Murder at Marble House (A Gilded Newport Mystery)

by Alyssa Maxwell

  The injustice rankled.

  The unfairness continued to fester the next day when, upon seizing the morning’s Observer from my front stoop, I saw that no headline peered up at me from the front page. I scanned the main articles again before running to the morning room, where I spread the paper out on the table and began flipping through the pages.

  Nothing. Not even another byline stolen by Ed. There was simply no article relating to Madame Devereaux’s murder.

  Well, I’d see about that. But first, of course, there were obligations to be met. Despite Aunt Alva’s impatience, I didn’t begin actively searching for Consuelo until later that morning. Mid-morning, to be exact, when I knew I’d catch everyone on my list at home and unawares. The wealthy never stirred from the comforts of their “summer cottages” before noon, nor did they expect to be disturbed before that hour. Yet the ocean air would surely prod them from their beds much earlier than they typically rose, and I’d likely find Consuelo’s friends wrapped in silken dressing gowns enjoying tea and scones from the comfort of cushioned lounge chairs placed just so on their wide verandas facing the sea.

  Putting my frustrations about my missing article on a back-burner, I knocked first on the door of Winthrop Rutherfurd. From Consuelo I already knew he was spending the summer in one of the older, shingle-style homes on a shady side street off the west side of Bellevue Avenue—not a mansion, no ocean view, but fashionable enough for a single man. For propriety’s sake, Katie stood beside me, so his neighbors wouldn’t gossip about how that poor Vanderbilt relation visited Mr. Rutherfurd alone. I was about to tap the knocker again when Winty, as Consuelo called him, surprised me by opening the door himself.

  He squinted out at me, recognition slowly dawning. Winthrop was not a young man; in fact, he was at least a decade older than I. He was, however, a trim man, tall and athletic-looking, his hair dark and full, though typically worn slicked tightly back. Invested in his family’s New York real-estate concerns, Winty had money of his own, though not in the sort of heaping abundance Aunt Alva deemed necessary in a suitor.

  With the morning sunlight slanting across his features, he looked even older than usual, or perhaps a late night had deepened the creases across his brow and beside his eyes. I wondered what—or who—might have kept him up.

  “Miss . . . Cross, I believe? To what do I owe the pleasure?” His expression didn’t register pleasure, only perplexity.

  I wasted no time with niceties. “May I come in, Mr. Rutherfurd?”

  “I . . . uh . . . I suppose . . .” He gave his lightweight morning coat a dignified tug as he stepped back from the threshold. Katie and I stepped into a dim foyer, made all the darker by the brown and beige pattern of the wallpaper.

  “Is there somewhere we can talk privately?” I asked, my bluntness obviously taking him aback once more.

  He glanced around at the various doorways opening into the foyer, then seemed to settle on a direction. “Follow me.”

  Katie moved to trail me, but I gestured for her to wait by the door. I trusted my maid, in my employ since the spring, to a point, and I felt not only protectiveness, but a sincere fondness for her. But I had to admit the young Irishwoman possessed a nervous constitution and could be something of a chatterbox. I couldn’t take the chance of her blurting private information to the greengrocer, the butcher’s wife—or whomever else.

  I followed Winty across a parlor furnished in rich leather and through another doorway that led down a narrow passage. A wary tingle grazed my back—where was he taking me? But finally we entered a morning room much like my own, with sturdy oak furniture and a homey, informal air. We were no longer alone; a footman busily gathered plates from a sideboard and voices drifted from an open door through which I glimpsed a service pantry.

  Good. Though my fears were certainly unfounded, a woman had been murdered yesterday, and until the murderer was apprehended I shouldn’t fully trust anyone.

  “Please have a seat, Miss Cross.” Winty pulled out a chair for me at the table. “I’d just finished my breakfast when you knocked, but may I offer you some coffee or tea?”

  The footman stopped midway to the pantry, the stack of plates balanced precariously in his hands. When I shook my head and said no thank you, the young man nodded and continued on his way. Winty sat at his own place, where the morning issue of the Newport Daily News blazed a headline up at me.

  MURDER AT MARBLE HOUSE!

  A part of me selfishly wished Winty subscribed to the Newport Observer instead, and that it was my article splashed across the page. I still didn’t understand it. I’d rushed into town yesterday evening to deliver my account of the murder before the presses stopped for the night. For once I’d beaten Ed Billings at his own game, and Mr. Millford, the owner and editor-in-chief of the Observer, had assured me my article would run in the morning’s edition.

  “Nasty business, that,” Winty said, pointing at the paper. The comment roused me from my ambitions. “Poor Consuelo—uh, Miss Vanderbilt. Tell me, how is she taking it? Is she very distraught?”

  He sounded sincerely worried about my cousin, although who knew how accomplished an actor he might be? “Have you spoken with my cousin recently?” I asked.

  He blinked and then raised his eyebrows. “No, how could I?”

  I ignored his question and asked another. “You’re quite sure you had no word from her yesterday?”

  “I wish I had, Miss Cross. Maybe I could have comforted her. I’ve been trying to speak with Consuelo ever since she arrived in Newport, but that wooly mammoth of a mother of hers won’t let me anywhere near her. Not in person and not by telephone.”

  I’d never heard Aunt Alva described in quite those words and, despite the seriousness of my visit, I stifled a snort of laughter. “So you’ve had no communication with Consuelo all summer?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that. There was the Astors’ ball last month. We were both there, and when her mama wasn’t looking we managed to exchange a few words. Someone obviously saw us, though, and reported back to Mrs. Vanderbilt.”

  “So that’s why my aunt had Consuelo virtually under lock and key in recent weeks.”

  His gaze swept over me before connecting with my own. “What is this all about, Miss Cross? I understand Consuelo must be terribly upset over what happened in her gardens yesterday, but why are you here?” His eyes sparked with alarm. “Has something happened to Consuelo?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “Miss Cross, I wish you’d stop speaking in riddles.”

  “But that’s precisely what this is, Mr. Rutherfurd. A riddle.” I paused to choose my words carefully. “You see, Consuelo isn’t . . . presently at home. I don’t know where she is—”

  “And neither does her mother, does she?” I expected an ironic smile; instead, lines of concern aged his face beyond his thirty-odd years. “This isn’t like Consuelo, not like her at all. She doesn’t do things like this, doesn’t rebel or run off in fits of temper. Or fits of anxiety. Dear heavens . . .” A waxy pallor suddenly replaced his outdoorsy complexion. “Do you think whoever murdered that woman . . . but no, the maid did it, didn’t she? And she was caught red-handed. Surely the woman couldn’t have had time to strike twice. . . .”

  I cut his outburst short. “Is she here?”

  “I—what? Who?”

  “Consuelo, Mr. Rutherfurd. Is she here?” I ground out each impatient word from between my clenched teeth.

  Winty’s palm slapped the table in a way that had me wishing for the reappearance of his footman or a maid or anyone else. “How dare you imply such a thing, Miss Cross?”

  His anger all but shuddered in the air between us. I drew back in my seat, but I forced myself not to look away. “I am not implying anything, Mr. Rutherfurd. I’m merely asking a direct question. You did ask me to stop speaking in riddles.”

  His nostrils flared. “That was no simple question, Miss Cross. You’re practically accusing me of . . . of s
tealing Consuelo away from her home and hiding her here.”

  My hands balled into fists around the purse strings in my lap. “Did you?”

  Winty sprang to his feet. “I most assuredly did not. Do you honestly believe I’d play with her reputation in such a dastardly way? The woman I lo—”

  He broke off, but I heard his unspoken sentiment. The woman he loved. “All the more reason to steal her away from her impending marriage. An unwanted marriage.”

  “I’m afraid it’s time for you to leave, Miss Cross.”

  I came to my feet but refused to budge any further. How I managed such audacity I couldn’t say. Instinct forced from me words and actions I’d never have been capable of under normal circumstances. But just as when Brady had been accused of murder and my faith in his innocence compelled me to hazard any risk to clear his name, so did my concerns for my cousin’s life prompt me to defy a man in his own home.

  “If Consuelo truly isn’t here,” I said calmly, “then you shouldn’t mind if I take a look about.”

  “You may not, Miss Cross,” he said in a tone that brooked no debate. He worked his jaw from side to side. His gaze swept to the servants’ doorway, then back to me. When he spoke again, his voice was less stern, but adamant. “You’ll have to take my word for it that your cousin isn’t here, nor have I seen her since the Astors’ ball last month, except now and again from a distance as we happened to pass each other in town. As for searching my house”—he drew in an audible breath and smiled grimly—“how dare you insult me, Miss Cross. You have all but called me a liar.”

  “I’m sorry, but my cousin’s life is at stake,” I began, but before the words were fully out of my mouth, the servants’ door swung inward, as if the footman who appeared on the threshold had answered Winty’s silent call of a moment ago.

  He bobbed a deferential greeting to his employer. “Will you be wanting the lamps in your study lit now, sir?”

  “Yes, Davis, thank you. On your way, please see Miss Cross out.” With that, Winty sank back into his chair and lifted his newspaper, giving it a brisk snap before hiding his face behind it. “Good day, Miss Cross.”

  I briefly considered trying to question the footman once we were out of Winty’s hearing, but I conceded to the unlikelihood of his answering at all, much less telling me anything I wanted to know. Was Winty hiding Consuelo, or had his refusal to allow me the run of his house stemmed from some other matter of which he preferred I remained ignorant? Consuelo’s erstwhile beau might very well have something to hide, but the question persisted as to what.

  But if young Davis, the footman, possessed any knowledge of my cousin, it was far more likely I’d hear about it in the roundabout way, once the information traveled through Newport’s network of servants and reached Nanny’s ear. With little other recourse, then, I trailed the young man through the house until he summarily deposited both me and a bemused-looking Katie on the front stoop, bid us a terse good day, and shut the door behind us.

  My next stop brought me to The Breakers. Halfway up the sweeping drive, I brought my rig to a halt and sat staring up at the palatial mansion, newly rebuilt to withstand fire and any other catastrophe nature might conjure. I fully believed those solid stone walls could withstand even the power of the nearby ocean. Yet a sense of irony filled me. With all their vast stores of wealth, my Vanderbilt relations could protect themselves from only so much, could keep the ugliness of the outside world at bay for only so long.

  My own brother, Brady, had been accused of committing a murder in this very house only a few short weeks ago. As those awful memories filtered through my mind, my gaze drifted to the balcony where a man had been pushed to his death—to land at my feet. And now here I was, so soon after one horrific experience, entangled in yet another murder involving my Vanderbilt relatives. A dreadful coincidence?

  Sitting on the seat beside me, Katie shifted and adjusted the brim of her squat straw hat. “Is something wrong, miss?”

  I blinked, not having realized how long I’d sat staring. “Oh, Katie. Is there some kind of curse hanging over the Vanderbilt family? How can this be happening all over again?”

  She patted my wrist. “If it means anything, miss, I don’t believe in curses, though my granny Norah back in Killarney would call me daft. The Vanderbilts are havin’ a bad run o’ luck is all.”

  “To say the least.” An unsavory thought struck me. “I was in the vicinity of both murders. I hope I’m not some kind of jinx.”

  “You, miss? Never have I heard such nonsense. Why, you saved me last spring when I was in the family way, sacked from my job, and had nowhere to turn. And you saved your brother when he might have been hanged for a murderer. I just know you’re goin’ to find Miss Consuelo and you’re goin’ to save her, too, in whatever way she needs savin’.” Katie gripped my hand and squeezed; her eyes shone bright against her fair, freckled complexion. “Because that’s the kind of person you are. You don’t let others suffer an injustice if you can do aught about it. So no more talk of jinxes, miss. I won’t be hearin’ another word about it.”

  I regarded her in astonishment. Though a case of nerves might bring on a slew of chatter, my otherwise shy housemaid had never strung together so many eloquent words at one time in all the weeks she had been working for me. And because of that—and because the words had come out calmly and deliberately—I knew she meant every one and hadn’t merely said them in an attempt to placate her employer.

  In short, she’d spoken as a friend. And as a friend, I slipped my hand free of hers and reached my arms around her. After a moment’s hesitation she hugged me equally tight, and we rocked gently side to side like two sisters, or how I imagined sisters could sometimes be.

  “Thank you, Katie,” I whispered through the curling tendrils of her fiery red hair. “That was quite the nicest thing anyone has said to me in the longest while.”

  “It’s all true, miss.”

  With a cluck I set Barney walking again. We drew up beside the front portico and immediately the main door opened. Beside me Katie stiffened, but I was quick to reassure her. “You can wait for me here. I’ll tell the footman he needn’t bother with the carriage.”

  She wilted slightly in relief. It had been here at The Breakers last spring, when a visiting youth, a friend of my cousin Reggie’s, had first seduced and then forced himself on Katie, resulting in her pregnancy and dismissal from her job. With no references, no family in this country, and no prospects of any sort, she had shown up on my doorstep, because when my aunt Sadie had been alive, Gull Manor had become known as a haven for young women in trouble.

  I did what I could to keep Aunt Sadie’s legacy alive.

  Katie had lost her baby one awful night, but she had never quite lost her fear of this house or the people in it, who had shown her so little compassion when she needed it most. I wasn’t always proud of my relatives.

  So while she waited huddled against the squabs of the carriage, I hurried inside and searched for my cousin Gertrude. There was no one else here who might have heard from Consuelo, and though her having contacted Gertrude was unlikely, I couldn’t yet rule out the possibility.

  “Good morning, Parker,” I said to the young footman who had admitted me. I let him take my light linen wrap from my shoulders. “Is Miss Gertrude at home?”

  “She is, Miss Cross. She was outside with the family last I saw her. Would you like me to inquire after her for you?”

  “No, thank you. I’ll just go on out and see for myself.” Thanks to my being a relative and a frequent visitor, I had the privilege of being allowed to walk in unannounced and roam the house as I pleased, something no ordinary visitor would have dared do.

  As I passed through the entry hall into the open expanse of the Italian palazzo–inspired Great Hall, I blinked just as surely as if I’d stepped into a garden bathed in dazzling sunlight. No matter how many times I entered this room, the grandeur of marble and gilt and priceless art never failed to stun me, to leave me bo
th breathless and speechless.

  I stopped just at the top of the few steps leading down to the main floor of the room. Two under footmen passed into view from the dining room, where they appeared to be gathering up the silver, probably to be taken below stairs and polished. Above me along the open gallery that looked down upon the Great Hall, a maid exited one of the bedrooms with an armful of linens. I let my gaze slide past her, higher and higher, until it came to rest on the ceiling, painted to resemble a clear, sunny afternoon sky.

  I pulled my gaze earthward as voices drifted in from the terrace that spanned the rear of the building. Listening, I could make out Uncle Cornelius’s and Aunt Alice’s voices . . . and the higher, eager tones of my youngest cousin, Gladys. They were discussing an upcoming yachting excursion. I listened for Gertrude’s voice but didn’t hear her, and as the downstairs seemed quiet but for the soft murmurs of working servants, I crossed to the staircase and hurried up. I found Gertrude in her room, still in her dressing gown, though a pile of dresses littered her bed and she seemed to be studying them with a critical eye.

  “Oh, good morning, Emmaline,” she said when I stepped through the open doorway.

  I smiled. It always both amused and annoyed me that most of my Vanderbilt relatives, with the exception of Reggie and Consuelo, called me by my full name rather than the shorter version I preferred. The men could be nicknamed; hence there were Reggie, Neily, Willy K., etc. Ah, but nothing so sporting or casual would do for the females of the family; thus, we remained Emmaline, Gertrude, Consuelo, and the rest. I had long since given up trying to persuade them otherwise.