Murder at Ochre Court Read online

  “You think Hannah will keep me honest, don’t you?”

  The laughter left my voice. “I do, Brady. I think she’s good for you.”

  Hannah Hanson and her brother had grown up with Brady and me on the Point, a harborside, colonial neighborhood that saw its origins in the seventeenth century. Hardly considered fashionable nowadays, the Point nonetheless forged strong bonds between those who lived there. Hailing from Newport’s hardiest stock, we understood and respected one another in ways outsiders could not.

  It had been one of the things I missed most in New York.

  Brady gave the reins a light flick. Hammersmith Farm rolled into view, snuggled in acres of verdant lawn, its weathered shingles gleaming in the sunlight. His gaze lingered on the varied roofline of its many wings, presided over by a single, regal turret. “Hannah is no society girl.”

  “No. That’s exactly what makes her so right for you.”

  “Does it? If you believed that, Em, you’d have married Derrick Andrews by now.”

  The comment stung, for all Brady hadn’t meant it to. He was merely stating a fact. I hadn’t married Derrick Andrews because doing so would change my life forever, substituting riches and luxury for the personal independence I presently enjoyed and valued above all else. “That’s different. You’re no Knickerbocker, and you never will be.”

  “Ouch. Touché.”

  “Brady, try to understand. I haven’t married Derrick, not because I fear his world and my place in it, but because I cherish my world as it is, warts and all. It’s our world, Brady. It’s no insult when I say you’ll never be part of New York’s generations-old aristocracy, Mrs. Astor’s Four Hundred. It’s simply a fact, no matter how high your pile of money. They might appear to accept you now for Uncle Cornelius’s sake, but you wouldn’t be happy married to one of their daughters, even if you managed such a feat. They’d never let you forget you aren’t one of them.”

  “Times are changing, Em. Slowly, but they are changing.”

  I pressed a hand to his coat sleeve. “Then let them change with Hannah.”

  Our debate ceased as we rounded the bend onto Ocean Avenue, not because of the sea-born wind that snatched the words from my lips and pounded in our ears, but because of the sheer exhilaration that filled me—oh, always filled me—at the strength and majesty of the Atlantic pulsing against our shores. It was like a heartbeat, pumping life into our island, and yes, sometimes death, but always the guiding force of our very existence.

  “Oh, Brady, how I’ve missed this.”

  “It’s only been since Easter. And before that Christmas, and before that—”

  “Too long. And neither the East River, the Hudson, nor New York Harbor can take its place.”

  The carriage slowed slightly as Brady turned his attention to me. “You’re not going back, are you?”

  “I don’t wish to discuss it now, but no, I don’t think I’m going back to New York. Let me enjoy the view, and once we’re home I’ll explain everything.”

  As welcome a sight as the ocean had been, the tattered shingles, loose shutters, and hodgepodge roof tiles of Gull Manor raised a tender ache beneath my breastbone. My joy throbbed all the more fiercely when, from around the side of the house, a yapping brown and white spaniel came running, his mismatched ears streaming out behind him. The front door opened, and out stepped Mrs. Mary O’Neal, my housekeeper and so very much more than that. Friend, grandmother, confidante. She had been my nanny when I was a child, and Nanny she remained in my life and my heart.

  My eyes brimmed and overflowed, blinding me so that my foot missed the step down and I stumbled my way to the ground, barely keeping myself from collapsing. I needn’t have bothered fighting gravity, for as my dear mutt, Patch, reached me, he scrambled and leaped, knocking both of us down into a heap of barking and laughter and the occasional sob. Just as I dried my tears and finished hugging Nanny, my outpouring began anew when a happily sniffling Katie, my maid-of-all-work, declared in her singsong Irish brogue how good it was to have me home.

  Thus was my typical homecoming over the past year, and I wouldn’t have changed it for anything.

  Katie brought tea into the parlor and then sat to join Nanny and Brady in listening to my news of New York. Young Katie Dylan had been with us these past three years after being summarily dismissed from her position at The Breakers, and only now did she feel comfortable enough with my slack views on servant discipline—as my aunt Alice would say—to occupy the same seating arrangement as the rest of us.

  “He lied,” I said bluntly to Nanny’s inquiry into the current state of my employment with the Herald. I thumped a ragged spot on the cushion beside me for emphasis. “Again. Mr. Bennett brought me to New York under the false pretense of my covering real news stories, but that is never going to happen. He hired me for my society connections, and he wants me sniffing out sordid gossip. I’ve tried reasoning with him, but he only smiles and tells me I’m doing a spiffing job. Nothing is ever going to change there. I can only control where I live, and I’m choosing Newport.”

  Nanny’s half-moon spectacles, sitting low on her nose, flashed in the light from the front windows. “What about the money?”

  “What about it? Yes, it’s more than I ever hoped to make working for the Newport Observer, but by the time I send funds to you for the running of Gull Manor and make my monthly donations to St. Nicholas Orphanage, I’ve barely enough left to pay for my own upkeep. New York is expensive.”

  “Even living with Alice and Cornelius?” Brady raised his eyebrows at me, and leaned to snatch another sandwich off the tray on the sofa table. “Those aren’t shabby digs, after all.”

  “No, the Fifth Avenue house is lovely, but I have no desire to go on living there.”

  Brady shook his head sadly, as if at a hopeless case. “You are an odd one, Em.”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.” I raised my voice an octave in my best imitation of Alice Vanderbilt. “Where am I going, with whom and when? And wouldn’t I like to meet the Bransons’ third oldest son? And, ‘Oh, Emmaline, since you’re not busy—I don’t know how many times Aunt Alice has uttered that phrase when I was quite clearly working on an article for the next day’s edition.” I stopped to collect my breath and my thoughts, then went on more calmly. “I love them and I appreciate their generosity, but if I have to live another day under Aunt Alice’s kindly thumb, I’ll sew bricks into my petticoats and throw myself in the East River.”

  Brady wrinkled his nose. “With the way the ships toss their refuse overboard? Yuck. So what will you do here in Newport? Beg Mr. Millford for your old job back?”

  “No, certainly not that.” I frowned and compressed my lips. I kicked at the faded oval rug beneath the sofa table. “Maybe. I don’t know yet.” Dubious expressions from the others bombarded me, but I pretended to ignore them. “I don’t want to be writing society columns for the rest of my life, but I belong here. I know that now. Newport is home, and here is where I want to make my future. I’ll figure something out.”

  “Of course you will, sweetie.” Nanny patted my knee with a plump, wrinkled hand capable of bringing me more comfort than all the luxuries my Vanderbilt relatives could buy.

  “Em . . .” An ominous note in Brady’s tone made me wary. I waited for him to continue. “Newport will never do for your career what New York can do. Have you considered selling Gull Manor and moving permanently to the city? With Nanny and Katie, of course.”

  “No. Absolutely not.” The very idea sent outrage coursing through my veins. “That is out of the question.”

  “We’d go with you to New York, if it came to that,” Nanny said bravely, but I noted the tremor in her voice. Katie vigorously nodded, although trepidation peeked out from her summer blue eyes.

  “Did no one hear what I just said? Aunt Sadie left me this house and a responsibility to go with it. If Gull Manor changed hands, would the new owners open the door when some abused and hungry young woman came kn
ocking?”

  Katie flinched, for she had been both when she came to me three years ago: with child and cast out onto the street, with nowhere to go and no one to help her. Except me, here at Gull Manor. I smiled at her and reached across the sofa table to squeeze her hand.

  She smiled back. “I’m not the only one you’ve helped.” She was right. Most recently had been a young lady named Flossie, who’d accepted my offer to help her leave a life of prostitution and start anew. She’d spent five months here, during which Nanny discovered her talent for baking. She now worked as a baker’s assistant at a hotel in Providence. “’Tis sure Newport needs Gull Manor, Miss Emma.”

  “That’s correct.” I straightened and poured another cup of tea to shore up my resolution. “Newport is my home. If I’m to be a journalist, I’ll do it here. I’ll find a way, even if I have to buy a decades-old press, set up business here in our cellar, and deliver the papers myself.”

  Chapter 2

  As the name implied, Ochre Court occupied several acres on Ochre Point Avenue overlooking the Cliff Walk and the sea. Being only a few minutes’ walk north of The Breakers, I left Barney and my carriage with my relatives’ gatekeeper and walked up to the Goelets’ home. I was to cover an afternoon ladies’ tea in honor of Miss Cleo Cooper-Smith, whose coming-out ball would be later that night.

  Wrought-iron gates stood open to a tree-lined drive that bisected the property perfectly in half and led, without a curve or wobble, to a circular drive in front of the entryway. The house, in the style of a French château of the Loire Valley, boasted deep, mansard rooflines and elaborate carvings crowning the dormer windows. A pleasing asymmetry of the house somehow presented an aspect of perfect balance that revealed the brilliance of the architect, Richard Morris Hunt.

  The house stood regally against a gently clouded afternoon sky, its creamy stonework golden in the afternoon sun, its only shadows huddled beneath the porte cochere. An oppressive heat closed in around me, for I’d dressed, not in the latest daytime summer fashion, but in the female journalist’s traditional garb of shirtwaist over a plain, dark skirt, with a matching jacket. My blue serge that once belonged to Aunt Sadie, but which had been updated numerous times by Nanny, served me well. Mrs. Goelet had made it clear I would attend today’s functions in a professional capacity, pencil and notebook at the ready, and not as a guest. It didn’t matter that her sister, Grace, and I enjoyed a close friendship or that we were all cousins by marriage. Mrs. Goelet considered me a mere step or so above a servant, and so while Ochre Court’s open gates beckoned, it was to the side entrance that I traipsed.

  I didn’t much mind. In this, Mrs. Goelet behaved no differently than most other society matrons. After all, despite my relatives, I wasn’t a member of the Four Hundred, that magical number of wealthy individuals who could comfortably fit inside Mrs. Astor’s New York ballroom. Compounding my faults, I also earned my keep by describing their exploits in painstaking detail for the less fortunate to enjoy. While they welcomed the renown and the admiration of the masses, they viewed me as a necessary evil.

  The housekeeper admitted me with an economy of words and warmth, and led me up the service staircase to the ground floor. She bade me to wait in a sitting area off the Great Hall, though she omitted to invite me to sit in any of the four wing chairs grouped there. I waited, standing, near the fireplace, carved of Caen stone, listening to the light, feminine voices echoing in the soaring openness of the Great Hall. From another direction came a hum, a creaking, and the mechanical workings of Ochre Court’s elevator. The sound unnerved me. Even after a year in New York, I hadn’t grown used to or fond of those claustrophobic boxes that conveyed humans up and down buildings with little more than a few cables between them and a fast plummet to the ground. Yes, I knew all about the safety brake invented by Elisha Otis, but knowing and trusting were two different things. My stomach dropped simply thinking about it.

  The clacking of heels alerted me to the imminent arrival of Mrs. Goelet. She swept around the corner of the hall in black with deep violet trimmings, a sign of mourning her husband who passed away nearly a year ago. Her willingness to sponsor Miss Cooper-Smith in this way, before her official grieving period ended, attested to the sincere affection she must have for the young woman and her family.

  Like the housekeeper, she, too, greeted me in a brisk manner. “There you are. Tea has started, but you aren’t needed in there. Not now. I want you to view the drawing room in daylight and write down what you’ll need to remember about the details.” Her lips twitched in the faintest of smiles. “I intend to dazzle my guests tonight, Miss Cross, and I want you able to pick apart the minutiae in order to dazzle your readers.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate that.”

  “I’m not doing it for you, girl,” she said, not unpleasantly, but as a matter of course. One would never suspect the relation between this woman and her sister, Grace. On the surface, they could not have been more different. Some fifteen years separated them in age, and while Grace presently courted society’s favor with her beauty, charm, and high spirits, Mary had settled squarely into middle age and all that that encompassed. Yet, when people referred to Mrs. Ogden Goelet in her youth, it was with a wistful admiration that evoked the poise and style of one of society’s one-time legendary beauties.

  She continued in a confidential tone. “I am launching Miss Cooper-Smith into society, and I wish to be certain there isn’t a soul in this country who doesn’t know her name after tonight.”

  “The Herald will make sure of that, ma’am.”

  “Indeed. Her mother was my dearest friend, and I promised her I’d do the best for her girls, and spare no expense.” Emotion made her voice husky. I knew the story. Mrs. Cooper-Smith had succumbed to the Russian flu that took so many lives in Europe and this country, even here in Newport, early in the decade. Mrs. Goelet’s eyes grew unfocused, and I guessed that for several moments she saw, not me, but the ashen face of her friend in her final moments of coherence.

  Just as suddenly, her brusqueness returned. “Come with me.”

  I followed her, nearly trotting to keep up, across the Great Hall. I wondered about her last statement, that she would spare no expense. I understood her stepping in to perform a mother’s role in launching a young woman into society, even opening her home for such a purpose, but must she pay for the event as well? Shouldn’t that be Mr. Cooper-Smith’s responsibility?

  I knew better than to ask. There was no surer or faster way to find myself out on the sidewalk.

  Those voices I’d heard continued emanating, I surmised, from the dining room. Our footsteps raised a clattering echo until we reached the rug beneath the seating arrangement in the center of the room, near the shallow, stone fireplace that had never seen a flame. I hadn’t been in the house since the Goelets opened it several years ago and I had come on behalf of the Observer, but many of its features had ingrained themselves in my memory. Out of over fifty fireplaces in the house, only three worked, one of them being in the sitting area where I’d waited for Mrs. Goelet to greet me; the rest were ornamental only. In a house that saw use only in the summer months, why go through all the fuss of equipping fireplaces with flues? The chimneys visible along the roofline ventilated the coal furnaces far below us, which generated the house’s electrical system.

  I glanced up at the biblical mural far above our heads. Like The Breakers’ Great Hall, this one rose three stories, surrounded by the open galleries of the second and third floors. Each story was distinct, with the first entirely lined in carved Caen stone, the second of rich, dark-stained teak, while the third-floor arches glimmered with gilding. Everywhere I looked, carved faces gazed back at me from their heights, like angels, or perhaps guardians to make sure I didn’t deviate a step from where Mrs. Goelet wished me to go. I didn’t dare defy them.

  We stopped at the wide double doorway of a room facing the rear of the property and beyond, thick blue bands of sea and sky. A footman stood at attention b
eside the closed doors, and before she opened them, Mrs. Goelet turned to regard me. “I’m going to unlock the doors and let you in. No one else is to enter this room, and you are not to breathe a word of what you see to anyone before this evening’s ball. Is that understood?”

  My curiosity spiked, but I held my expression steady. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “When you are finished taking your notes, come out, close the door, and come find me in the dining room. Oh, and you are not to touch anything. Not a thing, Miss Cross.”

  “Understood, ma’am. Um . . . do you wish me to view the ballroom as well?”

  “Mmm . . . A good idea, that. You can pass into the ballroom from the drawing room. Those doors are not locked. But you’ll need to exit through the drawing room again.”

  After unlocking the doors, she left me to return to her guests. I glanced at the footman, who deigned to make eye contact. I turned the knob and stepped inside . . .

  Into another time and place. The first thing I noticed was the springy crunch beneath my feet, and looked down to discover, to my bafflement, not the herringbone floor I remembered but a lawn of bright green clover. But no, that couldn’t be right. I bent down and felt with my fingertips. This clover had been woven from silk.

  No longer a drawing room, the furniture had been removed, and a garden planted in its stead. Potted trees, flowers by the hundreds, vines stretched across latticework surrounded me, and where walls and ceiling had once been, now were tapestries and silks in such an array of colors and patterns I felt vaguely dizzy. Heavy curtains festooned with garlands covered the rear-facing windows, extending into a canopy over a dais some six steps high. A throne occupied the center of the dais, surrounded by low stools, pillows, and small, cushioned chairs. Two pairs of columns covered in hieroglyphic designs held up the canopy in a setting for an elaborate, Egyptian-themed tableau vivant.