Louisa and the Missing Heiress

by Anna Maclean

  “Well,” I said, rising to my feet, “we will be on our way, Mr. Brownly. I am sorry if we have interrupted your work.” And I managed to say work in a tone of voice that sent the blush back to Edgar’s face, and a smile of victory to mine. “But might I ask a favor, Mr. Brownly? An escort home?”

  Breeding provides composure but also noblesse oblige. “Certainly, Miss Alcott, though it is a bit inconvenient. I have an appointment this afternoon. Maybe some other time?” He seemed not at all pleased to be inconvenienced and made a point of fetching his gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and peering at it intently.

  Feet sounded again in the outer staircase, lighter, faster feet, and I suspected that Mr. Brownly’s appointment for the afternoon had arrived. This satisfied me no end, as I had never before met the kind of woman a gentleman would refer to as an “appointment.”

  The door swung open and a woman, young and exotic and dressed in the most garish of scarlet costumes, stood there, as surprised to see us as Edgar Brownly had been. Her mouth dropped open when she saw Father Nolan, and she murmured, “Madre de Dios” several times. When she saw me, a dangerous fire glittered in her dark eyes.

  “So,” she hissed, glaring at Mr. Brownly and flaring her nostrils. “So soon you will replace me? We shall see about that.” And she raised her hand to slap him. We did not interfere. The slap was a good one for a smallish woman, loud enough to echo in the studio. Mr. Brownly gave a little yelp and raised his own hand to strike back, though a true gentleman never, ever strikes a lady . . . or a woman, for that matter.

  At that moment, I thought it wise to step between the two.

  “You are misperceiving the situation. I am a friend of the family,” I said to the woman.

  “A friend of the family? Ha! What would family do here?” the woman shouted.

  She had a point, I thought.

  The woman backed out the still-open door, muttering foreign phrases that sounded like curses, and flounced back down the stairs, her high heels clacking like castanets.

  “Well,” Edgar Brownly said between clenched teeth. “My afternoon schedule has been freed, thank you.”

  I had a flash of recognition, caused by my clandestine habit—which I hoped no one guessed—of poring over the popular papers and reading about the stars of the stage.

  “Was that Katya Mendosa?” I asked, and I could not contain the awe in my voice.

  Miss Mendosa was the most popular opera star of the season, not the least reason for which was her famed temper. She had stabbed a rival the year before, undeterred by the logic that stated that her rival, the man’s wife, had more right to the man than herself. Some mysterious working of justice had resulted in an acquittal; it was said that the judge was a great fan of opera, or at least of female operatic performers.

  “It was. Past tense seems appropriate.” Mr. Brownly looked longingly down the stairwell.

  “Since you are now free, perhaps you will fetch a horse and buggy and accompany me on an errand, for I do not wish to do it alone and Sylvia and her companion have other chores to attend to,” I said.

  “Yes,” Sylvia agreed, understanding my hastiness was a ruse, “come along, Father Nolan. Louisa, will I see you tomorrow?”

  “Yes. Come to the house, Sylvia. Father still wishes to speak with you.”

  And so we parted company, Sylvia to have tea with the priest and a long talk about the Holy Trinity, and me to my own purposes, which fell out as follows:

  A hired carriage was sent for and I required that it not be a closed brougham, but a cabriolet with the folding top down, though it was a winter day and the air was fresh. Mr. Brownly, the only male in a family of five women and therefore accustomed to whims, agreed without a quarrel, but was peevish and uncommunicative. Although his “appointment” for the afternoon had, apparently, canceled their rendezvous, all during that crosstown ride he kept checking his pocket watch, as men do when they wish to indicate their time is being wasted.

  Only when we arrived at our destination, the Charles Street Home, did the heavy glare leave his face. Once again he looked somewhat like a rabbit about to be pounced upon, an image enhanced by his bulbous nose and heavy, rounded cheeks.

  “Will you wait a moment, Mr. Brownly?” I asked sweetly, once the driver brought the cab to a full stop in front of the dilapidated porch of the home, with the flower box and rocker on one side and the red-painted whore marking the other. The omnipresent children playing on the porch pointed and laughed and came out of their quilt tent to stroke the horses’ soft mouths; Mr. Brownly had no recourse but to wait as the ragamuffins swarmed about.

  Queenie was upstairs, curled up on her cot but not sleeping. There was a plate of uneaten flapjacks on the floor and a glass of water made milky and noxious with a dose of Hostetter’s Stomach Bitters.

  “Queenie, are you well?”

  “Well as can be expected.” The girl sighed. She was of gloomy countenance, barely able to eat, to talk, to breathe, so heavy was the weight bearing down on her small, young shoulders. I picked up a much worn book that lay open next to the girl.

  “The Gold Seeker’s Manual, a Practical and Instructive Guide to All Persons Emigrating to the Gold Diggings in California, by David Ansted,” I read aloud. “Queenie, when this is over, are you going to search for gold?”

  “That’s a funny one. No. The camps are for men. But if I had my own stake I might go west and set up a boardinghouse, a new place where no one knows me,” Queenie said. “Might as well long for the moon, though when this is over I’ll be on the street.”

  I put my arm about the girl’s shoulder and pulled her up into a sitting position. “No, you won’t,” I said. “I won’t let that happen. Come to the window, Queenie, and tell me what you see. Prepare yourself first for a shock, and then have no fear.”

  I brought her to the window and made her look down into the street. The girl squinted, then drew back in wide-eyed terror.

  “It is him,” she whispered. “He said he would kill me if I told. . . .”

  I put my arms more tightly about her and held her for comfort.

  “He can’t hurt you, not more than he already has,” I said.

  “Oh, yes, he can. You don’t know him,” Queenie said between clenched lips. I drew back, frowning. The expression on Queenie’s drawn face spoke of great fear. “You don’t know him,” she repeated. “He’s a devil.”

  Just at that moment Edgar Brownly looked up at the window. His face seemed to have changed completely. He was no longer the bland, childish, and chubby darling of the Brownly family, but a man whose repugnance for this house and its inhabitants showed in his darkly knitting brows and the furious line of his mouth.

  Queenie and I stood behind the yellowed curtain, where we could see and not be seen, and Brownly did not know that when he raised his clenched fist at that house, I observed the gesture and tucked it into my memory for safekeeping.

  Two mysteries had been solved, at least: the mystery of how Queenie came to be pregnant, and why her portrait had been leaning against a wall in Edgar Brownly’s studio.

  ON WEDNESDAY, Mrs. Dorothy Wortham was interred in the Old Boston Cemetery, next to a long line of Brownlys who would keep her company for eternity. The service was subdued, the eulogy brief. It rained all the while, a steady, cold drizzle that soon soaked overcoats and bedraggled the black feathers in the women’s hats.

  The deceased’s brother, Edgar, provided the parting words for Dorothy, since Mrs. Brownly was not strong enough for public speaking, even graveside. He seemed to have great difficulty thinking of pleasant things to say about Dorothy and concluded with the simple statement that she had been the youngest daughter of the Brownly household and loving wife of Preston Wortham. Edgar sneered slightly at that.

  Edgar also gave me several sidelong looks of such distaste—indeed, hatred—that Sylvia, standing beside me, didn’t understand until I whispered to her the events of the day before, and the murderous look I had spied on Edgar’s face t
hrough the window.

  “Certain men can’t stand to be reminded of their sins,” Sylvia whispered back from behind her prayer book.

  “Certainly when other, even more grievous sins may be awaiting discovery,” I whispered back.

  During the service the Brownly daughters and spinster aunt stood straight and calm, and they turned away to return to their waiting closed carriages as soon as the prayers were finished. The phrase indecent haste sprang to my mind.

  Preston Wortham, however, wept copiously. He embarrassed his wife’s family, and Edgar loudly muttered that perhaps such a quantity of tears was unmanly . . . or even insincere. Then he, too, with one last darting glance at me, absconded for the carriage and was gone.

  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Amen.

  Sylvia and I stayed on to have private final words with Dorothy. We scattered yellow rose petals over the coffin before the gravediggers began shoveling the dirt back in the long, narrow grave. We were alone then, the three friends, Sylvia, Dorothy, and I, for the last time.

  I wept, finally. I had been unable to when the Brownlys were present. We shared Sylvia’s handkerchief, for I hadn’t brought one of my own.

  But even then my ability for observation was not deterred.

  “The family has left no room for Mr. Wortham,” I observed, looking about. “He cannot be buried next to Dorothy. I don’t think she would be pleased about that.”

  “He is young and healthy. I expect it will be a long while before he is buried anywhere,” Sylvia said.

  I frowned, and did not respond. Bruises on the throat made by a hand, Roder had said at the autopsy. Then she was certainly not drowned, but had fallen dead into the water. Already dead when she was put into the river.

  IT WAS BREAD-BAKING day in our household, and Abba made the best bread in Boston, so I had reason to become more cheerful. Yet it was not to be our gayest meal, since when the invitation had first been extended, Dorothy had been alive . . . out shopping for a hat, or gloves, or some such thing, and Preston had accepted a dinner invitation on their behalf. She wouldn’t be coming—ever again. She had joined the immortals.

  “But the body must be fed,” Abba insisted. “Sit there, Sylvia, next to Louisa, and tell us your plans.”

  In addition to carrots cooked six different ways, Abba had supplemented the fare with a dish of boiled potatoes and wilted greens and a wheel of farm cheese, one of the few animal foods that Father allowed. We drank plain water and ate off a worn linen cloth that had never known a scrap of lace, and the meal was, for Sylvia and me both, a feast, for as young as we were, we could feel grief and hunger at the same time and hadn’t yet eaten that day.

  “Does Queenie really think Mr. Brownly capable of acting upon his threat? Surely he wouldn’t actually kill her if she revealed his secret paternity,” Sylvia said, slathering a thick layer of white cheese over still-warm bread.

  I found it hard to give a reassuring answer. It was not uncommon in Boston, especially in the waterfront tenement area, to find the bodies of obviously pregnant girls who had died violent deaths . . . supposedly murdered by gentlemen friends who did not wish to be encumbered with a family, though such murderers were rarely discovered.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, pushing carrots around my plate. “The entire family seems strange to me, and, more than ever, I wonder how sweet Dot ever fitted into that household. Just to be certain, though, I have sent a message to Constable Cobban and asked that one of his watchmen check in at the home periodically. I told him threats had been made.”

  “A fortuitious coincidence that you found Queenie’s portrait there in that plethora of canvases,” Sylvia said, reaching for more bread.

  “Wasn’t it?” I mused. “Though I had wondered. . . . Do you remember, Sylvia, the day of the second tea party, the day Dorothy died? Edgar Brownly arrived late, and out of breath.”

  “May, go into the kitchen and fetch us a fresh pitcher of water,” Abba said, not wanting my youngest sister to hear the details of probable murder, but also not wishing to cut off a conversation that was obviously important to me. May grumbled, but did as she was told.

  “Tea parties. I disapprove completely,” Father mumbled through a mouthful of potatoes. “Serving tea and biscuits at an hour when working folk are sitting down to their hardearned dinner. Frivolous.”

  “Edgar is perpetually out of breath, due to an abundance of food and lack of exercise,” Sylvia said, following my train of thought. “Did you see him at the funeral today, sneaking caramels out of his pocket during the service?”

  “Yes, but he was particularly out of breath that day. And the bottoms of his trouser legs were wet. I remember remarking on that, for the day was dry. If he had been to the Charles Street Home to spy on Queenie, or threaten her, that would explain the condition of his hems. You know how they are forever mopping floors there, and carrying about basins of water. Of course, if he had been at the waterfront, his trousers would have been dampened there from the spray. . . . Oh, if only I knew why Edgar Brownly’s pant legs were wet that day!” I put my fork down and leaned my chin in my hands, frowning.

  “Enough about Mr. Brownly’s wardrobe,” Father protested, hemming a bit to get my attention. “Though I am sorry for little Dorothy’s demise, and unfortunately not surprised to hear of her brother’s secret life, there are other matters I wish to discuss.”

  But before we could continue, the doorbell rang, and I sprang up to answer it. “Who could that be?” Abba asked, frowning. “Louy, were you expecting anyone else?” I returned to the dining room a moment later, and with me, to their great shock, was Preston Wortham, dressed in evening clothes. My eyes met Sylvia’s and read in her face what she herself was already thinking: Was this how a husband grieved, by paying calls? What manner of man, indeed, was Preston Wortham?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  An Arrest Is Made

  “YOU SEE BEFORE YOU a lonely man, scorned by all,” he said, holding his top hat in his hands and looking absolutely distraught. Though he was well—even flashily—dressed, in white shirt and vest and a swallowtail frock coat, his hair stood on end and there was a smudge of ink on the tip of his nose. To whom had he been writing? I wondered. And what?

  “I hope I am not unwelcome.” Preston Wortham looked, at that moment, pitiable and quite innocent. Those we pity often seem incapable of doing harm, a lesson soon learned by overly lively children with a tendency to knock over tables of knickknacks.

  “I will take your coat,” I said, springing forward. “Mr. Wortham, you have come out in the cold without your new Savile Row greatcoat.”

  “Misplaced.” He sighed. “Dot takes . . . took such good care . . .”

  “Poor Mr. Wortham, you sit right here,” Mother said, pulling another chair to the table for him. And so he joined in that small circle, and the dim candlelight on his pale face made him seem even younger, even more in need of protection. We were still gape-mouthed with shock, but Abba had gathered her wits first to do the right and the sensible thing. Which, in that case, was to feed a man who seemed not to have eaten or slept for several days.

  “Preston, I hear you have lost your wife,” Father said, putting down his knife and fork and peering over his spectacles.

  “I have,” Preston admitted.

  “A bad business,” Father concluded. “Very bad. A wife is a good thing, one of the greatest goods in this life. . . .” He paused and beamed at Abba. “You have my sympathy, sir, for your loss.”

  “Thank you.” Preston absentmindedly chewed a piece of bread and butter and stared at the tablecloth. His bravura entrance having been achieved, he now seemed confused.

  “Dot’s family asked that I not call upon them. Nor will they call upon me. They are not a forgiving family. I don’t think I have ever before been this alone,” he said in a forlorn voice.

  “Quite defeats the whole purpose of proper mourning, which is to unite, not divide,” Father observed.

  “I called upon Dot’s mother y
esterday,” I said. “She has grown reclusive and bitter, it seemed. Perhaps you should not think overmuch about Dot’s family.” I had been twirling a bread knife in my fingers. Suddenly it dropped and fell to the floor. I went down on my knees to fetch it from under the table. Once there, I did what I had intended to do all along: I looked carefully at Preston Wortham’s trouser cuffs. They were dry as a bone.

  I thought back to the year I first met Preston, Dot’s husband. It had been during a holiday, two weeks in Newport, in the huge “cottage” on Oceanview Drive that belonged to Sylvia’s family, which Preston, Sylvie’s cousin, was also visiting. He was already a grown man then, and as good-looking, and always in trouble with his family, hence his frequent trips from New York and pater and the family business, to Newport, where he might sleep till noon and drink till midnight, his favorite occupations. Sylvia was madly in love with him and his dashing top hats and silk dressing robes (not worn concurrently), but later that young and foolish emotion turned to antipathy and often revulsion in her more mature breast.

  That summer, when Dorothy, Sylvia, and I were fifteen and dreaming of wild romance in Rome, Preston Wortham seduced the upstairs maid, a young woman called Marie Brennen. His predation was discovered some months later, when the fruit of her seduction began to mound under her white apron. The poor girl was paid off and sent back to her mother in Worcester. Sylvia’s father gave Preston a tonguelashing that echoed through the house, and afterward they shared a cigar and glass of brandy as the older man, in more subdued conversation, fondly remembered the misdemeanors of his own youth. It was lucky neither uncle nor nephew spotted my girlish form eavesdropping on the stairs, not out of simple curiosity, but because I knew instantly the conversation would provide essential research for a novel.