Back Bay (25 page)

Father Henison’s voice droned on. “His mother’s love expanded to fill the void left by his father’s death. His education and upbringing prepared him for a life filled with promise. But something was missing in Christopher, something that none of us saw.”

Evangeline wished it had been Philip Pratt whose sense of loyalty and idealism had overwhelmed him. She wished that Philip Pratt were lying in the bronze box next to her. He had presided over the demise of Pratt Industries. It was all his fault. But his sense of survival was too strong.

Philip Pratt was sitting right behind her, staring at the stained-glass windows and listening with one ear to the eulogy. He was not religious. He didn’t need to embrace the hope of an afterlife when he could experience everything in this one. To him, the body in the casket was all that remained of his nephew, and he was convinced that Carrington had committed suicide.

When he had first seen Carrington twisting at the end of the rope, Pratt had thought only of William Rule. He wanted to tell the police that Rule had killed his nephew, but Soames reminded him that Rule was too smart to be killing people, either in Boston or California. Rule was too close to his goal to endanger it now. He was too sensible to make a mistake.

Pratt had agreed. Rule hadn’t killed Christopher Carrington. The young man’s sense of family duty had run straight into his conscience, and the collision had destroyed him. A conscience was a dangerous thing, thought Pratt. In his world, he couldn’t afford to have one.

Father Henison had reached the end of his eulogy. “He was a
young man of high ideals, who heeded the words that have motivated so many in his family to greatness: ‘Of those to whom much is given, much is expected.’ He gave us all a great deal.”

A sob shook the pew. Evangeline’s mother began to cry softly. She had taken it well enough to this point, but Evangeline knew that she might come apart at any moment.

A hand closed tightly around Evangeline’s wrist. Evangeline took the hand gently in her own.

“Another generation, another tragedy. I could have stopped it.” For two days, Katherine Pratt Carrington had repeated the words like a dirge while sitting in her rocking chair and staring out at the ocean. This morning, when she had viewed her grandson’s body for the last time, she had neither spoken nor cried, and she had been silent since. The periodic tightening of her hand was her only expression of grief. Her shock was deepening.

Evangeline hoped that the police investigation would end quickly. Whatever the cause of her brother’s death, she knew that a long inquest would be too much for her mother and grandmother to bear. For their sake, perhaps it would be best to accept the verdict of suicide.

Calvin Pratt stepped into the pulpit and straightened his tie. His complexion was ashen, his voice weak. “Ladies and gentlemen, a young man of high ideals has passed from our midst, but as he would remind us, there can be no time for mourning.” His voice cracked, and he fought back his emotions.

William Rule sat with his wife at the edge of the large group of mourners. “Pratts always have something to say,” he whispered, “but all the talk in the world won’t bring their nephew back. Damn shame, a smart kid like that knockin’ himself off.”

“Why do you think he did it, Ruley?”

“Because he couldn’t bear to see an outsider take over the family company.”

“You?”

A smile curled the edges of Rule’s mouth.

“We must always remember his love of life, his love of excellence, his love of family. They far outweigh whatever momentary aberration caused him to take his own life.” Calvin Pratt’s voice
was strong at the end. He had overcome his emotions like a good lawyer and a good Pratt.

The church shook with the solemn tones of a Bach requiem.

Peter Fallon felt the vibrations in his shoes. He was sitting in the last pew, directly beneath the organ. He had visited this church often to hear the Bach Mass sung on the third Sunday of every month. He had come today because he was confused, but not over the questions of faith and morality that usually brought people into churches. His concerns were more mundane: an ancient note that no one knew about; a Revere tea set worth two million dollars or more; the art dealer who rediscovered it after a hundred and fifty years and refused to reveal his source; the writer who claimed it was a fake, then disappeared into a pint bottle of Old Mr. Boston; and now, the suicide of Christopher Carrington—seemingly as secure as the First National Bank—who had discussed the tea set with Fallon over brunch and hung himself after dinner.

Fallon had spent the day after Carrington’s death analyzing their conversation at La Crêperie. He wondered if Carrington’s death was connected to the tea set. He remembered Carrington’s stiffness when the tea set was mentioned and Carrington’s relief when he realized Fallon’s ignorance, but Fallon drew no conclusions. He wasn’t thinking very clearly. Two deaths in seventy-two hours had left him numb.

The following day, Fallon had tried to find two people who might answer a few of his questions. Lawrence Hannaford was in London on business and wouldn’t be back for five days. Jack C. Ferguson had vanished. Fallon combed through the records of alcoholic hospitals, Skid Row drunk tanks, and the city morgue, but found nothing about Jack C. Ferguson.

Now, Fallon was filled with questions, but he didn’t expect to find any answers in the church. He had come today to pay his respects. He wanted to shake Katherine Carrington’s hand, say a few comforting words to an old woman in her grief.

The Episcopal Mass was over and the bronze casket was rolling down the aisle toward Fallon. Philip and Calvin Pratt led the pallbearers. Carrington’s mother and her husband led the line of
mourners that trailed out behind them like the train of a black gown.

As Evangeline and Katherine Carrington passed, Fallon tried to attract their attention. One look at the blank expression on the old woman’s face and he knew she wouldn’t recognize him. But Evangeline saw him. She glanced briefly at his seersucker suit and looked away. Her eyes neither thanked him for being there nor criticized him for intruding upon the family’s private grief.

Expressionless in a black dress—and she was still beautiful. Fallon’s eyes tracked her out the door. He wished that he had met her under different circumstances, and he realized that half his interest in the Pratts was in her. When the end of the mourning line passed his pew, he stepped into it. Outside, the group was already dispersing in the eighty-five-degree humidity. The coffin had been slipped into the hearse and was speeding toward Marblehead. Interment would be private, and there would be no brunch for family and friends. Socializing after the funeral was a Catholic custom.

Fallon noticed Evangeline helping her grandmother into the limousine at the curb. She stepped into the car, the door closed, and the black Cadillac whisked away before Fallon reached the sidewalk.

Across the street, a drunk wearing a Red Sox cap sat on the curb and sipped sauterne from a pint bottle. It was Jack C. Ferguson, and he wasn’t quite as drunk as he looked. He rarely ventured so boldly into the open, especially when he thought that Bill Rulick’s men would be around. But Ferguson had to pick up whatever bits of information were dropped at the funeral. He was a good reporter, and he never shied from an assignment.

Ferguson saw Katherine Pratt Carrington for the first time in twenty-six years, and he thought she looked pretty good. Her granddaughter wasn’t bad either. He saw Isabelle, Philip, and all the rest of the Pratts as they ducked into their limousines. He saw Rulick, paying his respects to people he hated. Then, he noticed a young man crossing the street toward him.

Jack Ferguson recognized the Irish face, but he couldn’t place it. Maybe this was one of Rulick’s men, and here was Ferguson caught like a bookie on the toilet with the cops at the door. Ferguson
reached into his jacket and grabbed the handle of his switchblade. This guy gets too close or makes one wrong move for a shoulder holster, and he’ll be picking his nuts up off the street.

The young man did not even glance at Ferguson. Most people never made eye contact with a drunk on the street; they always looked the other way or pretended he wasn’t swilling his wine right in front of them. Ferguson knew it was the best way to avoid a panhandle. He relaxed the grip on his knife and studied the face as the young man walked past.

He still had a reporter’s eyes for detail. He noticed a pattern on the crimson tie, and the connections came quickly. The pattern looked like a Harvard coat of arms. Harvard led to Cambridge, which led to an address he had memorized, which led to a name and a picture in the newspaper. Ferguson’s detective work had paid off. Peter Fallon, witness to the murder of a rumdum bartender in Southie, was a family friend of the Pratts and Carringtons.

Maybe it meant nothing, maybe everything.

About the time that Christopher Carrington’s body was lowered into the earth, Peter Fallon was riding an elevator down to the microtext room buried deep beneath Harvard’s Houghton Library.

He was no longer telling himself that this was a scholarly pursuit, that he was investigating the story of the tea set in order to illuminate the character of Horace Taylor Pratt. He knew enough about Pratt already. He was looking for satisfaction. He had to be certain that there were no connections between the death of Christopher Carrington, the disappearance of Jack C. Ferguson, and the crumbling note by Dexter Lovell on August 24, 1814.

For the good of his work, for the four years he had already invested in a master’s degree and a doctoral dissertation, he hoped that his research turned up nothing. Fallon knew that if the story became more convoluted, if Jack Ferguson’s charges against the authenticity of the tea set were convincing, he would not be able to turn back to the disciplined work of writing a dissertation.

He stepped off the elevator into the concrete bunker that housed the microtexts. He hoped that he might find new leads among the
old newspapers, and almost simultaneously, he wished that he had never found Dexter Lovell’s note.

He showed his card to the librarian at the entrance and asked if copies of
Hubcap
, Jack C. Ferguson’s weekly, were kept on film.

The librarian shook his head.

Fallon recalled that they didn’t even keep back copies of the
Boston Globe
at Widener, Harvard’s enormous main library. He would have to look in the Boston Public Library for Ferguson’s articles. But just as important to him were copies of nineteenth-century newspapers, which the Houghton Library had on film. He requested films of the
Boston Gazette
, from August and September 1814.

In the darkness of the reading room, Fallon threaded the microfilm into one of the machines. The blue projecting lamp illuminated his face, and the
Boston Gazette
, dated August 3, 1814, appeared on the screen in front of him. He rolled the film ahead to late August, about the time that Lovell had promised the arrival of the tea set.

He was glad that newspapers of the period were only four or five pages long, because the
Boston Gazette
wasn’t indexed and he didn’t know what he was looking for. He was simply hunting. He skimmed across headlines screaming alarm at the burning of Washington, editorials summoning Bostonians to the protection of the city, advertisements for felt hats and barrels of salt cod. He paid close attention to the articles usually found on the bottom of the front page. They described the murders, robberies, and other crimes which, even then, sold newspapers in Boston.

On the last page of the September 9 edition, a small article attracted Fallon’s attention:

Fallon noted the date and copied the article onto an index card. He knew that Lovell had disappeared with a black freedman. Perhaps Lovell had killed him when the black was of no further use, which meant that Lovell had made good his promise and brought the tea set to Boston.

He rolled the microtext ahead. Nothing Saturday or Sunday, but a headline Monday stopped him cold.

The rest of the story described the boy’s schooling, his family’s background, and the arrangements for his burial. It sounded to Fallon as though it had been written for last night’s deadline. The past drew closer. The sense of danger, vague and imperceptible after his first trip to Searidge, drawn into focus by Christopher Carrington’s death, was growing on the blue screen before him.

In his excitement to copy the article onto an index card, Fallon broke the tip of his pencil. He stepped out to the main desk to sharpen it. When he returned, a big man wearing a Red Sox baseball cap was studying Fallon’s viewer.

The man finished his reading, then smiled at Fallon. “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help noticing the
Boston Gazette
in your machine.
When I was an undergraduate, about forty years ago, I wrote my honors thesis on journalistic styles in the nineteenth century, and I always loved the old
Gazette
. Great reading.”