MURDER AT BERTRAM'S BOWER Read online

  They were fifteen that night around the shining mahogany table, and as Caroline surveyed her guests, she felt a sense of well-deserved triumph. It was going to be all right—more than that.

  The hothouse flowers (expensive, but worth it), the tall candles glowing in her heirloom silver candelabra, the sparkling crystal, the china adorned with the Ames family crest brought over by her grandfather from Whampoa in ’27, the silver epergne laden with fruit—yes, it was a picture-perfect scene. No hostess in the city could have offered a more elegant display of hospitality. She glanced at the portrait of that same grandfather gazing down at them from its place over the mantel. He’d been a stern man, very old when she was quite young and never given to showing his feelings, but he’d be proud of her tonight, she thought, if he were here.

  The candlelight—so much more flattering than gaslight—glowed on the women’s shoulders and, here and there, décolletage, and glittered on the discreet displays of jewelry, much of which, like Caroline’s china and silver, was heirloom. Imogen Boylston was wearing her mother’s pearls; Edith Perkins was almost too showy in a matched set of emeralds; Harriet Mason’s grandmother’s ruby earbobs dangled and sparkled every time Harriet uttered a syllable, which was frequently. As Caroline had hoped, Harriet had taken the shy Matthew Hale under her wing. He could hardly get a word in edgewise, but he looked enthralled at Harriet’s ceaseless chatter.

  The guest of honor, Nigel Chadwick, sat at Caroline’s right. He was a small, fastidious man with pale hair and a closely clipped mustache. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles over his bright, canny eyes, and he spoke in a high-class accent that every now and then slipped into what must have been his native cockney. He had the air of a man touring the former colonies—ever courteous, and only occasionally condescending. Caroline could see, from the way her female guests hung on his words (the men were less enthralled), that she was having one of the triumphs of the social season. Her friends, she knew, would be envious for a time, but eventually they would forgive her, and as the evening slipped into legend, Chadwick’s bons mots would be passed along, and embroidered upon, and everyone would say how clever Caroline Ames had been to snare him, and how beautifully she had carried it off.

  The hired girl, looking smart in her black dress and white ruffled cap and apron, was handing around the salmon mousse. Caroline met the eyes of her friend Imogen Boylston, who lived in a grand house on Commonwealth Avenue and was known for her elaborate entertainments. That lady arched an eyebrow and smiled as if to say, congratulations.

  Next to Mrs. Boylston sat the Reverend Randolph Montgomery. He seemed in fine form this evening, chatting wittily on any number of topics, always ready with a quip or a question, all the while devouring with gusto the food that was placed before him. His pomaded hair shone in the candlelight, his handsome face radiated goodwill, his demeanor was that of a man without a care in the world.

  But as Caroline watched him, she thought, he knows these people here tonight hold his fate in their hands. He is putting up a good front, but all the same, he must realize the need to extricate the Bower from scandal as soon as possible, so that these people, and others like them, will continue to give generously to his appeals.

  His sister Agatha looked less at ease. She sat down the table at Ames’s left, next to Desmond Delahanty. She spoke very little and ate less. She should try to seem more tranquil, Caroline thought, to reassure people that she can bear up under the strain of the past few days.

  Chadwick was talking about his adventures in America. “I landed in New York—oh, two weeks ago now,” he said. “And d’you know, I was delighted to see it in every bookshop. Amazing!” “It”—his book, which he was assiduously promoting—was a slightly scandalous work about Queen Victoria.

  “You people over here may have fought a war to separate yourselves from us,” he added, “but I believe you miss us all the same. You can’t seem to get enough gossip about the Royals.”

  “Indeed, Mr. Chadwick,” chirped one of the ladies. “Tell us something delicious about the Queen.”

  He paused for effect. Then, with a conspiratorial smile: “For one thing, she is extremely superstitious.”

  A little murmur of excitement went around the table.

  “Do go on, Mr. Chadwick,” chirped the same lady. “Don’t torment us—do tell!”

  “She cannot tolerate a broken mirror,” Chadwick said. “And as for spilled salt—a catastrophe! And she lives in dread of certain dates of the month—the thirteenth, of course, but the fourteenth as well. Her beloved husband, Prince Albert, died on the fourteenth of December back in eighteen sixty-one, and”—another dramatic pause—“only last week, on the fourteenth of January, her grandson Prince Albert Victor died.”

  An audible gasp came from the ladies.

  “Yes,” Chadwick went on. “Very odd, is it not? But there is more, much more. I should refer you to my book, but—well, I can tell you this much at least. She is a confirmed spiritualist.”

  A few of the ladies squealed with delight. The hired girl took away their plates and stepped aside for Margaret bearing Cook’s potted grouse. Caroline, thinking of the mended platter, mentally crossed her fingers, but it was all right, it held.

  Chadwick waited for Margaret to leave the room before he continued. “She used to indulge in table-turning with Prince Albert—her husband, I mean. And after he passed on, she took part in spiritualistic séances with her Scots gillie, the notorious John Brown. He died some years ago, and I have not been able to determine whether she has since made contact with him, wherever he is now.”

  Chadwick basked for a moment in the admiration of his audience, but then, as if he feared giving away too much from his book, he turned the conversation back to his adventures in America.

  “I have been to Philadelphia, to Baltimore, Washington—a strange place, that—and Richmond. I returned to New York for a few days, and then I made my way north, to your fair city.”

  “And you return to London when?” MacKenzie asked, picking at his grouse. He’d never had it before, and he didn’t care if he never had it again.

  “Next week—from New York.”

  “And how do you find us here in Boston?” asked Edward Boylston. He was a stout, balding man, a pillar of strength to the Bower, where, twice a year, he audited the account books.

  “How do I find you?” Chadwick allowed himself a small smile. “Why—very well. Very well indeed. You are so very—ah—democratic, don’t y’know.”

  Delahanty met MacKenzie’s gaze and quirked an eyebrow. “Democratic” was the last word he’d have used to describe this assembly of upper-crust Bostonians.

  “I’m sending back a regular report to my newspaper,” Chadwick went on. “I want to give ’em a good sense of you. I’ve been to the theater in New York, I’ve visited reformatories and prisons, I saw a hospital in Baltimore, and tomorrow I am to have a tour of your medical school here at Harvard. I’ve gone to the big department stores in New York, and to Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia. I saw your Congress in Washington—amazing, the oratorical powers of some of those gents. They could give our fellows in Parliament a run for their money any day. I even went to an auction when I first landed in New York. I have a weakness for eighteenth-century stuff, and they’d advertised a little Watteau for sale.”

  “How fascinating,” said Caroline. “Did you get it?”

  “No, worse luck. I stopped just in time before I bankrupted myself. I never saw the fellow who did. He had a straw bidding for it. Someone told me later he was a Boston man, in fact.”

  They felt that he was chastising them. Was he holding them collectively responsible for doing him out of that painting? wondered MacKenzie.

  “We have many noted connoisseurs here in Boston,” Delahanty replied, smoothing over the awkward moment. “If you have time, I’ll take you to meet Mrs. Gardner over on Beacon Street. She’s been buying up half the treasures of the Continent, and she even has a smart young man to help her choose what is
best. Her collection is a bit of a jumble, but you might find it interesting.”

  Caroline threw Delahanty a grateful smile. In the little silence that followed, Matthew Hale, perhaps emboldened by the three glasses of wine he had drunk, leaned around his neighbor, the voluble Mrs. Mason, to peer at the reverend. “Speaking of New York, Reverend, I saw a friend of yours there last week.”

  “Oh?” replied Montgomery. He did not seem particularly interested.

  “Yes, indeed. A most charming lady.”

  Montgomery did not reply, but a wary look came over his face.

  “And she had a most interesting secret to tell me,” Hale went on, smiling merrily now. He was flushed, and his eyes were shining brighter than Caroline, who had known him since childhood, had ever seen them.

  “I don’t think—” Montgomery began, but Hale was too quick for him. He prattled on, chuckling a bit, glancing around the table to gauge the effect of what he said.

  “She gave me to understand that she is your fiancée, Reverend. You sly dog,” he added, grinning broadly. “I told her that half the single females in Boston had set their caps for you. It was too cruel, I said, that you went to New York to find a bride.”

  As Montgomery, for once, seemed at a loss for words, they were startled by the sound—and sight—of his sister choking. At once, MacKenzie jumped up and began to pound her on her back.

  During this distressing episode, Ames noted that the reverend sat perfectly still, his eyes fixed on Matthew Hale. It was not a look of a man who has had his secret revealed but who doesn’t mind very much. Rather, it was the look of a man who would like to murder the person who revealed it. Montgomery’s eyes burned with anger, and he did not appear even to notice his sister’s difficulty, eased now by Dr. MacKenzie’s efforts.

  “Well,” Hale said cheerily, oblivious of the effect of his revelations on the reverend. “Is it true, sir? Will you soon be entering the sacred bonds of matrimony with that charming lady from New York? Or is she, shall we say, allowing her own hopes and desires to triumph over the facts of the matter?”

  The Reverend Montgomery’s face had gone from pale to pink to an odd shade of puce. He was clutching his fork in a death grip; had it been his wineglass, he would have shattered it. “I—it is a personal matter, sir,” he managed to get out at last.

  MacKenzie sat down. Agatha took a sip of water. Harriet Mason asked someone a question about the new exhibition at the art museum in Copley Square. Margaret returned bearing the next course—a melange of vegetables. And so, somehow—Caroline never remembered exactly how—they got past the moment that had threatened to ruin her party.

  By ten o’clock they were finishing the blancmange, which had turned out splendidly after all. Fruit and cheese appeared and were consumed, and then Ames suggested that the men remove to his study for their coffee and port and cigars. A question had come up about ancient Athenian red-figured pottery; he could show them a very fine example, he said, that he’d picked up in Sicily several years before. The ladies, he added with a look at Caroline, could proceed into the parlor, where the men would join them shortly.

  Everyone rose. Ordinarily, Caroline should have led the women first out of the room, but when she saw that Agatha had remained seated, as if the effort of standing were too much for her, Caroline asked Mrs. Boylston to take the ladies out. The men left, then, as well, and Caroline and Agatha were alone. When the hired girl looked in to see if she could clear, Caroline asked her to wait.

  “What is it, Agatha?” she said. “Are you all right? The evening went well, I thought, and I am so glad that you and the reverend could come—”

  Miss Montgomery was visibly trembling. “I do not feel well, Caroline. But as you say, it is very good for Randolph to be here. I don’t want to take him home just yet. The men often have much to say to one another away from the women. If I could just lie down for a few moments …”

  “But of course!” Caroline was alarmed. Her friend really did look ill, her muddy complexion pale, her eyes watering. “I will take you up to my room—we will use the elevator—and you can rest for a bit. Should I ask Dr. MacKenzie to see you? He is very kind, and very wise, I think. Perhaps he could—”

  “No—no,” Miss Montgomery gasped. “I just need to rest for a bit—perhaps I laced too tightly.”

  Caroline put her hand under Miss Montgomery’s elbow to steady her, and as she did so, her eye was caught by a gleam of gold on the carpet.

  “Why—what is that?” she said.

  “What?” asked Miss Montgomery. “Oh, goodness, it belongs to Randolph. He wears it on his watch chain.”

  Despite her momentary faintness, she managed to stoop and retrieve it. Caroline had glimpsed it for only a second; she thought it was some kind of coin.

  “It must have dropped off when he got up from the table,” Miss Montgomery said. “I will give it to him later,” she added, opening her small, shabby reticule and slipping it in.

  After Caroline settled Miss Montgomery upstairs, she returned to the front hall, where she paused for a moment. She heard a burst of masculine laughter. Good.

  In Ames’s study, the question of the vase settled, he offered port and cigars to his guests. One of them, a man whom Ames did not know well but whose wife was an associate of Caroline’s in many of her charities, offered the Reverend Montgomery his condolences on the trouble at the Bower.

  “It will pass,” the reverend said. “With the good Lord’s help,” he added.

  Chadwick’s ears had perked up. “You and your sister have been the subject of the sensational reports I have read in your local news sheets,” he said to Montgomery.

  “Yes,” the reverend replied slowly. He seemed not to want to discuss the matter.

  “Do you think—but no, you wouldn’t know that, would you? I was going to say, do you think the man is targeting your—ah—place specifically, or may these be random murders like our own case a few years ago?”

  “Your own case?” Ames asked before the reverend could reply. “You mean—”

  “Yes. He called himself Jack the Ripper, but of course we never knew who he was really.”

  “Never caught,” said someone.

  “No.”

  “I hardly think—” the reverend began, but he was interrupted by Delahanty.

  “Did you report on the case for your newspaper?” he asked the Englishman.

  Chadwick paused before he replied. “I did, yes.”

  “And since the police never caught the man—never even came close—he is still at large?”

  “At large? I am not sure about that. Let us say that he has claimed no further victims.”

  “All of them in the slum district of Whitechapel—the East End of London.”

  “Yes.”

  “A curious fixation, was it not?” said the man who had first spoken. “Not really killing at random, was he, since he always chose as his victims—ah—ladies of the evening, shall we say?” He smiled in an unpleasant way.

  “Yes. Five women, possibly six. From August to November, three years ago.”

  “And then nothing,” said Delahanty.

  “Right. It was as if he went away.”

  “Or died.”

  “Or died, yes. Or was incarcerated for some other crime. It was a baffling case. There were several suspects, each with his fervent adherents. A local butcher, some said. A demented barrister, some said, who killed himself just when the murders stopped—a convenient coincidence perhaps. Some people even thought that the murderer—and his victims—had some connection to the Crown. I touch on that aspect of the case in my book about the Queen. Her own physician had a very vocal claque supporting his nomination as the Ripper.”

  “The Queen’s physician?” said Ames. “But that is extraordinary, is it not, to suspect such a man?”

  “Sir William Gull, yes. Preposterous on the face of it, of course. There was a scurrilous story about one of the Queen’s grandsons having some involvement with a woman, a chi
ld born, blackmail, et cetera. And because the victims were all—ah—extensively carved up, it has been held that the murderer knew something of surgery.”

  “Or butchery.”

  “Or butchery, yes. But may I ask, Mr. Ames—does your killer here send notes to the newspapers the way the Ripper did?”

  “No. Not yet, at any rate. But he—”

  The reverend loudly cleared his throat. “Do you think it necessary to burden our visitor with the tawdry details of a minor local case?” he said to Ames.

  But the Englishman’s eyes had lighted up, and he seemed eager to hear every detail of the murders at Bertram’s Bower—to hear them from Ames, if not from the Reverend Montgomery, in the hope, perhaps, of learning some detail that the newspapers had not reported.

  “The two women were both residents of the Bower, were they not?” he asked Ames. “I should think that was of some importance.”

  “It may be, yes.”

  “And the police have no idea—? Of course not. The police in Boston, no doubt, like the police in London, have far too much to do, and too few men to do it. Has the weapon been found?”

  “No.”

  “Not surprising. A knife is an easy thing to dispose of. Well, I will say this: One thing you can count on is that if the killings continue, as they probably will, there will be a public outcry. Even though the women involved are—ah—of the lower orders, as they were in Whitechapel, there will be panic. Just as there was panic not only in Whitechapel but in all London. The idea of some lunatic stalking the streets and bent on brutal murder is simply too horrifying for the public to bear, no matter who his victims are. Two women dead already, and then a third, and a fourth … Oh, yes.”

  “How do you mean?” Ames asked. “Are you insinuating that—”

  “I am not insinuating anything. I am stating flat out that a man who kills in this way will not stop at two. He will kill again.”

  Not everyone in the room had been paying attention to the conversation with Chadwick, but now, suddenly, all eyes were on him.

  “Why do you say that?” Delahanty asked.