Beacon Street Mourning Read online

  “Fremont Jones to see Augusta Simmons Jones,” I said, perhaps unnecessarily. But I wanted the maid to announce my arrival to Augusta as Fremont, not as Caroline.

  “May I help you with your coat and all, miss?”

  I acquiesced to this offer, and while divesting myself of all the layers of outdoor wrappings, I remarked, “Your employer is my father. I grew up in this house. Did Augusta—Mrs. Jones—tell you that?”

  “No, miss. Only that you’d be Miss Jones and you was expected.”

  “I see.” Well, that was a place to start at least.

  Propriety notwithstanding, I had always been inclined to talk freely with the servants, mine and other people’s, because, for one thing, they are people too and deserve to be treated as such, and, for another, because they generally know much more about what is going on in any house than anyone else. But in this instance, with a maid handpicked by Augusta, I must remember to be wary.

  “How long have you worked here, may I ask?”

  At closer range she was even younger than she had appeared when she first opened the door. Her skin was so fair that it bordered on the unhealthy, a bluish-white like skim milk. But her fingers were red, especially around the knuckles; Augusta was working this girl hard.

  “Few months, miss,” she replied, her pale eyes flickering as she counted up in her head, “going on five, I reckon. Would you like me to undo your coat buttons?”

  “No, thank you, I can manage. What is your name?”

  “Mary.”

  “And do you have a last name, Mary?” I asked gently, with a smile.

  “Mary Fowey.”

  Mary Fowey could scarcely stand still while she waited for me to undo the buttons all down the front of my coat. I was deliberately taking my time, not to torture poor Mary, but because Augusta had not seen fit to come into the hall and welcome me properly, with the warmth due a family member—or even a close friend. She should not have left me for her maid to handle like any old evening caller. I tried not to mind, for after all, I no more wanted to be there than Augusta wanted me, but still it did sting.

  “Well, Mary,” I said as I finished undoing the last few buttons, “perhaps you can tell me if Ralph and Myra Porter are still working here?”

  Ralph and Myra between them had looked after this house inside and out for more than twenty years, and they had been very much in residence when I’d left for San Francisco four years earlier. They lived not in those little dormer rooms on the top floor but in their own suite of rooms on the third floor, convenient to the back stairs; my mother was the one who had made this change, declaring it was senseless for Ralph and Myra to squeeze themselves into those tiny rooms on the top floor when the whole rest of the house was occupied by only three people. I’d unthinkingly assumed the devoted servant couple would be there forever—or at least until they died. This house had always been their home as much as it was home to me and Mother and Father.

  Mary ducked behind me to take my coat as it slipped off my shoulders. Her hands trembled, and were so cold I felt their chill through the fabric of my dress when she touched me briefly.

  “No, Miss Jones,” she said. “There’s never been anybody here by that name since I come. Nobody here but me takin’ care of the missus.”

  “I’ll need my canes,” I said quickly, as she was about to store them in the umbrella stand. “I’m sorry to hear about the Porters. They were here for a long time—and I expect sometimes you must wish you had some help.”

  At this Mary’s eyes widened. “Anything you say, miss,” she blurted, and then scurried off down the hall. She was several steps along before she thought to turn and say, “Mrs. Jones is in the library. If you’ll just follow me.”

  Interesting, only the one girl for this big house. No wonder her hands were red. Even given that recently Augusta had been the only person living here, it was still a lot of work for one maid. I imagined she would just get through the rooms in a week and then have to start all over again the next, which must be grueling for her. Not to mention the cooking and laundry.

  Well, there was going to be much more work starting tomorrow. I wondered if Augusta had thought of that. If she’d even told Mary.

  I walked down the hall to the library at a steady pace, slowly accustoming myself to the formerly familiar surroundings. Perhaps it was only my imagination, but the house felt different.

  The doors into the drawing room and dining room were closed, which made the hallway excessively dark. Of course the wainscoting and the doorframes were of dark wood, but the walls were cream plaster, and if those doors had been open the hallway would have been brighter, more welcoming. But that was not it entirely; there was a darkness here that had nothing to do with mere absence of light. Or with the fact that I could be virtually certain Augusta had taken no pains to create a welcoming atmosphere, because she did not wish to welcome me.

  As Mary and I passed the tall-case clock in mid-hall I noticed it stood silent; I hoped it was not broken, but had been left unwound. I loved that clock, its face with the Roman numerals and pastel-painted faces of the sun and moon. What kind of person does not bother to wind a clock?

  Aha, I might know the answer to that: a very nervous person, whose nerves are aggravated by the constant ticking and by the pendulum’s unrelenting swing; a person for whom the passage of time somehow has more import than merely the counting of the hours. Was this more imaginative speculation? Perhaps; on the other hand it could be my detective’s brain working—a part of myself that had always stood me in good stead.

  One door remained on our left. It was open; light and warmth poured out. Mary stopped in her tracks right in front of me, so abruptly that had I been walking more quickly I would have bumped into her. She turned around, an appalled expression on her face, and whispered, “I’m so sorry, miss! I forgot that other name you told me.”

  “Fremont,” I whispered back, “Fremont Jones.” I felt like saying not to worry, she would do fine, but somehow it didn’t seem my place to be giving encouragement. Instead I paid attention to my own posture, stretching my spine tall and straight, shoulders well back, lifting my chin.

  Mary went through the library door. She stood properly to one side and announced, “Miss Fremont Jones to see you, Mrs. Jones.”

  Augusta Simmons Jones received me from her seat in a chair by the fire. She did rise to greet me. She did not so much as extend her hand.

  So this was how it would be: I’d get no respect as the daughter of this house, not unless my father were present looking on. From the corner of my eye I saw little Mary flee and I couldn’t blame her.

  Augusta looked me up and down, her head tilted a bit to one side as if I were an item being appraised, and she was dubious about the purchase. Abruptly she said:

  “So you’re insisting on that, are you? Fremont Jones. Well, I suppose it suits you better than Caroline, which after all is a very feminine name.”

  Not hello, how are you, how nice to know you survived that terrible experience, and oh yes, I’m so glad you came all the way across the country to see your father, that’s a fine thing for a daughter to do. None of that, oh no.

  With such a beginning, I certainly wouldn’t wait to be invited to sit. I chose the wing chair on the other side of the fireplace, where I too could enjoy the warmth. She hadn’t greeted me properly, so I did not greet her at all. Nor did I look at her as I walked over and sat down, automatically careful of the Turkish prayer rug in front of the hearth, as it was inclined to slip.

  When I felt entirely settled and ready I topped Augusta’s ungracious remark with one of my own, couched in the polite tones of casual conversation:

  “This has been my favorite room in the house since Mother died.”

  “It’s your father’s favorite,” Augusta responded. “It’s more Leonard’s room than any other in the house, which is why I spend so much time here. I feel closest to him in this room.”

  Touché.

  She had not changed the
library much; I was glad of that. Of course it is rather hard to change a room whose walls are all books, and whose chairs are made of leather. Its principal floor covering was the same large, gently worn, rose-colored Persian rug patterned with thousands of fantastical, faded flowers and vines I used to trace with a finger, back when I was little enough to get away with sitting on the floor.

  “Sherry?” Augusta asked.

  “Please.”

  She did not have to get up from her chair to pour. She had the decanter and glasses on the leather-topped drum table by her elbow. Also on the drum table was an item that was new, quite lovely, and I imagined had been expensive: one of Tiffany’s lamps. The shade looked as if it had been made of giant, translucent moths’ wings.

  Here, in spite of Augusta’s presence, there was less of the oppressive atmosphere I’d felt in the hall. I relaxed a bit but did not let down my guard; in the months before Father’s marriage to her I’d learned it was never a good idea to let down one’s guard with Augusta. She was quite a different woman when Father was not around—something I’d once tried to tell him, but of course he would not listen to me, and how can such a thing be proved?

  She handed me a small crystal glass of sherry. Our eyes met, and she was the one who first looked away.

  I tried to see her through Michael’s eyes, both because he was bound to be more objective, and because he is a man and so is Father. In four years Augusta Simmons, as was, had if anything grown younger-looking and more sure of herself. She was fashionably full-figured, wasp-waisted, well corseted, and not too tall. She wore her white-streaked brown hair up in a fashionable pouf, and her gray dress, with its many pleats and tucks and lace collar, was of better quality than the dresses she used to wear. For some people these things come with having money; however it is perfectly true that for some other people having money does not impart better looks or taste, so I supposed Augusta deserved credit there. She had turned herself into a wife Father could, at least outwardly, be proud of.

  All right, but she still had mean eyes. Hard eyes, no depth to them, like brown pebbles. I made a mental note to ask Michael to look into Augusta’s eyes and tell me what he saw there.

  “I suppose you aren’t going to forgive me for keeping those telegrams from your father,” Augusta said, getting right to the heart of the matter.

  I gave her credit for that, too. When I returned to the hotel I wanted to be able to tell Michael I’d been fair. Whether he believed me or not.

  “An explanation would help,” I said, thinking of the explanation she’d given William Barrett.

  She gave the same one to me, but in a longer version: “Leonard believed you had died in that train wreck. We didn’t know any different, regardless what that man of yours—Archer, Kossoff, whatever his name is—regardless what he said, on account of he didn’t know anything for certain either, he was just whistling in the wind. It was weeks later when your first telegram came, and by then Leonard was in real bad shape, not in his right mind most of the time. It seemed best just to let him keep on thinking you were dead. Didn’t seem like he could possibly live long enough to get to see you again, anyway. So why get his hopes up?” Augusta tipped up her sherry glass and almost drained it with one sip.

  Perhaps she was more nervous than I’d thought. Perhaps even more nervous than I; I felt quite calm now, as I often do once some process I have dreaded is underway at last. I would always rather be doing something, even if it is unpleasant or dangerous, than to sit around thinking about it.

  “Some people might say one reason to get his hopes up is that with reason to hope, sometimes a sick person gets well. A dying person lives longer.”

  “Hah. Not likely. It’s more likely to mean a cruel disappointment.” She tossed off the remainder of the sherry in her glass. Her veneer of gentility was cracking. I had always seemed to have that effect on her.

  “I’m here now and the truth has been made known by my own devices. Father has not been disappointed,” I pointed out, “you were wrong.”

  “You weren’t here then, you didn’t see what he was like. You ran off and broke his heart, young lady. Now you think you can come back and everything’s fine, just like that?”

  Snap. Augusta snapped her fingers, the sound sharp and startling.

  I didn’t flinch or blink or move a muscle. “I could not stay here and be married off, especially to your nephew. You need not pretend, Augusta, that you were sorry to have me out of the way.”

  “Oh, you’d have been out of the way anyhow, only it would’ve been my way. And at least you’d have been respectably married instead of … of whatever that is you think you’re doing with some man twice your age. Oh, I heard all about it from your indulgent father, you can be sure.”

  She nodded her head a bit too vigorously and in her rising temper the woman I thought of as the real Augusta—the one I knew but Father did not—began to come out.

  “My personal life is none of your concern.”

  “It is if you’re going to be living under my roof.”

  “I find it difficult to think of this”—I glanced quickly up toward the ceiling—“as your roof, when in total number of years I have lived in this house far longer than you. Longer indeed than you have even known Father.”

  Her temper was rising still; bright red blotches appeared on her cheeks. She put down the empty sherry glass and dug her fingernails into the upholstery of the chair’s arms like claws—as if to stop herself from leaping up and clawing at me.

  Which in fact, knowing Augusta, she might actually be doing. Stopping herself, that is; more than once, in regard to my refusal to consider marrying her nephew and other matters of my unorthodox conduct, she had raised a hand to “slap some sense” into me. But she had never done it—I think because I would immediately have gone to Father, and if my skin had borne the mark of her hand, neither she nor I knew what steps he would have taken.

  I sipped sherry and decided it might be best to defuse this situation. “If I may change the subject: What has happened to the tall-case clock in the hall? Is it broken?”

  “No!” She realized she’d spoken too loudly and lowered her voice. “No. I stopped the pendulum. I do not like loudly ticking clocks, I find the noise irritating.”

  “Father finds it soothing, and so do I.” It was as if I could not help myself; the words that would most irritate Augusta slipped out before my mind could stop my tongue.

  I would do well to finish with the things that must be said and leave as quickly as possible, even if that meant I had to stand outside in the cold and wait out the rest of the hour for my cab to return.

  Augusta said, “I’ll start the clock before he comes home tomorrow.”

  “We need to talk about that.”

  “I don’t see why. You got what you wanted, didn’t you, Fremont? First you got friends of yours to take your poor father to that hospital, where they couldn’t save him anyway, and now you’ve got yourself and that man of yours moving right into my house, right under my feet. And as if that wasn’t enough you’ve got Searles Cosgrove insisting we have a nurse right here in the house, not just one nurse but two of them so’s they can take turns. It’s a waste of money, invasion of privacy, it’s—it’s—”

  “It’s what Father wants,” I broke in, my words sounding firm even though as to the last point, the nurses, I had no idea what Father really wanted.

  “He also wants you to marry that man, that Kossoff,” Augusta said in an evilly insinuating tone. “Leonard told me so himself, just tonight when I was there to keep him company at his supper. So, Miss Independence, Miss I-Will-Never-Marry, if you’re so anxious to see your father have exactly what he wants, what do you plan to do about that?”

  She had at last hit her mark. My face grew hot. “As I said before, my personal life is not your concern.”

  “And I’m telling you, it is. We’re all tangled up in this together, you and me, whether we like it or not.”

  I supposed that was true.
“For Father’s sake,” I said.

  “You can bet your life on it.”

  As Father once bet his on this woman, and was now losing the bet, I thought. But once more I heard words come out of my mouth before my mind had a chance to examine and possibly suppress them: “Father will have everything, everything to encourage him to live and be well, no matter how many have died of this illness before him. Michael and I are to be married here in Boston. You may offer me your felicitations, Augusta, since you are the first to know.”

  NINE

  AS IT HAPPENED, Michael did not move into the house on Beacon Street after all. We decided in concert (remarkably enough, which no doubt bodes well for the future) to observe an appearance of impeccable propriety in the weeks before our wedding. Therefore, Michael remained at the Parker House, from which he planned to seek out a suitable apartment for short-term rental where we both might live for our remaining time in Boston, once the Deed—i.e., the marriage—Was Done.

  I gave Father and Augusta and the nurses a day to get settled before I joined them. During that day—which Michael and I spent alone together, exploring the Common and the Public Garden in the morning and in the afternoon doing other things that generally are not mentioned in polite society—we also went to the jeweler Shreve, Crump & Low. There he bought for me an item I never thought to possess: a ring to signify our engagement.

  In the store Michael asked me to choose my own ring, but I could not; in fact, I said customs like engagement and wedding rings seemed to me not too far a step away from being branded, and one does not expect the cow to participate in the heating of the brand. However, he is used to my quibbles, not to mention my foibles, and so he paid me no mind and picked the ring himself.

  It is quite the loveliest piece of jewelry I have ever owned: a square-cut emerald, rather large, a clear medium green in color. To match my eyes, Michael said, but he is wrong about that, because my eyes are a lighter green tinged with gray. The gemstone is set down into a bezel of chased gold, rather than up on prongs with an openwork gallery beneath, as is currently the fashion for so many gems, especially diamonds. Those tall rings are forever catching on things, which can be irritating. My emerald is both elegant and practical because it is fairly flat, therefore I can enjoy wearing it all the time.