An Untimely Frost (15 page)

C
HAPTER
28

O
n Sunday morning, Lilly's mind felt fresher for having put her assignment aside for a few hours. Since she'd exhausted her list of people to question, there was no reason to delay the dreaded trip back to Heaven's Gate. She left as early as possible, packing a canteen of water and having Helen tie up a fried-egg sandwich in brown paper and twine.

Since the mornings could still be quite chilly and the empty house was bound to be cold, Lilly left her cape in the room and took out a warm gray wool coat and matching tartan scarf. Once again, she armed herself with her derringer on the off chance that the sheriff had not been able to convince the writer of the “appeal” to leave her alone. Assuming James Reihmann was the culprit, she doubted he would have enough gumption to come after her in person, especially since she'd confronted him. He didn't seem the type who'd want to get his hands dirty.

Knowing it was useless to protest, Billy Bishop rigged up a buggy. The morning was pleasant, and by the time she reached Heaven's Gate, the sun had already begun to warm the air. Squirrels played tag up and down trees. Soon the animals and birds would mate, babies would be born, and life would begin a new cycle. Despite her loss of faith in men and her fear of being like her mother, she couldn't stifle a twinge of longing for a love as strong and true as the one Pierce and Rose shared. At some time, she also wanted a child. She wondered if the day would ever come when she felt able to trust a man again.

At Heaven's Gate, she tied the horse to the sagging hitching post and, leaving her lunch and coat in the buggy, headed for the front door, which she'd left unlocked when she fled the house a few days earlier.

Determined to take William's advice and search carefully, Lilly started in the kitchen. She didn't expect to find anything helpful there, but looked nonetheless. Next, she checked the library. The walls were lined with copies of the classics, their leather covers splotched with grayish mold. Pictures of men on horseback fox hunting and hounds giving chase hung behind the desk and over the fireplace, which was flanked by two brown leather chairs also covered in mold.

She stood in the doorway, vacillating. There was no way she could check all the books, but she could check the contents of Purcell's desk. Inside a drawer, Lilly found a journal containing Prudence Purcell's household expenses. She thumbed through it and saw a bit of the minister's wife's life unfolding before her. Listed in a prim and proper hand were itemized expenditures and the dates the items were purchased.

* * *

 

 

It came of something of a start to realize the War had been raging when the Purcells lived here. She added the book to those she planned to take with her and riffled through the other papers in the desk. Another ledger with different handwriting noted receipt of Harold's salary and the itemizing of the purchases he'd made. She frowned. There was no way he could afford this opulence on his minister's wages. There were pages with notes and Biblical passages—most likely in preparation of his sermons—and books with excerpts underlined. A dust-coated copy of Dante's
Divine Comedy
lay on the desk. She added the lot to her growing stack.

Throughout the house, she collected letters and tintypes and other records. As she stood surveying the parlor, she spied the family Bible she'd seen before. On impulse, she added it to her cache.

The morning was almost spent. She felt she'd gathered everything of importance from inside the house and decided to have her sandwich before visiting the cemetery. Looking at the graveyard shouldn't take long, and it would help sate her curiosity about the Purcells. Then she would get back to town in time to have a leisurely dinner and pack for her trip to Springfield.

She was carrying her cache to the buggy when one of the books slipped from her grasp and fell to the floor. Bending to pick it up, she noticed a large discoloration at the bottom of the stairs. It looked as if someone had broken a decanter of wine. No doubt an excellent vintage, she thought, recalling the preacher's expensive taste. She must have been too preoccupied with her fears to notice it during her last visit.

Back in the warmth of the sunshine, she deposited her plunder in the floorboard of the buggy, unwrapped her lunch, and ate her meal sitting on a fallen tree and listening to the earth waking from its winter slumber. As Rose would no doubt say, God was in His heaven, and all was right with the world. Recalling her terror when she'd been here just days ago, Lilly laughed. She'd never been so fanciful before.

After finishing her lunch, she once again made her way through the overgrowth clogging the garden path to the small family burial plot. A large tree limb had fallen at some time, blocking the mildewed, lichen-encrusted headstone and knocking one side of the fence askew.

She pushed through the gate and picked her way across the small plot toward the stone. A chubby cherub sat on the memorial, a serene expression on its granite face. Carved into the speckled gray rock were these words:
J
OEL
D
AVID
P
URCELL.
P
RECIOUS SON, GONE TOO SOON.

The son whose death had been recorded in the church records. Recalling the sibling whose life had been sacrificed when her mother was killed, Lilly felt a prickling beneath her eyelids and swallowed back the threat of tears. The monument was a reminder of the fragility of life and how swiftly it could be snatched away.

As she turned to leave, her gaze was drawn to the house. A covered porch spanned the entire back side. On the second floor, a pair of dormer windows looked out over the yard. On the attic floor, she spied the octagonal attic window she'd looked out of the day she'd gone through the house. Another, smaller window with square panes was located some eight or ten feet to the right of that one. She didn't recall seeing another window, but then, she hadn't really been looking.

She was about to leave when she spotted the remains of a wooden cross. The whitewash once covering it was all but gone, and a severe case of rot caused it to lean left. She worked her way through the weeds and briars to get a better look, but if there had been a name on the cross, the elements had long since obliterated it. The Purcells had lost three sons. Was this the grave of another? If so, why was there no stone marker? And why wasn't this child listed in the ledger noting the congregation's deaths?

Her cat had gone to kitty heaven complete with a wooden casket and wrapped in a satin blanket Rose had edged with lace. Lilly and Pierce had sneaked into a cemetery in Terre Haute and dug Boots a grave beneath the low boughs of a cedar tree, hoping no one would notice it.

Lilly was so lost in her memories that she was halfway through the side garden before she recognized that niggling feeling that someone was watching her. Anger instead of fear rose inside her. She'd had about enough! Who the devil was it? She certainly didn't think it was a ghost. Had the telegraph operator given the sheriff the message William had sent and had he followed her? Had she misjudged James Reihmann, or had he sent someone else to do his dirty business?

Resisting the urge to whirl around and see if she could spot anyone, she slipped her hand into the pocket of her skirt, reaching for the comfort of her derringer, only to find that it wasn't there. With a thrill of alarm, she remembered that she'd left it in her coat pocket, and her coat was in the buggy. Heart racing, she kept walking at a normal pace, determined not to panic, or at least determined not to let whoever was watching her
know
she was panicked.

She managed to keep her steps slow and steady until she reached the rig, untied the horse, climbed up, and let the gelding trot down the lane and around the sharp curve in the road. Then she gave the animal his head and raced to the main road as fast as he could take her, her rear bouncing up and down on the wooden seat as the wagon wheels skimmed over the rough road. Ireland's Livery was going to start charging her double if she kept bringing back their horses all lathered up.

* * *

The man who'd followed Lilly to Heaven's Gate returned to town at a leisurely pace. While she was busy inspecting the cemetery, he'd been inspecting the ledgers she'd taken from the house as well as the contents of her coat pockets. When his fingers closed around the four-inch over-and-under Remington derringer in her coat, he'd been a bit surprised. He pulled it out and gave it a cursory once-over. A sardonic smile lifted the corners of his mouth. It was almost identical to the one he carried in an ankle holster above his right boot. The woman might be a bit batty, but she wasn't stupid.

* * *

By the time Lilly got to town, the horse had cooled out and once again her fears seemed ridiculous. Berating herself for her foolishness, she sent a telegram to William to let him know she was leaving for Springfield the following morning. She requested he check out Nelson Hargity in New Orleans and said she would be in touch soon. She sent another telegram to Rose and Pierce in Springfield telling them she was coming the following morning. Then she left the buggy at the livery stable and tied up the things she'd gathered at Heaven's Gate with a piece of twine she begged off Billy Bishop.

She was leaving the barn when her attention was caught by movement across the street. On her way to the livery, she'd seen that the boxing ring, mostly hidden from nonpaying customers by a makeshift fence, had been erected on the south side of the courthouse lawn. Now a crowd had gathered, and from where she stood, she was able to see two bare-fisted, shirtless men in high-topped shoes who waited to enter. Neither man was the audacious Irishman.

A memory of the arrogant boxer surfaced. He was strong, she thought, recalling the feel of his hands on her shoulders. And polite and concerned. Truth to tell, just because he'd flirted with her a little was no reason for her to have been so short with him. Perhaps if she saw him again, she would apologize. She squelched the thought as soon as it entered her mind. He meant nothing to her. There was no sense trying to make things right, just because she found him attractive. She'd learned her lesson. The hard way.

C
HAPTER
29

E
arly Monday morning, a well-dressed man watched the Pinkerton agent board the train bound for Springfield. Thank God. He stood staring after the slow-moving train; then he turned and walked away, filled with satisfaction. The status quo might have been shaken, but it was still intact, and she was gone.

* * *

Springfield was the juncture for no less than five rail lines. Six thousand miles of track crisscrossed the state and more was under construction. Lilly settled into her seat. All she knew was that despite its many drawbacks, train travel was much easier than stagecoach.

She hoped she was not wasting her time and the agency's money on this trip to the capital, but she truly felt it was necessary to be thorough in her search for the Purcells if she hoped to impress the Pinkerton men.

While the clacking wheels ate up the distance between Vandalia and Springfield, she had ample time to read the ledgers, letters, and journals she'd confiscated at Heaven's Gate. As she thumbed through
Divine Comedy
she saw an underlined passage:
Halfway through life's journey I came to myself in a dark wood, where the straight way was lost.
Had the reverend attached any special significance to the section, or perhaps planned to use it in a sermon?

She set the book aside and continued her search, gleaning a name or two that might bear checking out if this trip bore no fruit. She studied the daguerreotypes of the Purcell family with an intensity that, were it possible, would force the inanimate people to whisper all their secrets.

Sarah was a beautiful young girl, having received the most perfect features of both comely parents. Lilly imagined the portrait in color. Sarah's oval face was the perfect setting for the blue eyes the sheriff had mentioned. She had a straight patrician nose. The blond hair she'd inherited from her mother was pulled back at the sides and hung to her shoulders in barley-sugar curls, revealing small ears that hugged the sides of her head. Her lips were full and softly curved with a slightly pouty look.

The handsome preacher's dark hair was parted just off center and brushed back, shiny with brilliantine. Straight, heavy eyebrows rested on the bony ledge above wide-set eyes, which, if Lilly had to speculate, were the same blue that his daughter's eyes were said to be. His jawline was lean and angular with a deep cleft in his left cheek, and the mustache draping his upper lip drew attention to his finely molded lips. He stood straight and tall and somber in his black frock coat and white vest. His left hand rested on his wife's shoulder.

Though the pose was formal, stiff even, Lilly fancied that the slight lift of his chin and the gleam in his eyes hinted that he believed himself to be just a cut above his fellow man. She wasn't sure if the comments of the Vandalia citizens had skewed her thinking about Purcell, or if her own less-than-perfect experiences with the opposite sex were to blame.

Prudence was a lovely, older version of her daughter, but Lilly imagined she saw tenseness in Mrs. Purcell's shoulders, tightness around her pretty lips, and an expression of melancholy in the eyes that stared straight into the camera. Lilly touched the woman's face with her fingertip.

Lilly couldn't fault the preacher's wife. Centuries of submissiveness and dependence had fostered a fragility of both spirit and will in women. Few of her contemporaries would have the courage to speak up if they found themselves wed to a man whose deeds were less than honorable. Fewer still possessed the courage or the wherewithal to walk away. Once again, she thanked God for the assertiveness Pierce and Rose had instilled in her.

Sighing over the unfairness of a world that relegated women to such a fate, she put the picture away and took out the journal William had compiled for the assignment. She hoped a fresh look at it would give her renewed vigor for this last leg of her investigation. She did not want to be the reason her clients were forced to abandon their dream.

The couple who wanted to purchase Heaven's Gate resided in St. Louis. Noah Stephens was an attorney, and his wife, Rachel, was a schoolteacher. Appalled by the number of young women giving birth to babies outside the sanctity of marriage, the couple's goal was to provide a haven where those unfortunates might find sanctuary and comfort instead of censure.

Lilly wondered if Kate might have taken advantage of such a place had it been available when she'd learned she was expecting a child, but knowing her mother's penchant for thumbing her nose at the world and its rules, she doubted it.

Weary with the questions roiling about in her mind, she put everything back in the carpetbag and leaned her head against the window, hoping to catch a few winks of sleep. It was hopeless. All she could think of was what she would do when she arrived in Springfield.

She would visit churches and see if Harold Purcell was still preaching. Pierce had always been adamant about the notion that people did not change their habits, but she felt that in this case it was a gamble. She believed Harold had been stealing from his church members even before the incident at Vandalia, and that the odds of him abstaining from that practice for twenty years was unlikely. It was also unlikely that he was still in the area. How could he continue pilfering for so many years in one spot without being found out? Still, even if he
had
run true to form, someone might be willing to talk, providing another thread to unravel.

She would go to doctors' offices, since Prudence would have been of childbearing age when they left Vandalia. There were legal records of every kind regarding births, deaths, and property sales, not to mention newspaper morgues. And, as weary as she knew she would be at day's end, she would visit with Pierce and Rose whenever she could, and of course she would go to Chatterton's Opera House.

When Pierce had received her telegram saying she was heading to Springfield, he'd informed her that she must not miss Mary Anderson at Chatterton's. The popular performer would be playing the lead in
Romeo and Juliet.
Though the actress was often criticized by reviewers, most audiences, including Pierce Wainwright, adored Miss Anderson.

Seeing the play at the Fehren and visiting with Nora had made Lilly realize that it wasn't as easy to walk away from one's past as she'd imagined. It would be wonderful to see someone of Mary's acclaim perform.

Somehow, she drifted into a restless sleep until the train halted at its destination. By the time she got checked into the hotel, the day was half gone. Though she longed to go straight to the theater to see Pierce and Rose, she knew she must prioritize her time. The sooner she searched for the missing family through every avenue available, the sooner she could devote time to visiting with her loved ones.

The afternoon was warm. Looking at all the evidence of spring around her, it was hard to believe she'd driven in a snowstorm just days before. The streets of Springfield were broad and generously decorated with shade trees. Knowing she had to be careful with her money, she decided to start out walking and rent a phaeton only when she tired.

Her first stop was one of the two daily newspaper offices, where she spent two hours examining back issues, looking for any mention of Harold or Prudence Purcell, or any reference of thefts of local congregations' coffers. Finding nothing, she walked the few blocks to the second daily, with no better results.

After a late lunch, she decided there was no reason to question the nuns at St. John's Hospital about the possibility of Sarah having been a patient there, since Lilly had learned that the hospital had not been in existence twenty years earlier.

Instead, she decided to finish the day's search at city hall, where she checked land sales, deeds, census reports, and birth and death records. There were three different families of Purcells living in Springfield.

Armed with the facts she needed, she started to leave, but without actually meaning to do so, she found herself thumbing through the death records until she found the date of her mother's murder. And there it was: Katherine Viola Long, age twenty-eight, death by strangulation. Lilly was a bit surprised to learn that her mother was buried in a cemetery just a few blocks away. Feeling that familiar tightness in her chest, she slammed the book closed and headed out into the bright sunlight.

Deciding she had done quite enough sleuthing for one day, she instructed the driver to take her to the theater where Pierce and the ensemble would be performing. There might be time to enjoy an early dinner with him and Rose before the evening performance.

On the way to the theater, the horse and carriage trotted past a park, where she saw a boxing ring set up beneath the canopy of new green leaves. The broadside nailed to a tree was an exact replica of the one put up by the Irishman in Vandalia.

She was struck by the sudden, irrational notion that the boxer was following her. She dismissed the idea with a laugh. It seemed she was growing paranoid since becoming an agent! There was no logical reason a group of pugilists with broken noses and cauliflower ears would follow her from town to town. The truth was simpler and much less forbidding: Like theater troupes, boxers went from place to place in search of new audiences and new revenues. It was inevitable that she would run into some of the same groups. Unfortunately, the life of entertainers was neither simple nor easy.

To Lilly's delight, Pierce and Rose were only too glad to treat her to a meal before the evening performance. They went to a place on Fifth Street called the Café de Paris. The food was excellent, but she was more interested in catching up with what had happened since she'd left the ensemble than with enjoying the culinary fare.

“So, luv, tell us how you like the detecting business.”

“Yes, Lil,” Rose said. “How is your investigation going?”

Happy to comply, Lilly recounted everything from the time she'd gotten off the train in Vandalia. She told them about the missing family, the town's attitude, the abandoned house, the bloody sheets, and the ghost. She related her discussions with Eloise Mercer, Helen and Virginia Holbrook, the sheriff, the banker, and the attorney. And she told them about her growing feeling that something more than thievery had sent the Purcells running.

She did not mention the warning note that had been slipped beneath her door, or her feeling of being watched at Heaven's Gate, or her chance encounters with the pugilist. Neither did she mention what a failure she felt she was for not uncovering a single valid lead, and definitely not how she was beginning to fear that Pierce and Robert Pinkerton might have been right that she was not suited to the work. She did not want to worry Pierce and Rose unduly, or to admit defeat just yet.

“Of course I think the ghost story is nonsense,” she said at the end. “But it is spooky to go inside and see such a fine house abandoned with everything just as it was when they walked away. From all appearances, the entire family left with nothing but the clothes on their backs. And that bloody bed . . .” She gave a little shiver.

“Bed?” Pierce asked, his keen gaze finding hers. “Is seeing the bed what made you remember the day Kate was killed? That's what you meant in the telegram, isn't it?”

Picturing the room in her mind, Lilly's heart began to beat faster, and she tried to hide the trembling in her voice. “Yes. If it is blood, and the sheriff assured me it is, it must have been a grisly slaying. When I saw it, everything about Kate's murder came back with a rush.”

Neither spoke, but Lilly knew the time had come to tell them the things her mind had kept locked away from her for eleven long years. Looking from Rose's concerned expression to Pierce's, she related in vivid detail all the remembered horrors of her mother's murder.

“I still wake up nights reliving it,” she told them. “And I've become obsessed with men's signet rings. Whenever I see a man wearing one, I find myself checking to see if it looks like the one I remember the killer wearing.” She offered a quavering smile. “Still and all, I'm glad I finally remembered what happened. It helps to put the past to rest.”

“It will put it to rest for all of us,” Rose said, casting a glance at her husband.

“Remembering about the . . . baby was . . . disturbing,” Lilly said. She cast a questioning look at Pierce.

“I'm sure it was.”

Her mention of the baby Kate had been expecting ushered in an awkward silence. It was impossible to miss the sorrow in Pierce's eyes.

Sensing that the two of them needed a moment, Rose said, “If you'll excuse me, I need to find the necessary.”

When she was out of earshot, Pierce said, “She's missed you.”

“I've missed her, too. She's the only mother I've known since Mama died.”
And you're the only father I've ever known.

Pierce had always been there between the men who flitted in and out of Kate's life, the one constant in an existence spent traveling the country with a fey, flighty mother whose very nature was as changeable and tumultuous as the sea.

Long before Rose had come into the picture, Lilly recalled herself and Kate, accompanied by Pierce, eating at some of the fanciest hotels in the towns they passed through. He'd always let Lilly order whatever she wanted from the menu. Lilly realized now that he'd been wooing Kate. Aching to know the truth of her paternity and figuring this might be the best opportunity she'd have to ask, she took a steadying breath.