Edgar Allan Poe and Nancy Drew. An unlikely pair? Not according to Suzanne C. Johnson, who confesses that the duo lured her as a school-age, reluctant reader into the addictive world of books. Not until much later, though, would the Author’s Muse snare her. “Body in the Pond” is a product of Suzanne’s background in psychology and her love of mystery, language, and a city and period from the life of Poe. It is also her first published short story. She also admits to a case of writer’s split personality. Evidence: released in 2001 by Knopf/Random House, Fribbity Ribbit! her first book for young children, a “hilarious…high-octane romp,” according to reviewers. So, living on a lake in Washington State with her husband and son, Suzanne slips back and forth between books for children and the heady realm of adult mystery.
13 June 1835. Quarter past nine o’clock p.m.
I am forever weighing. Right or Wrong. Truth or Lies. Good or Evil.
Evil that my study is on the second floor. Spring has withered into a steamy Virginia summer, and upper floors swelter as night descends.
The second floor is Good, too. It affords its Master views into chambers belonging to a certain neighbor.
And now a fortuitous breeze bears sweet scents of her garden and of memories, oh, of her skin! Widow Ashcroft, a woman of regularity of habit (thank the Heavens!) and of impatience to rid herself of gown and corset each sweltering eve.
Verdict: Praise the second floor!...
—From the Diary of Judge Jacob Danby
On the heels of each summer dawn, Stella roamed the sun-kissed cloister of her garden.
Dressed in loose muslin, no binding corset, no hampering petticoats, hair tucked beneath wide-brimmed straw hat, she followed any whim of honeysuckle scent or bee buzz. Here she was free of the need to coax and contrive for the financial rescue of her modest bookshop. Free of lectures, be they on Homer or Cicero, to pen with Father by eye-wearying lamplight. Free of Mother’s salon gatherings where ladies indulge their tastes for tea and honey cakes, occasional juleps, and ubiquitous Richmond gossip. Yet such freedom was not to be had by Stella Taylor Ashcroft this sultry Virginia morn.
At the edge of the small pond deep among the laurels and magnolias of the lower garden, she stood with First Officer of Police W. D. Page. But for the ripplings made by fish, the pond surface was as glass.
Beneath lay the body, face up, of Judge Jacob Danby.
“You found him just like this, Mrs. Ashcroft?” Mr. Page spoke with a voice hushed in respect for both dead and living, since the Danby property was neighbor. Its vast lawn sloped up to the home some distance away; its garden house stood yards from Stella’s pond.
Despite the heat, she shivered, drawing tightly the shawl she had plucked from a kitchen peg to disguise her lack of corset. “I found him as you see him, Mr. Page.”
Jacob Danby: short, trim, tailored in every gentlemanly detail, except that his cravat was loose, its end floating like a flattened fish. The man’s features, fine and younger than his fifty or so years, were clean-shaven but for sidewhiskers. He lay inches from air. Inches from life.
Mr. Page tossed a pebble in the water to keep fish from nibbling.
Stomach churning, Stella stepped back. “I cannot stay here anymore!”
“Beg pardon, ma’am, but I need to notify the mayor, see how he wants to handle this.” The officer, dressed in a common black suit, hair and mustache the color of sand, gave a nod in the direction of the pond. “Would you please keep nearby? I want no animals coming ’round, nothing more than fish, leastways.”
Stella bit her lip. “My duty, of course. But do hurry.”
Three strides, then he came back. “One thing. How is it Judge Danby is in your pond?”
The question made her mouth go dry, yet she forced herself to answer, even meeting his inquiring eyes: “I have no utter idea, Mr. Page.”
Last night, Stella had met Jacob Danby’s eyes, too. For several evenings from her bedchamber upstairs she had noticed a figure standing at a second-floor window of the Danby home. Yesterday near dusk, armed with her father’s birding glass, she awaited the figure. When it appeared, she stepped back into shadows and held up the glass.
Judge Danby stood between narrowly opened draperies, his own spyglass aimed her way.
Taking a steadying breath, glass to her eye, she stepped to her window. At that instant, the judge jerked backwards, stumbling out of view.
Later came the confrontation. This man so revered for his legal acumen, philanthropy, flawless comportment—how dare he! How long, she wanted to know, had he been violating her privacy? She would expose his scandalous nature to his fragile wife, Myra, to his son, Creed, to all of Richmond if he did not desist!
Stella stepped to the pond again and made herself look. Jacob Danby would bother her no more. Alive, that is. In death, he might prove to be bothersome a hundred times over.
Early that morning, once she had sent for the police, she’d paced the garden, glad of one thing—that her parents were gone to Baltimore, thus escaping the inevitable inquisition by every friend and acquaintance and perhaps by authority. She’d wandered the wide, pebbly path to the berry patch, then to the laurel hedge at the Danby line. Over the years, blight had taken a few of the laurels. It was in one of these sparse places that the grass showed trampling, and Stella found, with a quickening of her pulse, the small torn piece of cotton cloth snagged on a low stem. A graceful pattern of peach and robin’s-egg blue. She’d freed it and plucked the stem clean of every thread.
Yards away, crammed in a hollow of dogwood trunks, was the woolen blanket. Bloodstained. She’d heaped on extra plant debris as further disguise. How she needed time to think!
Now, standing watch near the pond as Mr. Page had bidden, Stella had time but as yet no capacity for thinking.
Sounds of horses, a wagon, voices of the returning officer and assistance.
Reaching into her pocket, fingers icy, Stella worried the torn fabric into a tight wad. She knew it well. It was hers.
The sodden body lay pondside. Flies worked.
Stella sheltered herself beneath pines and kept out of the men’s way.
“Dear God!” Creed Danby, alarmingly pale, was steadied by two officers. “We thought, Mother and I, he was in his study upstairs. He does that, works all night, sleeps until noon some days.” Tall and lanky, in shirtsleeves and vest, Creed raked his fingers through his hair. “My dear mother!”
Out of the young lawyer’s earshot, the doctor lectured Mr. Page, his hand chopping the air at each turn of his theory. “Misstep in the dark. Backward fall against pond stones—quite a nasty gash back of the head. Unconscious. Drowned.” He clicked his tongue. “I declare, such a loss to Richmond! Have the body taken to my surgery.”
Mr. Page and two officers roamed the garden, particularly the path to the laurels, then to the Danby side. Stella followed, not too closely, and strained to hear any call signifying a find. None came.
“Jacob! Jacob!” Myra Danby, sobbing, tore at the laurels as she sought a way into Stella’s yard.
Creed ran past Stella. “Mother! It’s no good! Rose, thank God you’re here, take her home. I’ll ask the doctor to come by with something to calm her.”
Through a narrow break in the hedge, Stella watched. No. She spied. Rose Walters, the only free servant in the Danby household, murmured tenderly as she supported the inconsolable figure of her mistress across the lawn. Even in this crushing moment, Rose presented a strikingly lithe, lovely, and capable figure. Creed’s narrow shoulders sagged as he awaited the women’s entrance into the house, then he trudged back to seek the doctor. Stella viewed them as if for the first time, as if she were neither acquaintance nor friend. Had Jacob Danby felt so detached, so coldly alone, as he’d spied upon her just a half day ago? Somehow, she doubted that.
Another hour passed, and everyone left. Or so Stella thought.
“Is this yours, Mrs. Ashcroft?”
She spun around.
W. D. Page held up several inches of gold chain, substantial links of a geometric pattern, end links twisted open. The officer’s hand and the chain dripped water.
Stella shook her head. “It’s unfamiliar to me but from the pond, I assume, so perhaps it’s a portion of Judge Danby’s watch chain.”
“I reckon so. Broken somehow in his fall.” He slipped it into his pocket and tipped his hat. “Been a trying mornin’, hasn’t it, ma’am?”
This time she avoided his gaze, fixing hers upon the tiny orange wings of a flitting ladybird beetle. “A definite understatement, Mr. Page.”
Within a half hour of the officer’s departure, Stella had inspected every inch of her pond, turning stones, swirling vegetation, as she sought assurance that not a vestige of Jacob Danby was left. Something glinted in a twinkling of sunlight through the dense canopy.
Soaking her sleeve, she plucked the find: several more inches of chain identical to what Mr. Page had found. She searched further but was soon convinced that the bit of chain was the last remnant of the judge.
She slipped the links into her pocket next to the damning piece of cloth.
That afternoon, Mr. Burwell Bassett planted his portly frame on the couch in Stella’s parlor. His melodic voice soothed while his gaze—a piercing blue from under shadowed brow—unsettled. A perfect combination for a city magistrate. Banker by trade, he had been appointed by the mayor to inquire into the death.
A smile spread across his broad face. “Your parents, Mrs. Ashcroft, I understand they are in Baltimore for the summer.”
Stella sat in her father’s mahogany rocker and smoothed her fresh frock of violet-dusted ivory. “Father is lecturing, ‘Orations of Cicero.’ Mother is visiting her sisters.”
“’Tis best they are gone.’’ Mr. Bassett nodded in the direction of the Danby home. “This is a delicate business, and thus I come to your parlor unaccompanied.” He pointed to the front window, to where Mr. Page leaned against the trunk of the great oak that sheltered the front half of the Taylor home. “Even Page will not be party to our conversation.”
It was just like Burwell Bassett to toy with her: a gentleman’s game when the gentleman did not much like the lady. His daughters had more than once participated in her bookshop’s Ladies’ Study Circle, where the topics often strayed beyond the customary domesticity to the unaccustomed women’s rights, public education, literacy for black citizens, and, though whispered, abolition. Recently, when she had applied at his bank for a small loan for her bookshop, he had made it clear that funds would be available only if she curtailed her ladies’ group. Stella had declined. Mr. Bassett had made sure the other banks in town likewise refused her.
Here in her parlor she would take Mr. Bassett’s bait. “Death is delicate,” she said, “but I fail to imagine what it is that you wish not to discuss in front of Mr. Page.”
“I will be more direct. Did you arrange to meet Judge Danby last night in his garden house?”
Stella straightened. “Preposterous!”
“There was a note carried to him last night asking for an eleven o’clock meeting.”
“Why on earth would you think it was from me?”
He pulled a folded paper from his coat pocket and held it out. “It is signed W. A.”
The pen had been wielded hurriedly: Must see you. Tonight. Eleven o’clock. Garden house again.
Stella looked up, still puzzled. “My question still stands. Why would you think I—?”
“Come, now! W for Widow. A for Ashcroft.”
At this, Stella could laugh. “Two letters of the alphabet? Is that what ties this note to me?” She sat back in her father’s rocker. “I have been a widow for nearly ten years of my seven and twenty. No woman would entitle herself ‘Widow’ after ten years’ passing. Come, now, Mr. Bassett! Besides,” she leaned forward, pointing to the note, ‘T m not convinced the A is an A. It’s a bit malformed and could be, perhaps, an O or a D.”
But the magistrate was not swayed. “I contend that Widow Ashcroft and so W. A. were code names between you and His Honor.” He put up his hand to halt her protest. “Believe me, madam, I do not want this lurid information in the public domain any more than you do.”
Stella stood abruptly and marched, petticoats rustling, to the writing table. She snatched up her household journal and thrust it at the magistrate. “Compare my handwriting to that of the infamous note!”
He gave a cursory glance. “Handwriting can be disguised.” With a grunt he stood, his piercing gaze upon her as he reached once more into his pocket. This time he pulled out a small gold-trimmed book. “The Judge’s personal diary, not something I care to show you, but I see that I must.” He opened it to a ribbon marker and pointed to the entry dated the prior eve. “His last. Read, please.”
The leather felt clammy in Stella’s hands. I am forever weighing….Good or Evil…second floor…a certain neighbor…memories, oh, of her skin…Widow Ashcroft…gown and corset…
Heat surged up Stella’s neck. “An abomination!” She shoved the book at Mr. Bassett.
“Have you read it all? No?” He firmly guided it back into her view, his words quite gentle. “Disclosure is vital to your welfare.”
Stella swallowed—Damn him!—and reaffixed her eyes upon the judge’s perfect penmanship: Verdict: Praise the second floor! She offers magnificent views to hold me until our next garden rendezvous. Until later this night, my Widow Ashcroft!
Stella furiously flipped pages. Beyond the entry, the leaves were blank, but prior it was Ashcroft…Ashcroft…Ashcroft! One fancied assignation after another! She slammed the book shut, pulse throbbing in her fingertips. She fortified herself with a deep, slow breath and with the hope that Mr. Bassett would respond to reason. “You are correct about something.”
He smiled indulgently. “Yes?”
“This is a delicate business. The cost to Judge Danby’s legacy and to his legal firm which, no doubt, will pass to his son…well, this sordid book of…of imaginings could destroy a lifetime of work.”
“Agreed. In part.”
“And it would damage me and those I hold dear.” Gossip and censure marked a woman, and so her family, as deeply and permanently as some terrible disfigurement. Disfigurement, at least, brought with it pity.
Mr. Bassett nodded. “Which is why I wish to strike a deal with you.” He repocketed the book and note. “In return for keeping both of these from public eyes—forever, mind you—you will confess to causing—accidentally, of course—the death of His Honor.”
Stella’s hands clenched, nails biting palms. She dared not speak, not even breathe, else she would either dissolve or explode.
“By the way, Mrs. Ashcroft, the doctor found no water in the lungs. He was dead before he lay in the pond. A blow to the back of the head. Is that how it happened?”
Defiance rode the bitter bile in her throat. “Get out!”
Mr. Bassett, though pinking at his meaty ears and cheeks, remained undaunted. “Our fine city need only think that he was sleepwalking and you mistook him, quite innocently, dark as it was, for a trespasser.”
She struck him down—a fleeting victory—with a simple statement of fact. “The moon, sir, was full last night.”
His broad forehead glistened with perspiration as he leaned toward her. “A man of Judge Danby’s intelligence, which tolerated only facts, would not enter ‘imaginings’ into his diary. And I will not allow the guilty party to go free, even if I must use that diary as evidence. Furthermore, once the proverbial dust settles, I believe the public would forgive and forget his little indulgence in light of his great deeds and gifts to the Commonwealth. But, of course, I would rather not go that route.”
You must, for I will never—! She began it in her head, but seemed powerless to force the declaration to her lips. Powerless because she knew she was just that. She could instruct him on lunar phases, but, armed with Judge Danby’s diary, reputation, and station, armed with Mr. Bassett’s own position and connections, the magistrate could indeed do exactly what he threatened.
He headed for the entryway. “I will be in touch tomorrow. The inquest is set for the day following.” At the door, he turned. “Young Creed and his mother put up a handsome reward. It is below my station to collect, but Page, who knows of the note but not of the diary, is—shall we say?—eager to augment his slender salary.”
The magistrate departed. W. D. Page remained, though discreetly, across the road.
Stella could postpone no longer a task she’d dreaded.
Her frock was too festive for calling on such a somber occasion, but time was precious, so she hoped a simple gray bonnet would assuage any offense. She pretended no awareness of the officer as she walked to the corner and turned up the bricked path to the richly polished Danby front door. Chandeliers of swirled iron hung from the columned porch roof. With a steady hand, she struck the brass knocker.
Jackson, his skin the patina of aged black leather, offered a silver tray for her card, guided her into the expansive hall, but was startled out of his decades-old routine by her request: “Please fetch Rose.”
“You meanin’ Miz Myra, ma’am?”
‘Tm not wishing to disturb your mistress or Mr. Creed. Rose, please. But wait.” Stella lowered her voice. “Judge Danby’s death was quite unfortunate.”
“Yes’m.”
“I understand a message came for him last eve. Did you receive it?”
“I took it from the young’un, Jem.”
“Jem Rafferty?” An entrepreneurial street boy.
Jackson nodded.
Stella chanced another question. “Mr. Bassett, Mr. Page, did they ask you who brought the message?”
She knew the answer would be no before he shook his head. The deliverer, of course, had been hired by “Widow Ashcroft.” One would hope modern-day authorities might not operate on assumptions, that they would at least seek to verify their theories. But large rewards often blinded police, an issue the subject of colorful editorials. As to the magistrate: even if someone other than the “Widow Ashcroft” had sent the note, it would not erase the damning diary.
But for Jackson’s fading footsteps and the ponderous ticking of a clock, the Danby home was quiet. Somewhere down in the basement, preparations were surely under way for the receipt of the Judge’s body, then the washing, dressing, and eventual laying out in the parlor for visitation by Richmond society.
Rose might be in the basement, her seamstressing skills needed. Seamstressing was how Stella had met her three years prior, inquiring at the tiny lodging rooms behind Krause’s Cook Shop and securing Rose’s adroit skills for the making of a spring frock. There had been more than frocks since then.
“You ever teach school?” Rose had asked one winter day, rain driving against the narrow panes, the seamstress on her knees, pins pressed between lips as she tucked the hem of a cloak. Her two girls, ages eight and seven, sat cross-legged, mannered, dark eyes fixed upon their mother’s efficient motions.
The cloak was draped upon Stella. “I have never taught.” With mincing steps, she turned a circle for Rose. “Why do you ask?”
Rose worked her way around the hem until her lips were free of pins. She stood, half a head taller than Stella, and spoke in a husky whisper. “I’ll give you all your sewin’ needs. No charge.” She motioned her girls to gather at her skirt.
How much time passed? Seconds? Minutes? Stella recalled only that those six brown eyes did not leave her face until she nodded. “I will do it! Gladly!”
The very next day, Stella had begun to teach three eager students in those rooms behind Krause’s Cook Shop. A bold commitment by both Rose and herself, since teaching a Negro to read and write was illegal in Richmond. The eagerness with which Rose and her children had received Stella’s lessons these past two years compensated her beyond the making of frocks and overshadowed the worry of discovery.
And when Myra Danby had mentioned months ago she was in need of a personal maid, Stella had recommended Rose.
The clock in the Danby hall was as yet the only source of sound as Stella awaited Rose, who was probably needed upstairs, too, where Myra Danby would be gathering her strength, setting out a black gown, petticoats, gloves. Certainly, the new widow would grace her bodice with her always-present ruby cluster pin which secured a petite watch. Stella and her parents had attended the anniversary gala when the judge, with quite the fanfare, had bestowed the gift upon his wife.
And what of Creed now? Was he in his father’s study? That room from which Judge Danby had let his lurid mind and eye roam? Creed might be pacing there, his mind, his eye upon his own issues: had experience equipped him for the role of head of the house, head of the law firm, leader in Richmond? Daunting for a young man.
A noise as faint as a mouse scratch.
Stella turned.
Creed stood before her, understandably haggard of face, neatly appointed in black suit and tie. He held her card and bowed slightly.
“Mrs. Ashcroft, Rose is assisting my mother right now. Whatever it is you came for, I can probably help you, though time…” He ran his hand down the embroidered silk vest and tucked her card partway into the watch pocket. “Time is short. I’m sure you understand.”
“Oh, I do! And I had not meant to disturb you or your mother.” The torn fabric plucked from the laurels lay tucked in her skirt pocket. “This seems so selfish now, but I came to ask Rose if…if she had finished a frock for me, one she’d been working on for weeks.” The armor of deception, so necessary at times, was comforting yet so fragile.
He frowned, surely impatient with triviality, but Stella went on. “A dark gray frock, which would be most appropriate for paying my respects.” She waved her hand at the parlor doors.
“Ah.” The frown vanished. “Not selfish at all. In fact, quite generous that you should—” He turned at a sound from the far end of the hall. “Mother?”
Myra Danby, a forlorn figure seeming to float on a black cloud of mourning attire, looked exactly as Stella had imagined, though missing was the ruby watch pin. Indeed, it might now be too painful to wear such a dear gift.
“Rose?” Myra’s voice was barely audible. “Where is Rose?”
Creed clasped both her hands. “I’ll find her for you.”
He had slipped naturally into the role of protector. Stella had often seen son and mother strolling their slope of lawn, arm in arm. And in public Myra gazed upon Creed with unmistakable adoration.
“Who is that?’’ Myra peered round him, her drawn face framed by wisps of graying hair. Always frail and flighty, she now was even more these things. Grief, shock, and possibly the doctor’s laudanum enhanced the mix. “Our neighbor? Stella?”
At that moment, Rose stepped into the hall, turned red-rimmed eyes onto Stella, then shrank back out of view.
“Rose?” Stella said.
No answer. No appearance. Grief? Confusion? These emotions did not explain these actions by the resilient Rose Walters.
Stella asked Creed, “May I please speak to her?”
Myra had begun to weep.
“Rose,” said Creed, “Mother needs you.”
A few moments, and Rose reappeared, scurried across the hall, her look fixed upon Creed, then, without even a glance at Stella, ushered away her distressed mistress.
Fear? Distrust? Stella blinked at the sting of them.
“Perhaps you can return later, Mrs. Ashcroft,” said Creed, “although Rose has her hands full, as you can see.” He walked toward Stella, smoothing his vest again, pushing her card all the way into his watch pocket. “I must leave for another meeting with Burwell Bassett.”
Stella’s face flushed with the sudden realization—though it should have come as no surprise—that Creed must surely know now of his father’s diary. And what of the accusation of murder? Was he in concurrence with the magistrate, or was that theory’s author only Mr. Bassett? The young Danby’s gaze was unreadable, not because he was naive or ignorant, Stella believed, but because he had been bred a Virginia gentleman.
And what of Myra? Did she know of the diary, of her husband’s wandering attentions? Maybe that was why the poor woman, shortly upon seeing Stella, had wept.
As she had that morning, Stella felt as if she lived on one side of the James River and the rest of the world lived on the other.
Murmuring a hasty “Good day,” she escaped out the Danby front door.
And to the surveillance of Officer Page.
Changing her gray bonnet for summer-weight ivory and a parasol, Stella buggied Richmond’s bumpy streets to the city’s center. Mr. Page followed on horseback at a proper distance.
It was less than fashionable for a woman to command a buggy, but living far from her bookshop, having no husband to drive her and a father who, when home, offered but clearly would rather be managing pens than reins, Stella drove herself. Mother had at last accepted it and deftly lied to her friends that a lady at the reins was considered in Paris by some to be, well, fashionable.
This afternoon, however, Stella did not head for her shop. The Closed sign must remain in her window today.
She left the buggy at the livery and found young Jem Rafferty hefting feed sacks at Miller & Able. Coins brought a sweep of his cap, a shock of red hair, and an answer to Stella’s question.
“Got the note last night at the Danby and Son office, an’ I ran it straight to Judge Danby.”
“Who hired you? A clerk working late?”
“Ain’t sure he was a clerk, but name was Mr. Wick Arbogast.”
Stella drew a sharp breath. W. A.
Jem added, “An’ I carried back the Judge’s answer.”
“Which was—?”
“‘Yes.’”
Yes. I will meet you, Wick Arbogast, in my garden house at eleven o’clock tonight.
Jem squinted into the sun. “I carried back the answer to where he lives.” He opened his small, callused palm. “Want me to take you?”
In the parlor of Mrs. Yarrington’s rooming house, Stella smoothed her fan pleats, and Jem flipped coins and caught them.
“Mr. Arbogast!” announced the efficient Mrs. Yarrington with a sweep of the parlor door.
Unshaven, curly hair disheveled, tie administered with haste, vest buttoned unevenly but watch attached and pocketed, he tugged at his suit coat. “Forgive me! I’ve been working on several cases, up all night, or has it been two?” He smiled disarmingly, one corner jauntily tipped. He palmed her card and read, “‘Mrs. Stella Taylor Ashcroft.’ You are in need of legal services?”
She kept her eyes on the man, but her words were meant for Jem. “Is this he?”
“Yes’m.”
Mr. Arbogast chuckled. “Jem! Didn’t see you.’’ His tone sobered. “What may I do for you, Mrs. Ashcroft?”
Was she now standing before the last or one of the last persons to see the judge alive? And what, if anything, could that mean?
Her fingers tightened around the parasol handle. “This morning Judge Danby was found dead in my pond.”
Jem let out a low whistle. Mr. Arbogast backed up to a chair and sat. “But—but—!” He threw his hands up. “But I met with him last night! In that garden house of his. He was healthy as a bull. Fact is, he was angry as a bull when he read my report, every line of three pages, questioned me, lightning quick as always. Yes.’’
“He was angry with you?” asked Stella.
“No, no. At what I’d uncovered in some research I did for him.”
He stood, paced, his hazel eyes intent on inward thoughts. “Oh, he was furious, but when I left him, he was alive with that fury! The anger must have dealt his heart a blow.”
“He wandered to my yard? Fell over dead in my pond? According to the doctor, Judge Danby was struck on the back of the head.’’
Arbogast frowned.
“Jem,” said Stella. He scrambled to her side, and she planted another coin in his hand. “Fetch Police Officer Page. He’s probably not far from the front door.”
“Hurry, Jem!” Mr. Arbogast tossed the boy an extra coin. He turned to Stella. “I am grieved for the loss of a great legal mind, for the loss to his family, for the shock you, dear lady, must have endured.”
Stella did not know what to think of this Wick Arbogast. Either he was the most genuine person she had met all day, or he was a consummate actor.
Guardedly, she thanked him for his generous sympathies, then asked, her voice tense with hope, “Could there be something inherent in the information you brought Judge Danby that might have contributed to his death?”
He shook his head. “My report was not concerning some case gone wrong. No vendetta by an irate client or felon. It was a personal matter for the judge. I’m sure you understand I can divulge no particulars. But I assure you no one involved would have harmed him.” Assurances or not, Mr. Arbogast’s brow furrowed.
“And the report?” she asked. “What did he do with it?”
“Put it in his coat pocket. Yes. Then shook my hand, albeit somewhat grimly, and I departed.”
“Here he is!” Jem sauntered into the parlor. “Like you said, ma’am, he was close by.”
W. D. Page, hat in hand, strode in. He looked sheepishly from Stella to the lawyer and back.
She had failed to reason with Mr. Bassett, had failed in her mission to talk with Rose, had failed to extract anything of value from Mr. Arbogast. Nevertheless, she shrugged off the weighty cloak of disappointment to relish a most singular satisfaction.
“Mr. Page!” She flourished a hand in the direction of Wick Arbogast. “Please, kind sir, meet the Widow Ashcroft!”
Standing out of the path of passersby and sheltered by her parasol, Stella waited.
“Mr. Page!” she called as the officer closed Mrs. Yarrington’s gate.
He turned, startled.
“It is unsettling,” she said, “to find you are being followed, is it not?”
His cheeks took on a red hue. “It is, ma’am.” He thumbed toward the boardinghouse. “Beg pardon for the mistake, us thinking you were the writer of the note. It would not have taken much brains to find him.” The red hue deepened. “I—I mean, I didn’t mean—”
“You are correct, Mr. Page. It did not take intelligence to find Mr. Arbogast.” She savored one last morsel. “However, it did take operating outside one’s assumptions.”
“Yes, ma’am, but, unfortunately, Mr. Bassett says there is more than just the note.”
The word unfortunately did not pass by her. Perhaps Mr. Page was in a frame of mind to share information. “Did you manage to find out from Mr. Arbogast the subject of the unsettling report he delivered to the judge?”
He shook his head. “He says it’s all legal confidences.”
A most convenient reply if the lawyer had something to hide. “I presume he told you it was his opinion the report had nothing to do with the judge’s death.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I would be more comforted to know that you had made that determination, Mr. Page.” But her comfort, she assumed, was the last thing on his mind. “Did you find Mr. Arbogast’s report in the judge’s pocket?”
“Wouldn’t be much left of paper, ma’am, soaking all night in your pond.”
“Not even remnants of some pulpy mass?”
“No. And I went through his pockets myself. Speaking of that—” From his own pocket he pulled out the inches of chain. “From the pond, you remember? Must be your father’s or somebody else’s, ’cause I found Judge Danby’s chain and watch intact on the body.”
The officer spoke on, but Stella pondered the now familiar links. “Forgive me,” she finally said. “What were you saying?”
“Judge’s watch and chain had to be plain as day for you and me to see as we looked down on him in the water. Memory plays its tricks.”
“Especially when one is staring death in the face.”
“You have a way of puttin’ things, ma’am.” He tipped his hat and stepped aside for her to pass.
On her way to the livery, Stella stopped briefly to see Jem and arrange that he arrive at her home just before nightfall. For an assignment. If, she told herself, she had the mettle to execute it.
In twilight shadows, Mr. Page stationed himself across the road from the Taylor home. A determined bounty hunter, though he would probably take offense at the term.
Stella prepared a small package for Jem’s delivery: one-half of the fabric snagged at the laurels and a note. It is mine. It is yours. Near where found is hidden another telling detail. No signature.
The boy came, and, before she could falter in her resolution, she sent him on his way. Then she went up to her darkened room and sat at the open window. Her father’s birding glass lay in the lap of her dark blue skirt. The heat, as crushingly heavy as her heart and her hopes, remained unstirred by a faint breeze. Night rhythms—crickets, frogs, plaintive whippoorwill—and moon’s rise marked time’s passing.
At last, a yellowish light, as if a giant firefly, traveled in haste down the Danby lawn. Her chest tightening with each breath, Stella leaned forward, spyglass poised.
Dependable Jem had done his job.
Silently, swiftly, Stella headed downstairs and through her garden. Even in the dark of a new moon, she could have found her way past every bush, tree, and bed, along every stretch and crook of path.
At the cage of dogwood trunks, a lantern lighted the figure of Rose Walters wresting the bloodstained blanket.
“Rose!” whispered Stella.
The woman bolted upright, stifled a scream.
Hand trembling, Stella held out her half of the torn cloth.
Two months ago, she’d carried the frock of peach and robin’s-egg blue to the rooms behind Krause’s Cook Shop.
“It needs some of your magic,” Stella had told Rose. “It’s never looked right on me.”
Rose had embraced the gown to her own waist with one hand, to her neck with the other. She cooed with unselfconscious delight. And Stella had laughed. “The colors are ravishing on you! It’s yours, Rose!”
But now, on this night of the day of discovery of Jacob Danby’s murdered corpse, Rose stared at another fabric: bloodstained wool.
“I wanted—” Her voice broke. “I wanted him away!” Eyes huge, she looked more like one of her children caught in a swirl of guilt and regret. “The pond was yours! I knew it, but I wasn’t thinkin’ straight! Oh, Stella!”
Stella gripped Rose’s lean, strong arms. “With the blanket you dragged the body to the pond. But it was not you who killed him?” Doubt and dread compromised certainty.
Rose uttered nothing. Tears spilled.
“For your children’s sake,” Stella pleaded, “this is not a time to shield someone! Was it…was it Myra Danby?”
A man’s voice shot from the dark: “What are you doing here?”
Stella and Rose swung around as one.
Creed Danby stepped into the lantern’s light. His mother clung to him, only part of her in the yellow glow—curve of face, blinking eye, a slender segment of her gaunt frame. The rest of her in her son’s shadow.
A deep breath, and Stella said, “I am seeking the truth, Mr. Danby.”
“The truth?” his mother asked.
He caressed her arm. “Hush, now.”
But Myra stepped fully into the light, pressing her fingers to her temples as if to assuage incessant pain. “A note came, and Jacob refused to tell me from whom. Secret messages had come many, many times in the past, but not since he’d promised with the lovely ruby watch pin.” She touched her bodice, barren of the gift.
“Mother…” There was heartbreak in Creed’s voice. “You mustn’t.”
She went on, as if recounting some dream. “From my room, I watched him slip from the house. I stole into his study. The note was there. And a diary!”
“Every word untrue!” Stella spoke, though she knew the woman would not hear.
“A tryst in our garden house!” Myra cried. “But the woman of the diary, the woman of the note, she was gone when I arrived, yet before I could speak one word, Jacob was angry. I was angrier! ‘Jacob! I will live with treachery no more!’ Then, something in my hand! He went down! I killed my husband!” She sobbed.
Rose fixed her eyes upon Creed as he put his arms around his mother and rocked her.
And into the lighted circle stepped W. D. Page.
“How long have you been here?” Creed’s voice deepened with wariness.
Mr. Page’s Adam’s apple slid. “Beg pardon, Mr. Danby, I think I’ll fetch Mr. Bassett to talk with your mother.”
To know, at last, that Rose had not ended the life of the judge was cause to rejoice, but no celebration could be had amid the ruin of Myra Danby. The gentlewoman had waited so long to stand her ground that when she finally did, the venom had burst forth, catapulting herself and her husband to disaster.
Yet…something still did not fit.
Stella pulled from her pocket the short length of chain she’d scavenged from the pond. She held it to the light and asked Myra, “Where is your ruby watch pin?”
“In her room,” answered Rose, “in pieces.”
“I—I smashed it.” Myra’s face was soaked with tears.
Stella fingered the golden segment’s bold pattern. “You smashed the pin and the watch, but their chain is intact, is it not?”
Myra nodded.
Why hadn’t Stella realized it before? These links were unsuitable for a woman’s delicate piece.
To Creed she said, “My calling card—you tucked it in your empty watch pocket. Odd. And when you spoke of time, your hand passed where your chain should have hung and went to where your watch should have been.”
Even now, his fingers fidgeted along the bottom of his vest, but he hastily dropped his hands to his side.
Stella went on. “Your mother returned home, frenzied. Your singular purpose to protect her, you fled to the garden house. You found your father not quite dead? You found a damning report in his pocket? You had words, perhaps, when he roused? And in the tussle, your chain snared—in his fingers? on his clothing?—during your father’s last desperate motions.” She held up the links. “This piece of chain I found in my pond and, I would guess, it is yours, Creed.”
Rose let out a feeble cry. Myra looked about in confusion.
Creed jerked around to the officer. “She flings accusations as one might throw darts! Is this some cruel parlor game?’’
“Mrs. Ashcroft—” began Mr. Page.
“Danby and Son…” Myra reached out and ran her finger down the dangling links. “The watch and chain were Jacob’s gift. Oh, he was so full of hope.” She pointed to the house. “I found your watch, Creed, in your suit coat this morning.” Again, she pointed to the links held by Stella. “The rest of your broken chain is there. A shame, but I’m sure the goldsmith—”
Creed pulled her close.
Rose had not taken her eyes off Creed. It was now no wonder that Rose of late had spent increasing time at the Danby home, missing lessons, leaving notes for Stella with the girls: Sorry. Work at Danbys’. And no wonder Creed had been so shocked at the sight of his father’s body in the pond.
To Rose, Stella said, “You dragged the body off to shield Creed.”
The woman said not a word. Tears trailed down her cheeks.
Creed’s mouth hardened. “Where is my motive, Mr. Page?”
The officer brushed a finger across his mustache. “A Mr. Wick Arbogast came calling on me and the magistrate late today. He’d been thinking over some papers he’d left with the judge last night in the garden house. Said he figured they had no bearing on the death—surely no upstanding son, he said, would harm his father over money troubles—but he thought it best we knew just the same. Gambling, he said, and borrowing, you might call it, from law office accounts. Trust accounts, was what he named ’em.”
Creed swallowed. “I admit to differences with my father, but, surely, nothing to warrant—” His voice choked.
He had not planned to kill, Stella believed. A moment ripe with fear for his future, with frustration at a life, perhaps, under the judge’s thumb, with a wish for the effortless path through life. The moment came. And once passed, it was too late to undo.
Rose spoke softly. “Miz Myra was at the house cryin’, beside herself, sayin’ Judge Danby was dead. Creed—Mr. Creed—ran, and I followed, thinkin’ I could help. Through the garden house window I saw the judge was down. Mr. Creed took papers from his father’s pocket, and soon the judge was stirrin’, and—”
“Page!” Creed clenched his fists. “You believe the wench?”
Rose flinched. “And the judge was stirrin’, and Creed tore off his own jacket, bunched it up, and held it on his father’s face till there was no more stirrin’!’’
Creed flung a hand toward her. “It matters not what she says! You know the law, Page!”
Everyone in Richmond knew that Negroes—black or mulatto, free or slave—could not testify against whites.
Law be damned! Stella shoved the piece of chain toward Creed. “This must surely be proof!”
“Mr. Page!” Creed held himself as if he were about to deliver the penultimate judicial victory speech. “Based on my father’s diary, I’m sure you will agree, Mrs. Ashcroft’s word would be as worthless in court as Rose Walter’s!”
Mr. Page extracted from his pocket inches of chain. He held it next to Stella’s. “I, sir, found this piece, identical, in the pond under the lifeless body of your father. Thanks to Mrs. Ashcroft here, I now know, among other things, it’s yours. I think it’s ’bout time we talk with Mr. Bassett.”
Equipped with a bouquet of lavender roses and heliotrope, Stella knocked at the door behind Krause’s Cook Shop. A morning breeze off the James stirred a stew of the flowers’ sweet scents and the pungent ones of the cook shop—cracklings, corn cakes—and of the docks—sweat, fish, tobacco.
It took a second knock, but finally the door opened. Inches. “No!” came a breathless voice.
“Please!” Stella thrust the bouquet to the opening.
The door flung wide and Rose, hair loose, muslin limp, stood straight-backed, chin puckered. Her girls peered from the shadows.
Stella pressed the shank of the bouquet into the woman’s hands. “A gift not of condolence but of congratulations.”
“Congratulations?”
“For your having fallen for your devil. Did you not know it happens once for every woman? Now you are done with your turn. An angel next!”
Rose caught her lip, her face contorting as if in angst over whether to cry or laugh.
Stella whispered loudly enough for the girls to hear, “Lessons resume tomorrow,” then turned, skirts swishing.
“And what ’bout you, Stella?” called Rose, the sharpness of her tone more show than true. “Have you had your turn at a devil?”
Stella was saved the reply, for at the corner of the building, she stopped. “Mr. Page!”
The officer doffed his hat. “Mornin’. Mr. Bassett asked me to tell you he ‘burned it.’” He shrugged. “I think he was talking about that diary Creed Danby mentioned.”
The irony of the judge’s fanciful entries had never been lost on Stella. Her fierce “confrontation” with her neighbor concerning his voyeurism had been her own fantasy written in her own journal. A mere vicarious triumph—as vicarious a triumph as Jacob Danby’s diary might have been for him. She had learned long ago to choose her battles with care, and crossing swords with Judge Danby would have been a loss for her from the start. Her journal was often her weapon of choice. Perhaps too often.
“Any reply to the magistrate, ma’am?” asked Mr. Page.
The incendiary deed had not been done for her.
She shook her head. “It was kind of you to seek me out, Mr. Page. You are quite adept at that talent.”
He mumbled awkwardly, and, as he walked her to her buggy, she added, “My condolences.”
“Condolences?”
“That the Danby reward was withdrawn. Understandably, of course.”
A smile flickered beneath the mustache. “You do have a way of puttin’ things, Mrs. Ashcroft.”