“Right here.” Matters pointed at the headstone. “Shakespeare’s grave.”
Bell peered at the stone, imagining the sequence of events. The boy was dead. The headstone was already there. Matters dug a hole. The stone marked an unmarked grave.
Matters said, “Funny thing is, he never wanted to come to the theater. Hated it. Poor kid never could fit in. Fidgeted the whole play.”
“You buried him right here when he drowned himself?”
“Like I just told you. You can dig up the poor kid’s bones if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe that you buried him. But I don’t believe that he drowned himself.”
“He drowned,” Matters repeated doggedly.
“Drowning was the least likely method Billy would have chosen to kill himself. If he drowned, he was not a suicide.”
“He drowned.”
“Then someone murdered him.”
“I would never hurt him.”
“I believe you. But you found his body.”
“I told you.”
“Did the girls mention that I knew Billy slightly at college?”
“They told me you stood up for him.”
“As bullies will, they found his worst fear and used it against him. Do you remember what that was?”
“What do you mean?” Matters asked warily.
“The crew boys were throwing him in the river. Billy was rigid with fear. Absolutely petrified—he looked like his skull was popping through his skin—screaming he couldn’t swim. They’d have pulled him out in a second, but he was so terrified of water, he couldn’t see it was just college hijinks. There is no way on God’s earth that boy would have killed himself by drowning . . .”
But even as he spoke, Bell remembered Billy’s courageous attempt to conquer his fear by asking the crew to let him train to be coxswain. Could he have tried again and triumphed in a final deranged act?
Isaac Bell found himself staring intently at the Shakespeare gravestone.
“Did you say that Billy didn’t like the theater?”
“Hated it.”
—
Bell could hear old Brigadier Mills thundering in his mind. Ticket stubs from an opera house . . . Shakespeare shows . . . We traced them to Oil City, Pennsylvania. The thunder shaped a bolt of lightning. Why would the boy keep ticket stubs to plays he hated?
“I asked why you didn’t report Billy’s death.”
“I told you. To protect the girls.”
“Which one?”
39
Which one?” Bill Matters echoed Isaac Bell.
“You’re protecting one of your daughters. Which one?”
“What do you mean, which one?”
“Edna? Or Nellie? The one who killed Billy.”
“Killed him? You’re insane.”
Not insane, thought Bell. Not even surprised, looking back. He himself had remarked on the New York Limited, Strange how the three of us keep turning up together where crimes have occurred. And when he engineered Edna’s job covering Baku for the Evening Sun and the editor asked Mind me asking which sister you’re sweet on? some sixth or seventh sense had already made him a sharper detective than he knew: Let’s just say that with this arrangement, I can keep my eye on both of them.
Not insane. Not surprised. Only sad. Deeply, deeply sad.
Bill Matters was shouting, “They loved him. Why would one of them kill Billy?”
“Because she’s a ‘natural,’ to use your word.”
“Natural what?”
“Assassin.”
—
“She snapped,” Matters said quietly. “That was the first thought in my mind when I saw them. She snapped.”
“Who?” Isaac Bell asked. “Was it Nellie? Or Edna?”
Matters shifted his eyes from Bell’s burning gaze and stared at the pond.
“Who?” Bell asked, again. “Nellie? Or Edna?”
Matters shook his head.
“Who did you see?”
“She was out there. In the water. I thought she was floating on a log. ’Til I saw his leg. I leaped in, grabbed her, tore her off him. Pulled him out, dragged him onto the grass. He was incredibly heavy. Such a little guy. Deadweight.”
“Dead?”
“I held him in my arms. She climbed out and stood behind me. I kept asking her why. Why did you do it? She didn’t deny it.”
“She admitted that she drowned him?”
“She said it was Billy’s fault. He was a coward. Wasted his opportunity.”
“What opportunity?”
“Of being a man. Men are allowed to do anything.”
Bell realized he did not fully believe Matters. Or didn’t want to. “No one saw? No one in those houses?”
“Night.”
“You saw them.”
“Full moon. Lunatic moon.”
“Who? Was it Nellie? Or Edna?”
Matters shook his head.
“Which of your girls is innocent?” Isaac Bell demanded.
“Both,” Matters said sullenly.
“One is guilty. Is it Nellie, your blood daughter? Or Edna, your stepdaughter?”
“I love them equally, with all my heart.”
“I don’t doubt that you do. Which is the assassin?”
“I can only say neither,” said Matters. “Even if they hang me.”
“Oh, they will hang you, I promise,” said Bell.
“Your question will hang with me.”
Isaac Bell realized that if somehow the assassin were to stop killing and commit no more crimes, then he could spend the rest of his life wondering and never truly knowing which of them was the woman she seemed to be and which had been a murderer. But why would she ever stop? How many more would die before he caught her?
He was struck suddenly by a terrible insight. He saw a way, a way as cruel as it would be effective, to force Bill Matters to confess.
“There is no question you will hang, Bill.”
“I don’t care.”
“The only question is, will the girl who hangs beside you be the right one?”
“What do you mean?” asked Matters. But Bell saw that he knew exactly what he meant. The blood had drained from his face. His jaw was rigid. His hands were shaking so hard, they rattled the cuffs.
“The only truth you’ve ever told is that you love both your daughters.”
“I do. I do.”
“Your assassin covered her tracks so cleverly that she could be either of them. Either Edna. Or Nellie. But justice must be done.”
“Hanging the wrong one won’t be justice.”
“Sadly, justice makes mistakes. In this case, the better liar—the natural—will go free.”
40
Grim-faced Van Dorns in dark coats and derbies flanked Isaac Bell as he strode the grassy field across the road from the Sleepy Hollow Roadhouse. The ancient tavern was still surrounded by mud. The hayfield was a verdant, boot-pounded carpet under a multicolored fleet of gas balloons in various stages of inflation.
Nellie Matters’ yellow balloon was the tallest, its bulbous top rising higher than the trees at the edge of the Pocantico estate. It was fully inflated, and she was ready to soar under a gigantic billboard for equal enfranchisement.
To VOTES FOR WOMEN she had added NELLIE MATTERS’ NEW WOMAN’S FLYOVER almost as if to ask When you get the vote, will you vote for Nellie?
Other balloons were almost filled or half-filled, hanging odd rumpled shapes in the still air. The suffragists who had brought them had added the names of their states to VOTES FOR WOMEN and phrases aimed at Rockefeller in hopes of persuading the Standard Oil titan to put his influence behind their push to amend the Constitution to give women the right to vote.
Newspapermen and -women
wandered among them, invited under the rope that held at bay the public, for whom a tiered fairground grandstand was provided. Typewriters pounded away on picnic tables in an open tent. Photographers swarmed, lugging glass-plate cameras on tripods and waving smaller Kodak instruments that allowed snaps on the run.
Bell spotted Edna Matters darting about in a white cotton dress and made a beeline for her. She had perched a New York Sun press card at a jaunty angle in the hatband of her straw boater and was jotting notes in a pocket diary. Seen from behind, the wisps of chestnut hair trailing her graceful neck could have belonged to a boy until she turned toward him and a smile lit her beautiful face.
“Hello, Isaac! What a day Nellie’s made! Everyone came. Even the dread Amanda, in a scarlet balloon.”
Bell took her arm. Edna saw the Van Dorns. “Hello, Mack, Wally. Lovely to see you again. You’re just in time. They’re about to soar. Nellie’s going first, then the rest will follow.”
Bell said, “The boys will escort you to New York.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I am terribly, terribly sorry, Edna, but we have your father at our office.”
“Is he—”
“A doctor’s patched him up. He’s all right. I will hold off turning him over to the police until you have a moment with him.”
“I better get Nellie.”
“I’ll get Nellie.”
—
He saw Nellie watch him coming.
She gave him a warm smile and a big wave, as if inviting him to join her.
It had been years since Bell’s one ride in a balloon, but he recognized the working parts from her exuberant stories: the ten-foot-diameter wicker basket of tightly woven rattan; her bank of “emergency gas” steel cylinders containing hydrogen under pressure that she could pipe into the narrow mouth of the envelope; the “load ring,” the strong circle that rimmed the mouth, holding the fabric open and anchoring the basket that hung from it; and the giant rope net that encased the towering gasbag.
The controls were simple: three levers on the edge of the basket were linked by wires to drop sand ballast to ascend or release gas to descend. The dragline to reduce weight and stop descent was coiled in the bottom of the basket. A fourth, red-handled lever was connected to the bank of cylinders of emergency gas.
Nellie was smiling in a shaft of sunlight that shined down through the fabric dome eighty feet overhead. She reminded Bell of a sea captain about to set sail—in command, confident, and alert. She stood with one hand inside her vest in the classic pose of Admiral Lord Nelson. Or Napoleon, he thought grimly. And he thought, too, that he had never seen her more beautiful. She had high color in her cheeks and excitement blazing in her eyes.
Bell vaulted into the basket. The bask ropes—the shrouds that suspended the basket from the load ring—were quivering, vibrating from the power of the gas straining to lift it.
“Hello, Achilles’ heel,” she greeted him cheerfully.
“What?”
“You’re my Achilles’ heel. Every time I try to shoot you, I miss.”
“If you want to be mythological, Nellie, say hello to your Nemesis.”
“Her, too. But if you weren’t my Achilles’ heel, you would be dead already. Somehow I could never bring myself to kill you.”
“Too late to change your mind,” said Bell.
Nellie drew her hand from her vest. Her pearl-handled derringer was already cocked. She aimed at Bell’s heart. “Don’t get close.”
“It’s over,” said Bell.
“Get out of the basket before I shoot you. You know I will.”
Bell moved toward her.
Nellie said, “I will pull the trigger this second if you do not sit on the floor. Now! You will die and it won’t change a thing and I’ll still get away.”
“How far do you think you’ll get in a balloon?”
“Last chance, Isaac. You’re bigger and stronger. I can’t let you close.”
He crossed his ankles and lowered himself into a cross-legged sitting position, poised to spring the instant she looked away. She loved to talk. It would not be hard to keep her talking.
“The wind is dead calm,” he said, “you’ll go straight up. When the gas dissipates, you’ll come down within a couple of miles from here.”
“I will go higher and higher until I find the wind. The troposphere. The stratosphere. The exosphere! As high as I have to to catch the wind.”
“You can’t breathe up there. You’ll die.”
“The wind always swings west. My body will be blown out to sea.”
“Do you want to die?”
“How would you like to die in prison or hang, Isaac? Tell me.”
“First tell me something.”
“Anything, Isaac.” She actually seemed on the edge of laughing. “What can I tell you?”
“Whose idea was it to kill for your father? His? Or yours?”
“I volunteered.”
Bell shook his head. He had tried to convince himself that her father had somehow coerced her. “Why did he accept? His own daughter?”
“He knew I could deliver. He’d seen me in action.”
“When you murdered your brother?”
“Stop asking silly questions, Isaac. Ask something important.”
“How did you learn to shoot?”
Nellie answered as if telling a story she had read in a book. “I ran away from home when I was fourteen. Like you. I joined a circus. Like you.”
“Your father told me the same story. The sheriff drove off his mother’s pigs and cows. What’s your excuse?”
She ignored the question. “By the time Father found me, the trick shootist had taught me everything she knew. I had a talent for guns—steady hands and a keen eye. I can see farther than any human being. And I can concentrate; most people can’t.”
“A natural?”
“As natural as breathing.”
“And lashing out to banish fear?”
“I’m never afraid,” said Nellie. “By the way, I see you gathering your legs to jump . . . Don’t!”
Bell made a show of relaxing his legs. “Is that your rifle in the bag?”
“I’m at my absolute best with the rifle.”
“Loaded with explosive bullets?”
“Stop showing off, Isaac. Everyone knows you’re a crack detective.”
“Who’s it for?”
“Who do you think it’s for?”
“Rockefeller.”
“For what he has done to my father, John D. Rockefeller will pay with much, much more than his life.”
“What could be more than life, Nellie?”
“What Rockefeller loves most. Do you have any other questions, Isaac?”
He had to keep her talking. “A young soldier was commended by the President of the United States for winning the highest shooting metal in the nation. Why would he desert the Army?”
“She saw no future in the Army.”
“There is a long, brave history of women serving their country disguised as men.”
Suddenly she was bitter, her cheeks taut, her voice harsh. “I had no choice. How else could a girl win the President’s Medal? I knew I was the best shot, better than any man. How else could I prove it?”
“But how hard it must have been fooling men in their barracks. How did you do it, Nellie?”
She was all too ready to boast and the bitterness dissolved. But she never took her eyes from him. Nor did her derringer waver as she demonstrated planting her legs apart, lowering her voice to mock him and the people she fooled: “Manly tones; theater tricks like skullcap and wig, trousers, boots. A detective must know that men believe what they assume is true.”
“But why did this young sharpshooter desert?”
“She won the medal. Why stay? I
t was time to move on. I always move on.”
“Or was she afraid they would find her out? Just as she feared she would be found out when her brother was murdered and she joined the Army disguised as a boy?”
“She was never afraid.”
“After she learned that her father loved her so much, he would forgive her of anything . . . ?”
“Or refuse to believe his worst fear,” Nellie replied coldly. “Even when he saw it with his own eyes, all he could say was how much he loved my mother.”
The derringer remained rock-steady as she hiked herself up to sit on the rounded edge of the wicker basket while clutching her carpetbag under her arm. “Billy was only Father’s stepson.”
“And your half brother, your own mother’s child.”
“I never knew my ‘own mother.’ She died when I was a baby.”
“But why did you kill Billy?”
Nellie’s eyes bored into Bell’s. “Lots of reasons, Isaac. He was such a coward. I was trying to get rid of his silly drowning fear. I made the mistake of confiding in him. I told him I was running away to join the Army . . . I loved him, Isaac. I loved him very much. But he would have ruined everything if he told. And I couldn’t stand him being afraid.”
“How did you kill him?” Bell kept waiting for her to look away, but her eyes were fixed on his.
Suddenly the women in the nearest balloon called, “Nellie! We’re almost ready.”
She waved to them, the gun tucked to her side, neither turning her head nor taking her eyes from Bell.
“How could a girl drown a boy as big as she? Didn’t he fight back?”
“He was groggy.”
“You poisoned him.”
“I didn’t poison him,” Nellie said indignantly, “I gave him a little chloral hydrate.”
“Chloral hydrate? That’s knockout drops.”
“Just to calm him down. Not poison.”
“Calm him to kill him?”
“I was helping him beat his fear. I knew if he swam once, he could swim forever. But it didn’t work. He was a hopeless coward.”
“Did he pass out? Is that how he drowned?”
“Aren’t you listening, Isaac? He was groggy. He didn’t pass out.”