MURDER AT BERTRAM'S BOWER

by Cynthia Peale

  Poor mite, thought Caroline, what lies ahead of you except years and years of drudging work punctuated at frequent intervals—too frequent—by the arrival of yet another mouth to feed?

  A door opened and Dr. Hannah’s assistant came out. The woman at the desk spoke to her, glancing dubiously at Caroline as she did. The assistant, whom Caroline knew, nodded and beckoned.

  “I’ll just get Doctor a cup of tea,” she said when they were in the corridor. “She needs a rest. She’s been on her feet since six this morning, and the day isn’t half over yet.”

  Dr. Hannah’s office was neat and spare, like the doctor herself. She came in at once, smiling to see her friend.

  “Caroline! What a pleasant surprise.”

  They greeted each other with a kiss and an embrace. Dr. Hannah was a small, thin woman with graying hair and luminous gray eyes. She smelled of some chemical mix, and since she did not wear corsets, considering them unhealthy in the extreme, Caroline felt her body through the thin gray stuff of her dress, her bones quivering like a captive bird’s. Quivering with fatigue, Caroline thought. She is working herself to a shadow here, and no matter how hard she works, or how long, her work will never be done.

  The assistant brought in a tray of tea and biscuits, and Dr. Hannah, sinking onto a wooden chair, asked Caroline to pour.

  “What brings you?” she said, smiling as she accepted the steaming brew.

  “It is this business about Agatha’s girls.”

  “The murders?”

  “Yes.”

  Dr. Hannah arched a skeptical eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you are involved in that nightmare.”

  “I have known Agatha since we were children. You know I go to the Bower regularly to teach. I don’t have to tell you how important Agatha’s work is. And now, because of this madman, she is in danger of losing everything she has worked for all these years. People will no longer support her—”

  Dr. Hannah raised a hand as if to ward off further expostulations. “I understand. How can I help you?”

  “I wondered—you tend to the girls there.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I thought perhaps you might have heard something, or—did you know Mary and Bridget? Agatha told me that Mary was quite ill when she came to the Bower. Did you treat her?”

  “Yes, I did.” Dr. Hannah frowned, remembering. “Sometimes I do not recall a particular girl—there are so many of them, you understand—but I do remember Mary. She was pretty and bright, and once she’d begun to recover her health, she was the kind of girl who—I hardly know how to put it. She was the kind of girl who seemed determined, after her bad start, to make something of herself. Of her life.”

  “That seems to be the general opinion. You saw her—when? Months ago, when she first came to the Bower?”

  “That’s right, and for some weeks afterward.”

  “But you haven’t seen her recently?”

  “No.”

  “Nor Bridget either?”

  “I can check the files, but I don’t believe so.”

  “And you don’t know of anything that might help us—Addington—to learn who killed them?”

  Dr. Hannah shrugged. “You know as well as I do that girls like that—the girls who go to the Bower—are more vulnerable than your neighbors up on Beacon Hill.”

  There was no censure in her words, and yet Caroline caught a faint hint of—what? Reproach? For Caroline and her well-off neighbors? No, not that, not anything so strong. But something.

  “Yes, I know that.”

  “And so they are often put in the way of—shall we say—unwelcome advances. Such girls are not treated with the respect that men show to what the world calls ‘decent’ women. I believe that most of the girls whom Agatha rescues—there is no other word for it—truly want to begin a new life. A decent life, away from the streets. But sometimes they fail. A man will try to press himself upon them, make advances.… And the girls fall—or fail—all over again.”

  “Do you think Mary welcomed such advances, assuming she had them?”

  “Mary? I don’t know. She might have. But she was obviously determined to rise in the world—as far as a girl like herself could rise, which might not have been very far.”

  “She was expecting a child,” Caroline said abruptly.

  Dr. Hannah stared at her. “Are you sure?”

  “The medical examiner said so.”

  “I see.”

  “So perhaps someone did press himself on her, as you put it. But not on Bridget. Poor Bridget was not the kind of girl who would have had many overtures.”

  “And yet someone found it necessary to kill her too,” Dr. Hannah said.

  “Yes.”

  “Probably because she knew something that the killer—if it was one man and not two—could not afford to have revealed?”

  “Addington thinks so. Perhaps she knew Mary’s condition.”

  “Yes.” Dr. Hannah met her eyes. “And she may have threatened to tell—”

  “Yes. Perhaps.”

  Dr. Hannah swallowed the last of her tea and shook her head when Caroline offered her the plate of biscuits. She frowned and looked away, obviously working something out in her mind. Then she met her friend’s eyes again. “Do you know Agatha’s brother at all?”

  “The Reverend Montgomery? Why, yes, I do.”

  “How well?”

  “Not very. He came to dinner on Wednesday night, as a matter of fact, part of a group of a dozen or so.”

  “Was that the first time you ever invited him?”

  “Yes. As you know, I have not entertained for the past year and more, not since Mama’s last illness. But before that—no, I’d never invited him. Why do you ask?”

  “Because.” Dr. Hannah’s expression turned hard, her eyes grew cold. “I am going to tell you something I have not told before. I never thought I could tell it—not to you, not to anyone. Not even to the police,” she added bitterly.

  “The police! What are you talking about?”

  “I am talking about the Reverend Randolph Montgomery. He is widely admired, is he not, for his devotion to the Bower, for helping his sister maintain the place by his ceaseless fund-raising?”

  Caroline felt a small warning tremor at the back of her mind. “Yes,” she said faintly, “he is.”

  “And yet,” Dr. Hannah went on, “perhaps he is not the paragon of virtue that he pretends to be.”

  “Pretends to be? What do you mean?”

  “I mean”—Dr. Hannah leaned forward, fixing Caroline intently in her gaze—“that he is a fraud.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I am talking about the girls who come to me here. They are filled with remorse, some of them—for their pasts, for what the world would call their shame. But some of them, seeking shelter and help from Agatha, are subjected to new shame, new degradation—and from the very place that is supposed to be their refuge.”

  Caroline stared at her, dreading what would come next.

  “He molests them,” Dr. Hannah said flatly.

  “Who?”

  “Whom are we speaking of, Caroline? The Reverend Randolph Montgomery. That paragon of virtue, that man of the cloth who parades himself before the world as a man of God, a man dedicated like his sister to the salvation of the outcasts of this city. Oh, yes, she rescues them all right. And then he moves in on them, preys on them—a bad pun, is it not? He prays for them, and with them, and then he preys on them. Poor things, they are terrified to tell. They confess to me only after I have built up their trust in me, and even then I must pry it out of them. They don’t want to be dismissed from the Bower, you see. They are afraid that if they tell what he does to them, they will be thrown back onto the streets before their three months with Agatha are up. So they keep quiet, and it is not until I see signs of distress that have become all too familiar to me, and I begin to question them, that they tell me—about him.”

  Caroline’s heart was beating so fast that she fou
nd it difficult to breathe. Katy had told her this, and now Dr. Hannah was telling her all over again. The Reverend Montgomery—oh, but how could he? How could he betray Agatha like that?

  “Have you spoken to Agatha about this?” she said.

  “I tried to, once. She would not listen—would not believe me.”

  “No, I imagine she wouldn’t. Well, what about the police, then? Surely he is breaking the law, to—to molest them?” Caroline’s knowledge of exactly what molestation might entail was scant, but it was enough for her to understand what Dr. Hannah meant.

  “The police?” Dr. Hannah’s voice was filled with contempt. “And how far do you suppose I would get, complaining to the police? Who would believe me? Who would believe the girls from the Bower? The man is not a fool. He knows it is his word against theirs—or mine.”

  “I can’t believe it myself,” Caroline said, and then, seeing her friend’s expression, quickly added, “Oh, I didn’t mean that. I do believe you—of course I do. As a matter of fact—”

  “What?”

  “I spoke to two of the Bower girls yesterday. They told me that he—something like what you have just said.”

  “Well, then.”

  “But it is just so—so dreadful.”

  “To think that the Reverend Montgomery uses the Bower as his own private hunting ground? Yes, it is dreadful, isn’t it? But not so unbelievable, I think. Many men of the cloth are not the monuments to virtue they pretend to be.”

  Caroline knew that Dr. Hannah did not go to church. Occasionally, in the past, she had invited her to her own church, the Church of the Advent, but Dr. Hannah had always declined. She had little time to rest, she said, and Sunday mornings were precious hours to sleep. Caroline believed that Dr. Hannah, in her own way, did the Lord’s work, and so, after a few refusals, she gave up. Dr. Hannah’s religion was her work, her work her religion. Caroline was sure God understood that even if her fellow mortals might not.

  She sat silent for a moment, absorbing what Dr. Hannah had told her. Surely, she thought, there must be some way to stop him. He must be spoken to, admonished, warned.… But then she realized the truth of what Dr. Hannah had said. Who would believe it—that a man of the cloth, brother to one of the best-known and most widely admired benefactresses of the city, was in fact a monster of depravity?

  No. She flinched from the vision of Dr. Hannah—or, worse, her own self—trying to make that case. Dr. Hannah was right. They would not be believed, and they would themselves become the objects of derision or, worse—scorn, calumny—oh, what to do with this most unwelcome information? Hearing it from Katy had been one thing, but from Dr. Hannah …

  She would have to tell Addington, of course. But what would he do then? Go to Crippen? To other ministers? But Addington, like Dr. Hannah, was not religious; he had no friends and few acquaintances among the clergy.

  Still, she was glad Dr. Hannah had confided in her. Where that confidence might take her she had not yet begun to sort out. She would tell Addington and let him deal with it; he would know what to do.

  It was nearly noon when she left Dr. Hannah’s clinic, and now, having walked briskly over to the South End an hour earlier, she felt too tired—too crushed by the knowledge she carried away with her—to walk home. So she hailed a herdic-phaeton and sat limp and brooding as the little vehicle jounced along the rainy streets.

  The Reverend Montgomery—a duplicitous, even an evil man. A man who turned one smooth, bland face to the world, and showed another to the poor, helpless girls in his and Agatha’s charge.

  What did it mean? What could it mean?

  She peered anxiously out the cab’s little window. They were nearly home; she felt the herdic tilt as the horse turned up the steep slope of Mt. Vernon Street. Suddenly, urgently, she wanted to unburden herself to Addington, and she hoped he would be home.

  He was, and MacKenzie with him. They rose when she entered the parlor. As always, she was heartened by the smile on the doctor’s broad, honest face, and by Addington’s acknowledgment, a nod, a half-smile, that meant: Here you are safe again, Caro, and we are here to protect you. She didn’t always want to be protected, but just now she did.

  “How did it go?” she asked her brother, meaning Inspector Crippen’s lineup.

  He told her.

  “But—” She absorbed it. “You mean he deliberately did not include Garrett because he has decided that Garrett is guilty?”

  “It would seem so.”

  “That is ridiculous. Yes, Margaret, we’re coming.”

  She led the way into the dining room, where their lunch awaited them: vegetable soup, a plate of cold ham, Cook’s good whole wheat bread.

  “And what have you been up to, Caroline?” Ames asked. He spoke not without a small tremor of apprehension. She was his own good, obedient younger sister who would never intentionally act to rouse his disapproval. Yet she had a way of following her conscience that sometimes led to trouble.

  She told them about her visit to Dr. Hannah Bigelow, and what Dr. Hannah had told her about the Reverend Montgomery.

  MacKenzie received this information with a muttered oath—“damnable rascal!”—for which he instantly begged her pardon.

  Ames was silent, his dark, brilliant eyes fixed on her. Then: “We can assume that Dr. Hannah would have no reason to lie.”

  “Lie? Of course not! Why would she lie?” She put down her soup spoon and met his gaze as she said softly, “What are you thinking, Addington?”

  “I am thinking that Crippen is about to make a colossal blunder.”

  “One wonders what—or how much—Miss Montgomery knows about her brother,” MacKenzie offered.

  “Dr. Hannah said she spoke to her about his behavior some time ago, and Agatha would not listen.”

  “Of course she would not listen,” Ames said. “Aside from everything else, it is her brother who keeps the place afloat financially.”

  “Addington, really! You don’t believe that Agatha would sacrifice those girls—the girls to whom she devotes her life—to her brother’s lechery?”

  “No. I do not. Not when you put it like that. But still, we must keep in mind that he serves her well.”

  “So what if he does? At the same time, he undermines her work—violates it.”

  “Yes.” Ames nodded. “He does that also.”

  “I would venture that Miss Montgomery cannot—literally cannot—bear to believe such things about him,” MacKenzie said. “It is more properly the province of Professor James, this partitioning of the mind to avoid the pain of unwelcome knowledge, but from what little I know of human nature, I would say that in order for her to survive, she is compelled to deny her brother’s behavior. For her to acknowledge it would be impossible.”

  “Yes, I imagine it would be,” Caroline agreed. “Her life’s work—and at the very heart of it, a hideous rot. Oh, Addington, you don’t think that the reverend had anything to do—”

  “Yes. I do think he had something to do—with this case.”

  It was the world turned upside down, she thought. The good man was bad, the shepherd of the flock was the wolf in sheep’s clothing. She was still struggling with it, as she had been struggling ever since she listened to Liza’s and Katy’s revelations, when Ames pushed back his chair and stood up.

  “What are you going to do, Addington?”

  “I am not sure.” He was reaching into his pocket for his handkerchief, when his fingers touched the sodden paper he’d found on the street. He pulled it out.

  “We must still fit this into the puzzle,” he said. He handed it to her.

  “What is it? Oh—a Christian Science tract. Where did you get it?”

  “It was lying on the sidewalk in front of the Parker House.”

  “And how do you mean, fit it in?”

  “The type,” he said. “It matches exactly the cut-out letters on the coded note found on Mary’s person.”

  “But what—”

  “I don’t know, Ca
ro. Not yet. Crippen refuses to listen to me, refuses to believe the note has anything to do with Mary’s death. But I believe it does—and now that I have this, I believe it all the more.” He glanced at MacKenzie, remembering the doctor’s suspicions of the forbidding female who guarded the girls at the Bower. “We must keep in mind that Matron Pratt is a devoted member of this sect.”

  “Where are you going now, Addington?” Caroline asked.

  For he was going someplace, that was obvious. He hovered by the door, restless, preparing to take his leave.

  “Out.”

  It was raining still, but not heavily. The walk down the hill and across the Garden would be nothing; in less than a quarter of an hour he could be at the Berkeley Arms. It was early afternoon, too early for her to be at the theater. Unless she had some other engagement—at her dressmaker’s perhaps—she might be at home. As if she held him by an invisible cord of memory—of desire—she drew him to her even as he warned himself away.

  But yes. He would go to her. Ever since he’d spoken to her, two days ago, he’d felt that she’d left something unsaid. And now, with this fresh information about the Reverend Montgomery, he was sure of it: She had something more to tell him after all.

  “It is simply outrageous, Caroline,” said Aunt Euphemia Ames, “that an entire city must be terrorized—terrorized—because of one man’s behavior.”

  A small, elegantly dressed figure, she tucked her hand more securely into Dr. MacKenzie’s arm. The three of them were walking down through Boston Common to the Music Hall on Tremont Street, where Euphemia and Caroline had season tickets for Friday afternoon Symphony. Ordinarily, Euphemia’s niece and Caroline’s cousin, Valentine, accompanied them, but in her absence over the past several weeks, Dr. MacKenzie had agreed to go in her place.

  “Yes, aunt,” Caroline said. “I agree with you. It is outrageous. But—”

  “Where are the police in this matter?” Euphemia went on impatiently. She was a formidable woman of some seventy-five years, tiny, intense, a terror to anyone who aroused her wrath and to many who did not. “I am going to speak to Cousin Wainwright. It is intolerable that the police cannot apprehend this man.”