Her manner mollified, Sylvia showed Tom to the door.
* * * * *
Tom walked round the corner of the street toward Peter Bracewell’s front door. Two households, as Master Shakespeare had said, both alike in dignity, and no less given to feuding, or so it seemed by Eliza Bracewell’s testimony.
Black birds swirled like cinders in the wind, stooping over a field at the edge of town. Ravens or crows, most likely, although at this distance Tom could not ascertain which. An unkindness of ravens, he said to himself. A murder of crows.
The bottle and basket hung from his arm. He should not allow his next witness any knowledge of what the previous one had said. He concealed the basket behind a patch of tobacco which, despite the time of year, still flourished between the cottage and the street. Then Tom stepped up to Peter Bracewell’s front door and in a matter of moments was seated in another parlor furnished a la mode, complete with an elegant French mirror above the mantel.
Peter himself, in truth only a half-brother of Robert, had always had more of a taste for culture than had the bluff merchant now deceased. Tom himself had recently spent a most agreeable musical evening in this house, playing his violin whilst Peter played the harpsichord and his wife sang like a lark. The cold supper had been the equal of one served at the palace itself, a calf’s head displayed as the centerpiece of a veritable cornucopia of dishes.
Today Peter stood before the fireplace warming the tails of his coat, his handsome face soured by recent events. “Mr. Jefferson, I have given the matter much thought, and have concluded that my brother’s death was an unnatural one. Fevers abound in these climes, yes, but for him to suffer one so conveniently defies belief.”
“His fever and subsequent death were convenient?” Tom asked.
“On the day before his death, Robert stated his intention of paying my debts. He also informed me he’d added a codicil to his will leaving much of his property and his business to me, as a reward for my hard work in its pursuance. So Holy Scripture instructs us to welcome home the prodigal, he said, and congratulated me on mastering my baser appetites. But his wife has always been jealous of Robert’s affection toward me, thinking it better directed to her own son.”
“And who can blame a woman who wishes to protect her child?”
Peter’s mouth twisted in a satirical smile. “No one at all. But not when she imposes upon Mr. Wythe, and through him upon you, the vilest of falsehoods—a charge of murder laid against an innocent man.”
“Why, then, should Mrs. Bracewell accuse you?”
“If she were to eliminate me, then would not Robert’s entire estate fall upon their son, and through him, upon her? Who’s to say she does not have her eye and her cap set already toward a new husband, one of greater property and therefore greater prospects than my poor brother?”
“What are you suggesting, Mr. Bracewell?”
“That Robert was indeed murdered. But by his own wife.”
“How then, do you think Mrs. Bracewell could have accomplished such an outrage?”
“With poison from her own kitchen. My own wife saw Robert’s Sylvia purchasing arsenicum and soft soap, and remarked upon it, whereupon Sylvia admitted to the infestation she hoped to combat.” Peter paced across the room, drew an arpeggio from the keyboard of the harpsichord, then looked out the window at Robert’s roof. “Less than an hour before my brother’s death I passed Eliza upon the street outside Mr. Greenhow’s establishment, her basket upon her arm and the neck of a wine bottle protruding from it. Robert was accustomed to taking a glass or two before retiring. How easier to introduce a poison to him but to no one else?”
“You saw her carrying a bottle such as that one?” Tom indicated two blue glass bottles sitting in the corner cupboard, close beside several stemmed glasses.
“Very similar. Those, though, are my own private stock. Robert, with less of a palate than God saw fit to give me, drank from the common store.” Peter presented one of the bottles to Tom’s inspection.
The common store was quite acceptable for everyday consumption, in Tom’s considered opinion. But he kept his own counsel and noted only that yes, the glass medallions on the bottles were indeed imprinted with Peter’s name, not with that of merchant Greenhow.
“Surely you will not object to telling me, Mr. Bracewell, how you were employed between the time Mrs. Bracewell brought home the new bottle and the time her husband first felt the pangs of—his illness.”
“I found employment just here, Mr. Jefferson, practicing the new minuet by Corelli, neglecting even to take my supper, for my wife and I intend to hold yet another musical evening very soon. We should be honored if you would join us. I shall,” he added with a sly smile, “extend an invitation to Mrs. Martha Skelton as well.”
Tom concealed his expression by inspecting his shoe buckles. Delightful as she was, blessed with a voice as lovely as her form, Mrs. Skelton was not party to this problem. “Thank you, Mr. Bracewell. I heard your playing myself that night, accompanied by your wife’s most agreeable singing.”
As though summoned by his words, Mrs. Anne Bracewell entered the room. She too, had no doubt happened to be walking outside. Her silk wrapper was more highly colored than her complexion, which was very pale, as befit her delicate condition. “May I offer you dinner at our table, Mr. Jefferson? Our cook is not the equal of my sister-in-law’s Sylvia, but she does tolerably well.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Bracewell, but I expect Mrs. Vobe has already prepared my usual dish of vegetables.” Tom rose to his feet. “I was complimenting your husband on your singing, which was cut so lamentably short the night of Mr. Robert Bracewell’s death.”
“I was fortunate to have had the advantage of tutors in music and deportment in my youth.” Anne inclined her head with grave propriety, but Tom did not imagine the edge of mockery in her voice.
He heard the echo of Eliza’s words in Anne’s. Yes, Anne’s family was of a higher status in Virginia than Eliza’s, a fact of which both women seemed only too aware.
Making his excuses, Tom found his way to the street. There he retrieved the basket and stood for a moment listening to a mockingbird singing in a nearby tree. Just now it seemed to be repeating no particular melody. He wondered whether he could teach one of the little creatures a song, an Irish or Scottish air, perhaps, even though its duplication could be but a counterfeit of the original.
Just as the support Peter Bracewell had given Eliza at her husband’s funeral was counterfeit, or perhaps as Peter’s indignation or Eliza’s excuses were counterfeit. The bird, though, did not purpose to deceive with its mimicry.
* * * * *
After stopping to speak with several other citizens, Tom returned to his lodgings and amazed his landlady by asking to purchase one of the chickens that occupied a pen behind her kitchen. “An old one will do, one destined soon for the pot,” he explained.
“Well then,” replied Mrs. Vobe, “have that old cockerel in the far corner, the one’s grown weary of his life and is pondering dumplings and gravy.”
This chicken would not follow its relatives into dumplings and gravy or even into de Sequera’s exotic sauce. The good doctor might be content to experiment upon himself, but Tom intended to take a safer course. He isolated the chicken in a small pen and set before it a dish of corn laced liberally with a draught from Robert’s wine bottle. Leaving the animal pecking away at the food, he sat down to his own dinner, a splendid potage a pois.
He had had little need to inquire of the Bracewells’ neighbors whether they heard the music of harpsichord and voice the night of Robert’s death. With the windows standing open, he had heard both himself. He did, though, ascertain that Peter had recently, if reluctantly, turned his hand to Robert’s business, and that the relations between the brothers had not always been so cordial as Peter would have Tom think, as the issue of his own debts caused a constant friction.
Mrs. Randolph had assured Tom as to the whereabouts of Eliza’s Sylvia at the fatal hou
r. And Josiah Greenhow, who’d readily testified to Eliza’s acquisition of the infamous bottle of wine soon before her husband’s death, asserted that its cork had been fixed and whole when it left his hands.
Nothing, then, that Tom learned from the citizens of the town led him to believe either Bracewell a liar and therefore a murderer.
He returned to Mrs. Vobe’s yard to discover the chicken in its death throes. Before he could do it a mercy by wringing its neck, it expired in a shuddering heap of feathers. Tom poked and prodded its lifeless body, but unlike a Roman haruspex of old declined to inspect its internal organs. He’d proved that the poison, probably arsenicum, had been introduced into the bottle of wine in the brief interval between its arrival at the house and Robert’s pouring it out.
There should be some way of formulating a more exact test, to indicate not only the presence of poison but its specific sort. Then no uncertainties would remain on the mind, all would be demonstration and satisfaction. . . . No. Science could not illuminate the shadows of the human heart. It could identify the poison but not who placed it in the bottle. The question, as always, was cui bono, who benefited from the crime?
Peter might well have killed his brother to gain enough income to pay his debts and to live in the style to which he had accustomed himself. He, though, could not have been playing his harpsichord and poisoning the wine at the same instant.
Eliza might have killed her husband to prevent her own income from being diminished, as oftentimes widows found themselves obliged to take in lodgers or depend upon the kindness of relations, which, considering the demeanor of Eliza’s relations, was not an alternative. But then, if Eliza had made good with her first marriage, why not make better with her second, especially with her first husband’s estate as bait?
A squawk made Tom glance around. Mrs. Vobe’s cat was crouching in the door of the kitchen, its fur forming a bristling ridge down its back. A mockingbird stood only a few feet away, wings half-extended, cawing its contempt at its nemesis. No wonder it was named a “mocking” bird, when it not only copied but teased.
If the season had been spring, Tom would have thought the bird intended to draw the cat away from its nest. Such was always the maternal imperative, to protect the child even at the forfeit of one’s own life. But the season was autumn. Perhaps the bird fancied the cat encroached upon its territory, which passion was also a human trait.
Tom considered that Robert’s child was as much a motive in his death as his territory, his possessions. Eliza and Peter would each benefit from the other’s demise, as Robert’s property would go to his son, and the surviving adult, whether mother or uncle, would have control over its use.
But both Peter’s and Eliza’s accounts rang true. Neither countenance displayed any guilt or sly regard. Indeed, both seemed quite sincere. And yet one of them must be false. Tom needed more evidence, evidence that could be demonstrated to everyone’s satisfaction.
The cat leaped forward. The bird launched itself into the air and flew away, evading the extended claws by inches. A thin dust swirled lazily into the air and then drifted back to earth. The cat slinked back into the kitchen, admitting to no defeat. Its paws left a spoor in the dust.
Frowning, Tom strolled closer to the site of the momentary battle. Had he not seen it for himself, still he could have reconstructed the affray from the marks in the dusk, the spiky prints of the bird’s feet, the pugmarks of the cat, and the twin furrows where the bird’s wings had brushed the earth upon its abrupt departure.
Tom’s eye then turned to the wine bottle, still sitting where he’d laid it, on a shelf inside the chicken coop. A fine layer of dust and chaff shrouded its gleam. He remembered Mrs. Vobe, at the very moment poor Robert was hastening toward his mortality, entering Tom’s room wiping another bottle with her apron. No doubt Greenhow had done the same, cleaning the bottle Eliza purchased of dust and dirt. . . .
If his mind could stretch itself to invent a new collective noun, it could also invent a new scientific test. One that could identify the hand that had poured the poison. Taking great care to lift the bottle by its lip, Tom held it up to the light and squinted at its smooth glass sides.
* * * * *
Tom waited politely as George Wythe seated his guests around the green baize-covered table in his office. Mrs. Robert Bracewell twitched her skirts away from Peter Bracewell’s buckled shoes, whilst Mrs. Peter Bracewell folded her hands in her lap and looked about with little expression. Her husband and sister-in-law bent upon each other expressions of distrust and disdain, each complexion colored as pinkly as though Mr. Wythe’s fire burned with much greater heat.
“Mr. Jefferson,” said Wythe, seating himself in the remaining chair.
Stepping forward, Tom placed a clear pane of glass on the table between Eliza and Peter. “Would you each be so kind as to press your thumbs and fingertips firmly against this glass?”
“I beg your pardon?” demanded Peter.
Eliza said haughtily, “An exceedingly strange request, Mr. Jefferson.”
“If you please,” Wythe said, “indulge my young friend’s scientific endeavors. He has explained his reasoning to me, and it rings true in every respect.”
With indignant murmurings, first Eliza and then Peter did as he requested, even suffering Tom to apologetically roll their thumbs back and forth against the glass. He carried the pane closer to Wythe’s lamp, scattered it with the fine dust he’d collected in Mrs. Vobe’s yard, and blew the excess into the fireplace. He then inspected the resulting smudges through his refractive lens. “It seems as though the oils inherent in human flesh leave marks upon all they touch, in a process not dissimilar to the way marks are made upon paper by the metal type and ink of a printing press. These marks can be readily distinguished on such a hard, smooth surface as glass, be it this pane of glass I borrowed from Mr. Geddy’s workshop, or the glass of a wine bottle, which must be grasped firmly lest it fall and break.”
Not the least murmur or rustle of fabric came from any of the gathered souls.
Tom turned to the sheet of paper resting upon the corner of Wythe’s desk. He’d employed the afternoon sunlight in scrutinizing each print upon the bottle and painstakingly sketching its patterns, so that now he had before him a gallery of whorling designs like miniature labyrinths. “I theorize,” he continued, “that each human fingerprint is as distinct, albeit subtly, as each leaf upon a tree, or each snowflake falling from the sky in winter.”
There, yes, one pattern matched those made by Eliza’s fingers. Another matched the set he’d taken from himself, and a third matched that of Josiah Greenhow, who’d agreed with good humor to the test. Wythe himself had provided a wax seal pressed by Robert Bracewell’s thumb, from which Tom had been obliged to extrapolate the rest of the dead man’s grasp. But nowhere upon his paper was a copy of the pattern Peter had just this moment impressed upon the glass.
So then. The presence of Eliza’s prints proved nothing, as she’d already admitted touching the bottle. The absence of Peter’s prints, though, proved that he’d never touched it at all, and was therefore innocent of pouring the arsenicum into its narrow mouth.
Tom might perhaps have settled then and there upon Eliza as the perpetrator, except he had yet one set of designs upon his paper for which he could make no attribution. Was it possible that Eliza and Peter were both telling the truth, and the murderer was someone else?
He could hardly test the fingertips of every citizen of Williamsburg who’d passed by the Bracewell’s house during the fatal hour. But no. Cui bono, he reminded himself, and turned toward the group of people seated around the table. The disgruntlement of heirs.
From the chill twilight beyond the windows came the chirrup of a mockingbird, so gentle he would have found it hard to believe the same bird capable of the harsh squawks he’d heard this afternoon had he not heard them for himself. . . .
The answer winged into his mind like a mimicry of mockingbirds winging amongst the trees. He himself,
not to mention the neighbors, had heard a woman’s voice singing whilst Peter played the harpsichord. All had leaped to the assumption, as the cat had leaped toward the bird, that the voice belonged to Anne. But, as the cat had missed the bird, so assumption had missed fact.
Eliza had been practicing a song at that same hour. Without study, who could tell the song of one mockingbird from another? Who could tell Eliza’s song from Anne’s, particularly as Eliza had been endeavoring to copy Anne? That Anne had been privileged to possess tutors in music and deportment was a fact with which each woman mocked the other.
Tom considered Anne Bracewell’s lacy cap, which was presented to his gaze as her own gaze was directed to her lap. From modesty or from guilt?
Any mother, avian or human, would put her child’s welfare above her own. She would be compelled to defend any encroachment into her territory, even though such defense meant the risk of her own life. Eliza might have killed her husband to provide for her son, but Anne, too, had a child who wanted provision. As a femme coverte, her property might belong to her husband but his belonged to her. And to their child.
Anne had remarked upon Sylvia’s purchase of arsenicum. Anne would have known Robert’s and Eliza’s habits as well as Peter. Anne, going about her lethal errand, might have deliberately started singing every time Eliza paused, so that music accompanied her trip through the dusk from house to house and back again as though in a tragic opera. It would have been the work of only seconds for her to steal the arsenicum from the kitchen on her way into the house and to dispose of its packaging in the privy on her way back.
Tom set his pane of glass on the table in front of her. “If you please, Mrs. Bracewell, might I have the impressions of your fingers as well?”
The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth Page 5
