Mysteries of Winterthurn Page 28

  At the Peregrines’ tea the previous day, Xavier had managed to disguise the inordinate excitement he felt at meeting Perdita once again: yet, so flooded was his very being with sensation, which moved like splashes of warm sunshine through him, he could scarcely speak to her, save to murmur perfunctory words and phrases; and to offer compliments of a familiar sort. Ah, what a vision the girl presented, in her full, rustling, sweeping white muslin frock, so very prettily decorated with lavender rosebuds, and ribands of lavender velvet!—her gleaming hair artfully arranged in bands, and braids, and spit-curls, and poufs, the better to set off her heart-shaped face—and her manner an exquisite mixture of the grave, and merry, and sly, and innocent, and the coquettish: very unlike her sister, who comported herself with somber dignity, and smiled but sparingly. It was said of Perdita,—indeed, Xavier had first heard the tale from his brother Wolf, who had it on good faith from Miss Amanda Shaw—that while an innocent girl of sixteen, at the staid Rockport Seminary, she had so inflamed the passions of a Mathematics instructor thrice her age, that the unhappy gentleman had had to be finally discharged from his position at the school, thereafter to lapse into the lethal vice of alcoholism: this tragedy having evolved, evidently, with not the slightest shred of awareness, let alone intention, on Perdita’s part. (For, despite certain saucy mannerisms,—rolling her eyes, sniffing loudly, smirking—Miss Perdita Kilgarvan was acknowledged, by even those classmates who hated her, to be a good Christian girl: as chaste and pure of spirit as of flesh; and quite guiltless of caring a whit to attract the opposite sex.)

  More recently, since returning from Europe, Xavier had been intrigued by clouded rumors of a secret engagement Perdita had unwisely entered into, with the ne’er-do-well eldest son of the Versfields of Philadelphia and Nag’s Head, New York,—which is to say, the fabled Versfields of the old whaling and shipping fortune:—an alliance that resulted in catastrophe, and actual death, so far as the impetuous young gentleman was concerned. (The Versfields had so strenuously objected to their son’s choice of a wife, he had taken his father the Commodore’s sloop out alone, under the influence of alcoholic spirits: with the consequence that a sudden gale arose in the Sound, and the sloop was overturned, and wrecked, and young Versfield drowned . . . Or so one version of the scandalous tale went. Xavier had been both amused and vexed to hear a variant, in which a triangle of sorts had arisen amongst Perdita, her unacknowledged fiancé, and his younger brother: whereupon both brothers, besotted with liquor, had taken out the sloop, to fight a duel upon its heaving deck: and again the sloop was overturned in a gale, with, this time, the deaths of both brothers . . .) Thus it was, Xavier could not forbear politely inquiring of Perdita, in a lowered voice, whether she had recovered from the shock of a “certain untoward incident, of which he had heard,”—with the result that the chestnut-haired beauty had stared at him in some puzzlement, her gaze frank and direct, and her manner altogether guileless, as she assured him she knew not precisely what he meant: and hoped he did not make reference to the several tragedies of a dozen years ago,—which is to say, the deaths of her father, and her uncle, and her half-sister—which, with God as her witness, she fervently hoped she would not recover from, as such would be evidence of a shallow soul, indeed.

  SHORTLY THEREAFTER the social event became distinctly unpleasant for Xavier, as Mrs. Willela Spies, grown stout, and arthritic, and hard of hearing, evinced far more curiosity than Xavier found comfortable pertaining to his “career,” of which the lady had heard jumbled and comical reports. Speaking in a veritable voice of brass, Mrs. Spies interrogated the blushing young detective as to whether it was true that he had worked closely with Scotland Yard, in pursuit of the notorious fiend Jack the Ripper: and whether it was true, as her London relatives had said, that the fiend had finally been discovered to be “of Hebrew stock.” Xavier was not so discountenanced by this nonsense as to fail to speak in a forcible voice in reply: to explain,—alas, to the entire drawing room, which had paused to listen—that he had certainly not been involved in the search for Jack the Ripper, since the investigation had occurred years before; and that the six murders attributed to “Jack the Ripper” had most likely been committed by a Russian military surgeon who had lived, for a while, in London’s East End, under a diversity of aliases: and who was, it seemed, suspected of an unsolved Parisian murder as well, involving a woman of the streets barbarously slaughtered. The madman had escaped London, and was presumed to have returned to his native land; and was assuredly not, Xavier said, of “Hebrew stock.”

  Undeterred, Willela Spies pursued her subject, though it was scarcely appropriate in Shadow-Wood House, in mixed company: now bluntly alluding to Winterthurn City’s own “Jack the Ripper,”—and what a vast relief it was, for the womenfolk in particular, that the monster had been at last apprehended. In this, the room generally concurred; and even Xavier’s mother, who surely thought the topic distasteful, and would never have commented directly upon it, joined in the consensus. Whereupon Xavier, for a moment forgetting himself, rose to his feet and declared that, in his opinion, the “monster” had not yet been apprehended: but was still at large. “For the investigation has scarcely begun,” he said, “and the case against Isaac Rosenwald is so shoddy as to be comical.” Doubtless he spoke rashly, carried away by the exigencies of the moment, in stating that no reliable grand jury would hand down an indictment against the luckless suspect, at least on the basis of the evidence at hand: and, if they did, no honest prosecuting attorney could prove his case: and no jury would find the man guilty. “For it is naught but ignorant passion and prejudice that have railroaded Rosenwald to jail, at the present time,” Xavier said firmly, “and these are not, I hope, sufficient to find a man guilty of murder in the first degree, under our law.”

  Ah, what a storm was thus released, in the Peregrines’ elegant drawing room!—for not only did the disagreeable Willela Spies object to Xavier’s forthright statement, but numerous others, including the Reverend Harmon Bunting and his mother, Mrs. Letitia Bunting, and all of the Von Goelers who were present, and Mrs. Shaw, and elderly Colonel Westergaard, and the canny Henry Peregrine, who antagonized Xavier by asking, “If the Jew Rosenwald is not the murderer, then who is?—for someone, after all, is guilty!”

  Though much aroused by this ignorant remark, Xavier managed to calm himself, and to hold his tongue; for he knew he was obliged to exercise greater prudence than to discuss the case in so casual a setting,—as if it were but drawing-room conversation, and not a matter of the greatest significance. Had he not already spent hours,—nay, arduous days—of his time, puzzling over the probable chronology of events leading to the murder of Eva Teal; had he not brought several raging headaches upon himself, in attempting to make sense of the divers coroner’s reports, transcripts, et al., pertaining to the Teal murder, and the murders of the other young women,—these documents, it scarcely needs be said, giving evidence of shockingly inept police work; had he not suffered a veritable cornucopia of frustrations in seeking out such personages as Mrs. Teal, and Mrs. Iris Beck, and Lyle Beck, and the ratlike Louis (who continued brazenly to deny that he had ever set eyes upon Eva Teal), and Rosenwald’s landlady, Mrs. Buzard (who had of late seemingly invented an “Isaac Rosenwald,” to serve up to journalists,—and a most suspicious character he was, indeed); had he not, sometimes in disguise, ventured into the malodorous neighborhoods of South Winterthurn to speak, as it were idly, with whomever he might encounter—? All artlessly Xavier had put questions to a dozen or more of Eva Teal’s co-workers at the mill; and her foreman; and random parishioners of St. Ursula’s,—who had, alas, proffered wildly conflicting versions of the murdered girl, and the suspect Rosenwald. He had sought, but had failed to find, the redoubtable Dr. Wilts; he intended very soon to seek out Valentine Westergaard, who was, at the present time, said to be visiting relatives in Newport, and sailing, and playing polo,—quite as if nothing had transpired in Winterthurn to give him pause, and to subdue his naturally effervescen
t spirits.

  Was Valentine Westergaard the “Cruel Suitor”? Might the answer to the puzzle be as simple, and as terrible, as that—?

  Thus Xavier brooded, while about him the other guests continued to talk, and most outrageously: veering from the subject of Rosenwald to that of an essay in the current issue of McClure’s Magazine, by one Burton J. Hendrick,—“The Great Jewish Invasion of America”—which Eberhard Von Goeler had read in its entirety, and pronounced highly informative; from this to the subject of “ritual murder”: and the employment of Christian blood, in matzo bread, during Passover,—though no one present knew what either matzo bread or Passover was. As one of the murdered girls had been employed in the kitchen of Shadow-Wood House, and her brazen advances had, it seemed, so dismayed young Ringgold that he had felt obliged to leave,—alas, to leave the very country, and to travel God knew where!—it was natural that Henry Peregrine speak for some impassioned minutes on the subject, though, by his own admission, he had never set eyes upon the girl; nor had Ringgold ever spoken of the matter directly to him; or (evidently) to anyone. After a pause, during which the ladies assiduously fanned themselves, the white-haired Colonel Westergaard spoke ramblingly, albeit reproachfully, of a similar problem that had transpired at Ravensworth Park some years previous,—this, the wanton advances of a chambermaid of tender age, no more than fifteen, toward poor Valentine, who had, in the privacy of the Colonel’s library, dissolved into actual tears at the shame and confusion such behavior provoked in him. “Ah, it came to an unfortunate conclusion, as I recall,” the Colonel said, sighing, “—yet, on balance, I would rather suffer the blight of some small scandal than lose my only grandson to the Far East, as, it seems, poor Henry has lost his son.”

  From this, the subject drifted to that of the loose morals and unnaturally precocious experience of certain young women of the lower classes; and the pity of it, that the “Cruel Suitor’s” victims were so lost to all decency, and, withal, so careless of their own lives, as to venture into the Devil’s Half-Acre with the apelike Rosenwald, or with anyone at all. Some genial attempt was made to draw Xavier Kilgarvan back into the conversation (for the disapproval of his furrowed brow could not be mistaken, nor the nervous drumming of his fingers on the arm of a chair), as Henry Peregrine inquired of him whether it was the most advanced European theory, or no, that a propensity toward crime was inherited; and whether certain unmistakable criminal characteristics,—long limbs, protruding ears, thin upper lips, low brows, simian features, et al.—might be discerned, to alert police, and the public, as to who criminals in their midst might be. Though he surmised it but a transparent ploy to placate him, Xavier did speak for several minutes, in a reasoned, and altogether lucid, manner, as he thought the issue a crucial one: and most misleading, as the theories of Cesare Lombroso (who had tirelessly measured the skulls of many criminals, and noted their “animal” characteristics, in the 1870s) were now largely discredited. Albeit he had meant to say but a few words, Xavier found himself developing his position: that while ignorant, inept, frequently brutal, and easily solvable crimes might be likely to be committed by “animal-like” personages, it was often the case,—ah, in his limited experience, it was the case!—that crimes of greater cunning and subtlety were likely to be committed by persons who gave every impression of being wholly human, and civilized, and even, upon occasion, refined. “As to the ‘Cruel Suitor,’—one cannot help but recoil in disgust at the nature of his horrific crimes: for, in the five murders we know of (I should not be surprised, in truth, if there have been more), there is not only the irremediable fact of Death itself, but the fact of the murderer’s marked anger, as if he disapproved of his victims,—in somewhat the way certain persons in this room disapprove—and wished to punish them. A monster, it is said; a madman; a fiend. Yet I suspect,” Xavier said, with hot-flushed cheeks, “when he is finally captured, the ‘Cruel Suitor’ will prove no more monstrous, or mad, or fiendish, than any one of us here assembled.”

  Which astringent observation, it scarcely needs be recorded, struck a most disagreeable note in the Peregrines’ drawing room.

  AS THE CHURCH BELLS through Winterthurn City began, yet again, their cruel tolling,—sounding now the hour of eight-thirty—Xavier sternly admonished himself for playing the fool, and for having waited so long: as Perdita had clearly chosen not to meet with him, or was unavoidably prevented from so doing, by one or another exigency of Mrs. Spies’s household. Thus he was about to turn away when, of a sudden, his pulses leapt at the vision,—ah, how long, how steadfastly, awaited!—of the garden door opening at last: and a slender, lithe, enshadowed female form gliding through.

  Her magical name escaped from his lips, unbidden; and, scarcely knowing what he did, Xavier hurried down through the churchyard, like a man lapsed into an enchantment: stumbling against the tilted and broken grave markers, and not minding that mischievous briars gripped and tore at his trouser legs. “Perdita—” he murmured, his hand pressed flat against his breast, as if to placate his tumultuous heart. “As you had promised, so you are come—!”

  He would wrap her in his embrace; he would clutch her tight; he would press his heated lips against hers,—for thus his manly pride, no less than his desire, bade him. For he quite believed,—nay, was he not convinced, to the very roots of his being?—that his sweet cousin harbored feelings for him of a like urgency, and strength, as his for her.

  Thus Xavier made his way, with blind and precipitate haste, to the stone wall that bordered upon the Spies property, while the ghostly female figure made its more restrained way to him,—and it was not until but a few yards separated them in the sultry midsummer gloom that Xavier’s staring eyes forced him to acknowledge all that his pounding heart refused: that this young woman was not Perdita, after his long wait; but in fact Thérèse, the older sister, she of the dour pallid skin and great mournful eyes—!

  A most humiliating surprise, indeed; and so injured did poor Xavier feel,—and crestfallen, and numbed, and shamed, and very slightly touched by anger, that, for a minute or two, he could scarcely attend to the young woman’s profuse apologies, and her abashèd, even cringing, expression, as she sought to explain that Perdita was “indisposed,” and had taken to her bed early; and that she, Thérèse, had been sent,—ah, she knew how inadequately!—in her place, to make this heartfelt apology; and to deliver a missive.

  Dazed as he was by this painful reversal, and wounded, like a child, to the heart, Xavier yet recovered enough poise, or semblance of good manners, to thank Thérèse for her solicitude; and even to make some mechanical overture toward conversing with her,—for, after all, Thérèse was his cousin, no less than Perdita; and he did, he supposed, feel a dim stirring of affection for her, or, at the very least, interest: for he knew she was generally believed to be of uncommon intelligence, and wondrously well read, and, withal, the very pillar of kindliness, generosity, and Christian piety. And she had once,—had she not?—given him aid, in some near-forgotten minor matter, up at Glen Mawr Manor many years ago.

  So it was, standing most awkwardly in the derelict melancholy of the old Quaker graveyard, amidst brambles, and shattered granite, and vexatious mosquitoes, Xavier gallantly refrained from asking for Perdita’s missive at once, that he might (as his yet-palpitating heart urged) turn away to greedily peruse it: inquiring in a voice that betrayed but a token of the sharp disappointment he felt, as to Thérèse’s health,—and that of Perdita: and making glancing mention of the tea laid out at Shadow-Wood House the previous day, which his mother had greatly enjoyed, save for the introduction of a certain distressing subject, and the animadversion roused against Xavier; which, he allowed, surprised her far more than it could ever surprise him. “Yet I suppose I should apologize, to you and your sister, if not to the others,—ah, hang the others, they are such bigots!” Xavier said, half-laughing. “For I did not mean to willfully upset the ladies, with a dilemma here in Winterthurn, of which they can be expected to know very little.”

>   This forthright speech surely struck poor trembling Thérèse to the heart: for, as the reader will recall, she had, a dozen years previous, fancied herself in love, and most irrevocably so, with her dashing cousin: and being the most haplessly faithful of maidens, she had nursed, and tended, and shrunk from, and exulted in, and despaired over, that potent fancy, or emotion, through the intervening years!—for not even the most craven and unabashèd pleas to Our Heavenly Father had secured her release. Yet Xavier’s actual presence,—not fancy, not dream-phantasm, not vaporous memory—so discountenanced her, she could not fully attend to his words; and most gracelessly handed him Perdita’s letter; and then said, as if snatching haphazardly, and somewhat desperately, at a subject to detain him: “Ah, a dilemma?—it is a dilemma? A dilemma, Xavier, you say—?”

  Whereupon Xavier, giving the stiff envelope a furtive caress, as he slipped it into his vest pocket, made the somewhat disjointed reply that whereas most crimes are but crimes, though upsetting enough, and crying out for reparation, the “Cruel Suitor” presented a dilemma as well: for where public sentiment so furiously urged punishment upon a suspect (and that luckless person, as the authorities neglected to point out, but one of several), it would be a tricky business to save him from the noose,—unless of course the actual murderer was apprehended, within a few months; and made to confess. “Which, considering his low cunning,” Xavier commented, “strikes me as unlikely, indeed.”

  So intently did Thérèse stare at Xavier’s face, so greedily, as it were, did her starved eyes seek to absorb him, she failed to grasp the import of his words; albeit she nodded a ready assent, and, despite the sluggish warmth of the June evening, hugged her linen jacket close about her, as if she were overcome by cold. “Ah, it is a tragedy, then,—I mean in potential,—a dilemma and a tragedy both,” she said, with a slight stammer, “and we are obliged to pray to God for guidance, if the gentleman,—I mean the Jewish gentleman—for as you have called him a ‘gentleman,’ Xavier, I am sure he is: if he, whose name I seem to have forgotten—if he is innocent, as—as—you seem to imply.”