Death of a New American--A Novel

by Mariah Fredericks

  “That’s right, dearest.” Charles Tyler stepped into the room to take Alva Tyler’s arm. Raising her out of the chair, he said, “To bed. We’ll put you to bed. I’ll say goodbye to our guests, don’t you worry about them.”

  She gave me a despairing look, certain I had betrayed her, and it occurred to me that she should not be left alone. “Should I ask Mrs. Briggs to come stay? Just until you fall asleep?” Mrs. Tyler looked panicked, and I said, “She thinks so highly of you, Mrs. Tyler. I’m sure she’ll want to help.”

  “Excellent idea,” said Mr. Tyler. “Jane, you fetch Mrs. Briggs, I’ll see Mrs. Tyler to her room.”

  As I raced downstairs to the kitchen, I realized I was gambling on an assumption and that if I were wrong, another life could be lost. Breathless as I entered the kitchen, I said, “Mrs. Briggs…”

  She had been counting jars in the cupboard. But she heard something in my voice and said, “What’s wrong?”

  “Mrs. Tyler needs you, I think.”

  A look passed between us. Setting her list down, she wiped her hands on her apron and headed out of the kitchen with a determined look. “How bad?”

  “Very. She shouldn’t be left alone.”

  “Is Mr. Tyler aware of the situation?”

  “Yes.”

  We were now at the bottom of the back stairs. Mrs. Briggs said, “You don’t tell anyone about this. And you don’t judge her. You don’t know what that poor woman’s been through.”

  “I have some idea,” I said. “But no—I don’t judge her.”

  21

  I waited for Mr. Tyler at the foot of the stairs. I could hear the noise of the garden party, happy laughter and chatter. I thought of the poor woman upstairs. I thought of Mabel and hoped someone was looking after her. I both dreaded hearing Mr. Tyler’s footstep and was terrified to leave this spot in case I missed him.

  But Charles Tyler was never a man who missed being noticed. When he saw me, he flashed his famous smile and clapped his hands as if all had been taken care of.

  Then he tried to walk past me as if I were not there.

  “Mr. Tyler?”

  “Not now, Jane.”

  “I’m afraid I have to speak with you.”

  “I’m very sure you don’t. Excuse me—”

  He was going, leaving the house, escaping …

  I called after him. “You should finish that letter.”

  A good hunter has sharp instincts. They feel threat before they know what the danger is. Charles Tyler was an excellent hunter. He knew he was in danger.

  Half turning, he said, “Have you been reading my private correspondence?”

  “Only one letter. And then only the first line and the date. In the first line, you note the lateness of the hour—well past midnight. Do I need to tell you the date?”

  He was silent.

  “You weren’t in bed that night. You were in your study.”

  Abruptly, he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me down the hall and into his study. It was a violent act from a desperate man, and it occurred to me that I was not safe. But the thrill of being proved right is potent, and all I could feel was rampant curiosity as to what he would say. As he shut the door behind us, I marked the wide windows that looked out onto the party. There were at least fifty people present nearby. And, I noticed, an oar from Mr. Tyler’s Harvard days hung on a wall, well within my reach. It was not a broom, but it would serve.

  Charles Tyler took refuge behind his massive oak desk. Placing his hands flat on the leather blotter, he said, “And if I was?”

  “The study is close to the nursery. When Sofia screamed for help, you heard her, didn’t you?”

  He was silent.

  “She called for you when she was fighting with Mrs. Tyler. Trying to stop her from what she was about to do. The baby was on the floor, she knew it wasn’t safe for him there, especially in the middle of … well, let’s face it, a fight to the death. But if she got free of Mrs. Tyler, she couldn’t be sure of getting to him first. Or preventing Mrs. Tyler from jumping.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “That was what she meant to do, isn’t it? Take the baby and jump? Kill herself and him?”

  “My wife was not in her right mind. Who knows what she meant to do? She doesn’t know herself.”

  “Yes, she does, Mr. Tyler. And it’s destroying her. Guilt and grief are eating away at a fine mind and a great spirit. She needs help.”

  The hand formed a fist. “Don’t you think I know that?”

  “Yes, I do. I do, Mr. Tyler. I think you’ve been trying to help her for years. Even as you insisted she was fine, just fine. ‘Just needs rest,’ isn’t that what you said? I imagine you said it to her when you hired Sofia. ‘This way you can rest. Get your strength back.’”

  “She needed it. After what happened…”

  “Yes, after Johnny died. But she hadn’t felt strong even before his death. And she blamed herself for his loss.” I paused. “Needlessly, I think?”

  This was a point of which I was not certain. But Charles Tyler said wearily, “Of course needlessly. Alva was at the front of the house when it happened. She was nowhere near Johnny. That’s how it happened. No one was watching. It was an accident. An awful, tragic accident. But she blamed herself, God, how she blamed herself. I wanted to move back to the city, away from memories. She wouldn’t hear of it. Couldn’t leave him again, was how she put it. When Frederick was born, I insisted she have help. Get a nanny, take some of the burden off her…”

  But every time she saw Sofia, it must have been a reminder that she had not been strong enough to care for her own child. Never mind that most women of her stature employed nannies. Sofia was there because Alva Tyler was … tired. Not well. Unfit. In a house where you were not allowed to be tired or weak. Unable to cope? Not Alva Tyler.

  “She doesn’t like to be coddled,” said Charles Tyler with sudden vehemence. “Won’t have it.”

  “If she broke her leg, would you let her walk on it? It’s not coddling, Mr. Tyler. She’s ill.”

  Then, painfully, I asked, “You liked Sofia. You were kind to her, she said so. Why?”

  “I was kind to her. When she was in danger, I moved her from that sewer of a neighborhood, got her a job someplace safe.”

  “Your home.”

  “That’s right,” he said, not recognizing the irony. “You think anyone else would have hired a girl with ties to the Black Hand to care for their children? I could see she was a good girl. Good heart. At least, she used to be.”

  “Then how could you cut her throat?”

  He blinked rapidly, almost a twitch.

  “I was … as you said … in my study that night. Writing a letter. When I heard it. Heard her. Sofia. Screaming for me to come. I, ah…” He dropped his head, stared down at his desk for several moments. “I went upstairs to find Alva hysterical and Sofia holding her by the arms. Frederick was on the floor. I suppose I had known Alva was feeling some distress. She gets moods sometimes, spells…”

  Moods. Had that been what Alva Tyler meant when she worried “they” would come back? That she wouldn’t be able to stop them? And the children would be harmed? That was why she had sent them away, I realized. Not to protect them from kidnappers, but herself.

  I said, “It was the anniversary of John’s death.”

  “Yes.” He acknowledged this briefly. “I said, ‘Alva, you come with me now, we’ll see Frederick tomorrow when you’re better.’ I brought her back to our bedroom, gave her … something to help her sleep. She kept saying, ‘I was going to free him, Charles, that’s all, I was going to set him free.’ Then she said something about setting me free and herself. I told her to stop talking nonsense.”

  “And then?”

  He hesitated, stretching his jaw to its full length. “I naturally went to check on the baby. Sofia was soothing him. Right off, she started accusing Alva of … horrendous things, terrible things. She claimed to be frightened of her. Frightened for the baby.�
��

  “She’d tried to tell you before, hadn’t she?”

  “I told her she had no business making those accusations and that if she breathed a word of it outside this room, I’d make sure she was on the next boat back to Italy. But this time she was hysterical. Said if I didn’t do something, she’d tell the authorities.”

  Perhaps remembering that he was the authorities, he laughed soundlessly.

  “I suppose I lost my temper at that point. I might as well admit, I’ve been under some strain lately as well. The trial. Alva’s … worries. It went wrong. Badly wrong.”

  “All in an instant.”

  “Yes.”

  “A moment of rage and poor judgment.”

  “I was afraid for my wife,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “I know you were. So afraid that when you left her in her room, you went to your study and got the knife before returning to the nursery. You knew about the threats against your family. You’d saved a kidnapped boy—why not make it look like a kidnapping attempt? You even had their kind of knife. Where is that knife now, Mr. Tyler?” I nodded to the desk. “The center drawer? Bottom?”

  “Middle.” He smiled thinly. “Quite clean, I assure you.”

  “A Black Hand kidnapping that became a Black Hand murder. People would believe it. I believed it. I think the minute you saw that open window you knew very well what Mrs. Tyler meant to do. And that if people ever found out, it would be the end of her. It wasn’t a moment of rage and poor judgment. You had time. Time to realize that Sofia was serious about telling the world about Mrs. Tyler’s illness. And that there was only one way to stop her.”

  How strange—I had thought Sofia had been killed in revenge for her going to the police to protect a child. In fact, she was killed to stop her from going to the police again, to protect a child.

  “Alva’s suffering is no one’s concern but our own. I let that young woman into my home. I gave her a job. I trusted her—and asked nothing in return. She’d have been dead if not for me, and she tried to repay me by destroying my family.”

  “Perhaps she saw it as saving your son’s life,” I said quietly. “Why was Frederick on the floor?”

  “Sofia was holding him, you see. Wouldn’t let go. If I’d insisted on taking him, she might have been suspicious. So I … acted from behind. She dropped him as she fell. I left him because…”

  Because Frederick on the floor supported the kidnapping theory. It came to me that I was alone in a room with a man who had cut a woman’s throat as she held his child. What would those mothers who swooned over the hero of the Forti kidnapping think when the truth came out?

  “Does Mrs. Tyler know … what you did for her?”

  “Alva knows: there are times in life when you must take action to protect yourself. Waffling about it afterward does no good.”

  “Was it you or she who brought the details of Mr. William’s indiscretion to Miss Louise?”

  Because whoever had done so had possibly hoped to implicate William in Sofia’s murder. I didn’t think Charles Tyler would have done such a thing to his nephew and his befuddled expression told me I was right. It would have been Alva, I thought. Concerned, practical. “My dear, marriage is a difficult road.” Or Mrs. Briggs. Sensing threat to the family she was devoted to, loathing Sofia, wanting it clear that no one of any value had died.

  “What are we going to do, Mr. Tyler?”

  He looked at me, pleading. But he had enough self-possession not to ask me to forget.

  “Even if I never tell a soul, your wife cannot bear this any longer. She knows what happened that night. She will protect you, but I think it would destroy her.”

  He was silent, fists on the desk, head down. Then nodded in exhausted acknowledgment.

  In a hoarse voice, he said, “My children will live with such shame.”

  “They will remember other things, too. Mabel’s scrapbook—”

  He shook his head violently. When he was able, he said, “I see what it has done to my brother’s family. I always thought myself better, stronger…”

  And you wanted strong people around you. Strong, healthy, sane people who never experienced fear or doubt, never faltered or struggled, just strode boldly forth into the bright future. But Charles Tyler didn’t need more reason to reproach himself.

  “You are stronger than your brother. You have acknowledged responsibility. You did what you did, not out of malice, but to protect your wife.”

  I did not add that had he been truly strong, he would have been able to admit his wife’s illness, not felt he had to take a life in order to shield her—and himself—from the scandal.

  “They can’t know.” The finger was drawn and pointed at me. “No one can ever know of Alva’s affliction. What I did, I did in a moment of madness. I shall never say why. Let the world draw its own conclusions.”

  So it would, I thought, and it would not be kind.

  “You protected Aldo Grimaldi. You could have laid the blame at his door. I said you should. But you didn’t. That does you great credit.”

  If Mr. Tyler accepted my paltry absolution, he gave no sign of it.

  “But you also tried to blacken Rosalba’s name. You called Officer Sullivan the day I left for the city, didn’t you?” He nodded. “You often have him feed stories to the press for you, don’t you? Heroic stories about a brave deputy commissioner. This one was about a stupid girl in love with a criminal who helped him kidnap a small boy—then turned him in when he jilted her. Why did you say all that, Mr. Tyler? Why damage her reputation?”

  “I knew Sofia was going into the city. I didn’t know who she was talking to. I thought if Alva’s … pain ever came out, it would discredit her.”

  There was a burst of laughter from outside the window, and Charles Tyler gazed out at the party. “The wedding will proceed,” he said. “Afterward, I shall present myself to the police.”

  Uneasy, I said, “The wedding is not for another three days.”

  “And?” He thrust out his jaw.

  I thought of Charles Tyler’s friends all over the world, the remote places he might flee to and hide. “I think it cannot wait.”

  “You think it cannot wait,” he echoed, almost amused.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Are you threatening me with the police?” he asked.

  “I’m not threatening you with anything,” I said. “That would be highly inappropriate.”

  I moved to the library door. “But three days is too long. Rosalba Salvio has waited long enough for justice. She saved your son, Mr. Tyler. Even if the world never knows how or who she saved him from. She deserves to be remembered as a heroine. Not another shabby Italian”—how did William’s mother put it?—“killed in a tawdry scandal.”

  * * *

  In the end, it did not take three days. Charles Tyler emerged from his study perhaps fifteen minutes after I left it. No one who spoke with him that afternoon would have guessed he had just confessed to the brutal murder of a young woman in his own home. No one who had seen him laugh with his beloved wife would have any sense of the misery that had hung like a lead chain around their necks for the past few years. No one who saw him dance with his daughter standing on his feet, her tiny hands in his large ones, would suspect his life was over.

  And so when the world learned that Charles Tyler had been killed in a hunting accident the following day, it was shocked. Charles Tyler, the man who had shot game in Africa, faced down black bears in the Rockies, and knew more about guns than any American since Bat Masterson—killed when his own rifle misfired?

  Some noted in private that the new Winchester was more volatile than previous models. Charles Tyler was no longer a young man. Maybe the gun had been too much for him. He had been walking in his woods, perhaps he had tripped. Easy to get a shot off with the new pump. Several of the obituaries—while unanimously fawning—referred to his bombastic personality, his penchant for the grand gesture, implying a slight unsteadiness of temperam
ent without casting outright aspersions. One paper saw fit to remind its readers of his brother’s tragic history. But that article was pulled by the afternoon edition.

  Charles Tyler’s grief-stricken widow and her children were under the care of her sister-in-law and her daughter, Beatrice, who would be staying at Pleasant Meadows for the foreseeable future. In light of the tragedy, the family announced that the nuptials for William Tyler and Louise Benchley would now be celebrated quietly at the Benchley home.

  22

  It was Louise’s idea to invite Mabel to serve as flower girl. Mrs. Benchley was dubious at first—“But my dear, she’ll be in mourning, dressed in black. Won’t it seem a bit odd?”

  To which Louise answered, “Mother, sometimes there are things more important than what a young lady is wearing.”

  * * *

  Charles Tyler’s funeral was also private—and smaller than might have been expected. That no one questioned this showed that the city was sensitive to the shadow that had fallen over the family, even if no one knew its source. The police commissioner and the mayor were in attendance, but the governor sent regrets. The commissioner gave the eulogy, remembering Charles Tyler as a true example of American manhood, bold, selfless, always putting country and family first. Charles Tyler was buried near his son at Pleasant Meadows, his funeral service held at First Presbyterian Church of Oyster Bay. His two older sons made the journey from school. But his widow was too ill to attend, the other children too young.

  The older Tyler boys—ten and twelve—did not look like their father. One resembled William to a startling degree, and the younger one had his mother’s auburn hair and blue-green eyes. Both were wide-eyed with shock and while they strove to sound like the young men their father would have expected them to be, they felt no older than Mabel as they sat stiffly in church, hands trembling as they held the prayer book. The older one’s lip shook with the effort not to cry, and at one point, the younger one gave up mouthing prayers, dropped his head, and sobbed quietly. William made a point of taking them both by the shoulder as we headed to the cars that would take us to the gravesite. He drove with them. Louise and I followed.