Louisa and the Country Bachelor : A Louisa May Alcott Mystery (9781101547564) (24 page)

Gossip from the picnic, I thought. I rose, protesting.

“Sit down, Miss Louisa,” said Officer Bowman. “This is men's work. I ask you and your mother to now depart the room.”

“We will not!” said Abba. “This is my home, and this is my family. I stay, and Louisa stays.”

Officer Bowman took such a deep breath of exasperation his shoulders rose with it, then fell as he breathed it out. During my walks down Main Street I had sometimes seen this man with his wife and daughters. He strutted as he walked ahead of them. They followed meekly, heads bowed.

“Llew is your son?” Officer Bowman directed his question to Father.

“In a manner of speaking,” Father said. “We have known him many, many years. He is a good boy, a thoughtful boy. He is a scientist and a philosopher,” said Father, as if that proved beyond all doubt that Llew was incapable of violence.

“Well, this is a murder, and charges will be made against someone,” said Officer Bowman. “The next grand jury meets in three weeks' time. I'll ask you to stay in Walpole until then. You are under house arrest.”

That last comment was made to Llew, who nodded.

“You will vouch for him?” he asked Father.

“I will.”

“Then take Clarence Hampton home. We are done here.”

“Not quite,” I said, standing between Sheriff Bowman and the door so that he would be forced to listen. “There is one other element that must be mentioned.”

“And that is what, Miss Louisa?” The sheriff all but sneered.

“Clarence Hampton was dressed in Uncle Benjamin's cape and hat, and it was dark in the cellar. What if the murderer struck the wrong man?”

Abba collapsed onto the sofa with a little shriek. “He wanted to kill Benjamin Willis? My brother-in-law?” she asked faintly.

“I think it must be considered a possibility till proven otherwise,” I said.

Sheriff Bowman dangled his hat in his hands and studied his shoes. When he looked back up, there was a new gleam, almost of respect, in his eye.

“You've got a point,” he admitted.

“Who?” asked Abba, dazed, when the sheriff had gone and it was again just family and close friends in the parlor. “Who could do this?” She rose stiffly and went back into that dining room to sit with the mortal remains of Clarence Hampton.

Who?

It was dusk by the time Abba had finished repairing Clarence's body as well as she could. Dusk, and already a crowd of curiosity seekers had gathered before our front door, gawking. A stone was thrown at the door, and a boy's voice cried, “Let us see the murderer!” Llew cringed.

Word spreads even faster in towns than cities.

 

 

AT EIGHT O'CLOCK, Dr. Burroughs and Mr. Bowman returned with six men to carry Clarence Hampton back to his mother. The Alcotts and Sylvia walked behind that covered litter in a show of respect for the deceased and sympathy for the mother. Llew had been required to stay at the cottage, under house arrest, forbidden to even step onto the front porch.

Ida Tupper was waiting for us in her doorway.

She threw herself at the litter when it arrived, and began to wail. Her eyes were large and dark and luminous from laudanum. She looked stunned, even surprised, as if the death of a son were a grief for other women, not herself. I suppose all parents feel—and hope—the same until the cruel discovery that they and theirs are mortally assailable.

Mr. Wattles, from his wheeled chair, directed the carrying in of the body of his nephew, Clarence Hampton. He muttered to himself and stroked his beard, and held his arms open so that Ida might weep on his breast, but in her agony she turned from him and buried her streaming face in her hands. I thought I had never seen a family so devastated by grief.

“I will stay with her,” said Anna, taking Ida by the arm and guiding her back into the house.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WE NONE OF us slept well that night. I tossed and turned, all too aware of the grief emanating from that house next door to ours and aware of my failure: I had sensed danger and had not been able to forestall it. In my mind I went over and over the details of the two mysteries, the murder of Clarence Hampton and the murder of Ernst Nooteboom, for the violent death of one made me more convinced that Ernst's death was also no accident, just as Lilli had maintained.

As a young girl I once took a dancing lesson at Sylvia's house with an Italian dancing master. He was all the rage in Boston at the time and making a fine living, going from mansion to mansion on Beacon Hill and Commonwealth Avenue with his little black bag full of his slippers, gloves, and metronome. He had waxed mustachios and little black eyes as dark as his black patent dancing shoes. I thought of him and how he would tap our ankles with his cane if we did not quite leap high enough. “Higher,” he would say, as if we were circus animals. “Girls, you must jump higher.”

Louisa,
I told myself, you must jump higher.
You have let your wits grow dull with this concept of vacation, and now someone else has died.

Just before dawn I heard another sleepless person moving about downstairs and guessed it was Llew. Sweet, poor Llew, now under a dangerous cloud of suspicion. I knew how it looked to Sheriff Bowman: Llew had gone to the cellar looking for Clarence Hampton, and come back to tell us he wasn't there. Next day Mr. Hampton was discovered dead in that very cellar by Llew, who returned covered in blood and carrying the murder weapon.

Of course, no hard-hearted murderer would return carrying the weapon and therefore giving himself away in such a manner, but I wasn't convinced Sheriff Bowman would see it that way. Finally, I slept, my head aching and heavy with violent dreams.

 

 

WHEN I AWOKE later the kitchen downstairs was empty. Abba was spending the day at Ida Tupper's house, and Anna and my younger sisters were in the garden, drawing and reading. Llew was in the library, pretending to study, and Father sat next to him, likewise pretending. The philosopher was rarely so distracted with the affairs of this world that he could not concentrate, but today was one of those days. He realized the full danger for Llew—circumstances pointed to his implication, a trial might find him guilty, and murderers are hanged. That we, the Alcotts, loved him and trusted him explicitly might not prevent that worst of all possible miscarriages of justice: the execution of an innocent man.

Jump,
I told myself, peering in at them. I went back to the kitchen to make our noon meal and my plans. This I had learned from Abba: Delicate and complex arrangements are best made over the dicing of carrots and peeling of potatoes—though I suspected none of us would have a taste for potatoes. For our soup that day I rolled a batch of egg noodles.

And I thought.

Who. Not Llew. The blood on his hands, the weapon in his possession, that he found the body—those facts meant nothing, for Llew's innocence would be the basis of my investigation. Who would want Clarence Hampton dead? He had a fast reputation and there had been suggestions of a secret liaison, but fathers rarely beat young men to death for that. If the flirting had turned to actual seduction? I must look and listen more closely to this community. Were any Walpolian maidens looking plumper than usual?

I poured flour onto the table and began rolling biscuits, after the noodles were cut and left to dry a bit.

I thumped away at the biscuit dough—they would be none too tender, but I was thankful the Alcotts had sound teeth because sweets were usually beyond our means.

Along with the why and who, I realized, was a third question: How did the murder of Clarence Hampton connect with the murder of Ernst Nooteboom? It was beyond the possibility of coincidence for two young men to die in a small town, so soon within each other, and not have those deaths be connected. Mr. Tupper Sr.'s voice called through my thoughts:
He fell. It was an accident
. Mr. Tupper was the connection. He had tried to force business dealings onto Ernst, and he was Clarence's stepgrandfather. He might have been worried that his daughter-in-law's child would inherit all he worked to accumulate, and he made it plain he did not care for his daughter-in-law. The two had not exchanged visits all the while I had been in Walpole.

I gave the biscuits another pounding. Who else would murder Clarence Hampton? A business rival. Greed, rather than revenge or passion, as the motive. But Hampton had no business except his small trade in fossils and handy jobs. I sighed. That could again implicate Llew, who also was a fossil hunter. It was not a motive, but it was another connection.
Look elsewhere
, I told myself.
Jump
.

The land. That wounded gash in the earth where the railroad ended. Mr. Tupper had wanted to buy it, but how did that connect to Clarence?

Ernst Nooteboom, who had fallen from the cliff so close to Clarence's campsite. Had that been murder, and had revenge now been taken? I tried to imagine Lilli with a knife, with blood on her white hands. I could not. But then . . . perhaps. I knew so little about her, really. She had accused Mr. Tupper of the deed, but perhaps that had been a decoy. And accusations had been made about Lilli, about a beau her brother would not accept, quarrels with that brother.

A red cardinal chirped outside the kitchen window and peered in at me, tilting its bright head. Lilli's land. Everyone was attempting to gain ownership, it seemed, every male of Walpole except Jonah Tupper, who was missing.

Jonah Tupper. I put down the flour sifter so hastily it thumped, and a cloud of flour rose up like a volcanic eruption, then settled down over the table. Maybe father and son were in on this together. Maybe all of his so-called commercial traveling had been a way to establish alibis.

I looked at the uneven, lumpy mass of dough on the table before me. I had never been known as a good biscuit cook. Perhaps it would be wiser to purchase a dozen from Tupper's General Store.

Sylvia came into the kitchen wearing her strange high-collared costume and looked surprisingly serene for a young woman who had participated in the recovery of a brutally murdered bachelor from the potato cellar the day before.

“I do not know how men got along without good faith. ‘A cart without a yoke and a carriage without harness'—how could they go?” she said, tilting her blond head much in the same manner that the cardinal at the window had tilted hers.

“That is Confucius, I suppose.”

“It is.”

“What does it mean, Sylvia?”

“I'm not quite certain.”

“I think it means we must find our own answers; they will not come to us.”

 

 

MAIN STREET WAS subdued that afternoon. Everyone in town had heard, by then, of the dead body of Clarence Hampton found in our cellar, and I admit that more than a few women pulled their skirts aside as we passed, so that we would not touch them. Guilt by association.

Mr. Tupper's counter girl suggested we look for him in Crabtree's Tavern House, the next street over.

“We can't,” Sylvia protested, pulling at my arm to slow me down.

“We will,” I insisted.

Reader, I knew the rules as well as any woman. Unescorted women do not go into pubs, and even escorted ones sit in the females-only room, having been deposited there by father, brother, or son. But rules that stand as hurdles to truth beg to be broken. I broke that one. I pushed open the double swinging doors and entered Crabtree's, followed by loyal Sylvia.

The single large room was surprisingly dark for midday, perhaps because the walls, floor, and ceiling were all wooden and stained by years of thick cigar smoke. Sylvia and I wove our way among the tables and chairs, several of which contained card games in progress, looking for Mr. Tupper. All conversation in that room ceased. A burly-looking counterman knit his brows and came out from behind his workstation, barreling at us like a runaway carriage. I knew we were about to be forceably expelled from this male bastion. I spied Mr. Tupper in a far corner, and called his name loudly.

He looked up. There was no surprise on his face, as one would have expected, only irritation.

“Here comes trouble. I knew it when I first beheld you,” he muttered. “I'll handle this, Sam. Save my beer for me. Outside, ladies.” He pointed at the door.

“You have heard of the discovery,” I said, when I had reversed my path through the swinging doors and stood in the bright sunlight again.

“Who hasn't? The famous Alcotts of Boston have a murdered man in their cellar.” His voice was gleeful. “Soon as you said you were a guest of Ben Willis I knew you'd be no good.”

I chose to ignore that last statement for the moment. But I would get back to it. “Then you know it is Clarence Hampton who has been murdered. Your daughter-in-law's son.”

“He were a no-good layabout, and the family is better off without him.”

Well. That was harsh but sincere, I guessed. “Did you wish his death?”

Tupper glared. “I did not. I barely thought about him.”

“Now that can't be true,” I contradicted. “If your son and Ida do not produce children, then Clarence Hampton might well have become your heir. And I heard there will be much to inherit.”

Mr. Tupper's eyebrows knitted and he peered menacingly at me from under them. “Leave this alone and go back to Boston, where you belong,” he said.

“I cannot. Not yet. Did you hear that whoever killed Clarence might have believed he was murdering my uncle instead? Clarence Hampton was wearing Uncle Ben's cape and hat when he was murdered in the dark.”

“Now wait a minute—”

“I distinctly heard you say, some weeks ago, that the town would be better off without him, that you yourself would prefer to see him dead,” I said quietly but forcefully. “I will testify to those statements.”