Murder at the Breakers (6 page)

“So what changed your mind?”

“A couple of things,” he said with a shrug. “For one, I realized the New Haven-Hartford-Providence line has been losing money. Lots of it, through mismanagement and skimming off the top. The corruption is rampant. It might not be such a bad idea to scrap it and start over, and a shark like Cornelius Vanderbilt would be just the man for the job.”

“You said a couple of things. What’s the other?”

A corner of his mouth lifted and he rolled his eyes. “Don’t laugh, but I just couldn’t blindside the old man like that. Call me sentimental. A lot of good that does me, though, if he’s still ready to lead me to the scaffold.”

“Don’t say things like that!” I slapped my purse against the bars, sending Brady back a step. I moved closer to the cell and again lowered my voice. “What can you tell me about Alvin Goddard? Did he have enemies that you knew of?”

“You mean besides me?”

“Be serious!” I raised my purse in warning, as if I could slap sense into my brother through the bars.

He shook his head and shrugged. “Everyone has enemies of some sort. I suppose Goddard was no different.”

A notion had me pulling back and studying him through a narrowed gaze. “Were there allies, Brady?”

“Sure, he had friends, business associates, all kinds of lucrative connections.”

“No, I mean you. Were you alone in deciding to steal those documents, or did someone put you up to it? One of the investors?”

He did that little sideways bob of the head he’d always given our mother whenever she asked a question he didn’t want to answer. The cot springs whined as he lowered himself onto the edge of the mattress. “There was no one else involved. I came up with the harebrained idea all on my own.”

“You sure?”

He swung his face toward me. “Of course I’m sure. Look, Em, I’m tired. Didn’t get much sleep last night, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

The anger in his voice said he was shutting me out, which meant two things: There was something he didn’t want to tell me, and I wouldn’t likely get much more out of him today. “Just one more question, then.” When his gaze softened, I smiled apologetically. “How did you ever manage to get the combination to Cornelius’s safe?”

He chuckled softly. “It was months ago, at the New York offices. Right in front of me one day he turned around and opened the safe. Guess he didn’t think I could see over his shoulder.” He shrugged. “He must’ve still thought of me as Arthur Cross’s naïve little stepson.”

“More fool he,” I muttered. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me the combination?”

“Oh, no.” He came to his feet and strode toward me as if to grasp my shoulders and shake me, though he stopped a foot short of the cell door. “No way, Em. I won’t have you playing at intrigue on my account. See where it got me? You don’t need Cornelius Vanderbilt as an enemy. Now, go home, little sister, and stay there.”

“First, I’m going to send a telegram to Mother and Father.” Brady’s eyebrows quirked; he clearly didn’t expect much help from that quarter. I hesitated another moment. “Do you need anything?”

“They feed me pretty well in here, and Jesse looks in on me when he can.” He smiled, though his eyes remained bleak. “Don’t suppose you’d bring me some cigarettes?”

“I would, but I don’t suppose they’d let you have them.”

He nodded and looked away. I blew him a kiss and left him, along with a generous portion of my heart.

I got as far as the sidewalk before the image of Brady holding on to those bars and putting on a brave face turned me about and sent me back inside.

“I’d like to see Officer Whyte again, please.”

“You’ll have to wait, Miss Cross,” the sergeant manning the front desk replied. “He’s busy.”

Then wait I would. Surely I could convince Jesse to release my brother into my custody. He’d known us both all our lives, and he was Brady’s friend. Besides, we lived on an island with only one way off: by boat. It wasn’t as if Brady could simply run off in the night.

From where I stood in the lobby I had a clear view into the main room. Officer Dobbs had returned and sat tapping away at one of the typewriters, pausing now and again to squint down at a paper while uttering what must have been oaths beneath his breath, judging from his expression. Was he typing up the report on Brady?

A few feet away from him, Jesse was on his feet talking to a man in street clothes—dark blue suit and gray overcoat. Smartly tailored, but not extravagant, his attire marked him a professional, if not quite wealthy. He was no one I recognized, which immediately made him interesting—everyone in Newport knew everyone—yet that wasn’t the only reason I found myself staring. Framed by thick dark hair that curled slightly at the ends, his square jaw, straight nose, and strong brow caught my fascination, as did the broadness of his shoulders, the tapering lines of his figure beneath his coat.

“This Mr. Gale is being charged?”

Hearing Brady’s name, I pricked my ears.

“Looks like it,” Jesse said. “He was found at the scene of the crime. And there appears to have been a motive.”

For a moment I thought to admonish him for discussing Brady with a stranger; then I remembered he was merely revealing what was already on public record.

“What about the other guests? From what I understand, some three hundred of the Four Hundred were in attendance last night. Fish, Goelet, Oelrich, Astor, Halstock . . .”

My curiosity piqued, I moved into the wide doorway that separated the lobby from the main station. The gentleman referred to the very cream of society’s upper crust, determined, rumor had it, by how many people could comfortably fit in
the
Mrs. Astor’s New York ballroom: 400. Was someone finally agreeing with me that any number of people at the ball might have had reason for wanting Alvin Goddard out of the way?

Jesse shrugged, shook his head, and spoke some words I couldn’t hear over the typing—drat that Dobbs. I started to move closer, then stopped and pressed tight to the doorway as the gentleman glanced my way. His gaze skimmed past me into the lobby, slowly slid back, lingered until my face heated, and finally returned to Jesse.

Those dark eyes left me unsettled . . . tingling, as if I’d been touched. Left me speculating, too. Was this man a reporter, or had Uncle Cornelius hired a private detective to investigate the crime? If so, to help Brady or to seal his fate?

Either way, I wouldn’t be asking Jesse for any favors in that man’s hearing, because if I identified myself as the alleged culprit’s sister to either a reporter or a private detective, I wouldn’t have another moment’s peace.

Outside, I made my way to the telegraph office on nearby Franklin Street. I penned a quick message, scratched it out, and then tried again to convey in a few short sentences the seriousness of Brady’s situation without sending my parents into a panic. There was little they could do all the way from Paris, but I hoped they’d be able to send funds to help with Brady’s legal fees. I also hoped Mother, if not both of them, would board the next America-bound ship.

My errand completed, I picked a direction at random and started walking, my stride so brisk several pedestrians sidestepped anxiously out of my way. Never mind that the evidence against Brady was shaky at best, and anyone with an astute mind and open eyes should see that. The only people who mattered believed him to be guilty: the police and Uncle Cornelius. The drizzle had let up for the moment, but I shivered nonetheless. If Cornelius Vanderbilt decided to pressure the courts into convicting my brother, he would be convicted. Plain and simple.

I needed a plan to prove Brady’s innocence without a doubt. With each step I took names paraded through my brain—potentially 300 of them. How would I ever sort through all those people and discover which of them might have held enough of a grudge to commit murder? Where would I start?

The answer, I realized, was to start at the beginning. For that I needed to get back to my carriage. With a start I realized I’d drifted up to Spring Street and had covered quite a distance in the opposite direction from Washington Square and, just beyond on Marlborough Street, my waiting buggy. I turned around to start back, but a sight about a half a block away stopped me cold.

It was the man from the police station.

Had Jesse told him who I was? I could hardly imagine him doing anything of the sort. But maybe it hadn’t been too hard to guess the identity of the one woman visiting the police station today.

Our gazes locked for an instant. Quickly, I schooled my features to reveal no hint of recognition and darted a look at the building fronts beside me and across the street, pretending I was looking for an address. Molly’s Dress Shop stood two doors down. I headed there and darted inside.

“Good morning, Emma! How nice to see you,” the proprietress, Molly herself, exclaimed upon spotting me hurrying into the shop. She looked about to say something more, the knowledge of what everyone in Newport had already learned this morning written plainly on her features.

Molly had been my mother’s favorite seamstress here in town, and I’d known the woman forever. Like my mother, she was tall and trim and youthful despite her forty-plus years. Unlike my mother, she dressed modestly in a white shirtwaist with leg-a-mutton sleeves and slim charcoal skirt. When I walked in she was helping a customer, a Mrs. Peterson, and bolts of colorful muslin lay unrolled across the cutting table. “Are you . . . er . . . looking for something in particular today?” Molly asked. Sympathy tinged with uncertainty flickered in her eyes.

“I’m . . . ah . . . just passing through today, if you don’t mind,” I said a little breathlessly. “Hello, Mrs. Peterson,” I hastily added, wishing I could have avoided the prying eyes of one of the town’s biggest gossips. But it couldn’t be helped. “Molly, would it be all right if I ducked out the back?”

Mrs. Peterson raised her silver eyebrows in comprehension. “Avoiding someone, Miss Cross?”

“Uh, well, you might say that.” I pointed toward the back room. “Molly, may I?”

“Of course. Back door’s unlocked. It’s trash day, though, so don’t trip over the bins in the alley.”

With Mrs. Peterson’s inquisitive gaze burning into my back, I hurried on. I exited through the alley without any trash-bin mishaps and came out onto Mary Street. Another quick rounding of a corner brought me onto Clarke. I hastened northward, past the old Artillery Company, and then back across Washington Square, where in my preoccupation I nearly collided with the oncoming trolley rumbling its way toward Long Wharf. A shout of “Watch yourself!” from an unseen female pedestrian somewhere behind me virtually saved my life.

By the time I reached Marlborough Street I was huffing for breath and tugging at my collar. I’d left Barney and my rig in the carriage shed behind St. Paul’s Church, whose steeple cast a thin shadow across the front of the police station. A glance over my shoulder revealed no well-dressed stranger in pursuit.

“You’re in a hurry, Miss Emma. Everything all right with your brother?”

I didn’t stop to ask Mr. Weatherby, St. Paul’s sexton, how much he had heard about last night’s ordeal. Yes, in a town like Newport, news traveled fast and rumors spread like weeds. I assured him Brady’s involvement was a misunderstanding, thanked him for brushing Barney down, and promised I’d see him at Sunday morning services.

Did I see a flash of gray overcoat as I swung the buggy back onto Marlborough Street? I might have, but I didn’t linger to be sure. Was I overreacting? Maybe, but as garish headlines ran through my mind, I didn’t think so. This man might poke around as much as he liked. I had my own information to gather. My next stop was The Breakers.

T
he skies opened up as I drove through The Breakers’ main gates. Parker, the young footman on duty at the front door during the day, ran out from the porte cochere with an umbrella at the ready. A lot of good it did. I was already wet from the ride in my open-sided carriage, and in the nearly sideways rain poor Parker became fairly drenched as well.

Inside, he quickly handed me off to the acting head butler, Bateman, and excused himself to change into a dry uniform. Bateman hurried me into the ladies’ parlor off the marbled entry hall. Within minutes my carriage jacket had been whisked away by a maid for drying, and I sat wrapped in a thick shawl, sipping strong tea. I was grateful Bateman hadn’t brought me into the library, where the memories of last night would have replayed over and over in my mind.

“Is there anything else I can bring you, Miss Emmaline?”

Russell Bateman wasn’t much older than Brady, which was far younger than the typical head butler. With his wheat-colored hair and freckled complexion, he appeared greener than the most inexperienced under footman, yet I knew him to be capable of assuming an authoritative role when necessary—as was the case now. Mason, as I’d learned last night, had been recently let go, supposedly caught stealing by Alvin Goddard.

I wondered about that.

“Thank you, Bateman, I’m fine now. Has my uncle returned from town yet?”

“He’s been in and gone again, miss. None of the family is presently at home.”

“None of them?” This surprised me. I’d hoped that if nothing else I might probe Aunt Alice with a few strategic questions. “They’ve all gone out in this weather?”

“The events of last night have left the family unsettled, miss. I believe Mr. Alfred suggested an afternoon at the Casino and then dinner at the country club.”

“Probably a good idea,” I murmured. If I shrank from the idea of having tea in the library, I could only imagine how the rest of them felt inhabiting a house where a man well-known to them all had died less than twenty-four hours ago.

Seeming unsure what to do with me, Bateman hovered near the table as I sipped my tea. It might not have been very sporting of me, but I decided the family’s being away provided me with a rare opportunity. Setting my cup in its saucer with a light clink, I caught his eye. “Bateman, you’re aware of the circumstances surrounding Mason’s dismissal, yes?”

“He was accused of stealing valuables from the family.”

“Like what?”

“Well . . . I believe some rare bronze figurines of Mrs. Vanderbilt’s were taken. Chinese, I think, and priceless.”

“But he’s worked for them for years with never a mishap. When did the items go missing?”

“In the spring, it seems. No one noticed right away, though, what with all the refurbishing going on.” He lifted the porcelain teapot. “More tea, miss?”

“Thank you.” I held out my cup. “Did he admit to the theft?”

“Not at all, miss. Mr. Mason insists he’s innocent.”

“I imagine the family wishes to press charges.”

Bateman shrugged a shoulder. “That’s doubtful. Nothing was ever found, so there’s no proof Mason did it.”

“Were his room and all his possessions searched?”

“Of course, miss. But if he did take anything, he’d already disposed of it. Probably pawned the bunch of it up in Providence.”

“Then what made Mr. Goddard so certain it was Mason?”

“Opportunity, miss. No one had as much free rein in the house as Mason. And—” He broke off, shuffling his feet.

“What?” Quickly surmising the reasons someone suddenly took to stealing, I played a hunch. “Did Mason have financial troubles?”

“He, ah . . .” Bateman threw a glance over his shoulder at the doorway. “Seems he’d taken to gambling on his free time. Horses, mostly. Oh, and greyhounds.”

“Oh, dear.” Bateman was fidgeting now, eager to be away, but I had another question for him. “Was he very upset to be dismissed?”

The man’s gaze sharpened. I could see his mind working, trying to divine my meaning. “He was furious, miss. But that doesn’t mean . . .”

Doesn’t mean he was driven to murder? Possibly not—probably not—but as easy as it had been for Brady to sneak in last night, who was to say the Vanderbilts’ head butler, who knew the house better than the family themselves, couldn’t have done likewise? I’d always liked Mason, but as Jesse had implied, all avenues needed exploring.

“No, of course it doesn’t,” I conceded, wondering where Mason could be found, if he was still in town. I lifted my teacup in both hands to warm my palms against the nearly translucent porcelain. “I suppose I’m trying to prove a point, at least in my own mind. And it’s that opportunity does not necessarily a criminal make.”

Our gazes met for an instant before his angled away. Obviously I wasn’t just talking about Mason. Bateman probably believed Brady was guilty, but it was never proper for a servant to express an opinion, especially of a personal nature. It was time to let the man resume his duties.

“If it’s all right, Bateman, I need to run upstairs. I believe I lost something last night . . . in all the commotion. One of my earrings. They were a present from my parents and I’d surely hate to lose it.”

“I’ll send Lucy up with you to help you search.”

I didn’t bother objecting. It didn’t matter if I had an audience or not, or that my earring would not be found in Uncle Cornelius’s bedroom—that it was, in fact, safe at home in my jewelry box.

A few minutes later, as Lucy got down on her hands and knees and began combing the bedroom floor, she apologized nonstop for the rug having been thoroughly swept and scrubbed that morning.

“We were awfully intent on cleaning up the spilled spirits and candle wax. If your earring had been here, miss, there’s a good chance it was swept up into one of our dustpans and tossed in the garbage.”

“I’m sure not, Lucy. One of you would have noticed it.” I felt a tad guilty, because while the eager girl focused her attention downward, I looked upward, studying the dent in the frame of the balcony door. That was why I had come, to examine that depression in the wood and compare it in size and shape with the candelabrum Brady had used to see his way across the room. I placed my hand up against it. My palm fit easily inside, and I judged the depth to be about a quarter inch, suggesting a good, strong swing against the frame. But with what?

The base of the candelabrum might easily span four or so inches, but not the main shaft, nor the slender branches. If someone swung the piece by those branches and struck the wood hard enough to make that dent, wouldn’t the delicate, curving silver have snapped? And if someone had held the candelabrum farther down, they could not have gotten enough momentum for the base to have made such a defined depression in the wood.

“Miss Emmaline, did you step out onto the balcony last night? Should we search there, too?”

I whisked my hand to my side and turned to find Lucy still on all fours, staring up at me curiously. “Uh, no. I was just checking the floor where the rug ends.” I swept my foot back and forth several times. “Don’t see it anywhere.”

Lucy nodded and returned to raking her fingers through the Persian rug’s thick nap. Pretending to stare down at the nearest chair cushion, I once again set my hand in the dent and smoothed my palm up and down, my fingers spread. The rough edges abrading my skin and a crackling paint chip told me the hollow had been recently made.

I wondered how long before Uncle Cornelius made it disappear, and whether I could convince Jesse to come out here with the candelabrum before that happened.

“I give up, Lucy. It’s possible my earring fell off downstairs, or even on my way home.”

“Have you checked outside, miss? You know, in the grass, where . . .” Her voice trailed off. She rose to her feet.

“I guess I’ll come back when the rain stops. Or maybe when I return home my housekeeper will have miraculously found it. Would you please find my carriage jacket so I can be on my way?”

“Of course, miss.”

Downstairs, she helped me on with my overgarment and ran to open the front door for me. “Will you give Katie my regards, miss? Tell her I say hello?”

I remembered then that Katie and Lucy had been roommates up in the third floor servants’ quarters, both here and in the New York mansion. None of her former coworkers had contacted Katie all summer; maybe they were afraid to involve themselves in her troubles, fearing their jobs would be at risk. I offered Lucy a smile. “I’d be happy to, and Katie will be glad to hear it. She’d be happier still if you paid her a visit sometime. Gull Manor isn’t far from here.”

“I’ll . . . uh . . . I’ll try, miss, when I have some time off. Do you want Parker to walk you out with the umbrella?”

I turned my collar up. “No, thanks. I’ll just make a dash.”

Nanny fussed over me when I arrived home, scolding me halfheartedly for traipsing about in the rain. I only half listened to her lecture while I considered all I had learned on my travels.

“Theodore Mason had as much or more reason as Brady to want Alvin Goddard dead,” I said as Nanny removed the pins from my hair and tossed a towel over my head.

“I’ve known Teddy Mason for forty years,” she said mildly. “He didn’t kill anyone.”

“Oh, I believe you. But the point is that he could have just as easily as Brady. The evidence against both men is purely coincidental . . . or what do they call it? Oh, yes. Circumstantial.” But the last word became gibberish as Nanny moved behind my chair and rubbed my hair with the towel none too gently, wobbling my head this way and that.

“Circum-who?” She released the towel so that it flopped over my face, and stooped to pick up my dripping half boots from the floor beside me.

“Circum
stantial,
Nanny.” I peeked out from a corner of the damp fabric. “I’ll wager you can find him—find where Mason has gone. Couldn’t you, Nanny? I didn’t want to ask anyone at The Breakers. Too obvious.”

She set my boots before the drawing room fire. “I suppose I could inquire with a friend or two.”

“Humph. Word spreads along the servants’ gossip route faster than a speeding locomotive, and no one is better connected than you. I wouldn’t be surprised if you discovered who killed Alvin Goddard before suppertime.”

“Well, if I do, you’ll be the first to know. In the meantime, I’ll make some honey cakes to take to Brady tomorrow.”

The next morning brought clear skies, and Nanny and I set out together to the Point, to Brady’s third-floor flat in the colonial that had been our childhood home. My parents still owned the house, but rented out the two lower stories to a retired sailor and a pair of widowed sisters, respectively. In Brady’s untidy digs, Nanny and I collected clothes, toiletries, and a few magazines. I hesitated over Brady’s tobacco pouch and papers, but left them where they lay. The police wouldn’t let him have them, though I didn’t doubt Jesse provided Brady with the occasional discreet puff.

His eyes lit up at the sight of Nanny’s honey cakes. I asked him if he had remembered anything new, and when he merely shrugged with a mouthful of crumbs, I left Nanny to chat with him for a few minutes and headed into the main station searching for Jesse.

I found him at his desk, hunched over a stack of familiar documents.

“The New Haven-Hartford-Providence Line,” I said in way of greeting.

He flinched and glanced up. “Emma, I didn’t see you come in.”

“No, you were engrossed in those railroad plans. I hadn’t known my uncle delivered them to you.”

To my frustration, he tucked the papers into the leather folder I’d seen yesterday and set them aside. “A bit reluctantly.”

“I can imagine. You must have had to threaten him.”

Jesse extended a hand to give my gloved one a shake. Then he gestured me into the chair facing his desk. “What brings you back today? I mean, besides seeing Brady.” Did a glimmer of resignation enter his eye? I believe it did, and I couldn’t blame him. He must have thought I’d come to plead Brady’s case again.

Which, of course, I had. But this time I left my emotions at the door. I glanced longingly at that closed folder, wondering what revelations the documents might contain, then calmly met Jesse’s gaze. “I discovered something of significance yesterday at my uncle’s house.”

He folded his hands over the documents in that pensive way he had. “Now, Emma, don’t you think this investigation is best left to the professionals?”

From anyone else the question would have been condescending . . . and infuriating. From Jesse Whyte, it was fraught with sympathy. I shook my head. “I can’t sit by and watch my brother wrongly accused. And surely you can’t sit by and ignore pertinent evidence.”

Without a word, he leaned back in his hard-backed swivel chair and raised his palm, cuing me to continue.

“You might not have noticed the other night, but there is a dent in the balcony door frame. I went back yesterday to inspect this dent and realized it’s highly unlikely the candelabrum found next to Brady could have caused it.”

“How do you know that dent wasn’t caused by the carpenters when they rebuilt the house?”

“Jesse, you’ve met my aunt Alice, yes?”

Looking puzzled, he nodded.

“She was involved in every stage of the rebuilding. She inspected every detail down to the nails used in the paneling. Do you truly believe she would not have noticed such an imperfection in her husband’s bedroom, or that she wouldn’t have demanded it be fixed immediately?”

“I see what you mean. Still, one of the cleaning maids could have done it, or . . .”

“Jesse, all I ask is that you return to the house with the candelabrum and compare it to the indentation in the molding. It might just prove that another object caused the bruises on poor Mr. Goddard’s body and on the back of Brady’s head. As a professional,” I said, throwing his own word back at him, “you must at least entertain the possibility.”

His gaze bored into me. “Is this like the bourbon?”

“Jesse, please, I am not grasping at straws. You know me better than that.” Indeed, he did. Jesse’s parents, and now he, owned a house on the Point only a few doors down from my childhood home. He had often joined us for supper, had sat in our back garden and talked long into the night with both my father and Brady. I leaned closer to him across the desk. “The bourbon, that dent—these are clues that don’t quite add up to the picture of Brady as a murderer. If there’s a chance in hell of clearing his name, then I’ll ride into hell and back. Who will help him if you and I don’t?”