Back Bay (38 page)

Soames had never married and had no family. Women interested him only in passing. When he needed female companionship to fulfill social or sexual requirements, he had no trouble attracting it, but his passions were the opera and trapshooting.

He devoted one room of his apartment to his collection of opera recordings, books, and posters. Every summer, he traveled for three weeks to hear the best companies in Europe, and he contributed annually to the Opera Company of Boston. Opera, he said, allowed one to experience the most extreme emotions and, because of the music, hold them at arm’s length, so that they might be admired.

On weekends, Soames traveled to the Kenworthy Gun Club, near Newburyport, and he shot clay disks as they traveled across a range. Trapshooting tested speed, coordination, and marksmanship. The target appeared, it was destroyed, and another was launched at the shooter’s command. He considered it an efficient sport: one wasted no motion in the stalking of prey and saw no bloody carcasses.

Soames had devoted himself to Pratt Industries and Philip Pratt, and he had been the first to notice when Philip began to neglect his duties. He had tried to keep Pratt to his daily routine, but Pratt had refused. Pratt skipped meetings, took longer vacations, failed to read reports which, if seen in time, might have meant thousands of dollars to the company. Bennett Soames watched the stock fall, and he felt betrayed. He had decided that he would help to find the tea set, and that would be the last service he performed for Pratt Industries.

After she had hung up, Evangeline looked straight at Fallon. “Without taking more than fifteen seconds, tell me the name of the American who negotiated the Treaty of Ghent.”

“What?”

“Don’t waste time. Just tell me.”

“There were five. Albert Gallatin, John Bayard, and John Quincy Adams started. They were joined later by Henry Clay and John Russell.”

She seemed relieved. “You couldn’t come up with an answer like that if you weren’t a historian.”

“What else would I be?”

“Jack the Ripper, according to Philip Pratt.” Evangeline then sketched her conversation. “I told him I’d see him tomorrow in Boston.”

“Does that mean we’re spending the night together?” joked Fallon.

“Don’t push, Peter. You’ve already invaded my world and, at least for today, turned it inside out. I’ve been tempted several times in the last few hours to pull over at the side of the road and toss you out on your head. Keep your distance.” She spoke carefully, logically. She did not threaten. She knew what she needed to keep her life intact, and she didn’t care what he thought about her.

He smiled. “I wasn’t serious.”

They took their crackers, cheese, and beer out to the yard and sat in wooden lawn chairs. Several hundred feet beyond, past a stand of pines and an open meadow, the land fell away to a rocky beach. Evangeline closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the waves. Fallon wiped the dust off the diary with the tail of his shirt.

The diary was bound in leather, and Abigail Pratt Bentley’s initials were hand-tooled on the cover. The lock, made of brass, wouldn’t open. Fallon tried to pry it with his pocket knife, but old leather was weaker than brass, and he pulled the lock completely out of the book.

“It’s been a bad day for heirlooms,” said Evangeline.

“You wouldn’t think a lock like that would still hold after so long.” Fallon opened the book. The pages were made of the finest rag fiber, and there was very little deterioration. The date of the
first entry was January 1, 1845, the last, December 31, 1845. “We have one year of a woman’s life in front of us. How much did you know about her?”

“Not much, although Christopher was fascinated by her. Family history became a hobby of his three or four years ago, and I remember one November, between sailing and ski seasons, he spent every weekend reading her diaries in the Searidge attic.”

“They must have contained a lot of interesting stuff.” Fallon began to read. “ ‘January 1, 1845. I begin another chapter in the story of my life, which grows more fulfilling with every year. Young Artemus, now thirty-seven, with three bright children of his own, has invested heavily in the railroads that now wend their way across the American landscape. The Reading Railroad, the Attica and Buffalo, and the Auburn and Rochester are all financed by our Pratt dollars. I am now discussing with him the potential of a line to Chicago that is, as yet, unfinished—the Michigan Central.’

“This was one smart woman,” said Fallon. “The old Yankee merchant families were still making good money in the China trade, but the profits had leveled off by the time she was writing this, and New York had outstripped Boston as the center of shipping and commerce. More and more Boston money went into railroads, and the Michigan Central was a huge money-maker.”

He looked at the diary again. “ ‘I have been well pleased with the qualities and capabilities that Artemus Pratt has displayed in the years since he took over the leadership of Pratt Shipping and Mercantile. He has made the right choices, he has dealt firmly with his competitors, and he has conferred closely with me on every decision. From the day that he bargained away Pemberton Hill for seventy-five shares of Boston and Lowell stock, instead of the fifty Jackson had offered, I knew we were in firm hands. Ever since, Artemus has done nothing to disappoint me. Nor has Elihu, who has been Artemus’s right hand and faithful servant. My only regret in my dealings with my nephews is that Philip has never forgiven me or his brothers for his father’s death. Philip is now twenty-one years old and the handsomest young man I have ever seen. Although he is civil and decorous at all times, he still hates me. My heart breaks to think that what happened fifteen years ago can color our lives today, and I try, whenever I see him, to touch Philip in some way,
to remind him of the greatness of the Pratt past and our mission in the future. I fear that I have not reached him.’ ”

“This is amazing,” said Evangeline softly. “Amazing.”

“You can almost picture her, sitting there with her needlepoint in her lap fretting about her nephews. She talks as if they were her sons.”

“She didn’t have any children of her own, so she lavished all her love and worry on her brother’s children. It’s only natural.”

Fallon continued to read. “ ‘Of course, his father’s death was a terrible tragedy, and I have relived it in my mind’s eye many times. But I firmly believe that Jason was a victim of himself more than anything else. Artemus and Elihu recognized their father’s weakness, but Philip was only seven when Jason died, and he retains a romantic image of the man. I deeply regret his death. Had he lived to accept the terms I was going to offer, he would have become his son’s chief adviser, and he would have seen his beliefs about shipping vindicated. Since the Opium War ended five years ago and the British forced China to open all her ports, our ships have hauled enormous quantities of textiles to China, and our profits have been greater than ever.’ ”

For the next several hours, Abigail entranced her readers. Sitting on the lawn, with the afternoon breeze sifting gently through the pines that surrounded the cottage, Evangeline and Peter were transported to 1845.

Abigail spread her deepest emotions across the pages of her diary and wove them through the narrative of her life. When she was happy, she wrote short, fragmented entries that burst with enthusiasm. When she was depressed, she spent hours filling pages with her ramblings. But one theme dominated her writings—she was obsessed by the passages of the Pratts through history, by the mark they had left on the past and the glories they would enjoy in the future.

“Listen to this,” said Fallon. “ ‘May 2, 1845. A beautiful blue day in spring. A ride on the Boston and Worcester with my nephew’s beautiful children. We picnicked in the Needham countryside and returned to Boston at sunset. The children squealed with delight as we rode the “Dizzy Bridge,” that most frightening structure of trestle and track that crosses the Back Bay Full Basin between Brookline and Gravelly Point.’ ”

“ ‘Lord! How much has changed in thirty years. Two railroad lines now crisscross one another in the middle of our Back Bay, and the flow of water is all but stopped. The mills are completely useless. But no matter. Our legacy is still safe, our future is secure, and another beautiful generation of Pratts has learned to love their aunt. I will teach them all I know, for they will take us into the twentieth century.’

“How the Back Bay has changed in thirty years.” Fallon repeated the phrase and tried to inject it with importance.

“Everything changes in thirty years,” said Evangeline.

“But Abigail says the changes don’t bother her, because her legacy is still safe. She’s only fifty-five when she’s writing this, and she’s always talking about her legacy. What kind of legacy?”

“Her diaries, her collection of old walking sticks, her Herman Melville decoder ring. I don’t know. Wait until you read something significant before you start finding meanings. The only thing clear to me is that she wasn’t a very happy woman. Anyone who is always thinking about the future or the past can’t be enjoying the present too much.” Evangeline pulled her chair into a patch of sunlight.

“She was a manipulator. She had a hand in everyone’s business and, if I read it correctly, played a role in her brother’s demise. It sounds as though she was a real dowager queen.”

“Whatever she was, she still hasn’t told us anything about your mythical tea set. Read on.”

Fallon asked Evangeline to read for a while. He wanted to sip beer and listen.

She read through May and into early June. “Here’s something interesting.”

“About the tea set?”

“No, but it gives us a nice picture of the old girl. ‘June 7, 1845. Today marks the twentieth anniversary of Sean Mannion’s arrival at my door. It is hard to believe that he entered my service so long ago. I don’t know what I would have done without him. In the early years, he was source of strength, encouragement, and, yes, love of the purest sort. Now, he and his wife Lillian, whom he married ten years ago, are more like close friends than servants. I remember their son Joseph’s birthday as I remember my nieces’ and nephews’. Yesterday, we had a party to commemorate his years with
me. Artemus and Elihu and their wives and families all attended, along with many of Sean’s Irish friends from the North End.

“ ‘He is still a handsome man. His brawn and muscle have not diminished with the years, and his kindness and gentleness grow greater as he grows older. Would that we all aged so gracefully.’ ”

“Sounds like she had the hots for him,” injected Fallon.

“I doubt it. She was a New England Yankee. She wouldn’t look twice at an Irishman.”

“Maybe that was her problem.”

Evangeline pretended to miss his meaning. She simply continued reading. “ ‘He is now thirty-nine, and I know that he will never strike out on his own, as he wanted to do before my brother’s death. The circumstances surrounding that unfortunate incident tormented him for many months. Eventually, he regained something of his old personality, but he never found the strength again to break away from the security he has always had with us.”

Evangeline looked at Peter. “I wonder what happened.”

“It sounds like the guy blamed himself for Jason’s death. Maybe he killed him.”

She looked again at the diary. “ ‘For selfish reasons, I was happy that he stayed, but I now am haunted by the thought that he wasted his life.’ ”

“She feels guilty because he felt guilty that her brother died,” mused Fallon. “Interesting situation.”

“This next entry looks like a short one. ‘June 8, 1845. Philip will be graduating next week from Harvard. We have suggested that, like his brothers before him, he take a trip around the world and see the extent of the Pratt empire. I think he would enjoy spending a year at our China office. He is very interested in the prospect of a trip, but he says he won’t be stopping in China or coming back to Boston. Now that his mother is dead, he says he has no reason to remain in the city.

“ ‘He is young and fancies himself an adventurer, but I hate to see him go. I have, for many years, imagined him as part of the triumvirate that would lead our company for the next forty years. I may yet try to keep him in the fold. I am considering giving him a clue’ ”—Evangeline slowed down—“ ‘to our family secret and hope that it holds him here.’ ”

At first, Fallon did not react. “Read that last sentence again.”

She did.

“Damn,” said Fallon softly. “Why couldn’t she be more specific?”

“Because it’s a secret. She knew what it was. She didn’t have to be specific. Be quiet and listen. On June 15, she writes, ‘After a long, sleepless night, I have made my decision. I am going to give each nephew a quotation. I am going to tell them enough about our treasure to—’ ”

“The set never left this country,” said Fallon excitedly.

“She calls it a treasure, not a tea set.” Evangeline tried to control Fallon’s excitement and her own.

“Let me finish.” She found her place. “ ‘… enough about our treasure to bind them together.’ ”

“She’s certainly crafty.” Fallon was certain that Abigail was talking about the tea set. “She’s probably hung on to some of the choicest clues for herself.”

Evangeline didn’t stop to speculate. “ ‘June 16, 1845. I have failed in my plan. Artemus held a graduation party for his youngest brother at his new summer home in Marblehead, a handsome oceanside dwelling called Searidge. Before dinner, I called my nephews into the study.’ ” Evangeline stopped reading.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She laughed nervously. “It’s just very strange to read about a place where you’ve spent so much of your life. I used to sit for hours in the Searidge study and play with my dolls or look for sexy passages in the books I’d seen my grandmother reading. Nobody else ever used the study. It was my girlhood retreat. I knew that nothing could hurt me there. I never thought about all the life that went on there before I even existed.” She paused. “Of course, my illusions about my special place were shattered when I was sixteen. That’s when my mother told me that my father was murdered in the study. I felt betrayed somehow. I kept asking myself, why did he have to die there?”