Things Half in Shadow (21 page)

At that moment, I'm certain there wasn't a beet in Philadelphia as red as my face. The nerve of that woman! I wanted to tell her that she certainly didn't need to blackmail me nor did she have to become a swindler in the first place, but I was too flustered. All that came out of my mouth was a single, unintelligible noise that sounded something like,
“Gah!”

Lucy's eyes widened and her mouth formed a perfect, mirthful circle. She held a gloved hand to her mouth, trying to halt the torrent of laughter about to arrive. Instead, it only muffled the sound.

I couldn't help but laugh, too. It was either that or throttle her right there in the cemetery, and I was in enough hot water. So we both let our laughter rise in the burial ground until it echoed off its brick-walled border. When it subsided, Lucy pressed a hand against her flushed cheek and said, “Oh, Edward, what are we going to do?”

Despite my anger, I found myself softening upon hearing her use my first name. “There's nothing we can do but wait until our names are cleared.”

“There has to be a better alternative than that. What if you wrote something in the
Bulletin
proclaiming our innocence?”

“As of this morning, I no longer write for the
Bulletin
,” I said. “At least not until the matter of Mrs. Pastor's death is settled.”

Rather than expressing sympathy, Lucy's response was a frustrated, “Well, we must do
something
.”

“We will be found innocent,” I said. “It may take a day or two, but Inspector Barclay will discover who did this to Mrs. Pastor.”

Lucy removed herself from Commodore Truxton's headstone and resumed walking through the cemetery, aimless and anxious. “We can't simply wait and hope our names will be cleared. That could take weeks, perhaps years. I won't have a customer left if it takes that long. And think of your beloved Miss Willoughby. Eventually, she'll get tired of being engaged to a murder suspect and find someone more suitable to marry.”

“What do you suggest we do?” I asked.

“We clear our names by ourselves.”

“And how might we do that?”

“It's simple,” Lucy said. “We combine our efforts and solve Mrs. Pastor's murder.”

I replied with another outburst of laughter, one so loud and forceful I was certain it could be heard even by the dead who occupied that hallowed ground.

“It's not as ridiculous as all that,” Lucy said.

But it was. The two of us playing detective! It was the most ridiculous notion I had ever heard. Neither of us knew the first thing about solving crime, especially one as heinous as murder. We'd be entirely out of our element.

“I think we should leave the police work to the actual police,” I said. “Inspector Barclay will solve this particular puzzle. I'm certain of it.”

“And what if he doesn't?” Lucy asked. “What if your inspector friend never identifies the culprit?”

Granted, I hadn't thought of that. But now that the idea was in my head, I couldn't rid myself of it. There were unsolved murders all
the time in Philadelphia. On occasion, I'd heard Barclay moan about how he regretted never finding the person who had shot this man or strangled that woman. It was very possible Mrs. Pastor's death could end up like one of those—forever a mystery, a shadow of suspicion always hanging over us.

“All right. Let's for the moment pretend that I agree to this plan,” I said. “How do you think we could go about it?”

“Well, you've reported on crimes such as murder,” Lucy answered. “Surely you've learned something about how to solve them.”

Her assumption was correct, although at that moment I wished I had paid more attention to the various crime scenes I'd visited. I had also learned a thing or two from Barclay, who enjoyed regaling me with stories of past crimes on nights when both of us had had slightly too much ale. I knew, for instance, that blood patterns on walls and floors could be studied to determine from which direction a bullet had been fired. That the angle and depth of a knife wound could show you what hand a culprit favored. And I learned that in cases of murder, an inspector's first instinct was often the correct one.

“But what skills do you bring?” I asked Lucy.

She gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders. “I don't have any. But I know plenty of people who do.”

Of that, I had no doubt. She was, after all, the woman who'd persuaded Mathew Brady himself to show up at my doorstep and take my photograph.

“You're considering it,” she said, watching me closely. “I can tell. You want the shadow of this crime to be gone from your life as much as I do.”

I did, very much so, which was why I replied, “If we were to do this—and I'm not saying I will—how do you propose we start our investigation?”

“Clearly, someone in that room killed Mrs. Pastor. According to Inspector Barclay, the means was poison. But what about motive? I
think we first need to uncover
why
Mrs. Pastor was killed. So I suggest we return to the scene of the crime, the Pastor residence, and talk to the person who knew Mrs. Pastor the best—her husband.”

She had clearly given the matter a good deal of thought. Yet the more I considered it, the more it seemed like the wrong course of action. Robert Pastor was, after all, a suspect, just like us.

“I think we should speak to someone else,” I said. “Someone who knew Mrs. Pastor almost as well as her husband, if not better.”

“Such as?”

I thought back to an hour earlier, when I'd listened in on Lionel and Mrs. Patterson gossiping about me. They'd spoken with alarming candor, as if I were a scandalized neighbor and not the man paying their wages.

“The servants,” I said decisively. “We need to question Mrs. Pastor's household staff. They know everything that went on in that house. And I have a feeling they'll be very willing to share it with us.”

S
hortly thereafter, Lucy and I stood outside the home of the late Lenora Grimes Pastor. While I hadn't officially agreed to her plan, she took my suggestion as an affirmative answer and whisked me to the scene of the crime. I was only going along with it on the chance that we might learn something important, which Barclay could then use to clear our names.

Normally, I would have felt wrong visiting a house in mourning so soon after a death. The rules of Philadelphia society dictated that only the closest of family members and friends could immediately call. Yet there were no signs that it truly was a house of mourning. No black crepe hung over the door or windows. Someone passing
on the street, unaware of Mrs. Pastor's fate, would think it was an average day for the household.

The door was answered by the same mighty oak of a butler who had greeted us two nights earlier. Only the gentle, smiling face we saw then had been replaced by one that was deeply saddened.

“If you came round to pay your respects to Mister Pastor,” he said, “he ain't home.”

“Actually, we're here to see you,” I said.

“And the servant girl,” Lucy added. “And anyone else who might be in service to the Pastors.”

The butler was rightfully suspicious. Doubt furrowed his brow as he said, “That don't make much sense, if y'all pardon me saying so.”

He was right in that regard. It didn't make a lick of sense. Yet there we were on the doorstep, not knowing what to say next. A fine pair of detectives we were.

“We're sorry for disturbing you,” I said. “It was wrong of us to come.”

I made a move off the front steps, but Lucy grabbed me by the elbow and squeezed. She had a wicked grip, that woman, which held me in place as she stated our case to the butler.

“What's your name again?” she asked.

“Stokely, ma'am.”

“Well, Stokely, this morning I was speaking to my own servants about Mrs. Pastor's passing. They spoke of how saddened they would be if a similar thing happened to me. ‘Mrs. Collins,' they told me, ‘we'd be overwhelmed with grief if you ever died on us. We'd have nowhere to go and no one to talk to.' Hearing that, naturally, made me think of
you
.”

It was the biggest lie I had ever heard. A cruder man than I would have correctly classified it as “horseshit.” But it was a convincing one, aided by Lucy's sympathetic tone and the batting of her beautiful green eyes. I would have believed it myself if I hadn't
known any better, so it was no surprise that the butler took it to be God's honest truth.

“That's right kind of you, ma'am,” he said, widening the door. “Come in, but you can't be long. Mister Pastor will be comin' back any minute now.”

We entered the humble foyer, seeing no signs of mourning there, either. Stokely's clothes, I noted, also gave no indication that someone had died. Usually, it was customary for servants to wear a black armband.

“You can sit a spell in here, if you'd like,” Stokely said, gesturing to the very sitting room where Mrs. Pastor had died.

“Since Mr. Pastor will be home shortly,” Lucy said, “and since we certainly don't want to bother him in this time of mourning, perhaps our visit will be made faster if I seek out the servant girl on my own.”

“You mean Claudia?”

“Yes. I believe that was her name.”

“She's upstairs,” Stokely said. “But I'm tellin' you now, she ain't gonna say nothin'.”

Lucy, undeterred, offered him a wave of thanks before climbing the staircase just beyond the front door. I followed Stokely into the sitting room, which was only slightly less of a mess than two nights before. Instruments were still scattered everywhere, including the massive harp stuck in the floorboards. The chairs and tables had been set right, but the broken lamps were now in a pile of glass shards on the floor. Next to it was a streak of blackened wood. The site of the fire.

Stokely picked up a nearby brush and dustpan and began to sweep up the wreckage of the lamps, leading me to ask, “Is this where Mrs. Pastor will be lying in state?”

“No, sir. She's gonna be buried as soon as she comes home. That's the Quaker way, see. They live plain. They don't much care for them big funerals or all that mournin'. Missus Pastor once told
me the best way to pay your respects is to live the way the one who passed lived. I'm gonna try. For her sake.”

Stokely dumped the contents of the dustpan into the trash. When he returned for seconds, he said, “Now, you gonna tell me why you really came 'round? I know it ain't 'cause you're worried about the help.”

Of course he hadn't believed us. It was foolish of me to ever think he had.

“We wanted to ask the two of you some questions,” I admitted. “About the night Mrs. Pastor died.”

Stokely set the brush and dustpan aside to move on to the instruments. He placed the smaller ones on the tables and set the bigger ones upright while saying, “Why do you want to waste your time talkin' to us?”

“Because we're trying to find out who killed her.”

“Accordin' to the papers, either of
you
might have done it.”

I must have looked surprised, because Stokely let out an annoyed huff and said, “Yes'sir, I read the papers. Missus Pastor taught me how to read. First thing she done when I got here. Taught me readin'. Taught me some math. Tried to teach me writin', but I didn't take to it.”

“How long did you work for her?”

“Eleven years.”

“That's a very long time,” I said, thinking about the three months Lionel had worked for me. Although a capable butler, I envisioned him leaving sooner rather than later. And after overhearing what he'd said about me, I had a feeling it would be very soon indeed.

“I met Missus Pastor in January 1858,” Stokely said. “Knew from the minute I met her that she was different from most ladies. Right special, see? And kind. No one as kind as her.”

“Were you always a servant?”

“No, sir,” Stokely said, picking up Mrs. Pastor's tambourine and dropping it on the table. “I was a slave. And they are two very different things.”

He moved to the harp, nudging it back and forth in an attempt to pry it from the floorboards. However, his sheer size proved no match for the heavy instrument. After watching him make a few more grunting tries, I jumped in to help. It took more effort than I expected, the harp being as stubborn and heavy as a hay-fattened mule. But together we managed to dislodge it from the floor and lift it to sturdier ground.

While the effort left me winded, it made Stokely, who had manned the heavier end of the harp, positively drenched with sweat. I offered him a handkerchief, which he used to mop his face.

“Much obliged,” he said. “I don't know 'bout you, but that left me thirstin' for an iced tea. You want a glass?”

“If you're having one, then yes.”

We left the sitting room and set off down the hall to a kitchen at the back of the house. It was a sunny room, warm and comforting. Hanging from the green-painted walls were a skillet, a calendar, and a rectangular slate with the words
HOUSEHOLD NEEDS
written on it in chalk. According to the slate, the Pastor household was in need of potatoes, flour, and a tin of Earl Grey tea. Just beyond the slate was a door leading to the cellar. Through the open doorway, I spotted a few crooked shelves, a patch of brick wall, and a single wooden step. Nearby was a stove that looked brand new; a sink with an indoor water pump; and a very large, very expensive icebox. For people who liked to live plain, the amenities in the Pastors' kitchen had cost quite a pretty penny.

Stokely led me to a woodblock table in the middle of the room. Already sitting out was a pitcher of iced tea.

“If you want, you can ask me a question or two,” he said as he fetched a glass from the sink and filled it for me. “I'll try best as I can to answer.”