Murder at Crossways Page 2
“My word . . . is he dead do you think?”
“Dead as driftwood, I’d say.”
“Must have fallen overboard. That storm three days ago . . .”
“But how’d he wash up this high out of the water?”
While the speculation around me grew in volume and scope, I could do nothing but stare at that face. The blood pounded in my ears. My vision darkened. A tap at my shoulder sent a jolt through me.
“Miss, you really oughtn’t to be here.” And then, more emphatically, “Miss Cross?”
The red and white stripes of a man’s bathing costume flashed at the corner of my eye. I tore my gaze away from that blanched face and gazed up into another, nearly as familiar to me. “Robert?”
The young man looking down at me with such concern was Robert Goelet, the eighteen-year-old son of Mrs. Ogden Goelet, who owned Ochre Court. Only three weeks prior I had witnessed an appalling crime at their home, and had helped discover the culprit. Now I once again found myself caught up in violence, though whether committed this time by man or nature, I didn’t yet know.
“Miss Cross, you should go.” He tried to nudge me along, but I refused to budge. I was frozen in place, caught in a web of horror. I turned back to the body, to that all too familiar face—one I had known all my life, one I loved dearly—and fainted dead away.
* * *
Someone was slapping my hand, tapping my cheeks, and urgently calling my name. My eyelids fluttered but a burst of sunlight prompted me to seal them tight.
“Miss Cross, please wake up.”
I recognized the voice, as well as the tone—fear. Then I remembered where I was, what I had seen, and who spoke to me so adamantly. Reaching out and catching hold of a hand, I sat up and forced my eyes open, despite the glittering sunlight and salty spray. Spouting Rock had erupted again. My clothes were damp, my skirts sticking to my legs. Sharp pains pierced my back and elbows and I realized I had been lying on the bare rock.
The physical pain didn’t matter. My heart ached as though wrung out like an old sail and left to dry in the sun. I nonetheless said, “I’m all right, Robert. I’m sorry, I . . .”
I didn’t finish my excuses. Instead I tightened my grip on his hand and used his strength as leverage to stand. He tried to turn me around and draw me back to the beach, and once again I resisted. “No, I have to look. I have to know.”
“Know what? That some poor sot met with a watery, rocky end? Drunk, no doubt, and tumbled off his boat. Probably a scrod or lobster fisherman.”
“No.” I stumbled past him. “Fishermen don’t dress like that.” Despite the drenched state of the dead man’s clothing, his garments spoke of erstwhile quality. The trousers tapered in the current style, and the coat had been tailored to a personal fit. I even spied a mother-of-pearl stud on his shirt where his necktie had slipped awry. “No,” I repeated, “he was a gentleman.”
At a misstep I nearly went tumbling down the outcropping into the water, if not for the hand that grabbed my elbow to steady me. The men spoke of me as if I were deaf, all of them agreeing that someone should escort me from the scene. But I reached the body and forced myself to stare back into those sightless, clouded eyes. My heart threatened to shatter into countless, irretrievable pieces.
“Brady.”
Chapter 2
The Newport Police arrived about a half an hour later. By then I had left the outcropping and waited on the sand, which penetrated every fold and pleat of my damp frock. I didn’t particularly notice. I’d sent a message back to Aunt Alice specifically stating that she must not allow Gladys to come anywhere near here. I suggested they pack up and bring Uncle Cornelius home.
Horror continued to course through my veins, but with it, relief, however tempered and cautious. As certain I’d been at first glance, I’d soon realized the corpse on the rocks was not my half brother, Stuart Braden Gale IV. Where Brady’s hair was sandy brown and thick, this man’s hair was mostly gray and thin. His skin, too, was that of a much older man, for all the face was bloated by death. But in those initial moments, I’d almost wished for death myself, rather than live with the vision of my beloved brother tossed up on the rocks like a scrap of seaweed.
I remained only half-aware of the activity on the outcropping as the coroner and the police began their inspections. Robert Goelet, young gentleman that he was, hovered nearby, though I’d insisted I would not repeat my ignominious show of weakness by fainting again. Footsteps swished in the sand behind me, but I didn’t bother pulling my gaze away from the waves until a man in a dark, modest suit of clothes plopped down beside me.
“Emma, I’m told you recognized him, or thought you did. Are you all right?”
A new sense of relief cascaded through me, though for no reason other than that Detective Jesse Whyte of the Newport Police was a dear friend and could be trusted to identify the truth of the matter. I turned to peer into his blue eyes, bright against his subtly freckled complexion, and remembered that he shouldn’t be here. He’d been seriously injured at Ochre Court three weeks ago, and had nearly sustained permanent damage to his hands that might have ended his career. He should be home, continuing to recuperate. But that wasn’t Jesse’s way. He had only ever wished to be a policeman, and inactivity was as odious to him as it was to my Uncle Cornelius.
I took comfort from his dependable presence and leaned my head on his shoulder. But only for an instant. Then I regained my equilibrium and straightened. “For the most horrific moment, I’d thought it was Brady. Dear heavens, Jesse, he looks so like Brady.”
His arm went around me long enough for a warm, reassuring squeeze, and then he let me go. “How awful for you. I can’t imagine what went through your mind.”
“Have you seen the body yet?”
Jesse shook his head and pushed to his feet. “I’d better get up there. Why don’t you go home? Is your carriage here?”
“I came with my relatives. They don’t yet know what happened, although I daresay rumors are buzzing through the beach like mayflies.”
“Why don’t you go back to them, then. Have them bring you home, and I’ll come by when I’m through here.”
It was my turn to shake my head. “I should stay. I’m a journalist, aren’t I? I’d forgotten that in the shock, but I have a job to do, just as you do.” I reached out to him, and he drew me to my feet.
“If you’re sure . . .”
Together we mounted the rocks and once there parted, Jesse to perform his duties, and I to gather as many details as I could. With none of my usual reporter’s trappings with me—not even my handbag, which I’d left back at the beach—I had to rely on my powers of observation and memory. As for the latter, there weren’t many details about that poor soul’s countenance that hadn’t been burned into my brain.
By all appearances he had drowned and been washed up onto the rocks. Yet, somehow I found the presence of mind to remember appearances could not always be trusted. To that end, I studied the sand between the rocks and the road. There had been no rain the night before to disturb the two sets of carriage wheels that veered off Ocean Avenue and appeared to have stopped side by side, nor the two sets of footsteps leading to the base of the rocks. True, anyone might have come by to view the phenomenon of Spouting Rock sending up its geyser. People did all the time. But those marks in the sand certainly threw into question whether this man’s death had been accidental or not.
* * *
That night, a dream woke me. Or perhaps I should say an unwelcome vision hurled me from sleep and landed me upright in my bed. Patch, the spaniel mix I’d adopted two years earlier, lurched from his own dreams with a yelp that became a whine as he regarded me in the darkness. He rose from his place at the foot of the bed and crawled toward me until I could slip my arm around him. His nose grazed my cheek, imparting
comfort at the same time he seemed to inquire why I had awakened him.
“It’s impossible,” I said, more to myself, of course, than to him. “But I can’t shake it. C’mon, Patch, let’s go see Nanny.”
As I had done since I was a little girl, I donned house shoes and robe and padded down the hallway to the bedroom where Mary O’Neal, my former nanny, now my housekeeper, not to mention surrogate grandmother, slept. I didn’t bother knocking, and before I’d perched on the edge of her mattress she was awake and reaching for my hand. I’d never had to nudge Nanny awake; no matter the hour, she had always seemed to know when I needed her.
“What is it, sweetie? Bad dream?” She wriggled up until she sat against her pillows. “Are you still thinking of that poor man at Spouting Rock?”
“Yes, but more than that.” Patch sat at my feet, for he knew better than to jump up on Nanny’s bed. She and I both reached down to pet him with our free hands. “I think I know who he might be. Oh, but Nanny, surely it’s not possible.”
“He’s familiar to you?”
This was something I hadn’t yet told her. It hadn’t been Brady, so I’d seen no reason to upset Nanny with the notion that it might have been. But now, after what had occurred to me in my sleep, I had to tell someone, and I needed Nanny’s advice before morning came and with it, a decision I must make.
“At first . . . at first I thought it was . . . Oh, Nanny, he looked so much like Brady. I believed it to be him until I realized this man was too old.”
She put her arms around me. “No wonder my lamb had a bad dream.”
“The dream wasn’t about Brady.” I steeled myself with a deep breath. “The dream was about Brady’s father.”
She immediately released me and pulled back to peer at me in the darkness. In a moment, she reached onto the bed table for her half-moon spectacles.
“I know it sounds crazy,” I hastened to say. “I know it couldn’t be—”
“Brady’s father died years before you were born.”
“Yes, I know. But . . .” I shook my head, the ghostly, bloated face once more filling my mind’s eye. Even distorted, I still saw Brady—or a man who looked very much like him. “Was his body ever recovered?”
“Well, no. He died at sea.”
“A yachting accident, I remember.”
“There was a sudden, terrible storm and he was swept overboard, along with two others. He couldn’t have survived, Emma. And even if he did, where would he have been all these years?”
She was right, my suspicions made no sense. Brady had been about two years old when his father, a sportsman here in Newport, had disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean. However wrong to speak ill of the dead, Stuart Braden Gale III had favored risks and adventures above the needs of his small family. His son, my half brother, had inherited some of those tendencies, embracing an undisciplined lifestyle until forced to learn a hard lesson several years ago.
I had no answer to Nanny’s question, but a question of my own lingered. “Surely I’m wrong, but doesn’t Brady deserve the right to discover for certain if this man is his father or not?”
“Why risk upsetting him for no good reason? Emma, are you that sure it could be Stuart?”
Patch licked my hand and I resumed stroking his warm head. “No. All I know is I cannot banish those features from my mind. I fainted when I first saw him, I was so certain it was Brady.” We were both silent a moment, and I sensed a tentativeness in Nanny. “What is it?”
In reply, she dragged her legs over the other side of the bed and lumbered to her clothespress. She opened the bottom drawer, took out a box, and brought it back with her. “Light a lamp and bring it here, would you?”
I heard the box open as I went to the mantel. As a rule, Nanny never left lamps on her bedside table, even unlit. She considered it too dangerous to have any sort of flame near her bedding, a fear that harkened back to her own childhood. It seemed she would make an exception tonight. I found matches and lit a hurricane lantern.
“Look here,” she said, holding out a photograph. “It’s your mother and Brady’s father, on their wedding day.”
I couldn’t help a quiet gasp. I’d only ever seen one photograph of my mother and Brady’s father, which had also included Brady as a baby. It had been grainy and dark, their likenesses obscured. This picture was of much better quality, a brightly lit closeup of the pair sitting side by side, their hands clasped across the arms of their chairs. Mother wasn’t wearing one of the wedding dresses that by then had become fashionable, but something much more practical, which she had probably worn again. Stuart Gale wore a well-tailored, dark suit of clothes, but it was the clarity of his features that drew me.
Again, but for subtleties he had inherited from our mother, Brady’s face stared back at me. Something, too, in Stuart’s expression spoke of my brother, especially the Brady of old— irrepressible, incorrigible, but altogether loveable. Even in retrospect, I could see what had drawn my mother to him, probably against her better judgment.
“Well?”
Nanny’s prompting seized me from my musings. “I can’t be sure. The man at Spouting Rock was older. Perhaps the same age Stuart Gale would be today. I need to see him again with this photograph in hand.”
“I do wish you wouldn’t. Why put yourself through that? For what?” Nanny’s hand came down on my shoulder, prodding me gently. “Either way, the man is no longer alive.”
I let the photo drop into my lap. “But if it is Stuart Gale, doesn’t Brady have a right to know? And perhaps discover what became of him all these years?” When she pursed her lips and shook her head, I persisted. “Brady isn’t a child. We shouldn’t make this decision for him.”
Having assured myself of the only proper course, I returned to bed, but woke again well before dawn. The next couple of hours were restless ones, until I could stand it no longer and made my way to the telephone my Vanderbilt relatives had installed in the alcove beneath my staircase. I always hesitated to accept their largesse, for didn’t favors, even loving ones, always come with a price? For me, that price often involved having to sit through interminable dinners orchestrated by my aunt Alice with the goal of finding me a suitable husband. Every young woman wants a husband, Aunt Alice always insisted, whether said young woman knew it or not.
I chewed my lip while Gayla, Newport’s main daytime operator, put through my call to my brother’s abode on Easton’s Point near town. “I heard what happened yesterday at Spouting Rock,” she said as she pulled wires from the switchboard in front of her and connected them to the proper circuits. “I heard you were there. That’s quite a story for you, isn’t it? Should sell a few newspapers, I’d think.”
“I suppose you’re right, Gayla,” I replied indulgently. She referred to my brand-new role as editor-in-chief of the Newport Messenger. The unexpected opportunity had materialized after I’d been sacked from my employment as society reporter for the Newport Observer the previous summer, and then spent a disappointing year in New York City working for the Herald. I’d returned to Newport at the start of this summer wondering what on earth I would do next, only to have the challenge of a lifetime not only handed to me, but with a pretty please. I’d have been a fool to say no. But as for my success hinging on the misfortunes of others . . . “I’d rather not have to report on events like this,” I told her truthfully.
“Still and all, you need the occasional sensational tale to be a success in the newspaper business. And from what I hear, it’s not as though he was a local, thank goodness.”
It seemed only I found the poor man familiar. If it turned out I was right, all of Newport would soon be abuzz with rumors and speculation. “Gayla, do I hear the line ringing?”
“Oh, yes. Hold on.”
“Hello?”
I could hear the sleep in my brother’s voice; I’d obviously awakened him. With a quick apology, I explained only as much as needed to convince him to throw on some clothes and meet me outside Newport Hospital. I didn’t ment
ion his father’s name, not on the telephone. Not only did I wish to wait until Brady and I were face-to-face, but also if I mentioned it now, with Gayla possibly listening, word would have spread across Newport by lunchtime.
“You say he looks familiar?”
“Very familiar, Brady.”
“Then why has no one else recognized him, and why do you think I will?”
“I’ll explain everything when I see you. Brady, please just meet me.”
“View a body before breakfast? Ugh.” I could practically see him raking his fingers through his hair. “I suppose after breakfast could be worse. All right, Em, I’ll be there. But I had a bit of a late night last night, so this had better be good.”
He repeated the same warning when we met on the sidewalk outside the hospital. I’d telephoned ahead and spoken to a mutual friend of his and mine. We went in and Hannah Hanson, a nurse who worked at the hospital, met us in the lobby.
“What’s this all about, Emma? Does it have anything to do with the body brought in yesterday? I understand you were among those that found him.”
Brady’s expression mirrored Hannah’s questions, and they both regarded me quizzically.
“I’m sorry to be mysterious,” I said. “But this isn’t something I cared to discuss over the telephone. Can we talk privately?”
Hannah led us into the tiny waiting room, once a receiving parlor when this building had been a private home. No one occupied the wooden chairs lining the walls. I led the way and bade them to sit. “Yes, this is about the man found at Spouting Rock yesterday,” I began. “I have questions about him, and those questions involve you, Brady.”
“I don’t understand.” He absently rotated his derby in his hands. “I’m sorry for the poor fellow, to be sure, but—”
“Brady,” I interrupted, “I don’t know how to say this, except to simply say it. When I first saw him, I thought he was you.”
He flinched at my brusque statement. Then a grin spread across his lips. “Well, as you can plainly see, he isn’t me. I assure you, Em, I’ve never felt better.”