Too Soon for Flowers (12 page)

With a frown, Longfellow looked away from the girl’s still figure to the untroubled world outside the windows, where the road had begun to see movement. “What about burial?” he asked abruptly. “We’ll assure the village we’ve taken all precautions, but with no clear cause, they’re
going to think the worst. I doubt they will be happy with either of us, Tucker.”

While the men spoke further on the subject, Charlotte wandered from the bed to the open window, feeling increasingly ill and looking for a distraction. There was her rosemary, and next to it the young cherry tree she and Aaron had planted, which now required a light pruning. She set her hands on the frame, then removed them with surprise. Though Lem had recently repainted it, a few scratches already marred the sill down to the wood, in an arc suspiciously like the width of a large paw. With a slight smile she fingered the pattern, deciding they would have to take care of it before the weather got in. Some things, at least, could easily be fixed, and forgiven. Others could not.

Mrs. Willett’s mind wandered farther, drawn out into the garden by the beginnings of the same shimmer she’d seen earlier. It was an effect often noticed during an afternoon of high heat, yet it did seem out of place now, with the morning so cool. She peered more closely at the pot of rosemary lately moved to its summer home, after spending the coldest months in the glass house. Rosemary, for remembrance … what was it she sensed as she stared at the green plant, the light, the garden beyond? Surely, there was something….

She heard her neighbor speak behind her. “We’ll wake the boy first. But say nothing,” Longfellow warned as he led Dr. Tucker from the room.

Lem was soon brought in. At first, he yawned and wondered at the advanced hour of the morning. Then he saw Phoebe, and his mouth worked as he tried to speak, but could find no words.

“She’s been dead several hours,” Mrs. Willett told him softly, reaching for his hand. “Did you hear anything last night? Did Phoebe cry out?”

“I heard her talking to Will …”

“Loudly?”

“No, but I didn’t want to listen, so I closed the window and went on reading … until I forgot to cut the candle wick. When it guttered out and I didn’t want to get up, I went to sleep.”

“You remember nothing else?” asked Longfellow.

“I remember the moonlight when I woke later. Just after the clock struck three.”

While the boy spoke, Hannah had crept into the doorway. Now, gasping, she fell back against the wall in a swoon. Charlotte hurried to console her.

Lem then found a question of his own. “Has anyone told Will?”

Charlotte looked to Richard Longfellow. “No one’s seen him this morning.”

“Hannah, have you sent him on some sort of errand?” asked Longfellow. The boy’s mother only moaned softly, and brought her apron to her face.

“He’ll be able to take care of himself,” Charlotte assured her gently, with as much conviction as she could muster.

“Oh, Will!” Hannah wailed.

“I will go and wake my sister,” Longfellow decided abruptly, turning on his heel.

“There’s no need to bring her down,” the doctor called after him, but as the others could have told him, Diana Longfellow made such decisions for herself.

Sure enough, in two minutes the young lady sailed into the room, expressing disbelief that they all should have misread the situation so—for it clearly could not be as bad as her brother believed. When she had truly looked at the girl on the bed, she fell silent for several moments—until she found a reason to doubt even her own eyes.

“There is an illustration in my book of plays upstairs, Charlotte, of Juliet. She appeared dead, you know, but she
wasn’t—she’d only taken a sleeping potion. Have you given her a good shaking? No—I suppose—but perhaps—if she is dead … could it be she swallowed something far worse?”

“I don’t know why she would,” Richard Longfellow finally answered. “Do you?”

“No, I don’t
know
why, but—”

Diana pointed to the empty glass on the table next to Phoebe’s bed. Her brother picked it up. Carefully, he examined its dried brown dregs, first with his eye, then with quivering nostrils.

“Cider,” he pronounced, setting the glass down again. “Diana, did you talk to Miss Morris last evening?”

His sister nodded. “Some time before dinner, and she did seem quite agitated—as, of course, we
all
are! But then she went into her room to rest, and Mr. Pelham came, so I talked with
him
, alone. We sat there in the large room. After Mr. Pelham left, I went to see what Hannah was cooking. After
that
, I went upstairs, and called for only a little rice pudding. I meant to come down again, but I never did. Richard, might she not have done something extremely foolish? What is it she was reading?”

Longfellow picked up the volume from the table.

“Only Pope,” he answered. “Hardly the sort of thing to excite a modern young woman unduly.”

“But … if I had only come down again and talked to her … do you suppose she’d be alive still?”

Something new in her eyes decided him. “No sense staying here any longer,” said her brother, taking Diana by the shoulders and turning her around. He had soon marched her into the sunny kitchen, where he sat her down, found the pot of tea, poured one cup, and then another for himself. Recalling her own duties, Hannah wiped her eyes and set out toasted bread and preserves, with more chunks of sugar to pound down for the tea.

Then, officially, Longfellow instructed them to close
the study door, and keep it closed until a decision was made by the selectmen and the constable.

“Are you going to look for Will?” Hannah asked tremulously, for Longfellow had said no more of her son’s disappearance.

“I’ll ask if anyone has seen him, Hannah. Since he’s gone, I have to assume he’s aware that Phoebe is dead—and he must have felt her death more keenly than we. He’ll be better off by himself, while he finds his way through the beginning of the suffering that must come.”

Knowing that he understood a lover’s sorrow, Hannah forced herself to agree with Longfellow’s conclusion.

“As for the girl,” he went on, “I will go and inform Reverend Rowe—though God knows I don’t relish the task. Do you wish to join me, Mrs. Willett?”

“I’ll stay here,” Charlotte decided, “and do what I can.”

Dr. Tucker voiced his approval. “Make sure everyone keeps warm and continues to eat. We should be able to move her shortly,” he added quietly.

Promising himself a large brandy long before then, Richard Longfellow led the doctor out of Mrs. Willett’s kitchen door, and back across the garden to his own.

A
LONE IN HIS
study, Richard Longfellow found himself perplexed, as he felt his active mind sink once more into a black humor. That was to be expected, he supposed, with a young woman lying dead only a few yards away.

But there was more to it than that. With no immediate answer to the question of cause, he could not help but wonder if he himself might be at least partly to blame. After all, he had chosen Benjamin Tucker to perform the inoculations. Had the man somehow failed in his duties? It was clear now that Tucker had a tendency toward excessive indulgence, at least in drink, which must indicate a weakness. Yet, regardless, physicians could not always be successful—as he knew from bitter experience.

But what if his own idea had been a dreadful mistake? No, there was no reason to suspect the powder, and he refused to think of it, at least for the present. After all, Diana
was well, and she, too, had been given the stuff. But he vowed to watch his sister’s condition more closely, as long as she remained in Dr. Tucker’s care.

For a moment, as he looked about the familiar room, Richard Longfellow pondered something even more strange. He sometimes suspected that Cicero had a queer idea about the Howard farmhouse. It did seem that Death stopped there more often than he visited others. Could the place be some kind of infernal magnet? His sister was still in the house—with Charlotte. Dear God—might they, too, be yet in danger?

Swiftly berating himself for even imagining such superstitious nonsense, he set down his brandy. Then he returned to what he knew to be the facts of the matter before him, though they were admittedly few.

Was it to be death by natural causes, then? He, Tucker, the other selectmen, and Constable Wise would have to decide upon an answer. Everything, after all, had to have a reason, for the physical world did not operate by magic! It would be well, though, if the girl’s father could be given something beyond condolences, when he found his daughter had died in Bracebridge. But what, exactly, could they tell him?

Rowe, he suspected, would be quick to blame the inoculation, having made his opposition clear from the pulpit. But if smallpox was not the cause of Phoebe Morris’s death, and if no other natural morbidity could be discovered during a closer examination of the body (which the doctor had promised to undertake that afternoon, after they’d moved her)—then what other reason could there be? What was most often considered, he asked himself, in the case of an unexplained death?

Human agency, of course, was one possibility. Diana’s feminine mind had immediately suspected that Phoebe took her own life, perhaps while affected by some sort of romantic madness. But had they knowledge that might
lead them to believe the girl had any such desire? And where would she have found the means? On the face of it, the idea seemed implausible.

Mrs. Willett was concerned that Will Sloan was nowhere to be found. And the boy’s own mother clearly seemed to fear his involvement. High emotion between lovers often enough did turn deadly. It was something to consider.

But if it had not been Phoebe’s wish, or Will’s, could someone else have wanted her dead? Might an unknown person have walked into the girl’s bedchamber last evening, and helped her soul out of it? No, even more absurd! For who would have wanted to harm her?

Finally he groaned aloud, forced to admit that none of his theories could be easily sustained, nor could any of them be disproved. And so, when Reverend Rowe’s knock sounded on his outer door, Richard Longfellow rose to answer it with a feeling of relief. Another disconcerting problem was approaching—but at least this was a devil he knew.

Christian Rowe entered as usual, his long-tailed coat of black broadcloth clinging to his frame like a wrinkled skin. Barely thirty-five years of age, he dressed as an old man in mourning. Yet there was an ageless arrogance in his manner, something that stifled compassion and nettled more than a few of his flock. Longfellow had long supposed Rowe expected to find no goodness in anyone; clearly, he preferred to hunt for evil—softly, though, at first, without alerting his quarry.

“I was told I’m needed to discuss a matter of great importance.” His stern face implied that it had better be so.

Longfellow stood his ground and spoke with an authority of his own. “As a selectman, I must tell you that Phoebe Morris, a young woman staying in Mrs. Willett’s house, has died.” He saw the reverend’s demeanor alter immediately.

“Dead, sir? Who is responsible?” Rowe demanded.

“There is no obvious cause,” Longfellow returned, surprised that the preacher appeared to feel more outrage than shock.

Reverend Rowe sat down, taking off his hat, paying some heed to the state of its round brim before setting it on a table. By uncovering his head he showed a quantity of wispy golden hair, said by a devout few to resemble a halo.

Longfellow smiled as he remembered a whispered rumor he’d heard from Cicero, the gist of which was that there lived inside Christian Rowe an angel, revealed when the fearful black suit and ivory stockings were removed, and he stood in his long white shirt. Then, according to at least one witness, the reverend had a desire to please more than the Lord. Perhaps, Longfellow thought again, the fellow was not entirely deficient in normal human feeling, after all.

“I see by your smile,” the preacher finally replied, “that you are not displeased to give me this news! So I presume you do not believe the pox is to blame?”

“Yes, and no. The news of Miss Morris’s death is something I heartily wish I did not have to give—but as for the smallpox bringing it about, I don’t see how it could have. Nor does Dr. Tucker.”