Louisa and the Country Bachelor : A Louisa May Alcott Mystery (9781101547564) (27 page)

Abba and Anna had done an excellent job, combing his dark, wavy hair carefully over the spot in his skull by which he had been felled, and tying a lace cravat over the long gash in his throat. His hands were folded over his chest. He looked dissatisfied, I thought. And so he should be, to have been young and in love and have all that destroyed, all that taken from him.

“I am sorry, Clarence,” I said to him. “I suspected you of being a villain.” But I felt dissatisfied, as well. There was still the chance that he had been; being in love does not always guarantee a person will forever more do only good, and who is a more likely suspect to want to do away with an interfering brother than a lovelorn suitor? This is one of the greatest evils of death—it cuts short the truth, the possibility of discovering the truth.

Half an hour later, Mr. Wattles opened his library door, and I carried in the tea tray.

“Ah, Miss Louisa,” he said. “It was kind of your sister . . . What is her name? Anna? It was kind of her to come and attend to my sister, but I admit to some discomfort at having a stranger in the house, even if the stranger is a woman. Of course, you are harboring some unusual guests at the Alcott house.”

He was in his wheeled chair, with a lap robe over his legs and a shawl over his stooped shoulders. His white beard gleamed in the dim light.

“If you mean Llew, then be reassured he is as gentle a man as you could hope to find. May I put the tray on that table? It won't disrupt your papers. His involvement in the death of your nephew is accidental, I am convinced. He found him, but had no hand in the violence that . . .” I paused.

“That killed him, you were going to say,” said Mr. Wattles. “You are a writer. Don't shy from the words, Miss Louisa. And don't try to spare my feelings. They were destroyed long ago.”

I poured tea for both of us, though I could not drink mine. I paced, as I do when preoccupied with unresolved thoughts.

“Did you love your nephew?” I asked Mr. Wattles.

“Why, my dear, of course I did,” he said. He stroked his beard. “I have known him and helped Ida care for him all his life. She has had such misfortune with husbands. Clarence was a difficult child, unaffectionate and unbending, but he was family. One must love them, despite their faults, especially when we are the only ones who will probably ever love them.” He seemed very sad, very alone.

“I'm relieved to hear you say you loved Clarence,” I said. “He sometimes seemed very estranged from all of us. I often had the feeling that he wished to speak about something, but could not.”

“He was independent by choice, my dear, by choice. Young men will have it so.” Mr. Wattles finished his toast and yawned without hiding it. I took the tray into the pantry and spent the rest of the evening upstairs, on a chair in the hall, outside Ida's door, in case she should awaken. She did not.

Once, though, she did cry out, and I went in to check on her. She still slept, but fitfully, her eyes under their lids darting here and there, her hands making small grasping gestures, as if clutching at something. I lit a lamp, for sometimes even in sleep a light can bring some comfort. I spied a box on her dressing table, the kind in which women keep their sentimental trinkets and letters. My hesitation lasted only a moment; what was mere etiquette when lives were at stake? I lifted the lid. I found the telegram that announced the bell order that Jonah Tupper had never actually received. There were five or six penny cards in the box, all with much the same message:
Thinking of you. Send regards to Father. I am well
. Messages meant to reassure. Messages not sent by Jonah Tupper, but arranged by his murderer.

 

 

THE NEXT MORNING Sylvia arrived to watch over Ida so that I might go home and rest, and we had a hurried consultation. I walked outside to meet her on the porch, where we might talk. Dawn was turning the sky from gray to rosy, and the air smelled fresh and sweet, especially after the heavy atmosphere in Ida Tupper's house. I stretched and breathed in deeply, relieved to empty my lungs of the mustiness of Ida's house. I was physically exhausted, but my mind seemed to be dancing the same two steps over and over, to the music of Mr. Wattles's refrain,
We must love family
.

“Mrs. Tupper slept all night but will refuse food because of the drug,” I explained to Sylvia, whose ramrod posture indicated displeasure with the task she was determined to fulfill. Others might deem Sylvia flighty—I knew her to be as staunch as Gibraltar. “Try to force her to eat an egg or two, or at least some bread and butter. And use this only if necessary.” I gave Sylvia the bottle of laudanum.

“What about Mr. Wattles?” Sylvia looked terrified. Her own father had been so rarely present in her own life that mature men made her somewhat uneasy.

“I'll bring soup over at noon,” I said. “Otherwise, leave him be. He prefers his solitude.”

“Louy, before you go, I almost forgot to tell you. . . .”

“What, Sylvia?”

“Sheriff Bowman has arrested Mr. Dill. You remember him, the Irish laborer who was the recipient of the firewood your father gave away?”

I sighed heavily and felt, then, very tired indeed.

“On what basis?”

“That he was seen often in the neighborhood and he brawls on Saturday night. And they found some stolen things in his house. A silver cup and a garnet ring.”

“But not Ernst Nooteboom's gold watch? Then he has the wrong man,” I said. Sheriff Bowman had leaped to conclusions and made accusations on the flimsiest circumstances.

“He seems to require two murderers,” Sylvia added. “Llew is still under house arrest.”

 

 

UPON ABBA'S INSISTENCE, I slept late the next morning, and woke up just before noon to the sound of more rain on the roof and Father, housebound, pacing and muttering downstairs in his book-lined study.

“Isn't it the way?” he said, when he heard me come downstairs. “Deprive a man of work, make it impossible for him to care for his family and himself, and then accuse him of a crime. Where is the real crime here?”

I was barefoot and with my hair loose on my back, fresh from my morning rest, and Father gave me a peck on the cheek and tousled my hair, as he used to do when I was a small child.

“I think I preferred it when I was the sole suspect,” said Llew, who appeared behind Father. “Well, not really, if I am to be quite honest. I have a reasonable fear of hanging. What must you think of me, Louy? And I had so hoped for your highest esteem.”

Llew took my hands. His eyes were dark and large and searched into mine.

“You have my highest esteem. I know you are no more guilty of this crime than I could be, or Father.”

Father, seeing my hands in Llew's, cleared his throat. Llew and I stepped apart.

“I will always be your fondest sister,” I told Llew. I looked at the two men I loved most in the world, my father and my friend, and felt a new urgency that all of this must be set straight, order must be restored, truth must be victorious; else there would be no peace in the Alcott household, or in my friendships, for once a man has been accused he must be proven innocent, even if he is never proven guilty, or the stain lasts his lifetime.

“Where are you going, Louy?”

I ran back upstairs to don my afternoon dress and linen coat.

“Remind Anna to send soup over to Sylvia,” I answered.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

MY NEW WALPOLE acquaintances, those I knew by name and those I knew only to nod to as we passed, were friendlier that afternoon, since Mr. Dill had been arrested. He was, after all, one of theirs even if he was a fairly recent import from Ireland, not one of the “Boston crowd,” and so my family had achieved an early vindication at Mr. Dill's expense. Hats were tipped and “good days” exchanged as I walked to the main square. Several people shyly inquired about Mrs. Kemble's health and indicated that they would be happy to host a party or dinner in her honor, but I gave the response that Fanny had required me to give: Mrs. Kemble was in the country for a rest, thank you, and too exhausted for calling, but I would relay the kind thoughts to her.

“Such a shame about Jonah,” added one woman. “Such a terrible shame. We thought something strange was going on, but never thought he might actually be dead.” The woman shuddered with a kind of delight.

I nodded.
It's difficult to believe that someone is dead when his penny cards keep arriving in the mail,
I thought to myself. Whoever arranged that had a cruel heart, indeed. Again I thought of Clarence and wished with all my heart that on those occasions when he had opened his mouth to speak, and then decided in favor of silence, why, I wished I had forced him with all my ability to say what was on his mind. It was not inconceivable that Clarence had been involved in Jonah's death. And if I thought so, so would Jonah's father, and he was a man of anger and violence, the kind of man who would require revenge. Both young men had been beaten and then had their throats slit; either they had been killed by the same man (and I could think of no reason why that should be), or the second murder had been an imitation of the first, as part of the revenge.

Of course, the problem was that the murder of Jonah wasn't discovered until after the murder of Clarence—unless Mr. Tupper had discovered that grave himself earlier, and had decided to take his own revenge rather than going to Sheriff Bowman. Mr. Tupper could have waited for the right moment, and found it when so many had gathered at our house for dinner, when Clarence stepped out alone to go to the cellar.

Mr. Tupper, as did many shopkeepers, lived in rooms above his store. I went through the double door that separated storeroom from front display room, up the narrow, creaking wooden stairs. The stairwell walls were papered over with old flour and rice sacks and an occasional picture calendar from previous years, to keep out drafts. A few newspaper pages were glued up as well, with various advertisements circled in grease pencil—all advertisements of land for sale. The only light came from one small glazed window that was murky with years of dust and dead-fly speckles.

At the top of the stairs I knocked at the only door. “Go away,” his deep voice answered my knock. The words were slurred.

I knocked harder. “It is Miss Louisa,” I called.

Silence. Then heavy steps approaching in an irregular pace. The door opened. Mr. Tupper glared out at me, looking almost demonic. His red hair stood on end; his mustachios were drooped over his lip, looking more like monstrous teeth than hair. His red-checked shirt was hanging out of his pants, and his suspenders fell past his hips, revealing the gray long johns that some country folk wear even in summer. He looked old.

“You,” he growled. He took my arm, pulled me into the room, and slammed the door shut. I looked around for some weapon and settled on an empty bottle, which I picked up and grasped in my fist.

He laughed. “You think I would hurt you? I could squash you like a fly.” To make his point he stomped his boot on the floor and ground it into the carpet. “But why would I? Why?” He started to weep. “Why my boy?”

He wept as though his heart were breaking, with big gasping sobs and rivulets of tears staining his distorted face. I did what I thought Abba would do. I put down the weapon-bottle, knelt beside him on the floor, and forced his head onto my shoulder.

He quieted after a while, snuffling and wiping his nose with his fists. I gave him my handkerchief.

“Thank you,” he said in a small voice. “Please take a chair, Miss Louisa.”

I sat in the chair. He sat across from me in the other. I studied the room while he struggled to further regain his composure. It was poorly furnished, as if its occupant gave no thought to his own comfort. The collected objects and disorder—hunting rifles leaning against the wall, a bow and arrow, a set of horseshoes for gaming, several decks of cards, and empty bottles—made it clear there was no Mrs. Tupper to care for the home, nor had there been for quite some time. Only the faded red-checked curtains, the yellowed lace trim on the shelves, indicated a wife had once shared these rooms; only a carved wood bassinet, now filled with old ledgers and papers, indicated there had once been a child to bring comfort and joy to husband and wife.

Gone. I wondered how Mrs. Tupper had died, but knew it was not the time to ask. Mr. Tupper had other griefs weighting him down.

“I am so sorry about your son, Mr. Tupper,” I said when I thought he was calm again.

“What was he to you?” The bristling anger was back.

“It's true I never met him. But any death wounds us all, and I fear you have been greatly wounded by this loss.”

“Is that philosophy? From your father?”

“No. From me. From my heart.”

He sighed again, so heavily, so raggedly, I could almost hear the tearing of his own heart.

“Yes. I am wounded. A man works to acquire a home, a name, a business, money, land. Why? For his son. And his son's son. Now what?” He stared out his window, a glazed pane as murky as the one in the stairwell. “Now what?” he repeated in a dead voice.

“Mr. Tupper, it is time for the truth,” I said.

“And what truth would that be?” He sneered, then looked at my handkerchief, which he still held, and his face softened again.

“The day Ernst Nooteboom died, were you there?”

Again that ragged, heart-tearing sigh. He ran his fingers through his disordered red hair.

“I was. I asked Ernst to meet me there, to talk about the land. I wanted to buy the lot he had purchased two years before, and to sweeten the offer I was going to give him that piece of the mountain, where we met. Told him that someday the mountain would be worth something, that in Europe they build resorts and health spas in the mountains and we would too, once the summer visitors started to come, after the train was finished.”