterward. While traveling about Europe he had succumbed to one or two, or perhaps three, temptations, with an air of the experimental and the provisionary, it scarcely needs be said, but his pledge had been to Perdita all the while, or, at the very least, to her image . . . Nay, it did no good to think along such lines: it were best to forbid it. “And yet, how easy it must be,—how easy for us,—in crossing the river,—I mean for Valentine and his ilk, who ceaselessly take advantage,” Xavier bethought himself. “And no remorse afterward, I am sure: for where there is no memory, how can remorse spring to life—?”)

  In prowling the night-time streets of South Winterthurn, Xavier delighted in several disguises,—that of a waterfront laborer of his own approximate age, though stouter in girth, and far rougher of visage (taking for his model in speech, mannerisms, bearing, etc., his brother Colin); that of a racetrack hanger-on, temporarily down on his luck (taking for his model a cleverly debased version of his brother Wolf); or that of a disgruntled acquaintance of Valentine Westergaard’s, of a distinctly lower social class, who had been cheated and abused by him, yet was too cowardly to explicitly seek revenge. To the repentant, and, alas, no less garrulous Mrs. Buzard, whose conscience had, too late, pressed her to declare that “the Jew Rosenwald” had been in truth an ideal boarder, Xavier had presented himself as an affable, portly gentleman, a visitor from Powhatassie, a traveling salesman, perhaps . . . Indeed, so mesmerized did Xavier frequently become, in his mustaches, and whiskers, and eyeglasses, and new-acquired modes of walking, and improvised accents, he lamented that he must return to “Xavier Kilgarvan,” to whom so formidable a task presented itself as ridding the world of Evil,—or, at the very least, of one singularly evil man.

  “How mysterious it is!—how much a riddle!—that my ‘task’ matters not a whit to anyone else,” Xavier thought, in droll amusement, “yet is the very air I breathe, without which I could not breathe, to me!”

  AS TO THE CONTROVERSIAL “PLUNDERING” of Valentine’s house on Hazelwit Square (this term later to be used, with searing contempt, by Angus Peregrine),—Xavier performed the brazen coup very much along the lines that gossip would have it, in disguise as an upholster’s and decorator’s apprentice, a cheery young man in a cloth cap, with a valise of measuring tapes, house-plans, and the like, whose speech at the rear door of the house was so utterly convincing, the housekeeper (who had heard not a word from the master on the subject of redecorating) not only allowed Xavier into the house, but gave him free rein, to wander where he would, for upward of two hours—! Assuredly it was a pity, Xavier afterward granted, that this kindly old woman,—indeed, all Valentine’s fresh-acquired servants—were to be so brutally sacked by the master, upon his return: but, alas! such infelicities cannot be prevented.

  Thus it was, the decorator’s apprentice, to be excused, perhaps, for his springy step, and insouciant whistling, and scarcely disguised air of gloating elation, utilized to the full every minute granted him,—ah, it must have been by God!—in Valentine’s resplendent townhouse. What a triumph for Xavier,—what a feast! Nonetheless, he managed to calm his beating heart; and to proceed with as much restraint as possible, in examining the premises inch by inch; or very nearly. Methodical, assiduous, wondrously patient: for he would not be hurried, here at last in the “Cruel Suitor’s” abode: nay not even if he heard the murderer’s footfall on the stair—!

  Nor was Xavier susceptible, after the first dazed minute or two, to the cornucopia of charms ranged about, in room after room, and on virtually every square inch of wall space: for Valentine’s taste inclined, as one might suspect, to the baroque, and the lavish, and the rich-textured, and the playfully dazzling. Velvet draperies of an inordinate lushness; rich-brocaded chairs and divans, in medieval Spanish design; silken wallpaper in bursts of raw color; odd, arresting, doubtless “amusing” objets d’art, on every table and mantel; wall hangings by Gustave Moreau depicting languorous chimères, and death angels, and wispily clad youths astride unicorns, and sunken cities, and funeral pyres . . . “A riotous garden of fancies without,” Xavier primly observed, “to disguise the hideous sterility within.” In the drawing room, which was splendidly decorated in rich greens, purples, and deep reds, and presided over, as it were, by an antique Italian tapestry whose silken threads yet shone with a jewellike radiance, Xavier at once discovered that the Indian carpet had been freshly cleaned,—ah, and somewhat too abrasively, it seemed, as, in certain areas, the emerald-green arabesques were faded, and the fringe had grown distinctly shabby. Grunting with effort, Xavier turned over a goodly portion of the carpet: to discern, with a sharp intake of breath, a sizable bloodstain,—for surely it was a bloodstain—on the underside, directly beneath the bleached area. A thorough investigation of the carpet yielded several other stains, smaller in size, but no less blatant to the trained eye; and, though the hardwood floor had been very recently sanded and polished, a
sequence of faint stains was yet visible in the grain of the wood.

  “So it was, Eva Teal died in this very spot: or greatly suffered here,” Xavier murmured beneath his breath, “Eva, or any of the others, I should say,—or, dear God!—any other innocent victim, of whom we know not. For the man is a monster, and capable of anything.” For a brief space of time, not numbering, I suppose, above ten minutes, while Xavier continued his meticulous investigation, he felt a tangible sense of apprehension,—of near-explicit dread,—a fleet vision of a girl struck down, her arms flailing helplessly, her bodice stained with blood, her stockinged legs part exposed, and stained too: and Valentine, sinuous Valentine, his face all wildly distorted, Xavier might not have recognized it: Valentine rearing upward, with his dagger clutched tight in both hands. “Nay, it is but a phantasm,—a consequence of my excessive excitement,” Xavier told himself. The deed, cruel as it had been, had been done; and completed; and belonged now to history; and it was not given to Xavier to prevent it, or erase it.

  Now breathing quickly, and blinking against the fresh-provoked pain of one of his familiar headaches, Xavier continued the examination: finding, to his delight, a series of probable bloodstains scattered across the ebony wainscoting. And, in an adjoining room, yet more bloodstains, on the wall, and on the underside of the carpet . . . It was probable, then, that Eva, or one of the other victims, had bled most profusely in this room: and Valentine, being of a shallow and impatient sensibility, had not troubled to examine the carpet’s underside, after it had been returned from the cleaners. And though this floor too had been freshly and assiduously sanded, several faint stains yet remained, which Xavier’s magnifying glass revealed: and he did not doubt, with a rising,—nay, fairly galloping—sense of elation, that, when the police ripped up the floorboards of both rooms (as he would insist they must do, once a search warrant was properly prepared), they would discover a considerable quantity of congealed blood beneath. Why, it might amount to cups,—to pints,—to actual quarts!—evidence of which Valentine had not the least suspicion, in his emboldened ignorance. “And then we shall have him,—I shall have him,” Xavier murmured aloud. “And he shall stare out in dazed terror over the crowd of spectators, as poor Isaac Rosenwald did before him!—with the difference being, he will know that God Himself has directed his execution.”