by Merry Farmer
Mary made a frustrated sound and stomped over to the piano, where she attempted to physically pry Molly away from the keys. Martha wriggled in Marshall’s arms until he put her down so that she could run to join the fray, but Matty had the feeling he was barely aware of his daughters.
Alex stepped forward, touching Marshall’s arm. “Is something wrong?”
Marshall swallowed, glanced to Alex, then back to Matty. “In the hotel just now. Betsy Stowe, Flossie’s sister, mistook me for a man she knew from her home, a Wendell Keegan. She said I was the spitting image of him, that we could be brothers.”
Matty would have clapped a hand to her chest if Bracken weren’t squirming and crying against her shoulder. “There are things I need to tell you,” she said anyhow, with more seriousness than she thought she had in her.
“Papa,” Mary roared in protest.
“Just a minute,” Marshall called to his girls, twisting to face them.
He had enough tension in his voice and face that the girls stopped their fight, looking suddenly anxious. The sudden hush that filled the room had the prickling feeling of lightning about to strike.
“Perhaps we could discuss this somewhere quiet?” Matty said in a soft voice.
Marshall nodded, turning to survey the room. Matty could only imagine what he saw. The parlor was a shambles. The piano took up too much space, and the rest of the furniture gave the room a cramped feeling. Matty was well aware that the dining room across the hall wasn’t much better, that the girls had abandoned paper dolls and games when they discovered the piano, and that Mary hadn’t finished folding the laundry that had been washed the day before. Marshall crossed the room, Matty and Alex following, and when he discovered as much, he gestured for them to follow him outside.
“Mary, could you watch Bracken,” Matty asked in a solemn voice, handing the baby over to her friend.
She felt awful handing Mary a screaming baby at the very moment when the young woman looked stricken at being left out of the adults’ conversation, but it couldn’t be helped. And for her part, Mary took Bracken without complaint.
As soon as Matty joined Marshall and Alex just outside the front door, in the chill of the falling evening, Marshall asked, “What do you know?”
Matty took a deep breath, steadying herself with a hand to her stomach. The knowledge that she was about to change someone’s world gnawed at her. She held on to the last hope that what she’d discovered in Mother Grace’s house had no connection to Marshall, but it seemed a false hope now.
“Over the winter, when I was staying at Mother Grace’s cottage in the woods with Elsie and Connie, I accidentally saw something I’m certain I shouldn’t have,” she began.
“What was it?” Marshall asked, his eyes wide with foreboding.
Alex took hold of his arm, leaning into him for support.
Matty licked her lips and continued. “I found a medical book with an inscription that was a gift to a man named John Keegan.”
Marshall stiffened, but said nothing.
“I found letters from John to Mother Grace. They were clearly lovers.” She paused, waiting for a reaction. Alex glanced to Marshall in alarm, but Marshall’s eyes remained fixed on Matty, and she wasn’t sure he was breathing. She went on. “There were baby clothes as well. But there were also newspaper articles.”
“Newspaper articles?” Alex asked.
Matty glanced to her, as it was easier to break the news to Alex than directly to Marshall. “John Keegan lived in Lincoln. He was married to a woman called Jane. There was a fortune involved and accusations of bigamy. Then John Keegan was found dead. He took his own life with poison, but there were rumors that the man’s pregnant mistress, a witch, had poisoned him.”
“My God,” Alex said, pressing a hand to her belly.
Marshall remained motionless, but the color had drained from his face entirely. At last, jaw clenched, he asked, “What about the baby?”
Matty didn’t need to ask him to clarify. He was asking about Mother Grace’s baby. He was asking about himself.
Matty shook her head. “There was nothing to indicate what happened, but there were dates on the newspaper articles, on the letters. I…I asked Lawrence about them, and he said it all happened the year you were born.”
“Lawrence knows?” Marshall said in a strangled voice, anger filling his eyes.
“No.” Matty shook her head, reaching out to reassure him. “When I asked him, he dismissed it, saying that dozens of newborn babies were dropped off at the orphanage every year.”
“Not dozens,” Marshall said, his anger growing. “Only a handful every year. Only three the year we were all laid at the door.”
“Oh, Marshall,” Alex gasped, squeezing his arm tighter. Her eyes were wide with sympathy and love.
Matty’s heart throbbed in her chest. She didn’t know if she should be happy or angry on Marshall’s behalf. “I suspected, but I wasn’t certain. And now, with you being mistaken for a man named Keegan—”
“It was me,” he finished for her. “Mother Grace is—”
He stopped, his mouth hanging open. He pushed his free hand through his hair, making it stand up at wild angles. He seemed to retreat into himself, revisiting memories that probably spanned his entire lifetime, looking for confirmation. Matty exchanged a glance with Alex as he did. She looked as worried for him as Matty felt, but equally as helpless.
“All those years,” Marshall said at last, his voice full of emotion. “All those years, and she never said anything.” When neither Matty nor Alex said anything, he went on with, “She was right there for all those years, hiding away in the forest while I was alone in the orphanage.”
“You had Lawrence and Jason,” Alex added in a quiet voice.
Matty wasn’t certain if Marshall heard her. “All those years that we snuck out of the orphanage to play in the woods near her cottage. The way she coddled and treated us, the way she fed us and helped us out of the ridiculous scrapes Lawrence and Jason got us into.” His anger was mounting by the moment. “She was right there the whole time, and she never told me.”
At last, he dragged his eyes up from the blankness he’d been staring into and met Matty’s eyes. There was so much hurt and sadness in him that a lump formed in Matty’s throat. “I’m sorry,” she said, unable to think of anything else that might soothe him in a moment like that.
“She could have told me,” he said, his voice heavy with emotion. “She should have told me. She should have—”
His increasingly furious words were cut short by a shout farther up the street. Matty turned along with Marshall and Alex to see what the trouble was. A small crowd had formed at the intersection with Lake Street. Men were shouting and gesturing toward the lake. A few people had brought torches and were lighting them as the evening light dimmed.
“What’s going on up there?” Marshall asked.
Matty was surprised at how quickly his thoughts were diverted and even more surprised when he broke away from Alex and marched up the street toward the men. He must have been desperate to get away from the revelations that had bowled him over.
“We should follow,” Alex said, starting after him at a slower pace.
Matty went with her, looping an arm through Alex’s to give her the support she likely needed in her current state. They weren’t able to walk as fast as Marshall, and when they finally joined him at the edge of the group, the situation had already shifted.
“Percy Porter found it,” one of the men said. “When he was fishing this afternoon.
“It took him and Bob forever to haul it in,” someone else said.
“Somebody needs to fetch Constable Burnell,” a third man called.
“He’s already down at the dock,” the first man answered.
That seemed to be the cue for the entire crowd to shift. Marshall glanced to Alex before rushing on with the men down the slope of the hill toward the river. Alex followed him, which meant Matty was pulled along, still supporti
ng her.
An air of excitement filled the air as the group of a dozen men, Alex, and Matty marched down the hillside. A few of the torches were lit, and the prickling sensation that Matty was part of a mob up to no good filled her. There were even more men already on the dock, including Constable Burnell and Mayor Crimpley. They all seemed to be circling around something lying on the end of the dock.
“Disgusting,” one of those men said, peeling away from the group.
“Move aside,” one of the newcomers called to the others. “Let us get a look.”
The energy around the mass of men at the end of the dock was frantic. A few men stepped back to let others get a look, but more stayed crowded around whatever the object of interest was.
“Step back,” Matty heard Constable Burnell say from the center of the group. “Step back. This is an official police investigation now.”
The tight group of men barely moved. Mayor Crimpley looked around, and when he spotted Marshall, he called, “Dr. Pycroft. Thank God you’re here. Your medical expertise is needed.”
“What seems to be the problem?” Marshall asked, pushing his way through the crowd to reach Mayor Crimpley.
“This was found floating near the center of the lake,” Mayor Crimpley said, gesturing for Marshall to come closer. “The decay is alarming, but Burnell here says it could have been much worse and that the temperature of the water kept him preserved for far longer than usual.”
Matty’s stomach clenched at the words and for a moment she thought she would be sick. The crowd of men around the object on the dock parted to allow Marshall through. They also revealed the object itself.
“Oh, no,” Alex murmured, grasping Matty’s arm tightly.
Matty gulped to keep herself from screaming. There, lying on the dock, bloated, pale, and misshapen, was Hoag’s body.
Episode Ten - An Awkward Confrontation
Alexandra
Alex groaned as she studied her reflection in the mirror while attempting in vain to fasten the buttons up the back of her dress.
“How is it possible for me to have become so fat?” she lamented, giving up on the buttons. Instead of rubbing her enormous belly, she pulled at the puffiness of her cheeks.
“You’re not fat, you’re with child,” Marshall said, stepping behind her to finish with her buttons. “And you’re beautiful.”
He grinned fondly at her in the mirror, and when he’d finished with her dress, he slipped his arms around her massive waist and leaned in to nibble on her neck.
“Marshall, stop,” she scolded him, grinning from ear to ear all the same. She leaned her weight against him, glad to have someone else support her for a change. “That kind of amorous attention is how we landed in this kettle of fish in the first place.”
“I like your fish,” he said in a tempting voice, reaching below her belly.
Alex laughed, mostly because she was far too round for him to reach his destination. Her heart swelled with fondness all the same, and she sighed, resting her head against his. “You promise that we can do everything possible to ensure this doesn’t happen again?” she asked.
“Everything short of abstinence,” he said, returning to kissing her neck. “I’m willing to make a few purchases from Jason’s purveyor of prophylactics and to experiment with female equivalents, but I’m not going through another dry spell again.”
“Certainly not,” Alex agreed with a grin. She twisted to fit herself into his embrace as best she could. “But this one is enough for me, especially with the girls.”
She kissed his lips—a gentle buss that quickly turned into something deeper. Marshall hummed deep in his throat, and Alex considered closing the door to their room and working out how to enjoy a quick tumble that wouldn’t make her late for Lady Waltham’s literary event at The Dragon’s Head, when the jarring sound of someone banging on the piano downstairs ruined the mood.
Alex winced, resting her forehead against Marshall’s. “I regret ever offering Molly piano lessons,” she sighed.
“If I didn’t already hate Percival Danforth, I would despise him now,” Marshall answered.
“I still don’t think it was Danforth who gifted us with the piano,” Alex said, stepping back and moving to the vanity wedged into a corner of the crowded bedroom to put on her meager jewelry.
“If not Danforth, then who?” Marshall asked. He wasn’t planning to attend Lady Waltham’s event. Instead, it was his luck to stay home with the girls that Saturday afternoon while Nurse Nyman, Nurse Stephens, and Mrs. Garforth handled things at the hospital. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching Alex finish dressing.
“Perhaps you have a secret admirer?” Alex asked, looking at him through the mirror as she put on earrings.
Marshall winced and huffed. “After the ordeal with Winnie, I don’t ever care to have a secret admirer again.”
“She wasn’t such a secret,” Alex said in an ironic voice. She finished with her preparations and stood. “Perhaps we could borrow the services of Detective Lewis to uncover the origin of the piano.”
Marshall’s answering smile quickly dropped to an exhausted sigh, and he rubbed a hand over his face. “That investigation is going to be the death of us all,” he said, pushing away from the wall and offering Alex his arm so that he could escort her out to the hall and downstairs.
“You knew the moment they found Hoag’s body there would be an investigation,” Alex said quietly, glad that Molly’s banging on the piano covered her conversation with Marshall from any small ears that might hear it. “Crimpley wasn’t about to let the whole thing go. Not from the moment Hoag was identified.”
“That’s precisely my concern,” Marshall said. “Crimpley has targeted Lawrence and his family from day one, and now he has a Scotland Yard detective in on the witch-hunt.”
His expression pinched over the word “witch-hunt”. Alex knew him well enough to know that his thoughts had flown off to something other than Lawrence, his family, and the investigation into Hoag’s death entirely. A witch of a different kind had loomed large in Marshall’s thoughts in the long month since Hoag’s body was discovered.
“You need to talk to Mother Grace,” Alex whispered as they reached the ground floor and moved into the parlor, where Molly was practicing scales at an alarming volume and Martha was making her dolls dance to the music.
Marshall’s jaw went tight. “I’m still investigating the claims,” he said. “Without Det. Lewis’s help.”
“What more do you need to find out?” Alex asked.
Marshall had already asked Betsy Stowe for more details, contacted newspaper offices in Lincoln for more information on John Keegan’s death, and scoured boxes of records in the attic of the hospital for information about exactly when and how he was left at the hospital as an infant. Everything he’d discovered only seemed to prove Matty’s revelations. Beyond that, now that Alex knew the truth, she could see a distinct resemblance between Marshall and Mother Grace. Their coloring was slightly different, but they had the same nose, the same eyes, and the same way of moving.
Marshall blew out a breath and let her arm go, busying himself with picking up some of the constant clutter that filled the parlor. “I don’t know,” he said. “Her reasons for doing it, perhaps?”
Mary stepped into the room from the kitchen, wiping her hands on the apron she wore. Marshall hadn’t said anything to his girls about the possibility that Mother Grace really was their grandmother, so Alex could only say, “You need to talk to her,” without raising any suspicion.
“Talk to who?” Mary asked, proving Alex had said too much with even that innocuous comment. Mary’s inquisitive eyes darted between her father and Alex. “It isn’t me, is it? I swear I haven’t done anything wrong. My schoolwork is all done, and the house is as clean as it’s possible to make it with young children running about.”
Alex glanced to Marshall, who sent her a weary look. She could see in his eyes that he knew a confrontation with Mother Gr
ace was inevitable, just as she hoped he could see her belief that the sooner he got it over with the better.
“We were talking about hospital business,” Marshall said. He tossed the handful of paper dolls he’d plucked from the floor onto the table beside the sofa, then crossed to kiss Mary’s forehead. “When did you get so tall?” he asked, clearly intending the question to be a diversion.
Mary grinned from ear to ear. “I’m much more grown up than you think I am, Papa.”
“You’re only thirteen,” Marshall said, kissing her forehead again and stepping back with a smile. “You’ll always be my little girl.”
“Papa,” Mary said, rolling her eyes and blushing.
Alex’s heart squeezed, and unexpected tears sprung to her eyes. Marshall was a marvelous father. He had been for his girls and he would be for their child too. Perhaps, in a few years, she would consider having a second baby of her own just so that she could watch Marshall in his element.
“I have an idea,” Marshall went on, glancing to Alex with a bright, mischievous grin. He turned back to Mary. “Why don’t you go with Alex to Lady Waltham’s literary event?”
Mary gaped at him in shock. “Truly? You’d let me go to the hotel for an afternoon with fine ladies from London?”
“If Alex says it’s all right,” Marshall said.
Alex instantly warmed to the idea. She’d been scrambling for ways to end the constant, unspoken coldness between her and Marshall’s eldest all winter. “I think it’s a splendid idea.”
Mary let out a squeal of glee. “I can’t go dressed like this,” she said, skipping across the room like a girl half her age. “I must change into my Sunday best.”
She tore off around the corner, her footsteps ringing loudly on the stairs. Molly and Martha cheered for her sister, and Molly pounded with extra vigor on the piano. In spite of it all, Alex laughed, though she raised her hands to her temples as she did.
“When did this house become so loud?” she asked.
“You think this is loud?” Marshall asked in an exaggeratedly loud voice. “You should have grown up in an orphanage with three dozen and more other children.”
