Louisa and the Missing Heiress (28 page)

I winced at each step and thought of many things to say but decided against voicing any of them.

“We have no evidence against Mr. Wortham,” Cobban concluded when we were almost at my house. His hand at my elbow grew less gentle. “You’re partly responsible for that, Miss Alcott. I checked your crab-cake seller. She insists there was no quarreling lady and gentleman that day at the wharf. The information in the anonymous letter was false. And then the writer sent a second letter, admitting he had invented it.”

There was anger, frustration, accusation in his voice.

“Would you hang an innocent man?” I protested.

“Are you so certain Preston Wortham is innocent?”

“No.
Innocent
is a word few of us genuinely deserve.” Mr. Wortham was a seducer, probably a blackmail victim, but never an innocent. Greedy, yes. But was his greed great enough to resort to murder? “There is much at stake here,” I said. “We must be certain, and build a case upon evidence that assists justice rather than tricks it.”

“Perhaps you are getting close to that evidence of which you speak. Perhaps, Miss Alcott, you should leave this alone now. It may be dangerous. Your friendship with the Worthams leads you into peril.”

“You include Mrs. Wortham, Dorothy, as a danger? Why?” I asked. There had been a note of disgust in his voice.

“It is dangerous,” Constable Cobban repeated.

“I dropped a box of bonbons at your office earlier today and asked that it be tested. Did you get that request? How soon will the chemist examine the marzipan?”

“He has submitted a chit for materials for his laboratory, and the testing chemicals must be purchased. It takes time, Miss Alcott. We are a new organization.”

“You may give him that box, as well,” I said. “The first box was from Mr. Henry Mapp’s house. This is from Edgar Brownly’s studio. I fear both may contain substances other than those promised by the manufacturer.”

Cobban carried the second box of candy a little more gingerly.

“Time,” I said, “is something we seem to be running out of.”

Several hours after sunset I limped into my home, leaning heavily against my escort, the very pale Constable Cobban.

Abba’s eyes opened wide, but she did not scream or swoon, as other mothers might. Instead she helped me into the parlor, where, ashen-faced, I lay down on the sofa.

“Will you have a seat, Mr. Cobban?” Even in a crisis she was polite.

“He must be on his way.” I dismissed him rather hurriedly. “Thank you, sir, for your assistance.” I met his cool gaze.

“Well,” he said, clearing his throat. “You are safe now. I’ll be on my way.”

“IT IS DANGEROUS,” Abba said, wrapping gauze around my skinned and already swollen knee. “Louy, you must stop. Let others resolve this.”

“Abba,” I responded sadly, “when has danger ever prevented an Alcott from doing his or her duty to the truth?”

Abba, of course, could not respond to that, since her own husband was, almost at that very moment, endangering himself by aiding the fugitive slave Anthony Burns, who had been captured and taken to the courthouse and was probably sitting in the very room that Preston Wortham had recently vacated.

“Then promise you will be more careful, and not take so much on yourself, or at least to have someone with you when you go on these strange errands,” Abba pleaded.

“I promise,” I agreed. I also promised to spend the next day in bed, for a fierce head and chest cold was already beginning to set in, and what with the newly acquired limp and nascent sniffles and sneezes—moreover, a large purple bruise was taking shape across my forehead—I looked miserable indeed.

Rather than one, I spent several days in bed, feverish and low in spirits. Notes were sent round saying that I was ill and the children should not come for lessons for the rest of the week. The curtains were drawn in my bedroom to shut out the gloom, and my little writing desk in the attic grew dusty from disuse.

It seemed to me that the world and its evil had bested me. I could not help Queenie, nor could I discover the content of Dorothy’s last unspoken message to me. I had asked every question I could think of, and I had arrived at a brick wall. There seemed to be other questions needed to get at an answer, but I did not know what they were, despite all my pondering.

Even Abba’s advice that to discover the nature of the person was to discover the truth of any situation seemed to be failing me. What if their nature were undiscoverable or unformed? Surely there must be some other way to acquire information about crimes, other than witnesses, who were unreliable or downright liars; other than motives, which could be hidden or confusing; other than human nature itself, which was often unpredictable. Pondering was often the only way to solve crimes, and I speculated about a time when other means might be at the disposal of the investigator, perhaps even a trace of identification a criminal might leave behind at the scene of the crime.

I suspected that someone who wanted more money had murdered Dorothy, and not someone who merely wished to buy a loaf to feed a hungry family. A poor person would have stolen her expensive coat and card case and sold them, but Dorothy had been murdered, not robbed. So, this had been a crime of greed, not of true need. Nor had she been murdered by a lunatic; her murderer had been cunning and secretive, not raving. Moreover, he moved in the upper classes, not the taverns and brothels of the typical criminal class. Someone of the lower criminal classes would never have had the brazen courage to murder her in broad daylight for fear that his (or her) face would already be known to the constabulary.

How to find such a person, who had acquired a perfect camouflage, who moved through my world and Dorothy’s world as confidently and lethally as a lion moved through the plains of the African Serengeti? Who might, in fact, be a friend, or at least an old acquaintance?

Certainly the study of phrenology offered no assistance, for according to that dubious science all people of criminal mentality were low of brow, large of nose, and coarse of complexion. Neither Edgar Brownly nor Preston Wortham possessed the protruding ears and massive jaws, the stooped posture and slouching gait said to mark the true criminal.

Nor were the theories of the alienists particularly useful, for they claimed that crime was a product of a diseased mind, and that the diseased mind was easily discovered by the ravings and bizarre behavior of the lunatic. Mr. Brownly and Wortham were queer, indeed, and certainly of a low moral fiber. But they neither ranted nor raved.

Guilt or innocence was as difficult to establish in 1854 as it was in 1554, when women accused of witchcraft were thrown into ponds to see if they would float or not. Wiser in method, to me at least, was the ancient Chinese practice of putting rice in the accused’s mouth; if he spat it forth moist he was innocent, but if it was dry he was guilty, the theory being that fear stops the flow of saliva. But I could not very well parade around Beacon Hill asking the Brownlys, Preston, and everyone else to spit out rice for me.

I realized that most crime began in the mind and stayed its own secret, as unique as each person capable of wanting more than they had, or lusting after a neighbor’s wife, or simply enjoying acts of violence against another. Crime, I reflected, was an abnormality of the soul, not the face, or even the social manner and behavior. And to find the criminal I must find the steps, the landmarks that led back to the soul.

For at this time, as I tossed feverishly in bed, drifting in and out of bad dreams, I considered that an added complication had crept into this affair: Constable Cobban.

The Boston Watch and Police was not yet a year old, and there were many in Boston who complained that the tax money spent on it would be thrown away for nothing, that the city should have retained its older, less expensive system of guards and night watchmen, most of whom had been volunteers.

If the new police force could not even solve a domestic murder with plenty of suspects from which to choose, how would they earn their salary? Cobban, I sensed, was determined to find a suspect to try and hang. And if I did not point him in the direction of the truly guilty person, an innocent one might die in his place. There would be two murders, not one.

But I had asked every question that seemed pertinent, and the truth had not revealed itself.

What more was there to ask? What final question would present an answer, a truth?

While I feverishly tossed and fretted at home, Mrs. Milton lost no time spreading word that the Alcott girl had taken to visiting men alone at the docks. It was not long before Abba heard the story making its rounds through Boston, and even I myself soon afterward heard the story from Sylvia.

The one unfortunate consequence, for me, of what my father termed “the unseemly, irrelevant gossip of idle minds” was that Abba insisted I attend the ball announced in Sylvia’s honor. I had hoped my illness would excuse me from mundane social tasks, but a combined effort by my parents, and my weakened physical state, forced me to realize I would simply have to make an appearance. Even I grudgingly understood that an entrance at one of the finest balls of the season, in one of the oldest homes of Boston, would help mend the serious rent in my reputation caused by that visit to Edgar Brownly. And even an authoress must give some credence to the importance of reputation.

But while, after the week of my illness, life had returned to normal, I had not. My original sadness over Dorothy’s death had given way to a desperate urge to find her killer, and Abba knew I must uncover the answer soon, or it would be lost forever and I would never know, and never fully recover from this particular grief.

“But what question is left?” I asked Sylvia whenever we spoke of Dorothy.

“Other than who did it?” my friend asked, uncomprehending.

“No, Sylvia. The question that will provide the answer to that question. The one I haven’t thought to ask, the key.”

ON THE DAY of the ball, I arrived early, as promised, and a little out of sorts. Sweet, shy Lizzie hadn’t wanted to attend the ball. “Poor Louy,” she had said in sympathy.

But “Lucky Louy!” May had exclaimed. “I am invited?” May, our butterfly, loved nothing better than dancing and dressing up, but she was too young for a real ball, and Abba had asked her to stay at home that night. Mother and Father were expecting a family of “travelers,” and we knew what that meant. The Alcotts were to contribute blankets, a change of clothes, and a food basket, and Abba needed help.

How it rankled with me to have to be away that evening!

Sylvia didn’t seem in much better spirits. I could tell from her expression that she and her mother had fought bitterly over some insignificant detail of the evening. I’ve noticed that such events, intended to be amusing, perhaps even relaxing, often have the opposite effect.

I took one of the lounge chairs in Sylvia’s sunroom and tipped my face up to the uncurtained window with eyes closed. Two weeks had passed since my visit to Edgar Brownly and Wortham, since the “accident” in the street.

“No polkas for me, I’m afraid,” I said to Sylvia.

The bruise over my right eye from my misadventure had almost faded, but I still moved with a hint of stiffness in my right knee.

“We will have the band play all waltzes,” Sylvia said, sitting next to me. “That won’t bother your knee as much.”

“I was thinking again of Dorothy,” I said. “Not dancing.”

“Poor Dorothy.” Sylvia leaned back in the chaise and put her arm through mine. “I think for me the truth is just becoming evident. I’ll never see her again. That is what death means, isn’t it? I mean, unless you are a Spiritist and expect Dorothy to come at night because we are sitting in a circle and holding hands. No, Dorothy would never participate in anything that dubious. I will never see her again.”

“And I will never know what happened.”

“Surely at some point, Louisa . . .”

“No. Constable Cobban has talked to everyone in the family at least twice, and has come to an impasse in his investigation. The afternoon that Dorothy was murdered, Mr. Wortham was with his tailor until he returned home, and Digby says he did not leave the house again. Edith and Sarah were shopping together until they went to the Wortham home for tea. Miss Alfreda was tending to her sister, Mrs. Brownly.”

“Edgar Brownly?”

“He confessed to Constable Cobban that he was with Katya Mendosa. Wisely, I might add. The truth is always better than a lie. Moreover, Miss Mendosa will have less incentive to attempt future blackmail with him, since the affair is already confessed.”

“Would she, do you think?”

“That is how such affairs usually end, I believe.”

“The family are all accounted for, then.” Sylvia sighed. “As well as Katya, who was with Edgar.”

“Yes. All accounted for. Though, of course, one or two of them are lying. And we shall never know which.” I opened my eyes again and stared unhappily into the muddy landscape outside. The gardener went by just then with an armload of gray pussywillow branches arranged in a pretty blue-and-white vase. There had been a miracle during my two weeks at home recovering from injuries and the Slough of Despond. Spring, finally, had triumphed, the snow and frost had been abolished, and things were growing again. Dorothy had loved pussywillow.