5
The two hemlock trees were filled with snow. A late-aftemoon breeze spilled across the horizon under a darkening sky. It skimmed crystals of snow from the branches and spun them across the cleared driveway.
Between the two trees, a wooden sign hung from a wooden post and crosspiece. “The Old Book Shop. T. E. Cooper, Prop.”
The shop was an old carriage house down a lane. The upper floor was apparently the judge’s residence.
Through the small-pane window of the shop, Willow saw a man sitting by a fireplace with a book in his lap. When he stepped through the shop doorway, the man stood up.
He held a book in his hand, using a forefinger for a bookmark. “Mr. Willow?”
“Yes.” Willow held out his hand. The pleasant bookstore odor of old books pervaded the room.
“I’m Thomas Cooper. Come sit down.” He led Willow by the fireplace to a large wooden table surrounded by captain’s chairs.
“Just the day for a good book,” said Willow.
“Yes. And that’s just what I’ve got here. A history of some of the Indians of New Jersey. Absegami Indians who lived here. Do you know this book? By Frederick Josephson. Astonishing writer. After my forty years of miserably written legal briefs, I can tell you this fellow’s a positive delight. You know that lawyers can’t write worth a hoot. What business are you in?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
“Hmmm.” Judge Cooper considered that. “English?”
“Uh. I gave myself away, eh?”
“A little. I bet you can’t write any better than the rest of the tribe of lawyers here. If this Josephson had entered law, he’d have conquered the field just on his skill of writing briefs. He writes like Addison. You know Addison? Neat parallelisms. Balanced sentences with that same concessive construction of Dr. Johnson. He concedes something, then takes it back. Concedes. Takes back. Quiet authority. And precise use of words. Oh, I tell you, he’s well worth reading.”
“Good,” said Willow, smiling. "I’ll buy it.”
“Get out,” said the judge. “This is the only Josephson I’ve got. And there are six people waiting to buy it.” He nodded at a small escritoire. “In the spring, after I’ve dined a whole winter on this volume, I may sell it to one of them. It’s cut of print, you know. Trouble with that josephson is he doesn’t do nearly enough writing. There are at least fifty basic subjects right here in southern Jersey that need his attention and—” Judge Cooper stopped. “And you have miles to go on a snowy day. You mentioned the name Tully when you called.”
“Yes. I’m trying to get some hard facts on a Margaret Tully who lived here with her parents late in the eighteenth century.” Judge Cooper nodded. “Yes, that’s what you said on the phone. Well. Let’s see. I have a large quantity of primary source material for genealogists centering on what is now Camden County. While I was waiting for you I examined my records, and I find no Margaret Tully—and that’s no surprise. Very few church records have survived since the eighteenth century. Confidentially, it wasn’t a very literate age, and many records aren’t really lost. They never existed. But having said that, I do find an Algernon Tully whose death was recorded in a Camden City church. Does that help?”
“I don’t know. Her father was named Algernon.”
“I have a date of death of August 3,1807.”
“That should be the same man. I have already found his will.”
“I see. Now you want to find the daughter, Margaret. Hmmmm. Well.”
“This is his will,” said Willow, holding forth a photostat.
Judge Cooper took it and read it, tilting the page to the light from the window. “Hmmm. Uh-huh. Mmmmmm. Well. Yes. She must have predeceased him. A tart kind of a writer, wasn’t he? Blunt. Maybe laconic is a better word. No explanation given for his actions. And that’s an interesting name—Eric Lermonx. And Annie Coffee, Algernon’s wife. I may have something on those names. But let’s get back to Margaret. Aside from this reference to her in Algernon’s will, there’s no record of her ever having been here. Now, I’m going to make a couple of educated guesses. He doesn’t refer to her by a married name, and I’ll bet at the time of writing of this will, Margaret was no longer a young girl. Tully himself was an old man and somewhat crabby, judging from the tone of his writing style. Now, spinster ladies stayed home. If my guesses are right, then Margaret never married, died before her father and died a spinster under his roof. Now let's see if we can prove that. Can we use your car?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I hate to leave my snug little fire here, but—tell you what, Willow. You and I can come back here in a little while and stir up the ashes and have a toddy. They say it’s going to get cold enough tonight to freeze the heart of an Episcopal minister. And a toddy will keep the chill off things for a bit. Let’s see—” He touched his chin with his fingers. “I want some warm clothes. Boots. Rubber bootsl And a broom.” He eyed the weather through the window. “A shovel too, I suppose. Are you good at digging up bodies, Willow?”
6
The judge directed the car into the heart of Camden’s ghetto. The wheels shuddered on old cobblestones, frozen snow and the traces of an old trolley track exposed through a worn tar surface.
“Here, here,” said Judge Cooper. “Ahead there. Pull over at the curb there.”
Willow stopped the car and looked to his right. It was an old cemetery fenced in ornate black wrought iron. The fencing, broken in many places, was clotted with old newspaper sheets. Brown weed stalks stuck up through the snow.
The cemetery gate was hinged with an old length of clothesline. Judge Cooper, carrying his broom like a halberd, opened the gate and stepped into the cemetery. His eyes gazed at a row of jagged whiskey-bottle bases that stood on a tombstone. Inside each was a measure of snow.
“Watch now,” he said to Willow. “There’s all kinds of broken glass, rusty cans and trash under the snow.” He gazed around at the stones. “Let’s see how good a guesser I am.” He set off down the main lane of the cemetery, walking carefully in his boots, his eyes searching the names on the stones. He turned to the left and followed a narrow lane almost to the wall of a brick tenement building.
He reached out his broom and swept a tablet stone. "Cowan. Hmmm. Old family. Came from Salem originally.” He looked at an upright stone, noting the name, and sauntered among the stones, scuffing snow as he went. "Hmmm. Bailey. Starr. Culpepper. Shipbuilders, originally. Hmmmm. Douglas.” He paused and swept snow from another stone. "Hmmmm. Weathered. I make it Aston or maybe Maston. What do you think?” He walked on and paused again. He squinted at a stone, bent and squinted more closely, then prodded filaments of the broom into the lettering. “Tully,” he said simply.
Willow stepped abreast of him and looked at the stone. Algernon Tully 1732-1807.
Judge Cooper broomed away the snow from the lower part of the headstone. "And Mrs. Tully,” he said. Annie Coffee Tully 1738-1799.
Judge Cooper swept at the snow around the perimeter of the headstone. "Maybe I should have brought that shovel from the car.”
“I’ll get it,” said Willow.
"Don’t bother. I think I’ve found what we want.” His broom cleared away snow from the low stone. He stepped close and, bending, squinted at it. He straightened up and looked at Willow. “Daughter Margaret.”
The legend was as simple and unadorned as the ones on the parents’ stone. "Margaret Tully 1761-1801.”
"Family plot,” said Judge Cooper. “My guess was right.”
"But why wasn’t there a probate packet on the two women?”
"Quite common. There was no need for a will. Household furnishings went from mother to daughter. Property and things of value were in the man’s name, except the house, which was quite often in both names.”
7
Willow looked at the two stones exposed from the shielding snow in the midst of a decayed ghetto.
Another Tully line ended with the barren womb of Margaret Tully, spinster.
Ther
e was a crosswind on the New Jersey Turnpike. It picked up granules from the snowbanks and blew them in clouds across the roadway.
Willow drove with his windshield wipers slowly wiping away the tire spray.
He reviewed again the facts of the day. He’d found Algernon, found Algernon’s will. Algernon identified himself as Joseph Tully’s son and identified Margaret as his daughter.
Margaret: Judge Cooper had found her buried beside her parents. She was still Tully, still unwed wiien she died. A spinster.
Case closed.
But who was Eric Lermonx?
Willow dismissed Lermonx. Clearly, he was of no consequence to Willow’s search for Tullys.
The sun was westering and New York was only eighty more miles away. Maybe dinner with Alice Polsley and her lovely legs. Willow touched up his speed a bit. One more son to go.
Maybe, if he was really lucky, his search would be fruitless.
8
The sun had set behind the handsome old Victorian clapboard house across the path. The wind prowled through the dusk with increasing strength. It curled around Judge Cooper’s house and chased the thin thread of wood smoke from his chimney. A link of metal chain tapped forlornly against the frozen flagpole above it. A homeless evening star appeared in the frosty black sky.
When the shop door opened, Judge Cooper looked up and smiled.
“I thought you’d be back, Willow. I bet you haven’t eaten any dinner yet, have you?”
The wind blew up a gale that rushed across the eastern part of the continent bringing with it the coldest temperatures in thirty-five years.
9
Judge Thomas Eakins Cooper sat at the table by the restaurant window, stirring his after-dinner coffee and watching the stiff tufts of sedge shudder in the howling wind. The lake in floodlight was under a deep layer of ice and snow. Spinning devils of snow crystals ran across the lake’s white surface into darkness.
“That Molasses Act of 1735 was a stupid piece of business for Parliament to get involved in, Willow. British or not, you must be able to see that it was strangling the baby in the cradle.”
“But it was never enforced.”
“It was unenforceable.”
“It was a joke,” persisted Willow. “But Joseph Tully smelled profit. The Molasses Act would have increased the price of rum and increased the consumption of wine in the colonies. And he had good wines—from the Azores and the Canaries and Madeira. That’s when he hatched his plan. It was a good idea, only-”
“—only it destroyed him and his family.”
“Well, it was circumstance that destroyed his family. Maybe it was the seeds of dissension among the sons that destroyed it. Anyway, Tully began exporting sons to the New World. His grand design was to have a son with a warehouse and a proper importing license in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Williamsburg, Virginia.”
Judge Cooper nodded, listening.
“The eldest son, Henry, arrived first. In the 1740s. He set up shop in Boston, and things went so well that father Joseph sent over his second son, Thomas, in 1747. For some reason, Joseph waited five years before sending Algernon over.”
“That’s”—Judge Cooper squinted his eyes—“1752?”
“Yes. Algernon had just turned twenty.”
“And the fourth one?”
“Roger. He arrived in 1759. On his twentieth birthday. By then trade had heated up a bit, and Joseph, back in London, was ready to expand. Roger was too young to set up by himself. But Henry was a seasoned merchant now and Thomas had been a good understudy. So, Joseph ordered Thomas to New York City to set up a wine-importing activity there.
“Then came the real bonanza. The Sugar Act of 1764 was passed, and it carried a heavy duty on the wines that were shipped direct from the Portuguese Wine Islands to the colonies. The same wines shipped through England, through Joseph Tully’s warehouses, were cheaper in the colonies. It was perfect, the culmination of a lifetime of work. So Joseph ordered son number three to move to Philadelphia and open trading station number three. Joseph and Sons were about to become rich—except for one thing... well, two things.”
“And one of them was family quarreling.”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“You said family dissension—”
“Right. Right. I did. Well, Henry’s the real culprit. He became a colonial. He married a colonial lady. He took the colonists’ viewpoint against England’s trade acts...”
“And he fired a musket at Concord at British troops.”
“Yes. And you can imagine the reaction of the father in England to that. Well, the whole thing was to blow galley west anyway. The colonists went into revolution. The wine trade went to absolute hell, and the four sons found themselves cut off from England and home, and destitute. They knew only the wine-importing business. They had no money—the war had wiped them out. And they had to dig with their bare hands to grow food and cut wood to keep their families from starvation. Henry, of course, was a member of the Continental Army.
“When the war ended, the whole grand scheme had died a wretched mess. The family was destroyed. Henry never again had any contact with any of them. Roger returned to England after his family burned to death—practically feebleminded. Algernon seems to have gotten lost here in the wilds of New Jersey trading with the fur trappers.”
“And the fourth son—what’s his name? Thomas.”
"Ask me in a few days. I have to go to Brooklyn to find his history.”
Judge Cooper fixed his eyes on Willow. “Tell me, why are you doing this? Are you a descendant of the family?”
“No.”
“Ummm. Are you representing a legacy?”
“No.”
“Hmmmm. Everytime I get near that question, your eyes slide sideways. Willow, you look guilty enough to hang without a trial.”
Willow looked sideways out at the frozen lake and the reedbending wind.
“Willow. I have a feeling that I’m talking to a bright young man with a very promising future who’s about to take a wrong turning in the road. I think you’d better think things out again.”
Willow looked at the lake and felt as separated from the rest of the human race as a crystal of snow blowing away in the bitter-cold darkness.
10
The pages were typewritten, thermo-facsimile copies of an original manuscript and in a linen-covered binding. The volume contained page after page of names, collated and alphabetized from every known church record in two counties.
“There were two of them,” said Judge Cooper, pointing to the names. “Eric Lermonx, date of birth unknown, who died in 1792. Clearly the wrong man. He was dead long before Algernon Tully was. And this Eric Lermonx. Born 1779. Died 1809. Age thirty. He sounds like our man. The other Eric may be his father or an uncle. Both of them are buried in Mt. Ephraim, which is just on the other side of White Horse Pike. I think we ought to check probate records first and see where that leads us.”
Judge Cooper roused his fire with a poker and looked out at the hemlock which was bobbing and swaying in the stiff breeze. A branch rubbed forlornly on a windowpane. “Hardest freeze I can ever remember,” he said. “Well, I’m going to have a glass of wine and get some sleep. You're welcome to sit here as late as you want. The shelves on this side contain lawbooks, collector's items mainly. A lot of them go back to the Elizabethan era, but your Latin had better not be rusty. This bank of shelves contains old history books, mostly local, mostly counties in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. And that bank over there contains American biography. Mostly legal and political. There's enough reading to occupy you through ten lifetimes, but I’d suggest that you get upstairs to sleep so we can roll out first thing. Courthouse in Woodbury opens at nine.”
“Judge, I still think I'm imposing on you.”
Judge Cooper looked at him with candid eyes. “You’re not. If I didn’t want to do this, I wouldn’t. I must admit to you, Willow, that my motives aren't all altruistic. I can’t take walks in this kind
of weather. Can’t garden. I’ve been a widower for over ten years so I ought to be used to the quiet around here, but to tell the truth, I’m delighted to have a finger in your genealogical pie. It’s as stimulating as a detective story to me. Confidentially, if I were starting out all over again, I'd chuck law and specialize in historical research and genealogy. The most fascinating life I’ve ever run into.”
11
Judge Cooper used a paper tissue to polish his glasses with care. Then he fitted them deliberately at the ears and bridge of nose. Next, he addressed himself to the Index of Wills and Testaments. “L L L. Hmmmm. Le Ler. Here we are. Ler.” He opened the heavy volume and riffled a few pages. “Okay. Ler. E for Eric, 1809. Here he is. Waiting for us all this while.” He turned to the volume indicated in the index and tapped its spine with a pointing finger.
Willow reached up and pulled it down. He laid it on the metal work surface and let Judge Cooper open it. Practiced fingers leafed the corners of the pages. “Now, let’s see. Hmmmm. Petition. I was afraid of this. He died intestate. Maybe that’ll be a help. We’ll get a lot of information about him we wouldn’t have gotten from a last will and testament.”
Judge Cooper fell to reading the documents, skipping the standard legal phrasing and picking out the names of the persons involved in disposing of the property of Eric Lermonx.
“Kiln maker?" asked Willow, reading over the judge’s shoulder.
Judge Cooper nodded. “Jersey sand. Some of the best sand in the world for glass making. All these towns around here were called glass towns. Glass making, bottle making was a major cottage industry. And this man Lermonx apparently built kilns for glass making. Interesting.” He turned the page and read on, slowly trailing a forefinger down the crabbed lines of handwriting. He grunted and nodded periodically. His reading slowed down and he leaned closer to the book when he got to the inventory of Lermonx’s possessions. “Well now, that’s very interesting. He owned the Weeks House in Mt. Ephraim. The Weeks family, after generations of living there, recently deeded it to the County Historical Society. Beautiful colonial building. Now what would Lermonx be doing with that house? He was a bachelor. See, right here. Bachelor. What would a kiln-making bachelor with a modest income be doing with the Weeks House? Interesting.”
The Search for Joseph Tully Page 11
