Louisa and the Missing Heiress

by Anna Maclean

“I have. My toes will testify to that, since I danced with a young man by the name of Christopher Holt, from New York City, who has not yet learned left from right. What he lacks in skill he makes up for in enthusiasm. In fact, if a boy with black hair and black eyes and a jacket too short in the sleeves approaches, you are not, under any circumstance, to relinquish your place on this bench next to me. Promise.”

  “Dorothy would have enjoyed this so much. Will none of my dearest friends be lucky in love?” I whispered wistfully. The band had been ordered to play calmer tunes during supper for the sake of everyone’s digestion, and the sad strains of “I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair” now floated through the air. “Perhaps Dorothy was too loyal.”

  “Have you tried the strawberries, Louy? Do take a plate. But why do you say Dorothy was extreme in her loyalty?” Sylvia said.

  “I’m not hungry anymore. Not even for strawberries, though I can’t imagine how your mother obtained them, and in such quantity. Money is an amazing thing, Sylvia, in its limitless ability to obtain anything from strawberries to husbands. I speak of Dorothy’s loyalty to Mr. Wortham, of course. Despite everything, she seems to have stayed by him. I want so much to ask her why, but I must figure it out for myself.”

  The black-eyed boy who had outgrown his evening jacket had spied us and was approaching. Quickly we fled back into the candlelit ballroom.

  At ten o’clock, after the supper table had been laid waste and the musicians were replaying the tunes of the first hour, just as the first matrons were preparing to leave, we realized the unknown event that we had awaited was upon us.

  Constable Cobban was announced by a very startled doorman.

  Cobban, blushing and looking extraordinarily uncomfortable, was in the same plaid suit in which he seemed to make all of his appearances. It was a handsome enough suit for ready-made, but Sylvia sighed when she saw him, and I knew what she was thinking: No woman could ever really love a man who had but one suit to his name. He stood in the doorway, lit from behind like garden statuary at twilight, twisting his hat about in his hands and looking furtive.

  “Who is that extraordinary young man?” Sylvia’s mother asked. The band was playing a lively cotillion and only the hardiest dancers remained on the ballroom floor. Sylvia had finally asked her mother, as courtesy required, to sit with us and have a cup of punch. “Did you invite him, dear?”

  “No, Mother.”

  “Oh, perhaps it is Preston Wortham’s driver! Is he here? Is that terrible man here?” She fanned herself so vigorously that the feathers of her boa stirred like palm fronds in a storm.

  “I don’t see him, Mother. Stay calm.” Sylvia gave me a sidelong glance. “I will discover this visitor’s purpose and then ask him to leave.”

  She did no such thing. She gave his coat to a servant and brought him a glass of champagne, which he refused.

  “I’m not here for pleasure,” he said, and then blushed. “Not that I don’t take pleasure in your acquaintance . . . I mean . . .”

  With the constable’s entrance, the atmosphere of the evening changed. Whereas before it had felt slow, like swimming underwater, now it sped up and felt out of control, like a horse that will not be reined in. I felt the change and looked up to see Constable Cobban’s eyes staring directly into my own.

  I felt the faintest thrill of fear. The time had come; I felt it in my bones. The final revelation would be made, and I would know Dorothy’s story, as surely as if I had told it myself. Somehow this young man had become twisted in the coils of this tragedy, and it was only through him that the truth would be revealed. But I was no longer certain I should know. This inability to let go of the errors of the past could destroy, I thought.

  But in that fatal moment, when Constable Cobban and I gazed at each other, truth seemed the only possible good. The cotillion was followed by a slower two-step, and Cobban shyly approached me. I left my little group and gave him my hand so that he could lead me onto the dance floor. The card dangling from the ribbons on my wrist tangled in his fingers; when he did grasp my hand it was with too strong a grip. I cleared my throat, and he relaxed his hold somewhat.

  “We meet again,” was all he could think of to say. He nervously tried to pat his ginger curls flatter. They sprang back up, forming a kind of halo around his head, a most bizarre effect for a young man hardly worthy of canonization.

  “As you seem to have planned, Constable Cobban,” I answered with a gentle smile, “since you have not mentioned any urgent business. You have come for the dancing?”

  “No. Yes. I mean . . .”

  “Let us be friends, shall we?” And I meant just that, though he would not realize it till later.

  “I would like that,” he said.

  As Mr. Cobban was of the school of dancing theory that counts aloud to the music, conversation was somewhat limited. I decided we should sit out the rest of the dance at a table in the card room. The entire party would soon be gossiping about me, since I was walking hand in hand with a young man in a checkered suit, so we might as well sit in the very eye of the storm. Mrs. Milton, fortunately, had already left by that time.

  “That evening, two weeks ago . . . when I saw you, and you had fallen into the road . . .”

  “I was pushed,” I corrected softly. “Evil is omnipresent, Mr. Cobban. You may temporarily lock part of it behind bars, but another part will always walk freely among us. And perhaps the worst part is the unseen, the unknown.”

  “You always rise to his defense. One would think—”

  I interrupted him. “I never defend crime, not even when it is sanctioned by our own government, Mr. Cobban. If I argue that evil may not stop at Mr. Wortham’s front door, I am simply stating a truth as I reason it.”

  My admonishment made him blush, for he was not fool enough to overlook another fact. “Well,” he admitted. “I have been thinking about that evening, that if you didn’t trip into the road then you were pushed, and that maybe it wasn’t a simple pickpocket who pushed you.”

  “That idea had also occurred to me.”

  “And I think you have been useful in this case, and I don’t wish you to think me ungrateful, but it is time for you to leave well enough alone,” he finished in a rush. “If anything should happen to you, Miss Alcott . . .”

  “You have tested the marzipan,” I guessed. “Did the chemist’s supplies arrive?”

  “No. They weren’t needed, after all.” He stopped and again tried to flatten his copper curls. “His dog found the opened box and ate the last piece, and the powdered sugar as well. The dog is dead, Miss Alcott. There are two murders, Miss Dorothy’s and Mr. Mapp’s. You must leave this to me. You see, I think there is a fondness between us. . . . I certainly feel fondness, that is, although you have strange friends and I should expect you to see less of them, if you see them at all, after—”

  “Mr. Wortham is not so very strange,” I said, discreetly leading Mr. Cobban away from the conclusion of his speech, which seemed to intimate that he might wish to take me walking on Sunday morning and perhaps even speak to my father. “He is, as are many criminals, more pitiable than strange, being a person whose ambition exceeds his moral intelligence.”

  “I was not speaking of Mr. Wortham, for his nature is not at all strange but simply criminal,” Constable Cobban said. “I was speaking of his wife, of Mrs. Wortham. I wouldn’t have believed you to be friends with a woman like that, and I hope there are no more like her in your set.”

  My heart skipped a beat. With every instinct, I knew the key was now to be presented. And he did not even seem to be aware of the significance of this moment.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, forcing my voice to remain calm.

  “I mean the baby that was born to her before her marriage.”

  “The baby.” I repeated the words slowly, as if they were foreign. And then they took on meaning.

  “You did not stay to the end of the autopsy,” Cobban said.

  “No, I did not stay. I tho
ught Sylvia was going to faint, so we left. What did I not see, Mr. Cobban?”

  “It is common, during a postmortem on a female, to examine the, uh, the womb.” He blushed, but continued. “Mrs. Wortham had given birth some years before. Years before she was married. I thought you knew, but I see now you did not, and I have been clumsy.” He shook his head with disapproval. “The things women hide from each other. And their families. I’m assuming, of course, that Mr. Wortham did not know of the child.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t believe he knew.” I formed the words slowly and carefully, tasting their bitterness, the surprise in them that should not have been a surprise. We had been friends. And I hadn’t known. I hadn’t seen. See me, Dorothy had said in my dream.

  “That is why your friendship with Mrs. Wortham surprises me. She was a woman of dubious character,” Cobban said.

  I have a temper. I have never lied about this, and a lifetime of trying to tame it has not been successful. “Dubious?” I said. “Because she gave birth? You are a cruel judge, Constable,” I said, and my voice was not sweet. “Do you judge her partner as harshly, or is the guilt all the woman’s?”

  He blushed and stammered. “Of course, she was a child herself. She was badly used. . . .”

  “Yet you call her ‘that woman’ and judge her.”

  We grew awkward with each other. Neither of us knew the way out of this terrible moment. Cobban decided to try a different topic of conversation.

  “Too bad for that alibi of Wortham’s,” he said almost cheerfully. “It seems we have another motive on his part. Wouldn’t you say? Money isn’t the only motive, Miss Alcott. There is honor and pride and jealousy to consider, and it seems his wife tested him sorely on those points.”

  “Yes. It would be provoking to learn that Dorothy had had a child earlier and not told him.”

  “I suppose I could bring him in for more questioning. And check on that tailor of his perhaps. He will admit to the lie.”

  “Yes. Perhaps. A child . . .” I repeated, still stunned and feeling, in that very moment when society would have me hate and disdain my old friend’s very name, more love than I had ever before felt for the gentle, sad Dorothy. Dorothy, with the great sadness, the maternal nature, the full, womanly figure. Oh, what a weight of secrecy had pressed on those tender shoulders!

  “Then, too, it’s not looking so good for Edgar Brownly,” Cobban mused. “His sister had begun her family, it seems, though she kept quiet about it. Even an illegitimate child may be given some legal and familial rights, so there would be more competition for the family fortune.”

  “The family fortune? Or what remains of it. They are looking distinctly down-at-the-heels to me,” I said.

  “Perhaps, then, you will relinquish your relations with that entire family,” Cobban said. “I would rather you acquired different friends.”

  I rose from my seat and stepped away.

  “Mr. Cobban, it is time for you to leave. Not even my father dictates my friendships. You overstep. Good night.”

  Again, the blush and stammer. Then he too rose, turned on his heel, and stalked out.

  The rest of the evening seemed a blur. I danced. I attempted small talk and pretended to be interested in the latest styles from Paris. Minutes passed. Hours passed. At midnight, almost at the same time as the stroke of the clock in the hall, I had it figured out, and wondered that I hadn’t seen it sooner.

  I stood up so quickly my chair fell backward. The lingering whist players in the room where I had sought some calm and quiet looked up, shocked.

  Sylvia, who had just arrived with a glass of champagne for me, looked wide-eyed and alert, despite the late hour.

  “Sylvia, may I use your mother’s coach?”

  “I’ll have to find Jenkins and have him bring it from the stables. Jenkins is not known for his agility and quickness of pace.”

  “Then I will run instead,” I said.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Nursery

  I HITCHED MY GOWN to my knees and charged into the night, forgetful that I had promised Abba to attempt no more errands alone in the dark and trying vainly to ignore the throbbing in my knee. Why had I danced so much? Now I could barely walk, and I was in such a hurry.

  In addition to limping, I was completely out of breath from the effort of half running while costumed in a heavy gown, wooden hoop, and thin velvet slippers. But there was an errand that required my immediate attention. The puzzle pieces had been jostling against each other, ready finally to fit into place. Dorothy was going to tell Mr. Wortham about the child. Surely that was what she meant that day when she said, “I must tell him I am in terror. . . .” There was a phrase I remembered from a letter she had sent me from Rome. God designates one true husband for each woman, and I have been united with mine. That part of the letter had been splotchy, as if she had been crying. Could there have been a re in front of united?

  Four blocks from Sylvia’s house, a phaeton with two swift horses caught up with me. I cringed, remembering the carriage that had almost run me down in the fog, but Sylvia waved from the coach and ordered the driver to stop for me.

  “I thought your mother’s carriage was in the stable?” I asked breathlessly.

  “It is. This is Mr. Baldwin’s. We have borrowed it. Right, Jenkins?”

  The driver grinned and tipped his hat.

  “Always at the service of a damsel in distress,” he said, revealing that he, too, was a fan of the popular press.

  “Then to Mrs. Brownly’s house,” I said, taking Sylvia’s hand and ascending the carriage steps.

  Stars shone overhead. The night smelled of spring. But I, deep in thought, was oblivious to everything but the jolting of the carriage and my own thoughts. I took some moments to explain to Sylvia about the baby, Dorothy’s child, and then braced myself as we bounced over the cobbles.

  The Brownlys’ downstairs maid was not pleased to open the door to us at midnight. She stood in the doorway, her hair tucked under an old-fashioned mob, a candle in hand, glaring like a guardian dragon.

  “Everyone is in bed. Come back in the morning,” she said as she rubbed sleep from her eyes. “Even Master Edgar,” she added, inadvertently making it clear that Master Edgar was not accustomed to keeping early or regular hours.

  “Tomorrow morning may be too late. I must see Mrs. Brownly now,” I insisted. “It is urgent.” It must indeed have appeared urgent. I stood there, hatless, my wind-tousled hair and bedraggled silk flowers plastered against my face, my— Sylvia’s—green dress dark with dew and stained at the hem from trailing through the puddles that always gathered at the bottom of Beacon Hill even in fine weather.

  “Oh, all right, then.” Grudgingly the dragon-maid opened the door wider and led us into the dark front parlor. “Wait here.”

  The house was in complete darkness, and she lit only a single lamp in the room. We sat closely together within that cold circle of light, not speaking. Sylvia was filled with questions but knew she must wait a bit longer for the answers, for I had such a look of studious concentration on my face she dared not interrupt my thoughts.

  As we waited, I observed the condition of that parlor and saw in the light of the solitary lamp that the curtains were mothy, the carpet stained. There, against the window overlooking the garden, was the blue-and-white sofa, the one that Mrs. Brownly could not re-cover in yellow paisley because of the expense. I saw the brighter patches of wallpaper where pictures had been removed.

  The furnishings were long past the point of replacement, and not even the argument that goods were not as well made as they were fifty years before could justify the negligence of this room and its appointments. The Brownly fortune was being spent elsewhere. Following my eyes, watching the speculation flicker in her subtle changes of expression, Sylvia opened her mouth, unable to postpone the questions. I held a finger before my lips, indicating she was not to speak.

  A quarter of an hour later Mrs. Brownly came down in her nightclothes, l
ooking stern and forbidding despite the frilled white lace cap and voluminous chenille robe. She gave Sylvia a chilly greeting, but when she saw me sitting there, her expression changed. The formidable Brownly matriarch suddenly looked like a tired old woman.

  “You have a reputation for perspicacity.” She sighed. “I knew you would be back, Miss Alcott. Return to bed, Mary,” she said to the maid who stood behind her. “I will handle this.” With a parting angry glance, the maid turned and disappeared into the dark hall.

  “May I see Agnes?” I asked gently after a few minutes, when the sound of the maid slapping upstairs to the attic in her slippers died away. “I won’t wake her,” I promised. “I merely wish to see her.”

  Sylvia looked questioningly at me, but knew that to interrupt my train of thought at that moment would be useless. Biding her time with increasing impatience, still Sylvia kept quiet.

  Mrs. Brownly, however, did not share her confusion. She nodded and sighed once again. There was weary resignation in her eyes, but a note of relief in the sigh.

  “What a burden such a secret must be,” I whispered.

  “We shall go upstairs then, and you may see my burden,” Mrs. Brownly said.

  She carried the lamp. We followed, making slow progress through the dark halls and up several flights of stairs. It was an eerie journey through a house and a family history we had thought we had known and now realized we had not.

  At the top floor, night-lights burned in several niches, and I remembered sharing a bed with Anna, telling secrets in the darkness, knowing Mother was just steps away. This child had no such comfort.

  “Here,” Mrs. Brownly said, opening a door.

  The nursery still smelled of cough syrup and menthol steam, although it was weeks now since Agnes had fallen into the water down by the docks.

  “She has weak lungs,” Mrs. Brownly whispered, leaning over and gently pulling a cradled cloth doll from the sleeping girl’s face. We stood in a circle around Agnes’s little bed, and looked down.

  “Just as Dorothy had as a child. Poor thing,” Mrs. Brownly added.