Back in his rooms, Lenox discovered Fergus O’Brian standing in a ghastly, graying black suit and a frilled white shirt, his face bright as a beet.
“What are you dressed up as?” Lenox asked, amazed.
“It was Mr. Berry’s suit, sir,” the lad answered in a choked voice.
Lenox surveyed him critically. “Was Mr. Berry the filing clerk on a pirate ship?”
O’Brian strained to get his voice above a hoarse whisper. “I don’t know, sir.”
Mrs. Berry returned at that moment, beaming. “Here it is! His own tie. Only the slightest bit frayed—the frayed bit will tuck right under, too.” She held up a black tie that looked as if it had been made during the presidency of John Adams. “Doesn’t he look fine for the ball, Mr. Lenox? Such a handsome young gentleman.”
“Very,” said Lenox. “But you might want to loosen the collar slightly. It will be inconvenient if he dies of apoplexy.”
“Wasn’t that just the next thing I was going to do?” said Mrs. Berry. “This is a fitting.”
“Oh, a fitting. Of course. Carry on, then.”
O’Brian gave him a despairing look, and Lenox performed for him the small charity of unbuttoning the top button of the shirt, to the boy’s visible relief. Mrs. Berry was mending a tear in her late husband’s tie and didn’t notice. Better to ask forgiveness than permission.
Lenox went down to sit on the porch and read the papers. They were full of Mrs. Astor, even the front page of the New York Times offering a small preview of its longer story on the front page (GREAT BALL TO BE THROWN IN NEWPORT; THEME STILL SECRET) and a list of confirmed guests’ names inside, Lenox’s own among them.
Why had Mrs. Astor invited him? Perhaps simply because of Lady Jane; perhaps some combination of that and his exoticism, a dash of flavor. Well, he could pay her back there: For his own part, he was mostly going because he wanted to observe these foreign creatures at their pinnacle, on their finest behavior, in their most rarefied habitat.
Lily Allingham’s name, he noticed, barely appeared in any of the papers, though one or two had articles (MYSTERY LINGERS OVER BEACH DEATH). It was difficult to keep a story going without new information. All the phrasing—even “beach death,” rather than “murder”—might have been written by Welling, someone whose priority was to keep the information out of the public eye.
Lenox sighed. He had been sure someone would emerge from his late-night scrawlings, some definite thread.
And it was there, too—he sensed it, he could feel the truth of the case. But the facts still lay just beyond his grasp.
It might be, he thought, that there was too much to consider, too much crowding in around his line of vision for clear sight to be possible. At loose ends for once, he decided that he would take an hour or two away from the case, from the ball, too, and call upon Kitty Ashbrook.
He found her and Mr. Hunter sitting together in a gazebo, enjoying the breeze and reading, with iced tea on the table. They greeted him happily, the only people he had found on this island whose motives were clearly amiable, and he accepted a glass of the tea with curiosity. (“One of the traditions Newport has retained since it had a more southern population, I believe,” said Kitty.) It was undrinkably sweet, he thought, though not quite bad once the ice had melted down.
They had not been invited to the ball, and though they did not quite give up hope yet—Mrs. Astor was infamously unpredictable—both seemed resigned.
After begging their discretion, Lenox told them (indeed, it had been hard to keep to himself) the details of Willie Schermerhorn’s dramatic flight. They listened intently. Hunter seemed doubtful of the lad’s prospects for happiness in marriage. For her part, Kitty was delighted.
“Tell me,” he said suddenly, after they had been discussing one for some time, “did you ever notice Lily Allingham wearing a ring?”
“The gold one? I did.”
Lenox’s pulse quickened slightly. “Did you! When was the last time?”
“The day of the ball, I believe—yes, I would have noticed if it were gone. She told me about it. Her parents gave it to her.”
“The day of the ball? You’re sure?”
“All but sure. Why?”
Lenox looked away across the green fields toward the sparkling blue water, lovely and soft. “I’m not certain,” he said. “Tell me, if I told you that it was Vanderbilt who killed her—Lawrence Vanderbilt—what would your reaction be?”
“Surprise,” she said. “I wouldn’t have thought him violent.”
Hunter agreed.
“Quite,” Lenox murmured.
But of course, it might easily be one of those murders—quite a few were like this, in truth—with an element of mischance, less a concerted effort to kill than death as a horrifying outcome of a terrible but less murderous act of violence. Of course, the outcome was no different. It left so much unclear.
Before long Hunter had to leave. He was dining with a senator from Delaware. He and Lenox parted with a friendly handshake and an exchange of sincere hopes that they might see each other before long on one side of the pond or the other, and Kitty was left alone to entertain Lenox.
“You’ve had a long year or two since last week,” she said sympathetically.
“Yes,” he said.
“Yet you’ve been invited to Mrs. Astor’s ball! I have friends who sailed for Europe on Thursday to avoid admitting that they hadn’t been. Trip booked for months as insurance—thousands of pounds—and there they sit, despondent, in the first-class dining room of some luxurious ocean liner, wishing for all the world that they might have torn up their tickets and been in your place.”
“They sound like fools.”
She laughed. “Perhaps. But whenever I think that of someone, I try to remember that I, too, have been a fool, and could easily be one again.”
This was what he had most loved in Kitty Ashbrook, he realized: her ability to see the world differently than he did, and often more acutely. Looking at her, it was hard not to remember his lost competition with Lord Cormorant. Where would he and Kitty be sitting now, if this were their twenty-fourth year of marriage? London, probably, or perhaps the countryside. He would have chosen no other path—and she, too, seemed at peace, Hunter a sound chap to his end teeth. But that didn’t mean another path had never existed. Lenox looked at his old flame and felt a distant chime of their love, his old admiration, the passionate melancholy he had felt in those quick-blooded days.
“You’re quite right,” he said, “and I’ve no doubt the things I’m foolish about are ones I don’t think foolish.”
“Would you stay there for a moment?” she said. “I was going to ask you to take something back to England for me.”
“Of course.”
She walked inside. When she returned, she was holding a slim leather case. “What is it?” Lenox asked.
“I cannot quite recall myself,” she said, opening the case.
It was a piece of paper. She removed it delicately—it was obviously very old—and scanned it. At the bottom both saw a name hard to miss: Queen Elizabeth.
“It has something to do with Cormorant,” said Kitty. “I think it was the grant of their land and titles, perhaps. I have never been able to read the old script. Every s looks like an f.”
He laughed. “It’s true.”
“Besides which,” she went on, in a more subdued tone, “I do not look back with great happiness on the time of that marriage. I was sorry for my husband’s death. He was too young—it was a loss. But I will not pretend that my life since has not been happier. He was a cold, arrogant man, Cormorant. He had good qualities, to be sure. He gave me this on the night we married. I thought then that we might be very happy indeed.”
She ran a gentle finger over the paper.
“To whom shall I take it?” asked Lenox.
She looked up. “I don’t know. Cormorant’s cousin, I suppose, his heir—though they say he’s a drunk. It would really be ideal if there were some parson in the family, or some … but I have been gone so long. Has young Elijah Cormorant grown into something respectable? He was fourteen last I saw him, covered in spots, but very sweet. He went to your school. Now he would be thirty.”
Lenox nodded. “Leave it in my hands.”
“Ah! How I hoped you would say that. Thank you, Charles. It has weighed on my mind. You are doing me a great service.”
“Then it was worth it to have come to America.”
She smiled and withdrew her hand from the paper, where it had lingered. “We sail to Cape Cod tomorrow, where Hunter’s people spend their summers. Perhaps I shall not see you again?”
“I could call to visit before you go.”
“You would be welcome. But if you do not find the time, let me tell you how glad I am to have seen you.”
“And I you.”
She looked him in the eye. “Charles, I will speak openly. If I ever hurt you, I’m heartily sorry for it—I grieve it. I truly do.”
He could not say that she had not hurt him, for she had. But he was a gentleman. “Oh! That is long forgotten, Kitty. Besides, every moment we spent together brought me joy,” he said.
“Ah!”
“And I hope, if this is going to be a leave-taking after all, that the next time you are in London we may see each other, too.”
She brightened. “Oh, yes! I shall be so curious to meet Lady Jane—the most glamorous woman in London—I shall tremble before her, I fear.”
“No,” said Lenox. “She will be all too delighted with you, and with Hunter, too. She loves a good American to quiz.”
Kitty laughed. “Excellent. It’s settled. Next year, or the year after at the very latest.”
“A deal,” he said.
They talked on for some time. When Lenox left, he had the leather case. Kitty rose with a smile and squeezed his hand. It was a queer feeling to go, a goodbye of more than one kind. When he looked back at Kitty from the distance of the avenue, he saw her seated again, staring out to sea, and the thought struck him, from where who knew, that for the first time in a long while she was no longer Lord Cormorant’s wife, or even the young woman Lenox might have loved, but simply, and finally, herself.