No Rest for the Dove (35 page)

“Assuming the three of you are not first blown up to the rings of Saturn.”

“We only plan a simple test—of Watt’s improvements for the fire-driven steam pump, which we spoke of at length last week. Now, perhaps, the attempt will draw Gian Carlo out of himself. It should also teach Lem a thing or two he would not have learned at Harvard.”

She shivered at the thought of compressed steam under her neighbor’s hand, yet Mrs. Willett was glad to see him courting his old mistress once more—though she was frequently a danger to them all. “What will you do with this engine?” she asked. “Surely there are no mines near here to drain?”

“Who can say?” Longfellow replied, unshouldering his scythe. He squinted into rays that had begun to slant noticeably, marking the quiet coming of autumn.

“There is another thing I would like to know, Richard,” she began again.

“More questions, Carlotta? For instance?”

“What will happen to Thomas Pomeroy?”

“Since Warren has again stated that the rock we found was not the true cause of death, I doubt Thomas will be hung, after all. Still, there will be a trial. Then we’ll see.”

“What do you think Elena put into the wine? I suppose the Italians know of many mysterious Eastern poisons?”

“I’m sure they do! But we suspect she employed the same old retainer I often put to work in my own glass house. Arsenic is the usual choice, after all—and they have garden pests in Italy, Mrs. Willett, much as we do here. But now, I have another agricultural task to begin—a healthier occupation than discussing poisons, especially with a woman!”

Longfellow tightened his grip on the scythe, and swung his arms so that he laid down a line of grass along its deadly edge; then, pleased with his neat work, he took a step to the side as he brought his hands up again, ready to lay down another swath.

Within the week, Edmund Montagu sent a note to Longfellow, who shared it with Charlotte. The trail of Don Arturo and his daughter had at last been discovered. According to witnesses, a boy, quite ill, was taken on board a ship at Newport; his father claimed the child was in the final stage of consumption, and not to be disturbed. He was attempting to take the boy home, he said, for the blessing of a grieving mother. Their passage was procured by a pair of diamonds, yellowish in cast, and the child had been heard to sob as he lay in his cabin, no doubt as he contemplated his certain future. Montagu also told them that the two thief-takers who had been assigned to watch Longfellow’s doors had gone off, as well, leaving no trace behind.

In two weeks more, Thomas Pomeroy was indicted. He was then tried, and sentenced to another seven years of indentured servitude, beyond the original seven given to him at the time of his transportation. His life would not be easy; but in the frontier town where he was being sent to work, he would be exposed to fewer temptations than in Boston. And, Longfellow added one evening in the
inn’s taproom, where he shared a bowl of chowder with Charlotte, if the lad corrected his behavior, there was no reason he might not learn a useful trade, becoming one day a free man of some worth to his community. At least, that was the hope of the Superior Court, which had sent him off in chains.

Three months later, a final word came on a ship from the Mediterranean, in a letter from Don Arturo Alva that was addressed to Mrs. Willett. She opened it with trembling fingers on a snowy afternoon in early December, while she and Richard Longfellow sat by the warmth of her study’s hearth.

“He tells me,” she said after a few moments, “that Elena has done her duty. She was married on the week of their return, to the nobleman her father had earlier selected for her.”

“Hmmm,” was Longfellow’s initial comment.

“But there is more—oh!” After another pause, during which she read the rest, Charlotte set the letter down and stared into the fire.

“He congratulates me.”

“Does he? For what?”

“For seeing in Elena what he, at first, did not wish to believe. Could not—until, he says, last summer, when he heard his daughter arguing with her governess—moments before the woman fell to her death from a window in the girl’s apartment. When he then gave her the choice between a convent and a carefully arranged marriage, Elena attacked her father, as well. With a knife.”

“His scar!”

“Yes.”

Pondering this horrible knowledge, they sat in silence until Charlotte spoke again.

“Of the two, she would have hated the convent more, I think. And I doubt even the sisters could have changed
her. At least in her husband’s palace—for it seems he has one, something like a fortress—at least there, Elena may wear fine dresses, and her new jewels. But Don Arturo swears she will be kept closely confined.”

“Then she will no longer be a danger to the world. A tragedy, still,” Longfellow finally decided. “But would the girl have developed such cruelty, were it not for the faults of her decadent society? Could you imagine such a thing happening here, Carlotta?”

Receiving no reply, he reconsidered before he spoke again.

“Yet perhaps Elena was peculiarly unbalanced, after all. What kind of woman enjoys masquerading in a man’s clothing? I ask you, Mrs. Willett?”

Charlotte could not tell if this had been said with a small smile, or not.

“Do you think, Richard,” she returned, “that we should pass this news on to Gian Carlo?”

“I’m not sure it will do Il Colombo much good. But I suppose I’ll write something of it—whenever I can manage to send a letter off to Vienna.”

“Perhaps by then you’ll be able to tell him Mrs. Montagu has borne her child safely … which I’m sure he
would
like to hear.”

“As would we all,” said Longfellow moodily, before he, too, turned to observe the crackling logs being consumed before their eyes.

THE END

M
ARGARET
M
ILES
lives in Washington, D.C. The author of three Bracebridge mysteries, she is currently working on a fourth.