Louisa and the Missing Heiress (31 page)

“You will have questions,” she said, carefully putting a chipped Limoges teapot on the table. And then, “That color suits you, Louisa. I approve. Did the dance go well? I know how desperately Sylvia’s mother wishes her to wed.” She gave my friend a pitying look. “I myself have forgotten, if I ever knew, why it is we mothers are so eager to marry off daughters.” She sighed and stirred sugar into her tea, but did not lift the cup to drink. Instead she folded her thin, arthritic hands on the table in a posture close to prayer.

“The dance was charming,” I began softly. “But Constable Cobban dropped by to say hello. It was he who told me Dorothy had given birth some years earlier.”

“Ah. The young man with that terrible red hair. Information discovered at the postmortem, I suppose. I begged them to leave poor Dorothy alone.”

“Yes.”

“And you understand why I wished it to be kept secret.”

“Yes. But keeping that secret must have been devastating for Dorothy.”

“Yes. No.” Mrs. Brownly sipped her tea and thought for a moment. “The true devastation began when Dorothy was fifteen, and seduced in Newport. You remember that summer, Louisa. You, too, Sylvia. The three of you went boating together in the afternoons.”

“I remember,” I answered, and I thought of Dorothy, her pale hair loose on her shoulders, laughing and trailing her hands in the water and then falling silent and dreamy-eyed in the middle of her sentences.

“She loved him, the foolish child, and she never named him. There she was, beginning to swell up, and she would not even tell us his name. She said he had not truly loved her, so she would not force him to marry her.” Mrs. Brownly sighed again. “Love. You young people think too much of love. But how brave Dorothy was. She never wept, you know. Not then.” A smile of pride played across the mother’s tired face.

“So you took her to Rome,” I said. “To have her baby in secret.”

I heard a clock ticking in the hall. Time passing. Life and death, second by second. So many secrets in this house.

“Yes. And when the baby was born in Rome, Dorothy . . . Well, the birth affected her greatly. Motherhood often does. She threatened to throw herself in the Tiber if I did not bring the child back with us, so she could be raised in Boston, where she might be close to her. I had planned to leave her with a Roman family. A noble family, though much reduced in circumstances. They would have raised Agnes well. But Dorothy insisted. Oh, how she clung to that baby when we tried to part them. Clung and wept and shouted. She gave me no choice. I had never known her capable of such passion.”

Mrs. Brownly sighed and chewed on a nail, and for a brief moment I saw that farm girl from long ago. Then she remembered herself and folded her hands in her lap. “Edgar saw at once, of course, when we brought the child back. He was older, knew more of the world. He saw immediately that Agnes was Dorothy’s child, not mine, as we claimed.”

“But you decided to raise the child as your own rather than send her to another family. Dorothy must have been grateful.”

Mrs. Brownly smiled, perhaps remembering how her granddaughter had burrowed into her daughter’s chest, perhaps remembering her own passion for her children. “I had grown fond of her, too, you see. Edgar was displeased, of course. But then, he couldn’t very well give orders to his own mother. He tries. Oh, how he tries. But I made the decision and that was that.”

So many things were now comprehensible: Dorothy’s sudden departure for the continent, her personality change when she came back, the way she had of seeming preoccupied, older than the other girls of her set. To be a mother at sixteen, to have to deny the child, all to suit the harsh and arbitrary norms of society. And that terrible animosity between sister and brother.

“How sad,” I whispered.

“Yes. How very sad,” Mrs. Brownly agreed. “And now Dorothy is dead and I wonder sometimes how the world grew so cruel. It didn’t used to be. I almost lost Agnes, you know.”

“When Agnes fell into the water at the docks, it was Dorothy who rescued her, wasn’t it? That’s why, when she came home that afternoon before the tea party, she was wearing a new set of clothes, to replace the ruined ones.”

“Yes.” Mrs. Brownly nodded. “That’s how it happened. When she returned home from the tour of Europe she came here almost every day to see Agnes. She had missed her so. She told Wortham she was going shopping, or visiting. When she came that day and learned that that foolish nurse had taken the child out, she was terrified. She had discovered, you see, that the nurse had a male friend who was a ship’s factor, and the woman liked to spend time at the harbor, though I had forbidden it. She didn’t watch the child closely.”

“Was that the day Agnes lost her locket, Mrs. Brownly?” I asked, cupping my hands around the hot cup of tea. The embers in the stove were dying down, and the kitchen was growing cold.

Mrs. Brownly looked at me with dawning admiration. “How quickly you see things as they are. Yes. The child was brought back here, soaked to the skin and already feverish. I told the nurse not to bring her to the docks. . . .” Mrs. Brownly was beginning to repeat herself, and growing increasingly distraught.

“The nurse was let go.” I remembered my earlier visit to this house, the complaints of the maid that the nurse was to leave, and so there would be more work for everyone else.

“Yes.” Mrs. Brownly nodded. “I had been displeased with her even before I discovered she was spending her afternoons at the dock. She spent her weekly evening off at the theater, though I had forbidden that as well. I don’t like members of my household to waste their time and money in such places. Not at all. Was Agnes sleeping soundly, Louisa? I don’t remember. Perhaps I should go back upstairs.”

“She was sound asleep, Mrs. Brownly,” Sylvia said gently. “Drink your tea. It will warm you.”

“After Agnes was carried home,” Mrs. Brownly continued, “we gave the child a hot bath and doused her with syrup, and then Dorothy saw the locket was gone.”

“And that’s why Dorothy went back to the docks the next day. To see if she could find the locket. She discovered it. . . .” I finished.

“She found it, and sent it back with her maid. I never saw her again. That was the day my poor girl was murdered.”

Mrs. Brownly closed her eyes with grief, but did not allow herself to cry.

I reached over and touched her hands. We sat in silence for a long while. But it was not yet over. There was more to be said, more to be brought into the light.

“You and Dorothy were being blackmailed,” I said gently but firmly.

Mrs. Brownly withdrew her hands from the table, where I had put mine over them for comfort. She tried to pick up her teacup, but her hands trembled so severely she had to place it back in its saucer.

“Your mother always boasted you were clever. Yes. It began just after we returned from Rome. A letter, a plain envelope, no return address, no name. Only instructions. He said he had proof, eyewitnesses who had seen Dorothy in Rome. She went out very little, but I could not very well lock her in her room. The doctor there said she must have mild exercise or else.” Mrs. Brownly did not need to finish. I already knew firsthand what a delivery could be like for a girl who was not in excellent health at the beginning of labor. “Dorothy would go out walking at twilight, in the Trastevere, where the other Americans did not go. Still, she was seen by someone, some American who knew who she was, and not even the largest cloak can hide that condition in its last months.”

“May I ask how much money he required of you?”

“Fifty dollars every month.”

Fifty dollars. What many workers earned in a year. And they had been paying it since Dorothy returned from Rome years before. No wonder the draperies were moth-eaten.

“A fortune,” Mrs. Brownly said. “But there were Sarah and Edith to consider, as well as Dorothy. Their reputations were also at stake. You know how society can be, Louisa. The sins of one sister would ruin all three. And perhaps Edgar as well, though I wonder if there is much of his reputation left to save.”

“And where was the blackmail money paid?” I asked.

“I was to go to Trinity Church on the first Wednesday of the month at eight o’clock and sit in the fourth pew of the left side, and leave it there. I left it without ever looking behind me, though I imagined sometimes I saw a man in a greatcoat, a tall man, occupy that pew as soon as I left.”

I began to pace, hands behind my back, chin leading forward, deep in thought, fitting all the pieces together.

“I believe Dorothy was going to openly claim Agnes as her own, Mrs. Brownly. Dorothy had decided to let it all come into the open, so that she might have her daughter with her. But if she did, the blackmailer would lose his hold over her . . . and over you. That’s why she was murdered.”

“That was what I feared,” Mrs. Brownly said. She looked up and what had a moment before been a glance of distracted age and sad motherhood was now a look of such hatred that Sylvia and I flinched before it.

“Or perhaps the blackmailer had found a new and easier way to claim the entire inheritance. Perhaps he married Dorothy. And then murdered her,” Mrs. Brownly said, and her voice trembled with rage. “But we caught him in his own trap. Not a penny.”

“You think Preston Wortham was the man blackmailing you?” I asked.

“He had such an evil reputation, and he showed strange interest in Dorothy. And one day, when I visited them, there was mail to be posted in the hall. I . . . looked. An envelope addressed to . . . to Edgar. I knew the handwriting, for I had received a similar envelope. From the blackmailer. He has been blackmailing Edgar as well, hasn’t he, Louisa? Oh, I know Edgar thinks he has secrets from me. About the studio. About the women who come and go. Of course. Do you think Mrs. Milton could resist repeating such gossip, even to his own mother? And his own brother-in-law is now blackmailing him.”

“I admit Mr. Wortham’s reputation is bad. But is it possible that he might have truly loved Dorothy? And having loved Dorothy, wished no ill for her family?” I asked.

“Love. That word again.”

I took a deep breath. “Mrs. Brownly, I believe Preston Wortham is the father of Agnes. That was why Dorothy insisted on marrying him once he finally returned her affection and proposed. She had been in love with him for years, since that summer in Newport. I don’t think she ever loved anyone else. It was her nature to be faithful.”

Mrs. Brownly and Sylvia stared at me in amazement. “Preston? Agnes’s father?” they said simultaneously.

“Wortham is the father?” Mrs. Brownly repeated. “Then he killed his wife, the mother of his child. Oh, the devil.” She slumped forward in her chair, collapsing.

“Mrs. Brownly, let me ring for your maid. I don’t want to leave you alone, but I have another task to see to. And I need Sylvia. Your family is still not out of danger.”

I pulled the bell cord and waited for Mary to come back down, to sit with her mistress, and the wait seemed an eternity, for I sensed, with an infallible instinct, that the continued danger to the family I had spoken of was real and imminent.

Jenkins was enjoying himself that night, for his second set of instructions was to rush at top speed, even if he risked loosening a wheel.

“Where to, misses?” he asked.

“I will go to Preston Wortham’s house on Commonwealth Avenue. And then you and Miss Sylvia have a different errand. You must find Constable Cobban and bring him to me at Wortham’s. As quickly as possible,” I said.

“Giddap, Bessie,” Jenkins shouted gleefully to the horse, cracking the whip over the animal’s head. Her ears twitched with irritation, but she once again paced herself for a trot and we jolted through the night over the rain-slick cobbles.

WORTHAM’S COMMONWEALTH AVENUE mansion was completely dark when I arrived. I hesitated before the heavy front door. Instinct told me to wait for Cobban, but sense told me there was no time to be lost. There had been that packed, halfhidden valise, the emptying of the house of most of its rented furnishings. I raised my hand and lifted the brass ram’s-head knocker, bringing it down heavily against the door.

No one answered. I stepped back into the street and looked up. Yes, there was a light coming from a second-floor window.

My sense of urgency grew even stronger. I took the door handle in my hand and tried it. It was unbolted.

I opened the door and peered into the long, dark hall. Drizzle and fog swirled into the entrance, making the unlit interior even darker. I waited a moment for my eyes to adjust, and when they did the first object I recognized was the luminous fur collar of Preston Wortham’s Roman coat hanging on the coatrack. His gleaming beaver hat rested on the table.

So the escape had not yet been effected; surely he would not leave that coat and hat behind. But why did Wortham or Digby not attend to the unbolted door? Perhaps because he knew I had discovered his secret. Perhaps he was waiting for me, as he had waited for Dorothy, at the docks.

My heart was pounding so loudly I rocked slightly with the force of it as I stood absolutely still in that hallway, almost in the very place where Dorothy had stood that day she had come home, that day he had lied and said she had gone out to replace her lost Paris chapeau.

He had known that Dorothy had gone to visit her daughter, that she was getting braver and weary of living the lies, and soon would claim the child as her own. He had stood there, in that parlor off to the side, and thought, I will kill her. I shivered.

I waited a minute longer, hoping to hear the clatter of Jenkins’s carriage out front in the deserted street, and Cobban coming up the front steps. Through the still-opened door came the sound of a dog barking at some other night disturbance, the fog making it sound hollow and very faraway. There was no sound of carriage wheels coming over the cobbles. No other noise disturbed the night. I was alone with whatever evil cowered in this dark house.