Louisa and the Missing Heiress (12 page)

Preston Wortham, however, wept copiously. He embarrassed his wife’s family, and Edgar loudly muttered that perhaps such a quantity of tears was unmanly . . . or even insincere. Then he, too, with one last darting glance at me, absconded for the carriage and was gone.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Amen.

Sylvia and I stayed on to have private final words with Dorothy. We scattered yellow rose petals over the coffin before the gravediggers began shoveling the dirt back in the long, narrow grave. We were alone then, the three friends, Sylvia, Dorothy, and I, for the last time.

I wept, finally. I had been unable to when the Brownlys were present. We shared Sylvia’s handkerchief, for I hadn’t brought one of my own.

But even then my ability for observation was not deterred.

“The family has left no room for Mr. Wortham,” I observed, looking about. “He cannot be buried next to Dorothy. I don’t think she would be pleased about that.”

“He is young and healthy. I expect it will be a long while before he is buried anywhere,” Sylvia said.

I frowned, and did not respond. Bruises on the throat made by a hand, Roder had said at the autopsy. Then she was certainly not drowned, but had fallen dead into the water. Already dead when she was put into the river.

IT WAS BREAD-BAKING day in our household, and Abba made the best bread in Boston, so I had reason to become more cheerful. Yet it was not to be our gayest meal, since when the invitation had first been extended, Dorothy had been alive . . . out shopping for a hat, or gloves, or some such thing, and Preston had accepted a dinner invitation on their behalf. She wouldn’t be coming—ever again. She had joined the immortals.

“But the body must be fed,” Abba insisted. “Sit there, Sylvia, next to Louisa, and tell us your plans.”

In addition to carrots cooked six different ways, Abba had supplemented the fare with a dish of boiled potatoes and wilted greens and a wheel of farm cheese, one of the few animal foods that Father allowed. We drank plain water and ate off a worn linen cloth that had never known a scrap of lace, and the meal was, for Sylvia and me both, a feast, for as young as we were, we could feel grief and hunger at the same time and hadn’t yet eaten that day.

“Does Queenie really think Mr. Brownly capable of acting upon his threat? Surely he wouldn’t actually kill her if she revealed his secret paternity,” Sylvia said, slathering a thick layer of white cheese over still-warm bread.

I found it hard to give a reassuring answer. It was not uncommon in Boston, especially in the waterfront tenement area, to find the bodies of obviously pregnant girls who had died violent deaths . . . supposedly murdered by gentlemen friends who did not wish to be encumbered with a family, though such murderers were rarely discovered.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, pushing carrots around my plate. “The entire family seems strange to me, and, more than ever, I wonder how sweet Dot ever fitted into that household. Just to be certain, though, I have sent a message to Constable Cobban and asked that one of his watchmen check in at the home periodically. I told him threats had been made.”

“A fortuitious coincidence that you found Queenie’s portrait there in that plethora of canvases,” Sylvia said, reaching for more bread.

“Wasn’t it?” I mused. “Though I had wondered. . . . Do you remember, Sylvia, the day of the second tea party, the day Dorothy died? Edgar Brownly arrived late, and out of breath.”

“May, go into the kitchen and fetch us a fresh pitcher of water,” Abba said, not wanting my youngest sister to hear the details of probable murder, but also not wishing to cut off a conversation that was obviously important to me. May grumbled, but did as she was told.

“Tea parties. I disapprove completely,” Father mumbled through a mouthful of potatoes. “Serving tea and biscuits at an hour when working folk are sitting down to their hardearned dinner. Frivolous.”

“Edgar is perpetually out of breath, due to an abundance of food and lack of exercise,” Sylvia said, following my train of thought. “Did you see him at the funeral today, sneaking caramels out of his pocket during the service?”

“Yes, but he was particularly out of breath that day. And the bottoms of his trouser legs were wet. I remember remarking on that, for the day was dry. If he had been to the Charles Street Home to spy on Queenie, or threaten her, that would explain the condition of his hems. You know how they are forever mopping floors there, and carrying about basins of water. Of course, if he had been at the waterfront, his trousers would have been dampened there from the spray. . . . Oh, if only I knew why Edgar Brownly’s pant legs were wet that day!” I put my fork down and leaned my chin in my hands, frowning.

“Enough about Mr. Brownly’s wardrobe,” Father protested, hemming a bit to get my attention. “Though I am sorry for little Dorothy’s demise, and unfortunately not surprised to hear of her brother’s secret life, there are other matters I wish to discuss.”

But before we could continue, the doorbell rang, and I sprang up to answer it. “Who could that be?” Abba asked, frowning. “Louy, were you expecting anyone else?” I returned to the dining room a moment later, and with me, to their great shock, was Preston Wortham, dressed in evening clothes. My eyes met Sylvia’s and read in her face what she herself was already thinking: Was this how a husband grieved, by paying calls? What manner of man, indeed, was Preston Wortham?

“YOU SEE BEFORE YOU a lonely man, scorned by all,” he said, holding his top hat in his hands and looking absolutely distraught. Though he was well—even flashily—dressed, in white shirt and vest and a swallowtail frock coat, his hair stood on end and there was a smudge of ink on the tip of his nose. To whom had he been writing? I wondered. And what?

“I hope I am not unwelcome.” Preston Wortham looked, at that moment, pitiable and quite innocent. Those we pity often seem incapable of doing harm, a lesson soon learned by overly lively children with a tendency to knock over tables of knickknacks.

“I will take your coat,” I said, springing forward. “Mr. Wortham, you have come out in the cold without your new Savile Row greatcoat.”

“Misplaced.” He sighed. “Dot takes . . . took such good care . . .”

“Poor Mr. Wortham, you sit right here,” Mother said, pulling another chair to the table for him. And so he joined in that small circle, and the dim candlelight on his pale face made him seem even younger, even more in need of protection. We were still gape-mouthed with shock, but Abba had gathered her wits first to do the right and the sensible thing. Which, in that case, was to feed a man who seemed not to have eaten or slept for several days.

“Preston, I hear you have lost your wife,” Father said, putting down his knife and fork and peering over his spectacles.

“I have,” Preston admitted.

“A bad business,” Father concluded. “Very bad. A wife is a good thing, one of the greatest goods in this life. . . .” He paused and beamed at Abba. “You have my sympathy, sir, for your loss.”

“Thank you.” Preston absentmindedly chewed a piece of bread and butter and stared at the tablecloth. His bravura entrance having been achieved, he now seemed confused.

“Dot’s family asked that I not call upon them. Nor will they call upon me. They are not a forgiving family. I don’t think I have ever before been this alone,” he said in a forlorn voice.

“Quite defeats the whole purpose of proper mourning, which is to unite, not divide,” Father observed.

“I called upon Dot’s mother yesterday,” I said. “She has grown reclusive and bitter, it seemed. Perhaps you should not think overmuch about Dot’s family.” I had been twirling a bread knife in my fingers. Suddenly it dropped and fell to the floor. I went down on my knees to fetch it from under the table. Once there, I did what I had intended to do all along: I looked carefully at Preston Wortham’s trouser cuffs. They were dry as a bone.

I thought back to the year I first met Preston, Dot’s husband. It had been during a holiday, two weeks in Newport, in the huge “cottage” on Oceanview Drive that belonged to Sylvia’s family, which Preston, Sylvie’s cousin, was also visiting. He was already a grown man then, and as good-looking, and always in trouble with his family, hence his frequent trips from New York and pater and the family business, to Newport, where he might sleep till noon and drink till midnight, his favorite occupations. Sylvia was madly in love with him and his dashing top hats and silk dressing robes (not worn concurrently), but later that young and foolish emotion turned to antipathy and often revulsion in her more mature breast.

That summer, when Dorothy, Sylvia, and I were fifteen and dreaming of wild romance in Rome, Preston Wortham seduced the upstairs maid, a young woman called Marie Brennen. His predation was discovered some months later, when the fruit of her seduction began to mound under her white apron. The poor girl was paid off and sent back to her mother in Worcester. Sylvia’s father gave Preston a tonguelashing that echoed through the house, and afterward they shared a cigar and glass of brandy as the older man, in more subdued conversation, fondly remembered the misdemeanors of his own youth. It was lucky neither uncle nor nephew spotted my girlish form eavesdropping on the stairs, not out of simple curiosity, but because I knew instantly the conversation would provide essential research for a novel.

It proved to be a particularly interesting summer, as Marie Brennen was not the only fallen woman of the season. Several young society girls had also been discovered in compromising positions, a fact learned only after the girls had been sent home to New York or Boston in disgrace. Dot, the most innocent of our close threesome, had been especially upset by the discovery of Preston’s ungentlemanly behavior.

Even Preston, in his moral slumbering and enterprise, could not have been responsible for all the trouble stirred that season, but his name began appearing in whispered conversations much too frequently. His reputation suffered greatly, and with reason. Dottie wept often that summer, and all could see she had formed a higher opinion of him than his nature seemed to justify.

Preston, sitting now at our Pinckney Street table, chewed a bit of bread and swallowed it down with a large gulp of water. Judging from the look he gave the glass, and the way his hair stood on end, it was safe to assume he had been drinking stronger stuff before arriving at our house. He put his hands on the table, rested his chin in them, and stared beseechingly at me.

“Miss Alcott . . . do you think perhaps it . . . it wasn’t Dot we saw there, in the morgue . . . in the coffin?” he asked.

“Oh, dear.” I sighed. “Yes, Mr. Wortham. I’m quite, quite certain it was Dot.” Mother and I exchanged looks.

“Well, it’s just that . . . you know . . . you know, it seems like she will walk in the door any minute. She’ll smile and say, ‘I forgot the time. Have you been waiting long?’ She was like that in Rome, during our honeymoon. Forgetful. It doesn’t seem like Dot, you are thinking, but she did change, somehow. And I have been hearing things. . . .”

“Things?” I asked, raising one eyebrow.

“A woman. Laughing. Whispering. Then footsteps down the back stairs to the kitchen.”

“Where were you, and what time of day was it when you heard this?” I asked, now frowning and leaning forward.

“Early morning. In my bedroom.”

“Perhaps you were asleep and simply believed you heard real noises,” I suggested.

“No. I was awake, I assure you. In fact, I hadn’t yet been to bed.”

“Mr. Wortham,” I said with great gentleness, “I assure you, to our great sorrow Dorothy is dead. You have not heard her in the house.”

“Well, I’ve heard someone,” he insisted. “Did she love me, do you think?”

“Why, Mr. Wortham! Why else would she have married you?” Abba protested.

“Women have their reasons,” he said darkly, and then grew silent.

It was an uncomfortable dinner. Father lectured May, Lizzie, and me on the importance of consistency, of making life true to one’s beliefs. All the while he spoke, I had been studying Wortham, while Wortham had been glaring into his plate of vegetables, unable to eat.

“Well, it is an important principle,” Father said. “Especially for women. The domestic sphere must above all be the place where men and women stay true to the higher principles. It is not my experience that women are the best material for philosophers and mystics, but instead must guide and comfort the home.”

Abba and I exchanged another glance, this time one with an unspoken message about Father, not Mr. Wortham. As much as we loved him, his nonprogressive views on women were often grating. I felt it necessary to hide my monthly copy of
The Lily
since Father scorned the feminist press and praised Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe more for her femininely modest refusal to give public appearances than for her novel,
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
.