Must the Maiden Die (16 page)

***

It was late afternoon when Glynis found
herself trudging up Fall Street toward the side street on which Dr.
Neva Cardoza-Levy's refuge was located. Her arms and the large
canvas bag slung over her shoulder were laden with books, mostly
children's literature. Jonathan said he would bring along the
remaining ones she had designated for the Women's Refuge after he
closed the library, but Glynis had promised the children's books
and she knew that some of the youngsters there were waiting for
them.

There had been no further sighting of
Bronwen. Nor had Emma been at her shop. Perhaps she was with Adam,
which Glynis hoped was a good sign.

After she had turned off Fall, and was
nearing the refuge, she thought about the time, several years
before, that she had first seen the place. She had just returned
from a year in Springfield, Illinois, at the home of her brother
Robin, where his wife Julia had languished for months before dying
of consumption. Glynis, on the day she had returned with Emma to
Seneca Falls, had gone to the refuge, which Neva had written about
with enthusiasm. She remembered her first impression: that the
abandoned warehouse with its stark brick walls and few windows,
most of them broken, had evoked an image of nearby Auburn
Prison.

Since then things had improved, often as a
result of generosity on the part of anonymous donors. Neva had
told of arriving at the refuge on more than one morning to find
awaiting her, from unknown sources, items such as feather
mattresses, or wooden chairs, or crates of eating utensils, bowls,
rag dolls, clothing, and on one occasion, a Franklin stove.

There were also the efforts of a small but
disparate group of men: Neva's husband, hardware store owner
Abraham Levy; Lacey Smith's husband, the blacksmith Isaiah; the
young deputy, Zeph Waters; and even Adam MacAlistair. New windows
had been cut in the warehouse walls to let in more light. Broken
glass had been replaced. Partition walls had been erected. And now
grass surrounded the building where there had once been only
hard-packed dirt; or, still worse, a sea of mud. Several of
Cullen's sturdy, curly-horned merino sheep tolerated the children
and kept the grass cropped short. The yellow bloom of forsythia
bushes now spread against the brick walls, and stout, young oak
trees held rope swings. Here and there patches of scarlet tulips
and white candytuft bloomed in the sheltered places where
children's feet did not tread.

And then, of course, there was the new
addition. From a not-so-anonymous donor.

Glynis would never forget the morning,
nearly a year ago, when Neva arrived at the library, looking as if
she had suffered a severe shock. She had collapsed into a chair in
Glynis's small back office, and dropped on the desk a letter and a
banknote. As it turned out, the amount of the banknote had been
amply sufficient to cause shock.

"Glynis, just look—look at that number,"
Neva said. "Those are four zeros! I simply cannot believe it."

"I can't either. Who is it from?"

Neva gestured toward the letter. After
Glynis finished reading it, she suspected that she looked as
stunned as Neva.

"Vanessa Usher is donating all this money to
the refuge," Neva said, disbelief making her voice crack. "Do you
think it's the woman's idea of a practical joke?"

"If so, it's an expensive joke," Glynis
answered. "This note is drawn on the Partridge Seneca Falls Bank,
which is about the most solvent bank in the state. And after our
recent counterfeiting episode here, I know a genuine note when I
see one, Neva."

They had sat and just stared at each other,
until Neva ventured, "What do you suppose she wants in return?"

After a moment of thought, Glynis had
replied, "I think I can guess!"

And now, as she stepped onto the narrow
stone walk in front of the converted warehouse, she had to smile at
her bull's-eye prediction. It could not be missed, for
two-foot-high letters carved across the fieldstone entrance of the
new addition read: the Vanessa usher children's wing.

Neva had not put up even token resistance.
Nor had she so much as batted an eye when writing a letter to the
Courier
to publicly thank Miss Usher for her most beneficent
and selfless generosity.

Glynis left the books in the hands of eager
youngsters and went looking for Neva. She found her in the rear
yard, seated on a bench under a white-blossomed horse chestnut tree
and reading what looked to be a long letter. Neva in repose was
such an uncommon sight that Glynis disliked having to disturb her.
But then Neva called to her, patting the vacant portion of the
bench beside her.

"I take it Cullen isn't here yet?" Glynis
asked after seating herself and inhaling deeply; a row of lilac
bushes just beginning to bloom sent over the yard their peerless
fragrance. From the front of the refuge came the high, clear voices
of children playing in the warm, hazy afternoon.

"No, but he stopped by early this morning,"
Neva answered, tucking strands of tightly curled hair behind an
ear. She waved at Glynis several sheets of paper. "I was looking
over this affidavit I prepared for him to submit with a request for
a court-ordered autopsy on Roland Brant. 1 had time to do it
because the children who were sick yesterday have all made a fast
recovery, and none of the others have been stricken."

"That's good news, Neva!"

"I think the sickness was caused by
milk—milk that sat around too long on a warm day. It makes me more
certain than ever that Pasteur's research with airborne bacteria
is on the right track. I've insisted that everyone's hands be
washed before handling food. It seems to help keep these
illnesses—whatever they are—from spreading like wildfire from one
person to another."

"Do you think a cure will be found for
consumption?" Glynis asked her, thinking of Julia Tryon and
Vanessa's sister Aurora.

"We need to find out what causes it—there's
just so much we don't know," Neva answered, her wide brow creasing
like a folded fan as it did when she concentrated. "But remember,
until a half century ago we didn't know much about smallpox either.
Now we're on our way to seeing it someday wiped out, maybe even
within this century. When you think of the people who've died when
a simple inoculation would have saved them ..." Her voice broke as
she shook her head.

"You seem more agreeable to an autopsy than
you were last night," Glynis said.

"Last night I was exhausted! Besides, I had
another look at Brant's body after Zeph and I took it to the
icehouse. There's something odd there, Glynis."

"Odd?"

"Yes, to do with the stab wound. But I'd
better not speculate. Obtaining this court order may take a day or
two. Erich Brant's attitude has not changed, according to Cullen,
and apparently the judge is off somewhere on circuit and won't be
back until tomorrow."

"In that event, I guess we should hope
Roland Brant's funeral won't be held the same day as Emma's
wedding."

"What an awful thought, Glynis! Is Bronwen's
sister coming from New York City for the wedding?"

Kathryn, for the past five months, had been
nursing at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, founded
four years before by Drs. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell and Marie
Zakrzewska. "Yes, she's coming," answered Glynis with a smile. Of
her three nieces, she thought, Kathryn was the one most like
herself.

Neva nodded. "Unfortunately, I think we're
going to need battalions of nurses very soon. But the only one who
appears to recognize that is Elizabeth Blackwell. It's fore-sighted
of her to begin organizing a relief association," she added,
"because if this hideous affair in the South escalates... Men and
their wars! If to keep themselves amused they have to be firing
guns at something, why not line up all their politicians and have a
turkey shoot! Really, Glynis, you'd think those forefathers of
yours would have had enough of guns and wars when they wrote up the
Constitution."

"Why
my
forefathers?"

"So far as I know, there were no Jews
invited to that party," Neva scowled darkly. "Those men and their
Constitution have other things to answer for. Slave-holding is the
reason for this dread mess we're in now. And then there's the small
matter of their exclusion of women. I think it's high time we took
another look at that one-sided, flawed document."

Neva seemed to consider this a moment before
she continued, "Do you know what Elizabeth Blackwell is actually
doing? She's involving New York's society women in her relief
group—a brilliant stroke! My cousin Ernestine Rose wrote to me
about it. Now maybe some of that money will be put to good
use."

Glynis nodded. "We can only hope they don't
all demand to have their names carved in stone."

Neva, glancing at the new wing, laughed.

Before Glynis next spoke she took a quick
look around for possible eavesdroppers, and then said, "If it isn't
betraying a confidence, Neva, can you tell me if Roland Brant's
wife—or rather his widow—is a patient of yours?"

"No, she isn't my patient. And she wouldn't
be."

"Why not?"

"Because I've learned, Glynis, that women
with the most intimidating husbands are the ones least likely to
see a female doctor."

"I would think that's probably true."

"You would?"

"I didn't say it was good. But the point is,
does Helga Brant look ill to you?"

"I hadn't noticed. I don't view everyone I
meet as a potential patient. I've enough of those as it is. But
why are you asking about her?"

"I'm not sure. Just a guess, perhaps, that
she could be stronger than she looks."

"That may be, but strength is relative. I
met Roland Brant on occasion, and I doubt very much that his wife,
or few others for that matter, could have matched him for strength—
physical or mental. If that's what you're referring to."

"Not precisely, but again, true enough, I
suppose."

"That's one of the qualities I like about
you, Glynis. You nearly always sound agreeable, even when you're
not agreeing."

"Well, I'm agreeing now. At least I think
so. And I'm not even certain why I'm asking you this. It's just
that several things don't seem to fit," Glynis said slowly.

"Then, knowing you, I'd say there's a good
chance that things
don't
fit," Neva replied. "I can't tell
how, or even if, this might relate to Helga Brant, but there's
another thing I've learned. That some women, when they're terrified
of having more children, manage to become chronic invalids. Which
means they are frail. Untouchable. It's their only way out of the
so-called marital obligation. And it may not even be, on their
part, a consciously planned escape. I'm certain you know what I
mean."

"Of course I do. And tragic though it is, it
makes some sense. I'd just never thought of it that way
before."

"Well, why would you? You're not married!"
Neva gave her a sideways glance. "This despite the fact, I might
add, that two of the very few good men around are—"

"Neva, please. Let's not get into that."

But she readied herself, because Neva
shifted round on the bench to launch a frontal maneuver, saying,
"We haven't had any chance to talk, Glynis, since you came back
from Washington. Did Jacques Sundown come with you?"

"No, he didn't. Jacques put me on the train
and —"

"But Sundown is here. I saw him just this
morning."

"That's not likely," Glynis said,
straightening on the bench. "At least I don't think it is. Are you
sure it was Jacques you saw?"

"Glynis Tryon! How could any woman who
wasn't blind or half-dead mistake that man for anyone else. He was
riding that black and white paint of his up Cayuga Street. You
really didn't know he was here? No, from the look on your face I
guess you didn't—"

"Neva," Glynis interrupted, as she'd just
heard, below the high voices of children, another, deeper voice, "I
think Cullen's arrived."

***

Glynis grasped the side of the small,
covered buggy as Cullen turned the horse onto the side road that
led to the Brant house. A light wind had begun to stack the
southern sky with rolls of fleecy gray cloud, but the air remained
warm. Cullen said he had rented the buggy at Boone's Livery because
it looked like rain.

Glynis sniffed the air and agreed. "Has the
search party for Tamar Jager been organized?"

He nodded. "But it's a bad time of year to
ask men to leave their fields. The Seneca County Sheriff's Office
sent a couple of deputies, so that's a help. What men there are
have fanned out from the Brant place with descriptions of the
girl."

"Apart from the girl being mute, it's rather
a vague physical description, isn't it?" Glynis asked.

"The blonde hair narrows it down some, but
yes."

"Cullen, when we were at Brants' yesterday,
did you find the family's attitude unusual?"

"Hard to say. Unusual in the sense that they
sure didn't seem to be grieving Roland Brant's death, yes, but
maybe they're a tougher bunch than you're used to seeing. If we
could just find that girl! Biggest headache is that we don't have
any notion where she might go, or even in what direction she'd
head."

The shadow of something flitted across
Glynis's mind, gone before she could really see it.

"I worry about the girl being mute," she
said. "The men in the search party are aware of that, aren't
they?"

"Yes, but I know what you mean. Zeph and
Liam will handle it all right, and I think I impressed on the
others that they shouldn't scare her, but not all of them are my
men. Plus the dogs might frighten her."

"You're using dogs to track her?"

"Glynis, of course I am. She could be
anywhere! Got a piece of her clothing from Brants' last night,
hoping the dogs can pick up her scent. Don't forget that this Tamar
is possibly Roland Brant's killer—I can't think her disappearance
is only a coincidence. But I admit I also can't think of a motive
for a servant girl to kill Brant. Unless he caught her stealing
from his safe."