Beacon Street Mourning (24 page)

The clergyman who said the words over Father, and over us
all—for it was impossible to escape the grand resonance of his voice—seemed familiar to me somehow though I couldn't recall his name. At any rate he was a good choice for the task of laying Leonard Pembroke Jones in the ground, because he read little from Scripture and much from the Transcendentalists; later, at Beacon Street after the funeral, I met the man, whose name turned out to be Hawthorne—a fine old New England name, whether related to Nathaniel or not. He was a minister of the Universalist denomination, not from Boston but from Cambridge, and he claimed long friendship with Father—but this was rather curious, as I still had no specific memory of him.

The at-home after the funeral was a kind of necessary nightmare: necessary because one must do it; nightmare because one seemed trapped inside it, unable by force of will to make the misery come to an end. I could not, of course, wear my hat with the veil inside the house, and so I presented my naked, grief-ravaged face to all comers without much grace but also without shame. Michael provided some distraction, as over and over again I introduced him as my intended husband. He liked this a great deal; when I was able to come out of my own trouble from time to time, I could feel him quietly glowing by my side.

The light through the windows looking out on Beacon Street had the purpling cast of late afternoon by the time people began to leave. Only a handful of guests remained when Augusta made her shocking and vindictive move.

She came over toward me where I sat with Michael near those front windows, a cold and drafty place we'd chosen for its proximity to the door from the parlor into the hall, where we could most easily accept condolences and say our hellos and goodbyes.

I must say Augusta looked fine, considering the circumstances—even in my distraught and distracted state I could see that. She was, as I have said before, a handsome woman, with most excellent skin for a female her age, and a lot of only
slightly graying, docile hair that would take a curl, stay in place, do whatever she wanted. Her clothes were always of good quality and becoming to her fashionably full but small-waisted figure. Further, she had a certain charm, which she displayed for men and on social occasions; this worked well for her since neither men nor society are particularly good at detecting superficiality.

All of Augusta's best qualities had been in evidence today, whereas I was at my weakest and worst. I knew, as I watched her approach, that I could not deal with her. I think she knew it too.

I believe she had planned this for days, lining up her witnesses and asking them to stay on when others left. Except for the minister, Hawthorne, who had stayed on to talk to me and Michael, they were all her allies: Dr. Searles Cosgrove, William Barrett, a man whose name I could not recall at the moment but who'd spent considerable time with her tete-a-tete, and the two silly Forrest sisters—relative newcomers to Mount Vernon Street who will social-climb anything and anyone on Beacon Hill. Mary Fowey was also present, no longer passing sandwiches but now picking up empty plates.

I suppose I smelled the scent of battle on Augusta. I was so ill prepared for it that the intelligent thing to do would have been to surrender and try for an escape later, but some instinct drove me to my tired feet when she was perhaps a yard away. Standing I have something of an advantage, for I am several inches taller than she.

Mr. Hawthorne, perhaps sensing a sort of current like an electrical charge between us in the air, stepped back out of the way. Michael remained seated where he was.

Augusta clasped her hands together and took her own stand then, when she was still far enough away so that she did not have to look right up at me. She inclined her head slightly to the right and the man whose name I couldn't remember took that
as a cue. He came up and stood beside her . . . and he was very tall indeed.

"Fremont, I don't believe you know James Carraway," she said.

"We met this afternoon for the first time. Thank you again for your condolences on this sad occasion, Mr. Carraway," I said. My manners were in place at least, and if I sounded rather stiff—well, it had been a long day.

He simply nodded his head. His expression was grave and he had the face for gravity: large ears with pendulous earlobes, a long nose that flared into large nostrils at the tip, loose skin covering a narrow jaw, a high forehead marred midway by a thick, unruly shock of stark white hair.

"Mr. Carraway is
my
lawyer," Augusta said, emphasizing the word "my."

She turned to include the others, her witnesses as I later would think of them, in her next statement even though she addressed it straight to me. "Caroline Fremont Jones, daughter and only child of Leonard Pembroke Jones, so-called business woman, bluestocking, and runaway whore, did you really think I would allow you to get away with your elaborate plan to pass off that so-called new will in which my dear Lenny left everything to
you?"

"I beg your pardon," I said, my head reeling from her accusation and my ears burning from the word "whore," "but he did not leave me everything. Father left you a more than adequate settlement, enough to buy a house of your own where you may live in comfort for the rest of your life. And to suggest that Mr. Elwood Sefton, or anyone at Great Centennial Bank, would collude with me in the perpetration of such a trick is . . . is disgusting!"

"I beg your pardon," said Augusta, "but what is disgusting is taking care of an old man through long, long months that turn into years of a nasty, messy illness, only to have his whore
of a daughter come interfering at the last minute. Listen to me, you tall skinny bitch, I
earned
that inheritance and I won't allow you to snatch it right out from under me!"

I was stunned. Had Michael not shot to his feet and put his arm around my waist to support me, I do believe I might have collapsed. I felt physically assaulted.

Now William Barrett, that sterling employee of Great Centennial Bank, the very man my father had hoped would succeed him, stepped up and said, "I am willing to testify that Mr. Sefton is getting along in age and his mind is not quite what it should be. He could be easily manipulated by a clever person, even a woman. Though his reputation has remained untarnished until now, there is always a first time."

And here I'd thought this man, William Barrett, was such a great friend not only to me but to Father. Of all the people to whom I could have written, I had chosen him. It seemed the poor judgment for which I'd been noted before Michael took me in hand had returned to plague me once again.

The Forrest sisters tittered. For lack of anything else I could think of doing at the moment, I glared at them and they stopped, just in time to hear Augusta's final declaration:

"You are hereby put on notice in front of these witnesses, Caroline Fremont Jones: I intend to break that will. In court. With James Carraway as my lawyer. Your enormous inheritance will not stand!"

THERE IS AN EXPRESSION "to sleep like the dead," which well describes how I slept the night after Father's funeral. Ordinarily I am not so heavy a sleeper, but I suppose it came on me from sheer exhaustion and to pay back a sort of deficit of sleep, since I'd not had much for the past several nights.

Thus I did not hear Mary Fowey's knock at my bedroom door, and woke more because she had entered and was standing
by the bed, than because she was calling "Miss! Miss!"—a form of address I scarcely recognize. People are not generally so formal in San Francisco, at least not in my circles, thank goodness.

To have someone in your bedroom unexpectedly is not a pleasant way to awaken, and so I came out of sleep with a most unpleasant jolt, and I expect I grumbled as I asked her what she wanted and what time it was.

"It's just after seven in the morning, miss, and there's a policeman downstairs. He said I was to say would you please get dressed and come down."

She was already at the wardrobe, opening its doors so that I might choose a dress, but I stopped her. "Mary, go back downstairs and tell him I'll be there directly. I can manage on my own."

"Yes, miss. If you're sure."

"I am." I swung my feet out from under the covers and put them on the cold floor, always an effective first step toward awakening. Thus jolted I called out:

"Oh, Mary, wait. Do you have the slightest idea what he wants? And are you sure he wants me, not Augusta?"

Her eyes seemed huge in her face. My addled brain finally realized the poor maid was afraid of something. "What is it, Mary?" I prompted.

"I'm sure I don't really know, but Jem next door told the cook on her way in just now, a few minutes before seven that was, somebody's dead in the park across the street. Begging your pardon, I mean the Public Garden. And Mrs. Augusta, she's not in her room. And that's all I know."

Before my "Thank you" was out of my mouth, Mary had slipped out and closed the door behind her.

Now, on any morning until I have had coffee, I am slow to put two and two together, and on this particular morning after having slept "like the dead" I was worse. I do not much like the
police at the best of times—perhaps an unreasoning prejudice due to a bad experience I had, but still, there it is—and I do not like being told what to do either, so I saw no reason to get dressed just because some strange policeman downstairs had sent word that I should. I put on my perfectly decent green wool robe and belted it tightly over a nightgown which was already buttoned up to the neck, and because the floor was cold I put on wool stockings with my black kid house slippers. I took a couple of futile brush strokes at my straight, thick hair, gave it up as a lost cause, and left it hanging down my back like a slightly untidy curtain.

In the hall on my way to the head of the stairs I passed Augusta's room. The door was open, which meant the room was empty as Mary had said. When Augusta was in that room she invariably closed the door. I supposed she'd already heard about the body in the "park" and had gone across to satisfy her morbid curiosity.

I'd gone halfway down the stairs when my slowly waking brain presented me with an interesting coincidence: Last night I had slept with my new gun under my pillow, and this morning someone was found dead nearby. Had I perhaps known, on some mysterious level, there would be danger nearby in the night? An involuntary shudder passed through my body.

I was two steps up from the bottom of the stairs when it occurred to me that I should have brought my cane, or even both of them—eliciting the sympathy of the police is never a bad idea. Mary was standing in the hallway, darting nervous glances first toward me on the stairs and then toward the smaller of the two parlors, which was no doubt where she had put the policeman. I sent her up to fetch both canes, and waited at the bottom of the stairs until she handed them to me.

As she did, I cautioned her: "Mary, don't make my bed, just leave it. I expect I am going to want to sleep again when this
business is over. I can't imagine what they want with me, but it couldn't possibly take long."

I had seldom been more wrong about anything in my life.

IN SPITE of the early hour, a small crowd had gathered just inside the iron fence surrounding the Public Garden. The bystanders were being held off by a number of uniformed policemen who had arranged themselves in a circle around the body, which I could not yet see through the crowd.

The officer who was my escort—name already forgotten— had been told by one of these bystanders that I would be able to identify the dead person; while I did not want to believe it, I was more than a little apprehensive as I approached, leaning by turns on each of my two canes as if I needed them far more than I did. I was afraid it might be Michael, because who else would I be called upon to identify?

So I was afraid, and because of the fear my body began to sweat beneath the new black cloak that was a part of my mourning raiment, and I wished I had dressed after all in warmer clothes. At least no one would know that beneath this cloak I wore only a nightgown and robe, for it was voluminous enough to hide the sins of the world and then some.

The police officer, who was quite tall, bent down and whispered apologetically, "It's not too bad as these things go. That is—"

I interrupted him: "Don't worry, I shall be fine. I am not the squeamish type."

It had been on the tip of my tongue to say I was not unaccustomed to death because of my profession; thank God I did not say it. The police are not favorably disposed toward most private detectives, and it does not do to alienate them without good reason.

My policeman escort made a path for us through the by-standers. We had entered the Garden by a small gate that is approximately halfway between Charles Street and Arlington Street, almost directly across Beacon from Pembroke Jones House. The body lay not far into the grounds. My first instinct was relief, because by its dress I could tell the dead person was a woman, therefore could not be Michael, and my major fear was relieved.

But my fear was relieved only to be immediately supplanted by an awesome sense of dread. This was wrong, very wrong. It was the last thing I would ever have thought could happen.

I didn't want to believe what my eyes told me, and so I circled the body twice, my canes poking holes in the crunchy snow and my feet, in spite of their thick socks, going cold through the soles of my thin slippers. Finally I bent down over the head that had leaked its red blood into the cold, frozen whiteness—not very much blood—she had died quickly after being shot. She, too, like me, was wearing her nightgown; but she had on nothing else, not even slippers. Her feet had turned blue.

Straightening up, I choked down that awful feeling of dread and said, "The dead woman is Augusta Simmons Jones, recently widowed by my father, Leonard Pembroke Jones. She was his second wife, and she was not my mother."