by Anna Maclean
“Abba,” I responded sadly, “when has danger ever prevented an Alcott from doing his or her duty to the truth?”
Abba, of course, could not respond to that, since her own husband was, almost at that very moment, endangering himself by aiding the fugitive slave Anthony Burns, who had been captured and taken to the courthouse and was probably sitting in the very room that Preston Wortham had recently vacated.
“Then promise you will be more careful, and not take so much on yourself, or at least to have someone with you when you go on these strange errands,” Abba pleaded.
“I promise,” I agreed. I also promised to spend the next day in bed, for a fierce head and chest cold was already beginning to set in, and what with the newly acquired limp and nascent sniffles and sneezes—moreover, a large purple bruise was taking shape across my forehead—I looked miserable indeed.
Rather than one, I spent several days in bed, feverish and low in spirits. Notes were sent round saying that I was ill and the children should not come for lessons for the rest of the week. The curtains were drawn in my bedroom to shut out the gloom, and my little writing desk in the attic grew dusty from disuse.
It seemed to me that the world and its evil had bested me. I could not help Queenie, nor could I discover the content of Dorothy’s last unspoken message to me. I had asked every question I could think of, and I had arrived at a brick wall. There seemed to be other questions needed to get at an answer, but I did not know what they were, despite all my pondering.
Even Abba’s advice that to discover the nature of the person was to discover the truth of any situation seemed to be failing me. What if their nature were undiscoverable or unformed? Surely there must be some other way to acquire information about crimes, other than witnesses, who were unreliable or downright liars; other than motives, which could be hidden or confusing; other than human nature itself, which was often unpredictable. Pondering was often the only way to solve crimes, and I speculated about a time when other means might be at the disposal of the investigator, perhaps even a trace of identification a criminal might leave behind at the scene of the crime.
I suspected that someone who wanted more money had murdered Dorothy, and not someone who merely wished to buy a loaf to feed a hungry family. A poor person would have stolen her expensive coat and card case and sold them, but Dorothy had been murdered, not robbed. So, this had been a crime of greed, not of true need. Nor had she been murdered by a lunatic; her murderer had been cunning and secretive, not raving. Moreover, he moved in the upper classes, not the taverns and brothels of the typical criminal class. Someone of the lower criminal classes would never have had the brazen courage to murder her in broad daylight for fear that his (or her) face would already be known to the constabulary.
How to find such a person, who had acquired a perfect camouflage, who moved through my world and Dorothy’s world as confidently and lethally as a lion moved through the plains of the African Serengeti? Who might, in fact, be a friend, or at least an old acquaintance?
Certainly the study of phrenology offered no assistance, for according to that dubious science all people of criminal mentality were low of brow, large of nose, and coarse of complexion. Neither Edgar Brownly nor Preston Wortham possessed the protruding ears and massive jaws, the stooped posture and slouching gait said to mark the true criminal.
Nor were the theories of the alienists particularly useful, for they claimed that crime was a product of a diseased mind, and that the diseased mind was easily discovered by the ravings and bizarre behavior of the lunatic. Mr. Brownly and Wortham were queer, indeed, and certainly of a low moral fiber. But they neither ranted nor raved.
Guilt or innocence was as difficult to establish in 1854 as it was in 1554, when women accused of witchcraft were thrown into ponds to see if they would float or not. Wiser in method, to me at least, was the ancient Chinese practice of putting rice in the accused’s mouth; if he spat it forth moist he was innocent, but if it was dry he was guilty, the theory being that fear stops the flow of saliva. But I could not very well parade around Beacon Hill asking the Brownlys, Preston, and everyone else to spit out rice for me.
I realized that most crime began in the mind and stayed its own secret, as unique as each person capable of wanting more than they had, or lusting after a neighbor’s wife, or simply enjoying acts of violence against another. Crime, I reflected, was an abnormality of the soul, not the face, or even the social manner and behavior. And to find the criminal I must find the steps, the landmarks that led back to the soul.
For at this time, as I tossed feverishly in bed, drifting in and out of bad dreams, I considered that an added complication had crept into this affair: Constable Cobban.
The Boston Watch and Police was not yet a year old, and there were many in Boston who complained that the tax money spent on it would be thrown away for nothing, that the city should have retained its older, less expensive system of guards and night watchmen, most of whom had been volunteers.
If the new police force could not even solve a domestic murder with plenty of suspects from which to choose, how would they earn their salary? Cobban, I sensed, was determined to find a suspect to try and hang. And if I did not point him in the direction of the truly guilty person, an innocent one might die in his place. There would be two murders, not one.
But I had asked every question that seemed pertinent, and the truth had not revealed itself.
What more was there to ask? What final question would present an answer, a truth?
While I feverishly tossed and fretted at home, Mrs. Milton lost no time spreading word that the Alcott girl had taken to visiting men alone at the docks. It was not long before Abba heard the story making its rounds through Boston, and even I myself soon afterward heard the story from Sylvia.
The one unfortunate consequence, for me, of what my father termed “the unseemly, irrelevant gossip of idle minds” was that Abba insisted I attend the ball announced in Sylvia’s honor. I had hoped my illness would excuse me from mundane social tasks, but a combined effort by my parents, and my weakened physical state, forced me to realize I would simply have to make an appearance. Even I grudgingly understood that an entrance at one of the finest balls of the season, in one of the oldest homes of Boston, would help mend the serious rent in my reputation caused by that visit to Edgar Brownly. And even an authoress must give some credence to the importance of reputation.
But while, after the week of my illness, life had returned to normal, I had not. My original sadness over Dorothy’s death had given way to a desperate urge to find her killer, and Abba knew I must uncover the answer soon, or it would be lost forever and I would never know, and never fully recover from this particular grief.
“But what question is left?” I asked Sylvia whenever we spoke of Dorothy.
“Other than who did it?” my friend asked, uncomprehending.
“No, Sylvia. The question that will provide the answer to that question. The one I haven’t thought to ask, the key.”
ON THE DAY of the ball, I arrived early, as promised, and a little out of sorts. Sweet, shy Lizzie hadn’t wanted to attend the ball. “Poor Louy,” she had said in sympathy.
But “Lucky Louy!” May had exclaimed. “I am invited?” May, our butterfly, loved nothing better than dancing and dressing up, but she was too young for a real ball, and Abba had asked her to stay at home that night. Mother and Father were expecting a family of “travelers,” and we knew what that meant. The Alcotts were to contribute blankets, a change of clothes, and a food basket, and Abba needed help.
How it rankled with me to have to be away that evening!
Sylvia didn’t seem in much better spirits. I could tell from her expression that she and her mother had fought bitterly over some insignificant detail of the evening. I’ve noticed that such events, intended to be amusing, perhaps even relaxing, often have the opposite effect.
I took one of the lounge chairs in Sylvia’s sunroom and tipped my face up to the uncurtained window with
eyes closed. Two weeks had passed since my visit to Edgar Brownly and Wortham, since the “accident” in the street.
“No polkas for me, I’m afraid,” I said to Sylvia.
The bruise over my right eye from my misadventure had almost faded, but I still moved with a hint of stiffness in my right knee.
“We will have the band play all waltzes,” Sylvia said, sitting next to me. “That won’t bother your knee as much.”
“I was thinking again of Dorothy,” I said. “Not dancing.”
“Poor Dorothy.” Sylvia leaned back in the chaise and put her arm through mine. “I think for me the truth is just becoming evident. I’ll never see her again. That is what death means, isn’t it? I mean, unless you are a Spiritist and expect Dorothy to come at night because we are sitting in a circle and holding hands. No, Dorothy would never participate in anything that dubious. I will never see her again.”
“And I will never know what happened.”
“Surely at some point, Louisa . . .”
“No. Constable Cobban has talked to everyone in the family at least twice, and has come to an impasse in his investigation. The afternoon that Dorothy was murdered, Mr. Wortham was with his tailor until he returned home, and Digby says he did not leave the house again. Edith and Sarah were shopping together until they went to the Wortham home for tea. Miss Alfreda was tending to her sister, Mrs. Brownly.”
“Edgar Brownly?”
“He confessed to Constable Cobban that he was with Katya Mendosa. Wisely, I might add. The truth is always better than a lie. Moreover, Miss Mendosa will have less incentive to attempt future blackmail with him, since the affair is already confessed.”
“Would she, do you think?”
“That is how such affairs usually end, I believe.”
“The family are all accounted for, then.” Sylvia sighed. “As well as Katya, who was with Edgar.”
“Yes. All accounted for. Though, of course, one or two of them are lying. And we shall never know which.” I opened my eyes again and stared unhappily into the muddy landscape outside. The gardener went by just then with an armload of gray pussywillow branches arranged in a pretty blue-and-white vase. There had been a miracle during my two weeks at home recovering from injuries and the Slough of Despond. Spring, finally, had triumphed, the snow and frost had been abolished, and things were growing again. Dorothy had loved pussywillow.
“A tramp has been arrested,” I told Sylvia, who did not read the daily papers. “He was sleeping homeless by one of the piers, and the day before Dorothy’s murder he had been inebriated and made a commotion of some sort. So now the Boston police have arrested him and charged him with murder.”
“Hanging seems an unfair punishment for being homeless and prone to tipple,” Sylvia agreed.
“It grows worse. Constable Cobban is beginning an investigation into a new case,” I said, rising from my chaise longue. “A prostitute who was murdered on Wharf Street.”
“Isn’t that near Edgar Brownly’s studio?”
“It is. But don’t get your hopes up.” I smiled ruefully; strange concept to have one’s hopes rise at the thought that an acquaintance is a murderer. “There are many artists’ studios in that area, many brothels and taverns, and from what the constable has gathered so far, the poor girl was not particular in her choice of clients. Mr. Brownly, if he knew the girl, would have been one of dozens, I understand.”
I sighed again and jammed my hands into my pockets. “No. What this means is not more intelligence about Dorothy’s death, but simply that Constable Cobban has given up and begun a new investigation, and a person innocent of the crime of murder may be hanged. I have this feeling, Sylvia, that he is withholding something from me, something important. Whenever Dottie’s name is mentioned, his eyes get very hard. And I don’t know why.” We both stared, perplexed, out the window for a long while. The gardener passed by again, his arms empty this time. Where had the pussywillows gone? Perhaps into his own wife’s sitting room. I hoped so. Sylvia’s mother could afford a roomful of orchids; the gardener’s wife should at least enjoy pussywillows.
“Shall we choose our dresses now?” Sylvia asked, trying to distract me. “Wear the pink dress,” she said, leading me upstairs to her rooms. We were of the same size, and when necessary I, who could not afford fancy outfits, borrowed frocks.
“The green, if you don’t mind,” I answered thoughtfully. “Pink seems a bit lighthearted for me today.”
Sylvia rummaged through the piles of lace and silk laid out on her bed, searching for the green satin. “Do you think Preston might come, Louisa? He did come to your house for supper so soon after Dorothy’s death. Mother is so fearful that he might attend, after all, and ruin her evening.”
“Forgive me if this sounds a criticism, but you know your mother tends to flights of fancy. He is not particularly sensitive, but I don’t think Mr. Wortham would appear at an event where he is blatantly unwanted. I suspect he wishes a little privacy at the moment, for despite his many faults he does seem to have had some affection for Dorothy. Are you wearing that? Oh, how lovely, Sylvia.”
She held up a white dress embroidered with yellow roses. “Yes, I’m wearing this. And I shall powder. What a scandal there would be if we both went downstairs with powder on our faces!”
“Poor Dorothy would be shocked, too. She had that perfect peaches-and-cream complexion. . . .”
“And that lovely, full figure,” Sylvia added. “She never had to sew flounces inside her dresses to fill them out, the way I did. Poor Dottie . . .”
That was, I recalled later, the very last time we put a poor before Dorothy’s name. After that evening I would be free to remember Dorothy as sweet, as shy, as gentle and loyal; as all the good things she was before she had been made into a victim. My one final question and the all-important answer would occur to me in the middle of a fandango.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Revelation at the Ball
THE GUESTS BEGAN arriving at five, as was the custom. We would dance for a couple hours, have a buffet supper at seven, and then dance more until ten, or until the last guest disappeared, which was often much later if the champagne and fruit punch were particularly good. Parties required stamina in those days.
Even I admitted to stirrings of enthusiasm as the girls in their glittering party frocks and dancing shoes, and the young man in their evening suits of black jackets with tails to their knees and jaunty bows at the throat, arrived. There was something quite pleasant about seeing girls dressed in their prettiest gowns, with their swansdown boas draped over bare shoulders, or in the case of poor Jennie O’Connel, a thin scarf of possum, and their satin skirts hitched up to show red petticoats. The young men, awed and often bamboozled by such blatant displays of feminine charms, put into practice their oft-rehearsed best manners, some of which even verged on gallantry. When young Robert Baldwin, only a very distant cousin of the piano family, arrived, he left his top hat on a moment too long, and, blushing red with embarrassment, he actually went back out and rang a second time at the bell to repeal that faux pas.
But despite the gaiety of the scene, I could not give myself over to joy.
I stood solemnly in the reception line, a pale, grave young woman in a borrowed green frock, plainly preoccupied with decidedly unmerry thoughts. I had dreamed of Dorothy again the night before, of Dorothy in her blue-and-white-striped sport dress and carrying her tennis racket. “You have looked, but you have not seen. See me!” my friend had pleaded. “Louisa, look and see me!”
What was it Dorothy wanted me to see?
“Perhaps,” Sylvia suggested, “it was just a dream with no significance.”
“Perhaps.” I sighed without conviction. “But I have overlooked something. I know I have. There is a strange atmosphere to this evening, Sylvie. I feel it in my bones. Something will happen.”
“No more carriages trying to trample us,” Sylvia said hopefully. “No more suspicious French bonbons, though Mother suspects all
things French.”
I had a dance card tied around my wrist with a pink ribbon, as did all the unwed women, but it did not interest me. I did not carefully hold my hand and wrist in midair so as not to crush the card, as did the others, and when a young man asked to put his name down for a waltz I had already lost my little silver pencil.
But when the rooms grew crowded and warm and soft with candlelight, when the band began with a lively rendition of “Buffalo Girls,” some of the preoccupation began to lift from my brow. My spirits lifted. My foot tapped and I could not stop it.
By six all the guests had arrived and been greeted, and Sylvia and I were free to dance. There had been some tense moments during those greetings, especially when Mrs. Milton and her daughter arrived and pointedly refused to acknowledge me, for by that time gossip had me running half-clad in the street, chasing Edgar Brownly, who refused to embrace me, rather than merely leaving his studio with my hat off.
Sylvia smoothed over that awkward moment by announcing, in confidential tones yet loudly enough to be heard, that I was wearing that lovely garnet brooch that Margaret Fuller’s family had given me. And since Margaret Fuller upon her death had been a countess, and since Mrs. Milton was a name-dropper of the worst kind, that reminder of my proximity to nobility ended the problem and the gossip.
Robbie Baldwin asked for the waltz—Annie Potter glared in fury—and I was whirled away. Sylvia did not see me much for the rest of the evening, not until suppertime, when we shared a bench as we ate shrimp and oysters and cucumber salad. The window had been opened slightly and I thoughtfully nibbled shrimp as I watched the first spring moths singe their wings in the candle flames. One fell onto my slipper and I bent forward to pick it up, but the insect was dead.
I was breathless, for I had danced often, despite my injured knee.
“The evening is a success,” I pronounced without enthusiasm. “Your mother will be so pleased. Have you danced, Sylvia?”
