An Untimely Frost (19 page)

C
HAPTER
33

O
n her way back to the hotel, Lilly forced her thoughts away from the boxer. It was not an easy thing to do. As she was reliving the evening, she realized that she had left the theater without having her conversation with Chester Carpenter. She supposed she could be forgiven for having forgotten, since she'd almost been killed. She sighed. There would be other opportunities to delve into the circumstances behind her mother's death.

First thing in the morning, she would telegraph William that she had found what was left of the Purcell family, that Prudence had no intention of selling, and she was coming back to Chicago. She would not tell him of the carriage incident or mention the fighter.

Feet dragging as she entered the hotel lobby, she summoned the woman to help her get out of her corset, then got into her nightclothes and fell onto the feather tick, hoping her eventful day would bring an easy rest.

It was not to be. She could not forget her meeting with the man at the theater. She remembered the teasing good humor in his eyes, the fear, and the irritation she'd seen there when she'd challenged him about following her.

While it was true that she was unafraid of him—perhaps naïvely so—she was equally certain that something about him was less than genuine . . . or was she once more measuring an attractive man with the same yardstick she'd used when looking at the daguerreotype of the Reverend Purcell? Were the two men really flawed, or had her limited and disastrous experiences with smooth-talking men tainted her judgment?

She thought about the fighter's comment about the horse and carriage deliberately trying to run her down. That disturbing notion took her thoughts back to the events in Vandalia and her encounters with him there. All that aside, she still could not believe he meant her harm. If that were his intent, why come to her rescue?

It didn't make any sense. Who would want to harm her? She decided to concentrate on her conversation with Prudence Purcell. Considering the widow's circumstances, her refusal to sell Heaven's Gate held no more logic than it had when she'd last tried to make sense of it. It had something to do with the reverend, but what?

There was much about this strange assignment Lilly didn't understand, but one thing was certain. Something had happened at Heaven's Gate, something no one knew about. But what? Was Prudence afraid that if she sold the place the new owners might stumble across that secret, whatever it might be? While it was possible that she'd been ignorant of her husband's thievery, Lilly suspected that the Widow Purcell was privy to whatever secrets lay behind the doors of the crumbling house. What other explanation could there be for her reluctance to sell?

For all her growing certainty that she was on to something, Lilly felt she was missing a vital piece of information. Knowing she might be going on a fool's errand, she made a decision. She would not return to Chicago just yet. She would go back to Vandalia and the Purcell house just long enough to make one last search. Since the trip was to satisfy her own curiosity, she would pay for all her expenses. That would be fair, and the agency would have nothing to complain about.

Yes, she was missing something . . . unlike the keen-eyed boxer, who she suspected missed very little. Groaning at the memory of him that intruded yet again, Lilly flounced onto her side and yanked the covers over her head.

Lilly bolted upright in bed. They had not exchanged names, yet the stranger had known hers. Her heart raced. Despite his seeming carelessness and cocky demeanor, there was an aura of danger surrounding him. Foolish perhaps, but somehow she did not believe that he meant to harm her. But like Heaven's Gate, she did suspect that there was more to him than met the eye.

C
HAPTER
34

W
ithout contacting William, Lilly took the early train back to Vandalia on Thursday morning. On the way to the depot, her carriage passed the park where the boxing ring still stood. She wondered if chance would bring her face-to-face with the pugilist again. Perhaps she had finally convinced him that she had no interest in him. Except, of course, she did. She wondered how he knew her name, and why he had troubled himself to learn it.

When she arrived back at the Holbrook Hotel the desk was being manned by one of the Holbrook boys. Lilly had her things taken up to her new room and went straight to the dining room for a cup of coffee. Helen was nowhere in sight when Lilly took her favorite table near the window, but the young waitress soon emerged from the kitchen. She spotted Lilly, but instead of her usual smile of welcome, her gaze darted away, and she concentrated on serving the middle-aged woman and child seated at a nearby table.

Helen looked sad and pale, and her eyes were red, as if she'd been crying. Trouble with a beau, perhaps? The poor child might as well accustom herself to the fact that if a male were the source of her misery, it wouldn't be the last time she would suffer. Lilly turned her attention to the blackboard menu.

When Helen finally approached the table, the corners of her lips were quirked upward a tad, though the action seemed forced. Without asking about the Springfield trip, without any conversation at all, Helen took Lilly's order and disappeared into the kitchen once more. Concerned by this turn of events, Lilly wondered if she should question Helen about her change of manner, but when Helen returned with the food a few moments later, Lilly thanked her and kept silent.

By the time she finished her meal she'd decided to ask Helen what was bothering her, but before she could frame the question, the girl blurted, “Miss Long, may I have a word with you?”

“Of course, Helen. Sit down.”

Helen glanced around the room, her nervousness apparent, even though everyone had left but Lilly. “Not here. I'll take your money and find an excuse to step out back a moment.”

“All right,” she agreed, wondering once more what was going on.

Carrying the dirty dishes, Helen started toward the kitchen, but spun around quickly. Her troubled gaze met Lilly's. “I didn't expect to see you again.”

“I didn't expect to come back.”

“I'm glad you did.”

Lilly's curiosity was definitely piqued. After paying for her meal, she went through the front lobby and around the house to the back, where she found Helen pacing in a tight circle.

“You must not have found the reverend, since you came back here,” she said, as Lilly neared.

“I found his widow. It seems the reverend passed away a few years ago.” Lilly thought she saw surprise in Helen's eyes. Surprise and something else she couldn't define. Relief?

Instead of commenting, Helen burst into tears.

“What is it?” Lilly asked, all thoughts of the Purcells and Heaven's Gate vanishing in the face of the young woman's distress. “I knew the moment I saw you that something was wrong.”

“Everything is in a muddle,” Helen cried, sobbing into her apron.

“Is it because of me?” Lilly felt the need to comfort Helen in some way but was held back by a sense of inadequacy. What did she know about comforting a young girl? “Has my nosing around caused your grief?”

“More than you'll ever know.”

Lilly's heart took a sickening plunge. All she'd wanted to do was complete the work assigned to her. She'd never meant to disrupt lives and cause hurt, yet it seemed that she had done so at every turn. “Why don't you tell me what happened while I was gone?”

Helen nodded and struggled to get her tears under control. “Th-The night after you talked to my mother, my parents had a terrible row. I know I shouldn't have, but I listened outside the door. I heard my mother telling my father—David—about your visit. He told her that she should talk to you, that she
needed
to tell you the truth about what happened, so that justice might finally be served for what Harold Purcell had done to her and the others.”

Lilly's mind raced, trying to make sense of what she was hearing. She did not like the picture forming in her mind. “Go on,” she encouraged, knowing she should not rush to judgment, needing to hear her wild suppositions put into words.

“Mother told him she had no intention of telling you anything more. She said you were leaving town, and that the past was dead, buried and forgotten, and she intended for it to stay that way. Then D—David—told her that the past was not dead, not buried and certainly not forgotten, that it was still there eating away at her soul. . . .” A fresh round of sobs shook the girl. “It was terrible, Miss Long. I've never heard them quarrel like that before.”

“Oh, Helen! I'm so sorry. What happened then?”

“I couldn't bear it, so I went into the room to stop their arguing. Mother was beside herself that I'd overheard, and fa—David—told her to tell me the truth.”

“What is the truth, Helen?” Lilly asked, though an ugly picture of the past was taking form in her mind. “What did Harold Purcell do to your mother and . . . the others?”

Helen's tears started afresh, and her anguished gaze found Lilly's. “H-He t-took advantage of them! Oh, Miss Long, D-David Holbrook isn't my father at all. Harold Purcell is.”

Lilly felt no surprise. From the onset of the conversation, she'd known that what Helen was about to tell her would be disastrous. She seethed with fury. The wretched, wretched man! Harold Purcell presented himself as a man of God. A man whose duty it was to cherish souls and help guide them to Heaven. How could he have done such terrible things to innocent young girls? As usual, it was the man who'd come out unscathed, while his poor victims were left to deal with the unholy messes he'd left of their lives. Poor Helen. And poor Virginia!

“Who were the others you spoke of, Helen? Did your mother say?”

Helen dried her eyes and wiped her nose on the hem of her apron. She nodded. “She didn't want me to know about it. She said I was too young and innocent to hear such things, but David made her tell me the whole story.” She drew a shuddering breath. “The others were Eloise Mercer and Rachel Townsend.”

“They were
all
seduced by the preacher?” Lilly pressed, even while something she couldn't put her finger on nagged at the back of her mind.

Another nod. “Over the course of time.”

“And were they all . . . with child when the Purcells skipped town?”

Helen shook her head. “Eloise happened a year or so before Mama and Rachel.”

Disgust filled Lilly. Getting three young women with child was beyond appalling, and learning that two were pregnant at once certainly explained the necessity of Harold leaving town so quickly. She ground her teeth together to keep from screaming at the unfairness of it all. It was bad enough that Purcell had been a despoiler of young girls, but how could he have been so heartless to the long-suffering wife who'd borne him a daughter and three sons who'd died? What kind of man could do that?

Intellectually, she knew that good men inhabited the world, but they seemed to be few and far between. After thinking it over, she thought that what she'd heard wasn't so shocking after all. Still horrendous, but perhaps not so difficult to understand. Men of the cloth were men first, and while most of them lived good and decent lives, there were bound to be a few who saw their “calling” as a way to further their own agendas. Just men, in the end.

She thought of the arrogant expression in Harold Purcell's eyes in the daguerreotype. Remembered the way Timothy had always been so certain he could charm her out of her bad moods. Recalled the way her mother's lover had been all loving and filled with good humor until she had sprung the news of the baby on him.

The pattern became clear. From her limited experience, it seemed that when some men were pushed into a corner, they suffered no qualms about sacrificing whoever was in the way of their own desires and happiness. When she'd tried to make Tim more accountable, he'd stolen her livelihood, assaulted her and Rose, and fled. When Kate's lover had been forced to face the consequences of his actions, he'd killed her rather than risk losing the life he coveted. And after the Reverend Purcell had seduced and gotten three young women with child, he'd stolen the church's money and hightailed it to another city where he probably repeated his offenses.

“I met Eloise Mercer the other day,” Lilly told Helen, thinking that many of the things Eloise had said made more sense in light of this new information. Sheriff Mayhew's comments about a past misunderstanding with his daughter made more sense as well. She'd assumed that the preacher was fooling around with the women of the congregation, and that the sheriff's wife was one of them, and that he and his daughter had disagreed over the affair in some way. It had never occurred to her that he had found out about Eloise's pregnancy and placed the blame on her before learning that the true culprit was the man supposed to be the town's moral compass.

“Do you know what became of Eloise's child?”

“Mama didn't want to talk about it, but David said she should tell me so that maybe I could be better prepared in case something like that ever happened to me.”

“I think David—your father—is a very wise man,” Lilly told her.

Helen tried to smile through her tears and picked up the story. “Mama said when word got out about Eloise's condition she got a reputation for being a bad girl. She was sweet on Buddy Mercer at the time, and the next thing you know, they were married. I guess the sheriff thought that would help make things right. But when Buddy found out the baby wasn't his, he took to drinking real bad. They say he beat up on Eloise, and finally he took her to some quack who did something to make the baby go away. Mama said she was in a bad way, but at least Buddy had enough sympathy that he took her to Doc Ramsay. He saved Eloise's life, but she was never able to have babies after that.”

“How does your mother know all this?” Lilly asked.

“Doc's nurse let the whole thing slip to her sister, and from there the news spread through town like wildfire.”

“Your mother told me that Buddy died.”

Helen nodded. “His horse came back to town one day without a rider and limping real bad. Sheriff Mayhew and some of his men went out to check and found Buddy's body alongside the road about three miles out of town. He must have been thrown. The sheriff said he reeked of whiskey.”

Lilly closed her eyes, almost feeling Eloise Mercer's despair. Not only had she borne the shame and rejection of her family and the town, but in her desire to please her husband, who like so many others was concerned only about his own feelings, she'd forfeited her ability to ever mother a child. Then, with nothing left of her self-respect, she had sold the only commodity she had—her body. Little wonder she despised Harold Purcell.

Lilly drew in a shaky breath. “Tell me about Rachel Townsend.”

“That was another scandal,” Helen said, sighing. “Somehow, Rachel hid her condition several months. When she started showing, everyone began wondering who might be responsible. She'd always been such a good, God-fearing girl. Matt Travers's name was bandied about for a while, and his folks sent him off to military school real fast. His father said he wasn't about to let his son be railroaded for something he didn't do.

“Mr. Townsend's lawyering business dwindled away to almost nothing, and he was planning to move his family to St. Louis as soon as Rachel had the baby. They were scheduled to leave just days before the Purcells vanished. But before they could, Rachel left her family a note saying Reverend Purcell was responsible for her condition, and she was going away to start over.”

“Let me guess,” Lilly said in a dry tone. “When Mr. Townsend went to confront the reverend, he was already gone.”

Helen nodded. “Mrs. Purcell said he was out of town. Then, when they all vanished, Grandfather, who is still Mr. Townsend's best friend, convinced him to stay here. He told him the town needed a good attorney and the gossip would die down.”

“That's what's wrong with Mrs. Townsend,” Lilly said, recalling the information that she was fragile and not to be disturbed.

Nodding again, Helen said, “Mrs. Townsend . . . well, she was so ashamed she took to her sick bed. She still never leaves the house. According to Grandfather, Rachel married, but she's never once come back in all these years. No one speaks of hearing from her. It's as if she's fallen off the face of the earth.”

Sickened, yet fascinated by the sordid tale, Lilly needed to hear all the details. “How did your grandfather and Mr. Townsend find out that the reverend was the guilty party for Eloise and your mother?”

“Mama said that a couple of months after the Purcells left town my grandparents found out about her condition. Grandfather was sure the reverend was to blame. As I said, Papa was a good friend of Mr. Townsend. They started putting two and two together and took their suspicions to the sheriff. The three of them forced Mama and Eloise to tell the truth, since Rachel had already gone.”

“And your mother went away to stay with relatives, married David, and lived happily ever after.”

“Until you came to town, I thought so. Yes, Nana and Papa sent Mama to relatives in Memphis before she started showing, hoping to protect her from the wagging tongues that almost destroyed Rachel and Eloise. Mama had me there, and later met David, who loved her enough to tell everyone I was his child. He's been a good father,” she added. “I never once suspected otherwise. No one does.”