A Skeleton in the Closet (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (8 page)

“
Mmmm
, yes, we have.”
Ada
stirred her tea thoughtfully. At first, we thought it might be from the Civil War era, perhaps a runaway slave who had been hidden here by one of our ancestors. That would have been just like a
Henstock
. The Underground Railroad was quite active in these parts, you know.”

I hadn’t known, but I was appropriately impressed.

“But it wasn’t a slave, no,”
Lavinia
chimed in. “The authorities who first viewed the remains were quite clear about that, the Lieutenant told us. Not old
enough,
and that blue fabric she was wearing was certainly not Civil War era.”

I was becoming interested in spite of my vow not to get caught up in another intrigue. “They know for certain it was a woman?”

“Oh, yes, Dear. But as I say, she was of much more recent vintage than the Civil War.
World War II perhaps.”

“Don’t speak of the wretched woman as if she were a bottle of Papa’s claret,
Lavinia
!”
Ada
tsk-ed
her sister and made an effort to mask her irritation. “All we know is it’s a woman who must have died sometime after 1945.”

“Goodness! However did they date the remains that quickly?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Oh, it had nothing to do with the body,”
Lavinia
assured me.
“Much too soon for that.
But
Ada
and I did some research last night in Papa’s ledgers and so on, and we
founds
records showing that that old closet in the basement had been constructed in 1945. So the body couldn’t have been hidden there before that time. It was right there in Papa’s handwriting. He was so meticulous about his papers,” she concluded with satisfaction.
Ada
nodded wearily in agreement, and my heart went out to her. Both sisters must be exhausted after the doings of the past twenty-four hours, but
Ada
seemed to be the only one feeling the strain.
Lavinia
appeared to be thriving on the unexpected excitement.

“Why was the closet or whatever you want to call that enclosure next to the furnace built in the first place?” I couldn’t help but ask. “It seems only logical that those pipes would have needed maintenance from time to time, and it must have been very inconvenient to have them right next to a brick wall. By the way, was there a door to the closet? It was so demolished, I couldn’t tell.”

Ada
paused mid-sip to consider my question and knit her brows in consternation. “Why, I don’t recall, do you, Sister? We were young women at that time, and the house always seemed to be full of workers of one sort or another and people from dear Papa’s office. I can’t say I ever paid any of them much attention.”

Lavinia
explained more fully. “Our mother died when
Ada
and I were just girls. Influenza took her when we were nine and ten years
old,
and Papa was just devastated. For simply years, he spent every evening alone in his study, lost in his work. I believe he just about forgot he had children, he was so sorrowful about losing precious Mama. If it hadn’t been for Clara and Agnes …”

“… the cook and the housekeeper who came to live with us after Mama’s death,”
Ada
interjected.

“…
we
probably would have gone off to school looking like ragamuffins,”
Lavinia
continued without missing a beat. “But those two good ladies saw to it that we were properly turned out for every occasion. And there was always bread and jam and cold milk after school. Why, we would sit right here at this very table, chattering about our day, while Clara got the supper started and Agnes oversaw our homework. How I miss those dear souls.” A misty smile played about her mouth as she recalled her old friends.

Ada
brought her sharply back to the question at hand. “Yes, they were wonderful to us,
Dear
, but that doesn’t get us any closer to knowing why that closet was built ten years later. Do you have any ideas,
Lavinia
? It might shed some light on
who
that poor woman was.” She shuddered.
“To think that we have been living all these years with that dreadful … thing … right under our feet the whole time.”

Reluctantly,
Lavinia
dragged herself away from her childhood memories and gave
Ada
’s
question her attention. “Why, yes, I believe I do,” was her surprising response. “At least, I know what Papa said it was for at the time.” A sly smile played with the corners of her mouth.

Judging from
Ada
’s
expression, the implication that the Judge may have invented a cover story was not lost on her, although I pretended not to notice. “Whatever do you mean, Sister? It seems odd that Papa would have told you about this and not me, and I don’t remember anything.”

“Oh, you were far too taken with young Robert Sloane and your parties and dances and tennis games to be aware of anything as mundane as a closet being constructed in the basement.
Ada
was always the social butterfly, far prettier than I was,”
Lavinia
confided, and
Ada
colored. “It was for his personal papers, Papa said, so they could be locked up away from prying eyes. A vault, I guess you’d call it. He had letters and diaries and trial records of cases dating back to the beginning of his career as a lawyer… oh, all sorts of things. He always said he would write his memoirs when he retired from the bench, but in the meantime, he wanted to protect the innocent. At least, that’s what he said.” Again, I ignored the implication of her words.

“But surely those things would be kept in his study or a file cabinet or something,” I said. “Whose prying eyes did he mean?”

“I assumed at the time that he meant Clara and Agnes, which was complete nonsense. My goodness, they would never pry. But now, I’m not so sure that was it.”

It was
Ada
’s
turn to question her sister. “What do you mean,
Lavinia
? For heaven’s sake, just spit it out!”

Lavinia
regarded her for a moment before deciding to answer. “I think he meant us. Now I think he built that closet to lock those papers away from us. As children, we wouldn’t have been the least bit interested in looking at his old files, and we wouldn’t have understood anything in them even if we had snooped through them. But as young women …” she shrugged.

Ada
stared at her sister, clearly confounded. “If
I’m understanding
you correctly,
Lavinia
, our father, a grieving widower and a respected member of this community for decades, had secrets to keep. Whether they were his or other
people’s
, we don’t know, but he was certainly determined to keep them.”

“But wouldn’t any closet with a lock on the door have been sufficient?” I was still mystified by the enclosure in the basement.

“I guess that would depend on how big the secrets were … and about whom,”
Lavinia
commented, doing more damage to her image as a doddering airhead. I was beginning to suspect that had been carefully cultivated over the years as protective coloration. Nobody expected much of a ditz, especially when she had an exceptionally capable, not to say domineering, older sister to manage things. She shifted her gaze pointedly from
Ada
to me and then back again.

Ada
addressed her sister. “
Lavinia
, Mrs. Lawrence is here to help us resolve this dreadful situation. If you know something that might help us do that, just go ahead and tell us. It has been my experience that secrets always come out sooner or later anyway, and Mrs. Lawrence can be trusted with ours, isn’t that right?” She looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded mutely. As a rule, I hated being the repository of other people’s secrets, but this time, I had an avid interest in what
Lavinia
might have to say.
“There now.
What more can you tell us?”

Lavinia
rose to replenish the teapot, whether to hide her face or give
herself
time to choose her words, I couldn’t be sure. Her hand trembled as she poured more hot water over the tea ball inside the pot, and she replaced the lid carefully before turning back to us.

“For one thing, Papa wasn’t quite the grieving widower you remember,
Ada
. Oh, for a few years, perhaps, when we were still young. It was only decent in those days that a few years elapsed between our mother’s
death
and, well, Papa’s renewed interest in socializing.”

“Renewed interest in … oh, do stop pussyfooting around,
Lavinia
. Say what you mean!”

“Women,”
Lavinia
said firmly. “Rather a lot of them, as I recall. You were always out and about with one or another of your young men, but I spent a lot of
evenings
right here in this house with little to amuse me but the comings and goings of Papa’s, um, guests.”

At this, my eyebrows climbed higher than
Ada
’s
, but I kept silent.

“Do you mean that Papa entertained lady
friends
right here in the house, and I didn’t know about it?”

“As I said,
Dear
, you were preoccupied, and Papa’s visitors usually arrived after you had gone out for the evening and Clara and Agnes had retired to their rooms on the third floor. Came to the side entrance and left the same way through the kitchen after spending several hours with Papa in his study. He always told me they were clients, but if that were true, why did he keep his study door locked, I wonder?”

Ada
placed her teacup carefully in its saucer and clasped her hands on top of the table for support. “What makes you believe that he locked it?”

“I tapped on his door one evening to see if he and his,
er
, client would like some tea. He didn’t answer, and when I turned the knob to poke my head in, it was locked. I took my own tea straight up to my bedroom, and the next morning, neither Papa nor I mentioned it. It was right after that when he arranged to have the vault built in the basement.”

I didn’t dare look at
Ada
and busied myself pouring more tea.

“And you never mentioned any of this to me,”
Ada
said.
“Why not?”

“Why, I suppose because it stopped,”
Lavinia
stated flatly. “All of it, the women and the late-night visits and the closed-door meetings just stopped. I never knew Papa to see a woman socially again, in this house or elsewhere, until the day he died. And after a few years, I decided I must have been mistaken, and the whole matter left my mind. Until now,” she added.

I cleared my throat. “When did the Judge pass away? I know he had a long and distinguished career on the bench.”

The ladies consulted each other silently. “It was the year that nice Mr. Kennedy was assassinated,”
Lavinia
asserted.

“The President was assassinated in 1963,” I said.

“Not President Kennedy, the other one, the brother,”
Ada
put forward. “It was at that hotel in California. Bobby, I believe it
was,
which I always thought was a rather silly name for a grown man, and him the Attorney General.”

“Then that would be 1968,” I said, conveying another of the few dates I had managed to retain from my barely read school textbooks. “The Judge must have been in his sixties by then and ready to retire, but he never got around to writing his memoir?”

“No,”
Lavinia
confirmed sadly. “He died at the bench. Right in the middle of the prosecutor’s summation, Papa suffered a massive heart attack and fell over dead. It was in all the papers.”

I could well imagine that it had been. “So that closet or vault was opened after his death?”

“No, it wasn’t,”
Ada
spoke up at last. “I’m quite sure I would have remembered that, wouldn’t you,
Lavinia
?”

“Oh, yes. It would have been quite a noisy business, having to break down the door. There’s no question that we would have known about it. In fact, we would have had to arrange to have it done, but we didn’t. Quite frankly, I had forgotten all about it by that time.”