MURDER AT BERTRAM'S BOWER

by Cynthia Peale

“Oh? Why is that?”

  “I don’t mind saying I had a few words with her. She—Well, never mind about that. But I left for Worcester right after I saw her, and I just got back not an hour ago. So you’ll have to look elsewhere for your man.”

  “She was your friend,” Ames replied. “And yet you seem remarkably unconcerned about her death. Considering the way she died.”

  “Friend?” Brice sneered. “Mary wasn’t no friend of mine.”

  “You became acquainted with her because you sell typewriting machines, isn’t that so? And Bertram’s Bower was in the market for one.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You hadn’t sold it to them yet?”

  “No. Tight with their money, they are, over there.”

  “But Mary bought a manual from you?”

  “Yes. Well—she didn’t buy it herself. The Reverend Montgomery was the one who actually paid for it. It was his idea to get them a machine.”

  “Correct.”

  “Look, mister, I don’t know what you want of me.” In a nervous gesture, Brice wiped his hand across his mouth. Then, speaking more firmly: “I had nothing to do with Mary’s death. And when I left her on Saturday, I made up my mind I wasn’t going to see her again.”

  “Why?”

  “Because. She told me to my face that I wasn’t good enough for her. She had her sights set on someone better than me, or so she said. Can you believe it? A girl from the Bower, and she had her sights set above me? I have prospects, you know. I won’t be a drummer for much longer.”

  “Drummer” was the popular name for traveling salesmen, who, in their travels, tried to drum up business.

  “Indeed,” Ames remarked dryly.

  “That’s right. I’ve got my eye on a share in the firm. This time next year, I’ll be pretty well set up if everything goes according to plan.”

  Very little in life goes according to plan, Ames thought.

  “Who was this person whom Mary spoke of?” he asked. “Did she mention his name?”

  “No.”

  You are lying, Ames thought, but he kept silent.

  “I don’t mind telling you,” Brice went on, “I was put off by the way she acted. Perhaps we had words—yes, I suppose you could say that. Words. We spoke sharp—of course we did. What d’you expect, when she gave herself airs like that?”

  “But you have an idea of who the man was,” Ames replied. It was not a question.

  Brice hesitated. “I don’t want to get into no trouble,” he said.

  “You will be in very great trouble indeed if you withhold evidence in a murder investigation. Did you know that she was pregnant?”

  At this, Brice’s mouth dropped open, and for the first time, Ames saw fear in his eyes.

  “Is that a fact?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “No.” Brice tried to pull himself together. “Look, mister—”

  “Who was the man Mary spoke of?” Ames persisted.

  “It sounds foolish, what I’m going to tell you. She’d got way above herself, Mary did, and I told her as much. ‘You’ll come to grief in the end, my girl,’ I said. But of course she wasn’t about to listen to me. Who was I? Nobody, as far as she was concerned.”

  Ames waited. After a moment, struggling with it, Brice burst out, “All right! You want to know who the man was, I’ll tell you. But you won’t believe it. I didn’t believe it myself. But she did, didn’t she?”

  “Who was it?” But he didn’t need to hear the name; he already knew what Brice would say.

  “It was the Reverend Montgomery.” Brice spoke sullenly, as if guarding himself against Ames’s disbelief. When Ames merely nodded, Brice added more confidently, “She thought he was going to marry her. I tried to tell her he never would, but she wouldn’t listen. ‘He’ll have to,’ she said. ‘Why,’ I said. ‘Because,’ she said, and she wouldn’t say more. Now you come here and tell me she was in the family way. Well, I didn’t put her there. And I’d be surprised if the reverend did. Him a man of the cloth, and her an Irish girl, and from the streets? Even as handsome as she was, and she was that, I don’t mind telling you. A very fine-looking girl.”

  He leaned in to Ames, speaking confidentially, one man of the world to another. “Now, here’s the way I see it. She got herself into trouble, see. And she went off loony, the way some girls do when they find themselves in that condition. And, being loony, she had it all settled in her mind that she’d get a fine gentleman like the reverend to marry her. Crazy, isn’t it? I’d say you have to find the man who got her into trouble in the first place, and then you’ll find the man who killed her.”

  Yes, thought Ames. That is my notion exactly.

  He nodded, then reached into his jacket pocket and took out his card. “If anything else occurs to you, I can be reached here.”

  Brice glanced at it, plainly impressed at the address. “I’m off to Providence on Monday,” he said. “But, yes. If anything else occurs to me.” He slipped the card into his trouser pocket. “She wasn’t a bad girl, you know.”

  “No, I don’t suppose she was.”

  “She just had—ideas above herself, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “She didn’t know her place, like.”

  “I gather she didn’t.”

  Ames turned to go, but then he remembered something else—unimportant now, but something that should be checked all the same. “Are you a Christian Scientist, Mr. Brice?”

  “What’s that?”

  Ames shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  All the way back to Louisburg Square, as he thought about his conversation with Fred Brice, typewriting machine salesman, the young man’s words echoed in his mind: You have to find the man who got her into trouble in the first place, and then you’ll find the man who killed her.

  It was friday evening after dinner. In the parlor at no. 16½, Ames was sunk into his chair, his chin on his chest, lost in thought. MacKenzie had pulled a straight chair opposite Caroline’s, and now he sat with his arms extended, a large skein of dark blue yarn looped over them. Her hands moved with amazing speed as she rolled the yarn into a ball, glancing at him from time to time, her soft brown eyes reflecting the pleasure she took from his company in this humble work.

  And he saw something else there as well—a shadow of pain, of fear, that reflected the events of the past few days. This was not a normal, peaceful evening at home, and they both understood that. Their surface calm covered the knowledge of the brutal death of two girls from Bertram’s Bower, and until the killer was found, no evening at home would ever be normal or peaceful again.

  “Ah—just a moment,” Caroline said. She put down the rapidly growing ball and ran her fingers along the yarn. “It is imperfect just here—you see how it is thick and then thin? I will just knot it—so—and then break it and knit it in when I get to it.”

  “What will you make with it?” said MacKenzie. He never ceased to be amazed at her skill; only last Sunday she’d finished the third of a set of twelve petitpoint seat covers for the dining room chairs. They were the handsomest seat covers he’d ever seen (not that he’d seen many), and he couldn’t imagine actually sitting on them.

  “Oh—I haven’t decided. A shawl, perhaps.”

  But she had enough of those, and so did every female she knew. She’d thought of something a little more daring: a muffler for him. He needed a new one; his old one was very shabby. Probably it was army issue from when he’d first joined up, and never having had a wife or any other female to look after him, he’d never acquired another. Of course, a muffler was a personal thing, perhaps too personal. She’d have to think about it.

  “There.” Rapidly, her hands moving so swiftly that he could hardly see them move, she finished up. He relaxed his arms and reached for his pipe.

  “Now,” she said perhaps a shade too brightly. “What would you like to do this evening, Doctor? Shall we read?”

  His thoughts were far
too unsettled to concentrate on reading. “How about a game of draughts?” he replied. “I beat you very soundly last week, if I recall correctly.”

  She laughed. It was the kind of laugh a woman gives to a man when she knows he admires her.

  “I was off my game, as you well know,” she said. “Perhaps we should have a hand of vingt-et-un—but it is no good with only two. If Addington would play—”

  She glanced at him. He still seemed oblivious.

  “No,” she said. “Addington is thinking. He won’t want to be disturbed.”

  “Dominoes, then?” said MacKenzie. He moved toward the cabinet where they kept their games and decks of cards. Most of them were well worn, relics from childhood. Like everything else in this house, the cabinet held the sense of a family who had long lived here, and would continue to do so for years to come. His own life had been constant moving from one place to the next, first with his widowed mother when he was a child, living on the charity of relatives, and then with the army, going from one post to another. He’d never had a proper home.

  Until now.

  Ames looked up, and Caroline, noticing, said, “A game of vingt-et-un, Addington?”

  “What? Oh—no, thank you. I want to walk a bit.”

  Something in his eyes made her uneasy.

  “Where, Addington?”

  He felt, superstitiously, that if he told her, he would jinx it. On the other hand, probably she and MacKenzie should know where he was bound, just in case.

  “I am going over to the South End,” he said. “To the Reverend Montgomery’s place.”

  “You mean the rectory?”

  “Yes.”

  He hadn’t told her about Serena Vincent’s run-in with the reverend. Hadn’t wanted to—hadn’t been able to. In some odd way, he’d felt he was protecting Mrs. Vincent by not telling. She hardly needed protection, from him or anyone else, but still.

  Randolph Montgomery. He felt his pulse quicken in anger. Respected, widely admired man of the cloth—and duplicitous predator, preying on helpless females. And what further crimes had he committed? Fornication? Rape? Murder?

  Yes, what he knew about Randolph Montgomery sickened him, and yet he did not know enough. He needed to know more.

  Over dinner, he had passed along what Fred Brice had told him about Mary Flaherty’s ambitions. Caroline had been appalled.

  “Marry—the Reverend Montgomery? But that is ridiculous. The reverend would never marry a girl from the Bower.”

  “Of course he wouldn’t. I am merely telling you what this young man told me.”

  “And now the reverend is engaged to a woman from New York, apparently. So even if he did have some kind of—of friendship with Mary, he would never admit to anything more than that.”

  “No. He would not. Therefore, if it was more than that, somehow I must persuade him to confess it. If I can.”

  Now, as he took his leave, she watched him with anxious eyes. After a moment, she heard him gathering his cloak and hat; then the front door slammed and he was gone.

  She turned to MacKenzie and, for his sake, put on a smile. “Well, Doctor, it seems we are on our own for a bit.”

  Ames went along the square toward Mt. Vernon Street, his long legs striding fast over the uneven brick sidewalk. It had stopped raining, but the night air was raw and misting, a night to be at home beside one’s own fire. Through partially opened shutters he could see lighted parlors, families gathered around. The sight held no charm for him. Tonight he wanted cold air in his lungs, he wanted to stretch his legs and pump up his blood for the confrontation—surely it would be that—with the Reverend Montgomery.

  Serena Vincent’s face rose up in his mind. He remembered how her eyes had met his, how her voice had enchanted him as it must enchant her audience every night, how he’d felt at her touch.

  And how he’d sickened as she told him of her unwanted encounter with the reverend.

  So it was not for Caroline, not for Agatha Montgomery that he ventured out this night, but for Serena Vincent. The reverend had accosted her—would probably have raped her if she’d not been a woman of his own class. If she’d been a poor, frightened girl off the streets, unable to resist a man of authority, a man who held power over her, who could deny her shelter at the Bower—oh, yes, Ames thought bitterly. Then the reverend could have had his way with her and none the wiser. Had he done that, many times, with the Bower’s girls? Had he done it with Mary—had his way with her, and then, panicked at her condition, had he killed her?

  He turned down Charles, crossed Beacon—traffic, for once, was light—and plunged into the Public Garden. The misted haloes around the lamps, widely spaced apart on their tall posts along the winding paths, gave little light; the lagoon, its ice partly melted in the thaw, glimmered fitfully. Between the lamps were stretches of darkness where an unwary pedestrian, on a night like this, might be set upon by footpads. But he had spent years at Crabbe’s Boxing and Fencing Club. He would give any man who accosted him a fight for his life, and the fellow would go away the worse for the encounter.

  He emerged from the Garden across from the Arlington Street Church, whose tall brownstone spire was lost in the darkness and mist. He crossed and went on down Boylston Street. There were not many people about, and of those, few were women. Now, loping along, he overtook a lone female; as she realized that a man approached her from behind, she threw him a terrified glance over her shoulder and tried to walk faster. But she was encumbered by twenty pounds of clothing over a tightly laced corset, and she made no headway.

  “I beg your pardon, madam,” Ames said, hurrying past and doffing his hat. She stopped short, staring after him, her face a pale blur.

  He strode on, over the railroad tracks to the South End. There were even fewer pedestrians here, but at the corners, and in doorways, he could see the dark shapes of men. Menacing, threatening shapes, and might one of them be the man he sought?

  No. He swerved to avoid a creature slithering across his path—a cat? a large rat?—and went on. None of these tramps and drifters was his man. He was sure of it—more sure with every passing hour.

  At Columbus Avenue, he turned toward Bertram’s Bower. His footsteps echoed as he went, giving him an unaccustomed sense of vulnerability. And if he felt vulnerable, what must a lone young woman feel? Anyone could step out from one of those sheltering doorways and set upon her, and she would have no defense.

  He was not far, now, from the Reverend Montgomery’s place. With luck the man would be at home. He was stepping off the curb to cross, when out of the night a figure appeared and seized his arm.

  “What the—”

  “Police, mister,” said a voice. “Hold on now, or we’ll have you in for a look-see.” An Irish voice.

  Ames drew himself up. They were standing under a streetlamp. In its feeble glow, he could see that the man who had accosted him wore a policeman’s uniform, but he could not make out his face.

  “Have me in, by all means,” he said. “My friend Inspector Crippen will vouch for me.”

  The hand on his elbow relaxed a bit. “Himself, is it? Well, he’s hereabouts. Let’s see if we can find him.”

  With his free hand the policeman took out his wooden clacker and whirled it furiously. In the quiet night, the rat-tat-tat seemed very loud.

  “You might let go of me,” Ames said. “I won’t run.”

  “Yes, well, we’ll see about that,” the policeman replied gruffly. He did not take away his hand. Ames made a mental note to speak to Cousin Wainwright about teaching a few rules of common courtesy to the police force, but then he reminded himself that this was the night watch he and Crippen had spoken of, and the man was only doing his job.

  A herdic clattered by, and then another, followed by a four-wheeler. Inspector Crippen, it seemed, was elsewhere.

  “Look here, Officer,” Ames said, “I can assure you that Inspector Crippen knows me well. I am late for an appointment as it is, and I see no reason why I should be detained
unless you intend to arrest me.”

  “Not yet, I don’t.” Ames noted that the man had not yet called him “sir.” “But we have to ask you your business hereabouts,” the policeman went on. “We’re questioning every man abroad in the district, and—”

  He broke off at the sight of a trio of men hurrying toward them. Two were tall, and one was short, rotund. Crippen. The little inspector was panting as he came up, but when he recognized Ames, his ugly face broke into a grin.

  “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Mr. Ames! Getting a breath of air, are you? It’s all right, Devlin, I know him.”

  Ames felt the pressure on his arm fall away, and he shook his cape into place.

  “Your night watch is most thorough, Inspector,” he remarked dryly. “I consider myself fortunate not to be loaded into the paddy wagon and taken downtown for a night as a guest of the city.”

  Crippen was not in the least disconcerted. “We have to be thorough, Mr. Ames. We have our work cut out for us, and I don’t mind telling you, we need to do it quickly.”

  “I thought you were on the verge of making an arrest, Inspector. Or has the situation changed?”

  “No.” Crippen tipped back his bowler and rocked back on his heels as he peered up at Ames. “No, it hasn’t changed at all. I still know what I know. This little exercise here tonight won’t change that. But as long as we’re undertaking it, we have to make it look good, don’t we?”

  “You mean, this is like the lineup—strictly for appearance’s sake?”

  “Well, now, I wouldn’t say that exactly. But what with my superiors breathing down my neck, so to speak, I want to give ’em their money’s worth. I have my men on every block in this district, and I’ll be surprised if we don’t have a fine good haul down at the Tombs come morning.”

  “But nowhere in that haul will be the man you seek?”

  “Probably not, no.”

  Ames thought of the drain on the city’s treasury from the overtime paid this night, but he said nothing. The drain on the city’s treasury was not his concern.

  “May I take it that I am free to go?” Ames said, his sarcasm lost on Crippen.