by Paula Paul
“What is it, Nancy?” Mrs. Fontaine said, sounding terribly weary.
“It’s about Dr. Gladstone’s dog.”
A surprised frown creased the elderly woman’s forehead. “Zack?”
“Yes,” Nancy said quietly and with a sly glance toward Alexandra. “He ate something poisonous, and I suspect it may be a plant growing in the doctor’s garden. The doctor is no help,” Nancy said, whispering. “She knows nothing about plants.”
“What does this plant in her garden look like?” Mrs. Fontaine asked.
“Shrublike, and the leaves are about like this,” Nancy said, holding her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart, “and the flowers are purplish with yellow spots. Lots of seeds. The plants spread themselves everywhere. I thought ’twas a weed at first, but perhaps not. Not much scent to the flowers.”
“Rhododendron, I should say, and yes, it is indeed poisonous to animals,” Mrs. Fontaine said. “Dogs as well as cats. That’s why I never grow it. You must caution Dr. Gladstone to have them removed.”
“I’ll do my best,” Nancy whispered.
Alexandra, who had been feigning disinterest, glanced involuntarily at Nancy, surprised that she had lied so easily. Nancy knew there were few flowers at all and no rhododendron growing in her garden. Obviously Nancy suspected, just as she did, that the popular flower was the source of the poison for all the victims, including Zack. She wanted to find out whether or not Mrs. Fontaine cultivated them in her garden.
“I hope you gave poor Zack something to help him expel the poison,” Mrs. Fontaine added.
“Oh, I did,” Nancy assured her. “I believe he will be all right, but I just wasn’t certain what had caused it. Neither was the doctor. She knows about people, now, doesn’t she? But animals? I’m afraid not.”
Mrs. Fontaine said nothing as Nancy kept her seat beside her. Alexandra, still sitting across the room, abandoned her pretense of sorting through her medical bag and moved to another chair nearer the two of them.
“You have known me all of my life,” she said to Mrs. Fontaine, “and you’ve known my family all of your life.”
Mrs. Fontaine nodded, but with a distracted expression.
“I’m sure, then, that you can understand that I don’t want you implicated in this sordid business.”
Mrs. Fontaine took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You are kind, my dear, but you must do your duty.”
There was another silent, awkward stretch of time until Nicholas finally returned with Constable Snow and Judith Payne in tow.
Judith rushed toward Mrs. Fontaine as soon as she entered and knelt beside her. “Oh, my dear lady, please tell me, what is this all about?”
Mrs. Fontaine looked at her, agitated. “I told them to leave you out of this. It’s no concern of yours. You must leave immediately.”
Judith was equally surprised. “But…I don’t understand. I was told—Constable Snow, Lord Dunsford—they said you asked for me, that you were distressed about something. They wouldn’t tell me why.”
“They lied to you,” Mrs. Fontaine said. “Now you must leave.”
“Mrs. Fontaine has just admitted that she committed all the recent murders of Freemasons here in Newton-upon-Sea, as well as that of your own father,” Alexandra said.
Judith jumped to her feet. The blood drained from her face, leaving it sickly pale, and her eyes were wide and fear-filled.
“Alexandra! Shush!” Mrs. Fontaine scolded. Agitated, she tried to rise from her chair. “Judith, leave immediately.”
“I don’t understand.” Judith’s voice was weak and trembling.
By contrast, Alexandra’s voice was firm. “You don’t understand that Mrs. Fontaine has just confessed to the murders you yourself committed?”
Judith’s face had turned a sickly color. “I’ve killed no one.”
“You’re willing to allow Mrs. Fontaine to take the blame and pay for the crimes with her life?” Alexandra asked.
“I…”
“Stop it!” Mrs. Fontaine said. “Stop trying to make her confess. I’m the guilty one.”
There was a moment of chilling silence until Constable Snow finally spoke. “Very well, Mrs. Fontaine, stand please, and place your hands behind your back.”
As Mrs. Fontaine struggled to get to her feet, Judith took a step toward Snow. “You’re going to put her in manacles?”
Snow didn’t answer, but the manacles made a clanking sound as he pulled them from a strap attached to his trousers. He helped Mrs. Fontaine up and clasped one side of the metal restraints on one of her wrists.
“Wait!” Judith cried. “Take those monstrous things off her.”
“It is my duty, Miss Payne, however unpleasant it may be,” Snow said, without looking at her. He secured Mrs. Fontaine’s other wrist with both hands behind her back. The old woman was slightly stooped, as if she was uncomfortable, and waited to be led away. When Snow took her arm to guide her, she made her way toward the door in slow but unfaltering steps.
“You can’t do that! She is innocent!” Judith cried. She turned toward Alexandra and spoke in an angry voice. “You’re right, Dr. Gladstone, I killed them. All of them. Yes, my father as well. He deserved it more than any of them.”
“Judith, I am old,” Mrs. Fontaine said. “My life is almost over. You are young, with everything to live for.”
Still holding Mrs. Fontaine’s arm, Snow turned to Judith. “What do you mean your father deserved it more than any of them?”
Dropping into one of the chairs, she covered her face with her hands. When she looked up, she had regained some of her color, and she looked directly at the constable. “You would have been next, Constable,” she said. “You’re just like the others—no better.”
Snow did not respond.
“You were lying about your father killing your suitors,” Alexandra said. “Why?”
“My father tried to kill my own spirit by dictating whom I could marry, by forbidding me to marry the man I loved. Isn’t that worse than anything I’ve done? To try to destroy a person’s spirit? To assume you have that right just because you are male? But worse, he wouldn’t allow me to go to school. I am a mere seamstress, when I could have been more!”
Snow took a key from his pocket and unlocked the manacles while Mrs. Fontaine shook with sobs and repeated, “No, Judith, no, no.”
Nancy went to her side and led her upstairs. When Judith tried to follow, Alexandra and Constable Snow stopped her, each with a hand on one of her arms.
“Why did those men—or Constable Snow—deserve to die?” Alexandra asked. “And what gave you the right to decide?”
“I did it because no one else would. I did it for justice. For the rights of women!” Judith shouted. Agitation had changed her face from white to red.
“Justice?” asked a baffled Alexandra. “The rights of women? I don’t understand,” Alexandra said.
Judith gave her a look of disdain. “I admired you so much, but I see now that you have become complacent, like most women.”
“Perhaps you could explain,” Nicholas said. “All those men you poisoned were decent, upstanding men.”
“Poisoned?” Judith asked. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Dr. Gladstone”—Nicholas nodded at Alexandra—”is the one who realized you’d poisoned them with honey made by bees who’d eaten the pollen of your rhododendrons. Although I didn’t know you kept bees, as Mrs. Fontaine did.”
“I discovered them once when I was trying to keep Zack from destroying her garden, but I didn’t put it all together at first,” Alexandra said.
“Clever,” Nicholas said, before he turned to Judith. “You may think her complacent, but she is a remarkably intelligent woman and an astute doctor.”
“Yes, intelligent and astute,” Judith said, her voice full of rage. “Those qualities matter not to the world, though, because she is a woman. Her gender holds her back, just as it does me. Am I less decent and upstanding than those men who
held me back?”
“Held you back?” Nicholas said. “How did all those men you killed hold you back?”
“They denied me the right to Freemasonry!” she shrieked.
“My dear, Miss Payne, you are quite irrational,” Snow said. “You, as well as the rest of the world, know that Freemasonry is a brotherhood.”
“Ha! What of your Masonic devotion to equality? Are women excluded from equality? Is it not a good thing for womanhood to aspire to the betterment of all people? To benevolence and devotion to God? To freedom of the individual mind, to the great attributes of a World Order? When you deny a woman admission to your ranks, you are denying yourself, and you have become a hypocrite! Your aprons that symbolize purity are hypocritical. It made me sick to think about it when I sewed each one for all those men. Symbol of purity, you say! I smeared each one with blood from my own body. I defiled them the way you have defiled words like equality and freedom!”
“Miss Payne, surely you know that your own father—”
“The worst of a bad lot,” she said, interrupting Snow. “The descendent of a founding member of the Temple of the Ninth Daughter who denied his own daughter the opportunity to make the world a better place by joining your numbers. Oh, how I admired my father’s devotion to making the world a better place through Freemasonry. The same devotion was present in his father, and his grandfather, and all of the Payne men before him. It is my calling, my destiny, to be among those who stand for such beauty, but without your hypocrisy.”
Snow’s voice was remarkable in its calmness. “Freemasons cannot all be painted with the brush of hypocrisy, and certainly not the Temple of the Ninth Daughter.”
“Ah, yes, the ninth daughter,” she said. “That name is itself ludicrous. You christen yourselves in the memory of a woman, the ninth daughter. The ninth of the nine muses. She was Calliope, the goddess of inspiration, the muse for Homer’s works. You name yourselves for a goddess and forbid women to join your ranks.”
“None of what you say justifies murder,” Nicholas said.
“Leave her alone!” Mrs. Fontaine said. “She’s a distraught child.” The woman’s sudden appearance in the doorway surprised everyone in the room. Nancy stood behind her, looking worried.
“I’m sorry,” Nancy said. “I tried to keep her calm and away from all of this.”
“It’s all right, Nancy,” Alexandra said.
At the same time, Snow spoke. “She is no child, Mrs. Fontaine. However, I don’t doubt that she is distraught, since she just confessed to murder.” He turned back to Judith. “And I also believe that you are the person who chased Dr. Gladstone and Nancy as well. Dressed as a man.”
“Yes, I dressed as a Templar and a man, disguising myself as my own enemy. Amusing! But empowering—such freedom not to be encumbered by skirts! And yes, I went after Dr. Gladstone and Nancy both. I had to. They stood in my way. I had to frighten the doctor, and I had to drug Nancy, but I wouldn’t kill them. They are women. They are the ones I fight for.”
“The ones you killed for,” Snow said.
Mrs. Fontaine grew more agitated at Snow’s words. “The poor girl has just lost her father. She—”
“She killed her father,” Alexandra said, “and you insist on trying to protect her. Why?”
“Because of her family! The Paynes are one of the old-line families, just like my husband’s, the Fontaines. They are French names—Paen and Fontaine. My maiden name was Payne, spelled differently when the family was in France long ago. They and others are fathers of the Templars.” Mrs. Fontaine’s voice grew more agitated. “Our French ancestors established the Temple of the Ninth Daughter on sacred ground that once belonged to the Templars, and where they buried part of their treasure. Don’t forget the Templars wanted to change all of Europe and move it away from the tyranny of rogue churchmen and the tyranny of feudalism.”
“Mrs. Fontaine, please…” Snow began.
“She taught me so much,” Judith said. “She made me determined to carry out their ideals.” Judith laughed, a cruel sound. “I only wish I’d known about that treasure legend. I could have used that to deflect all of you.”
Mrs. Fontaine shook her head. “I wanted you to understand,” she said, speaking to Judith. “I never meant for you to…You never knew how much I loved you. Your father, my kinsman, he did all he could for you. Especially after your mother died. You had to live your life without her love. I wanted to give you all the love I had. I don’t understand what happened. The murders, posing as a Templar and terrorizing the village. I never meant for you to lose your senses and…”
“Don’t condemn me!” Judith cried. “Can’t you see? I did it for you as much as for me. I did it for all of womankind. For the ideal of equality. That’s one of the Freemasons’ tenets, isn’t it? One of the ideals that fired the Reformation. That was because of Freemasonry, but then a noble group became hypocrites who forgot their mission.”
“Freemasonry is a system of morality,” Snow said. He had already taken out his manacles again, and he soon had them attached to Judith’s wrists.
“I am at peace with my own morals,” she cried as he led her toward the door. “It is the deepest morality when one fights for one’s own rights.”
Mrs. Fontaine stood at her door and watched Judith and the constable until they disappeared from sight. “A tragedy,” she said in a voice that was almost a whisper. “Such a tragedy to see one of the old-line descendants fall so far.”
“It is a tragedy when anyone becomes so delusional,” Alexandra said. “It matters not from what family they descend.”
“Another tragedy is that some of this might have been curtailed if Constable Snow hadn’t been so derelict in his duties,” Nancy said.
Mrs. Fontaine’s eyes flamed as she turned toward Nancy. “Don’t dare blame poor Robert for any of this!”
Nancy was taken aback at her sudden show of anger. “I only meant to say that because he disappeared for his own selfish personal reasons—”
“You have no idea, Nancy,” Mrs. Fontaine said, with another show of anger. “His reasons are far from selfish. Each time he has been called away to London it’s because of his sister. The poor woman has…” Mrs. Fontaine’s voice trailed off, and she turned away, covering her face with her hands. “Oh, no, I didn’t mean to say that. He wouldn’t…”
“I never knew Constable Snow had a sister in London,” Nancy said.
“He never wanted people to know that she…” Mrs. Fontaine paused again, tears filling her eyes.
“You don’t have to say anything more,” Alexandra said.
“No, you must know the truth. It’s not right for people to malign him. He goes to London to help his sister, an invalid who had a child out of wedlock. Some man took advantage of the poor girl when she was no more than Charlotte Malcolm’s age. Robert sees after her and her son. The boy must be at least seven years old now, and in need of educating. Robert…Well, you mustn’t blame him when he’s called away. He only wants to protect both of them.”
“I’m sorry,” Nancy said. “I didn’t know…”
Mrs. Fontaine, looking weary, sat down in her chair and was immediately joined by three of her cats. “There is much people don’t know about their own neighbors in this village,” she said. “Newton-upon-Sea is full of secrets.”
Epilogue
Zack stood at a distance from Nicholas as he sat sipping brandy in Alexandra’s parlor. The big dog’s eyes followed his every move, but he did not take his usual cautionary stance.
“At least he’s not snarling,” Nicholas said to Alexandra, in a chair next to him, the sling crutch propped on the arm of the chair. Nancy was a few feet away, arranging plates on a cart.
“He’s beginning to trust you, at least a little.” Alexandra motioned for Zack to lie down. The dog obeyed, but still without redirecting his eyes.
“Speaking of trust, it was obviously wrong for us not to trust Constable Snow,” Nicholas said. “You were right about one thi
ng, Nancy, old girl,” Nicholas said. “It really was a woman that drew the constable away. As a matter of fact, I finally received a telegram from Captain Mitchell at Scotland Yard confirming that he regularly sees after his sister.”
Nancy’s eyes widened. “What else did the captain say?”
Nicholas set his glass aside and glanced at Alexandra and then at Nancy. “Mrs. Fontaine was right about his visiting London often to see about his sister and her son, but this time it seems his visit was more urgent than usual. The child was about to be taken away to gaol for stealing money from a woman who employed him at a dame school.”
“I’ve heard of those schools,” Nancy said. “People put children to work in exchange for teaching them to read, and usually the teacher can hardly read herself.”
Nicholas nodded. “Seems he had a job weaving straw for hats. Snow convinced the police the boy took money to buy food for his mother.”
“And that saved the child?” Alexandra shook her head. “Usually an innocent motive makes no difference.”
“Apparently, Snow was quite persuasive. Either that or someone owed him a favor. I’ve offered to pay for the boy’s education at a public school.”
Nancy shook her head. “Never would have guessed the truth.”
“Just one of the many secrets of Newton-upon-Sea Mrs. Fontaine mentioned,” Nicholas said. “How do you suppose she knows so much?”
“She’s lived here all of her life, and that’s quite a long time,” Alexandra said.
Nicholas took a sip of his brandy. “Quite so, but that doesn’t explain how she knew Judith was a killer.”
“There’s more to Mrs. Fontaine than longevity,” Alexandra said. “She’s remarkably intelligent. She put all the clues together just as we did.”
“Intelligent, indeed,” Nicholas said, “and fiercely protective of those she cares about—Constable Snow as well as Judith. Like you, Nancy, I never would have guessed the old boy’s true reason for being away, but I must say, contrary to what you originally believed, it was hard for me to imagine him with a woman.”
