Delivering the Truth (10 page)

She made as if to show me up, but I stopped her. “I know the way. Thee has other tasks this morning, I'm certain.” I had made one home visit early in the pregnancy, so I'd know where the birth chamber would be and to ascertain it would be suitable. Hardly an issue with a rich family like this one, but it was part of my practice, and I carried it out for every client.

She thanked me and hurried off to the back of the house. I climbed the gentle curving stairs stretching the width of two arm spans. The
dark wood of the railing gleamed from polish and contrasted with the lighter wood of the balusters. A tall arched window marked the landing, but the cloudy day let in little light. I continued up to the second floor and turned left into the hallway toward Lillian's rooms at the end. I tapped lightly on her door.

“Lillian, it's Rose Carroll. May I come in?” I heard nothing but turned the knob anyway. I poked my head into the room. The tall drapes were still drawn and a gas light shone above the bed. Lillian sat up amid a half dozen pillows and cushions reading a letter with a small smile of satisfaction on her face. Her hair looked remarkably well arranged for one still abed. A breakfast tray sat on the small table next to her.

“Lillian?” I said again.

She glanced up and whisked the letter under the puffy coverlet. Her expression transformed into one of pain.

“Oh, Rose, I'm so glad you came.” She patted the bed next to her. “You heard our tragic news? Poor dear Thomas has met an early demise.”

I sat next to her. “Thee must be grieving for thy stepson.”

She nodded gravely, although her eyes were dry. “And for William. It has hit him hard, I'm afraid. That policeman, a Donovary—”

“Donovan. Kevin Donovan. He's the detective looking into the arson, too.”

“Yes, yes.” She waved a hand. “He came at first light to tell us. William received him and then came wailing up the stairs to tell me. Wailing, I tell you. A grown man.”

“Thomas was his firstborn, and his son,” I said. “Anyone would so mourn, as I'm sure thee is for thy stepson. How is thee feeling physically? Has thee noticed any change in the baby's activity?”

“No. Why should there be?” She shrugged, as if a member of her household hadn't just died by violent means.

“I'm glad. Sometimes a stressful event can cause the body to react. I'd like to do a quick examination, only to be sure you both are well. May I?”

“If you'd like.”

I drew out the Pinard horn and checked the baby's heartbeat. It was strong and regular. I palpated the baby and got a little kick into my hand for my efforts. No change in position from last week. I monitored Lillian's pulse for half a minute and listened to her heart, as well.

“You both seem perfectly healthy. And thee doesn't seem to need a calming tonic, of which I'm glad.”

“Would you look in on William before you go?” Lillian asked. “If he'll let you? He's the one who might need a tonic.”

“There's no reason not to go down and speak with him, thyself, Lillian. Doesn't thee want to?”

“I will, by and by. I have also sent for Robert Clarke. They're close friends, and perhaps Robert can comfort my husband. But will you, please, see if you can calm William a bit?”

“I shall. Please accept my sympathies for losing Thomas.”

Lillian tossed her head ever so slightly. “It's really William you should be saying that to, Rose. In truth, Thomas didn't like me and I didn't like him. His death doesn't change that.”

I nodded as I rose. I thought as much. I bade her
good-bye
and made my way slowly down the staircase. As I did, a tall, slender young man burst through the door from the outside and rushed up the stairs toward me, a shock of light hair falling in his eyes. When he saw me, he slowed. He brought his hand to his brow and gave me a mock salute with a single raised eyebrow. I was about to greet him when he clattered on past me. I watched him go, realizing he must be the man Lillian had gotten into the carriage with after her visit to my office. A relative, most likely, possibly a younger brother.

At the library door I knocked.

“Don't want any,” William's voice barked.

“William Parry, it's me, Rose Carroll. The midwife.”

“Wife's upstairs,” he said in a gravelly voice.

“Yes, I just saw her. May I come in? She asked me to check on thee.”

Silence. I waited. “Please?”

At last the knob turned. He opened the door and stood before me. His face had lost the flushed look of a man who indulges in rich foods and fine liquors without benefit of fresh air and exercise. Now his skin was pale and his eyes devoid of light.

I held out my hand. “I want to express all my sympathy for the loss of thy son, William. I was truly sorry to hear the news.” When he kept his own hands at his side, I dropped mine.

“Lillian is concerned for thy health,” I went on. “I can bring thee a sedating tonic.”

He sank into a large leather armchair, rubbing his brow with one hand. He gazed up at me. “I don't want to be sedated. I want to feel the same stabbing pain my boy felt. And I want to feel the rage when it replaces the millstone of sorrow that's within me. When they catch this person, I'm going to rip him apart with these hands.” He held his hands up in front of him, turning them from side to side.

“I lost my own sister last year, mother to five children. I know that millstone well.”

He looked into my eyes. “But this was my boy, Miss Carroll. He was my baby, then my little boy, and then my son, the man. I know he was a prickly type, but he didn't deserve to die. Not before me. And to be brutally murdered.” His voice wobbled and he swallowed hard. “Please go.” He sank his face into his hands and mumbled something I didn't catch.

“I will. Once again, please accept my sympathies. I hold you all in the Light.”

I donned my outerwear and let myself out. As I walked away, a fine carriage pulled up and Robert Clarke stepped out. Perhaps he could comfort his friend. So much death in our town in so few days.

fifteen

I walked slowly toward
home, barely seeing my path. I had Genevieve's postpartum call to make and two clients to see this afternoon. But for now, my brain was full of possibilities about who could have stabbed Thomas Parry in the dark hours of the night, and my gait kept pace with the fullness of my thoughts. Kevin had joked Lillian might have killed her stepson. I thought that highly unlikely for several reasons, primary being that she was a typical upper-class young woman with no muscles in her arms to speak of. She never needed to work a busy loom, lift a hod of coal, or wrestle a calf out of its mother. She didn't knead bread or scrub laundry. That said, what if she so detested Thomas that she hired someone else to do him in? She'd been reading some kind of missive when I'd first entered the room, and had been smiling, not full of grief. I supposed that didn't necessarily make her a murderer or even a conspirator, especially when she was the first to admit she was not sad about Thomas's passing.

Ephraim was a logical choice for a suspect, but I didn't want him to be a killer. I prayed he was not. Maybe William had an enemy who chose to strike at him by killing his son. The same carriage business competitor who started the fire could have also killed Thomas, if that theory were correct. But Kevin had rightly pointed out Parry's factory wasn't the one to envy of the top three or four. That honor would belong to the Clarke factory, or perhaps Ned Bailey's establishment. I wished I'd asked Kevin where the murder had happened and who had discovered the body.

I longed to discuss all this with David and wondered where he was today, what he was doing. I smiled to myself, picturing him examining patients, smiling at them, reassuring them, explaining both their ailments and their treatments. He had a bedside manner much to be emulated. But in place of being able to talk through the murder with David, I suddenly realized where I might be able to learn more. In a town this size, I was sure that information was already running through all the gossip channels. I changed course slightly and headed down Main Street to Market Square and Sawyer's Mercantile. The busy general store was always an active source of news. Whether the details were accurate or not was a different matter.

Two minutes later I glanced in all directions and lifted my skirts slightly to cross the busy, muddy,
manure-laden
intersection where Main, Elm, Market, and High Streets meet. I entered the store, which sold all manner of goods. Thread. Awls. Cheese. Great coats. Sacks of flour. Toys. Ale.

Bolts of fabric lined one corner. Opposite were rows of horseshoes, brushes, and crops. Jars of candy sat on the front counter. Behind the register a
glass-fronted
cabinet held bottles of tonic and jars of liniment. Above the cabinet a poster proclaimed the corrective and invigorating powers of Hostetter's Celebrated Stomach Bitters. A woman was purchasing a length of cloth and sewing notions. A small boy pushed a toy truck back and forth on the floor behind her. A
white-haired
man and a taller one with almost no hair stood near the stove warming their hands and talking in low voices.

I waved to Catherine Toomey, the owner, where she stood behind the counter. She was a
good-natured
woman I had assisted in the birth of her twin daughters a few years earlier. I moved to the stove. Drawing off my gloves, I joined the men appreciating the slow steady warmth.

“Terrible news this morning, wasn't it?” I said, not looking directly at either of them. I wagered these two would be a rich lode of gossip to mine.

“Oh, certainly, miss,” the taller one said. “May Thomas Parry rest in peace.”

“It's a sad morning for his family,” I murmured. “Have you heard who found him, and where?”

The slighter of the two men pursed his lips. “I won't want to be spreading gossip around, but I have heard you're a trustworthy type. Miss Carroll, the midwife, isn't it?”

I nodded and smiled with what I hoped was a trustworthy look.

“Well, it was O'Toole who reported it. Said he was on his way home from the pub when he stumbled across the body down near the lower falls, by where Wing Supply overlooks the river.”

“Jotham O'Toole?” I asked.

“That's the one,” the taller man said. “He ran up the hill to Market Square here yelling his fool head off. ‘A body! A body!' he was shouting. ‘A man is dead!'” The man acted it out with great enthusiasm. “My son was on his own way home and he caught up O'Toole and asked him who the body was. ‘Parry. Thomas Parry. He's been stabbed,' O'Toole told my boy. Then my son saw young Officer Gilbert driving by on the night patrol and hailed him. He sounded the alarm. And here we are. No more the wiser.”

The other man shook his head. “Haven't caught the killer yet, not that I know of.”

“I'm sure they will soon,” I said.

“Parry had been taking a goodly amount of drink at the pub earlier on, I did hear,” the tall one remarked. “And had himself some words with that Pickard fellow, the one what's always got his nose in a book.”

Ephraim was involved, then.

“They had a drunken brawl outside, was what I was told,” said the
white-haired
man.

“Have you heard what Thomas was stabbed with?” I asked, lowering my voice. “The murder weapon, so to speak?”

The slighter man gazed around, and then back at us. “They said 'twas a needle. A knittin' needle. One of them sharp ones.” He pantomimed sliding a slender object up and under his own ribs.

“No,” scoffed the taller one. “It was a cotter pin. See that one there?” He pointed at the wall of tools, fasteners, and the like. Several long pins with rings at one end and a sharp pointed end at the other hung from a hook. “That was the weapon. That would do the trick right nice.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “What's your interest in all this, then, Miss Carroll? Don't let that detective know you've been asking so many questions, he'll say you've a been meddling.”

“I'm a curious person, I suppose,” I said with a little laugh as I pulled my gloves back on. “I must go,” I said to the men. Each touched his forehead as if tipping his hat, if he had been wearing one instead of holding it in his hand. At the counter, I selected a piece of candy for each Bailey child, and then added several more, thinking of Orpha's
great-granddaughters
. Sometimes it was handy to have a few spares tucked away, just in case, a practice I had learned from Harriet. I paid at the register, exchanging a few words with Catherine. Crossing the intersection again, I headed down Water Street toward Genevieve LaChance's home in the Flats.

According to the gossip of the men in the store, who probably had no real information and were only conjecturing, the murder weapon wasn't a knife. They'd guessed a knitting needle, or perhaps a cotter pin. Either would do the job for someone who knew where to strike. How to avoid the ribs. Where the vital blood vessels lay. Or maybe the man's miming of a stab up into the heart was wrong. Perhaps Thomas's neck was fatally pierced and his life seeped out where he lay. Jotham O'Toole reported finding the body on his way home from the pub. After last call at the drinking establishment, I assumed, which set the time at about midnight. Thomas Parry, by all reports a difficult man, might easily have gotten into a brawl at the pub. But if the weapon was a knitting needle, that could mean the killer was a woman.

What would my sister think of this whole affair? She had been unfailingly loving to all she met and would have been horrified at the thought of murder right here in our town. But she also would have tried to understand the motivation of the killer, and would have been ready with as much forgiveness as possible. I missed her with a sharp dart to my heart.

I surely hadn't learned anything Kevin Donovan didn't already know, but I had expanded my own set of facts, including that it was Minnie O'Toole's brother who had found Thomas's body. After I checked in on Genevieve LaChance and her baby, I might detour over to Fruit Street and pay Minnie and her baby boy their own postpartum visit.

As I walked near the lower falls, I glanced to my right where the water rushed over sharp crags of boulders. I imagined what Thomas's death must have looked like: the dead man lying perhaps at an odd angle on the rocks, nearly tumbled into the rushing Powow itself, blood soaking his white collar like he'd dyed it red. I shuddered.

I climbed the outside steps to the LaChance flat to ascertain whether Genevieve and the baby were both healthy and thriving. I found the newly delivered mother scrubbing clothes out on the laundry porch only three days after the birth, the babe tied to her back with a wide strip of cloth. Genevieve's cheeks showed color and she moved with vigor. She slid the baby girl around to the front and invited me to sit.

I took the tiny girl onto my lap. After checking her, I asked, “And thee is recovering well?” I held the infant to my shoulder and patted her back. My Quaker sense of simplicity was nourished by this straightforward new being, who needed only her mother's milk and care to thrive.

“I am, of course. This body is made to grow and birth babies, isn't it? And that daughter of mine is a lusty nurser,” she said, rising and pinning a small shirt to a clothesline.

“I'm glad to hear it. Thee holds a good attitude about thy body.
I sometimes muse on women giving birth around the world and throughout all time. In darkest Africa, in the far East, in Europe—women are all alike. They carry their young, give birth to them, and then care for them. Speaking of young, how about thy boys?” I asked.

“My sons are adjusting to being big brothers. Although this one”—she gestured to the shirt—“can't quite understand he's no longer the baby.” She laughed.

“And is thy husband getting used to the idea of a fourth child?”

She nodded with a quiet smile. “He realized he's going to have a little girl to dote on.”

Half an hour later I was in Minnie's tiny flat. Minnie, five days postpartum, presented a picture in sharp contrast to Genevieve. Minnie wore nightclothes and her hair lay loose on her shoulder, although she was out of bed and sitting in a chair filing her nails in the dim light of curtained windows. The baby slept on a blanket in a bureau drawer resting on the bed. A glass of ale sat by Minnie's side, but neither Jotham nor the sister were in evidence. The air in the room smelled stale, like it hadn't been freshened in a long time.

I greeted her and pulled open the curtains on both windows. “How is thee?” I cracked open one window at the top.

She squinted at the light as she waved a lazy hand. “All right, I suppose. The baby doesn't let me sleep at night. I'm tired all the time.”

“I recommend some fresh air. Take the babe for a walk outdoors. Thee needs to be up and around, Minnie, to restore thy health and to be able to produce plentiful milk for thy son.”

“Oh, I suppose. But it takes so much energy to get up. And when little Billy wants to eat, well, he's very insistent.”

“So thee has named him, then?” I stroked the baby's cheek. He opened his little mouth and turned it toward my fingers in the feeding reflex.

She gave me a sharp glance. “Yes. His name's Billy O'Toole. At least for now.” She gave her head a defiant shake, as if to say,
And if you don't like it, too bad
.

“Has thy brother been by this morning?”

“Why do you ask?” Minnie's voice took on a cagey tone.

“I've heard he had a very upsetting experience last night. Well, in the wee hours of this morning, to be accurate.” I watched her.

“Oh, that. Yes, he came by and said he'd found Will—I mean, Mr. Parry's son Thomas dead by the river. It quite upset Jotham, it did.”

“I should think so. Where is he now?”

“He has his own place.” She furrowed her brow. “But I expect he's down at the police being questioned. He said they wanted to talk to him more. I hope they didn't think he killed poor Thomas. Jotham's got a hot head, but he always means well.”

Little Billy began to stir. He whimpered several times and, when he was ignored, let out a cry surprisingly loud for such a newly minted person.

“Oh, hush, child.” Minnie sounded impatient. She hoisted herself out of her chair and sank onto the bed. She drew him out of his makeshift cot and held him in the air in front of her. She cooed and murmured, but that only worked for a few moments before he commenced to howl again. She held him closer and sniffed.

“Oh, mother of God, would you smell that?” She laid him on the bed and unwrapped the cloth fastened around him, revealing a fine mess. She gazed up at me. “My sister Ida's been helping me. There's a basin of water in the kitchen and dry diapers on the line. I hope. Do you mind?”

I fetched the basin and a washing cloth, as well as two dry diapers. “Make sure thee dries him off well after thee cleans him,” I said, handing her the cloths. “So he doesn't get a rash.”

Minnie made an unpleasant face, but she managed to get her baby clean, dry, and wrapped up again, and her own hands cleaned, even as he continued to yell.

“He's got a good set of lungs,” I said. “Give him the breast and he'll quiet soon enough.” I carried the soiled items out and dumped them in a bucket of water and soap that sat at the ready, surely of the sister's doing. Minnie didn't seem like the practical sort, but she'd learn. She'd have to.

I returned to the bedroom. She sat propped up by pillows with her left breast exposed and a hungry baby latched onto it. She glanced up and sighed.

“Motherhood. It's not all nature and instinct, is it?” Her tone was resigned.

“Not entirely, no. But thee is doing a good job of it.” I brought her the glass of ale. “The two of you will learn together. Keep listening to little Billy there, and to thy own heart.”