Louisa and the Missing Heiress (14 page)

Footsteps overhead announced that the manservant was busy upstairs, probably toing and froing from the wardrobe to an opened valise on Mr. Wortham’s bed. I picked up the paper and refolded it to the front page.

There was the sketch of Mr. Wortham, making him look older, diabolical, capable of anything. And underneath, of course, the headline:
Fortune-hunter Arrested for Murder of Wealthy Wife.

Overhead, I heard the manservant and a new set of footsteps—the woman who wore attar of roses? Murmurs, then laughter floated down the stairs. A minute later Digby returned. I couldn’t help but note that the man was smirking and his hair had been ruffled out of place.

“Well, thank you,” I said somewhat coldly, accepting the valise he had packed so hastily that a shirtsleeve hung out the side. I made a point of putting the paper back on the table, front page up, with the drawing of Preston Wortham visible.

Digby sighed. “I fear,” he said somberly, “that Mr. Wortham’s past may be catching up with him. He has not always been known for his prudence.”

“What do you mean, Digby?” I asked.

“Ah. I will say no more.”

“Well, if it is any reassurance, I shall look deeply into this matter, Digby. Your employer shall not be punished unless he is proven guilty of this terrible deed.”

Digby cleared his throat and studied the floor.

“That is reassuring, miss,” he said after a long pause.

On my way out, I passed the carved oak hall tree, with its mirror and antlers and umbrella bucket. Preston Wortham’s Savile Row coat was hanging there.

“I’ll take that, too, Digby,” I said. “He will need a warm coat. Strange. He had said it was misplaced.”

“Perhaps he forgot to look for it on the coatrack, Miss Alcott,” Digby suggested with more than a suggestion of a sneer.

“Well, then, Digby. Thank you for your help.” I stepped toward the door. But Digby did not step forward to open it for me. He cleared his throat once again.

“Ah. I almost forgot.” He sighed. “Tragedy makes one lose track of things. Mrs. Wortham brought you a present. From France, I believe. She would want me to present it to you, I’m certain. Will you wait a moment?”

He disappeared back up the stairs and was gone a full ten minutes before he returned, looking somewhat strained and carrying a slender tin box.

“I had some difficulty locating it,” he said. “It is bonbons. Marzipan, I believe. Good day, miss.” And he ushered me out the front door.

AT THE COURTHOUSE JAIL, Preston Wortham was overjoyed to see me. He was most in need of a friend.

“A visitor. A lady,” the guard called out, even though I already stood in front of the little barred room where Preston had been ensconced, and he could see me quite clearly.

I thought I had prepared myself for the sight of Mr. Wortham in captivity. I knew what the secured room looked like, since my father and other men of the committee had visited it three years before, during the troubled time of the case of Simms, the runaway slave who had been arrested and held in that room. The room was bare, small, and dark, with only one window, and that one almost to the top of the wall, and barred. A heavy wire grille across the doorway prevented the occupant from leaving. It was a room from which there was no escape, being on the third floor and heavily guarded. The room smelled fetid, and I averted my eyes from the chamber pot in the corner.

Preston sat on his bed, a bare lumpy mattress on a rusting metal frame, absurdly still dressed in his evening clothes and looking like a gentleman who had partaken a little too freely of entertainment the evening before and been accused of disturbing the peace, not murdering his wife. Men with Preston’s looks and childlike intelligence carry an aura of innocence about them; they seem like naughty boys caught stealing from the cookie jar, I thought, studying him.

He had been deprived of his shoes and put in leg irons, since he stood accused of a vicious act of murder. When he politely rose to greet me, the leg irons clanked and the sound startled both of us. He was terrified.

“They will say I murdered poor Dorothy for her money,” was his greeting to me. “I am doomed.”

I had the awful feeling that life too closely resembled my blood-and-thunders. The guard brought a chair and I sat opposite Preston, but outside of the barred room.

“I have brought your valise,” I said. I set it on the floor, where he could see it. “Soap, razor, sheets, clean clothing. And your coat. It may be chilly, if they let the fire go out at night.”

“I wondered where that had gone to,” Preston said, reaching for the coat through the bars.

“Here, here!” The guard leaped forward and intercepted the coat. “I’ll have to check those pockets first.”

“I haven’t brought a file, if that is what you are thinking,” I protested. But the pockets were checked, and the valise, too, before the guard would pass them on to Preston.

“I’ll just have to confiscate this,” he said, taking the razor. “Desperate men consider desperate plans.”

“How will I shave?” Preston wailed, as if that were his worst problem.

“If you have the money, you can hire a barber to come in,” the guard said.

“Well, money is one thing I do have,” Preston said darkly.

“Are you certain of that?” I asked, studying the ceiling as Preston unpacked and examined the small clothes that Digby had packed for him.

“Of course I’m certain. Dorothy was even wealthier than I suspected,” Preston replied, frowning. “I say, are you sure Digby packed the clean stuff? As far as I can tell, Dorothy’s family owns a large portion of the state of Georgia, and the cotton that comes out of there, in addition to the manufactories and the Newport estates.”

“They do?” I was genuinely surprised. Dorothy had supported slavery?

“They kept it quiet, for the very reason you have just turned pale, Miss Alcott. Philosophically, they are abolitionists, I suppose. But they own a plantation. Dot didn’t know. They kept it from her. Edgar revealed it to me one night in his cups. My brother-in-law does not hold his liquor well.”

“You’re certain?”

“Look at this shirt! Why didn’t Digby press these things? Well, after Edgar spilled the beans I met with their banker for lunch one day, and asked the right questions.” Preston smiled, pleased with himself. He had stolen a cookie from the cookie jar. “They are wealthier than you even suspect, Miss Alcott. Wealthier even than I suspected. Certainly wealthier than Dorothy knew. They kept the poor child in the dark, skimping on her clothes allowance, keeping her out of family meetings. When I told her about the plantation, she . . . she wept. She hadn’t known, you see.”

“And when was that, Mr. Wortham, when you told Dottie about the plantation?” I asked, leaning forward.

“Let’s see. We were still unpacking. Two weeks ago. Yes, just two weeks ago. The week before . . .” His voice trailed off.
Before she died
, I finished in my thoughts.
Before she was murdered.

“There was quite a to-do when we visited her family that Sunday,” Wortham continued. “She confronted them, and, well . . . I was asked to leave the room for that discussion. They weren’t overly eager to accept me into the family. But you already know that.”

“Yes. I already know that. If it is any consolation, I’m sure that by the time you and Dorothy had filled the nursery, they would have grown more accepting. They needed time.”

“I’m not at all sure. Edgar, in particular, has taken a rather strong dislike to me. And I to him, I freely admit, though he seemed to dislike Dorothy almost as much as he disliked me. I don’t understand that family. You’ll think I’m being fanciful but I’ve often wondered if they didn’t have some deep, dark secret. Aside from the slaves. Have you ever wondered about them, Miss Alcott? Do you really think they might have grown to accept me?”

I stared at the stained ceiling for a few moments before answering, uncertain of how openly I wished to discuss this matter. Preston was—rather, had been—Dot’s husband. He might also be Dot’s murderer. I decided to answer vaguely, and borrowed one of my father’s favorite sayings, a quip from the earlier philosopher William Byrd, that that song is best esteemed with which our ears are most acquainted. Of course, it went right over Preston’s head, but he nodded and pretended to understand.

I decided it was time to get to the point.

“Mr. Wortham,” I said in a low voice, since the guard was not more than ten feet away, “did you and Dot sign a marriage agreement?”

“Of course. It is what our class expects.” Now Preston looked deeply confused. “What a strange question.”

“And do you know the terms of that agreement? You did read it, didn’t you?”

“It was very long, I recall. And filled with clauses. Yes, that was the day that Edgar and I drank champagne with lunch and then the lawyers came with the papers. . . .”

“And you signed after having had too much champagne.” I sighed. “I suggest that Dot’s brother is not the only man who cannot hold his liquor. Really, Mr. Wortham, one would suspect—”

“Tell me quickly what these questions mean,” Preston said, putting his chin in his hands and looking as if he might weep.

I plunged in, since there seemed no way to soften the blow. “Dorothy’s mother told me you are cut off from the family wealth, now she is dead.”

“Impossible,” he said.

“Very possible. You yourself signed the papers. Those very long, clause-filled papers that you seem not to have read.”

“Not even an allowance?” Preston moaned so that the guard, half-asleep leaning against the wall, started forward. I held up my hand to indicate all was well, or at least not at emergency level.

“Not even an allowance,” I said.

“Does this mean you won’t be wanting a shave in the morning?” the guard asked, smirking.

A tear trickled down Mr. Wortham’s chin. I looked away courteously, though I felt chilled.

 

 

LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Sylvia and I were together again in the kitchen of the Charles Street Home, boiling water for one of the residents. A Miss Miller (she refused to give her first name, and all knew that last name was an invention) had decided to give birth that day, and her labor was in progress—had been, in fact, for several hours already—when we arrived.

Sylvia and I assisted by supplying pails of hot water, linen, and the occasional teacup of whiskey the midwife required to keep up her strength.

“Tear this worn sheet, Sylvie. It will make fine swaddling. I will tell you first about that brown package, as it is a shorter tale,” I said, puffing a little with exertion. “It is my new story, Sylvie. Finished. I completed it last night. Though I am dissatisfied.” Steam from the boiling vat had curled my thick dark hair and reddened Sylvia’s cheeks. Our gowns clung wetly to us.

“This is as close to a Turkish bath as I hope to get.” Sylvia wiped perspiration from her eyes, tore the old sheet into footwide strips, and handed them to me. I then dipped them in boiling soapy water and hung them on a rope strung through the scullery.

From the upstairs birthing room came the sound of a young woman screaming at the top of her lungs, and the scream was followed by a string of curses that made one wonder where Miss Miller had acquired her conversational habits.

“One can only hope never to experience such agony,” Sylvia said.

“If you insist on conversion and the convent, you may well be spared it, Sylvia,” I replied. A thought occurred. “As has Dot, who has died so young.”

Conversation temporarily ceased again as another scream sounded through the house, a scream of agony that sent chills down my spine. The scream, this time, was followed by silence, and then by a high-pitched wail. Miss Miller’s child had successfully entered the world and was calling for his first meal and bath.

“Victory!” Smiling, we gathered up bundles of clean linen to take upstairs. “Only eight hours for her labor. An easy one,” I said, though I was certain it hadn’t felt at all easy to the new mother. “Let’s go relieve the midwife. She’ll need a rest.”

Another hour passed before both mother and child were nicely cleaned up and resting upstairs in fresh sheets. Miss Miller had come through quite well, considering it was her first (and last, she insisted), but her lack of curiosity about the infant was troubling. He had been swaddled and laid in a cradle, for Miss Miller would not have him in her bed, nor would she give him her breast. So the poor little tyke sucked goat milk from the pierced finger of a glove and burrowed into a pillow rather than his mother.

“Those who say motherhood is instinctive and natural are talking balderdash,” I commented to Sylvia in a low voice. “Maybe for some women it is, but it would seem that love of a baby does not necessarily follow from that brief and often bitter union between a man and woman.”

“It’s wailing. Take it away,” Miss Miller called from her bed. “Take it away!”

And so the new little person was bundled up and taken away by the midwife, to be brought to a wet nurse and then, perhaps, adopted into a good home that would not question too deeply the child’s parentage.

“I suspect when I go home, Father will want to hear about Miss Miller and the baby, and then discuss the meaning of life and the transference of souls,” I said. “Hard to think all that blood and gore today had any meaning to it at all. Perhaps we should adjourn to a place where one can order a strong cup of tea.” And so to the Commonwealth Tea House we went, and found a table in the ladies’ side, and ordered a pot of China black and a whole plate of buns, with fresh butter.

“Now,” Sylvia ordered, pouring her cup, “tell me about Preston in jail.” It was twilight, and the serving girl came and put a little oil lamp on the table. I described my visit to Digby and my audience with Preston in jail.

“He shed tears over lost money, when he had not cried at Dot’s identification,” I said. I shivered again, as I had earlier that day outside Preston’s cell.