Jasper quieted further when Mr. Cutter placed his hands heavily on two of the senior officers’ shoulders. He ushered them into his study down the hallway. Allene left Jasper and Birdie to casually follow her father. She saw him open a cherrywood humidor on his desk and hand each officer a cigar. Mr. Cutter turned to close the doors, briefly frowning at Allene.
She knew that frown all too well. He’d grimace like that when she used to entertain evening guests with her parlor tricks. She’d had an unwomanly habit of loving chemistry since she was a girl. Her mother thought it a charming entertainment, but ever since Mother had taken herself to a health spa in Saratoga, chemistry had been all but outlawed in the Cutter house. At parties, Allene used to light a tiny ball of cotton soaked in naphtha and hidden in her ungloved palm. She’d give the illusion of conjuring fire with her bare hands. With all eyes on her, she felt a spark of something that amounted to more than just one dull life. Something dangerous and unquenchable. But then her father’s frown would land on her like a thousand pounds of wet wool, and the good feeling would flee.
Just as the door to her father’s study closed, she noticed that one of the officers wasn’t holding a cigar; it was a small roll of money. She hurried back to Jasper and Birdie, then whispered what she’d seen.
“Well, of all the . . . ,” Jasper began.
“Why would he do such a thing?” Birdie asked.
Jasper stared at the closed oak doors. “Probably just to clean up the mess quicker. He doesn’t want a drawn-out investigation. If they ask the medical examiner to come, the case will be open for weeks. There would be an autopsy.”
Birdie stared at him, eyebrows lifted. “How on earth do you know this?”
Jasper shrugged. “I’m in and out of Dr. Norris’s office and labs all the time. I keep my eyes and ears open.” Unlike the other boys at the party, Jasper didn’t brashly boast of wanting to fight the Krauts in France as soon as he was old enough to register. His brother, Oscar, had gone to Camp Upton to train and had died of peritonitis the previous winter. Jasper was ambitious, but not when it came to dying for his country. “Besides. People who empty the trash see more than just the garbage,” he said, winking at Birdie. It was Jasper’s second wink of the night, and Allene was jealous that she hadn’t owned them both.
The evening ended quickly after that. The police scribbled notes as they listened to Lucy’s account. They briefly spoke to Birdie, Jasper, and Allene, but since they’d all been in Allene’s bedroom at the time, there wasn’t much information to gather.
“We’ve spoken to Mr. Biddle. Anyone else who spoke to Miss Waxworth tonight? We’ll need to take a statement from them.”
“What about Ernie?” Birdie asked.
They looked around, but Ernie was gone. He must have left with the rest of the guests. The irony made Allene smile. Their childhoods were full of stories of distracting Ernie to escape him, so they could have each other to themselves.
“I’ll take his name, and we’ll obtain a statement tomorrow,” the lieutenant said.
It was past midnight when the police took Florence’s body away. Her stockinged foot peeped out from the shroud they’d covered her with, and something about the sight made Birdie start crying. Allene handed her a French lace handkerchief, but she wouldn’t take it, instead smearing her eyes on a palm. Even now, after Allene had ignored Birdie so abominably for so long, Birdie refused to rumple the nice things in Allene’s life.
Allene thought, I don’t deserve her. But on second consideration, she decided, Why yes, I do.
Mr. Cutter said a few last words to the officers. Florence’s parents were at their tobacco estate in North Carolina for the week, soon to return. A telegram would be sent. With the war, telegrams never held anything good.
Lucy approached the group. Her lace cap was a little crooked, her normally smoothly combed ebony hair falling out in loose tendrils. “Miss Birdie, I’ve turned down the guest room bed and laid out some sleeping things for you. Mr. Jones, I believe Mr. Biddle is arranging for the motor to take both you gentlemen home.”
“Thank you, Lucy,” Allene said. She caught Jasper’s eye and smiled, even though death was in the air, even though there was a door about to close on the evening. She smiled her best, most perfect smile, and waited.
Like a slow sunrise on Christmas morning, Jasper smiled back. Her heart knocked inside her rib cage. She knew she would see him again, and soon.
She and Birdie walked Jasper to the door. By necessity, they had to pass the stairs. No one wanted to look; a splotch of blood darkened the polished oak, and the remnants of the champagne glass had yet to be cleaned up.
“Do you smell that?” Jasper asked, sniffing.
“What? You mean that perfume?” Allene asked. Without the crowd of guests, it was quite noticeable now.
Birdie’s eyebrows pinched together. “I smell it too. Like Christmas cookies that got baked too long.”
Jasper stooped and picked up a shard of glass, one that still cradled a little liquid. “Almonds.”
“Almonds?” Allene and Birdie asked at the same time.
“Bitter almonds.” Jasper turned to them with a grim expression on his face. “I would know that smell anywhere, because my parents reeked of it when they died.” He dropped the shard before wiping his hands on his trousers. The glass clinked as it bounced.
“What is it?” Allene asked.
“Florence Waxworth didn’t just break her neck from tripping on the stairs,” Jasper said. “Someone poisoned her.”
CHAPTER 2
Almonds, sweetish but almost burnt, like overcooked nut brittle. The scent was one he’d never forget.
It spiraled Jasper into memories of his parents’ Fifth Avenue bedroom. He could see his mother’s paper-white hand hanging over the bed, nails perfectly filed into ovals. His father’s mouth sagged open, as if his last word had gagged him. Both were neatly dressed for church, though it wasn’t a Sunday. Their hands were far apart in death, and they faced opposite walls, their bodies sinking into the goose down of the coverlet. They had chosen to die, and to die together, but not amicably.
Young Jasper had crawled onto the bed, put his mother’s hand in his father’s stiff one, and then rung for the police.
He should have seen the symptoms of the cataclysm. Only in retrospect had he realized that over the past six months, Mother’s neck and earlobes had grown less and less ornamented with gold and pearls. There were nervous whispers behind closed doors, wrung hands, arguments. Oscar had taken to leaving for weeks at a time for the company of college chums on Long Island. The servants had been sent away. The townhouse was being sold.
Jasper had been too distracted to notice. He spent his spare hours at the Cutter house with his Birdie and Allene, whose boyish, twig-like figures were rounding out, much to his fascination. Birdie, in particular, was blooming with an almost unearthly beauty. He’d see her in his mind’s eye when he slept at night. The sight of her new breasts affected his own growing body in ways that were terrifically strange and inconvenient.