Flight of the Earls (42 page)

“No, I'm fine.” Clare arranged the drawings side by side. “Do you see something odd about these?”

Daphne shrugged. “I just think they are beautiful.”

“The background. They are all the same. They each have the same trees. The same gate. And look at this structure.” Clare tapped her finger on each of them.

“I don't . . . ?”

“My sister was trying to tell us something. She must have believed one of us would come after her to America, but she didn't know which one of us it would be. So she drew all of us and asked Greta, who must have been about to be released, to deliver some kind of message.”

“Well,” Daphne scratched her head, “let me think. That does look familiar, now that you are pointing it out.”

“Think, Daphne. Where is this?”

“Those trees. They could be anywhere. But that structure. It looks like . . .” Daphne stopped as if she didn't want to say anything.

“Go ahead,” Clare said with ardency.

“Well. It looks like one of those . . . what do you call them . . . you know, those little stone buildings you would see at a graveyard?”

“The key!” Clare went to the cabinet and pulled down the gold key she had found in the apartment.

“What's that?” Daphne seemed perplexed.

“I know what the key is for now.”

It was the third cemetery they had visited, but they knew instantly as the carriage pulled up and rolled them to a stop that they had arrived at the precise location. Maggie's drawings didn't have detail. There were no gravestones, no shrubbery, no flowers, nor any of the surrounding buildings. But she had charcoaled in by memory an almost perfectly drawn perspective of a thin grove of trees at the far end of the yard, which framed the precise mausoleum depicted on the paper.

As they dismounted the cabin, Andrew handed a few coins to the driver.

“Should I wait for you, sir?” said the tall man who was bent at the waist as if he had been leaning over a team of horses all of his life.

“That won't be necessary.”

It pained Clare to wait for Andrew, as she was anxious to unearth what had been so important for her sister to share. At the same time, Clare was hesitant to discover more dark secrets. There remained a fragility in her soul, one which had her at the precipice of her inner strength.

Passersby crossed before the iron gates of the cemetery with disinterest, going about their daily business. Though the gates were closed, the latch was open and they fumbled with it, before a man with a rake in his hand assisted them from the inside.

“Need to keep the swine out,” he said. “All types.” He greeted them with a warm countenance and with the respect due those in grief.

They nodded and, trying to be circumspect, walked toward the mausoleum with their heads down and holding hands.

“This is your first visit here, is it not?”

Andrew turned and spoke in a measured voice. “Yes. As a matter fact, she's visiting relations for the first time.”

The man tilted his head. “Then how do you know where you're going?”

Andrew took the drawing of Davin from Clare and showed the image to the man.

“Ah yes. The Hanley vault. Mr. Feagles is here often to pay his regards.”

“This is Clare Hanley,” Andrew said. “From back home. I think the lady would appreciate some privacy.”

“Oh yes, of course.” The man put his gloves back on. “Get's a bit lonely here on the job. Not much conversation . . . as you can imagine. If you need of anything, just let me know.” He returned to his raking, but Clare sensed they were being watched from behind.

They came up to the stone structure, which was bruised and cracked by weather and time. Vines grew like veins all around it and were barren of leaves. A few worn stairs led down to a splintered and faded wooden door with large, rusted hinges. Engraved above the door was a stone placard which read:

The Hanleys
Branlow, Co. Roscommon, Ireland
Tomas Hanley 1798–1842
Margaret Ames Hanley 1817–1845

“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Andrew asked.

Clare pulled the key from her pocket and handed it to him. “No more lies.” Clare covered her mouth and nose with her scarf.

Andrew inserted the key and giving it a twist, the lock responded with a firm click. He pulled on the door handle, and though jammed, it freed itself following a few determined tugs, sighing with the pains of age as bent beams of light penetrated the interior.

“Wait here,” he said firmly.

He slipped in and following a few anxious minutes, he stuck his head out. “Come inside, love.”

Her knees wobbled and the faintness of having not eaten well for a couple of weeks made her flush, and Clare stepped gingerly.

Andrew shut the door behind them, and it made her uneasy as it snapped to a close, sealing them from the outside.

Oil lamps, which Andrew must have lit, hung from either side of the cramped stone chamber draped with cobwebs. Oddly, instead of caskets or even urns, there was a wood table in the center, and pressed up to it was a solitary chair.

A tallow candle was propped in a wooden holder, and Andrew lit the wick with one of the tall matches that lay scattered beside it. On the table there were a few papers, an inkwell, and a quill pen.

“What is this?” Clare said.

“It appears to be a place your uncle comes to work. A secret office.”

She fumbled through the papers and they seemed insignificant—some notes, a letter that had barely been started. “This can't be it.”

“It appears so. Maybe he realized the key was missing.”

“But it must have been a spare,” said Clare. It looked like it hadn't been moved for years. “There must be something else.”

“All right then.” Andrew took down the oil lanterns and handed one to her. “Let's look for a hidden chamber. But we must hurry. Every minute we remain will draw the curiosity of our friend outside. He may have already sent for your uncle.”

Clare hovered the lamp close to the floor, searching for any clues in the patterns of the dust, her fingers probing to discover some sort of loose stone. Andrew ran his palms along the walls, seeking out anything that appeared odd.

Yet after scrambling for several minutes, they came up empty, their hands blackened as their tension was rising. Disappointment flooded through Clare. She never should have let herself hope that they would find something. She pulled out the chair and sank into it, watching Andrew as he continued to probe and poke.

“It's no use.” She let out a heavy sigh. “I'm not sure what I expected we would find.”

Andrew's face was chalked with dust and grime. She could tell he was desperate to give her some sort of victory, and he looked at her with eyes of apology. Then his countenance shifted abruptly. “Stand up.”

“I'm finished,” Clare said. “I can't do this anymore.”

“No. Off the chair.”

Confused, she got up and he swept the chair from her and set it against the wall. He stepped on it, pausing as the wobbly legs of the chair caused him to stumble. Bracing his hand against the wall, he raised the amber glowing lamp above him, as the wick danced shadows in his glasses.

“There's a ledge here,” he said. “And it appears to go all around. It's difficult to see.” With his tall frame bent slightly to keep from hitting his head on the ceiling, he slid his hand around as far as he could reach, and then moved the chair and continued the process.

After repeating this a few times, he suddenly froze and looked down at Clare with joy in his eyes. “I've got something.”

Stepping down carefully from the wobbly chair, he had a small wooden chest in his free hand. He set it on the table and slid the candle close to it while Clare hovered over it, now holding both lamps.

The chest was of modest proportions, with a pale wood frame with cracked corners and leather straps fastened with a tarnished buckle. A lock with a slender keyhole kept its contents sealed from them.

Before Clare could ask about a key, Andrew put his coaled hands in his pocket and pulled out some slender tools. “I haven't yet taught you all of the tricks of a journalist.”

He slipped a pick and small angled rod through the aperture of the lock, and in a few moments it clicked. He paused to make sure she was ready and then expectantly lifted the lid.

To Clare's disappointment, it was a cracked leather book.

Andrew pulled it out and the words
Irish Society
were imprinted on the cover. He untied the leather string that bound it, and as he lifted the cover, she could see lines and handwritten numbers on the pages within.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It's a ledger. Financial records. Labeled as the Irish Society. It dates back from almost four years ago.” He thumbed the pages with interest.

“What else is in there?” Clare said with impatience.

Andrew reached in, pulled out a stack of envelopes, handed them to her, and returned to his close examination of the book.

Clare gathered the envelopes, and as she began to arrange them, her breathing stopped. Her mouth opened with dread as she recognized the handwriting and the address they were being sent. “Oh no. Oh no, no, no.”

“What is it, Clare?”

She tore open the envelopes one at a time and withdrew the letters she had so meticulously and lovingly penned for her family back home.

“Clare?”

“These are . . . my letters. They are all here. They were never sent.”

“Your letters? How is that possible?”

“Almost every week, I went into that building and gave them my letters for home. And all of my earnings. Every last bit of it.”

The impact of what she was saying came over his face, and deep empathy flowed from his eyes. “I'm sorry, Clare.”

She ran her hands through her hair and glanced to the ceiling as she started to gag with emotion. “The remittances. Did they go home?”

Andrew reached into the chest and pulled out the bills, bound together with receipts.

“These are the slips,” Clare said. “These are the fees I paid. He must have . . . he must have intercepted them from the Irish Society.”

Clare felt betrayed, but more than this, she was profoundly angry with herself. “Of course. He wouldn't have allowed any of those letters to go home. It would have exposed him as a fraud and made its way back to New York. But what horrible evil would keep him from at least sending the money on its own?”

Andrew tapped on the book. “This is what I'm seeing in the book. Your uncle has been skimming from the Irish Society all along. There are records here that show his involvement from the beginning of it being formed. It's him and a . . . Mr. Gorman O'Riley. Isn't this the same surname as Maggie . . . ?” He caught himself before he went further.

The very mention of the name made Clare nauseous. “It's what he wanted all along,” she said, almost inaudibly. “The ledger. That's what my uncle had on the man. He was threatening to take them both down.”

“We need to go.” Andrew folded the book and retied the string. “There's money in the chest as well, but we should leave it. Just take what you're owed. Bring your letters and I'll carry the ledger.”

Clare was numb with the knowledge of the damage inflicted on her family. She had heard the reports of continued blight in Ireland and had witnessed the incoming flow of starving expatriates of Ireland.

But she had been in denial, confident that her weekly provision would keep her family immune from the effects of the famine. Her whole purpose in life was taking care of them. Those she cared for so dearly. And she had failed. Miserably.

“He murdered them. My uncle destroyed them all. What a desperate fool I am. How could I?”

“Clare,” Andrew said sternly as he extinguished the light. “We must go.”

He pulled her by the arm, as her mind was plagued with the tragedy of her discovery. They exited and Andrew locked the doors behind them. Continuing, they went up the steps and marched across the graveyard to the gates.

The caretaker waved to them as they left, apparently unaware of their life-threatening mischief.

Clare was disappointed. She had hoped the man had alerted her uncle and that Tomas himself would be waiting at the gate for them with vengeance in his eyes. In all of her life, she was never more prepared for a confrontation. Clare wanted to rip out the man's deluding smirk, his manipulative heart, and whatever fragment of pleasure remained in his loathsome marrow.

Instead, Andrew flagged a cab and Clare gazed mutely out the window as they passed through the streets of the Five Points, as humanity unfurled before her jaded eyes.

After a while, she turned to Andrew. “I need to go home.”

“Yes. I know.” He grabbed her hand and caressed it in his, and then his fingers gently swept clear the hair hanging in front of her swollen, moist face. “And I'm coming with you.”

She began her protest, but he interrupted her.