Louisa and the Missing Heiress

by Anna Maclean

  I sent Sylvia a note that afternoon, asking her to pay a condolence call on Harriet, knowing full well that Harriet and Sylvia hadn’t spoken for years because of some silly girlish quarrel. But judging by Mrs. Bradley’s severity, Harriet would need old friends about her for a while. Sylvia returned my note with one of her own. She would call on Harriet. But it was to be a trade.

  This was the favor Sylvia wished, as explained later: for me to come as a guest to a ball her mother was planning.

  “You must, Louisa. You simply must, else I can’t bear it.”

  It was the next morning, after we’d had a brisk walk through the puddling snow on the Commons, and I was setting up the parlor for my little day school, fetching chalks for the slates and a globe for the geography lesson.

  “No. I haven’t the time,” I said. I was in such a rush I thumped pieces of chalk and a slateboard at each of six places set around a game table that had been recruited into the service of education.

  “You promised,” Sylvia accused.

  “You sound like a schoolgirl,” I said.

  “Well, I felt like one last night, when I got home and discovered that without asking me Mother had sent out invitations for a dance, in my honor, for the Saturday following the next. A dance! You’d think I was sixteen all over again.”

  “Yes. Not the ripe old age of twenty,” I said. “Don’t ask me to do this, Sylvia. I’m not in a mood to put ribbons in my hair and trip around a dance floor.”

  “Think of the music.” Sylvia smiled slyly. “There will be polkas and reels. The musicians are already hired.”

  “I can’t, Sylvia,” I protested gently but with slightly less conviction. It was to be a meat market, and we were to be the lambs for sale. But I loved music. “What with this business of Dorothy, and now worrying about Queenie and her baby, how could I spend an evening dancing? How could your mother ask it?” I insisted.

  “Her reasoning is simple and heartless. Dorothy was not a blood relative, so we are not officially in mourning.” Sylvia bent down and fetched a marble that had fallen off the table. “I can’t bear it if you don’t come. Just for an hour. Bring your notebook and carry that around instead of a dance card. You can take notes for a story.”

  I sighed. Sylvia had won the battle. Every experience could be used in one of my stories. Here was grist for the mill. “Well, for an hour or two. For the music. And the dialogue. The Brownly family will not attend because of the mourning, of course,” I added.

  “Courtesy requires that they be invited, but Mother does not expect them to come. It is much too soon after Dorothy’s passing.”

  “Then since you have determined to involve me in this affair, I will hand-deliver Edgar Brownly’s invitation,” I said. “And on the way, I will leave the marzipan tin with Constable Cobban. I’ve decided the police chemist should examine it.”

  “Louisa, you can’t think—”

  “I think nothing, Sylvia. But there is a connection, and it must be explored.”

  “And to think, just a short while ago we believed Dorothy had suffered a fatal accident. Now it’s murder, and perhaps double murder. Is the world still round, Louisa, or has it gone flat? I wouldn’t be surprised, so much seems to be changing.”

  “Or perhaps things never were as they seemed,” I said sadly.

  The front door slammed and Walter Campbell stormed into the room, squealing that he wanted milk and crackers.

  “School is starting,” I said with a wry smile. Sylvia fled, but only after promising to return in two hours and finish the last hour of school for me, so that I might attend to my errand of delivering Edgar Brownly’s invitation myself and have one more conversation with the Brownly heir.

  I moved effortlessly through the lessons of the morning, able to recite all the tributaries of the Mississippi and conduct a second private train of thought in my head at the same time. But my reality had shifted in the weeks since Dot’s death. Daughters were no longer loved by their mothers and elder brothers; sisters no longer protected younger sisters; good friends bearing gifts seemed less trustworthy; and husbands . . . well, husbands seemed in general a thing to be avoided, if Preston were an example of the breed.

  Much of what I had been taught of that great ambiguity that society likes to refer to as “life” seemed no longer pertinent. Dorothy’s death was revealing the underbelly of the serpent known as society, and any cruelty suddenly seemed possible.

  WHEN I DECIDED to pay one more visit to Edgar Brownly, Mr. Wortham had been in jail for a week, trying to work with his lawyer to prepare a defense, for the court had decided he would be charged and tried. I feared that if the truth were not discovered soon, it might never be.

  “You know how you must quickly spill salt over red wine when it splashes on a white cloth?” I told Sylvia when she returned after lunch. “If the wine dries, the stain can never be removed. I feel this stain is drying, Sylvia. There is no time to lose. Judge Loring will hear the case against Preston Wortham, and an outraged jury will find him guilty simply because someone must be punished. Mr. Wortham will hang, and I will never know for certain what really happened to Dorothy, and why.”

  “Then you think my cousin innocent?”

  “I did not say that, Sylvia.” I smiled sadly and put down the black crayon I had used to make my schoolroom maps of the Amazon and Nile and Mississippi. “I said I would never be certain. There. Can you work with this?

  “Here is the Amazon. The one with the monkey in the tree next to it. The Nile has a pyramid next to it.” I put a second map over the first. “And the Mississippi has a levee. Can you remember those, and place the towns along them?”

  “I suppose. Maybe I should just try singing lessons instead,” Sylvia suggested, daunted by what she had agreed to do.

  “Now, Sylvia, you will never know if teaching children will suit you if you do not attempt it now,” I said. “Be brave. They cannot hurt you very much. Only remember little Dicky does bite when he’s angry.”

  I tugged at my waistjacket and gave my hair one last pat into place. I wore my dark blue afternoon “calling” outfit, the same costume I had worn to Dorothy’s two tea parties, and I hoped, with those memories, to stir Edgar Brownly’s conscience. “The play’s the thing,” I had muttered as I dressed.

  “I will return as soon as I have met with Edgar Brownly and made a short visit to Queenie. I have some new garments for her baby.” I rose from the table and, distracted, gave my friend a reassuring kiss on the forehead, as I did with my young students.

  I missed Anna more than ever that afternoon, as I walked back to Mr. Brownly’s studio. It was unwise, I knew, going out without a chaperon, and if Anna had been at home she would have accompanied me. But she was in Syracuse, May was too young for this visit, Lizzie was too shy, and Sylvia was in the schoolroom. I was on my own. I hoped desperately that Miss Mendosa would not arrive in the middle of this lessthan-social visit.

  The fickle Boston weather had changed from snow to a drizzle, and I carried my beat-up old parasol—not a prime choice of weapon, but one that would serve its purpose in the sequence of events that day. To save money, I walked to the bay rather than take the public coach, and because the cobbles were slippery, a full three-quarters of an hour passed before I arrived at Brownly’s studio. I encountered few people on the street, only those who must be out in wet weather, for over the centuries Bostonians have developed a nose for the weather, and it was the kind of day when mothers stuck their heads out of upstairs windows, sniffed, shouted back to spouse and children that a fog was settling, then clapped the window and shutters shut again, and kept them shut for the day.

  The greengrocer was out with his cart of early lettuces and spinach, the milk seller and his donkey made their slow progress up and down the streets of Beacon Hill, but I spied no others braving the dreary afternoon till I arrived at the Common. There, a goose girl raced up and down a muddy path, herding her honking white charges, and at the Smokers’ Circle a huddled group o
f men created a denser fog than that rolling in from the bay.

  I went first to the Charles Street Home, to leave a bundle of baby’s things for Queenie.

  “Oh, ain’t that the sweetest!” The new mother sighed, examining the pink sleeping gown with matching cap, the white booties, the miniature woolen coat, all only slightly used and well mended by Abba herself where the moths had made holes.

  “How do you feel, Queenie?” I sat in the one rickety ladder-back chair the room contained, and patted Queenie’s hand.

  “Tired, Miss Louisa. And kind of soft in the head, if you know what I mean. I can only see today, like there’s nothing past it.” Queenie hugged her baby closer and the little bundle mewed and stretched, whereupon I spent several minutes admiring the baby’s beauty and intelligence, as new mothers seem to expect even before the infant can display any qualities whatsoever other than the primary skill of taking in and then giving out various liquids.

  “Are you still reading your books about California? I don’t see them here,” I said when I felt due praise had been rendered.

  “What’s the point?” Queenie stared out the dirty, curtainless window at the swirling gray fog. “I can’t even afford the coach to Worcester, and I can’t walk to San Francisco, can I?”

  “Don’t give up, Queenie. I haven’t. We’ll find a solution,” I said.

  But Queenie only stared out the window and stroked her baby’s head.

  By the time I arrived at Edgar Brownly’s studio, I was very determined. Too many things needed to be set to rights.

  The fog had reached the consistency and color of burned pea soup, for the chill had turned to outright cold, and the thousands of chimneys in the city were sending up a fresh allowance of soot and smoke that, encountering the heavier wet mist, simply fell back down to earth.

  By the Customs House the fog was especially thick, for there it combined with the salty mist of the bay, and for that I was thankful, I admitted later, for it rendered me just another vague moving object in the false twilight. The sailors leaning in the tavern doorways did not bother with their usual catcalls and whistles. The foghorn boomed and the harbor cats skittered over the cobbles and yowled. Bells clanged from the masts of rocking boats.

  The same old landlady who had opened the door to me a week earlier now opened it again and smirked unpleasantly at me.

  “Come to see ’im again, have you?” She cackled. “You young women are all alike. Them high-buttoned blouses don’t fool me.” She opened the door and allowed me into the hallway.

  “Is Mr. Brownly at home?”

  “Went out for grub. Back in a minute, I suppose. There.” She pointed into a deeper shadow. “You remember where the stairs are. I’m not walking up there with you. My knees are something bad, you know.”

  No gas lamps had been lighted here; the landlady would not waste money on illumination during day hours, no matter how dark the day. The hall was all shadow and fog, for broken windows had allowed the outdoor climate to migrate indoors. The windows had not been broken during my first visit, I thought. There had been some violence here.

  “I remember the way,” I told the muttering landlady. “There’s no need to accompany me. Thank you.” I gave the woman a nickel and began a slow, cautious climb upstairs to the top floor. The railing was slick with grease, the stairs littered with paper and bottles and now leaves, which had come in through the broken windows.

  As the landlady had said, he was not in, but he had left his door open. That indicated he was expecting someone, and it was not I. Nevertheless, I decided to take the risk and enter and wait.

  The room was as I had remembered. Canvases leaned against the walls in wild disarray, rectangles of all sizes and shapes jutting their corners at each other with no little hostility. One unfinished canvas, still on its easel and covered with a cloth, occupied the center of the room.

  I lifted that cloth, and Katya Mendosa, dressed—or somewhat dressed, since the garments were few and brief—as a gypsy dancer gazed back at me. The actress’s eyes were narrowed, her mouth pouting. She looked on the verge of a complaint. It was most lifelike. While the canvases were of dubious taste, their execution displayed talent; how Mr. Brownly must have resented it when his little sister was taken to Europe to tour the galleries, and not he.

  I replaced the cover and continued my inspection.

  The studio, I noted now, was more prosperous than the building. Brownly had brought in a second velvet sofa and positioned it under the window since my last visit. Perhaps he, too, was already making use of Dorothy’s allowance. He had also installed a polished table with a good embroidered cloth on it, a liquor cabinet, and a big copper coal scuttle. A folding screen modestly kept from view the chamber pot and washbasin in the corner. There was a “maid’s box” next to the fireplace, with the brushes and blacklead used to tidy up hearths, so I knew that Brownly also had a woman come in for the cleaning. His taste for artistic deprivation went only so far, it would seem.

  The charwoman probably came in the morning to mop and dust and lay the fire for the day, since the Brownly heir slept at home and would not need a fire in the evening. For the most part, I added to myself.

  Carefully, moving the paintings as little as possible, I began my cautious search through them, tilting canvas-stretched frames this way and that until I again discovered the painting of Queenie. This I pulled out of its pile and leaned against an empty spot of wall. I sat gingerly on the sofa opposite it, and considered.

  Queenie stared back at me out of huge, lustrous green eyes. Her bristling black hair fell partially over her shoulders, and aside from that avalanche of hair, she was as naked as the day she was born. The child—she was barely fourteen when this was painted, I estimated—reclined languorously on a sofa, the same sofa on which I now sat. Brownly had outfitted her with a ruby ring and many strands of pearls around her slender neck. Probably his mother’s. How had Queenie, a child of the streets, felt wearing those jewels, reclining on that sofa . . . and wearing nothing else? How, for that matter, had Mr. Brownly convinced her to pose so? Money alone wouldn’t be enough, not for Queenie, who, while she struggled to give birth to her first child, had still clutched a blanket modestly over her belly and legs.

  I felt my eyes narrow, my jaw grow tense. I looked very closely at the painting, nose-to-nose. The pupils of Queenie’s eyes were dilated. Her fingers were loosely curled as if she half slept, despite those wide-open eyes, and the tilt of her head also suggested sleepiness. Laudanum. Brownly had given her opium.

  I heard footsteps then, and, leaving the painting where it was, I sat back down, this time in the chair by the table, not on the sofa. As upset as I was, I remembered that ladies, if caught alone in a room with a gentleman, never sit on the sofa, since that could be construed as an invitation to intimacy. Of course, I wasn’t really alone with a gentleman; I was alone with Edgar Brownly, the child seducer, the drugger of women . . . the murderer?

  He fumbled with the unlocked door and finally kicked it open. His red moon face was obscured by an armload of groceries, bottles and loaves of bread sticking out of net bags, so he did not see me at first. He was humming a tune from Girl of the Golden West.

  Stooping with apparent effort and exhaling the sound that sails make when the wind suddenly abandons them, he placed his parcels on a side table. He stood, removed his hat, and turned around. He saw me sitting there, waiting, watching.

  He sputtered with dismay for a few moments before finally being able to pronounce, “Miss Alcott! What in blazes are you doing here?”

  “The door was open, and the landlady said I might come in,” I answered mildly. “I was hoping we might talk for a few moments.”

  “Most inconvenient!” He turned in a circle the way street dogs do when they have been cornered and have no escape. He could not very well flee his own loft, however, so he decided to take off his greatcoat, hang it on the oak coat tree from whence also dangled an umbrella and his painting smock, and brave the lion
ess in his own den.

  “You are . . . you are not a lady,” he sputtered, taking some time to come up with even that mild insult. “You . . . you . . . are masculine in your thinking!” And he meant that as a great insult, indeed, though I could not take it as such.

  He sputtered and ineffectually insulted me for several more minutes, scratched his head, started to say things and then paused before words formed themselves, and finally sat on the sofa, looking as if he would weep with frustration.

  “I will be gone in just a few minutes,” I said firmly. “But I do wish to speak with you about Dorothy.”

  “Dorothy.” He pouted. “It is always about Dorothy. It has always been about Dorothy. Will she never stop plaguing me?”

  “Mr. Brownly, your sister is dead. Surely she can bother you no longer.”

  His pout disappeared. “Humph. Yes, of course. I mean, we grieve for her; we all do.”

  “Was there ill will between you and Dorothy? Sisters can be a nuisance,” I commented in my gentlest voice.

  Slow as he was, Edgar Brownly was beginning to follow my line of thinking. “Ill will? No. Of course not. At least, no more than naturally occurs between an older brother who is saddled with the responsibility of overseeing a family of females, and the much younger sister who refuses to take on any responsibility at all. I love my sisters, Miss Alcott. All of them. I have dedicated my life to their well-being.”

  “Of course you have,” I agreed. “Your mother must be quite proud of you, and grateful, I suspect, for your . . . sacrifices. I see a little spirit stove over there, Mr. Brownly. Could I make you a cup of tea? It is such a damp day.”