Death on Beacon Hill (13 page)

“What was it, four years altogether that you were gone?” Martin asked.

“Almost. I left—
we
left, Aunt Vera and I—in May of sixty-five, right after the war ended. We came back this past February, when Father cut off our—”

“Emily,” Pratt said quietly. “Don’t bore our guests with details.”

Martin looked from Pratt to his eldest daughter with those placid blue eyes that saw everything. Although the youngest of the Hewitts’ three remaining sons, Martin was, in many ways, the wisest. He was also the fairest, resembling the flaxen-haired August, just as Will, with his inky hair and rangy limbs, took after Viola.

The footmen returned with gold-rimmed plates of sliced duck and bottles of Madeira, which they served all around. Emily declined the duck. “Honestly, dear,” her mother inveigled. “Not even a little?”

With strained patience, Emily said, “Mother, you know I don’t eat meat.”

“But it’s not meat,” Winifred said. “It’s duck.”

“You’re a vegetarian?” asked Dr. Foster as he waved away his own plate. “So am I.”

Emily seemed to notice him for the first time. “Really?”

“Perhaps it’s all those years of surgery,” Foster said, “but I’ve gotten to where I can’t bear the thought of eating flesh.”

Winifred’s elation seemed only to increase as she looked back and forth between Emily and Foster, from which Nell concluded that the wellborn surgeon was a bachelor. How thrilled she must have been to have not one, but two gentlemen of breeding chatting up her marriageable daughter at the same dinner.

“Four years,” Martin said, bringing the conversation back around to Emily’s tour. “That’s a long time to spend traveling.”

“It was to have been a year-long tour,” Emily said. “London and the Continent.”

“I love London,” said Martin as he spooned currant jelly onto his plate.

“I loathed it.” With a glance at Vera, Emily amended that to, “
We
loathed it.”

“Terribly gray.” Vera rubbed her arms, shivering delicately. “Terribly damp. Perhaps it was just that particular Spring, but—”

“It wasn’t the weather,” Emily said.

“No, of course not,” her aunt quickly responded. “I didn’t mean—”

“It was those stuffy English prigs and their absurd caste system. No offense intended, Mrs. Hewitt.”

“No, I quite agree,” replied Viola, who’d been—and remained, for the most part—as much of a free spirit in her own way as Emily. “I couldn’t wait to get away from there myself.”

Emily propped her elbows on the table, her glass of Madeira cupped lightly in one hand. It was the sort of posture all well-bred girls were exhorted to avoid, yet far from looking vulgar, Emily exuded an aura of graceful insouciance. “We escaped to Italy as soon as we could. Aunt Vera met this Russian lady there who traveled quite a bit, and we more or less threw our lot in with her.”

“Madame Blavatsky.” Vera might have said,
The Holy Mother
, so reverent was her tone. “A marvelous lady with marvelous gifts. She’s fairly young, actually—not yet forty—but so wise and enlightened, you might think she’s lived for hundreds of years. Perhaps she has,” Vera added with a private little smile. “It was a remarkable experience, traveling with her.”

“Remarkable,” Emily muttered into her Madeira. As she lowered the glass, Nell saw her biting back a smile.

“What kinds of...gifts does she possess?” Viola asked.

Vera looked around the table, a hectic red stain crawling up her throat.

“Go ahead, Auntie,” Emily urged. “They can’t be any ruder about it than I am, and they’ll probably be a good deal kinder. Most people are.”

“H.P.B.’s gifts are—”

“H.P.B.?” Viola asked.

“Helena Petrovna Blavatsky,” Vera said in her thin, warbly voice. “It...it’s what we call her, those of us who travel with her. Her gifts are of a...spiritual nature, profoundly spiritual.

“Ah,” Viola said after absorbing that for a moment. “By ‘spiritual,’ do you mean...?”

“She performs séances,” Emily said.

Vera’s blush spread over her face. “Well, yes, there’s that, but—”

“Real séances?” Harry sat forward, his grin widening. “With people sitting ‘round a circle and ghosts rapping on the table? Does she speak to the dead?” Harry had on one of his signature garish scarves tonight, a swath of Chinese-patterned red-and-gold silk draped with studied negligence over the shoulders of his tailcoat.

Vera hesitated, her gaze on the plate in front of her, her mouth working as if she couldn’t quite find the words to express what she wanted to say. It seemed to Nell that she wasn’t accustomed to being the center of attention, wasn’t at all comfortable with it, but that she felt an obligation to enlighten her fellow diners on the subject at hand. “H.P.B. does have an...an aura that enables her to commune with, and even possess, the spirits of those who have passed into the dimension we call death. But as an esotericist, she—”

“Have you seen her talk to the dead?” Harry asked.

Vera sat back, still staring at her plate. “Yes. And...and she can move objects just by staring at them, and make letters from departed souls appear out of thin air. I’ve seen her make a piano play music.”

“Good heavens, even I can do that,” Cecilia said with a piercing little giggle.

“I’ll wager the dead can do it better,” Emily muttered into her glass.

“I meant w-without...” Vera stammered, “I meant without anyone actually sitting down at—”

“She knows what you meant,” Emily said. “She thinks she’s being hilarious. H.P.B. believes in... What is it?” she asked Vera. “There’s something she calls it.”

“Theosophy,” Vera said.

Emily nodded. “It’s this sort of religion she made up.”

“She didn’t make it up,” Martin said as he dipped a bite of duck into the currant jelly and lifted it to his mouth.

Everyone turned to watch him as he chewed and swallowed.

“She didn’t make up the
word
,” Martin said. “I learned it in my divinity curriculum at Harvard. Theosophy, it’s...well, it’s sort of when you apply eastern teachings to western theological—”

“Yes,” Vera said. “Yes! The ancient wisdom, the mystical insight. Karma, the rebirth of the soul into a new human form...”

“Reincarnation?” Martin asked. “Do you really believe in that?”

Vera stammered painfully until Emily said, “H.P.B. does. She believes in all that mystic hocus-pocus. Reincarnation, ghostly visitations, communion with the spirit world... Aunt Vera, being more of less a...follower of hers...”

“Disciple,” Vera corrected.

Attention refocused on Vera.

“You, you’d understand if you’d ever met her.” Vera still seemed unable to look her listeners in the eye; her face was a blotchy red now. “She, she’s an amazing lady. She’s experienced things you and I could never conceive of. She’s been known to awaken and find herself...well, someone else entirely. A different person, with a completely different voice, different mannerisms... And she wouldn’t become herself again until someone called her by her real name. I’d never heard of such a phenomenon. She’s truly a gifted soul.”

Will sat forward. “She displayed two personalities?”

Vera said, “Yes, but the other one wasn’t really her. It was a departed spirit looking for an earthly shell to inhabit—a human host, if you will. They do that, you know. They miss having bodies, being able to do all the things living people do.”

Will sat back, ruminating on this.

Dr. Foster met Will’s gaze with a discerning look, his smile so mild it was almost imperceptible.

Will smiled back.

“How extraordinary, Miss Pratt,” said Nell, breaking her silence at last. “Did you and Emily spend the rest of those four years traveling with this Madame Blavatsky?”

“Yes. Oh, yes. It was the most fantastic adventure.” Vera’s smile was rapturous. “We went everywhere with her. All through the Balkans, Greece, Egypt, Syria, Russia, India, Tibet...”

“Tibet?” Will said. “It’s devilishly hard to get into Tibet. I know—I’ve tried.”

Most of Will’s fellow diners, including his parents and brothers, turned to stare at him.

“We wore disguises,” Vera said. “We were guests in the home of Master Koot Hoomi, and we saw and learned things...well, things I’ll never forget. I’ll never be the same, and I have H.P.B. to thank for it.”

Winifred, probably bored with the Madame Blavatsky conversation, said, “Emily kept a travel diary. There are notes and sketches from everywhere she visited—churches, galleries... She drew the local flora and fauna, the way people dressed and spoke, the music they played, their bizarre heathen traditions... You should bring it down and show it around later, Emily.”

“Mother, please,” Emily said.

“I’d like to see those sketches,” said Viola. “I’m sure Miss Sweeney would, too. She’s quite an accomplished artist in her own right.”

“Really?” Emily said.

“Of course,” Winnie said, “what I really wish is that Emily would set aside her sketchbook and her wanderings and start thinking about settling down. And perhaps relearn how to dress.” Winnie let out an edgy little giggle. “She’s spent just a bit too much time among uncivilized peoples, I think.”

Dr. Foster said, “Oh, I don’t know about that, ma’am. She looks rather appealingly comfortable, if you ask me, and I shouldn’t think there’s anything particularly uncivilized in that.”

Nell, whose snugly laced corset felt as if it were all but pinching her in two, would have given anything at that moment to be clad in loosely draped silk.

Winnie emitted another little burst of laughter in response to Dr. Foster’s chivalric defense of her daughter. Nell wanted to throw something at her head.

“I quite agree,” Will said. “Say, Foster, was it you who wrote that article on pulmonary obstruction in the
New England Journal of Medicine
a couple of months ago?”

“It was.”

“Excellent research,” Will praised, “very well presented. There was a similar piece in
The Lancet
not too long ago, but I felt you made your points with greater clarity.”

“You’re too kind.”

Will, a professional gambler for some five years, still read the medical journals? Judging from his mother’s nonplused expression, she found this news as remarkable as did Nell. The two women exchanged incredulous little smiles.

“I was particularly interested in what you had to say about diagnosing drownings during post-mortems,” Will said. “I autopsied a young lady last Autumn whose body had been found in a field, but not only were her lungs waterlogged, they were clogged with bits of algae and water weeds and the like.”

“Any mucous froth?” Foster asked.

“Quite a bit,” Will said as he cut into his duck. “The lungs had gone spongy, of course, and—”

Viola cleared her throat. Will looked her way.  She said softly, “Perhaps this is a conversation for another time?”

Will looked around the table as if it had slipped his mind that he was at a formal dinner party, which it probably had. “My apologies if I’ve ruined anyone’s appetite.”

“You haven’t ruined mine,” Emily said. “I was finding it quite interesting.”

“You were probably alone in that sentiment,” Will said. “Some other time, old man,” he told Foster.

“Looking forward to it.”

“I’m representing Dr. Foster on the sale of his house,” said Mr. Pratt as he dabbed his mouth with his napkin, having polished off all of his duck save the requisite last bite. “It’s right here on Beacon Hill, just a couple of blocks away. Charming little place, four stories with a verandah and a private garden, brand new kitchen and, er, comfort rooms. If anyone knows of someone looking to buy a home in a lovely neighborhood—”

“Well,” Winifred said, “it
is
Acorn Street.”

Pratt glared at her down the length of the table.

“I’m just saying people should know that right up front,” Winifred said. “Because Acorn, well...you know... One would be living next door to shopkeepers and the like.”

Mr. Pratt sighed and motioned to the butler, who had the footmen clear away the duck course.

“I find Acorn Street quite delightful, actually,” said Viola. “That narrow little cobblestone lane with the lovely brick houses on one side and the garden walls on the other... Reminds me of some of the quainter parts of London.”

Dr. Foster said, “I like it, too. I wouldn’t be moving if I didn’t need more room for my surgical practice. I’ve built a larger place in the Back Bay. The entire first floor is set aside for examining patients and performing operations.”

“Whatever the reason, it’s wise of you to trade up to a bigger house in a better neighborhood,” Winifred told Foster. “You’ll attract the more desirable young ladies that way.” She looked toward Emily, who pointedly looked away.

The footmen returned with the next course—ham mousse and green salad—and the subject under discussion turned to the current Boston real estate market and whether up-to-the-minute amenities made houses that much more attractive. Someone brought up the elevator August Hewitt had installed for his wife, permanently crippled from a bout of infantile paralysis acquired in Europe before the war, thus redirecting the conversation to the advantages and disadvantages of modern innovations. Mr. Hewitt was, for the most part, opposed to them, especially in the home; he never would have considered an elevator had not Will pressed the issue. Will’s having cared enough about his mother’s well being, despite their estrangement, to broach the idea, and Mr. Hewitt’s having actually taken his advice, boded well, Nell thought, for their future as a family.