Too Soon for Flowers (33 page)

Longfellow broke in. “And so, Will took the bait. But if he had indeed been fooled, then why … ?”

“I suspect that here in Bracebridge, shortly after Phoebe was inoculated, something else must have occurred; only then did she seek to escape a future that offered no happiness. For this, at least, I suspect we have some proof.”

“Proof?” asked Longfellow, grasping a tangible straw.

“Here,” said Charlotte, reaching into her pocket and holding out the two halves of the pellet she had split the night before. Longfellow took them in his palm and studied them.

“Valerian,” he concluded while Orpheus inched forward, taking a sniff of his own.

“Yes.”

“But … what
is
this thing?”

“Bread, I think.” Despite the gravity of her explanation, Mrs. Willett smiled. “As children, when we were given distasteful medicine to swallow, Eleanor and I sometimes wrapped it in pieces of soft bread, making something like the rolled pills we’d seen. Like those you probably had from the apothecary, in town.”

“You believe Hannah provided a quantity of valerian from her simples chest, to help the girl sleep?”

“No—Hannah was stunned to find her supply gone when she wanted it herself, after we discovered Phoebe’s body. I suspect the girl secretly made several of these spheres, Richard, after Will left her. One of them must have rolled under the bed, where it was found. The rest sent Phoebe into a stupor. I presume she believed it would bring on a peaceful death. Young girls often believe what they choose, even against reason, and frequently act against good sense.”

“They do,” Longfellow had to agree, with a look toward the farmhouse where his sister now resided.

“Then, there is the book.”

“The volume of Pope?” Longfellow asked, remembering the scene when they had viewed Phoebe’s body.

“Hannah found it creased and on the floor, under the body. Has she said—?”

“The girl was tangled in the bedclothes, yes. But no one mentioned the book, when I spoke with Will and his mother this morning.”

“Hannah probably thought it of no importance. Yet
last night, when I let the volume fall open, I saw a poem, ‘Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.’”

“‘
Is it, in heaven, a crime to love too well?’
And there is something about acting a Roman’s part—referring to the opening of a vein, I suppose …”

Charlotte, who had reread the poem the night before, whispered its eerie beginning:

“You think she gave us a suicide’s message,” Longfellow concluded.

“I believe she lay down, stricken, holding the book to her breast—knowing someone would eventually find her. I suppose she hoped we would feel sorry, and forgive her. But when someone did come in while she was in this state, he cared nothing for her pose. Phoebe tried to save herself with the last of her fading strength, and slid from the bed; then, I suspect, he pressed a pillow to her face, after the book had fallen.”

“If the girl told Will Sloan more than he now admits, he may have returned in a rage….”

“But I feel we
must
go back and find the answer to one question, Richard. Why
now
did she tell Will she could not marry him, as he does admit—not now, or ever? Phoebe’s error occurred long before they made their contract. Could she not have imagined he might forgive her? For I think he would have.”

“Perhaps not, if she’d ended a child’s life, as well. If she feared Will would be warned by Tucker, or even Pelham—”

“That is possible, I suppose—but what if Phoebe had given herself again—to the same man?” For a moment, Charlotte recalled Dr. Tucker’s impassioned face as he held Phoebe’s hand, before she left them alone.

“I might almost believe it was Pelham, then—except that he would never have dared it, with Diana there. But you can’t suppose she and Ben Tucker—!”

For a moment Charlotte reconsidered.

“Will Sloan told us Phoebe would not marry him, but also that she could not marry anyone else, either. Dr. Tucker, of course,
was
married already … but why should Phoebe reject the idea of marriage entirely? With anyone?”

“Why, indeed?” asked Longfellow, having no idea.

“I can think of one reason, though it is unusual, and somewhat unrelated. In a few women, the thought of producing children can become a fearful torment … and she had lost one, we presume, already, however it happened. As her wedding approached, it’s not unlikely that Phoebe sought out Dr. Tucker to talk about the process of giving birth … on the very eve of her death.” Charlotte continued, losing momentum, “Yet she had at least appeared to be happy before that, when she imagined her life with Will. Why, now, would children … ?”

“Who can tell, with women?” Longfellow countered, growing impatient. “All we are doing is guessing, Carlotta, while we have no facts to build upon.”

“Yes, but why now, Richard? Does it hinge on something Tucker did … or possibly something he told Phoebe? What
could
she have learned from him, to so—Oh!”

Suddenly, she believed she knew. It was little more than an intuition, and yet—! At last, the pieces, like the spokes of a broken wheel, fit together to create a whole. She stood dumb as she tested several connections carefully. Then, Charlotte again put a hand into the pocket beneath her skirt, and brought out the item she’d brazenly taken from David Pelham’s room at the inn.

“What is this?” asked Longfellow.

“A buckle.”

“I can see it is. But why ‘Oh!’ Mrs. Willett?”

Her original, though vague, supposition of that morning now made far more sense, and Charlotte went on rapidly. “I went to Pelham’s room looking for this … as I believed it possible that he, too, went in to Phoebe, some time between the visits Will Sloan admits to. I blush to tell you, Richard, but I saw new marks on the windowsill the morning we found her. I thought little of them with so much else happening, and when no one else supposed them important. Still, they bothered me. This is a buckle David Pelham wore the afternoon we first met him at the inn—I remembered its unusual silver thistle, with the ruby points. They are quite hard and sharp.”

Longfellow took the buckle into his own hands, where its stones shone with the hue of heart’s blood. “And you think the spacing of the stones will match the mars in the sill’s paint? I did notice them, Carlotta, but I confess I assumed they were made by the claws of our friend Orpheus.” At the mention of his name, the dog thumped his tail, rewarded as last for his patient attendance.

“There is a simple test—”

“But why would Pelham climb in to see Phoebe in the middle of the night, when he is clearly interested in Diana’s favors?”

“If he had been the father of her child—”

“Even if that were true, I hardly think it would lead the man to murder her! Even if Phoebe
had
told Diana, do you think such an affair three years ago would be enough to utterly deter a woman of Boston, these days?”

“But what if Pelham gave Phoebe something … something more than a child?”

“More?” asked Longfellow, waiting for his neighbor to go on, which she suddenly seemed reluctant to do.

“Richard,” said Charlotte finally, “imagine, first, that there was an intimacy, and at least the suspicion of a child to come, when Tucker was called in by Phoebe’s aunt to treat the girl’s rash. Later, Phoebe’s child is lost, possibly
after she had already gone back to Concord, but before her condition became obvious. But what if that loss was not by plan, as Mr. Pelham suggests? What if it came about only as a result of disease?”

“Disease,” Longfellow repeated.

“I think Dr. Tucker suspected Phoebe’s situation in Boston, though I doubt he was sure. But then, meeting him again in Bracebridge, she may have spoken of the lost child, as it related to bearing others during her marriage. What if he told her then that she
must not
try for more? Tucker surely saw Pelham’s strong reaction to Phoebe’s presence here, and that may have made him certain of what he could only have guessed before—that Pelham had been Phoebe’s lover. After all, Pelham was one of Dr. Tucker’s patients, and so Tucker would also have known
his
medical history—”

She stopped short as Longfellow stiffened.

“And, that he had contracted
syphilis
while he tramped, as Diana tells me, through Europe?” he asked.

“Would Pelham have had to go so far, if he were less than careful on our own shores?”

“Possibly not,” Longfellow admitted. “But why, then, would Tucker have allowed Pelham to see Diana? Why would he not have warned us?”

“About another of his patients? Could he, ethically? Although I believe he did try. But he could ill afford to lose a friend. And then, when Phoebe died suddenly, taking with her the knowledge of her disease and her disgrace, might not Tucker have feared for his own life? As the last who knew the secret, save one?”

“Do you now suppose, Carlotta, that David Pelham is a murderer? I can hardly—but if you are right, we must do something, and soon! If he has had the French Disease for this long, it may have come to affect his mind, and make him dangerous.”

“It is still no more than a theory,” Charlotte returned,
sensing the wisdom of a temporary retreat, as she considered anew her lack of sure evidence.

“Yet one too deadly to dismiss—especially for my sister’s sake.” Longfellow gave back the buckle and caught hold of Charlotte’s other hand. “We will soon test how well facts bear out your conclusions.”

Led by Orpheus, they hurried down the side of the knoll, arriving at Mrs. Willett’s door a few minutes later.

A
COMMOTION IN
the doorway kept them from entering.

“I won’t stay here a day longer,” Will shouted, “and you can’t make me, even if you are my mother!”

“That I am, to my shame and horror!” Hannah exclaimed, holding on to a broom as if ready to swing it. “One whose pains gave birth to a thoughtless, cruel child!”

“Then why should you care, when I’m gone?”

“Because there are others to fear for! If you would
think
, for once—”

“
You’re
the witch here—not Mrs. Willett!” the boy accused, pointing a finger at his mother as he glowered.

“What is this row?” Longfellow finally shouted. Hannah put down the broom, and smoothed out her apron.

“I am sorry to tell you, sir, that this willful, selfish thing—”

“—would like to leave,” Longfellow supplied impatiently,
“though he has been told I won’t allow it. Well, with his obvious recovery, it is safe to conclude, Hannah, that your young hothead has not taken the smallpox after all. Perhaps it
would
be wiser to be rid of him, rather than keep him here, for the safety of all concerned! But hear this, boy. You will spend the day, and the night, if you choose, in that lean-to of yours, as long as the weather holds fair—
but you will go no farther
, on pain of a speedy removal to Mrs. Willett’s root cellar! You will be as Mr. Crusoe on his island. This
must last
until we have settled the issue of illness. We will see how long you find a solitary life appealing. In the meanwhile, you may speak to no one, and none may speak to you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Will mumbled, while casting a malignant eye toward his mother. He went out of the kitchen, and they heard him climb the stairs to bid Lem good-bye.

Charlotte, too, quit the kitchen, intent on her own mission. She entered her empty study, looked about for a moment in puzzlement, and proceeded to the garden window. Holding out the buckle she inverted it, lowered it to the sill, and moved it until she saw that the stones did, indeed, exactly match the set of arcs already there. She traced the path once more, barely letting the buckle touch. There could be no doubt. Someone, certainly, had slipped in or out of the window with this buckle on his shoe. That someone, it was only reasonable to conclude, was David Pelham.

She turned as Longfellow entered the room, with Hannah close behind him. His look was answered with a nod. Then, she held out the buckle so that he might make his own trial. “He must have gone out in a state of confusion,” she decided.