Shrouded In Thought (Gilded Age Mysteries Book 2) (33 page)

Freddie raised a quizzical eyebrow. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that Martin failed to follow through again?”

Evangeline’s attention was temporarily diverted by a butterfly that fluttered through the carriage in search of hollyhocks. “Quite. Martin failed to follow through. Apparently, after he filled the sherry glass with poison, he lost his nerve and ran out of the house in a panic. The maid said he looked ill when he left. He may have intended to go for a walk to get a grip on himself, but by the time he returned to finish the job, Euphemia was already dead. I kept asking myself why he bungled the poison evidence so badly. There’s only one explanation. He never anticipated the event that actually transpired. He had already thought through an explanation for the circumstances of Bayne’s death. He was completely unprepared to explain Euphemia’s. Since I had hinted at his motive for killing his wife in front of the sheriff, thereby making him a suspect, Martin would have needed an accomplice to point the finger at someone else.”

“What a perfect irony.” Freddie laughed sardonically. “He makes his intended victim the accomplice in the murder of his wife!”

“Yes. But he could hardly tell Bayne what really happened, so the ultimate irony was that he had to say he’d planned to kill his wife all along to prevent Bayne from becoming suspicious.”

“And that, in turn, would have given Bayne more reason to blackmail him.”

“Exactly. He was just digging a deeper grave for himself. Martin forged the letter from Euphemia himself, but he had to rely on Bayne to get the additional cyanide from the company supply. It was too risky for him to go back to the factory and get it himself. But he didn’t count on Bayne’s mistake. It was the luckiest stroke for us.”

Freddie eyed the head of the procession. The trees at the cemetery gate loomed into view off in the distance. “Which brings us to death number three. I think it’s going to be pretty hard for you to claim that he didn’t follow through on that one.”

“Ah, but I can.” Evangeline smiled.

With an amused look, Freddie tilted his head to the side. “I’m listening.”

“In elucidating this mystery, I must give credit where it’s due.”

“Since when?” Freddie countered impishly.

Giving her friend a look of long-suffering forbearance, Evangeline pressed onward. “You said something the night of Bayne’s death that started me thinking. Why would Martin go to all the trouble to stage a murder to look like an accident and then disappear, leaving it to look like murder? I concluded that something must have gone wrong along the way. I’m convinced that Martin planned to murder Bayne but couldn’t finish loosening the railing in time. Bayne must have arrived before he was expected and Martin probably panicked. Bayne may have said something to upset him further, and he must have backed into the railing and went over the side himself.”

“Now just wait a minute. It was Bayne’s body that was found on the shop floor, not Martin’s.”

“Yes, and if you allow me to continue, I’ll tell you why.”

The young man rolled his eyes and remained still.

“It was the position of the body that aroused my suspicions. As we both noticed, the railing was bent back as if someone had been clinging to it before falling. If that someone had fallen from that position, he would have landed on his back, not on his face.”

Freddie’s face registered amazement. “Ye gods! Engie, you’re right. I never thought of that.”

Evangeline nodded. “What must have happened is that Martin went over the railing and somehow managed to keep hold of it. The railing bent backward and he still clung to it. Bayne crouched down to help him up, but he must not have seen that Martin had loosened the railing on purpose or he wouldn’t have assisted him. It’s also unlikely that Martin had tried to push Bayne and missed, because Bayne wouldn’t have come to his rescue in that case either.”

Freddie sat forward excitedly. “Of course! That makes perfect sense! Bayne thought Martin’s fall was an accident. He didn’t want to lose the source of his ill-gotten gains so he probably reached over to offer Martin a hand.”

Evangeline adjusted her parasol to shield her eyes as the sun grew more intense. She picked up the thread of Freddie’s narration. “Martin may have panicked and clung to Bayne, throwing him off balance. If Bayne had been drinking before he arrived, as is most likely, he probably lost his balance and went over the side, landing as we found him, on his face. Martin was able to climb to safety, in the meantime.”

Freddie shook his head in disbelief. “Well, what do you know. Martin ended up killing Bayne accidentally.”

“Yes, I think so. If he had wanted to kill him with certainty, since Bayne outweighed him, he would have gripped Bayne’s hand with both of his own and let go of the railing. But he couldn’t do that, as they would both have died. Instead Martin saw Bayne fall and, as he always did at any critical moment, he panicked and ran. Once again he didn’t follow through. Though by the bye, his assertion that he never murdered anyone is making too fine a point of it. He certainly tried a number of times. He just never actually succeeded.”

The carriage came to a halt, waiting its turn while the procession filed slowly through the cemetery gate.

Evangeline looked off into the distance contemplatively. “I overestimated Martin all along. His principal crime was that, in critical moments, he always lost his nerve and did nothing at all. By his own admission, he didn’t follow through.” She laughed mirthlessly. “You know, I gave him far too much credit. Credit for guile in plotting crimes which he never committed. And credit for the nerve to carry them out which he never possessed.”

“Well, he succeeded in blowing his brains out, at least.” The young man’s tone was cut-and-dried.

“But even in that case, he sent a letter to me as insurance that he would follow through. He was convinced I would hound him to the ends of the earth. The letter baited me to find him. He was counting on the fact that we would trail him to Hyperion. He had effectively cut off all avenues of escape for himself. It was probably the only reason he could work up the nerve to take action that one last time.”

Freddie scouted the landscape for their final destination: a gravesite at the far end of the cemetery. “Don’t you think he loved Nora Johnson, at least a little? He certainly seemed to feel guilty about her death.”

Evangeline pondered the question. “Serafina hinted that he felt both fear and regret just before he died. Regret for something he had left undone. Regret, perhaps for a person he had failed to save.” She sighed expressively. “I suppose he loved her as much as a gray little man with a gray little soul can ever love—timidly and with one eye always toward his own self-interest. In the end, he was willing to trade her life for a scrap of propriety.”

The carriage came to a stop in line behind the ten that preceded it. Everywhere, mourners were climbing out of their vehicles and walking slowly up the hill toward Euphemia Allworthy’s gravesite. Freddie jumped out of the carriage and held his hand out to help Evangeline.

She stepped down to join him. “I am struck by the paradoxical nature of this whole miserable chain of events. Bayne could never have blackmailed Martin at all if he had tried to save Nora in the first place.
 
Instead, he sacrificed her to preserve his wealth and reputation. He ended up losing both, along with his life.”

“What doth it profit a man,” Freddie intoned.

“What, indeed.”

The couple walked up the hill to see Euphemia Allworthy laid to rest. Evangeline doubted that her husband’s spirit would find anything like everlasting peace.

Epilogue

In the aftermath of the ARU boycott, George Pullman’s fall from grace was swift. The
U.S.
St
rike Commission held hearings in
Chicago
during August of 1894 and concluded that
Pullman
had created unnecessary hardship for his workers by refusing to arbitrate and by failing the reduce the rents in his town.

As a consequence of the investigation, the
Ill
inois
State
Supreme Court ordered the
Pullman
Pa
lace
Car company to divest itself of its non-manufacturing real estate. The town of
P
u
l
l
m
a
n
, no longer privately owned, was absorbed into the city of
C
h
i
c
a
g
o
.

There is speculation that
Pullman
’s public disgrace took a toll on his health. He died of a heart attack three years later in October, 1897. Because his family feared that
Pullman
’s body might be desecrated by his former employees, he was buried at night in a lead-lined casket placed in an eight foot pit with walls, floor, and ceiling of steel-reinforced concrete. The Corinthian column which caps Pullman’s grave in Graceland Cemetery was designed by Solon Beman, the architect of the town of Pullman.

THE END

AUTHOR BIO

"There's a 52% chance that the next Dan Brown will be a woman ... or should we just make that 100% now?" --Kindle Nation

Nancy Wikarski is a fugitive from academia. After earning her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, she became a computer consultant and then turned to mystery and historical fiction writing. Her short stories have appeared in Futures Magazine and DIME Anthology, while her book reviews have been featured in Murder: Past Tense and Deadly Pleasures.

She has written the Gilded Age Mystery series set in 1890s Chicago. Titles include The Fall Of White City (2002) and Shrouded In Thought (2005). The series has received People's Choice Award nominations for best first novel and best historical. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America and has served as vice president of Sisters In Crime - Twin Cities and on the programming board of the Chicago chapter.

She is currently writing the seven book Arkana Mystery series. Her work on the Arkana volumes has prompted Kindle Nation to call her one of its favorite authors.

BOOKS BY N. S. WIKARSKI
All the links below are for the Amazon US store.

The Fall Of White City (Gilded Age Mysteries #1)
A socialite stalks a murderer against the backdrop of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.
 
Shrouded In Thought (Gilded Age Mysteries #2)
A drowned factory girl provokes a labor riot during the Pullman Strike of 1894.
 
The Granite Key (Arkana Mysteries #1)
The murder of a shopkeeper over a stone artifact known as the granite key sparks a 3,000 year old treasure hunt.
The Mountain Mother Cipher (Arkana Mysteries #2)
When clues to the Bones Of The Mother lead from Greece to Turkey, the Arkana team struggles to stay one step ahead of its rivals.
The Dragon’s Wing Enigma (Arkana Mysteries #3)
A puzzle in the sky leads the treasure seekers to some unexpected places and unforeseen allies.

Riddle Of The Diamond Dove (Arkana Mysteries #4)
An even more cryptic astronomical riddle sends the relic hunters and their foes to Africa. What they discover there will have far-reaching consequences for both sides.
Into The Jaws Of The Lion (Arkana Mysteries #5)
A new clue draws the Arkana team to India where a
rift among the trio threatens to destroy the relic hunt altogether.

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N. S. Wikarski