Mysteries of Winterthurn

by Joyce Carol Oates

  (Alas, it must have been a consequence of the numerous wicked assaults upon his body which, over the years, Xavier Kilgarvan had suffered*: for, of late, particularly after an evening of alcoholic indulgence, the detective found himself unable to recall precisely where he had been. Sometimes he woke, as it were, on an unknown street; at other times, while being driven home in a hackney cab; yet, most commonly, in his very own bed, in his Washington Square townhouse, fully clothed, and with not the slightest knowledge of how he arrived there. At such times, wrenching himself awake, Xavier Kilgarvan struggled with bodiless assailants, unknown to him, but intent upon savagely taking his life: and woke with infinite gratitude, tears starting from his eyes, to discover himself safe at home,—albeit his clothes were frequently torn and stained; and he might be bleeding from one or two negligible wounds about the face. These lapses of memory, which brought with them raging headaches for most of the following day, Xavier did not like to think of as amnesia, as he knew that to be a pathological condition; and supposed his own problem more minor. Yet how curious it was!—to wake in one of his favored disguises,—as an elderly Roman Catholic priest, or a spoiled young Manhattan playboy, or a middle-aged Italian vendor—with not the slightest recollection of why he had got himself up so expertly, and where he had been, and what consequences, if any, had resulted!)

  Ancillary to the sense that he had seen everything the world might offer, at least by way of evil, was the sense that preoccupations of a normal, and even manly, sort were henceforth forbidden him: for those several liaisons with women he had embarked upon, after Perdita’s betrayal, were rather more experimental than otherwise, and deeply dissatisfying. Admirers Xavier Kilgarvan had many, of the female gender, and most forthright and dogged were some of them,—nay, quite shameless: but if he succumbed to their blandishments, it was more from a wish to arouse, in himself, certain creaturely appetites and sensations than for reasons of the heart. “So cold!—so icy cold!” one especially wounded lady passed judgment on him, even while pledging herself to love him forever, and to be his bride, if he would have her. Another, in his embrace, grew rigid with cold; yet another, convinced that, after a night of love with Xavier, her blood beat chill and sluggish in her veins, and parts of her body, including her lips, had grown numb—! It was rumored that Xavier Kilgarvan had once been married, in his youth, in distant Winterthurn; and that his young wife had died in childbirth; and that he would never again wed. Then again, it was rumored that he had inherited a fatal genetic weakness, akin to hemophilia; and dared not wed, and sire offspring. Part rumor, and part fact, were the tales told of him, that he had grown wealthy as a consequence of his clients’ gratitude: for when the “consulting detective” was not paid in outright cash, he was given lavish gifts of jewels, and objets d’art, and racehorses, and yachts, and enviable properties throughout the Northeast.

  Out of sheer whimsy, it seems, Xavier Kilgarvan patronized the most exacting (and the most expensive) tailors in Manhattan, so that his wardrobe boasted all variety of costumes, from the elegantly formal to the sporty and daring: he owned any number of tuxedos, and evening garb, and suits of a conservative English cut; and Irish tweeds, and flannels, and houndstooth checks; his shoes were of black lizard, and custom-made. He had a pair of red suspenders trimmed rakishly in gold and leather; and a herringbone Donegal tweed coat, with a full beaver collar, that gave him a zestful air. It had become a hobby of sorts with him to collect cuff links, amongst the most prized of which were a pair made of antique enamel and eighteen-karat gold, formerly belonging to an Italian prince; and another of crystal, sterling silver, and diamonds, with matching shirt studs; and the lapis lazuli pair,—a gift from a female client of advanced years, of the Rockefeller family. While not valuing any of these things very highly, Xavier nonetheless vowed to cultivate, in his numbed soul, a dispassionate “pleasure” in those things considered, by the general run of mankind, to bring pleasure,—with, I am afraid, naught but occasional success.

  OFT-TIMES, in the twelve-month preceding the narrative at hand, Xavier Kilgarvan roused himself from troubled dreams, to feel that his blood did run cold, and that his very touch was icy; that he was not merely chilled and numbed in himself, but the cause of such in others. If his soul was but a mirror overlooking an abyss,—if his soul was but a nullity, mirroring naught but frantic motion,—how was he, Xavier Kilgarvan, to account for it; and what might he do to transform himself? “Perhaps I did die in the quicksand that day,” he thought, “and the news of my death has yet to reach me.”

  He had not failed, for instance, to detect the police chief’s slight shudder, when the two of them shook hands in the rectory vestibule: for Xavier Kilgarvan’s touch, though gloved, imparted chill. Nor, with his acute sense of hearing, did he fail to detect the whisperings outside Reverend Bunting’s study during his two-hour examination of the scene of the crime. How calm, how methodical, this “consulting detective”!—how lacking in all human response!—thus the witnesses remarked to one another; and would carry their tales through Winterthurn.

  Xavier Kilgarvan prided himself, however, on having at last returned to the dread land of his birth; and for purely professional reasons. He could not be humiliated by throwing himself at his mother’s feet,—for his mother was dead; his boyhood was dead; his tenure as a son was dead. Now he was fully an adult, without parents or history. If he must concern himself with Perdita, the minister’s wife, why, then, their relationship would be exclusively professional: for he did not love her, and had not, for eleven years, in his waking hours at least, allowed his thoughts to dwell upon her.

  With his magnifying glass and tweezers, his gloves not removed, nor his exquisitely fitted tropical wool coat, Xavier Kilgarvan examined, inch by inch, the room in which the savage murders had taken place; and spent some long entranced minutes simply gazing, with his inner eye as well as his outer, at the pitiable remains of Reverend Harmon Bunting, and Mrs. Amanda Poindexter, and poor Mrs. Letitia Bunting: consoling himself with the admonition that, even in Winterthurn, he must be content to analyze only those mysteries within his ken.

  The Talk of the Town (I)

  Not since the days of the “Cruel Suitor’s” reign, now many years past, had the inhabitants of Winterthurn City been so frenzied in their absorption with Crime,—or, as the Gazette had emblazoned in three-inch headlines, OUTRAGE: there being, in the days following the discovery of the bodies, scarcely any other topic allowed for discussion than that of the “Grace Church ax murders,” as they shortly came to be called. And, quite apart from the hideous murders themselves, and the fact that the murderer was still free, were the scandal of Reverend Harmon Bunting’s evident liaison with Ellery Poindexter’s wife; and the grave and part-mysterious abuse suffered by the Reverend’s wife; and, not least, the remarkable appearance on the scene, as if by prearrangement, of the celebrated Manhattan detective Mr. Xavier Kilgarvan.

  While as many as one thousand persons gathered on Berwick Avenue, day following day, with no other motive than to stare in silence at the dignified gray façade of the Grace Episcopal Church, those persons belonging to the Buntings’ and the Poindexters’ social set discussed tirelessly,—over luncheons, teas, dinners, and late-night suppers, in their stately homes, or in their clubs,—virtually every aspect of the case of which they had knowledge: the identity of the murderer being of very little interest, as “Jabez Dovekie” was a name that counted for naught. But might it be true that Harmon Bunting and Amanda Poindexter had been adulterous lovers?—and had Ellery Poindexter known?

  (As a consequence of wild and alarming rumors, connecting the ax murders with Anarchist activities, or with the striking workers in South Winterthurn, a number of the larger houses became fortified, within a matter of hours: the Von Goeler, the Peregrine, the Shaw, and the Westergaard estates, amongst others, being armed by able-bodied menservants bearing rifles and shotguns, in the event of attack. For, as the elderly Henry Peregrine said, in an impassioned voice, if Anarchists we
re indeed responsible for the murders, in their announced campaign to level all class distinctions in America, no one of decent upbringing was safe: and it was foolhardy to suppose otherwise. So violently negative was public sentiment against the striking workers at the Poindexter factory, even children gathered in the street, to throw stones at pickets, and the police gave themselves license, as it were, to wade into the demonstrators with billy clubs: the result being, within two days of the murders, that the strike was broken, and planned strikes, in other South Winterthurn factories, were most prudently canceled.)

  Even so, most speculation on the case centered about the question,—Had Reverend Bunting and his prominent parishioner been involved in a love affair; and had Ellery Poindexter known; or anyone at all—? A goodly number of the ladies, subsequently to be questioned by Xavier Kilgarvan, believed that a love affair betwixt the two was simply out of the question: for no one who had heard a single one of Harmon Bunting’s dry, earnest, and unfailingly righteous sermons could envision him as an adulterous lover; and no one who knew of Amanda Poindexter’s devotion to her family, and, of late, her preoccupation with Christian theology, could doubt her moral probity. (Albeit it was hesitantly acknowledged that there had been some strain in the Poindexters’ union, for upward of a decade: Ellery Poindexter being a “difficult” gentleman, as much dreaded in society as admired, for the acerbity of his wit. Indeed, though Ellery Poindexter had not returned to St. Bride’s until past nine o’clock in the evening of September 11, having been mysteriously absent for approximately twelve hours, he had not deigned to explain himself to anyone; nor to proffer anything so crude as an “alibi.” A tall, saturnine, slope-shouldered gentleman in his mid-fifties, urbane in manner, though oft-times cruel in expression, Mr. Poindexter was generally known to have been gifted, as a youth, with a myriad of talents: yet proved too indolent, or too indifferent, to cultivate any. When questioned by a noisy contingent of journalists, who had somehow managed to corner him, as it were, en route to Mrs. Poindexter’s funeral on the morning of September 13, Ellery Poindexter had replied in subdued, laconic, and, it very nearly seemed, listless tones, that he very much regretted the opprobrium to be suffered by the Poindexter family for years to come: and, it scarcely needs be said, he very much regretted the loss of his belovèd wife, Amanda,—and the loss of his minister, and the saintly Letitia Bunting: but, apart from that, he did not wish to comment on the situation, as police would shortly apprehend the brute who had wielded the ax, and Justice would be served. As to where he had been through much of the day, while news of the murders had spread into every neighborhood of the city,—the gentleman did not condescend to explain; nor did he rise to a reporter’s impertinent question as to why he had not even gone to the mortuary to view his wife’s remains, but had, very shortly after being greeted with the horrific news, retired to his bed-chamber, pleading fatigue and an impending asthma attack. Coarse-mannered as the reporters were,—some of them being attached to Mr. Hearst’s papers in Vanderpoel, Albany, and New York City—they did not dare to ask the widower his opinion on the scandalous rumors everywhere in effect: albeit Mr. Poindexter would most likely have turned aside the offensive question, with a mere flicker of disdainful hauteur.)

  In naught but whispers and surreptitious asides was the plight of Mrs. Perdita Bunting discussed, and never, of course, in mixed company: for it was generally known that the lowlife brute Jabez Dovekie had “had his way with her,” following the murders; and that, for what bizarre purpose no one might guess, the red-haired brute had fumblingly dressed her in her very bridal gown, that he might despoil it with blood, and with his own animal excesses. So foul,—so lurid,—so unnatural a crime was scarcely to be comprehended by persons of good breeding: for, set beside it, even the ax murders seemed in a way natural,—which is to say, to the extent to which the taking of a human life is acknowledged to be a human proclivity.

  Being a gentleman, and, moreover, Mrs. Bunting’s personal physician, Dr. Colney Hatch shunned all questions regarding his patient: saying curtly that the unhappy woman was under heavy sedation, in her bed; and was not to be disturbed in any way,—by police officers, by well-meaning friends, or by “that young detective Kilgarvan from Manhattan,” whose presence in Winterthurn could not fail to bring disruption. (For it was the case that Dr. Hatch had attended Xavier’s mother after her collapse; and doubtless had been poisoned against him by her ravings.) Fearing that Dovekie would return to the residence, or that a like-minded maniac would attempt to break in, the chief of police had assigned two junior officers to watch over the house, at all hours of the day and night; and, upstairs in Mrs. Bunting’s bed-chamber, either Miss Thérèse Kilgarvan or Mrs. Bunting’s maid Nell was in attendance ’round the clock, to prevent the stricken woman doing harm to herself, should she be so moved. (Speaking with somber authority, Dr. Hatch stated that, abused thusly, a decent woman is susceptible to great self-loathing; and, in line with the foulness of the crime perpetrated against her, may wish to take her own life. So it was, the physician recommended prolonged bed rest; and no excitement of any sort; and thought it an excellent step that the silken wedding gown, torn and stained past redemption, had been burnt by Nell and one of the policemen, in the coal-burning furnace in the cellar. “For it would be an unfortunate development, indeed,” Dr. Hatch said, “if Mrs. Bunting should ever again set eyes upon the garment.”)

  In such scandalous situations it is common practice for members of a social set to “close ranks” against outsiders: and so it was, that those selfsame ladies who had oft expressed their disapproval of Reverend Bunting’s wife now shed tears on her behalf, and sent to her invalid’s bed any number of floral arrangements, light romances, boxes of bonbons, and the like. That the former Miss Perdita Kilgarvan had been unpopular in Grace Church parish, amongst the ladies at least, was scarcely a secret, as, all irresponsibly, she had left it to her indefatigable mother-in-law to oversee many of the rectory’s social evenings; and oft turned a sullen face to friendly overtures, even from officers of the Altar Society; and behaved from time to time in a manner unbefitting an Episcopal minister’s wife. (It was widely known, for instance, that the excitable young woman, herself childless, had become morbidly attached to a foundling infant, doubtless of the lowest parental stripe, left at the rectory door one Christmas Eve; and had been inconsolable for weeks, after its death. Then again, the following spring, she had, unbeknownst to her husband, joined a ladies’ cycling club, with the brazen intention of bicycling in Juniper Park, in a veritable army of bright-colored stockings, tam-o’-shanters, and bloomers!—this caprice being cut short, as one might imagine, when Reverend Bunting was informed by a parishioner. As to domestic disagreements, particularly Mr. Bunting’s management of the “Iphigenia” royalties,—little was known save that hinted at by the long-suffering Letitia to one or another of her most trusted friends, and, by way of them, circulated through town. In general, it was held against Perdita Bunting that she was not worthy of her husband, nor of her own social status in Winterthurn; and that, though she was a fully mature woman of five-and-thirty years, her manner, and her girlish appearance, gave her the air of one far younger.)

  Nonetheless, Winterthurn society grieved for her, and murmured not a word when, of the Kilgarvans, only the hardy Thérèse, and Bradford, and the two or three elderly aunts, attended the funeral for Harmon and his mother: both the coffins being closed, out of necessity: though it was known that Harmon had been costumed, by the undertaker, in a stole, cassock, and white surplice,—the proper ecclesiastical vestments of his station. “To think that one standing so close to God, as Reverend Bunting, should be struck down in such wise!”—thus the awed murmur of Miss Verity Peregrine, as soft clumps of earth were dropped on the gleaming ebony caskets.

  AS FOR XAVIER KILGARVAN’S wholly unanticipated involvement in the case,—virtually everyone who speculated on the subject, whether acquainted with Xavier from years before, or no, proferred strong opinions: the consensus bei
ng one that would have greatly surprised Xavier, had he known,—for it credited the detective with uncanny powers of precognition, second sight, and the like. How else to explain the sudden reappearance of Lucas’s son in Winterthurn, after an absence of more than a decade?—and on the very afternoon of the murders! Not many months before, the Gazette had published a laudatory profile on Mr. Kilgarvan, taken verbatim from the New York Post, which had stressed Xavier Kilgarvan’s “clairvoyant” powers, while slighting his scientific procedure, and, alas, gravely slighting the Manhattan police, with whom he had worked in a totally cooperative manner. Moreover, with the passage of time, and a kind of collective amnesia, in which disagreeable events were forgotten, it came to seem, to many proud citizens, that Winterthurn’s own Xavier Kilgarvan was on a par with the famed Sherlock Holmes,—albeit the Englishman was naught but a fictitious creation of A. Conan Doyle, and Xavier was a living and breathing personage, not yet forty years old. Just as Isaac Rosenwald’s name was now forgotten, or recalled, hazily, as being that of an unrepentant criminal who had been executed,—just as Valentine Westergaard’s name was associated with the Vanderbilts, and with an enviable world of cosmopolitan-international society,—so too had the aura surrounding “Xavier Kilgarvan” undergone a significant change. If the toymaker Lucas had sired a son highly respected in the larger world, surely that cast an agreeable light upon Winterthurn—? Thus it was thought only fitting, and not at all to Orrin Wick’s discredit, that, on the morning following the murders, he had invited Xavier Kilgarvan to guide the police investigation,—albeit, as Mr. Wick half apologetically reiterated, there was really little mystery about the case at all.