Must the Maiden Die (7 page)

"Something happened all right," he said
harshly, "but it was at the Brant house. Roland Brant was found
dead."

"Cullen, no! How can that be? He looked like
such a healthy man. What did he die of, or don't you know yet?"

"I know he didn't die of bad health. Brant
was stabbed and the knife left in his chest. There's no question
he was murdered."

Go where it chooseth thee,

There is none that accuseth thee;

Neither foe nor lover

Will the wrong uncover;

The world's breath raiseth thee,

And thy own past praiseth thee.

—Dora Read Goodale, "The Judgment"

Glynis drew in her breath and took an
unsteady step toward Cullen. "Roland Brant's been murdered? Who did
it?" was all she could think to say, and even then the words
emerged as a whisper.

"Don't know yet. His family seems to be
bearing up fairly well, but no one admits to knowing anything about
his death. I left Zeph at the house to make sure they all stay
there."

Cullen glanced around, apparently for
passersby, and though there were none, swung down from the Morgan,
saying quietly, "No need to send the whole town into an uproar
tonight."

Glynis nodded, and kept her voice lowered
when she told him, "Roland Brant's wife was invited to Emma's
party, but late this morning she sent her regrets. Her note simply
said she was indisposed, which I took to mean that she was
ill."

"She didn't mention any illness to me,"
Cullen said.

"Mrs. Brant's health has been less than
robust for some time. It would certainly be understandable if she
didn't elaborate, Cullen, especially given the circumstances."

"Guess that makes sense, but she seemed
mighty calm for someone who'd just learned of her husband's
murder."

"When did it happen?" Glynis asked, knowing
the question was none of her affair, except for the fact that
Cullen had chanced upon her. But curiosity, never her most
commendable or repressible trait, overcame discretion. She also
simply could not find it credible that a man of Roland Brant's
substantial vitality was dead. Much less that he had been a victim
of murder.

"Don't know when he died," Cullen answered.
"The last time anyone recalls seeing him—seeing him alive—was
around nine o'clock
last night
. Family and servants all
agree on that time. Mrs. Brant claims that earlier this evening,
when her husband didn't appear at supper, she sent one of the
servants to look for him. The servant, a fellow named Clements,
says he found Brant's body on the floor of his library."

"What time was that?" Glynis asked.

"Around six o' clock tonight. But it looked to me as
if Brant had been dead for some time, and I think it's damn
peculiar that no one discovered his body earlier. On the other
hand, it's a big house, and Clements says it was a hard-and-fast
rule that Brant was not to be disturbed when in his library. Brant
was also known to take frequent, overnight business trips."

"What made you think he'd been dead for some
time?"

"He was stiff. Rigor mortis doesn't set in
until a few hours after death. Maybe even later if the weather's
cool. I'm hoping the doctor will answer that one, so we can try to
guess at the time Brant died. I'm on my way now to get her, or—"
Cullen motioned toward the shop "—is Neva still in there?"

"No, she couldn't stay long. Several
children at the Women's Refuge have been sick, and she had been
with them round the clock, so she was worn out. By now she's likely
home with Abraham."

"And will not be happy about being rousted
out again," Cullen commented. "Well, it can't be helped. I want her
to see Brant's body before it's moved."

If the circumstances hadn't been so grim,
Glynis would have found Cullen's insistence on Neva Cardoza-Levy
amusing. When Neva had first come to town four years ago, Cullen
had been as disturbed as many others at the idea of a female
doctor. But in a matter of months, she had proven herself more than
capable, and Cullen, to his credit, had openly voiced his change of
heart. Just six months ago, he'd succeeded in having Neva appointed
deputy coroner of the village, a heretofore unheard-of position for
a woman. Not that she and Cullen didn't continue to snipe at each
other, and sometimes argue heatedly; the arguments nearly always
centered on the taverns and alcohol that Neva believed responsible
for at least half the ills she encountered in her practice. The
primary reason, in fact, that she had opened the Seneca Falls
Refuge for Women and Children.

"Glynis, while I'm fetching the doc, I'd
like you to go to the Brant house," Cullen said, his overly casual
manner making her suspect it was not a spur-of-the-moment request,
but something he'd intended all along. "Someone might slip," he
added, "and say something useful to you."

"You can't think that one of Roland Brant's
own family murdered him," Glynis protested. "That's not only
dreadful, but it seems far-fetched."

"Not any more far-fetched than the notion of
a stranger just walking in and stabbing Brant in his own library!
Besides, Glynis, you know his family—"

"I don't know them at all well," she broke
in.

"Doesn't matter. They might say more to you
than they have to me."

He took a lantern from a post and handed it
to her, saying, "There's a near-full moon rising, so you probably
won't need this, but take it anyway."

Not giving her time to object, he remounted
the Morgan. "If you start walking now, I'll catch up with you
before you get to the house."

"The Brants will resent my intrusion," she
argued, remembering to keep her voice down. "And if a family
member was cold-blooded enough to murder Roland Brant, and then
remain there at the house...well, why should that person suddenly
become rattled enough to say something incriminating? Cullen, I
don't think this is a good idea."

"I do."

"But I'm not adept at this sort of
thing."

"You're as adept as anyone else around here
and then some," he said, turning the Morgan and urging it forward
before Glynis could think of a more persuasive argument.

She stood watching him ride down Fall
Street, wondering as usual why she possessed so little backbone.
She should have simply refused Cullen; although it did occurr to
her that the Brant household must be in a terrible state. While she
had seen Roland Brant infrequently, he had always been generous
when donating money to the library, and there was the possibility
she might be of some help if one of his family needed it. She
certainly owed the man that. Moreover, regardless of what Cullen
might expect, she hadn't consented to do anything else.

She swung the lantern back and forth a few
times and, still debating with herself, reluctantly began to walk
up State Street.

Why would someone murder Roland Brant? It
was true that he had considerable wealth and was subject to the
predictable envy levied against one who had much when others had
little, but it was hard to imagine that envy alone could kill. Yet
what other possible reason could there have been for his
murder?

When Glynis turned north onto a dirt road
running off Fall Street, she was still finding it inconceivable
that Roland Brant could be dead. She remembered the Brant family's
arrival in Seneca Falls some ten or eleven years before, and since
then the man had been a leading figure in the village. A
philanthropic member of Trinity Church, he also contributed to
other charitable institutions. His importing business had been
highly successful, thriving even during financial recessions when
others had failed. Just within the past year, she heard that R.
Brant & Sons had purchased at foreclosure a large, stone
building along the canal and then converted the bankrupt
harpsichord factory into a company warehouse.

And Brant, from all accounts, had been
devoted to his family—his wife, two sons, and a daughter-in-law—all
of whom lived in the one large house. A house which, now that
Glynis thought about it, stood so far back from the road that its
isolation might have been purposeful. While the place was being
built, carriage traffic on Fall Street had been snarled for days by
dray wagons weighted down with deliveries of live evergreen trees.
Almost everyone in town had been inconvenienced by this project,
and almost everyone speculated about its cost. And to what purpose?
Rather than move half-grown trees, why not simply plant seedlings
that would mushroom in a few years' time like every other tree in
western New York?

As she reached the gravel drive nearly
hidden from view by a thick stand of hemlock, Glynis realized she
hadn't noticed how dense the trees fronting the road had become;
she had little reason to pass this way often and especially not at
night. It looked as if a forest had sprung up there, and if she
hadn't known that a house sat somewhere behind it, she could have
missed the drive altogether. Although Cullen had been right about
the moon, and the lantern wasn't really necessary, she had no
intention of extinguishing it until he appeared. When a light
breeze ruffled her hair, it brought the sound of hoof beats from
down the road. It must be the Morgan, so she might as well start
for the house, for while the night held the balmy warmth of the
day, it would soon start to cool.

Gravel crunched under her high laced shoes
as she followed the initial curvature of the drive and almost
immediately wished she had waited. The hoof beats seemed to have
faded, though it could be the trees were so dense they absorbed the
sound. It hadn't occurred to her that the entire length of the
drive would be overgrown, but to either side of it the trees and
shrubs had been pruned back only enough to permit the passage of a
coach. Other than that, they'd been allowed to reach the height and
density of impenetrable walls. Clearly, the Brants preferred
privacy. Which meant they did not want intruders. What had Cullen
been thinking when he sent her here? Likely as not, he hadn't been
thinking about anything other than a murder taking place in his
town.

Holding the lantern before her, Glynis
raised her skirt with her free hand to walk more quickly and
searched her mind for a distraction. Just how good was a librarian
who couldn't recall a few random phrases to divert herself?
Something soothing, such as poetry. Someone trustworthy, such as
Longfellow. What did he write about murmuring pines and hemlock?
This is the forest primeval....

She should think of something else. While
she watched her feet, refusing to look anywhere but down, the lines
came to her in a rush:
Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care
/ Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are. I, Macbeth shall
never vanquished be until / Great Birnam Wood.. .

This was not helping. Her fixation with
woods
she could understand, but Macbeth? One of the most
notorious murderers in all of literature?

Quickening her pace, and searching for words
to curse Cullen's idea and her own spineless compliance with it,
she tripped over a tree branch lying in the gravel. The lantern
swayed and clanked while she regained her footing. With relief she
saw at some yards ahead a boundary to the nightmarish woods. Beyond
lay an open grassy expanse broken only by four or five lofty fir
trees, their lower branches pruned away so they resembled immense
umbrellas spread beside a rectangular, three-story,
Italianate-style house. Like many such houses, its architectural
design included a square, central tower as though endeavoring to
pass itself off as a castle. Glynis thought she saw shadows flit
before candlelight in the tower's top dormer window, but she could
locate only a few scattered lights in what must be the first-floor
rooms. Otherwise the house was dark. The flat-roofed structure had
a forbidding presence, squatting there amongst the firs like a
great brooding beast.

Since she could not hear the sound of
hooves, or of anything else behind her, and since she refused to
remain one second longer in the forest primeval, she cautiously
went forward, but wondered how Cullen planned to explain her
appearance to the Brant family. As she neared the house, she again
tripped, stumbling over something at the edge of the drive. Her
balance restored, she took a cautious step forward only to have the
toe of her shoe strike something substantial. She pulled aside some
hemlock boughs and lowered the lantern, bending down to look more
closely at what might be just another branch. But what she saw
shining there in the gravel simply could not be. She straightened,
thinking that a rush of blood to the head might be causing
delusions. Setting the lantern down on the gravel, she slowly bent
over again. And then she stared, disbelieving, at what appeared to
be the largest diamond ever taken from a mine. About the size of
the palm of her hand, its facets sparkled in the lantern light like
that of a translucent jewel.

When Glynis picked it up, however, its sheer
heft told her that what she held was a crystal paperweight. They
had first become popular in Europe several decades before—American
glass factories today were hard pressed to keep up with demand—but
this one resembled pictures of paperweights made by the famed
Baccarat factory of France. Had she not been standing on the drive
of an extremely wealthy man, this would have seemed an absurd idea;
but it was not, she decided, any more absurd than finding the
crystal to begin with, lying in the gravel like a carelessly
discarded rock.

What was she to do with it? The small velvet
reticule looped over her arm was not sturdy enough to bear its
weight. Yet she could hardly just leave it there. It was not only
valuable, it was also somewhat dangerous should a horseshoe or
carriage wheel strike it. She transferred the paperweight to her
left hand and, picking up the lantern with her right, again
proceeded toward the house.