As her eyes adjusted to the dim light of the attic space, Alice attempted to orient herself to Analee’s vague clues. Somewhere over toward the right, she thought she remembered. Near a stack of baskets? But the only baskets she could see were toward her left. Behind them was a large camel-backed steamer trunk. It was unlocked and opened easily. What luck! There were extra pillows, several to choose from, actually. She tested their firmness, pulling them tight in her arms, laying them up to her cheek. One she rejected as being too lumpy, but two others seemed just the right firmness. These two, Alice took and laid on a chest in the hall. She caught her breath a moment before returning to the gloom of the storage. Under the rejected pillow, there were what seemed to be a couple of quilts. Their thinness surprised her, until she remembered that these were made for New Orleans weather, not for the prairie winters. Nothing else seemed to be in the steamer trunk. She clicked the latch shut.
Standing, Alice stretched her back, which now ached when she exerted herself even a bit more than usual. She bent side to side, then wandered about among the chests and odd furniture, scattered in no particular order. She opened a few drawers here and there. In one she found a handful of gowns for a newborn, but that was all. She could quickly mend and personalize them for her infant. There would be time to find those for an older baby, of course. However, infants grew so quickly and required so much attention. Even tired, she shouldn’t procrastinate. Now was the time to continue the search and get organized for the coming months. Beyond that chest stood a tall covered basket, perhaps used for diapers? And beyond that a medium-sized lady’s trunk. Ah, this must match Analee’s instructions.
Alice squeezed between a chest and a ladder-back chair, past the tall basket to the trunk. The clasp was on the far side, near the wall, and she had to tug the trunk round by its leather handles, then use her foot to turn it yet some more before she could manage to open it. When the open top unexpectedly banged against the wall, Alice jumped, then shook her head and laughed at herself. Everything’s so hard these days! She must sit down. Her roving eyes landed on the ladder-back. It should be easy to lift. She eased it over the trunk and sat down.
Comfortably installed, Alice sat for a minute, regathering herself. Then she examined the top layer of garments in the trunk. As she lifted the tissue paper from the top layer, she had a fleeting memory of her brother wrapping a comb in tissue and playing it tunefully, like a kazoo. White silk spilled into her lap, bits of tulle and lace. The tissue fell to the floor as Alice lifted the yards of delicate fabric. A wedding dress! She covered her mouth with her hand. This had to be Constance’s wedding dress. How beautiful it was! The skirt more full than today’s styles, the waist a bit higher, the collar beaded to stand high on the neck. It was lovely. Alice could envision how beautiful Constance must have been as a bride. Alice wondered how Benton had felt seeing her walking toward him. Beneath the dress lay a simple veil of not great length, with bouquets of silk roses to poof out at each side, above the ears.
Beneath that, yet more paper. Then a man’s suit. This must have been his outfit for the wedding, Alice thought. She lifted the jacket. Hardly dressy enough for a wedding. And what a small man he must have been. She had always imagined him as a medium-sized man. She lifted the trousers. Definitely casual, definitely small. Something fell to the floor. It was an effort for Alice to bend down to retrieve it. A mustache? A bushy mustache? Wait. And fake eyebrows. Equally bushy. As she leaned forward, she spotted a man’s hat flattened in the trunk.
Alice dropped her hands onto her protruding abdomen, her fingers working the texture of the fake facial hair. Here in her hands were the clothes, the bushy facial hair of the young man in the photo Pulgrum had brought. The unknown witness to Benton Halstead’s death. She remembered Constance’s fearful reaction when Pulgrum had come to announce the resolution to Benton’s murder. Now here were the remnants of that unidentified witness: Constance herself.
Alice sat back. For minutes that seemed timeless, Alice sat. These clothes, this disguise belonged to Constance. What had she been doing on that train? How had she not known that the man who had threatened them, threatened her children, was Benton’s murderer? What was Alice doing in this house of unknowns? Unknowns that she had never suspected, never seen hints of. Who was this woman who had taken her in? This woman she trusted? Was Alice safe here in this house as she was about to give birth? The questions piled onto one another, too many to hold. Alice dropped the fake facial hair on the floor.
Leaning into the trunk was difficult, not just from the awkwardness of advanced pregnancy, but from the fear and foreboding that encompassed her. Alice lifted the crushed fedora, felt its smooth texture with her fingers, then threw it onto the floor, beside the eyebrows and mustache, which made even the floor seem sinister.
More paper, somewhat wadded and wrinkled from lying under those unexplainable layers. A fine wedding dress, a sinister disguise, and what else? A stiff envelope with a button closure lay at the bottom of the trunk, its string wrapped tightly back and forth in a figure eight between the two wood buttons. Alice lifted it out and sat back once more. She held the envelope in her hand, flipping it from one anonymous side to the other. There was no label, no handwritten identification, nothing to indicate its contents or its reason for being among this mystifying collection of things. Did she dare open it? Certainly, she was far astray from searching for infant clothing. With a deep breath, she untwined the string. She could not explain the sense of foreboding that took hold of her as she opened the flap and reached inside.
The slick surface and the weight of the contents felt like that of photo paper. Slowly Alice slid the contents from the concealment of the envelope. Yes, a photo. A wedding photo? The dim light made it difficult to see. She rose and took two steps toward the louvered light at the end of the attic room. The light through the louvers cast dark bars across the image: Constance, smiling in that beautiful dress, holding a small bouquet of roses. The groom beside her, attired in tails and waistcoat, and smiling full face into the camera, was Howard.
The elusive Howard Butterworth was the murdered Benton Halstead.
Alice’s breath came short and fast. Her empty hand wrapped around the bulge of her abdomen. With the other hand she lifted the photograph again to the barred light. This man was her missing husband, this murdered man buried now above the ground in some New Orleans cemetery, this dead man whose children she adored, whose wife was near to being the sister she had never had. The picture trembled in her hand, and she raised the other to steady it. Her strength was failing. She turned from the light of the window and edged herself onto the seat of a chair nearby. With the back of her hand, she wiped the sudden sweat from her brow, looked again at the image. Though dimly visible away from the light, the image etched itself into her mind, into her very being. As she leaned back in the chair, a box of some sort fell from the seat onto the floor. Startled, Alice stood again, praying that no one had heard, that no one would come to check on the noise.
In silence she stood long enough to still her fright. Disbelief assailed her. She had made a mistake in the dim light. Had mistaken a mere resemblance in the disarray of her emotions. Alice stepped to the window again, held the photo close to her face. Stared at the hard truth.
CHAPTER 49
Here was her husband, her nonexistent husband, the father of the child now kicking vigorously in her womb, the man whose name on her marriage certificate was a lie, the man whose very life had been a lie. Here also was a man who had not deserted her, had not abandoned her to survive on her own. A man, a husband, murdered on his way to her. Murdered in Constance’s sight, Constance in disguise as another man. Why had she been there? But she had. Why had she never spoken up, told of this horrid murder of her husband, their husband? But she had been disguised. She had been there in secret. Had Howard—Benton—Howard known who she was? What had she been doing? What they had been doing, maybe? Who knew?