The Fall Of White City (Gilded Age Mysteries Book 1) (16 page)

The two older men appeared discomfited by her remark. Freddie jumped in to try to repair the damage. “What she means is—”

Evangeline cut him short. “What I mean is what I have said! Since when does social rank determine one’s right to occupy a public hotel?”

“When murder is involved, Miss LeClair. That’s when,” the superintendent retorted. “The judge is simply suggesting that if we didn’t have riffraff putting on airs and thinking they can go anywhere, then we wouldn’t have a crime like this occurring in a reputable establishment. She would have been killed in a back alley where she belonged, and it never would have made the papers at all. Instead, we’ve got a local scandal on our hands.”

“My, how unfortunate for you,” Evangeline said acidly.

“It’s just a shame this had to be blown out of proportion by the newspapers,” Judge Franklin added. “It made her sound like an injured innocent, which I’m sure she wasn’t.”

“I wasn’t aware you knew her personally and could presume to formulate an opinion of her character.” Evangeline’s voice held a dangerous challenge.

“God forbid! I didn’t know her personally,” Judge Franklin exclaimed.

“Well, I did!” Evangeline made little attempt to conceal her anger. “I see no point in standing by and hearing either one of you malign the character of an unfortunate young woman you never knew and would never have taken the pains to protect while she was alive! I’m sorry her murder has proven to be such an inconvenience to you! Good evening... ,” she glanced scornfully from one to the other, “... gentlemen!” Turning on her heel, she marched out of the room.

***

The four men stood together, silent and somewhat chastened. The judge finally shrugged. “Ah, the ladies! Who can understand them? When they take up a cause, they make up in sentiment what they lack in reason.” The others laughed uneasily.

Freddie looked nervously toward her retreating figure. “I’d better go after her and calm her down.”

As he headed toward the buffet room to find Evangeline,
Blackthorne
followed him. Turning about, Freddie said, “Look, old man, I don’t mean to be rude, but you’d better let me speak to her alone before you try to see her again. She’s pretty upset.”

“Well, you know her better than I do.” Jonathan sounded skeptical.

“Unfortunately, I do.”

“Under the circumstances, I won’t intrude myself any further on her notice this evening, but when you find her please tell her I’ll call tomorrow afternoon... ,”
Blackthorne
paused. “You will tell her that, won’t you?”

“I’ll give her your message. You needn’t worry.” Freddie waved him away distractedly.

The young man eventually found Evangeline, not by the buffet table, but standing near the entrance where she was in the process of summoning her carriage. “Oh, there you are, Freddie! I think it’s time to go.”

“Well, this has been an unusually short party. I‘ve never known you to run from a fight before. What’s going on?”

“I need time to think. I just need time to understand this...” Evangeline seemed agitated.

“And what about that assault on me?”

“
Shhhh
! Not now! Wait until we get into the carriage. I’ll tell you then.”

Luckily, Jack arrived at the front steps at that moment to drive them home. When they were settled in the carriage, Freddie broached the topic again. “All right, this had better be good!”

Evangeline was silent, apparently collecting her thoughts. When she spoke, her voice was tight with nervous tension. “You went off inspecting handkerchiefs?”

“Yes, you know I did...”

“Find anything?”

“No, nothing. Not a clue.”

“I don’t suppose you noticed Jonathan’s waistcoat?”

“Why would I? He was with you, and besides, he’s a friend of yours... ,” Freddie trailed off, realizing the implication of her question. “Oh my God,
Engie
. You don’t mean...”

“Yes, I do, Freddie. Indeed I do. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it. In his waistcoat pocket, I caught a glimpse of a handkerchief. A handkerchief with the same embroidered pattern as Elsa’s. When I started to think about it, everything made horrible sense.”

“How?” Freddie was lost.

“The flower on Elsa’s handkerchief. The same flower on his handkerchief. What sort of flower do you think it was?”

Freddie knit his brows in concentration. “How should I know? You’re the horticulturist.”

“Yes, but I would imagine that even you would recognize a rose when you saw one. More specifically, it was a black rose, Freddie. Don’t you find that significant?”

“Should I?”

“Of course you should. Elsa’s handkerchief showed flowers, vines, leaves, and notches that we couldn’t identify—all stitched in black thread. If the flower is a rose, what do you imagine the notches to be?”

“Thorns, I suppose.” He caught his breath with a hiss as the full force of the answer struck him. In a far-off voice he whispered, “Yes, I see... black thorns...
Blackthorne
...”

Chapter 15—Of Roses And Thorns

“It’s impossible! He couldn’t have done it.” Sunday afternoon found Evangeline no less shaken than the night before. In an attempt to quell the debate raging inside her head, she had retreated to the conservatory to tend her plants. Unfortunately, physical activity did little to calm her mental distress.

“I’ve known him for years. It’s almost as absurd as thinking that Freddie might kill someone!” Evangeline’s mind refused to accept the possibility that a man she knew could be capable of cold-blooded seduction, much less murder. Her world, so safely enclosed by the ordinary—theater matinees, lawn parties, and charity auctions—couldn’t contain knives and blood. It simply couldn’t. No matter that her bravura displays of independence suggested a woman who had no difficulty embracing life’s stranger elements. Those stranger elements had never included poisoned corpses or libertines seated at her own tea table.

Evangeline sighed and watered an African violet. She glanced at the listless bougainvillea and rusted ferns struggling for life beneath the cloudy autumn afternoon. A weak beam of sunlight shivered down through bare-branched trees past the glass ceiling panels and touched her shoulder. Outside, bone-dry leaves rattled across the lawn driven by a chill north wind. So little time before the snows came and laid waste to everything.

Her mind drifted to a picture she had seen of Lizzie Borden, a woman who, just the year before in
Fall River
,
Massachusetts
, had been accused of hacking her father and step-mother to death with a hatchet—thirty blows with a hatchet to be precise. The crime was so dreadful that it even made news half a country away. The
Gazette,
the
Trans-Ocean,
and all the other local papers had carried sketches of the infamous spinster. Evangeline felt a morbid fascination in the story, and she had studied the woman’s face over and over, looking for some trace of viciousness—some hint of a demon capable of such brutality. The eyes of Lizzie Borden didn’t betray a crazed murderer. They suggested cool streams and tranquil shade. Evangeline tried, but never found a way to reconcile the contradiction—to combine the mundane with the monstrous.

She turned her attention back to the task at hand—a tea rose badly in need of pruning. She set to work cutting away the dead undergrowth with feverish intensity. The paradox bedeviled her. Lizzie Borden looked harmless. Jonathan
Blackthorne
looked harmless as well. He was certainly not the sort of man to go lurking about in hotel hallways. But she could hardly ignore the description given by the chambermaid’s friend—a tall, clean-shaven, dark-haired gentleman. It fit too well. “Maybe he only went to see her that night. Maybe she was killed by one of the others,” she thought. But this possibility still implied some connection to the murdered girl—a connection that cried out for an explanation.

Evangeline paused to contemplate the plant she was holding, now free of its misshapen twigs, its yellowed leaves. She brushed the delicate coral petals with her fingertips. Her mind drifted back to all the dinner parties she had attended at the
Blackthorne
home; the first time Jonathan had sent her a bouquet of camellias; his first, almost timid request to pay his addresses to her. Mysterious he might be, but there was nothing in his manner, nothing in his voice to suggest the beast who had certainly seduced, and possibly killed, Elsa.

“How can this be? I know him. I know him!”

Lost in her mental struggle, she didn’t hear the door open. Nor did she realize that someone had quietly walked up behind her until she saw a shadow cast over her shoulder. She gave a start and wheeled around to see
Blackthorne
smiling down at her.

“Good afternoon,
ma
belle
.”

Evangeline backed away a few paces when she saw who her visitor was, and clutched convulsively at the plant she was still holding.

He caught his breath sharply, taking her hand. “Why,
Engie
, you’re bleeding. Let me attend to this.”

She tried to laugh. “Oh, it’s nothing. I’ll never learn. That’s what comes of handling roses without gloves.” She took out a handkerchief to stanch the blood. “Never mind, Jonathan, please don’t make a fuss.” To cover her trembling, she turned around to resume her work.

“Forgive me, my dear. Delphine told me you were here and suggested that I surprise you. I’m sorry if that surprise turned to alarm.”

Evangeline distractedly twisted the blood-stained handkerchief between her fingers. “You needn’t be concerned. I’m very happy to see you. Very happy. I just wasn’t expecting you today, that’s all.”

“Oh, I see.”
Blackthorne’s
tone was icy. “Then Simpson must have forgotten to convey my message of last evening.”

“What message?” Evangeline asked over her shoulder in puzzlement.

“I was quite concerned about you yesterday night. When you left the ball, you seemed in such a state. I wanted to follow to make sure you were well. Unfortunately, your young friend discouraged me from doing so.”

“Oh... ,” Evangeline paused in embarrassment. “I’m sorry about that little scene. It was rather awkward.”

“Under other circumstances, I would have found it amusing.”
Blackthorne
smiled as he toyed with a pair of pruning shears lying on the table. “If only you’d seen the faces of the judge and the superintendent when you walked out. I believe it was a new experience for either of them to be at a loss for words.”

“I wish I had seen it. There are a great many things I wish I’d seen.” She crumpled the stained handkerchief into a ball and tossed it into an empty clay pot.

“
Engie
, I believe this business of the murder has unnerved you. You seem shaken, and I’ve never known you to act
missish
before. All this morbid talk about corpses must be upsetting you. Don’t you see the futility of dwelling on it?”

Jonathan was standing directly beside her, his jacket brushing her sleeve. He had tilted her chin up so he could look directly at her while he was speaking. Evangeline looked into his eyes for a long time, trying to read something there. She hoped to see some glint of remorse, or guilt, or even fear, but his face revealed nothing more than a disconcerting tenderness. Perhaps I’m imagining things, she thought. Finally, turning away from the potting table, she gestured toward the wrought-iron chairs in the corner. He took her hand and led her gently to sit down next to him.

“Maybe you’re right, Jonathan. Maybe I should just stop thinking about it.” She appeared to relent.

“The police are clearly unwilling to pursue another suspect now that Franz Bauer has been indicted. Isn’t that so?”

“Yes, that much is obvious.”

“And since I’ve heard nothing to the contrary, should I infer that your own investigation has been unsuccessful?”

She hesitated a long while before answering. “Yes!” she exhaled in the attitude of one unwilling to admit defeat. She could scarcely tell him how much she had uncovered.

His tension eased and he smiled sadly. “Sometimes it can be hard to let go of the past. Especially if it means the loss of those we care about. It’s even harder to admit we’ve been mistaken in the character of those we trust. I’d advise you to put the whole business behind you. Let it go,
Engie
. There’s nothing you can do.”

“I suppose not.”

Her visitor nodded briefly and continued. “But it isn’t the past that concerns me today. I came to speak about the future.”

“Oh?” Evangeline pulled herself back to attention.

Blackthorne
stroked the top of her hand gently with his thumb. “It must be obvious to you what my feelings are...”Evangeline was speechless.

“I wanted to bring the topic up last night, but circumstances prevented me.”

“Jonathan, before you go any further... ,” she tried to intercept him.

“No, please, my dear.” His manner was soothing. “You must hear me out this once. I’ve been looking for an opportunity time after time, but you were always engaged with other company. So, it’s now or never. I must know if my affections are returned.”

“You place me in a very awkward situation.” Evangeline’s heart was hammering like a bird trying to escape a cage. “You’ve been paying your addresses to me for such a brief time.”

“What does time mean to the heart?”
Blackthorne
searched her eyes in appeal. “One loves or one does not.”

“One may grow to love in time.”

“Such slow-growing affection makes a poor substitute for passion in full bloom,” Jonathan said glumly.

Evangeline affected a light tone to break the tension. “Every gardener knows a rose must bud before it blooms.”

Blackthorne’s
hand tightened over her own. “Your words give me hope.”

“I’m afraid I can give you no more than that at the moment.” Evangeline tried to put the right note of regret in her voice.

“I’ll feast on that crumb for the present. If you hadn’t given me at least that much of a hint of your inclination, I was prepared to do something desperate.”

“Desperate?”

“I was thinking of leaving the city—even more, leaving this area of the country and settling in the east.”

“Why, Jonathan, you shock me!” This time, Evangeline didn’t need to falsify her response. “All that simply because of unrequited love?”

“
Ma chérie
, once you’ve aspired to love an ideal and have seen that love rejected, what else remains? The fall from such a height is terrible indeed.”

Evangeline gazed at him fixedly, but his face was still unreadable. His eyes were cast toward the ground. When he looked up again, she fancied she saw tears in them.

“All this because of me?”

“All this because of you,
ma
belle
.
” His voice had become a silken whisper. “Surely my suffering deserves some recompense.”

To hide her distress, Evangeline stood up and walked back toward the potting table. Over her shoulder she said, “I’m sorry. I can’t reward you with any better answer than I’ve already given. You must be patient with me.”

Blackthorne
came to stand behind her. She could feel him placing his hands on her shoulders. He bent down to murmur in her ear. “Then take as much time as you need. I’ll watch and I’ll wait.”

Evangeline drew her breath in sharply. She could feel him running the tips of his fingers gently down the back of her neck. Without her knowing quite how he managed it, he had turned her about to face him. “I’ll only beg this one last favor before I take my leave,
Engie
.” He bent down closer and kissed her softly on the lips.

Shuddering inwardly, she put her arms around him and returned the kiss. His lips felt very, very cold. Without another word, he released her and walked out of the room.

Evangeline stepped over to the windows. She felt dizzy, the same dizziness she’d felt the night before on the dance floor. She stood a long time looking out over the brown lawn, anxiously rubbing the cut on her finger.