Death Brings a Shadow Read online

  As intent as she was on unraveling the skein of the Bennett family wrongdoings, the possibility that Teddy Bennett’s father or brother had conspired to keep an old woman and an old man quiet was more than Prudence wanted to face. Surely neither Aunt Jessa nor Jonah would ever have told the whole story. There were bound to be undercurrents of jealousy and bad feeling among the island’s inhabitants who had nothing to do with the Bennetts and their secrets. People killed one another every day in New York City over trivial incidents that sounded ridiculous when you read about them in the newspaper.

  That was the trouble with applying logic to situations that defied logic. You talked yourself out of believing in your first intuitive response. That people really could be worse than you wanted to believe them to be.

  * * *

  By the time they reached Wildacre, it had been decided that Prudence would call on Aurora Lee and Maggie Jane while Geoffrey concentrated on the men of the Bennett family.

  “That’s what the sisters will be expecting,” Prudence agreed. “After all, they did pay me a visit at Seapoint. Even though it turned out to be more an attempt to steal Eleanor’s trousseau than to console and comfort me in my illness.” She didn’t bother trying to hide the sarcasm in her voice or her scorn for the motives of the Bennett women.

  “We don’t want to put them on their guard by doing anything so far out of the ordinary that it will get their backs up.”

  “Honestly, Geoffrey, I’m growing heartily sick and tired of always having to say things I don’t mean to people whose company I’d rather avoid.”

  “You’ve just described how detectives spend most of their days.”

  “This seems very different,” Prudence protested.

  “The main thing is to find out what, if anything, the misses Bennett know about how much Eleanor discovered before she died.” Taking his cue from Prudence, Geoffrey very carefully avoided implying that the death had been anything but a tragic accident. He wasn’t sure what had caused his partner to do such an about-face, but for the moment, at least, he would honor it. He had a gnawing gut feeling that their worst suspicions would eventually be confirmed.

  * * *

  Aurora Lee and Maggie Jane entertained Prudence on a side porch that overlooked a broad expanse of overgrown lawn and a formal garden badly in need of pruning.

  Back bent, face protected from the sun by a broad-brimmed straw hat, a painfully thin man in a ragged shirt and pants clipped ineffectually at the garden’s English boxwood borders. Prudence wondered briefly if he was old enough to have been born into slavery, then caught a glimpse of visibly shaking hands and filmy eyes sunken into deep sockets. Even from where she sat she recognized the signs of advanced old age. Somehow, she decided, she’d find an excuse to talk to him. Perhaps when no member of the Bennett family was around to see her do it.

  She sipped the cool green tea served over crushed mint and sugar cubes, wondering if it was served liberally laced with rum or whiskey for masculine tastes. She’d never drunk cold tea before coming South, but it tasted deliciously refreshing in the warm, muggy island air.

  “I wonder if you’ve had occasion to talk to Mrs. Dickson about our offer to help with Eleanor’s things,” Aurora Lee asked. “There’s no hurry, of course, but we didn’t want to contact any of our charities until we could tell them something definite.”

  “What charities would those be?” Prudence sipped her tea, trying to appear only mildly curious about where her friend’s carefully chosen trousseau would end up. “Mrs. Dickson will want to know,” she explained.

  “We thought we’d write to the Society for the Succor of Confederate Widows and Orphans in Savannah,” Aurora Lee replied glibly. “So many ladies of impeccable reputation found themselves bereft of family and fortune after the war. Our dear Eleanor’s dresses would be a comforting reminder of their former station in life.”

  “The war’s been over for almost twenty-five years,” Prudence said, deliberately allowing no trace of compassion to soften her voice. “Surely the widows have remarried and the orphans grown into adulthood.”

  Aurora Lee’s back stiffened and Maggie Jane’s eyes widened into a shocked stare. An awkward silence wrapped itself around the three women, broken only by the swish of their ivory-handled fans and the occasional screech of a peacock.

  “Nevertheless,” Aurora Lee finally said. A slow flush reddened her cheeks.

  “I’ll leave it entirely in your hands.” Prudence blithely pretended to ignore the tension that not even the heavily sweetened tea could dissolve. “When the time comes,” she added. “But I haven’t yet found the right moment to talk to Mrs. Dickson about it.”

  “But you will, won’t you?” Maggie Jane glanced defiantly at her sister.

  “I suppose so,” Prudence replied. “Though it might be easier on all of us to have Eleanor’s trunks packed up and stored in one of the luggage rooms at Seapoint until the Dicksons decide whether or not to have them shipped north. Mrs. Dickson is active in several charities in New York City. As was Eleanor. It might be a more suitable remembrance if they were the recipients of the family’s generosity.”

  “Oh, no,” Maggie Jane whimpered. “Who knows what could happen along the way? Everything could be stolen. Or ruined, if the trunks weren’t properly secured.” Her eyes glistened with tears of alarm as if stained and torn dresses lay strewn before her on the ground.

  “I suppose I’ll need to talk to Mrs. Dickson today or tomorrow,” Prudence mused. “Or perhaps Mr. Dickson. He intends to sail within a week.”

  “So soon?” Aurora Lee’s feeble protest plainly implied it wasn’t soon enough.

  “There isn’t anything to keep them here now,” Prudence said softly. She’d hinted at the possible ruin of what had been a carefully plotted scheme; now she would take advantage of the disappointment and dismay she could read on Maggie Jane’s expressive face. “I’m sure Eleanor was as charmed as I’ve been by the beauty and history of the island. How fortunate you are to live in such a place. New York seems very rough and new in comparison.” She didn’t mean a word of what she was saying, but if it loosened tongues, she’d gush compliments and platitudes until the cows came home.

  “Dear Eleanor. She asked so many questions,” Maggie Jane said.

  “Too many,” Aurora Lee snapped. “Morbid curiosity is never becoming.”

  “I can’t envision Eleanor expressing an unwholesome interest in anything ghoulish or macabre,” Prudence said.

  “She wanted to know all about what it was like before the war,” Maggie Jane explained, ignoring her sister’s glare. It was as though, having finally found a story to tell, she had decided to give it full voice.

  “She told me before she went missing that hardly anyone ever left the island, even when they could,” Prudence said. Remembering Geoffrey’s admonitions, she deliberately did not use the terms slaves or ex-slaves. She’d heard Teddy refer to them as our people; she had to trust that the Bennett ladies would understand who she was talking about. “When I look out over these beautiful grounds and gardens, I can certainly see why they’d want to stay.” She gestured toward the elderly gardener. Her smile implied that she was in complete agreement with the Bennett family’s decision to retain his services long after he should have been dismissed. Wasn’t that what considerate employers did with long-time servants?

  “People not leaving the island when they could easily find work on the mainland is a sore point with Papa that we don’t ever mention when he’s around. It gets him riled up something fierce, and Lord knows, the doctor says he’s not supposed to lose his temper,” Maggie Jane confided. “Heart, you know. He and our uncle Ethan were both wounded at Peachtree Creek.” She paused as if expecting Prudence to nod knowingly at the mention of one of the most decisive Confederate defeats during Sherman’s Atlanta campaign.

  “I don’t think I’ve met your uncle Ethan,” Prudence said, making a mental note to steer Maggie Jane back to a discussion of the Bradford islanders w
hose continued presence no one wanted to discuss. She was sure Eleanor hadn’t spoken of an uncle when she’d given her friend thumbnail sketches of the Bennett family members she would meet at the wedding.

  “He was Papa’s older brother,” Aurora Lee said abruptly. “He died.”

  “Of his wounds?” Prudence asked. “How sad.”

  “He was thrown.”

  “But Papa always said it was because he was never strong again after Peachtree Creek,” Maggie Jane explained. “He wasn’t supposed to be out riding the fields, but he did it every morning, just the same. I was a little thing then, but I remember being told that one of our people had to hold Jupiter’s bridle while Uncle Ethan got settled into the saddle and had his boots lashed to the stirrups. When he got thrown, one leg stayed tied. Nobody knows how long Jupiter dragged him before Uncle Ethan’s other foot came out of his boot. By that time, it was too late, of course.” Maggie Jane’s eyes glistened wetly.

  Prudence wasn’t sure how to get the conversation back to the topic of light-skinned slaves and what happened to them and their descendants. She thought Aurora Lee looked tense and uncomfortable, though there was nothing in what Maggie Jane had revealed about Ethan Bennett that was scandalous or embarrassing. A veteran soldier had never fully recovered from the wounds he suffered in battle. You might say his death was indirectly caused by the bullets that had plowed through flesh and undoubtedly broken bones that never knitted together properly. A sad story, tragic perhaps, but nothing to hide or be ashamed of.

  “I’m sure your father was deeply saddened by the loss of his brother,” she said. “But at least you had the comfort of being able to bury him in the family plot. So many of those lost in the war never came home at all.”

  “We don’t talk about Uncle Ethan,” Aurora Lee said firmly.

  They don’t allude to their former slaves and they don’t speak of the Wildacre master whose horse dragged him to his death. Prudence wondered what topic was safe to broach without incurring someone’s wrath or stubborn refusal to discuss it at all. And how on earth was she to bring up the topic of white slaves without coming right out with it? Which she was sure would earn her a polite but very prompt dismissal.

  A slender young woman appeared beside the elderly gardener and began to help him down the path toward an empty wheelbarrow. She, too, wore a straw hat that shaded her face against the glare of the sun, but there was something familiar about her that pricked at Prudence’s memory. She’d seen her someplace else. And recently.

  Suddenly it clicked.

  “Minda,” she said aloud. Without thinking. And stood up.

  Aurora Lee was at Prudence’s side before she could say anything else. And then, while she was still asking herself if it was really the girl she’d seen arranging Eleanor’s white roses in the Seapoint chapel early that morning, Prudence’s arm was firmly grasped and she felt herself being turned away from the porch railing. When she looked back over her shoulder, the girl and the old gardener were gone. Vanished as quickly and mysteriously as if they’d never been there at all. Even the empty wheelbarrow had disappeared.

  * * *

  “Keep going,” Geoffrey urged, holding tightly to Prudence’s elbow as he guided her down Wildacre’s broad, curved stairway toward their horses. “And smile. Try to look as though you’ve had a lovely, uneventful visit.”

  “But I told you I saw her. She’s here. Minda is here.”

  “I don’t doubt it for a moment.”

  “If Aurora Lee and Maggie Jane won’t talk about their family’s by-blows, I’ll have to ask someone who will.”

  “By-blows? You’ve been reading too many English romances, Prudence,” he said, standing so immovably close she had no choice but to mount the dappled gray horse she’d ridden over from Seapoint. Geoffrey put the reins into her clasped fingers and held her hands firmly in his. “Smile and wave good-bye,” he ordered. “We’ll talk later, I promise. But here is not the place and now is not the time.”

  Prudence pasted a wide grimace on her face and hoped it would pass for the smile Geoffrey had demanded. She hadn’t seen any of the Bennett men as Aurora Lee and Maggie Jane ushered her along the veranda toward where Geoffrey waited. There had been an unmistakable air of urgency about the pace the Bennett women set. As though they wanted her off the premises before she could blurt out one of her unmannerly questions where either Elijah or Lawrence Bennett would overhear and be forced to respond.

  Geoffrey had conveyed the same sense of immediacy as soon as he’d reached for her arm to assist her down the stairs. Which she didn’t really need. She was perfectly capable of descending them on her own, thank you very much.

  And she hadn’t accomplished what she’d set out to do. As he could very well understand if he bothered to take the time to read between the lines of what she’d barely managed to tell him. Minda was here. And so was a gardener who had to be old enough to be one of Aunt Jessa’s contemporaries. Old enough to know secrets. Perhaps close enough to the end of his life to dare to tell them.

  Everywhere Prudence turned, she seemed to walk smack into an impenetrable wall.

  CHAPTER 19

  “I told Elijah Bennett the Dicksons were planning to leave Bradford Island within a week’s time,” Geoffrey said as soon as they were out of sight of Wildacre.

  “I’m sure he’ll be glad to see them go,” Prudence replied sharply, matching her mount’s pace to his. She was still fuming over the unceremonious way her visit with the Bennett sisters had ended.

  “He didn’t try to hide it,” Geoffrey agreed. “But he was polite and formal. Restrained in his reaction.”

  “Aurora Lee and Maggie Jane said he has an explosive temper when certain topics are raised. I got the impression they tiptoe around him, and that they’re worried he might refuse to allow them to keep Eleanor’s trousseau.”

  “Something else is going on,” Geoffrey mused. “Whenever I think I’m getting close to finding out what it is, either Elijah or Lawrence deflects my questions and changes the subject. I’m positive about two things, however. Teddy’s engagement to Eleanor might have brought the promise of financial rescue, but it was also perceived as a threat.”

  “Did they think marriage to a Yankee would ruin their social position?” questioned Prudence.

  “It’s more than that,” Geoffrey said. He rode in silence for a while, then visibly shook off the conundrum he couldn’t solve. “Lawrence wasn’t at Wildacre today, but Elijah Bennett said he and his son intend to sweep the live oaks and flush out the fugitives they’re convinced are hiding there. He’ll enlist men from the mainland and have the sheriff deputize them. He maintains it has to be done every few years anyway, but the murders of Aunt Jessa and Jonah make it more urgent. He claims the family has always protected its people. I think it’s an excuse to get rid of the ones he considers troublemakers.”

  “Anyone light-skinned enough to draw unwanted attention,” Prudence said. “I would have thought he wouldn’t bother now that Eleanor isn’t here to wonder about them. Will Philip Dickson allow it? After all, he owns most of the island.”

  “Neither Elijah nor the sheriff will let that stop them. Dickson is well on his way to becoming an absentee landlord with no intention of ever returning to Bradford Island. Would you, in his place? He won’t be able to bring himself to sell the property, but neither will he ever live here again. Once he’s gone, the Bennetts will reign supreme. It will be as though Eleanor and Teddy’s engagement never happened.”

  “I found out something else about the family, something neither Eleanor nor Teddy mentioned,” Prudence said, her memory jogged by mention of their names. “It may not be important, and perhaps Eleanor was never told about him, but Elijah Bennett had an older brother named Ethan. They were both wounded at a place called Peachtree Creek, but they survived the war. Ethan was killed when his horse threw him. I don’t know how many years later that was. He’d had to be tied on to the saddle, and when he was thrown, he was also dragged. I was
going to press for more details, but Aurora Lee interrupted what Maggie Jane was telling me. She said they didn’t talk much about Uncle Ethan. I thought that odd.”

  “His portrait is hanging in the library. I saw it this morning. He and Elijah both, side by side above the fireplace. In uniform. Two young officers enshrined in Confederate gray and gold. There’s a marked resemblance between the brothers. They must have been painted at the beginning of the war, before things turned bad.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Portraits in defeat are never the same as likenesses captured where the future looks bright and promising.”

  “Maggie Jane didn’t mention whether Ethan had a wife or children,” Prudence said. “So I presume he didn’t.” She’d already wondered if the deceased Ethan Bennett had ever visited Wildacre’s quarters, either before or after the war, and decided that until she knew differently, she would presume he had. Presumed guilty until proven innocent. It was a jaded reversal of the most basic tenet of American justice. Prudence didn’t doubt that her father’s sense of judicial propriety would have been outraged if she’d voiced such an opinion. Fortunately, he would never have to know how much Bradford Island was influencing her.

  “Interesting,” Geoffrey commented.

  But Prudence could tell that his mind was more fixed on solving the here and now than on musing over recent history.