The Fall Of White City (Gilded Age Mysteries Book 1) (33 page)

“Not quite. She was going to let Jonathan decide. The outcome depended entirely on him. Though unfortunately, I think she had little doubt beforehand of what it would be.”

Freddie looked at his friend in perplexity.

“Here’s what must have happened. She made her arrangements ahead of time. Commissioned the hair ornament to be redesigned. Checked into the hotel anonymously weeks in advance of the rendezvous to judge the layout of the place. Even managed to find a source for the poison.”

“How in the world would she have found a poison that exotic here?”

Evangeline smiled ruefully. “It was in her own backyard, so to speak. Mast House has many visitors passing through its doors. Some of them stay for extended periods of time. I recall a missionary visited us sometime during August. He offered a very interesting lecture series on the natives of the Amazon.”

“Good lord! Don’t tell me he carried that stuff around with him.”

“Several vials, if I recall correctly. Elsa attended at least some of the lectures. She had free access to all the guest rooms at Mast House. I doubt he would have missed the minute quantity she required.”

It took Freddie a moment to digest this new fact before he continued with his questions. “Well, the poison didn’t cost her anything if she stole it, but the jeweler and the hotel visits would have cost money. Where did she get it?”

“Franz said his sister had many expensive items tucked into her dresser. I’m sure these were all gifts from Jonathan collected over the course of time. She pawned them for the money she needed. And when her plans were set, she wrote to Jonathan to arrange a meeting.”

“How could she be sure he’d come?”

“She couldn’t. It was a risk she took, but she guessed correctly that he would have done whatever was necessary to forestall a threat to expose him.”

Freddie’s uneasiness grew. “What about the handkerchief?
Blackthorne
said he never gave it to her.”

“A young girl who is infatuated will fix on the most ridiculous mementos. On any number of occasions when they were together he might have gallantly offered a handkerchief for her to use. Without a doubt, she would have kept it..”

“You’re saying she deliberately brought it with her that night.”

“Yes, I’m certain she did. It would act as a clue to the murderer.”

“Why do you keep calling him the murderer?” Freddie’s uneasiness was rapidly deteriorating into irritation. “It’s clear she planned this thing from start to finish. It must have been suicide made to look like murder.”

“Suicide!” Evangeline laughed incredulously. “Freddie, how easy do you suppose it would be to achieve the proper pressure to trigger this knife at the proper angle while you’re wearing it fastened to your hair?”

“Well, I don’t know. I’d never be likely to wear one of those contraptions. You tell me.”

“I think it would be very difficult to manage without some sort of assistance.”

“Then what are you saying?” Freddie cried in exasperation. “That she walked up to
Blackthorne
and said, ‘I’m having a bit of trouble with the murder weapon, dear, can you help me?’”

“I think he helped her, though without realizing that’s what he was doing.”

Freddie tapped his foot impatiently. He felt like a man lost in a maze who longs for a pair of hedge clippers.

His friend proceeded with her narration. “If you recall, I told you she’d probably gone to the hotel beforehand. Knew the layout of the rooms. Possibly she even requested a room of a certain type that would suit her requirements.”

“Her requirements?” Freddie echoed.

“A room with a window leading to a fire escape. She was giving Jonathan one final chance to acknowledge her. The most painful part of her humiliation at his hands was that he would never admit that he knew her at all. Even if she had brought the matter to the police, all he had to say was ‘I don’t know her,’ and the matter would have been dropped. If he had left by the door, things might have turned out differently.”

“What on earth do you mean?” Freddie, having turned down a side row in the maze, had lost all hope of finding his way out unassisted.

“From start to finish, Jonathan’s actions were secretive. He used a false name. Used an accomplice to do his pandering for him. Ruined the lives of others without technically ever killing them. I’m sure you would agree his behavior was elaborately calculated to prevent exposure.”

“I certainly wouldn’t argue that point with you.”

“Then how would you expect such a man to behave in a room such as I have described, confronted face to face by a woman he has wronged, when a stranger knocks on the door?”

“I’d expect him to scuttle out of there as quickly as he could and leave as little evidence of his presence as possible.”

“Quite right, Freddie. That’s what I would have expected him to do, and I’m sure that’s what Elsa, deep down, expected him to do as well.”

“This is unbelievable!” Freddie exclaimed as the full force of her words hit him. “It was a deathtrap.”

Evangeline nodded grimly. “Exactly so, my lad. But he had one chance left. If he had stepped forward and answered the knock on the door, it would have meant he at least had the fortitude to allow himself to be seen with her under his own name. That on some level, he had stopped denying her. As it was, he chose to betray her once more. He crawled out the window.”

“Her body was found by the window. She must have been standing with her back to it when
Blackthorne
let himself out.”

“Not standing next to it, Freddie, leaning against it. She rested her body on the sill and tilted her head back against the pane. And waited.”

Freddie was horrified at the mental image she had conjured before his eyes. “She waited as he closed the window from the other side. The pressure of the sash coming down—”

“Would have caught the top of the weapon and released it, pressing the knife into her back,” Evangeline completed the thought. “When her body fell away from the window, the knife would have sprung back into its hiding place, but there would have been enough blood to suggest a murder had been committed. All she had to do was wait for Jonathan to do the inevitable. Failing in every other recourse, she would finally force him out of the shadows through her death. While he might easily have denied seducing her and gotten away with it, a murder charge would have been less easily avoided. She planned it so that he wouldn’t be able to run away from her, or from anyone else, anymore.”

“What if he’d answered the door instead?”

Evangeline shook her head sadly. “Then we wouldn’t be visiting this grave today. But I don’t think she ever really expected him to do that. She already knew the sort of man he was.”

Freddie rubbed his forehead in puzzlement. “It was such a long shot. How could she know someone would knock on the door at just the right moment?”

“Because she planned that, too. The knock wasn’t an accident. All the rooms at the Templar House are equipped with electric call buttons that send a signal to the housekeeper’s station on each floor. She rang the call button in her room just before she opened the door to let Jonathan in. She calculated that it would take the maid between five and ten minutes to arrive. Plenty of time to say what she had to say. All she had to do was wait.”

“It seems like a well-laid plan, but a few things went wrong along the way.”

Evangeline sighed. “She didn’t anticipate Sidley’s involvement. Jonathan was never seen in the lobby as she planned he would be. I doubt she expected the police department would fail to track down the handkerchief or the hair ornament. Worst of all, she could never have foreseen the tragedy of her brother’s role in all of this.”

“She was lucky that you proved to be such a loyal friend to her. If not for you, it’s possible that
Blackthorne
and Sidley would have gone free.”

“Maybe so.” Evangeline shrugged. “But I’ve always believed truth has a way of emerging over time, even though the path it takes may wind a bit.” She studied the hair ornament, turning it in the light to let the jewels flash in the sun.

“What will you do with the evidence now?”

Without replying, Evangeline stood up and walked back to the gravesite. Freddie followed. She stood in front of the cross for a long moment and then turned to him. “The police and the court have had possession of it for a year. I believe I’ve given them an adequate grace period. The knowledge it contains is going to be buried with Elsa.” She dropped the weapon into the hollow of the cross. It made a clattering noise in its descent and then was still. Evangeline took the capstone out of her bag and fitted it into place on top of the monument. “Jack is waiting for us to finish here. He’s come under the guise of planting flowers, but his real purpose is to seal the capstone so no one disturbs what it contains.”

Freddie didn’t interrupt as she performed her ritual. When she was through, he said, “You know, it’s funny. If murder is defined by the intent to kill, then
Blackthorne
technically didn’t murder her after all. He was telling you the truth. He was innocent.”

“Innocent!” Evangeline looked at her friend with disbelief in her eyes. “He was technically innocent of the crime of which he was convicted, but guilty of a multitude of others which never came to trial. And Jonathan depended on technicalities. Everything he did was calculated to keep him safe within the letter of the law.” She sighed. “We honor the letter of the law, Freddie, never its spirit.” Evangeline looked up as the wind shook loose a cluster of leaves over Elsa’s grave.

“Would you have acted differently if you’d known in time?” Freddie asked gently.

“Known what?”

“About the jeweler’s receipt. About Elsa’s orchestration of her own death.”

Evangeline sighed. “I don’t believe I was meant to. Franz once said to me, ‘Perhaps there is such a thing as fate—
schicksal
—after all.”

Freddie contemplated the capstone of the cross, silently guarding its secret. He read the inscription on the tombstone aloud.

“Lo! o’er the city a tempest rose; and the bolts of the thunder

Smote the statue of bronze, and hurled in wrath from its left hand

Down on the pavement below the clattering scales of the balance.”

Evangeline watched him intently. “Do you recognize the quotation, Freddie?”

The young man looked quizzically at his friend by way of reply.

“I thought it was appropriate since I became Elsa’s avenging angel, perhaps as I was fated to be all along.” She smiled grimly. “Both of us believed in a different kind of justice. The quote is from a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It’s called
Evangeline
.”

THE END

AUTHOR BIO

"There's a 52% chance that the next Dan Brown will be a woman... or should we just make that 100% now?" --Kindle Nation

Nancy Wikarski is a fugitive from academia. After earning her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, she became a computer consultant and then turned to mystery and historical fiction writing. Her short stories have appeared in Futures Magazine and DIME Anthology, while her book reviews have been featured in Murder: Past Tense and Deadly Pleasures.

She has written the Gilded Age Mystery series set in 1890s Chicago. Titles include The Fall Of White City (2002) and Shrouded In Thought (2005). The series has received People's Choice Award nominations for best first novel and best historical. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America and has served as vice president of Sisters In Crime - Twin Cities and on the programming board of the Chicago chapter.

She is currently writing the seven book
Arkana
Mystery series. Her work on the
Arkana
volumes has prompted Kindle Nation to call her one of its favorite authors.

BOOKS BY N. S. WIKARSKI
All the links below are for the Amazon US store.

The Fall Of White City (Gilded Age Mysteries #1)
A socialite stalks a murderer against the backdrop of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.
 
Shrouded In Thought (Gilded Age Mysteries #2)
A drowned factory girl provokes a labor riot during the Pullman Strike of 1894.
 
The Granite Key (
Arkana
Mysteries #1)
The murder of a shopkeeper over a stone artifact known as the granite key sparks a 3,000 year old treasure hunt.
The Mountain Mother Cipher (
Arkana
Mysteries #2)
When clues to the Bones Of The Mother lead from Greece to Turkey, the
Arkana
team struggles to stay one step ahead of its rivals.
The Dragon’s Wing Enigma (
Arkana
Mysteries #3)
A puzzle in the sky leads the treasure seekers to some unexpected places and unforeseen allies.