The Body in the Gazebo

Chapter 9





“My greatest problem was figuring out how to go off to Martha’s Vineyard for an entire day. I couldn’t tell my parents. Finally the simplest solution was the most obvious one. I cut school.”

Faith had been reeling from Ursula’s account of her sixteen-year-old self marching up to the Charles Street Jail, gaining admittance, and embarking on an investigation to free a convicted murderer. And now this? Cutting school? This was the kind of thing people like Ursula, and her daughter, never, never did without at the least a gun to their heads.

“I told Mother that I was involved in a project that required my presence both before and after school. I would have to leave early and might be quite late. Mother was not particularly interested in academics, although she was a reader—she was quite fond of Mazo de la Roche’s novels, and all she ever wanted as gifts were the newest Jalna and a box of Fannie Farmer chocolates. I knew she wouldn’t ask me any particulars, so I told myself I wasn’t really lying. I did have a project. A large one.

“We’d been in Aleford for some time, but I didn’t know many people in town. Since I attended Cabot, not the public school, I knew I wouldn’t run into any fathers on the train who might recognize me. In any case, I took a very early one before rush hour. I changed to the train for Woods Hole and the ferry in town. Before I boarded I called school. Mother and I had very similar voices and people often mistook us for each other on the phone. I simply told the secretary, Miss Mountjoy—you can imagine what fun the girls had about that name, especially since she always looked as though she’d received dire news and perhaps she had.”

Ursula got back on track. “I said that Ursula would not be at school today, but would return tomorrow. She said, ‘Thank you for calling, Mrs. Lyman,’ and I hopped on the train.”

At this point Faith was no longer reeling—nothing further would surprise her, she was sure—but had a strong sense that the nation had lost a valuable resource. FBI agent? Spy? G-woman?

“I had time to think on the ferry over. It was a beautiful spring day, so warm it could have been July. . . .”

Ursula stood on the deck watching the gulls circle overhead and wished she could be a little girl again on Sanpere sailing with Theo in his beloved catboat. It had been built on the island and he’d helped, a little boy himself at the time. Friends had much larger boats and Theo never turned down a chance to go “yachting,” but she knew he was never happier than when he was in his own boat sailing down Eggemoggin Reach up into Jericho Bay.



The trip was taking longer than she’d remembered and her time on the Vineyard would be shorter than she hoped. She knew that neither Mary Smith nor Elias Norton had been live-in employees. Mary lived in Oak Bluffs with her family, happily not far from the ferry landing. She’d pointed the house out to her once when Ursula had received permission to walk into town with Mary, who was doing various errands for Mrs. Lyman. Ursula didn’t know where Elias lived.



The salt air had dried her throat out and she walked quickly to the Smiths’ house. Mary would give her a glass of water and they’d talk. Everything was going to be all right. Ursula closed her eyes for a moment. All morning she had steadfastly pushed any thoughts about the enormity of what she was doing from her mind, as well as any thoughts of failure.



Outside the tidy Cape, a young woman was weeding the front garden. Ursula started to speak, then, seeing her resemblance to Mary, signed instead. Her effort was returned with an appreciative smile. She was relieved to know that her signing skills were still intact. Mary and Elias had married and were living only a short walk away. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky as she set off.



Even if it had been possible—if they had been able to hear and speak—Ursula would not have wanted to talk with them on the phone. Nor had she wanted to write to them. She had wanted to appear unannounced, wanted to present Arnold’s case, her case, and gauge their reactions without their prior knowledge.



Mary opened the door, and the first thing Ursula noticed was that the woman’s obvious surprise seemed more like fear. Elias stood behind his wife in the doorway. Neither of them moved or responded to Ursula’s signed greeting. Ursula hadn’t thought beyond finding them and getting them to tell her what they’d seen that night. That the couple might not want to cooperate, not agree to see her, simply hadn’t occurred to her. She congratulated them on their nuptials. The well-wishes triggered a polite response. Mary invited her in and Elias stepped back, both still visibly ill at ease.



“Would you like tea, miss? Or something cold?” Mary signed.



“I’d love a glass of water, thank you,” Ursula replied.



They both disappeared to what Ursula assumed was the kitchen in the back of the house. The parlor was small, spotless with a few cherished possessions on the mantel—a framed wedding portrait, a pair of brass candlesticks, and an iridescent glass vase filled with blue hyacinths.



When they returned, Ursula’s heart sank at the look on Mary’s face. The woman was blinking back tears and her hand shook slightly as she handed Ursula the glass of water. In contrast, Elias’s face was blank, his mouth set in one firm line.



The only thing to do was start from the beginning and tell them everything—finding the newspaper articles, encountering the Winthrops in the department store, and finally her visit to Arnold in jail. Mary gave a gasp at this last piece of information and started to lift her hand, but dropped it back in her lap. Elias had sat impassively throughout Ursula’s account. When she stopped signing and drank some water he stood up, firmly taking charge.



“We’re very sorry about young Mr. Rowe, but we don’t know what we can do to help him.” He tapped Mary on the arm and she jumped up. No other kind of sign was necessary. The visit was over.



“Please,” Ursula implored. “Please sit down again and just tell me what you saw that night in the woods. Arnold saw you both. You must have seen him, too.”



“It was a long time ago. We talked to the lawyer fellows when it happened and it’s all over now.”



Mary’s hands were clasped behind her back. Ursula stood up and signed her thanks. Despair slipped over her, threatening to engulf her completely, but she had to leave the house, get back to the ferry, and make her way home. At the door, she signed one last question.



“Is Mrs. Miles, the housekeeper, still on the island?”



A look of disgust crossed Mary’s face, the expressive face Ursula remembered so well from their times together. Mary’s emotions were always close to the surface.



“That one! A she-devil to work for and she took off that night for good. I haven’t laid eyes on her since she went out the back door in her Sunday best before it was even dark, neither has anybody else.”



Elias took Mary’s hand and held it.



What did he want her to keep from saying, or was it a gesture of affection? Ursula wondered. She thought the former, and after wishing them well—she could tell Mary was expecting and, from the lack of any children’s toys or things in the room, assumed it was their first—she went out the front door.



As soon as she heard the door close, Ursula darted around the side of the house. She was sure they would be discussing her visit and thought she might be able to see into the room from a side window, but Elias’s green thumb had produced forsythia bushes and spirea in such abundance that it was impossible. She was about to give up and head for the landing when she heard steps on the back porch of the cottage. She had a clear view of the yard from where she stood and stepped farther into the cascading blooms, blessing them now for their protective cover.



Mary was carrying a basket of wash to hang on the line and Elias was following her, signing away like mad even though her back was turned. He reached out to stop her; she dropped the basket and began to sob. It was all Ursula could do to keep from running out to comfort Mary herself.



“Run after her, Elias. The ferry won’t be leaving for a while. What we did was wrong!” she signed frantically.



“We didn’t tell any lies.”



“We didn’t tell the truth, either.” Mary wiped her eyes with her apron. “We saw that boy lying in the summerhouse as plain as day. You thought he’d passed out from drink. And we never checked! Somebody else was nearby in the woods, but we couldn’t see. It wasn’t Mr. Rowe, because we did see him close to where the path started at the house. He was running toward us and it was after we’d gone by Mr. Theo.”



She stopped signing when she saw Ursula emerge. Elias seemed to be battling two warring instincts; his expression was tormented.



“I guess I know when the Almighty is trying to tell me something,” he signed to Ursula. “All you told us, and your coming here today, was meant to be. We did see Mr. Rowe, but we don’t know how your poor brother came to die and that’s the truth. Let’s go inside and sit down again. We’ll tell you everything. If you miss the ferry, I’ll run you over to the mainland in my skiff.”



Tea appeared rapidly—and a plate of oatmeal cookies. As they sat in the parlor, Ursula remembered that Arnold’s lawyer had said Mary and Elias would not be friendly witnesses. A better description would have been “terrified” ones.



Elias signed that the prosecutor had warned them that he would bring up what he imagined they had been doing off in the woods if they took the stand.



“It was a lie. I respected my Mary, but people want to believe the worst! He told us he’d make sure it got out and no one would hire servants with such low morals. It didn’t matter how good we were at our jobs.”



Ursula was shocked. She felt as if she had left the few remaining remnants of her childhood behind over the course of the afternoon, a childhood where, before Theo’s death, she’d believed that all adults told the truth and nothing bad could happen to anyone she knew.



Mary looked tired, and Ursula told them she would be in touch. In fact, she didn’t know what her next step would be, other than toward the ferry, which hadn’t left. She hugged her old friend, now restored to her, and Elias went with her. As the ferry pulled away, he waved once.



She waved back and went to the prow of the Naushon. As she faced Woods Hole, crossing Vineyard Sound, the world seemed newly made and she imagined herself as a kind of figurehead—a sort of Winged Victory.



It was after dinnertime when Ursula walked into the house. She had planned to phone, but had just made both trains. Her mother rushed over to her.



“Ursula! Where have you been? We were just about to start calling around!”



“I’ve been to Oak Bluffs and I need to tell you why.”



Her earlier exhilaration had left her and now she was exhausted.



Her father got up from his chair.



“Sit down. Have you eaten today? And I think a drop of brandy might be a good idea.”



Mr. Lyman had thought the whole notion of the Thirty-second Amendment was misguided, making criminals out of otherwise law-abiding citizens. He wasn’t much of a drinker himself, but saw no harm in keeping decanters of port and sherry as well as a bottle of brandy.



Ursula was not used to spirits and choked at the first swallow, but soon the alcohol’s warmth suffused her body and she realized she was hungry. She made short work of the sandwich her mother brought.



It took a long time to tell her parents what had transpired and her mother had not wanted to hear any of it at first.



“It won’t bring Theo back. Why stir things up again?”



“I’m sorry to disagree, Dorothea,” Mr. Lyman said. “If what Ursula has been telling us proves to be true, we must do everything in our power to clear Arnold Rowe.”



At midnight, Ursula knew she couldn’t talk any more. Her mother had gone to bed with her usual Ovaltine and her father told her to go, too. He wanted to make some notes. While he believed her, he wasn’t totally encouraging.



“I’m not sure how to proceed,” he said. “The only evidence against Charles Winthrop is a young girl’s recall of an extremely traumatic night. Lawyers for Winthrop would be able to easily discredit your testimony, questioning why you hadn’t mentioned it at the time to anyone—the fact that you were ill and didn’t know any of the particulars of the charges, or even the outcome of the case against Arnold, will not make a difference, I’m afraid. They’d also bring up the notion of false memory after so many years. They will also”—Theodore Lyman hesitated—“put your motivation down to a schoolgirl’s crush.”



Ursula started to protest.



“No, daughter. I believe you, but the Winthrops are a very powerful—and proper—family. They are not about to have it come out that their son was in debt to the worst sort of bootleggers and involved if not actually in committing the crime of murder, then in covering it up. Young Charles knew his actions, had they come out, would have resulted in his estrangement from the family—emotionally and financially.”



On this note, he kissed her good night and told her not to set her alarm. He’d call the school to tell them she’d be late.



She thought she would have trouble falling asleep, but Ursula sank almost immediately into oblivion—sleep, the sweet escape.



“Ursula,” Faith said, “this has been an amazing story. I know it has a happy ending”—she assumed they had reached it—“otherwise there wouldn’t be a Pix or an Arnold junior. I wouldn’t be sitting here, either.”

“This part did have a happy ending, but it’s not over. I’ll explain shortly. To finish up about Arnold’s imprisonment—Father consulted his own lawyer, William Lloyd, taking me with him. The next day both men went to the jail and spent a long time talking to Arnold. After that everything happened quickly. A judge in Dukes County ordered a new trial, but before they got to jury selection, Mr. Lloyd asked that the charge be dismissed in light of new evidence that exonerated his client beyond the shadow of a doubt. Of course it had all been worked out beforehand. Mary and Elias had been deposed, as was I. Arnold’s full account was presented to the judge also. The charge was dropped and the case was left open: ‘Murder by person or persons unknown.’ It was hard on Mother. Not that she wanted Arnold in jail, but she had hoped that justice would be done. That Charles Winthrop would be punished—she’d come to believe he’d been responsible. But there wasn’t enough evidence to arrest him. Both he and his wife stuck to their accounts of that night.”

“And Arnold was freed right away?” Faith said.

“That very day. Father eventually found him a position as private secretary to a business acquaintance who was very open-minded—difficult to find any sort of job in those times and there was Arnold’s incarceration, however mistaken.”

“And what about you? It must have been hard to go back to Cabot after all these dramatic events.”

“It was. I’d never felt very comfortable there. I missed my old school. By the time I graduated it was understood that Arnold and I would marry. It was merely a question of when. He came out to Aleford often at my parents’ invitation. No one could ever take Theo’s place, but they began to rely on Arnold for advice and I think he brought them a measure of comfort—he’d been so close to Theo. I know it did me.

“Things had improved somewhat for Father, but I knew that going to college would stretch their finances considerably. I went to Katie Gibbs instead and got a job as a secretary in a large law firm—lawyers seem to figure prominently in this tale. Arnold wanted me to go to college—Wellesley, in fact, where dear Samantha went. I told him he could be my college and he took the job seriously. He would have made a wonderful professor, but his life went in another direction. We were married quietly at The Pines on Sanpere on my nineteenth birthday. Arnold had risen in the firm and eventually became a partner, but that was much later. We wanted to be near my parents and bought this house. You know the rest—or most of it.

“The day Arnold was freed, he came to the house for dinner. At the beginning of the meal, Father gave thanks. We all said ‘amen’ and Father added that from then on, we would never talk about what had happened again. And we didn’t.”

“Not even with your husband?” Faith found this almost beyond belief. She knew New Englanders were tight-lipped, but this was taking things to a whole new level.

“I imagine it’s hard for you to understand. You were raised in such a different time. It wasn’t a guilty secret, but it wasn’t something we wanted to trumpet from the rooftops. We needed to have a normal life again. When the children were born, we did discuss whether to tell them or not. We certainly wouldn’t tell them when they were young, and by the time they were older, there didn’t seem to be much point.”

Yet they had arrived at a point now. The point where the story ended and its purpose began.

“What do you want me to do, Ursula?” Faith asked. “Be with you when you tell Pix? Or tell her myself? Perhaps with Tom, as well?”

Ursula shook her head. “Not yet. I can’t think of that now. Go over to the window seat. There are two envelopes tucked underneath the cushion. The first arrived some weeks ago, just before I went to the hospital. The second more recently. Bring them here, if you would.”

Faith removed the envelopes and gave them to Ursula, who handed one back.

“Please open it and look at what’s inside.”

Faith read the contents, glancing quickly at the newspaper clippings, focusing longer on the words on the single sheet of paper:

Are you sure you were right?





“And now this one.” Ursula handed her the other envelope. It contained only the sheet of paper, apparently the same kind as the other. Again a single sentence:

You saw the knife in his hand.





“Do you know who’s sending these? Why would—”

“Wait, dear.” Ursula slipped a third envelope from her pocket, removed the letter, and handed it to Faith. Two lines this time:

Time will tell.





I’m waiting, but not for long.





“It came yesterday,” Ursula said. “I’ve been expecting it.”

Normally the Uppity Women’s Luncheon Club was Niki’s favorite gig. Years ago Sandra Katz, who lived in Aleford, decided that she had women friends she enjoyed being with who should get to know each other. What started out as a December holiday luncheon, which Have Faith catered, became an informal club meeting at various members’ houses several times a year. The only rule was no cooking—no pressure to match or surpass a fellow Uppity’s prior menu. For such a small gathering, only Faith or Niki needed to be there. After a while, it became clear that the women were getting a kick not just from Niki’s great food, but her sense of humor, and it became her assignment.

The women were married, divorced, or never married. They ranged from stay-at-home moms to a college dean, and were all now somewhere in their forties. Sandra, who worked raising funds for nonprofits, was the unofficial president and the person who got in touch with the catering company. Thinking spring, Niki thought of eggs—hard-boiled on the seder plate, hard-boiled and colored in an Easter basket. That took her to the idea of breakfast for lunch. Before she was married, exhausted after working all day, she’d often had breakfast for dinner—crispy bacon, maybe a sausage, scrambled or poached eggs with toast. Faith and she had been experimenting with an eggy breakfast puff. The batter was poured over a peach or pear half placed in a ramekin, and when it looked like a golden-brown popover it was ready.

Sandra loved the idea of the puff, and Niki thought she’d add mini BLTs using turkey bacon with tiny grape tomatoes. She’d also put out a large bowl of fresh strawberries—they were coming in from Watsonville, California, now and delicious. She’d toss them with a little bit of sugar to release their juice and set separate small bowls of several flavors of yogurt—the Greek kind, of course—alongside. The Uppities wanted a salad, so she’d do a simple one of fresh spring greens with a lemon–poppy seed dressing—also on the side. Some of the Uppities were always doing Atkins, Pritikin, or the grapefuit or cabbage soup diet. Before they sat down to eat, she’d serve Kir Royales—crème de cassis and champagne—both alcoholic and non, with cheese straws. A mild cheese so as not to interfere with the taste of the drink.

There would be more cheese for dessert. Sandra had said they were celebrating their tenth anniversary together and she wanted a cake—a chocolate cheesecake. What she’d actually said was, “Screw carbs. This is a celebration and we all look pretty damn good. Besides, isn’t chocolate supposed to be healthy now?”

Niki was with her on that one, and there was evidence that dark chocolate lowers both blood pressure and cholesterol, and it has eight times the number of antioxidants of some fruits, to protect the body from aging. The Uppities would appreciate this last tidbit of knowledge.

The food was packed and she was ready to leave. Should have left. Faith was at Pix’s mother’s house and Tricia was over at the Ganley café making sure everything was going smoothly there. Niki slumped into one of the beanbag chairs Faith had placed in the play area for her kids. It felt great. Maybe she could just sit here, letting the chair cushion her, for the rest of her pregnancy. It was appropriate. She’d resemble a beanbag herself by the end of it.

She got up, locked the door, and set out for the job. She hoped the women wouldn’t expect her usual “wit and charm”—a compliment passed on through Faith. She felt funny today, but not funny ha-ha.

Today’s hostess lived in a beautifully restored Arts and Crafts house with a decidedly nonperiod kitchen. It didn’t take Niki long to set up and another Uppity luncheon was launched. Going in and out of the dining room, she heard snippets of their conversation, which ranged from spouses to kids and a lot about politics in between—“My skipped period was early onset menopause! I was so relieved! The only diapers I want to change in the upcoming years are my grandchildren’s!” and, “It’s so nice when he’s away. The bed’s a snap to make and I can have a glass of wine and soup for dinner. But then if it’s too long, I don’t like it.” And, “Honestly, if I talked to my mother the way she talks to me, I wouldn’t have seen twenty.” The dean had addressed the whole table at one point. “ ‘Underachiever’! The boy’s drag-ass lazy, but if I told his parents that, I’d lose my job in a heartbeat—plus we could kiss those all-important future donations good-bye. These days my job is ninety-nine percent fund-raising and one percent education.”

The rhythm of their conversation, their lives, was ordinarily very comforting, but today Niki found herself feeling more and more depressed. What were she and Phil going to do? With a blatant view to the future offspring, both sets of parents had given the newlyweds the money for a down payment on a small house in Belmont. “Good schools,” her mother had assured her. She’d memorized Boston magazine’s annual ranking list. “And good property values.” She’d bought that issue, too. But now they couldn’t keep up the mortgage payments with what Niki alone made. In the past, various restaurant owners and chefs had offered her jobs that paid more money. She’d turned them down, cherishing not just the relationship she had with her boss, but the freedom she had to experiment with new things in the kitchen and her flexible work schedule. Three years ago, she’d taken several months off to travel, ending up in Australia and almost settling there. She knew that with the current economy the jobs she’d been offered before—and many of the restaurants—no longer existed. Even if she could tear herself away, it wasn’t an option.

True, the cheesecakes were selling well, but woman cannot live by cake alone. At that thought, she lighted the numeral ten candle she’d stuck on the top of the cake and opened the door, singing “Happy Anniversary to You.”

Sandra blew out the candle and Niki started to cut slices.

“I’ll do that. Why don’t you get the coffee, and Lisa, please get a chair so Niki can join us?”

Niki had been dreading this moment. Not joining them—she always did at the end—but the coffee.

“How about I serve and maybe someone else can bring in the pot?”

She’d plugged in the coffeemaker earlier and so far so good in the olfactory department. Pouring it out would be another matter.

Sandra raised an eyebrow. She’d never heard Niki say anything but “Sure” to a request.

“No problem, I’ll get it. Why don’t you sit here?”

Niki flushed and sat down at the head of the table, right in the limelight where she absolutely did not want to be.

“Great lunch as usual, Niki. I love that puff thing. Is it hard to make?” Pamela was tall and slender with the kind of short haircut that only the best stylist could deliver. She was a Wharton graduate. She and her husband had moved into town now that their children were out of the house. They lived in a condo at the Four Seasons and Niki was pretty sure Pamela’s cooking nowadays was room service.

“It’s very easy. I’ll e-mail the recipe to anyone who would like it.”

Sandra returned with the coffee and started pouring.

“I know you want some, Niki. And you take just milk, right?”

“I’ll pass today, thanks.”

“On the milk?”

“No, the coffee.”

“Okay.” Sandra pulled the chair Lisa had brought in up to the table. “You’ve been looking like you lost your best friend since you got here. What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Niki said, and started to add a further denial, but one of the other Uppities interrupted.

“Come on, sweetie. You know all our secrets and then some.”

It was true. Over the years Niki had heard them unburden themselves to one another in sorrow and in joy.

She burst into tears.

“You’re pregnant!” Sandra happily clapped her hands together. “The smell of coffee and hair-trigger hormones, oh Niki!”

“We’ll make the next luncheon a shower,” Pamela said. “I love to buy baby things, and given my daughter’s track record with men, I’ll be a grandmother at eighty.”

“Is that biologically possible?” the woman next to her teased. “Isn’t your daughter twenty-eight?”

“So, she’ll adopt. I should only be so lucky.”

It was inevitable. Niki found herself spilling her guts to the roomful of sympathetic women. “Spilling her guts” was an apt phrase, she thought, as a torrent of words spewed forth. She told them about Phil’s losing his job and not wanting to burden him further with her news. And described how depressed she was feeling most of the time. During the rest, she was feeling nauseous.

She’d hardly finished when the Uppities whipped out their BlackBerries and iPhones, looking up contacts; making notes for themselves about Phil’s qualifications; and entering how to reach him.

“You may have heard about the old boys’ and old girls’ networks,” one said. “But they’re nothing compared to the Uppity Women’s.”

This was the woman, Niki recalled, who had a bumper sticker on her Lexus that read, WOMEN WHO SEEK TO BE EQUAL TO MEN LACK AMBITION.

“Now you go home and tell Phil everything,” she said. “It’s time for you to start enjoying being pregnant. Not the morning-sickness part, but the rest—and believe me, there will be plenty of joy.”

“Tell me about it,” Pamela said. “I never got so much action. I was horny; he was horny. That’s why pregnant women have such a glow.”

“It was the big boobs that did it for my husband,” Sandra said. “He went nuts.”

This led to a few more comments on sex and a discussion about getting picked up at Trader Joe’s, especially on Saturdays at the Sample Station.

“Forget Costco, it’s all families, although there is stuff to try that you’d normally never eat—deep-fried pizza last time I was there. The Roche Brothers cheese counter is good, too. I love the come-ons, ‘Do you think this Brie is ready—subtext, I am.’ Even you married gals should give it a whirl; it’s great for the ego.”

Niki began to laugh so hard she had to make a mad dash for the bathroom to pee. This was beginning to happen a lot lately and she’d seriously considered getting those nonsenior Depends-type things that Whoopi Goldberg was advertising to keep from “spritzing.”

They helped her clean up and sent her on her way. She decided to go directly home and bring the van back to work later. The Uppities should be cloned, she thought, and then changed her mind. She wanted to keep them all to herself.

“Who do you think is sending these?” Faith repeated her earlier question. She’d moved back to the window seat and had spread the letters out on the cushion.

It was still raining heavily, as it had been on and off for days. Every night the news showed footage of people near the swollen rivers being evacuated from their homes by Zodiacs and even canoes. Faith had received two reverse 911 calls from the Aleford police announcing road closures, and this morning she’d seen ducks swimming on her front lawn.

But it could have been brilliant sunshine and eighty degrees. Her mind was on the papers beside her.

“Who?” she repeated. “It has to be someone who saw your husband in the gazebo—and knows that you were there, too.”

“Which most likely means it’s one of the people who was staying in the house, although I suppose it could be any of the partygoers—the few still alive.” Ursula shook her head. “Very unlikely. It just had to be said. No, it’s one of the four, and easy to eliminate two of them. Charles Winthrop was older than the rest and I’m sure he’s been gone awhile. I know that Schuyler—Scooter—Jessup died just after Arnold. His wife, Babs, is alive, however. We used to run into each other in town at the Chilton Club from time to time over the years, but of course we never mentioned that night.”

Of course, Faith thought. Not the thing to do.

“Which leaves Violet Hammond, Violet Winthrop. The envelope has a New York City postmark and the Winthrops left Boston before the war so Charles could run the family’s Manhattan office.”

“How did you know? They wouldn’t have kept in touch, would they?”

Ursula shook her head. “No—thank goodness. I didn’t want anything to do with either of them, but I did want to know where they were, especially early on. I suppose I was nurturing notions of, well, revenge. I used to think I’d uncover some kind of evidence that would bring Charles to trial. As time passed, there were other things to think about, especially during the war years and after the children were born.”

During the last few minutes, everything had become clear to Faith. The cause of Ursula’s illness, the need to tell someone what she believed to be the truth, and now the kind of help Ursula wanted from Faith.

She was asking Faith to prove her husband’s innocence—a task she thought she had accomplished almost seventy years ago. A closed book—until the letters arrived sowing their insidious seeds of doubt.

Yes, Ursula wanted Faith to solve Theo’s murder, irrefutably.

“Tell me what you want me to do first.”

“We don’t have much time. I’d like to get this settled before Pix gets back, or near enough. And then, there’s the implied threat in the third letter. I think I know what it means.”

Faith did, too. “That the writer intends to use information about the crime to hurt you in some way? Knows, perhaps, that it was kept secret and plans a tell-all story, but where? I can’t imagine the media would be interested in such old news.”

“Nor can I, although it might make a splash for a while in the Aleford and Boston papers. And I wouldn’t want to see my family’s private affairs in the headlines.” Ursula pursed her lips.

Faith knew that Ursula belonged to the school that believed a lady was only mentioned in the press three times: when she was born, got married, and at her death. No, she wouldn’t like the notoriety at all.

“The writer means to go public in some way and I have to find out how. And find out what it is she believes happened that night. Yes, she. It has to be Violet because of the postmarks—and I think she was a rather unscrupulous woman. She’s a very old lady now and I suppose this is her idea of fun. She used to enjoy stirring things up—she was quite sarcastic, but that voice of hers tended to make even the meanest remark sound melodic. I don’t know why she’s waited so long to go after me—and my family. Perhaps something reminded her of that summer recently.”

“All will be clear.” Faith wished she felt as confident as she sounded. Ursula was asking the impossible—that Faith trace this old crime and unmask the culprit. Yet truth dealt with the possible, not the reverse, and Faith intended to do everything she could to reveal it.

“So,” she said, “I’ll find out where the old witch lives and go talk to her. Tell her to stop bothering you or we’ll get some kind of restraining order. She is making threats.”

Ursula nodded in agreement.

“She lives on East Seventy-second Street. I have the phone number.”

“How did you get this? I thought four-one-one wouldn’t give out an address.”

“I didn’t call information. I called that nice reference librarian Jeanne Bracken, and she got it for me. She said something about ‘Googling’ the name, but I think we had a bad connection because of all this rain. The wires must be soaked.”

Faith decided there were more important things to discuss, but she made a mental note to explain to Ursula sometime that “Google” was not a form of baby talk.

“I could go Thursday, or maybe even tomorrow,” Faith said. She could take the shuttle and if there was time swing by Zabar’s on the West Side for deli.

“Thursday would be fine. And tomorrow, do you have time to pay a call on Babs Jessup? I have her address and phone number, too. If you agree, we could call now.”

Faith was a little mystified.

“I thought you were sure that it was Violet Winthrop who is responsible for the letters.”

“I am, but forewarned is forearmed. I have a feeling that Babs might tell you what Violet has been up to all these years. I don’t think she liked Violet. In fact, I’m sure of it, but the Jessups and Winthrops were related.”

“So she’d know?”

“Yes. Should we make the call now? Probably sometime in the morning would be best for her. She’s an old lady, too. We all are—and that’s generally when we feel the best.”

Faith hated to hear Ursula refer to herself as an old lady.

“Anytime in the morning would be fine.” She’d been mentally rearranging the next two days, who might pick Amy up for ballet, what to take out of the freezer for dinners.

The call was made and a woman who identified herself as Mrs. Jessup’s companion told Ursula eleven o’clock would be a good time. After she hung up, Ursula reported the companion had said that Mrs. Jessup enjoyed visits and would be delighted to meet Mrs. Rowe’s friend. Faith was all set.

Phillip Theodopoulos was sitting in the little room off their bedroom, which they’d made into an office. He was hunched over his computer at the desk and didn’t hear Niki come in. She put her arms around his neck from behind his chair and he started in surprise.

“Hi, honey. How’d it go? Fun with the Uppities?”

He always enjoyed hearing her accounts of these luncheons, even though at times he felt like a target, along with the rest of the male sex.

“Not just fun. I have three things to tell you. First, I saved you a big slice of cheesecake—chocolate hazelnut. Second, the Uppity Women’s network is on the job, or rather going to find you a job. I’m a little surprised your phone hasn’t rung yet.”

She hugged him tighter.

“And the third?”

“You’re going to be a dad.”