Louisa and the Missing Heiress (27 page)

The silence that followed was longer than it should have been. I looked up from my teacup and saw Digby frowning at something behind me.

“Don’t badger my servant, Miss Alcott,” a man’s voice growled.

I turned, and saw Preston Wortham standing behind me, glaring.

He wore his stylish brown velvet Roman coat and black top hat and carried a walking cane, as if he had been out for a walk and just returned. Which, indeed, was the case, as I was startled to discover.

“There was no evidence. I was released yesterday,” he said, answering my unspoken questions.

Preston Wortham looked murderous at that moment. His wet hair clung to his face in dripping tendrils, his face was flushed, and his eyes glittered with mad impulse. Incarceration, even for a brief time, seemed not to have rehabilitated Preston Wortham but set him more deeply in his rogue ways.

“You are returned, sir. Well, well. May I take your coat?” Digby took Preston’s hat and cane as well, and with a gentle hand at the elbow, led his employer to the remaining comfortable armchair, then placed a footstool for his feet.

“Why are you badgering my servant?” Wortham repeated angrily from the depths of the chair. “What is this nonsense about blackmail?” If he felt any gratitude for my kindness to him at a time when everyone else had abandoned him, he did not show it at that moment.

I studied him closely. He resolutely avoided my gaze and stared at the ceiling.

“It isn’t nonsense,” I said softly. “It is the truth. Who is blackmailing you, Mr. Wortham?”

He ignored my question and, instead of looking at me, studiously wiped the damp from his face. He moved his feet closer to the grate and leaned heavily into the chair with the possessive gesture of a man who had been temporarily deprived of his own hearth. “Surprised to see me at home, Miss Alcott? Perhaps you were the one who accused me in the first place, in that anonymous letter,” he said finally.

“You don’t believe that. I have been your friend throughout this ordeal, and I will continue to be your friend as long as you will let me, for not even the worst of us deserves to be denied the grace of friendship.”

His eyes, dark, opaque, glittering, met mine briefly, and then resumed their study of the ceiling.

“There is no evidence against me,” he said. “The writer of the anonymous letter has written a second one, saying the first was a prank with no truth to it. It was received yesterday, and I was released yesterday. Ask Constable Cobban. He received the letter and showed it to me. Moreover, my tailor has come forward and explained that I spent most of that afternoon with him. I was nowhere near the waterfront when Dorothy . . .”

Suddenly he seemed exhausted. His shoulders slumped and his chin fell forward onto his chest, as if even the effort to sit upright required more strength than he possessed.

“Died. Dorothy is dead,” I whispered. “She was murdered. Isn’t it time for the truth, Mr. Wortham?”

“Forgive me, sir. It now seems the right thing to do.” Digby stepped forward, still holding Preston’s cane and sodden coat and hat. “Mr. Wortham was being blackmailed.” He addressed himself to me. “He was, for a time, in great danger himself. That is now in the past.”

Wortham looked up at Digby with an expression of great relief.

“Well. It is out.” Wortham sighed.

“Who is the blackmailer?” I asked.

“It is over. What does it matter?”

“Mr. Wortham, have you ceased to believe in justice?” I asked. I noted, for the first time, that a brown leather valise, puffed and heavy-looking with contents, had been placed behind the drawing room door. Was Mr. Wortham planning a voyage? “I notice this room has been relieved of much of its appointments. It must be painful to sell off such beautiful possessions,” I said.

“My beautiful possessions—I use the term ‘my’ loosely—have been returned to the leasing company,” Wortham said. “You spy my valise, there in the corner. I will leave this world, or Boston, depending on how the wind blows. This is no home to me.”

“Then perhaps a crime has been committed against you, as well as Dorothy,” I said.

“Miss Alcott, thank you for your kindness. For speaking to me, and visiting me, at a time when all others had abandoned me. But I now wish only to put this behind me. Good day, Miss Alcott.” Wortham’s voice was firm.

When I stood, he noticed the box of marzipans, now tucked under my arm.

“A gift?” he asked, and his grin was like his old one, boyish.

He truly seemed to have never seen it before. Perhaps he had simply forgotten it. Or perhaps he was even more skilled at the thespian arts than his friend Katya Mendosa.

Digby stepped forward. “I will see you to the door.” He gave a solicitous glance over his shoulder at his exhausted employer and politely showed me out.

And so once again the ornate, heavy door of 10 Commonwealth Avenue was hastily shut, and I was left perplexed.

It was, by then, very late afternoon, and the streets were very dark, almost black, in those sections that did not contain gaslights. A bad time of day to be walking alone. It would be a long and wet walk home.

I trudged through the cold twilight, lost in thought. I had much to reflect on. And between memories of Dorothy rose up the small but nagging irritation that I would have to purchase a new umbrella, for a sudden stray wind turned mine inside out as soon as I left Wortham’s front step, and it was useless now except as a walking cane. Well, events would prove it not entirely useless. But at that moment the thought of the expense of a new one saddened me, for it came just at a time when I had given up all unessential expenses and begun a penny bank for Queenie. I could not put aside much money for the girl, but every nickel, I knew, would help keep her a moment longer from complete destitution and disgrace, once her time at the home had elapsed and she was required to leave.

It was not of Queenie I thought, however, during that sodden walk. Much as I had dreaded to think that Dorothy might have been murdered by her own husband, I now realized that if Wortham were not tried for the murder, nobody would be. There were no other suspects other than the victim’s own brother, and the justice system would never accuse the Brownly heir, with or without direct evidence. Dorothy’s murderer might go free.

I was not particularly pleased to see Mr. Wortham released from jail, as much as I had argued against the circumstantial letter that incriminated him and that, indeed, turned out to have been some sort of deadly practical joke. Who had sent that letter? And why had the sender changed his mind and sent a second, rescinding the first?

Now the police had no suspects.

And that did not sit right with me. I had been brought up to respect justice even more than the laws, for the two so often are unrelated, and I wanted justice for Dorothy, which meant I would ask, and think, and consider, till Dorothy’s murderer was brought to justice—if it took the rest of my life, which, at that moment, seemed a likelihood.

Even more worrisome was the problem, as unresolved now as on the first day of my investigation, of why Dorothy had been murdered. Too many motives were as bad as too few. And there were far too many. Greedy husbands, moneydriven sibling rivalries, jealous mistresses . . . hadn’t Dorothy a single friend or protector who wished her well?

I was her friend. She counted on me. I had let her down once, that first day when I did not stay and insist she talk to me about her problems then and there. But I would not fail her a second time.

I had already walked as far as the Common, and was only another half mile or so from my own home, when I grew aware of footsteps behind me in the thick drizzling twilight, keeping time with my own. I slowed my pace. The footsteps slowed.

And when I turned to look, no one was there.

I walked on, a little more quickly, but not much. I was not given to panic. I listened, picking out the noise that was not part of the rain and the distant booming of the foghorn. A man’s steps, heavier than a woman’s, the heel of the boot making a thud that echoed slightly. Another sound. Wood knocking against brick and cobble. An umbrella or a walking cane.

He wanted to be unseen, but not unheard. He wanted me to know he was there. He wanted to frighten me.

I sensed his desperation, his anger, now directed at me. If only I could see his face! I was convinced I would see the face of Dorothy’s murderer. I turned quickly, just in time to see the tall, dark shape of a man in a black hat and black greatcoat sidestep into a doorway. But when I turned to walk on, the footsteps behind me resumed.

I began to walk faster then, eager to reach the busier streets at the bottom of Beacon Hill, for this part of Boston was isolated and empty, with huge trees looming overhead making the twilight even darker. The fog grew thicker with each step, closing me in, decreasing the distance between myself and him, and my heart began to beat faster. I had driven the beast from his cave. What did he intend to do? A pulse sounded in my ears like a drumbeat . . . and all the while, a different part of my now-frightened consciousness was thinking,
I must remember this sensation and write it down as soon as I am home
.

The bells of a coach sounded, a horse’s rhythmic steps, its snorts and breath close by. A carriage! The presence of others reassured me. I was not alone with a murderer. However, the fog was so thick that the coach might be only a couple of yards away, and I still couldn’t see its shape in the gray, wet, moving dusk.

Running footsteps, coming closer. No longer in time with my own. He had made a decision.

Raising the broken umbrella as a defense (a ploy even I laughed at later when telling the story), I spun around in the mist to face him. I struck out with the rattling umbrella, its cloth folds black as bat wings in the twilight, and felt a momentary satisfaction as the tip of the umbrella prodded something soft, flesh perhaps. But the prod was inadequate. I felt a push. I was in the road, stumbling, falling to my knees, the umbrella clattering some feet away, and now I saw the coach almost upon me, the startled horses snapping their heads up, their hooves flashing white. They passed within inches of where I fell, the carriage wheels kicking up stones.

“Damnation!” the driver yelled, pulling on the reins with all his might. The hooves came down inches away from me. The horses skittered sideways, their eyes huge and white with panic.

I instinctively put my arms up to shield my face, and then began flailing, for another hand pulled at me, lifting me to my feet, and I wondered if he now meant to throw me completely under those frightened horses.

“Miss Alcott! Are you all right? Come out of the road,” a familiar voice said. It was Constable Cobban. Even the fog and twilight could not dim the bright red of his hair, the pinkly freckled complexion, and I remembered thinking, at that moment, that a man with Constable Cobban’s particular coloring could never attempt secret acts in the dusk, that noon would be as suitable as midnight for him. That aspect of Dorothy’s murder had confounded me; she had been struck down in broad daylight.

“Damn foolish thing, walking in the road,” the driver of the coach shouted down.

“I wasn’t walking in the road. I was pushed.” My voice shook a little, which embarrassed me, for Cobban was looking at me strangely.

“Probably a pickpocket,” Cobban said. “You shouldn’t be out walking alone. Come, I will see you home.” He picked up my umbrella and the candy box.

“How do you happen to be here?” I asked. He took my arm, for I was visibly shaken.

“You are trembling. Here, lean on me, Miss Alcott. I was out for a walk. What are you doing out in this weather?”

“I have been to the Wortham home.” I did not correct his impression that a common pickpocket had bullied me. However, the fear I felt at the incident and the force of my intuition convinced me the attack was more serious and sinister.

“Ah.”

“Yes. Ah. Mr. Wortham came in while I was there.”

We walked on together, the coachman having resumed his errand. I noted that the footsteps that had followed me were now gone. Instead, Constable Cobban’s gait thudded along with my own lighter steps.

“You have not been following me, have you, Constable?”

He blushed, turning a shade of scarlet visible even in fog. “Of course not,” he grumbled.

“Well. Your coincidental arrival is interesting.” He did not reply. I tried a different tactic. “I understand that Mr. Wortham’s tailor is supplying an alibi?” I pressed.

“An alibi? Miss Alcott, you have been reading the popular press. He is. I suspect that for a fiver, he would say anything.”

The popular press. I couldn’t hold back a smile, reflecting on what Constable Cobban would think of my blood-and-thunder stories, should he ever read one.

We continued our walk in silence for some moments, the fog creating an eerie sense of isolation about us. My knee was beginning to ache and I suspected it might be cut, but I walked staunchly on without complaint. Abba would see to it once I was home.

“It is a strange world, is it not, Miss Alcott?” Cobban said when we had rounded the corner and begun to climb Beacon Hill. His voice was weary. He might almost have been talking to himself. “My father grew up in County Cork. His father worked a farm there. And one day the landlord came and beat my grandfather so badly he never walked straight again. And there was no one to stop him, for my father and his brothers were just little ones and my grandmother was only a weak woman, and the hired man had run away. So the landlord beat him and beat him and my father could only stand and watch. He tells me that story every week, on Sunday night. So that I’ll never forget about the weak ones of the world, who need strong ones to protect them, and the poor who have to be protected from the rich . . .” He pronounced the word rich with heavy bitterness. “It comes down to simplicities.”

“It seems to me that true justice is anything but simple,” I said.