Murder at Marble House (A Gilded Newport Mystery)

by Alyssa Maxwell

  My cousin hesitated. The tension had returned to her neck and shoulders, and I guessed Consuelo wanted no part of the afternoon’s entertainments. Yet after a pause, she grasped the medium’s hand and gave it a single, cordial shake. “How do you do?”

  Madame Devereaux gasped. Snatching her hand back as if Consuelo had placed an ember in her palm, she staggered backward. Her eyes shot wide open, then glazed over as she stared at Consuelo. Her mouth gaped like that of a beached fish.

  “You’ll never be happy. Never be happy with him,” she intoned in a strained voice. “Oh, child . . . you poor child . . . stay away from him. Never, never trust him. Consuelo Vanderbilt . . . hear me. You’ll never know happiness with a scoundrel such as he. . . .”

  “Whatever do you mean?” Consuelo demanded when the woman trailed off, her voice fading like the lingering note of a plucked harp.

  Her mother hurried forward and sandwiched herself between Consuelo and the medium. “There, there, now, Consuelo, dear—”

  Before Alva could say another word, Consuelo snapped, “Let her speak, Mother. What does she mean?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Alva whirled about to face the medium. “You didn’t mean anything, did you? Just a little joke, although not a particularly funny one, to be sure.”

  Madame Devereaux blinked several times and gave her head a little shake. “I . . . I’m sorry, Mrs. Vanderbilt. Yes, just a joke to . . . to break the ice. I’m sorry if . . .”

  “That was no joke.” Consuelo’s voice trembled. “And I insist—”

  “Consuelo,” her mother said through gritted teeth, “we have guests.”

  “I don’t care. I—”

  “Emmaline,” my aunt called to me, “please take my daughter into the house. Up to her room, in fact, until she calms herself.”

  “I am calm, Mother.”

  Alva’s voice plunged to a whisper. “Do as I say, Consuelo. Madame Devereaux didn’t mean anything, so do stop making a scene. Go upstairs. Now.”

  Side by side, Consuelo and I climbed the stairs with a good deal less spirit than when we’d descended them.

  “She makes me want to run away.”

  I slung an arm about her waist but said nothing as we followed the graceful curve up to the second floor. I wasn’t about to speak in my aunt’s defense, not when she’d essentially humiliated Consuelo in front of the others, treating her like a naughty child when all Consuelo had wanted was some kind of reassurance after the medium’s odd, ominous prediction.

  When we reached her bedroom, she opened the door. In a streak of gray, Muffy darted out past our ankles and barreled away down the hall.

  “Oh!” Consuelo cried. “Stop her! Mother hates it when she gets downstairs.”

  It was too late. Muffy had reached the staircase and galloped down. “I’ll go get her,” I said, fearing if Consuelo went her mother would think she was disobeying and scold her yet again.

  Downstairs in the entry hall I glimpsed Muffy’s swishing tail darting toward the library, and when I entered the room she scampered beneath the desk. I bent down to coax her out, but she crept past my groping hand, shot out from under the desk chair, and leaped onto a glass-fronted cabinet. As soon as I came to my feet, Muffy dived onto a satin brocade sofa, sending a hiss through the down-filled cushions. That was her mistake, for there I had her, trapped between my open arms and the sofa’s high back.

  “Got you, you imp. And not a moment too soon. Do you have any idea what Alva Vanderbilt would do to you if she caught you pawing her precious Italian brocade?” I scooped the furry being into my arms, and when I expected her to struggle against me, she instead went limp and rested her head against my shoulder. Her whiskers tickled my neck. “Oh, you just wanted to play, didn’t you, you naughty thing? Don’t like being cooped up in a bedroom all the time, do you?” Just like Consuelo, I thought sadly.

  Before I could set out to return Muffy to her mistress, voices drifted through the open library windows—the ones that overlooked the terrace.

  “You’ll do as I say.” My aunt’s hissing voice raised the hairs at my nape.

  Curious, I moved to the window, standing where the curtain would hide me. The four houseguests were strolling in the gardens, and snippets of their conversation and laughter bounced on the breeze. Closer, Aunt Alva and Madame Devereaux stood together near the garden table. Those same breezes fluttered the edges of the medium’s frock and prompted Aunt Alva to grasp the brim of her silk-covered hat. Both were red-faced and gesturing angrily.

  “I do not lie.” The medium’s lips curved disdainfully downward. “I am an ethical woman.”

  “Whom do you think you’re dealing with? A fool? You’re a fortune-teller.” Aunt Alva’s eyes narrowed dangerously. She thrust a finger squarely at the woman’s chest, just as she had with me earlier. “That makes you a fraud, a con artist. And believe me when I say I can make your life exceedingly difficult. So difficult you’ll never practice your hokum anywhere again, except perhaps in a Providence prison cell.”

  The medium blanched. “I am no fraud,” she said, but a good portion of her conviction had drained away, along with her almost-French accent.

  “Here is what you are going to do.” Aunt Alva stepped toe-to-toe with the woman, and I pressed closer to the window so as not to miss a word. “You are going to go down to the pavilion and prepare to tell our fortunes. When it’s my daughter’s turn, you are going to spread your cards across the table, gaze into your crystal ball, and with every shred of false enthusiasm you can muster, you will convince her of the glorious, loving, successful future she’ll enjoy as the Duchess of Marlborough.”

  Or else.

  I heard the warning as clear as day, though the words once again went unspoken.

  Or so I thought. After a pause during which the tension shivered palpably in the air between the two women, Aunt Alva eased closer and brought her lips beside the medium’s ear. Madame Devereaux turned a shade of scarlet that sent my pulse leaping with alarm. Muffy twitched her tail as I squeezed her too hard, pressing forward as I was with my head nearly out the window in my attempt to hear what my aunt was saying.

  My efforts proved unfruitful. But when Aunt Alva leaned away with a cunning smile, the medium’s features froze in dismay. “You will tell her the man you meant, the man who would only make her miserable, is Winthrop Rutherfurd,” Aunt Alva said, “or you will be very, very sorry.”

  Madame Devereaux gave a wobbly nod.

  “Have you all thought of what you wish to ask Madame Devereaux?” Aunt Alva led her guests along the garden path toward the pavilion. Her smiles and the carefree swinging of her arms belied the conversation I’d overheard no less than twenty minutes earlier. Now she seemed as cheerful as the summer sunlight glittering on the ocean beyond the cliffs at the rear of the property. The Spooner sisters trailed immediately behind her, the tiny blossoms on their wide hats rivaling Alva’s meticulously tended flowerbeds.

  “I’d like to ask Madame Devereaux if dear Roberta will ever find a husband,” the sister who must be Edwina said, tittering into her hand.

  “Me? What about you, sister? At forty-eight you remain as unmarried as I.”

  “Quite true, Roberta, but I remain single by choice. Whereas we all know you have been pining over that Mr. Armandale for years now.”

  “Mr. Armandale doesn’t appear to be the marrying kind,” Roberta replied wistfully.

  Behind them, Hope Stanford and Lady Amelia seemed locked in a heated debate.

  “You must take a stand, my dear. The property is yours by rights. Your grandfather left it to you in his will. Do not allow yourself to be swindled.”

  “He may have done, Mrs. Stanhope, but the law in England supersedes a man’s last will and testament. I may have been Grandpapa’s favorite, but the title will go to my younger brother, and with it all the property. There is simply no way around it.”

  “Bah!” Hope Stanford swatted her fingertips at a bush beside the path as if the branc
hes had somehow offended her. “Such laws, that leave women destitute or dependent on the charity of their menfolk, need to be changed.”

  “I agree wholeheartedly, ma’am. But that’s not likely to happen until women can vote.”

  “Then we must be tireless in our efforts, on both sides of the ocean,” Mrs. Stanhope concluded in her no-nonsense way.

  “Lady Amelia,” I said, gathering my hems and trotting a few steps to catch up to them, “are you from England, then?”

  The emerald in her hat caught a sunbeam and momentarily blinded me as she turned toward me. Blinking, I saw that her smile held approval. “You’re very observant, Miss Cross. You noticed that I don’t sound particularly English, didn’t you?”

  “If you’ll pardon my saying so, you sound more as though you’re from New York’s Fifth Avenue than London’s Mayfair. Am I wrong?”

  “No, indeed. You see, my parents separated when I was sixteen. My mother is an American, a Wentworth as a matter of fact, and she brought me to New York to continue raising me among her family.”

  “And your brother?” Mrs. Stanford asked, though the angle of her chin suggested she knew the answer.

  “Father wouldn’t allow Mother to take him out of England. He stayed there and attended Eton, and then Oxford. We barely know each other.”

  “How very sad.” This came from Consuelo, who had been in the rear but now moved up beside me.

  “Sad my eye,” Mrs. Stanford all but spat. “It’s a travesty. He’ll inherit every bit of the English fortune while Lady Amelia gets nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “I wouldn’t say nothing,” Lady Amelia corrected her. “I’ve gotten heaps from Mother’s side.”

  “Still and all, it isn’t right.”

  As the others strode on in Aunt Alva’s wake, Consuelo came to a halt beside a rosebush. I stopped beside her and waited for her to speak. She remained silent, however, staring at the scarlet blossoms but not seeming to see them; her eyes held a faraway, pensive look.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked her gently.

  “It’s what Lady Amelia just said about her parents separating, and her being taken far from home, from her brother and her father. It’s so sad, Emma. It’s . . . it’s exactly what’s happening to me. If I marry the Duke, I’ll leave this country. I won’t see you or my friends or my brothers anymore. Soon, we won’t even really know each other. We’ll be strangers.”

  I slipped an arm around her waist. “You and I will never be strangers. I can promise you that.”

  I reached out and plucked a rosebud, careful not to prick my thumb, and handed it to my cousin. She bowed her head to it, dabbed at a tear with her free hand, and inhaled deeply. Her lips parted as if she were about to say something more, words that never came.

  In that instant, a scream ripped across the garden.

  Gripping each other’s hands, Consuelo and I set off running down the path. Another scream filled the air and echoed off the rear of the house behind us. Up ahead, Mrs. Stanford and Lady Amelia came to sudden halts in front of the pavilion. Just inside the wide archway, the Misses Spooner stood clutching each other’s hands. Aunt Alva was lost in the shadows under the pavilion roof.

  “Oh, good gracious, Emma, what can it be?” Consuelo squeezed my hand as we ran, her fingernails cutting into my flesh. Then we, too, reached the pavilion. My hand flew up to press my bosom. Consuelo cried out.

  “Is she . . . is she . . .” Roberta Spooner—or was it Edwina? —craned her neck to see around Aunt Alva.

  Aunt Alva didn’t utter a word. I pried Consuelo’s fingers from my hand and then pressed forward, placing a hand on Lady Amelia’s shoulder so I could squeeze between her and Mrs. Stanford and continue up the two steps into the pavilion. The aroma of some pungent incense tickled my nose and stung my eyes. I stepped around the Spooner sisters and came to Aunt Alva’s side. My breath froze in my throat.

  I saw Clara first—Clara Parker, the young maid I’d spoken to outside Consuelo’s room that morning, who had fretted over how little Consuelo had eaten and who had hoped I might be able to cheer my cousin up. Clara, her severe black frock contrasting sharply with the white pinafore and starched cap she wore, stood facing us, the whites of her eyes gleaming in the shadows, her head moving side to side in a continual gesture of denial. The already-petite girl seemed further diminished by the fear magnifying her eyes, and by the incongruously cheerful yellows of the sunflowers, daisies, and black-eyed Susans that bedecked the pavilion.

  To mirror the happy destinies about to be foretold?

  Or to sit in garish contrast to the gruesome image that greeted me as I lowered my gaze.

  A figure swathed from head to toe in varying shades of violet sat slumped over a cloth-covered card table, her head angled awkwardly to one side. The jeweled turban had fallen off her head and rolled to the edge of the table, and short, thin wisps of graying brown hair stuck out in all directions from her scalp. I moved farther into the pavilion until I could see her face; her eyes protruded from their sockets, staring unblinkingly at the crystal ball inches away. A colorful deck of cards fanned out from beneath her cheek, several of them scattered on the floor beside the table amid a sprinkling of coins. Her lips were a sickly shade of blue and . . .

  A crimson gash scored her throat. My stomach roiled—but no. I looked again and realized there was no blood anywhere. Instead, around her throat a scarf of deep red silk was twined so tightly her neck bulged from around the fabric.

  “Dear God.” I circled the table and shoved a stupefied Clara aside. From behind Madame Devereaux’s chair, I grabbed the woman by the shoulders. I hauled her upright, then leaned her limp body against the back of the chair.

  In a frenzied blur I dug my fingers around the silk scarf to loosen its grip. Even as the ends slipped free I knew it was too late. Madame Devereaux had breathed her last, and no amount of hoping would coax her lungs to fill again. A trickle of blood spilled from the corner of her mouth. Her lips gaped and her tongue lolled, showing where she had bitten clean through. A bruise was already forming on her temple, where her head had struck the table in front of her. Or . . . perhaps she’d been struck, before being strangled.

  A whimper came from one of the ladies grouped in the entrance of the pavilion. I looked up to see them gaping, dumbfounded. Then, as one, they lifted their gazes to the person whose presence I’d all but forgotten.

  “I didn’t . . . I didn’t . . .” Clara stammered. She stood with her small back plastered to one of the structure’s carved columns, looking like a child called to the headmistress’s office and babbling incoherently.

  Aunt Alva’s arm came up, her forefinger aimed at the maid. “Your hands were around her neck. I saw you.”

  “I swear . . . I didn’t . . . I swear . . . she was like that . . . I only tried to help . . .”

  “Shut up,” Aunt Alva ordered. “Just shut up.”

  Her command may have silenced Clara, who clamped her lips tight, but it also released a flurry of cries and exclamations from the other women. Alva whirled about to shush them. Her gaze must have landed on her daughter, because she immediately said, “Go back to the house. Tell Grafton to call for the police. Go, Consuelo, now.”

  I don’t know how much my cousin saw. I wanted to go to her, to comfort her, but when I looked up from the sight that held me so horribly entranced, she had gone.

  Chapter 4

  “We caught you red-handed, girl. What other reason could you have had for being out here?”

  Aunt Alva had Clara backed up against that support column so tightly I could have sworn the wood creaked in protest. Clara sobbed hysterically, continuing to shake her head in denial.

  “Why did you murder Madame Devereaux?” Aunt Alva pressed her flushed face close to Clara’s, spittle flying from her lips. “You’d better start talking, girl. . . .”

  It was that imminent or else that propelled me across the pavilion to them. I’d wanted to stay with Madame Devereaux until the police c
ame, just stand at her side to watch over her. It seemed heartless to simply leave the poor woman half slumped so grotesquely in her chair, where she could easily tip to one side and slither to the floor. She deserved more dignity than that, didn’t she?

  Yet the living also deserved their dignity, and Aunt Alva was doing a blasted good job of stripping Clara of hers. I stepped up beside them and placed a hand on each of their shoulders— Clara’s thin, shaking one and Aunt Alva’s much sturdier one. Aunt Alva veered toward me as if to swing a punch. I winced, but the blow never came.

  “Aunt Alva, we don’t know that Clara did anything wrong. Please, we should wait for the police.”

  “What other reason could a housemaid have for being in the gardens?” Alva never took her eyes off of the blubbering Clara. “Well? Why were you out here?”

  Clara clutched at the railing on either side of the column behind her until her fingernails scraped the wood. “I . . . I . . . came to see if anyone needed anything. If Madame wanted—”

  “Liar!” Alva’s shout squeezed a sob from Clara, who shut her eyes and turned her face away. “It’s not your job to see if my guests need anything. Grafton wouldn’t have sent you out here.” The emphasis Aunt Alva put on you reduced Clara to the status of the lowliest street urchin.

  “I only w-wanted to . . . to help, ma’am.”

  “Then why did we catch you standing behind her, as if you’d just wrapped the scarf around her neck and squeezed the life out of her?”

  “I didn’t . . . I didn’t.” Releasing the column behind her, Clara buried her face in her hands and broke down into unintelligible sobs.

  “Mrs. Vanderbilt, your niece is right.” Mrs. Stanford’s stern face appeared beside me. “Badgering the girl will accomplish nothing. Leave it to the police. They should be here soon enough.”

  I noticed now that the other women had retreated back down the pavilion steps and stood gathered on the walkway. The Spooner sisters had their arms around each other. Their faces were mottled, their eyes watery. Lady Amelia stood off to one side hugging her middle, a pained look on her face.