Death Witnessed

by Beth Byers

  “I was lucky,” she told him.

  “Perhaps,” he admitted, “but only to an extent. I’m sure that many novelists have their excellent books overlooked, and you came across Robert’s desk when he was desperate to keep searching for something, anything, to prove himself capable of working on his own.”

  Georgette opened her mouth to object, but Charles stopped her. “Believe me, Georgette,” he leaned in and spoke low, “your book sold itself.”

  “And when it is finally revealed that Joseph Jones is the town’s cipher and old-maid Georgette Marsh?” Her eyes were wide with concern and just enough of a sheen to show that she was well and truly worried.

  “You aren’t trapped here, you know. You could sell your cottage, move to London, to some quaint sea town, to another little village and present yourself from the beginning as who you are rather than allowing the people of this town to continue to confine you within their expectations.”

  Georgette considered before responding. “I have never, not once, considered living elsewhere. This was always my fate.”

  “You’ve changed that once before.”

  Her eyes brightened as they fixated on him. “I have, haven’t I?”

  He nodded, still holding her hand and marveling at the softness of her skin. “In a time when so many are suffering, you changed your fate. You are to be commended. What you have done is nearly beyond belief.”

  She was blushing again, and she twisted the fingers of her free hand in her lap as she considered what he’d said. A moment later, she shook her head, but he wasn’t confident that it meant anything other than she was setting the thought aside for the moment.

  8

  GEORGETTE DOROTHY MARSH

  There was too much happening at that moment for her to even process it all. She was worried about Miss Schmitz trying to discover the things Georgette didn’t want anyone to know. The idea that she could somehow leave Bard’s Crook was rocketing around her mind, and Mr. Aaron was holding her hand. Was he trying to comfort her from her fears? He couldn’t possibly mean anything else, could he? Marian would hold Georgette’s hand if she were upset.

  She looked down at his hand as she played with her fingers in her lap and wondered just what she was supposed to do. Was she supposed to turn her hand over and hold his back? The truth was she wanted to do that more than she could say. She was so often without anyone touching her at all. She wasn’t sure how to even interpret what was happening, but one thing she could be sure of, she was an old-maid and he was protective of her as one of his authors. There was nothing else happening here.

  She glanced up at him, smiling. “I suppose you should share with me your feedback on the books. Was Josephine Marie very bad?”

  She glanced down at their hands again, noting the way his skin was darker than hers. They were rougher as well, and she marveled at the differences between them while trying to hide her fears about her books. He laughed, startling her again with the differences between them. She supposed it was because most people in her life were female, but it was a shockingly deep laugh.

  “It was delightful.”

  She bit down on her bottom lip and then glanced at him once again, trying for a stern tone. “I need to improve as a writer. I have no intentions of being an untutored natural writer. I need feedback to grow.”

  “Improving sometimes requires feedback. The most important thing is to keep reading and keep writing. Practice and implementing what you see others do—that’s the key. Miss Hallowton and that odd Miss Schmitz aren’t going to be able to tell you what you might be doing wrong. What you’re doing right is natural to you.”

  “But you could,” Georgette told him fiercely, “if you weren’t worrying about my feelings and simply helped me without regard to crushing my feelings. I am tougher than I look.”

  He smiled at her again, and she gaped at him. How could he be a successful businessman and also be so gentle and kind? This was why he was such a good publisher, she thought. He made his writers feel as though each of them were his highest priority. She’d love to meet whichever writer actually fit that bill. What a brilliant fellow he must be.

  “I will give you my feedback. I have marked on your books, both of them, the places that I think you were particularly able.” She frowned at him, and he held up his hands in surrender. “I find that authors are as blind to when they are doing something well as to when they could improve. Sometimes they need to know when we found parts particularly witty or funny as often as they need to know when we aren’t quite sure what they’re saying.”

  Georgette wasn’t quite sure she believed him, but she’d take his comments regardless. If nothing else, they’d be a place to start on her improvement.

  “You are much surer now.” He crossed his legs, letting go of her hand to cross his hands behind his neck and stretch back. “Your Josephine Marie shows that you’ve grown as a writer. Did you write it before or after The Secrets of Harper’s Bend?”

  “At the same time.”

  He cocked his head to glance at her and then turned to face the green again. It was spring and the birds were showing up with greater and greater frequency. There were several pairs flittering around the green, and as he watched them, Georgette thought a sense of peace fell over him.

  “I suppose,” she mused, “you don’t get to enjoy birds quite as often in London.”

  “Not like this. Plenty of pigeons,” he agreed. “There is much to recommend these villages that are close to London. I could see living in one quite happily.”

  She tried to hide her surprise. She had, of course, put Mr. Aaron into Harper’s Bend in her novel, but she never imagined that he’d truly wish to live in such a place. There was something about him, with his nice suit and perfect tie, that proclaimed him as a man about to go to the club for his dinner.

  “You convinced me, you know. When you made it work for Mr. Alvin in your book, it made me consider.”

  She paused as she looked up to reply, but she was distracted by the couple on the edge of the green. If it wasn’t the Thornton son and Miss Schmitz! Given the way he was looming over her, Georgette suspected Miss Schmitz just might be trying her same machinations with the man. Georgette couldn’t imagine that someone like Jasper Thornton would take the snooping claims of some spinster seriously but that didn’t mean the man would take her prying well either.

  Charles saw Miss Schmitz with the young man. “What an odd little woman she is. Have I read about this fellow over there?”

  “That’s one of Thornton’s sons,” Georgette told him. “They’re as aggressive as he can be without being as good.”

  “What an interesting conundrum to see the titans meet. I can see why you put them in your books. You really do live in the most ridiculous village. What is this?” Charles asked in surprise as Georgette rose.

  She looked at him over her shoulder while she stepped away. “I don’t want her to see you with me.” Georgette tucked her hair behind her ear as he rose to stand near her.

  “I think she’s distracted.”

  Georgette glanced at the woman and saw that Jasper Thornton was yelling into Miss Schmitz’s face. The wind was blowing the other way, so Georgette couldn’t make out what he was saying, but she didn’t need to gather the attention of a nefarious woman.

  “She might be,” Georgette said, stepping from the edge of the green into the wood that ringed it. “I can’t risk it. Leaving Bard’s Crook?” The very idea gave her a stomach ache. She’d been nowhere. Nowhere at all. To London, to just outside of Lyme for school, to the sea twice with her parents. “I’m not ready. You’re the Aaron of Aaron & Luther. It’s not an especially hard equation if anyone discovers that and realizes who published Joseph Jones.”

  There was something in his gaze as she stepped farther into the shadows. “All right. Let’s avoid the woman, then. May I walk you home?”

  Georgette saw Miss Schmitz had been left staring after Jasper Thornton. Georgette nodded hurriedly and rushed d
eeper into the wood. They could use the little trail to make their way back to her cottage without being on a busier thoroughfare.

  They didn’t speak for a few minutes and Georgette finally looked up and admitted, “I suppose I am very cowardly.”

  “I hardly think so,” Charles replied.

  “I somehow feel that you are too kind to me, Mr. Aaron.”

  He reached out and took her hand, placing it on his arm. “I thought we had already agreed on first names, my dear Georgette. I believe I shall cling to yours whether you wish me to or not.”

  She felt her cheeks blush a brilliant red and she cleared her throat. “Well, yes of course. I suppose we did.”

  He laughed again. “How about if I invite myself to your house for dinner?”

  She nodded rather helplessly, thinking that she had no idea what was happening. He was acting very different this visit, and she wasn’t sure what to think of him. Perhaps he was having something of a personal crisis that brought him to Bard’s Crook, and she was experiencing him while he was…stumbling?

  Why would anyone want to come to Bard’s Crook, after all?

  “Why don’t you bring Detective Aaron, and I will see if I can get Marian to attend. Perhaps the events of the—” Georgette stopped, her head tilting as she witnessed Harriet Lawrence sitting on a stump near one of the wild mushroom patches, weeping into her handkerchief. Georgette paused, worry for the woman striking her. Was this only grief or something else?

  She glanced at Charles. “Seven o’clock. Bring your nephew. I must see if she’s all right.”

  Charles might have responded, but Georgette didn’t wait long enough to hear it. Instead, she crossed to the crying woman, wondering just what she thought she was doing. There was quite a difference between Harriet having been kind to Georgette to actually being friends. How many times had Georgette looked upon Harriet and Theodora, the doctor’s wife, and wished to have been their friend in the place of Virginia Baker, who was neither kind, nor good, nor even a friend.

  “Mrs. Lawrence?” Georgette called quietly, dropping to her knees in front of the woman. “Mrs. Lawrence, are you all right?”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Lawrence said, sniffling. “I’m sorry to bother you, Miss Marsh.”

  “You aren’t bothering me.” Georgette took the woman’s hands, squeezing them. “Sometimes we need a good cry, but sometimes I think we need to know that people care.”

  Harriet nodded, her bottom lip trembling. She had plumped up in the months since her husband died. Her face had taken on a pretty glow that you hadn’t realized had once been absent. “Thank you, Georgette. I—” She looked down, shaking her head and dabbing away another tear.

  Georgette saw that there was a sheet of paper and an envelope at her feet. She carefully picked up the letter, folding it so she didn’t see the contents, and then slid it into the envelope. “Did you receive bad news?” Georgette reached back out to take Harriet’s hand, squeezing her fingers.

  Harriet’s watery laugh was bitter. “I suppose I got a rather disturbing missive. Now to decide what to do.” She seemed defenseless, which must have been why she looked at Georgette and actually saw her, spoke to her as though she weren’t just the old maid that no one liked. “Do you ever feel like if people knew the real you, they’d stop being your friend?”

  Georgette must have also been defenseless because for once in her life she answered straightforwardly. “I suppose if I thought that I had true friends, I might worry about losing them should my secrets be revealed. I don’t think you have that same worry though, Mrs. Lawrence. You are well-loved, and you have true friends.”

  Harriet stared at Georgette and then grasped her hand back. “Perhaps you have more friends than you realize.”

  Georgette pushed to her feet, wrapping her arm through Harriet’s as she said, “Let’s get you home, shall we? I find a good cup of tea doesn’t solve everything, but it does make me feel better.”

  They walked for some time in silence before Harriet asked, “Do you truly feel as if you don’t have a friend in the world? Surely you don’t.”

  Georgette supposed that having bared her thoughts once, she might do so again. “I know how people see me, Harriet.” She didn’t know what possessed her to use Harriet’s first name, but she didn’t regret it. “They see the sad, poor, little old maid that no one loves. Perhaps if someone gets to know me a bit better, they might think ‘Oh, that Miss Marsh is so sweet. She’s a good girl.’ I’m not really, you know. I can be quite unkind.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Harriet said. “You are sweet and kind.”

  Georgette laughed earnestly. “Oh Harriet. Sweet is the word you use for someone that you don’t know well enough to know their failings or their thoughts. It’s the mask you put over the person who doesn’t interest you enough to know better.”

  “I—”

  “Don’t let it bother you.” Georgette smiled and patted Harriet’s hand when they reached the gate to her garden. “I have gotten quite used to being alone. It is, I suppose, a good thing that I’ve learned to like myself well enough.”

  “Oh Georgette,” Harriet murmured.

  “Did you need me to see you inside?”

  Harriet shook her head, her eyes wide and fixed on Georgette’s face. There was a wrinkle between Harriet’s eyes, but Georgette told her, “All will be well, Harriet. Trust in those who love you.”

  9

  GEORGETTE DOROTHY MARSH

  “She said you were sweet?” Marian asked as she peeled the potatoes that Eunice had placed in front of her. Georgette was snapping the ends of early green beans as she nodded a reply. “She doesn’t know your secret then. I doubt you’d get called sweet after The Chronicles of Harper’s Bend and The Further Adventures of Harper’s Bend.”

  “Georgette is sweet,” Eunice said from where she was basting a chicken.

  “Sometimes,” Georgette replied.

  “Sometimes,” Marian agreed.

  Georgette pressed her lips together to hide a smile. “I did sketch out a rather awful scene for Harriet in my next book after talking to her.”

  “In revenge?” Marian asked, eyes wide. “I thought you liked her.”

  “No.” Georgette finished the last green bean and picked up a knife to help with the potatoes. “More because of the scene where I found her—crying over a letter and asking about losing friends. It made me think of a blackmail plot. The result, I suppose, from watching Miss Schmitz trying to ferret out everyone’s secrets. The Secrets of Harper’s Bend could follow through with a blackmail plot. Don’t you think? Perhaps Miss Hardport will push things to the next level with her secret-gathering. What do you know of Miss Schmitz? She’s the oddest little woman.”

  Marian scraped her potato peel off. “She moved here while I was back at home with my parents. When I came back that introduction party Mrs. Thornton threw for her had already happened. Did you go?”

  Georgette shook her head. “I got a rather terrible cold and fever and was sitting with my feet in a bucket of hot water, dirtying handkerchiefs.”

  Marian leaned back. “Confession time?”

  Georgette nodded eagerly.

  “I have been avoiding Joseph, using my cousin Harrison, hoping that it would make Joseph jealous.”

  Georgette gasped and Eunice snorted. “Interesting choice.” Eunice’s voice was dry.

  “I just thought—well,” Marian shrugged. “I feel like I’m the jacket Joseph left behind and is coming back for. I’m not even convinced he’s come back for me, but to try me on for size. It wasn’t like he asked to write to me after he left. Or that he found me in London when I returned. I made sure he knew when I’d be back to London.”

  “Is that why you came back to Bard’s Crook? Because he never came knocking?” Georgette reached out her hand. She could see that Marian had fallen for the handsome detective, and while he hadn’t exactly crushed her feelings, he’d bruised them.

  “I was tired of looking for him around
every corner. He’s a detective. Even though he hadn’t met my father, it would have been easy for him to meet me again. If he’d wanted to.”

  “Girls,” Eunice told them both as she rubbed the chicken down with herbs and butter. “You can hold a grudge that those men set you aside and then be unhappy. You can spend the rest of your lives wondering what would have happened if you’d been forgiving. Or you can give them a chance to show you matter to them. They did come back, after all.”

  Georgette didn’t believe for a moment that Charles was interested in her in any way but as one of his authors. She was, however, grateful for his feedback. She was only hoping that he’d bring her books when he came.

  She dressed for dinner with the same care she’d have dressed for any and then when she met him and his nephew in her parlor, she tried her very best to be her normal self.

  Charles and Joseph stayed long enough to try her unique tea mixture with cocoa beans and coffee beans, and her black tea blend. They stayed long enough for Joseph to smoke a cigarette and Charles to smoke his pipe. Georgette took his feedback on her book with the copious notes he’d made for her with glee, and when they left to walk Marian home, Georgette immediately opened the pages.

  She skimmed through the notes as she hurried up the stairs. She could do those things he suggested. She could fix the things he’d pointed out. She could sharpen her book. For the first time, she felt as though she knew where to begin. He’d included a list of books for her to consider reading. Eunice called something after Georgette, but she didn’t even recognize that the woman had spoken until the office door had already closed.

  Georgette put a sheet of paper in the typewriter and glanced down at the pile of pages next to her. A careful restructuring, a focused mind, and she could get the book to Mr. Aaron far sooner than she’d expected.

  Georgette wrote through the night and into the next morning until Eunice came into the office and pulled Georgette’s chair away from the table.