Winter Sisters

by Robin Oliveira

  The clapboard house, Jakob noted, was one of the older row houses in the Pastures. The newer brick federalist structure next door was far more elegant, with gabled roofs and dormer windows that Harley’s more humble house lacked. Inside, his house reeked of mold and sewage. Heavily tracked river silt sat six inches deep in some places; in others, warped floorboards testified to the river’s destructive force. The stove flume in the kitchen hung detached from the wall. The modest furniture—a single chair, two low tables—lay in splintered pieces up against plaster walls. A waterline reached a foot above the floor. Outside, in the narrow alley behind, a wooden privy tilted at a thirty-degree angle.

  The door to the stone cellar stood askew, half off its hinges. Jakob noted a set of keys dangling from its lock. Downstairs, the smell of must and mold in the derelict basement overwhelmed them. It was little more than twenty by twenty. One of the cellar walls had partially collapsed, and someone had propped a few four-by-fours against the remaining boulders and wedged several more under the ceiling joists. Two waterlogged mattresses, a ruined couch frame, a Perry coal stove with its chimney intact, a copper tub basin, and a shovel had come to sodden rest on the muddied floor. Farrell took hold of the shovel and tagged it with a slip of brown paper. Orders, he said, from Hotaling.

  They came up out of the cellar, and then climbed a narrow stairway to the second floor. There was only one room under the low eaves. A high, neatly made bed rose four feet off the floor. The quilt wasn’t even mussed. Harley’s shirts and underwear and a second set of bed linens were neatly folded in a chest of drawers. Several pairs of pants hung from nails along one of the walls.

  Farrell’s lips formed a thin line. “Neatest criminal I ever saw.”

  “He was careful at the yard, too,” Jakob said. “Van der Veer Lumber has the fewest accidents in the district—due entirely to his vigilance.”

  Farrell touched the counterpane, which was thick with down feathers. “He kept himself comfortable.”

  Jakob recalled that Harley had only recently bought the house—presumably on monies he had saved from his twenty-year tenure at Van der Veer Lumber—but even so, the home seemed more than Jakob imagined Harley could afford. The Pastures was a far more expensive area to live in than North Albany, where most of the Lumber District laborers resided. The Pastures’ denizens were small-time merchants and business owners. Perhaps in addition to his propensity toward tidiness, Harley was frugal, too, though it occurred to Jakob again how little he knew about the man his father set such store by. He leaned against the edge of the bed and looked around the small room. Newly painted. Pristine.

  Farrell arched his eyebrows at Jakob. “Why such a high bed?”

  Jakob shrugged.

  “Get up.”

  Farrell still held the shovel, and he laid it down. Then he tore off the bedclothes and flipped the mattress onto the floor. Hidden in the bed frame, a hinged wooden box about six inches high bore the trademarked oval stamp of Van der Veer Lumber. A handle was built flush into the top. Farrell lifted it.

  Piles and piles of greenbacks in neatly tied bundles lay nestled inside.

  Farrell let out a low whistle. “You pay him enough for this at the yard?”

  Jakob shook his head, mentally tallying the fortune before him. Fifteen hundred, two thousand dollars?

  “Grab a pillowcase,” Farrell said. “I’m going to get that stripling downstairs to come witness this.”

  Jakob did, and Farrell returned with the stripling, who gaped openmouthed at the money.

  Jakob and Farrell began the count.

  They added up the money twice.

  It came to $2,150. A fortune.

  —

  Later than night, Jakob searched his father’s study, stealthily opening and shutting the many cabinet doors and easing his father’s desk drawers in and out with the smooth deftness of a burglar. Methodical and patient, he replaced everything just as he had found it, conscious of his father’s acute attention to every detail, noting how similar he and Harley sometimes were. Finding nothing, Jakob carried a lit candle down the stairs and out into the bricked yard and through the stable doors. Six carriage horses slept in their stalls, their heavy exhalations undisturbed by his intrusion. A heavy canvas tarp covered his father’s sleigh, which was set on blocks for the off-season. Jakob set the candle on a shelf and picked up one edge of the tarp, folding it back until he could see inside. On the sleigh’s leather seat were the books that Jakob had rescued.

  He lit two oil lamps affixed to the stable wall and sorted the ledgers by date. There were two distinct sets, duplicates of one another. His own handwriting, small and precise, filled one, its pages and labeled columns listing monies in and monies out, lumber purchases, sales, payroll, and expenditures for maintenance and upkeep. The second set he had never seen: his father’s looping handwriting filled these pages with similar tallies of debits and credits, except that none of the tabulations in the two sets of books matched, nor did the source of monies or expenditures.

  And all his father’s entries were coded.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Four days later, on Saturday, May 10, William Stipp stepped down from a canary yellow car of the Old Colony Railroad onto a sand-strewn street in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the tiny fishing village at the far tip of Cape Cod. It was one o’clock in the afternoon. A white rush of steam exhaled from the locomotive into a blue sky already noisy with the cries of seagulls and gannets looping over the shingled shanties of the fishing village. The pungent scents of brine and fish carried on a light breeze from the nearby bay, just out of sight. It had been two days of travel from Albany, with an overnight stay in Boston at the United States Hotel, and they were all tired.

  They was everyone but Mary, who had stayed behind in Albany.

  In the frantic hours before their departure they had scurried to pack. Eschewing the services of the meticulous cobbler, Mary had procured shoes from a shop on State Street that sold them ready-made; Amelia had scared up another pair of dresses for the girls from the church box; Elizabeth had helped Vera to drag trunks from the attic; and Harold had been sent to purchase railroad tickets.

  They had withheld from the girls the reason for their swift departure.

  On the morning before their hasty retreat, Jakob had come to depose Emma and Claire. Elizabeth had arranged to absent herself. Recently, Madame Hubbard had written to her twice, the first letter expressing exultation at the sisters’ resurrection and the second, desolation. Wouldn’t Elizabeth like to come for a visit to allow Madame Hubbard to offer her comfort? Seizing the excuse, Elizabeth had gone to call on her French teacher at the unreasonable hour of 9:00 a.m., taking with her one of Vera’s strawberry pies as recompense.

  At the door, Jakob failed to disguise his surreptitious survey of the foyer and hallway—presumably looking for Elizabeth—before he took a seat in the same parlor chair that Hotaling had recently occupied. Jakob looked as if he had not slept. His waistcoat was wrinkled, his unbuttoned shirt cuffs had been rolled back, and his shock of sandy hair had not been combed in some time. Before beginning, he yawned, rubbing his eye sockets with the heels of his hands. Despite his fatigue, however, Jakob flashed them both a dead-eyed certainty, one that William had come to recognize in the war as the life-or-death resolve of the newly fearless.

  “Before you bring in Emma and Claire,” Jakob began, “I want to tell you that I’ve met with Lansing Hotaling and he shared the particulars of his interview with Emma and with you. I want you to know that I will not bother her on points of physical intimacy that I believe will only embarrass her.”

  Mary glanced at William. Emma had spoken little in the two weeks since the district attorney’s bludgeoning visit. It was as if she were just holding on, and despite the rapid healing of her cuts and bruises, she remained withdrawn and lethargic.

  “If I may, before we go on, did Elizabeth share my
letter to her with you?” Jakob said.

  “She didn’t,” Mary said.

  “She told you nothing?”

  “We’re not interested in puzzles, young man,” William said, “so why don’t you save yourself an interrogation and tell us what you want to say?”

  “I fear that all of you may regard me as a traitor. Indeed, I feel a bit of one myself. I said as much in my letter to Elizabeth, though I expect her opinion of me plummeted the moment she learned that I would be defending Mr. Harley. I expect that yours did as well. I want you to understand that my role as Mr. Harley’s attorney is not one I sought out.” He stared past them, silent for a moment, his bloodshot eyes watery with fatigue. “Are you aware that Captain Mantel’s first name is Arthur? I haven’t figured out who ‘G’ is yet. I have an idea, though.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” William said.

  He shook his head, as if to clear it of cobwebs. “Forgive me. What I mean to say is that I want to assure you that you can trust me.”

  “You’re defending James Harley,” William said. “How can we trust you?”

  “I mean Emma and Claire no harm. I promise that I will not bolster my defense of Mr. Harley at Emma’s expense. Another defense attorney might seek to discredit them or use shame as a tactic, but I will not. Not today, not during the trial. I hold your family in the highest regard.

  “Before I forget, there is one thing I want to warn you about. Be on your guard with Captain Mantel. Take care what you say to him. If you can, avoid him altogether.”

  William raised his eyebrows, but Jakob would tell them nothing more. Instead he said, “Have you explained to Emma that she’ll be going to court?”

  They had, in stages. They did not know how much she’d absorbed of what they’d told her, but she seemed to understand that she would have to answer more questions, both now and later. The concepts of a gallery and a judge and jury, however, Emma had greeted with silence.

  “Do you think she’ll be able to testify?”

  “We don’t know. She’s still not talking much.”

  “There’s still five weeks before the trial. Do you think she will talk to me today?”

  “We can’t say whether Emma will answer any of your questions. Mr. Hotaling terrified her.”

  Amelia led Emma and Claire in by the hand and sat between them on the long divan, a protective arm around each. Jakob’s sharp-eyed gaze turned kind and sympathetic. He said hello in a soft voice and that he was glad to meet them and most of all that he wanted to help them. He understood, he continued, that they probably didn’t want to talk to another stranger like him about the terrible thing that had happened to them. But he wouldn’t always be a stranger. He was going to see Emma again at least one more time, in the courtroom. But today, he had only one question for both of them. It was an easy one, but it was an important one, too. They would have to try very hard to remember, and if they couldn’t, it would be all right. Would they try?

  He posed his question, and at first neither Emma nor Claire responded. It was as if they were digging through eternity to find the correct answer. But the question concerned nothing about their bodies, and Emma exhibited none of the reticence she had exhibited with Hotaling. She considered Jakob’s question for a time, her brow furrowed as she glanced around her grandmother to Claire, who was waiting for Emma to answer first.

  Emma said, “I do remember. It was bright red. Like a cherry.”

  The room stilled. Mary, William, and Amelia gaped at one another. Jakob shut his eyes for a brief moment, and when he opened them he said, “Are you sure?”

  Emma nodded emphatically.

  Jakob said, “Thank you. Now what do you say, Claire?”

  Claire nodded in turn. “Red.”

  “You’re sure? You’re not just saying that because that’s what your sister said? It’s okay if you can’t remember.”

  Claire shook her head solemnly.

  “Thank you,” Jakob said. “You really helped me. Another time, we’ll talk again. But not today. I’ll wait until everyone feels better.”

  Mary noted with gratitude that he did not single out Emma as the one who most needed to feel better.

  Amelia shepherded the girls into the kitchen, and a second shocked silence permeated the room. William and Mary could think of nothing to say.

  “It doesn’t prove anything by itself,” Jakob said, his voice subdued. “It’s just one more puzzle piece.”

  “A rather significant one,” William said. “What will you do now?”

  “What I have been doing. Mrs. Stipp, I trust you have nothing more to say about Emma’s injuries than what you told Mr. Hotaling?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  There was a knock at the front door, and they could hear Vera padding down the hallway to answer it. She came into the parlor carrying a large crate addressed in neat block letters to Claire and Emma O’Donnell, care of The Doctors Stipp, 714 Madison Avenue, Albany, New York.

  The package had no return address.

  William pried open the crate with a crowbar he got from the carriage house. Inside, on a bed of fine paper straw, lay two exquisite dolls, dressed in lavish gowns and wearing pale wigs and fashionable hats. Mary lifted them out, strips of the paper falling to her feet like confetti. They were beautifully made. Each one was almost a foot tall. Their heads were crafted of painted porcelain and their glass eyes fluttered open and shut. A single envelope dangled from the wrist of one of the dolls, attached by a scalloped golden ribbon. It was addressed to Emma.

  Jakob stole it away with a proprietary motion that bordered on violence. He tore the envelope open and read the note out loud.

  Do you miss me?

  Jakob looked up and said, “Take Emma and Claire to the edge of the world. Don’t wait another day. Saratoga isn’t far enough. Nor is Lake George. Take them somewhere beautiful, somewhere far, far away, and don’t come back until the trial. Tell no one—not even me—where you’ve gone.”

  —

  And so, a mere thirteen hours later, everyone but Mary had embarked from the Boston and Albany Station on Steuben Street on the 2:00 a.m. Express, stealing away in the middle of the night to avoid anyone else taking notice of their abrupt departure. Well provisioned by Vera with a wicker hamper stuffed with meat pies, bottles of ginger ale, wintered-over apples, a small crock of butter, and two loaves of dark bread, they’d easily endured the six-hour trip to Boston, arriving at eight o’clock in the morning. They’d checked into the United States Hotel, a titanic, utilitarian railroad hostelry that catered primarily to excursionists. From a nearby shop, Amelia purchased Emma and Claire broad-brimmed sun hats in addition to warm coats and gloves, unseasonable items she insisted the salesclerk unearth from a back storage room.

  Now, at the Provincetown railroad depot, William handed their luggage tickets to the porter and turned to help Claire and Emma down the railcar’s steep stairs. Amelia followed behind, balancing her small leather valise and the emptied hamper in one hand and gripping the handrail with the other. She turned to lend Elizabeth a hand, but Elizabeth skimmed down the three steps without any help. She carried a new violin in a cheap case made of pinewood that William had purchased for her in Boston. When he had discovered at the station in Albany that Elizabeth had not brought her own instrument, out of fear that the sea air would damage it, he told her that while she might be willing to sacrifice the progress she had made, he was not. In Boston, he asked after reputable violinmakers and was directed to St. Botolph Street, an hour horsecar ride away. He purchased an inexpensive one over the protestations of its maker, who argued that no one should choose a violin except the person who was going to play it. They are cherished beings, he’d claimed, like children, and to select one for someone without their approval was tantamount to committing a crime. But Elizabeth was thrilled.

  Emma and Claire had never bee
n to the sea. William hired a hack to carry their luggage from the depot to their hotel and a second one to carry all of them. The road to the hotel ran past the harbor. The wind was up, and the whip of sail and rope filled the air. A dozen sailing sloops and schooners rode at anchor. Dories, trawlers, cutters, and dinghies crowded a long dock extending a hundred feet into the glimmering bay. At the dock’s far end, a steamship was loading day passengers for the bumpy trip back to Boston. It was delicious to watch Emma and Claire gasp at the vibrant scene, delicious to catch them forgetting, even for a moment, the stone walls of that cellar. It was eight weeks since the blizzard, two since the flood. They had buried Emma and Claire, and now they were alive.

  In Boston, when they had asked where to stay, the concierge had said, “Provincetown? Why are you going there now? It’s all ‘Portugee’ fishermen and sand and herring. But if you must, there’s a new hotel for the tourist trade.”

  The Whaler’s Rest was a shingled two-story inn with a long, covered veranda that faced the sea. This early in the season, the inn abounded with vacancies, and they were assigned choice rooms on the second floor overlooking the endless bay and its strip of shell-pebbled beach. Two rooms connected through an interior door: Amelia and Emma took one side, and Elizabeth and Claire the other. William’s corner room down the hall was full of light and furnished with a single bed made up with a white bedspread and two bright blue pillows.

  Do you miss me?

  William shuddered at the memory. He hoped that Provincetown would be far enough away to keep Emma and Claire from harm, but he didn’t know. He might have suggested getting out of town anyway. Horace Young’s relentless newspaper articles had stirred up the city so much that none of them could go anywhere without being stared at, which was one of the other reasons why he had hated to leave Mary behind, vulnerable to every curious stare or passerby. He had wanted to be the one to keep the clinic going to save her that indignity, but soon after they had begun packing, a letter arrived for her, the libelous newspaper articles having done swift work.