Beacon Street Mourning (23 page)

This was getting more and more interesting. From the early days of Augusta's tenure, when she'd been known as "the
Widow Simmons," I knew she had a nephew. Indeed, she had almost persuaded Father to marry me off to this nephew, who had sounded sufficiently loathsome that I had not bothered to meet him. But as for other relatives, including any putative sons, I had only Father's vague mention of "her many relatives" in one of his letters.

William asked, "Will they be here for the funeral, do you think, her other children?"

"I don't know," I replied. "I've not heard. As for Larry, he had to go back to New York. Something about a job on a newspaper that couldn't wait. He said that he and Father were not overfond of one another in any event, so I am not offended that he didn't stay."

The doorbell rang. Mary came scurrying again, this time to admit Michael.

As she was opening the front door, William said hurriedly, "Your stepmother will need someone at her side for the funeral. It is most unfortunate her son cannot accompany her. Augusta is not the sort of woman to do well through something like this alone."

How eager William Barrett was to volunteer!

This was an interesting wrinkle. Had Augusta charmed him, as she did so many, in these few weeks of William's knowing her? Or had he really known her for much longer than he had led me to believe? And why would he do that?

One thing I knew for certain, from my father's experience: Augusta was a woman who did not improve the longer one knew her. Rather the opposite.

Who knew if it was mischief or compassion that caused me to do what I did next? As Michael came into the parlor and I prepared to leave the house with him, I took pity on William and said, "You're quite right. If you don't mind waiting an hour or so, I'll have Mary go upstairs and inform Mrs. Jones that you are here."

"I don't mind at all," William responded. Which was exactly what I'd thought he would say. Poor man.

I GLANCED UNEASILY at the sky when Michael and I came out of the Parker House after breakfast. The clouds were high, thick, and not so much gray as white—a snow-laden sky.

"Father's funeral may have to be postponed," I said.

"Hm?"

"I think it's going to snow, and the services are to be graveside only. I suppose it's a good thing we had that little thaw yesterday—even so I wonder that they can dig the grave."

"In Russia, where the ground freezes as solid as a rock, the bodies of those who die in winter are buried in banks of snow where they also freeze until spring thaw. But it is possible here, where it is not quite so cold, to break ground that is frozen only near the surface. If they could not dig the grave, someone would have said so, Fremont."

"I suppose," I conceded rather glumly.

I hadn't wanted to enter the Common by the path that leads around the Old Granary Burial Ground—there being entirely enough of burying and graves in my life already—so we walked up Tremont Street, past Park Street Church with its elegant white steeple. Though I do not know the facts about my own house, it seems I've always known this steeple is over two hundred feet high. I looked up at it soaring over us as we turned right just past the church and entered the Common.

A few dauntless mothers walked their babies, who were all wrapped up like little bundles inside their carriages, but otherwise very few people were abroad. Winters here are capricious; they tease you into a visceral recollection of spring, only to bring the cold down upon your head again with a vengeance.

Yet for my purpose fewer people were better than many and
I was glad at last I could get to something I had not quite dared to do in the dining room of the Parker House.

"I have something to show you," I said, and withdrew the flat dark brown bottle from where I'd been keeping it, inside my fur muff.

"What's this?" Michael took the bottle and turned it over once in his hand. Then he read the label, which said:

Dr. Zahray's

HERCULES TONIC

Exclusively for

MALES

An erectile

Performance enhancer

Active Ingredient: Fresh Testicle

Also Contains: Alcohol, Water,

Strychnine, and Glycerol

"Hmm," Michael said, which was precisely what I'd thought he'd say.

"Is that what I think it is?" I asked.

He arched one black eyebrow, in a way he does better than anyone else I have ever known. "That depends, my dear Sherlock, on what you think it is."

Then, immediately his tone changed and the eyebrow came back down where it belonged. "I apologize if you think I was making light of something that concerns your father's death. That was not my intention. It was . . . merely habit, I suppose. Please forgive me."

"There's nothing to forgive, think nothing of it."

Over breakfast Michael had encouraged me to tell him all
my suspicions, and my grounds for them; he had also acknowledged that my hunches were usually right—with, however, the caveat that sometimes where one's nearest and dearest are concerned, hunches can go wrong or be harder to interpret. With this last I could not find fault.

So I said further, "We've agreed you and I will work on this matter as if we were investigating it together for J&K, and so we shall. . . Watson."

I dared to grin at him.

"Do you know," Michael stopped in his tracks, and stopped me too, "that's the first smile I've seen on your face in a very long time."

I was still smiling, though perhaps not as broadly as was my usual wont.

"Michael," I said, "your willingness either to believe me about Augusta or at least to suspend your disbelief long enough to help me with this investigation is the first thing I've had to smile about in a very long time. So now tell me: Is that bottle what I think it is, a patent medicine designed to, uh, take care of that problem you told me about when sometimes
it
just doesn't work?"

Michael nodded.

A squirrel running across the path in front of us dropped a huge acorn it had dug out of hiding. Michael bent and picked up the acorn, then threw it after the squirrel.

"It's not too surprising that your father would have this . . . concoction," Michael said, "considering what Cosgrove told us about his medical history. But, Fremont, I hardly think Augusta would poison your father just because he couldn't, if you don't mind my saying so, give her sexual satisfaction."

"But the bottle says strychnine. That's a poison!"

"It also says 'fresh testicle.' Now maybe that's not a poison, but I for one would have to be pretty desperate to drink it!"

"That's the point, Michael. Apparently Father was pretty
desperate. Come now, you know a thing or two about poisons, I know you do."

"How do you know that?" He shot me a suspicious glance.

Oh, dear! I had almost let an old cat out of the bag.

Fortunately, at that moment we passed a tree, beneath which I spied something that might have been a clump of new-sprung crocuses; to hide my sudden dilemma I bent to inspect them. My face was burning: the truth was, I'd never told Michael about the time four years ago when I hid under his bed and discovered his journal about poisons. Especially mushrooms, but there had been other poisons—organic poisons, now that I thought of it—in that book too.

"I'm sure you were bragging to me at one time or another about your expertise," I said, straightening up, then pointing. "Look, Michael, crocuses. Let's hope it doesn't snow too hard, so that they will survive."

I do not think my diversion had fooled him, judging by the expression on his face, but he let it go. We had now walked as far as the Frog Pond, and by unspoken agreement we turned and began to walk slowly back.

I leaned on my cane a little, more tired than I cared to admit, and I heartily wished I did not now have to go try on dresses and coats and such. But I did. We would go next to R. H. Stearns Department Store, and after that I could go back to Beacon Street for a most welcome nap.

"Come now," I urged, "don't be coy. Tell me about this so-called tonic in light of what you know about poisons."

Michael rubbed thoughtfully at the white streaks in his beard. "Well," he said, "strychnine is very bitter in taste. Small doses are considered to be therapeutic, the theory being that in a tiny dose the poison may go to whatever is poisoning the larger organism. The person, the host, is presumably large enough to remain unaffected by such a small amount of poison. Many herbal medicines work that way."

"So it is supposed to work on the principle of 'what doesn't kill you will heal you,' is that correct?"

"Something like that."

"But if Augusta, or someone else—I still think it almost has to have been Augusta—were to add
more
strychnine to this tonic, who would know? I mean it would be bitter already, yes?"

"I don't know, Fremont. It seems far-fetched."

Michael remained quiet for a while, thinking. Then he continued:

"I agree with you that the fact that your father's dressing room had been searched right down to the farthest corners is suspicious. But a man would've had to be taking this tonic in very large quantities for it to be an effective way to deliver enough poison to sicken, and eventually to kill him. Even if she—or someone—did increase the amount of strychnine."

"I think he
was
taking it in large quantities," I said grimly, hating the mental picture that fact brought to my mind.

"I do not believe, though, that Leonard's symptoms were at all consistent with strychnine poisoning. I shall have to go to the library and do some research."

"I wondered what you've been doing with your days," I commented.

"Yes," Michael said with a smile, "I've been spending some time in your excellent Boston Public Library."

"It's nice to know you're doing something constructive."

"I can also find a chemist to analyze the contents of the bottle," Michael offered, "and to tell us if there's anything there that should not be, or in quantities that should not be present. Shall I?"

"Yes," I said, "I want you to do that. And, Michael?"

"Yes?"

I stopped walking, waited until I had his full attention, and then lowered my voice to make certain no one could overhear:
"I want you to buy me a gun. A revolver, the kind you wanted me to have before, when I refused and chose the Marlin instead."

He studied my face, and apparently was satisfied with what he saw, for all he said was, "If you're absolutely certain."

"I am. Absolutely."

SNOW FELL OVERNIGHT, not in a storm but softly, like a late-winter blessing. In the morning sun, the streets, the hills, the bare-branched trees, the frozen river Charles, all were covered with a clean layer of white.

Our funeral cortege, by contrast, was all in black, even to the black plumes on the heads of the matched pair of black horses that pulled the carriage in which Augusta rode alone. Michael and I followed her in our own hired carriage, our one horse
sans
plumes; behind us were others. I did not know how many, but I knew they too were all in shades of black.

I, who detest hats, wore a hat with a brim and a heavy black veil and I was grateful to have it hide my face. Not that I really cared a whit to have my face all swollen and blotchy from crying, but I could not seem to stop and I did not want people watching me do it.

The previous night I'd kept vigil with Father's body at the mortuary. Michael was with me. That was when he gave me the gun I'd requested, a revolver small enough to hide inside my fur muff. And so I sat with my dead father and my hidden gun and let all the emotions I'd been holding back wash through me, the sorrow and the rage.

Some of the time Augusta had been there, accompanied by
Dr. Searles Cosgrove. But most of the time she was not; I thought her visit was perfunctory, but for all I knew she had been at the mortuary before, whereas I had not. I felt some guilt over that, but I told myself Father would understand; more than that, he would approve of my attempt to discover the real cause of his death, and perhaps to bring a murderer to justice.

One hears that the police, in their attempts to find murderers, will attend the funeral services of the victim on the theory that the murderer may be present and may do something to give himself—or herself—away. If that were the case today I should never know it, because grief had become my whole world.

Mount Auburn Cemetery is a beautiful place; if one must lie in the ground to fulfill that grim prediction in the Bible—"dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return"—then I can think of no better place to do it. At least one is in good company here, with Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Justice Holmes, not to mention my mother. With the new snow over everything, it was particularly beautiful, everything so white and pure; here and there among the gentle curves of its hills one could see a tiny temple in the style of Greek Revival, and the mournfully graceful droop of a willow, no less weeping without its leaves.

Father's grave lay gaping and ready, undisturbed by the snowfall; I supposed the gravediggers, not wishing to have their hard work ruined, would have covered it overnight. There were many flowers, all in muted colors and white or cream. The wooden coffin when it was brought down from the wagon, which we had followed from the mortuary, was covered as I'd wished with a funeral spray of pink roses and white lilies. Standing at the head of the grave, where one day a marble marker would be, was a three-foot-tall arrangement of ivy and carnations twisted, tortured, and twined into the shape of a large heart. Augusta's ironic tribute, no doubt; the sight of it sent me into another paralyzing paroxysm of anger and tears.