The Miser of Cherry Hill Page 12

‘Because it was presented to him by Theodore Roosevelt.’

  ‘It was?’ Usually Theodore had a story about everything, but I didn’t recall a story about him giving this flask away to Isaac Jensen. ‘When was this?’

  The professor screwed up his eyes, remembering. ‘1895. Roosevelt was still the President of the Board of New York City Police Commissioners. My brother and Jensen attended a reunion of their old regiment at GAR Post Number 327, in Brooklyn, the Grant Post, as it’s known. Roosevelt was handing out medals and other presentation pieces. Jensen was awarded not only a medal but also the flask for his brave actions at Monckton, Georgia, when he heroically neutralized a sniper at great risk to his own life to save Ephraim’s.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Isaac mentioned this to me.’

  Herschel nodded and took another pull on his cigar. ‘Isaac was never recognized for those actions at the time. So when Roosevelt presented the medal and flask back in ninety-five, he was terribly moved. And proud. I was there myself. I saw his tears. He particularly liked the flask. Which is why I never understood why he would foolishly wager it in a bet the following year.’

  This was all extremely telling. ‘You see, Professor Purcell? This is why we don’t want to make a headlong rush to judgment on Billy Fray. The flask was missing. Mr Jensen is a flask fancier, and has a whole collection of them. This particular flask now seems to be of special importance to him. Also, Jensen practically lives on top of the crime scene. Add to that the fact that your brother drove Mr Jensen’s hat shop out of business, and that they were apparently in a tangle over a woman earlier in their lives, and you can see why I’m concerned. Now Mr Jensen’s son is telling us he saw Billy Fray in the alley. Why? Is Jensen coaching him to cast blame away? That makes Jensen look guiltier. Also, Jensen’s a sharpshooter. He took out that sniper. The evidence suggests that the shot that killed your brother was a long-range shot. So we really must be careful about who we pick as a defendant in your brother’s murder.’

  Professor Purcell thought about all this and finally nodded. ‘I see your point, Dr Deacon. In the history field, it would be the equivalent of publishing too soon.’

  ‘Precisely. And so we have to gather more facts. I’ve just now gathered further facts about the flask. But I’m still relatively factless about this woman they fought over. Tell me, do you know anything about her?’

  ‘I already mentioned her. Hattie Whitmore. She and her brother, Ben, were part of our little circle.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Isaac and my brother fought over her when they were school chums in New York City together. Just after the war. Ephraim stole her away from Jensen. My brother couldn’t stand the thought of Jensen having someone as exquisitely beautiful as Hattie all to himself. Rather an awful business, really. First my brother stole her away from Isaac, then led her on until he was sure Isaac was married to Tilda, then he ruined her, and left her penniless. I’m glad her brother, Ben, stepped in. He’s doing what he can for her but I’m afraid her lodgings in Manhattan aren’t the best.’ He shook his head. ‘My brother’s done some awful things in his time, and I don’t condone the way he treated Hattie, or Isaac for that matter, but he’s still my brother, after all.’

  ‘He ruined Miss Whitmore?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The poor woman.’

  ‘Hattie was heartbroken. And so was Isaac.’

  ‘You see? Motive. Perhaps an even stronger one than the flask.’

  Herschel puffed meditatively on his cigar for a few seconds. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what the flask looks like?’

  Herschel thought for several moments. ‘I only ever saw it once. I believe there was an engraving of Ulysses S. Grant on it.’

  This didn’t coincide with the description Edmund Wilson, the undertaker, had given me. ‘You’re sure it wasn’t Abraham Lincoln?’

  The professor considered. ‘Maybe it was? I can’t be sure. Like I say, I only ever saw it once.’

  ‘Out of curiosity, what did your brother bet in return?’

  ‘His Henry rifle.’

  My heart seemed to thud an extra beat. ‘A Henry?’

  Herschel nodded. ‘The one he used as a soldier in the Civil War. My brother actually gave it to Jensen because Jensen kicked up such a fuss about losing his flask. So it’s not as if Jensen didn’t get anything in return for it. He got the Henry. Which proves my brother isn’t that bad after all.’

  Having cooled Herschel Purcell’s ardour about electrocuting Billy Fray at the earliest possible convenience, and succeeded in gaining critical evidence about Isaac Jensen’s flask and his affair with Hattie Whitmore, I went to Dr Pritchard’s private study and jotted a few notes down about it all.

  I then put the murder investigation firmly from my mind and again focused my attention on finding Miss Wade. I decided I would be a fool not to put aside my uneasiness about Everett Howse. And what should I care about her married man in Boston if he was consigned to her past?

  I searched the first floor, but couldn’t find her.

  So I climbed the stairs, a switchback affair, the first set rising to a capacious landing where a large bunch of mistletoe hung from a chandelier in front of a stained-glass window. I was rounding the banister to go up the next run when I saw Miss Wade coming toward me along the second-floor corridor.

  Her brow was pinched and her eyes were intent on the floor, so she didn’t at first see me. From her expression, I understood she was upset about something, most probably me. Before I could warn her of my presence, she was already at the step, lifting her resplendent crimson skirt so that I caught a glimpse of her Trilby shoes, her white lisle hosiery, and her taffeta lace underskirt, a decidedly intimate view that stunned me into silence for a few seconds.

  When she looked up, she was already on the landing. ‘Oh! Dr Deacon!’

  ‘Forgive me, madam. I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  She lifted her head and peered upward, her eyes like two pieces of sky come to earth. Wondering what she was looking at, I cast my own curious glance and realized we were standing beneath the mistletoe. I looked at her, and she looked at me, and never had I seen her face turn a brighter shade of pink. Her eyes swam in panicked confusion. I, too, felt extremely discomfited. The strain of what the mistletoe implied, and how its silent and traditional command couldn’t possibly be obeyed, was nearly too much for us. And thus, we were both relieved when Chester, Dr Pritchard’s bulldog, no more than an overgrown pup, rocketed along the corridor like a runaway motorcar, leapt down the stairs, barrelled past us, lost his footing on the hardwood floor, and slid into the metal radiator, limbs akimbo like a circus contortionist practicing a new act.

  I went to attend to the dog, helping it up. ‘There’s a boy. I think you need new tires.’

  Miss Wade took the opportunity to move herself out from under the mistletoe.

  I knew I shouldn’t have taken it as a rebuff, but I did, and I felt my stance against Miss Wade hardening again.

  Chester went on his way downstairs, his cheerful mood not at all diminished by his mishap.

  I turned to my female companion with a serious and perhaps too careful manner. ‘Are you well, Miss Wade?’

  Her eyes widened with a degree of churlishness I wouldn’t have expected. ‘Agreeably so, Dr Deacon. Merry Christmas. I have to go. The best to you for the holiday.’

  She tried to pass but I physically blocked her way. ‘Let me rephrase. Are you well, Miss Wade?’

  She paused. The stiff smile on her face faded. ‘Quite. Now if you’ll excuse me.’

  ‘I would like to extend an invitation to you, Miss Wade.’

  The coldness in her eyes was nearly too much to bear. ‘Oh?’

  ‘The president has invited me to the White House for his annual Christmas party. I should like you to come with me.’

  The corners of her lips tightened, producing two enchanting though dismissive dimples. ‘I think not, Dr Deacon. Thank you for asking.’

&nb
sp; I became bolder. ‘Come, Miss Wade. It’s a wonderful opportunity. The nation’s best society will be there. I spoke to the president extensively about you during my visit to Long Island this summer and he’s extremely anxious to make your acquaintance. So is the First Lady. I’m sure you would enjoy yourself immensely. I do so wish you’d come. And I desperately want to mend whatever fissure has come between us. I find it intolerable that you should think ill of me. I thought we were getting along so nicely.’

  She looked away, her dimples gone like momentary jewels, her chin dipping, and her shoulders sinking. ‘I believe I once told you about a man I knew in Boston.’ So, it was going to be about the man in Boston after all. ‘When we first met last June?’

  My chest tightened. ‘The married one?’

  ‘Yes. Edgar Keenan is his name.’

  I was now fearful that this Keenan fellow had finished things with his wife once and for all and was getting ready to take Olive away from me. ‘He was a cad for treating you so cavalierly. But what does he have to do with my invitation to Washington?’

  ‘Nothing. Except that you and Edgar share some of the same characteristics.’

  I felt my face grow warm. ‘I refuse to be compared to that mugwump of a philanderer!’

  ‘Oh, but you see, doctor, he had an interesting habit, particularly when he took me to a jewellery store. He was entirely distracted in a jewellery store. He couldn’t look at just diamonds. And he couldn’t look at just emeralds either. Or rubies. He had to look at them all. He was the same way with women. I was often surprised he didn’t employ a loupe when there was a room full of women around.’

  ‘Madam, if by your inference you mean the pains I’ve taken to make my new nurse, Miss Gregsby, feel welcome in Fairfield, then I must inform you that I am offended.’

  ‘Infer what you must, doctor. In any case, the caliber of your attentions to the young woman have assured me that I must bow out as gracefully as I can.’

  ‘Just as yours toward the assemblyman this summer make me have second thoughts. Now you bring up this Boston man?’

  She didn’t flinch. ‘Perhaps we should conclude that your affections belong, and always shall belong, to your poor late wife.’

  This left me struggling for words, especially because her eyes were now like the blue core ice found in the middle of glaciers. ‘Madam, I hope you understand that my fondness for you remains undiminished.’

  Her face remained as immobile as a slab of marble. ‘A Merry Christmas to you, doctor. I should be going.’ She moved past me and down the stairs before I could do anything to stop her.

  I looked at the mistletoe. I frowned at it.

  Dr Pritchard might as well have hung a sprig of hemlock up there for all the good it had done me.

  NINETEEN

  In the Pullman car on the way down to Washington on Tuesday, Henny absently fussed with the gold tassels that hung from the armrest covers. She craned to look out at snow-covered farmland – the rolling hill-country of Pennsylvania. Her eagerness uplifted my soul but did little to moderate the anxiety I felt over Olive. Her youth invigorated me. Her prettiness enchanted me. But I couldn’t help wondering what, if anything, I could do about Miss Wade.

  I tried to distract myself by reading the day’s edition of the Fairfield Newspacket. But the Newspacket just added to my distress because of a story by Ira Connelly about Alvin Jensen. I read how ‘one of the town’s innocent lambs, Alvin Jensen, eight years old, witnessed that monstrous fiend of a scoundrel, William Fray, shoot, in cold blood, Fairfield’s most beloved and respected benefactor, Ephraim Purcell.’ Connelly further wrote that ‘it seems only a matter of common sense that Fray should be tried as soon as possible for the murder, but the authorities defer, failing to see the crime as clearly as public opinion does.’ And I finally read how ‘Deputy Deacon, so astute and sure-footed in his investigation of the Charlotte Scott murder last summer, seems to have lost his way, and this reporter can’t help wondering if he should hand the case over to the more experienced Sheriff Armstrong.’ I shoved the paper aside, disgusted with Connelly’s brand of penny-dreadful journalism, and also convinced that Isaac Jensen had leaked the story to the Newspacket as a way to deflect blame from himself.

  For several miles on the approach to Philadelphia, I thought I had made a mistake bringing Miss Gregsby to Washington, and that Miss Wade would again interpret it in the wrong way, invoking, as Stanley called it, her God-given right to misunderstand. But, Theodore’s personal note notwithstanding, the printed part of the invitation specifically stated I was allowed to bring one guest. And was I to waste this most gracious once-in-a-lifetime summons, or make use of it to broaden a young woman’s horizons? Again, it was a moral question for me. I couldn’t bring myself to leave Henny all alone in Fairfield at this festive time of the year when, casting myself as her mentor, I could introduce her to the President of the United States.

  All that aside, I still felt a lover’s irritation with Olive, and knew my motive to bring Miss Gregsby to Washington wasn’t as pure as all that.

  In Washington the next evening, the White House grounds were covered with snow. A variety of horse-drawn conveyances as well as a handful of new-fangled motorcars stopped in front of the pillared portico where guests were welcomed by butlers, stable-hands, and other White House staff.

  ‘Is he a nice man?’ asked Henny.

  I had to think about this. ‘Can a president ever be nice?’

  ‘But I’ll like him, won’t I?’

  ‘My dear, you’ll hardly have more than a few seconds with him.’

  Having been President McKinley’s presidential physician for three years, the rooms, corridors, and furniture inside were all familiar to me. It was like coming home. Many staff – old friends – greeted me, and there were several pleasant reunions. No one seemed to hold it against me that I had lost President McKinley, and everybody asked after Jeremiah, and how he was doing at school in Boston.

  With a suddenness I wasn’t expecting, Henny, unable to contain her excitement, stood on her toes and kissed me on the cheek. ‘You look ever so dashing in your tuxedo.’

  I turned to her. Inwardly, I cringed. Why hadn’t I seen it before? She was smitten with me! It didn’t bother her a tick that I was nineteen years older than she was. I realized I was in trouble. If, as Stanley said, women had the right to misunderstand, then men had the right to be hopelessly obtuse. I had fashioned myself her mentor, but I now understood she had taken it in the wrong way.

  Instead of the State Dining Room, the East Room was used for dinner – this to accommodate the large number of guests. Men wore black tuxedos and women sumptuous gowns in a bouquet of festive colours. Present were representatives from all departments of government, all branches of the American military, all walks of American life. Several foreign dignitaries had been invited as well. I felt honoured and particularly fortunate to be a close personal friend of the young vigorous president, a leader who embodied the hope and spirit of the new century.

  The receiving line moved forward, and soon Henny and I were standing face to face with Roosevelt, his wife, Edith, and their children.

  The president said, ‘Doctor, I see you’ve brought a lovely companion. Bully for you! This must be Olive Wade. A pleasure to meet you at last, Miss Wade.’

  The president took Miss Gregsby’s hand in a rough fashion and kissed it.

  Henny, rattled to be mistaken this way, said, ‘Oh, no, Mr President. I’m Henrietta Gregsby. The doctor’s nurse.’

  She turned to me the way a student turns to a tutor, anxious to know if she had followed proper form.

  The president looked at me, his silent inquiry penetrating, direct, and complete. ‘Clyde, I must have missed your last letter about this.’

  I smiled with some embarrassment. ‘Mr President, allow me to introduce my nurse, Miss Henrietta Gregsby.’

  The president stared at me some more. Then he turned to Henny. ‘Well, then! A Merry Christmas to you, Miss Gregsb
y. And thank you so much for coming to my little gathering. I’m sorry I mistook you for Miss Wade.’

  And that was that.

  But before we left the receiving line, I said to the president, ‘Theodore, if I could have a word with you later on.’

  ‘Of course, Clyde. We’ll have drinks in the Red Room.’

  ‘I’m investigating a murder. And you might have been a witness.’

  I then moved off.

  I glanced back at the president. He stared after me through his oval wire-rim spectacles, his walrus mustache drooping, the receiving line forgotten, the chief-of-state looking as bewildered as a hare beaten by a tortoise in a foot race.

  When we were seated for dinner, we sang the national anthem then said the Lord’s Prayer. The president made a short speech, and soup was served.

  Henny used this interlude to make an inquiry. ‘Why did the president think I was Olive Wade?’

  I felt myself squirming. ‘We spoke about her last summer when I visited him at Sagamore Hill, that’s all.’

  I could see she was disturbed by my revelation. She lifted her linen napkin and dabbed her lips, even though she hadn’t eaten a morsel yet. Her former gaiety deserting her, she asked, ‘And is Miss Wade a woman of any special importance to you?’

  I deflected in the interests of saving the evening. ‘Do we have to talk about Miss Wade? I find her a vexatious woman at times.’

  She stared at me for several seconds, a knit coming to her brow. Then the corners of her lips lifted upward in a grin. ‘Merry Christmas, Clyde.’

  My own lips rose. ‘Merry Christmas, Henny.’

  After soup, the various courses came.

  The wine flowed. The noise thickened.

  Between the end of the final course and the serving of dessert, the president made another speech, short, jocular, and admirably apolitical.

  He then circulated among the tables, shaking hands, giving personal Christmas wishes to many of his distinguished guests, finally working his way to our table.

  ‘Miss Gregsby, you must allow me to take the doctor away for fifteen or twenty minutes. I’m sure if we’re not back before the dancing starts, a young woman as pretty as yourself will have no difficulty finding any number of partners.’