Seven

Departures

August–Mid-September 1831

PHILADELPHIA’S POLICE FORCE, WHICH numbered some forty patrolmen and several junior officers and high constables, was one of the largest in the country. Among the high constables was sixty-two-year-old Willis H. Blayney, who as a young man had never thought he’d rise so high. He’d been a printer then, turning out books and broadsides, his fingers blistering in winter from the touch of the icy type trays and his eyes aching, winter and summer alike, from the dim light in the print shops where he and his fellows slaved well into the night. But at last he’d given up that difficult trade, entered the police force, and advanced rapidly from patrolman to captain to his present exalted rank.

Along the way he’d garnered a reputation for being a sharp-minded detective, and in the middle of August 1831, he got a chance to test that reputation. He received word from the high constable of Washington that in the course of investigating a local businessman’s claim to have been swindled by a fellow named Lino Amalia Espos y Mina, his men had gone to the main post office, confiscated some mail, and come across a mysterious letter indicating that the swindler had already bilked a widow living in or around Philadelphia. The letter might prove useless, Blayney’s opposite number in Washington informed him, for it bore no last name, was signed merely “Lucretia”; he was, however, forwarding it up to Philadelphia on the off-chance the victim could be identified.

Blayney’s investigative appetite was immediately aroused. But at first he got nowhere. One of his underlings, thinking the widow’s letter insignificant because it was anonymous, had discarded it. Blayney railed against the man’s incompetence, demanding that worktables and wastepaper receptacles be thoroughly searched, and in short order the document appeared on his desk—it had been tossed aside but not yet thrown out.

Fingering it carefully, Blayney saw at once that it was a mess, a peculiar web of underlined words, sentences that ended not just in exclamation points but sometimes in two such points, and phrases that scrawled sideways along the pages’ narrow margins. The work of a very distraught person, the high constable concluded. But also of an educated person. The writer, accusing her correspondent of having made away with her silver and gold and horse and carriage, used bookish words—said the thief had a heart of “adamant” and that she was “thunderstruck” by his behavior—and her handwriting looked tutored and ornate.

The handwriting. He knew that handwriting, the high constable realized with a start. He’d seen it in the past, set type from words written in it. And then it dawned on him—the letter writer, this Lucretia-no-last-name, was none other than Lucretia Chapman. Mrs. William Chapman. He used to print broadsides for the couple’s speech clinic. They’d moved away from the city, but once upon a time he’d known the pair well. Especially the missus. When she was single and teaching at the LeBruns’ school, she’d lived in his mother’s boardinghouse. When she’d started her own school, she’d hired his sister to teach dancing. She was a fine lady. Yes, there’d been some trouble about counterfeiters in a boardinghouse she and her husband ran for a while on Pine Street. But basically he’d never heard anything but good about Lucretia Chapman. Had someone gone and robbed that estimable woman?

Distressed, Blayney decided to show the letter to the mayor, Benjamin Richards. Then, remembering that Richards was on vacation, he took the document to the city’s recorder, Magistrate Joseph McIlvaine.

The summer heat had baked Andalusia dry. The trees were thirsting, the grass was sere. Lucretia’s eyes, too, were dry—she had at long last ceased her nightly weeping over Lino and made up her mind that she never wanted to see him again, without or even with the money he owed her. She was fanning herself on the porch and asserting this to Mercy, who’d stayed on in Andalusia to make sure she was all right, when they noticed a man making his way through the play yard. Lucretia blanched. She knew by the cocky familiar stride that it was Lino. She didn’t want to see him, she told Mercy, and ran into the house. But it was too late. Lino was vaulting up the porch steps and, with Mercy close on his heels, strutting into the parlor.

“I’ve been to New Orleans,” he announced, speaking to Lucretia as if nothing had changed between them, as if she still wanted to hear about his every exploit and adventure. “I went all the way on a railroad. Traveled night and day—at the rate of thirty miles an hour!”

“Leave me,” she said with lofty disdain.

But Lino was acting as if he hadn’t disappeared for a month, hadn’t read her accusatory letter, didn’t know she no longer considered herself his wife. Plunking himself down on the spindly, straight-backed sofa and tugging off his boots, he teased, “What’s the matter? If an angel from heaven had come and told me a wife of mine would behave this way, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

Angered, Lucretia spurted, “The chain you gave me is not gold.”

“If your affections are so slender as a chain,” Lino shrugged off her accusation, “I can explain that to you. When I gave you the chain I told you a friend had given it to me—that friend might have deceived me, or might have been deceived himself.”

Lucretia threw up to him his other deceptions, stormed that he had lied to her about where he’d stayed in Philadelphia, and with whom. He could explain those things, too, Lino insisted and, launching into a long tale, told her that because the Cuestas had been out of town, he’d taken a room at the United States Hotel and later gone to see a play at the Chestnut Street theater, only to get caught in a torrential rain. “I ran under the arcade for protection,” he rattled on, “and while I was there, two ladies of distinction came and asked me if I had an umbrella.” He didn’t, but he was about to hail a carriage, and as the ladies were soaking wet, he’d chivalrously offered them a ride back to his hotel so that they could make themselves presentable before traveling home. “I was up all night with the servants of the hotel,” he declared. “Drying their clothes in order that they might go home the next day.”

Lucretia, fed up, wanted no part of his preposterous explanation. Neither did Mercy, who shot Lino an exasperated look.

Seeing it, Lucretia put on her sternest schoolmarmish expression and, addressing her husband on her sister’s behalf, said, “My sister is not at all satisfied with this conduct!”

“We had better be separated, then,” Lino snapped. “I find I have more wives than one to please.”

“The sooner, the better,” she hurled at him.

He agreed, but, “Remember, Mrs. Chapman,” he added, “before I go, I must tell you something.”

“What is it?”

“I cannot tell you in the presence of your sister. If you will come in the other room, I will tell you.”

Reluctantly, Lucretia followed him into the dining room. She stood there unyieldingly, and into her stony silence he said something that she would never reveal, not to Mercy, not to anyone, though she did admit to one friend that it was something darkly secret, “something between ourselves.”

Shortly afterward, Lino left the Chapman house, never to return. But this time, too, he didn’t leave empty-handed. Whatever he had said in private to Lucretia had caused her to agree to write a letter of introduction for him—a letter that, at his request, said nothing about their being married. It was addressed to her relatives on Cape Cod.

The Cape Cod Winslows were an affluent and powerful clan. They’d first taken up residence in the region back in the 1600s, purchasing and clearing large tracts of wilderness and turning their property into farms. But the Cape, and in particular the Barnstable County town of Brewster where Lucretia’s relatives lived and to which Lino boarded a stagecoach after traveling by boat to Boston, had become a major center for New England’s lucrative whaling and fishing industries. Some of Lucretia’s relatives, like other members of the Cape’s landed class, had branched out from agriculture to become sea captains or manufacturers of supplies for sailing vessels, and some had invested heavily in those vessels and reaped great profits. Their profits, and indeed New England’s whaling and fishing industry itself, were soon to decline, but in 1831 many of Lucretia’s kin were living high on the hog. Lino’s coach was filled with young men eager to make their fortunes on the sea. But he had different ideas about how to make a living. Promptly upon his arrival in Brewster, Lino brandished among Lucretia’s people the letter of recommendation she’d written for him, which termed him “a very estimable young man.” Then, embroidering as he went, he recited his usual tale.

He was a major in the Mexican army, he said, the son of that country’s famous General Mina. He owned gold mines. Silver mines. Plantations. Just like his hero, Andrew Jackson. Mrs. Lucretia Chapman—he told no one that he was married to her—had been exceedingly kind to him, and because of that, and that alone, he’d given her ten thousand dollars in gold. But alas, he’d met with misfortune on his way up to the Cape. He’d lost most of his jewelry and a pocketbook containing five hundred dollars. The sum was inconsequential, for he had thousands and thousands of dollars and would make a draft on his Boston bank as soon as he got back to that city. But for now he was virtually out of cash.

Lucretia’s relatives, among them her sister-in-law, Abigail, and a host of aunts, uncles, nephews, and nieces, proved highly gullible. They offered to put him up, and even to lend him money.

Lino couldn’t have been more deferential and appreciative. When one of his new acquaintances asked if he knew the time, he pulled out his gold watch—it was William Chapman’s watch, but he alone knew this—and not only announced the time but insisted on making a gift of the timepiece to the questioner. It was a calculated move. As Lino expected, his offer was refused, and he was able to slip the watch back into his pocket. But the tale of his impulsive generosity marched as swiftly as time itself through the small seaside community, and soon not just Lucretia’s relatives but friends and neighbors of theirs began vying to have the distinguished foreigner stay at their homes.

One man who gave him hospitality was Elijah Cobb, a renowned ship’s captain who was an old friend of Lucretia’s. The author of a memoir about his seafaring days, Cobb had gone to sea at the tender age of six to help support his widowed mother and eventually sailed all over the world, visiting and trading in the West Indies, Africa, Russia, even France during the bloodiest days of the French Revolution. But exotic places, revolutions, wars didn’t really interest him—“I saw Robertspeirs head taken off, by the [infernal] Machine,” was Cobb’s laconic observation about the demise of Robespierre, the mastermind of the Terror. Rather, he was interested in money, in making it through trading in palm oil, coffee, ivory, and gold, and by the time he met Lino he had made a great deal. Yet despite his wealth and worldliness, he was thoroughly taken in by “the Major,” as the Cape Codders had begun referring to Lino.

Another man who believed Lino utterly was none other than the high sheriff of Barnstable County. To make his trumped-up tale seem credible, Lino had advertised his loss in a local newspaper—he’d done that in Washington with excellent results—and to bolster the claim, he’d reported the loss to the high sheriff. The officer, impressed by the newcomer’s fine raiment and unfamiliar accent, took him at his word when he said he was a high-ranking foreign noble and treated him with exceptional courtesy.

Unfortunately for Lino, however, big city officials were not nearly so gullible. While he was being feted at the Cape, down in Philadelphia the swift-minded Blayney and McIlvaine had decided to investigate him.

Blayney looked into his activities in the capital. He learned that Lino had introduced himself to a number of wealthy men as General Mina’s son, told them he’d lost a wallet containing hundreds of dollars, and begged them to lend him enough cash to get to Baltimore, where he had vast sums of money. Several people had fallen for this hard-luck tale, especially after reading about it in a newspaper, and lent Lino money, never to hear from him again.

McIlvaine interrogated Edwin Fanning, who’d requested an interview. The itinerant book salesman told the magistrate that he feared his deceased friend William Chapman had been poisoned to death by a man named Lino Espos y Mina.

Late in August Blayney and McIlvaine pooled their information and concluded that Lino ought to be brought in for questioning. But they didn’t know where to find him. Then, reasoning that Mrs. Chapman might be able to help them out, they decided to pay a call on her.

They came on a Sunday, while Lucretia was at church, and waited uncomfortably on the hard-backed parlor sofa. When she returned home, accompanied by her sister and a chattering band of children, Blayney greeted her warmly, consoling her on William’s death and giving her news of his mother and sister, but McIlvaine cut short the small talk and asked if they could speak to her in private. When she led them into an inner chamber, McIlvaine did all the talking. “I understand a person calling himself Mina spent some time in your house,” he began abruptly, then inquired whether, when Mina left her house, he told her where he was going.

“He said he was going to the north,” Lucretia replied.

McIlvaine wanted more. “I have in my possession very satisfactory evidence that the man is a swindler and impostor and it has become my duty to have him arrested. I also have reason to believe that you yourself suffered from his impositions.”

Lucretia denied having been imposed upon by Lino. She didn’t know that McIlvaine and Blayney had read her last letter to him. But when the magistrate pressed her, she admitted that Lino had made off with many of her possessions.

He wasn’t surprised, McIlvaine offered, and informed her that Lino had been in Washington for some time and had swindled several people there.

Washington? For some time? Lucretia was perplexed. “I’d supposed from his account that during his absence he’d been to New Orleans and back,” she murmured. Then she added with awe, “He went all the way on a railroad and traveled night and day at the rate of thirty miles an hour.”

McIlvaine snickered. “Madam, there is no railroad to New Orleans.” A train to that city had long been under construction, but it was not due to start carrying passengers until the autumn.

Startled by the magistrate’s information, Lucretia began to pale.

McIlvaine noticed the change in her complexion, but he was a businesslike man, one not to be swayed from his duties by any excessive reactions from the female sex. “From my knowledge of the character of this man,” he intoned, “and of the lower classes of the nation to which he belongs, and from information I have received of the circumstances attending the death of Mr. Chapman, I have a very strong impression that Mr. Chapman died by poison, and that he administered it.”

This time Lucretia’s face turned ashen. There was no mistaking her distress. In all his years of interviewing witnesses and suspects, McIlvaine had never seen a face drain so completely and suddenly of color. Yet although clearly the woman had been affected by his statements, she didn’t seem surprised by them. He’d hoped she would be, hoped she’d ask what reasons he had for making such a dire allegation about her boarder. But she said nothing, just put her face down on her arm.

He could no longer see her expression, but he pushed on. “Did anything occur,” he said to her bowed head, “to make you suspect the same thing that I suspected?”

Lucretia took a long time before answering, so long that McIlvaine began to worry that she might have gone into shock. But after an interval she straightened up, her eyes focused firmly on his, and seemed to have mastered the feeling—what feeling it was, McIlvaine couldn’t be sure—that had previously overcome her. “No,” she said, her voice controlled, “No, I saw nothing of the kind. Lino was Mr. Chapman’s kind nurse during his illness.”

Afterward she went into detail about that illness. She went into detail, too, about why Lino had come to be in the house in the first place, and described at length his asking for charity, his revealing he was wealthy, and her and her husband’s decision to let him live with them. McIlvaine heard her out with a certain amount of cynicism, thinking she was taking great pains to try to convince him that any attentions she’d paid to the man had been paid with her husband’s full approbation. He made a mental note of this reaction of his, then once again urged her to give him any information she could about Lino’s whereabouts. “He is a swindler,” he pronounced, “and it is your duty to give me that information.”

Lucretia denied having any information other than what she’d already provided. “I have no knowledge further than that he went to the north,” she repeated dully.

Bidding her goodbye, McIlvaine swore, “If it is possible by any effort of the police, this man shall be taken and punished for his crimes,” and once out of the house he directed Blayney to alert the police in Boston and New York to keep an eye out for Mina and arrest him at once if he turned up. But he was dissatisfied with how his talk with Lucretia had gone. It had left, he would say later, “a mystery upon my mind.”

Up at the Cape, Lino had set his sights higher than on recouping false losses. He had made the acquaintance of an unmarried Winslow woman, a niece of Lucretia’s whose looks were modest but whose means were sizable, and decided to try to persuade her to marry him. If she consented, he would be able to obtain her property, just as he’d obtained Lucretia’s.

He was staying at Cobb’s, but he busied himself with Lucretia’s niece, not the old sea captain. He took the young woman for walks down romantic country paths and along the water’s pearlescent froth. He sang to her. He told her she was the prettiest woman he’d ever met. And one late summer’s evening, when the air was tinged with a hint of autumn and the fading light foreshadowed the loneliness of winter, he asked her to marry him.

Lucretia’s niece was flattered, and admitted she was drawn to him. But she anticipated, she cautioned him, that her family would oppose her marrying him, given that he was not just a stranger but a foreigner.

Lino told her not to worry about the family. He and she could simply elope and have a secret wedding in Boston.

His ardor was captivating. Lucretia’s niece agreed to elope with him and accepted his suggestion that in order to escape detection, they travel separately to Boston, he setting out in a day or two, she coming down a few days later.

He had not communicated with Lucretia since he’d left Pennsylvania. But after her niece said she’d marry him, he decided, perhaps partly out of some unaccustomed twinge of guilt, to write to her again. He addressed her coolly, calling her “Dear Madam,” and said nothing of his forthcoming marriage. But he told her he had opened an account with a Philadelphia banker named Juan Bitonia and suggested that if she needed any money, she ask Bitonia to give her some from his account. Additionally, he enclosed a bank draft for one thousand dollars and asked her to redeem it at Bitonia’s and send him the cash in care of Elijah Cobb’s mercantile establishment in Boston. He would be leaving for Boston, he informed her, in two days.

The letter was intercepted by Blayney and McIlvaine.

Lino arrived in Boston sometime during the first week of September. Avoiding the Sun Tavern, from which he had so ignominiously fled two years earlier, he took a room at a fashionable hotel and at once began trying to make friends with the wealthy businessmen who frequented the hotel’s public rooms. He was successful. In short order he met one such man, a prominent Boston merchant, and charmed him so thoroughly that when the merchant learned Lino was single, he invited him to a masquerade ball he was hosting on the weekend. His fete would be attended, he told Lino, by “nearly a hundred ladies of the first families.”

Lucretia’s niece had not yet come down from the Cape, and immediately Lino began to weigh the possibility of making an even grander match than the one with her had promised to be. Perhaps, he schemed, he could woo and wed not another provincial Winslow but a daughter of one of those first Boston families. The ballroom etiquette of the day required a host to see to it that every lady danced. Surely his host would press Lino into service. More, since etiquette also decreed that guests ought to assume that those introduced to them by respectable hosts were of a social standing equal to their own, surely his dance partners would view him as a fit suitor.

Exhilarated by his new possibilities, on the day of the ball Lino went shopping. He’d already spent most of the money that had been lent to him at the Cape. But he’d forged himself a few letters of credit and convinced a Boston bank of their authenticity. He’d even gotten the bank to give him a letter promising a cash advance the very next day, an advance of nine thousand dollars. Armed with the letter, he began looking for a proper outfit, something that would set him off handsomely as he swayed to waltz music and performed the intricate figures of the cotillions. What would look best? A military costume, he decided. It would suit the son of General Mina, and besides, he’d always fancied himself a military officer.

In a store that specialized in uniforms, he found just what he wanted—a Spanish officer’s dress jacket; it had gold epaulets with fringes thick as mops. He bought the jacket on credit and then, spying a dashing hat bedecked with six velvety ostrich plumes, he bought that, too.

Back in his hotel room, he laid out his costume on the bed, bathed, and was about to get dressed when three Boston policemen burst into the room, pinioned his arms behind his back, and told him he was under arrest.

Lucretia didn’t know yet that Lino was in jail, but on the day after he was arrested, she appeared in McIlvaine’s office. She’d been to see a lawyer, John Campbell, a member of the Pennsylvania state legislature who’d handled a few matters for her and William in the past, and she’d told him that the police had been asking her about her erstwhile boarder. She’d also confessed to the lawyer that she was married to the man. With her consent, Campbell had passed this information on to McIlvaine, who’d demanded she come in for further questioning, and the politic lawyer had advised her to do so promptly. You have nothing to fear, he’d counseled, you’re as much Mina’s victim as any businessman he’s said to have swindled.

Campbell wasn’t with her on the day that, following his advice, she appeared at McIlvaine’s. But taking her cue from what her attorney had said, she told the magistrate, “I have been deceived and injured by Lino Espos y Mina.” Then she begged him to tell her how to protect herself and her character from any consequences she might face as a result of Lino’s deceptions.

McIlvaine heard her out coldly. He’d been thinking ever since learning of her imprudent marriage that she was a trollop and her marriage the product of gross infatuation. “I cannot promise that any step you take will relieve you from the consequences of your rash conduct,” he said to her stiffly. “But if you choose to be candid in your communications to me, if you show your sincerity by giving me all the means in your power to bring Mina to justice, I will do all I can, consistent with my duty, to rescue you from those consequences.”

Lucretia nodded, and to show him she now no longer doubted what he’d told her about Lino’s being a swindler, she handed him the letter Lino had sent her from Cape Cod. She had tried, she explained, to find Bitonia, the banker Lino mentioned in the letter. Tried and failed. “There is no man named Bitonia,” she said bitterly.

McIlvaine had already seen the letter and its enclosed bank draft, seen it and afterward let it be delivered to the unsuspecting Lucretia. “Fictitious,” he declared, glancing cursorily at the bank draft. Then, “Did Mina palm upon you any other documents or papers?”

Lucretia had come prepared. She showed him a will Lino had written two weeks after coming to stay at her house, a will promising her fifteen thousand dollars for having looked after him when he was sick, the money to be delivered to her in Mexico City in the event of his death. She also showed him a certificate from Don Tomas Montolla, the minister of Mexico in Washington, certifying that she and Lino were lawfully married.

McIlvaine knew why she’d brought him the will. Clearly she’d wanted him to understand why she and William Chapman had paid such extraordinary attention to their boarder. But the certificate from the Mexican minister? “For what purpose was this paper obtained?” he asked.

“Señor Mina’s health is fragile,” Lucretia said. “After we were married I repeatedly told him that in case of accident or death to him, I would have no means of claiming my rights to his properties.”

McIlvaine studied the certificate and snorted, “It is in Lino’s handwriting. And that seal on it is a forgery.”

Lucretia had known all along that Lino had filled out the blanks on the certificate himself. He’d done so, he’d told her, because Montolla, being overly busy, had directed him to. But he’d also told her that the seal and the minister’s signature were authentic. Now she knew that everything was false, the writing in the blanks, the loopy letters of the minister’s signature, even the crested Mexican seal. And the promise of money from Bitonia’s bank. And the bequest of fifteen thousand dollars. “I want to obtain a divorce from Mina,” she said to McIlvaine.

“I can offer you no opinion on this,” the magistrate replied in his chilly tone, and gesturing at the dubious certificate, said, “You must give me that paper. It will enable me to detain Mina on a charge of forgery committed in Pennsylvania.”

Lucretia got up to go and deposited Montoya’s certificate on McIlvaine’s desk. Then she added the will, the letter, and the bank draft from Cape Cod. That done, she walked to the door of the magistrate’s office. But at the door she turned, came back to the desk, and laid a gloved hand down on the papers. “Will these communications get me into trouble?” she asked.

“You have come to me voluntarily,” McIlvaine said. “And I have pledged myself to you. I have nothing to add. It is for you to decide whether the papers should be left or not.” He did not tell Lucretia that throughout their conversation he had purposely abstained, out of legal scruples, from asking her a single question about the death of William Chapman. Had he done so, McIlvaine thought, it might have been the end of their voluntary conversation.

Lucretia, her gloved fingers still on the documents, hesitated. She’s agitated, McIlvaine surmised. But at last she left the papers on the desk and departed.

Two days later, as soon as McIlvaine received word from Boston that Mina was in custody, he sat down at his desk and wrote a letter to Lucretia, informing her of this fact. He also wrote to Thomas Ross, the deputy attorney general of Bucks County. He had a case to turn over to him, he wrote. A case of forgery. And possibly of murder.

On September 17, 1831, a week after Lucretia’s visit to McIlvaine, the Philadelphia National Gazette printed an article that read, “We understand that a most consummate villain, who passes by the name of Lino Amalio Espos y Mina, has been arrested at Boston.… Since the arrest of Mina, circumstances have been developed which leave no doubt that he is a villain of no ordinary character. Mr. Blayney has been put in possession of facts which show that he married a respectable lady in the vicinity of Philadelphia, ten days after the decease of her husband, having induced her to believe that he was the son of the celebrated General Mina, and a foreigner of high distinction. He dispossessed the lady of all her valuable jewelry, plate, and personal property which it appears he converted into cash in Baltimore. There are circumstances almost amounting to positive evidence, which warrant the belief that the husband of the lady was poisoned. A forged draft for $1000, drawn by Mina on a merchant in Philadelphia, has been intercepted through the mail.… A demand having been made for Mina by the Governor of Pennsylvania, he will of course be conveyed thither for trial.”

Lucretia heard about the article before she saw it. She was expecting the imminent arrival of her two new students when her friend Sophia Hitchbourn knocked on the door and, fairly bursting with news of the story, cried, “I hear Lino’s been arrested in Boston! On suspicion of poisoning William!”

“Is it possible?” Lucretia replied, sounding incredulous.

“I hear you married him!” Sophia exclaimed. “Ten days after William died. Did you have any idea he poisoned William?”

“Of course not,” Lucretia said. Then, “Was my name in the paper?”

It wasn’t, but Sophia, like most of Lucretia’s neighbors, had met Lino, knew he styled himself the son of General Mina, and had easily figured out who the “respectable lady in the vicinity of Philadelphia” was. “Oh, Lucretia,” Sophia demanded. “How could you have been so imprudent as to marry that man?”

She didn’t answer, and Sophia said, “It must be a fact. Or they wouldn’t dare to publish it.”

“I thought he was very rich,” Lucretia mumbled. “I thought it was best for me—and for the children.”

As soon as she could, she got Sophia out of the house and ran to tell Mercy what had happened. Mercy collapsed. She fell on the floor, tears gushing down her cheeks, and Lucretia had to escort her to bed. Just then, the new students arrived, accompanied by their mother, who was planning to spend a few days at the school to see that the children settled in properly. Lucretia tried to collect herself and show the newcomers around. But her mind was aswirl. What would happen now? Would the police want to arrest her, too? She had to see that newspaper story—see it with her own eyes. She sent one of the new girls to fetch the newspaper from Sophia’s house and then felt a terrible longing to talk to someone, to unburden herself. But to whom? Mercy was still sobbing away in her room. The mother of the new girls? Yes, she seemed a most sympathetic person. She’d talk to her, she decided, and asking the woman, a Mrs. Ann Smith, to step into her bedroom, she began chattering away like a demented person, her words pouring unstoppably out of her mouth.

She told Mrs. Smith how Lino had come to her house. She told her how she and her husband had thought he was rich. She told her how William had taken sick and died. She even told her how, just a handful of days later, she’d married the stranger.

Mrs. Smith listened to her with her mouth agape. “Mrs. Chapman, I shouldn’t be surprised if this fellow had poisoned your husband!”

“Do you think so, my dear?” Lucretia sighed. “The police have intimated the same thing.”

Mrs. Smith got thoroughly upset when she heard this final detail. Instead of comforting Lucretia, she told her she’d like to withdraw her girls from the school. Dismayed, Lucretia begged her to let them remain. “Hearsay is not proof,” she reminded the woman.

Her axiom, and perhaps a refusal to refund tuition, proved persuasive. Mrs. Smith agreed to keep her girls at the school and to stay there with them for the weekend as planned. But Lucretia confided in her new acquaintance no more. It had dawned upon her that after hearing her story, most people, not just Mrs. Smith, would assume that Lino had poisoned William, and that many might assume she herself had played a role in the poisoning. That weekend she began pulling clothes out of her drawers—the clothes she had once hoped to wear in Mexico. She heaped them on her bed and bureaus, and on Monday morning, she directed the laundress to brush up her boots and braid-trimmed traveling dress.

She was putting on the traveling outfit when Mrs. Smith stopped by her bedroom. “Are you going somewhere?” she pried.

“On a short trip,” Lucretia lied. “I’m going to town to sell some books.”

Mrs. Smith didn’t believe her. “Don’t you think you are wrong to go off at a time like this?” she chided. “It looks like running off.”

“I’m not running off,” Lucretia insisted. “I’m just going a short way to sell some books and get some money. I’m badly off for money.”

But it was not a short trip she had in mind. It was a long trip, a great long trip that would take her far from Pennsylvania, far from Constable Blayney and Magistrate McIlvaine. Mercy could handle the school, just as Lucretia had meant for her to do if she went to Mexico. Mercy could mother her children. At least until she figured out a plan. For now, she had none. For now, she wasn’t even sure just where she’d go. Only that she’d best get away as soon as she could.

That afternoon she fled Andalusia. She was wearing her traveling dress, but in her bags she had secreted a man’s frock coat, trousers, and a tall hat. She would don them, she had decided, if she went somewhere she was likely to be recognized.