9

EFFIE

1901
Shepherd, Iowa

THE NEWSPAPER SCREAMED the headline Murder at 322 Predicament Avenue the following morning, even though by then it wasn’t news to anyone. The rumors of death and mayhem at the abandoned house had revitalized within hours of Mr. Anderson’s reporting of their findings to the local magistrate. Of course, the lure of his own story became fodder for gossip as well. An Englishman, his missing wife—Isabelle Addington—and now this discovery? A lurid and macabre ending to his search perhaps? Or was it a secret and torrid affair that had ended in murder? A missing body? Perhaps Mr. Anderson wasn’t as innocent as he made himself out to be. Tongues wagged behind closed doors and gloved hands.

Effie shrank into the settee in the sitting room of the manor and wished it all to go away. Her mother snapped the newspaper in her hands and whimpered as she read it. Effie exchanged looks with her friend Bethany, who sat opposite her, the most apologetic look on her pretty face that Effie had ever seen.

“I’m so sorry,” Bethany said, rushing to amend the snap of the newspaper. “I saw it this morning and felt you should see it as soon as possible.”

“Of course we should!” The paper rustled as their mother folded it and tossed it with a dramatic flair onto a side table. Katherine James smoothed back the grays of her otherwise dark hair, then made an absentminded gesture to pick off imaginary lint from her sleeve—all while eyeing Effie with a motherly censure that left Effie unsure if she should feel more chastised than she actually did.

“You accompanied that man unchaperoned to investigate the murder of his wife?” Katherine was unable to modulate the trembling in her voice.

Yes, she had, and her intention was that no one would ever know. Only Bethany, who of course could not be held responsible for leaking it to the gossipy newspaper that masqueraded as local news. No. Effie was certain it was the moment she’d rushed from 322 Predicament Avenue after Mr. Anderson had brandished the blood-coated butcher knife and she in turn had lost her breakfast in the bushes. Passersby had seen her, the police knew she had been in attendance, and it was a small town. Such exciting news!

Effie bit back her cynicism and reminded herself that she’d done it for Polly. For Polly! Now no one dared claim Polly was manipulating circumstances for attention or brazenly crying wolf. Nor was Polly acting, as she lay in a wretchedly afflicted position of shock and whimpers in her bed upstairs.

Effie glanced at Bethany. She had dreaded this confrontation, prayed that it wouldn’t be necessary. But now the paper had splashed her name beside Mr. Lewis Anderson’s for the entire town of Shepherd and surrounding communities to see.

Mr. L. Anderson, accompanied solely by Miss Euphemia James of Shepherd, Iowa, daughter of the president of the First National Bank of Shepherd, were the first two to uncover evidence that supports Miss Polly James’s claim of witnessing a gruesome and most horrific slaying last week at 322 Predicament Avenue. What they were doing at the address, aside from investigating prior suspicions, is unclear. However, a source states there may be some unknown relations between the couple, and we are certain that will also be investigated.

The implications the paper was making was pure gossip fodder, a way of taking stunning news and making it even more extraordinary by crafting rumors and scandal. Married man, bank president’s unmarried daughter, and the alleged murder victim was the married man’s wife?

Effie had practically memorized the report. “They left out that Mr. Anderson’s assistant was with us.” She offered the peace offering in hopes it would be sufficient but knowing full well it wouldn’t be.

Katherine James pinched her lips together before responding with the bite of sarcasm. “Oh, that improves the situation tenfold. You were accompanied by two men—one supposedly married, and now what? Widowed? And the other one is unmarried. A much better circumstance, for certain.”

“Mr. Anderson’s assistant has to be over sixty years of age—”

“Euphemia.” Katherine sucked in a steadying breath and eyed her daughter. “Unchaperoned is unchaperoned—especially when the paper states it in ink for the entire community to ruminate on!”

“Mrs. James, I’m certain that once people understand the circumstances, they’ll be more than forgiving.” Bethany sighed wistfully.

Both Katherine and Effie turned their attention to Bethany, and it was Katherine who responded, “You and I know better, Bethany, but thank you for your good intentions.”

“Well, I had no intention of gossips spoiling Polly’s name and calling her a liar.” Effie defended her actions while understanding her mother’s concerns were well founded.

Katherine had the grace to grimace and soften her expression even as she stated the truth of the matter. “Polly is in no condition to defend her claims, that is true. But, Euphemia!” Katherine’s voice broke as she leveled a pained wince on her daughter. “Patrick Charlemagne—as well as other young men of upstanding quality—this changes everything for your future circumstances.”

Effie didn’t dare look at Bethany now, knowing of her friend’s social interactions with Patrick Charlemagne. Effie was certain her chances with him were already out of the question, yet her mother wasn’t wrong when it came to the others. She tried not to think about the cost to herself as she attempted to protect Polly. “It’s 1901, Mother. This isn’t the days of Queen Elizabeth, along with the nonsense of falling into a man’s arms by accident, requiring marriage to salvage a woman’s good name.” Effie’s words fell flat even as she spoke them.

Katherine’s dark eyebrows lifted. “Perhaps not, but now you have attached a probable murder to this outing, the questionable activity of this . . . this foreigner, and no one knows if his wife was the victim or not. He can’t assist in repairing the situation by offering marriage to you because we don’t know if he is still married, or if he’s widowed, or if he ever was married! Do you not see the awful rumors coming from this, Euphemia? You were sneaking around with a man at least ten years your senior, uncovering violence and blood, and now your name has been printed beside his for the community at large to gossip about. Whether this is the days of old or a new era with more freedoms for women, it is of no matter. You will be the center of every dinner table conversation for weeks until the murder is solved. My church ladies’ group will be tittering behind their hands!”

“I wasn’t sneaking around with him.” It was all Effie could think to say. Other than that, her mother was correct. She would indeed be the center of conversation, a nightmare in and of itself.

“It is probably best that we send you away for a time. If we can allow this brouhaha to fade, then perhaps it will be all right.”

“No!” A desperate look at Bethany assured Effie her outburst was founded. Bethany’s stricken expression mirrored her own. “I can’t leave Polly.”

Pain fluttered across Katherine’s face. She nodded. “I understand, but if you go to live with my sister in Chicago just until—”

“Then the rumors will be that Effie is with child!” Bethany interrupted, then covered her mouth with her hand in shame for stating it aloud.

“Oh, heavens.” Katherine’s fingertips pressed against her mouth. “You’re absolutely right.”

“Do my intentions and motivations mean nothing?” Frustrated, Effie found her throat tightening. “For the good of whoever was the victim of bloodshed? For Polly who doesn’t deserve to be talked about—not now, not when she—”

“It is the way of things.” Her father’s voice echoed as he pushed one of the pocket doors open and entered the sitting room. Carlton James was buttoned up in his tailored suit, his hat tucked under one arm. “I wish you had spoken to me first, Euphemia, before this situation exploded beyond my control.”

“There is nothing I did that . . .” Effie bit her tongue as another man strode into the room behind her father.

Mr. Lewis Anderson. The corners of his eyes were lined, and the deep-set eyes told her nothing at all about what he thought of the situation at hand. His hat was absent from his head, but his hair was neatly combed. He wore a gold pin on his silk tie, his suit coat also boasting a square of silk kerchief. But what made the man most striking was the aura that exuded from him. An aloof sort of confidence mingling with an unspoken emotion Effie could not decipher.

His eyes met hers, and Effie thought she saw an apology in them and perhaps something else as well. She averted her eyes. He was part of her problem, after all. A married part of her problem, which had made matters so much worse, more complicated.

Mr. Anderson cleared his throat. “I sincerely apologize for putting your daughter in a spot. I was unthoughtful, driven by my desire to uncover what had happened to my . . . to Isabelle.”

“Your wife?” Katherine inserted, eyeing him with the shrewdness of a mother.

Mr. Anderson gave her an indecipherable look but said nothing further.

Carlton James tossed his hat onto a nearby chair and strode across the room to stare out the front window. Their yard stretched quite a distance before meeting up with the cobblestone street. A wrought-iron fence bordered the property. Yet it didn’t feel high enough now or secure at all. Effie could sense her father’s concern in the way he stood, his back to them, his coat shoved back with his hands resting at his hips.

“I am happy to give an interview to the press,” Mr. Anderson offered. “I will explain the circumstances that brought me to the old house and why I’d requested Miss James’s company.”

Carlton turned to face the Englishman. “And you truly think that will silence the tongues of a Midwestern Christian community? Have you ever attended an assembly of the Ladies’ Society of Benevolent Morality?”

“I didn’t realize such a group existed,” Mr. Anderson said.

“Oh, it certainly does!” Carlton James shot a look at Effie as though she should have foreseen her future.

Had the victim been lying in the house and still alive and in need of assistance, would she be under scrutiny for rushing inside with Mr. Anderson and Mr. Cropper simply for attempting to help?

“Does no one care about Mr. Anderson’s feelings?” Effie startled them all with her audacity. The room fell silent as Mr. Anderson’s gaze dropped to her. She wasn’t one to be flippant and impulsive, but somehow the gravity of what they faced superseded propriety. “Considering his wife has potentially been—I apologize, Mr. Anderson—murdered, there is so much more here to contend with.”

Katherine eased slowly into her chair.

Carlton James cleared his throat.

Effie met the cavernous stare of Mr. Anderson, and for several long seconds neither of them blinked.

At last, Mr. Anderson broke eye contact.

“There is no doubt,” Carlton acknowledged, “that the situation in which we find ourselves is both reprehensible and tragic. There is no pleasant outcome to be had in any of it.”

“I-I have a possible solution,” Bethany inserted hesitantly. “It’s quite ridiculous perhaps, and I know I’m not a part of this family and so I really should excuse myself.”

Katherine waved off Bethany’s attempt to be polite. “You have been a dear friend to Effie her entire life. Even today in bringing us the newspaper.”

Bethany smiled gently, and Effie noticed that even in the clamor and tension, Bethany maintained a genteel delicacy. Effie wished she were half as beautiful and half as sweet. Instead, she was average in appearance and personality, and when pushed, she was more forthcoming than she was discreet. Bethany would never have gotten herself in such a dilemma, and yet somehow she still would have figured out how best to help Polly.

“Please tell us, what is your solution?” Carlton addressed Bethany, who folded a kerchief in her lap, probably for something to do besides give either of the men in the room her direct attention. It was intimidating, Effie was sure, to be proposing anything to Effie’s father and to a complete stranger.

Bethany issued a delicate cough. “I’m thinking that this outlandish problem requires an equally outlandish solution. At least a temporary one.”

The look of apology Bethany cast Effie made Effie straighten in her seat. She braced herself. Bethany would wish her no ill will, but . . .

“What if you were to announce your intentions toward each other?” Bethany asked. “If you were to do so, then it wouldn’t seem such a scandalous thing, your . . . uh, proximity of yesterday.”

“Absolutely not!” Effie said.

Their father held up his hand to silence her.

Bethany continued, even as her voice lost confidence in the idea, as though hearing it aloud revealed its ludicrous elements. Her voice dropped to almost a whisper. “You announce your engagement to the papers, stating belatedly that circumstances regarding Predicament Avenue had gotten ahead of the announcement. It may not completely assuage the rumormongers, but at least it gives some backbone as to why you were together.”

“It will not rectify things.” Thankfully, Mr. Anderson looked none too enticed by Bethany’s bold proposition. “It would imply that Miss James had dalliances with a married man prior to the possibility of his wife’s passing.”

“So true.” Effie’s father quickly shot down the notion, and the glance Bethany gave Effie was tinged with relief.

“Perhaps it sounded better in my head,” Bethany mumbled.

“I appreciate your desire to help,” Mr. Anderson offered Bethany the small comfort of his nod. She seemed to take respite in it, even as her cheeks warmed from embarrassment.

Effie gave her friend a wobbly smile. Bethany had meant well.

“The fact remains, what’s happened has happened,” Mr. Anderson stated. “Unfortunately, we shall have to deal with the repercussions. An investigation will be forthcoming into what occurred at Predicament Avenue. With no body, there is no confirmed victim and—”

“For your sake, I do hope it wasn’t your wife, Isabelle,” Katherine interjected. Mr. Anderson dipped his head. “Still, it does nothing to help with respect to my daughter—my daughters—and their involvement in this horrible set of events.”

Carlton leveled a dark look at Mr. Anderson.

“No. And I’m afraid, Mr. James, that the honest truth is that nothing can be done.” Mr. Anderson’s words began to take on an ominous, dark quality. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience this has caused, and I have no desire to sully your daughter’s reputation, but we’ve had a crime committed and, if the evidence is correct, a murder. A murder your daughter Polly witnessed, which has been reported in the papers.” He paused, letting his words—and the implications of them—sink in.

“What are you saying?” Carlton shot a look at Effie. She met her father’s eyes. They were both realizing the truth of Mr. Anderson’s statement.

“It appears there’s a killer loose in Shepherd, Mr. James, and Miss James here and her sister have been aligned with the heinous crime as witnesses. And that poses a far greater threat than a tarnished reputation.”

The clock on the mantel ticked away.

Effie could see the worry making its way into the fine lines of her mother’s face. Bethany sat looking very uncomfortable. Effie’s father was staring at the ceiling as though he could peer straight through the floorboards and into the room where Polly lay unresponsive, tended now by one of her brothers.

After his warning, Mr. Anderson had politely excused himself, and no one had the wherewithal to stop him from exiting.

Now Effie heard his footsteps fading in the entryway of their home. She shot to her feet and, ignoring her mother’s cry of her name, hurried after Mr. Anderson. His broad form had already exited the front door. Effie chased after him. The flurry of her footsteps behind him made the man stop and turn on the walkway, bordered by bushes turning green in the springtime promise of beauty.

“Are you saying my sister is in danger?” Effie blurted out without regret.

Mr. Anderson swiped his hat from his head, holding it before him in his fists. “I’m saying it is a possibility, yes.”

Effie descended the steps of the veranda, her hand poised for balance along the railing. “I don’t understand. Why would—?”

“Give it a moment of thought, Miss James, and it will all make sense.” Mr. Anderson’s words weren’t delivered callously. Just a straightforwardness that, for the moment, Effie appreciated. The dramatics of the morning had her nerves feeling taut and exposed.

“But Polly is no threat to whoever is responsible for what happened. She hasn’t spoken a word since that night.”

“True, but if she regains her faculties, that could change the ending to the perpetrator’s story—an ending they will not want. Anonymity is their primary goal at this point.”

“If there’s no body, then there isn’t a crime, right?” Effie was desperate to find justification that would release Polly—and herself—from the danger of retribution.

“Miss James,” Mr. Anderson said matter-of-factly, “with what we found at the house on Predicament Avenue, and with the knife, it’s not a question of whether a crime was committed. It is a question of to whom and by whom.”

Effie studied Mr. Anderson, who seemed patient enough under her perusal. The breeze lifted his hair from his forehead, but it didn’t soften the angular lines of his face or the mystery she saw in his eyes. “And your wife? You truly believe she was the one attacked?”

“For more reasons than I can count, I pray not.” The gravity in his tone was perhaps the first sign that he cared for the situation emotionally, beyond the logic and the reasoning of solving the questions that hung over the house on Predicament Avenue.

“And you love her?” Effie let the question slip out before she could stop it.

“My wife?” Mr. Anderson gave a solemn nod. “More than the breath in my body,” he answered.

Effie’s heart sank for reasons she couldn’t explain. She felt empathy for him—a wife who had gone missing who he presumed might have been murdered. And for herself because she found him an egregious interruption to her sensibilities. The way his eyes were like hooded pools of secrets that belied not the secrecy of ill intent but some unspoken pain—some hidden burden that he had buried so deep within that he appeared cold and distant and even rude.

“I am sorry, Mr. Anderson,” Effie breathed. “Truly.”

“Stay well, Miss James.” He dipped his head and repositioned his hat.

Effie nodded in response. “And you.”

But their eyes stayed latched on to each other, gauging and searching. For the first time, Effie felt as if Mr. Anderson was letting her in just a little bit. It was a place she was shocked to find she wanted to go, and it was a place she knew was not hers to venture into.

It was Isabelle’s place. Isabelle Addington. His wife.