Seven for a Secret (29 page)

She certainly hadn’t disappointed
me.

No, if what I wanted was a better picture of Rutherford Gates, I’d gotten a mural. As for Lucy’s true portrait, I’d kept it to myself.

I pored over the drawing, chin in hand.

Gates, I thought, was a very good suspect from almost every angle. A suspect who lied. A suspect with
motive.

But if I believed his sister, he’d once nearly killed himself to save a puppy.

I added a finishing flourish to her hair, scrubbing my free hand over my face before pushing myself along my deliciously warm floor to reach more blank paper.

Next I tried my luck with Timpson, the owner of the flower shop where Lucy had been all too briefly employed. Timpson resembled the world’s most affable cadaver. Grey skin, grey hair, greying teeth. The only patch of Mr. Timpson that wasn’t grey was his nose, which drew its sunlike glory from the little flask of spirits within his pocket. He was a Manchester man, before. And anxious enough over Lucy to be happy to see me. I told him little enough of her murder, but what I did tell him shook his frail bones.

I drew Mr. Timpson arranging a vase as he spoke with me, the stifling perfumed hothouse flowers just a half-rendered mass of charcoal fumes.

I cannot begin to tell you how sorry I am to be informed of this dreadful news. And in Ward Eight, no less—positively shocking. I have always been of the vocal opinion that this neighborhood, this very integrated neighborhood—ah! I see, Mr. Wilde, that I do not shock you by speaking of integration. All to the good, my dear boy.

As I was saying, I have always trumpeted its safety at every polite opportunity. One does not win a battle of public opinion in a day, sir. You’re a copper star, so you understand me perfectly. Copper stars are new, yes? They are mistrusted by the masses. You must earn their trust, as must proponents of general integration. When integrated neighborhoods are seen to be free of crime and vice, they will become desirable. When the copper stars are seen to protect the citizenry and serve the public, they will become heroes.

The way I read the map, Timpson’s dreams coming true were about as probable as Piest donning a straw bonnet and winning the beauty contest at the county fair come summer. I liked the stooped little florist, though. I took a pull of rye beer purchased from the Germans next door before continuing to sketch his antennae-like eyebrows.

I can begin the tale only a month ago, regrettably. She came into the shop and— Lucy’s full name? Why, Mrs. Charles Adams, I believe, though I never met the husband. She spoke of him only occasionally, but she seemed quite taken with the lucky fellow.

Yes, I’m certain. Undoubtedly Adams was the name.

Actually, she was already known to me, as she’d purchased flowers here for her own household several times. And she was quite unforgettable, Mr. Wilde. A month ago she approached my counter with a certain boldness in her eye I’d not been accustomed to seeing there, as she had always appeared a shy—not to say timorous—lady for all her great beauty. She confessed to me that her little boy spent his days away at lessons now, and that she found herself lonely, and that she knew flowers very well indeed. Had raised them, arranged them, helmed Christmas parties and marriage ceremonies. And I have been in need of assistance for quite some time—my age and rheumatism make repetitive work rather arduous, you see, and it was a great stroke of good fortune that such a capable applicant showed an interest.

She readily described her previous experience for me. I was much struck by the detail with which she described a wedding celebration she’d worked on—fresh gardenias arranged into an intricate coiffure for the bride, shocking-pink azaleas framing sprays of white moss roses on the tables, magnolia centerpieces—she knew of which she spoke. I hired her on the spot.

I last saw her on St. Valentine’s Day. It’s the busiest day of the season, of course. She stayed quite late. She oughtn’t to have been there so long, but she insisted upon remaining until the crowds had thinned. There wasn’t an inkling as to any trouble. Lucy was conscientious always, but I can’t imagine she’d have lingered if something was truly troubling her. She appeared quite at peace.

I have been so horribly worried all this time, Mr. Wilde. I made inquiries, you see, but could discover nothing. None of the other merchants in the area were personally acquainted with her. It seems she kept herself quite private. By the time I realized I didn’t even know her exact address, days had passed.

Other stories? Told to me by Lucy, you mean? Gracious, I wish I could help you, but we talked only of flowers. Lucy was a wonderful woman, but a reticent one. It’s of no use to a policeman, my relating that Lucy recalled running through field after field of wild orange coneflowers as a little girl and afterward felt as if she spoke their language.

She was such a lovely creature. Thank you for telling me of her fate at last, Mr. Wilde. To know the truth is better, in the end, howsoever it might hurt us.

Poor old Timpson was mistaken about that, but I followed him well enough at the time.

Finally, I wriggled toward a fresh corner and started in capturing Grace of the Millington household. I’d begged a favor of Turley in the mournful afternoon half-light and gained a private conference in the wine cellar, our oil lamp tracing white semi-circles in the bottoms of hundreds of bottles, throwing Grace’s features into sharp relief as she stood before me with her hands tucked neatly behind her.

Not kittled to see me. Nor any too gladdened that the subject I broached was
Why are you frightened of copper stars? Which? Who? Can you tell me the stories?

I’d explained. I’d cajoled. I told her of Jean-Baptiste’s carriage museum, and she relented a fraction. Finally, I related the death of Sean Mulqueen and she spoke her piece. Probably because being trapped in a wine cellar with a star police for longer than twenty minutes was going to wreak absolute havoc upon the remainder of her schedule.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate what you’ve done. Letting the boy go free and all, and no one the wiser. I’ve seen him hereabouts, though I’ve not hired him since. Not every man would have done the same.

It just doesn’t matter, you see, Mr. Wilde. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. It isn’t enough.

That Irish copper star, and the slave catchers you spoke of. We know them. We know them plenty well by sight. We know others too, ones you’ve never heard tell of. We walk in pairs and those that have little ones keep them inside after dark and we pray that something comes of our precautions. That numbers will shield us, that daylight is friendlier. None of that is true, the way I figure it. But we imagine it’s so, and so live easier.

Supposing you stop them, Mr. Wilde? I’d shake your hand, then, and praise the Lord for His mercies. But supposing they stop you? And hear tell as I’ve talked, whether from your lips or someone else’s? What then?

Folk are disappearing. Melting away. They trickle up from the South too, new escaped slaves arrive every day—singles, pairs, whole groups sometimes. I’m happy for them. They get a second chance. I hope more fight their way through. What’s more, I pray for it. But they don’t matter either. Not to my life and whether or not I get to carry on living it.

When a man lays hands on you, you’re gone. Just like that. Easy as blinking. The way back home is too long, Mr. Wilde, and the light too dim. So I can’t talk to your sort. Because you can’t keep me safe. Maybe you want to, for all that you’re white and I can’t rightly see what difference it makes to you one way or another. But it comes down to luck, caution, and God. You aren’t my kind, you never will be, and you don’t understand what it means to think about it. It won’t ever happen to you. And so I’ll go on about my business and ask you not to be seen hereabouts anymore. For my sake.

Please try to picture what I mean. If we were stolen for ghosts when we were snatched up, sold for even a shadow of our former selves, that would be something bearable. I could be sold for a ghost. I’d live, I think, though nothing’s certain. But you’re less than a ghost once you’ve been taken. At least ghosts get to keep their own name.

Growling in frustration, I dropped the stick of charcoal.

I did my level best every morning not to picture Jonas chained to a wall, watching the unspeakable befall his aunt. As had nearly already happened. Likewise, I tried my damnedest not to imagine the pair of them tethered with leg irons to a narrow ship’s berth, bereft of every human kindness for the rest of their lives on account of not being human any longer.

At night I pictured it, though. And darkness was fast falling. And my heart was thudding up against my clavicle because I’d tried the only trick I know and the only talent I have that’s ever brought me a moment’s respite from misery and
I still wasn’t getting anywhere.

Tap tap tap.

“Come in.”

My door swung to. Belatedly realizing I’d heard Mrs. Boehm’s tread on the staircase, my face snapped upward half a second later.

“Oh, sorry, I—” Leaping from my ridiculous prone position, I threw a blue waistcoat over my shoddily buttoned shirt and lit the oil lamp. Being reduced to a copper star with a mangled face is bad enough without losing all sense of dignity. “I was working.”

Mrs. Boehm edged forward, staring at the butcher paper. She wore the plain grey frock of the three I’ve catalogued, with the neat row of white lace at the hem and the four deep pleats at the hips. The one that makes her hair less golden, but her eyes marginally more blue. She placed her right hand on her tiny—really far too thin, but who am I to ask whether a baker is eating properly—waist and raised the back of her wrist to wipe a bead of sweat from her brow. Several translucent locks of her baby-fine hair had fallen in her face, but she avoided touching them, for her nails glowed with butter. How Mrs. Boehm (who is almost precisely a year younger than I am, as I learned in November, making her twenty-seven) manages still to produce goose down from her head is a perennial puzzle. She brought with her an oddly calming aroma of cinnamon.

“I made
franzbrötchen
,” she answered in reply to the question I hadn’t asked. “With pumpkin seeds. Too much dough, and maybe you would like one?”

My landlady had reached the spread-out sheet anchored with four of my five books by this time and sunk absently to her knees, wiping her hands on her ivory half apron. I fell to watching her.

“These people, they are to do with your problem?”

I nodded, sitting Indian-style on the opposite side of the brown paper. About two feet divided us. Two feet and four carefully rendered faces, staring back at me in vivid, accusatory detail. I traced the edge of my scar and then dropped my hand. Annoyed. Instead, I picked up the charcoal again and let my fingers wander.

“You think with your hands.” The edge of her liberal crescent-moon mouth lifted. Her angular cheekbones had pinkened from the heat of the ovens. “I think also with my hands. But with bread.”

Glancing up momentarily, I continued drawing.

“Bird, she, I believe, thinks with her eyes. When closed, when open. Always looking, always remembering, always busy. Filling her head with more thoughts.”

“There’s plenty of thoughts in that pate already,” I sighed.

Adjusting her dove-colored skirts in a small fan, she leaned forward. What interest she held in my portraits I couldn’t fathom before remembering Mrs. Boehm loves stories. And my drawings, God help me, are nearly as florid and emotive as is Mercy’s fiction.

“I worry over that kinchin,” she owned. “But Bird, she is strong. She can handle more thoughts than many children are capable.”

“Did she tell you about waking up wrong?”

She tilted her head, a pained
yes
. Liking the interest of that angle better, I shifted my wrist accordingly.

“I told her she needn’t be alone to be brave.”

Mrs. Boehm’s head cocked the other way. There was a tiny track of sweat making its slow descent from her neck past her collarbones and downward. Nearly as elusive and shimmering as her hair in the waning daylight. It arrested the corner of my vision for senselessly long.

“Truth, I think that. One needn’t be alone to be brave.”

“She said I didn’t believe so myself and then called me a liar.”

“And
are
you a liar, Mr. Wilde?”

“Probably. I’m enough other undesirable things.”

I thought about the manuscript hidden in my sleeping closet. Those words I’d spent, the hours of effort, all in search of what truly happened last summer. Never having intended for any living soul to read it, I must have been telling the truth therein. Mustn’t I? Could I believe myself truthful when utterly alone? Copper Star 107 had written the same events in police reports, but Tim Wilde had once been told that books could be cartography. They were maps for Mercy, anyhow. Always had been. So why did I sometimes feel as if even that effort was meaningless, merely the blurred vision of a half-blind, sentimental fool?

One for sorrow,
I thought, absently recalling the chiming girlish voices at Bird’s school and the dark augury of seeing a single blackbird. There was a reason that number heralded pain. There’s always a reason, I think, behind the doggerel kinchin chant.

“
Tch.
Easy enough to tell if you are a liar,” Mrs. Boehm chided. “You are brave already. Are you alone?”

Her eyes, when I met them, were entirely colorless as the sun angled lower. Uncanny, the pallor of them, and yet how warm they seemed, softened by a hint of blonde lashes and an indulgent expression as she finally smoothed her hair back behind her ear. Not a thing about Mrs. Boehm’s eyes, I realized just then, made an ounce of sense.

“Perhaps, as Bird thinks, you walk through life alone in the middle of company. Always a stranger. Only you can know for certain. I don’t give
franzbrötchen
to strangers,” she added.

My hand froze.