Chapter Nineteen
“WHY WOULD YOU need to meet your own sister in secret?” Grace mused aloud. It seemed an odd place to meet, unless one really didn’t want to be spotted. Could she really have been talking to her about money?
“It’s strange,” Theo agreed, directing his carriage driver toward Lillie’s house.
“Harriet’s theater needed money or it was going to close,” Grace said. Was it possible that the man who had threatened Harriet at the restaurant was part of her theater somehow?
People did unimaginable things when their dreams, livelihoods, or families were at stake. Perhaps, if it involved all three, it could even drive someone to murder.
But why would you kill your own star?
Lillie had changed out of her funeral clothes and seemed in good spirits when she accepted Theodore’s hand and climbed into the carriage.
“Earnest got us tickets to the orchestra at Festival Hall tonight,” she said to Grace. “He thought we could use some cheering.”
“That was kind of him,” Grace said. She turned to Theodore. “Are you going?”
“I hadn’t planned on it,” he said.
“Unfortunately, I think they’re sold out,” Lillie said apolo-getically.
“I could use a quiet night at home anyway,” Theo said. “Between the fair and a murder investigation, I’ve been rather inattentive to Sesame.”
“Sesame?” Grace asked.
“A small black puppy I recently acquired. Destroyer of slippers and Persian rugs.”
“Perhaps while you and Sesame are having a raucous night at home together, you could look into contacting Penelope Forbes,” Grace said.
She filled Lillie in on what they had found in Harriet’s apartment, and Lillie reciprocated by showing Grace a small, handwritten piece of paper tucked into her handbag.
“I decided not to confront my mother about the woman she hired to follow Harriet until I did a little snooping of my own,” she said. “The woman’s name is Vera Lackey and this is her address. I’d rather catch her off-guard and get the truth from her lips before she can be tipped off by my mother.”
Grace touched the page with a slight thrill. “Can we call on her now?” she said.
Theo rapped twice on the carriage ceiling, directing the driver to the new address.
“Shall I come in with you?” Theo asked as the carriage pulled to a stop.
Grace examined the small, tidy home. It was a gray, timber-framed hall-and-parlor house in a slightly better neighborhood than Harriet’s had been and was situated next to a church.
“No need,” Grace said. “And if we don’t come back out, you’ll know we found the murderer.”
“Your humor is disturbing,” he said. “But, Grace,” he said, reaching out for her. “You’re taking a lot of risks right now.”
She quieted. “I’ll be careful,” she promised.
And yet, she felt a fresh hunger surge within her. She was going to do this.
Lillie waited to ring Vera Lackey’s front bell until Grace was out of sight. From this angle, it was apparent that the house was in worse shape than Grace had first thought. The roof, at the very least, needed replacing. She could smell a lilac bush blooming just beneath the rotting window.
The white curtains flicked, and then the door hesitantly opened.
“Miss Carter?” Vera asked with surprise. “What are you doing here?”
When Grace appeared next to Lillie, she paled.
“I’m Grace,” Grace said. She smiled thinly. “But I think you know that already.”
“Come in,” Vera said, looking furtively over their shoulders at Theodore’s waiting carriage. Its presence provided Grace with a comforting sense of protection. “We can have tea.”
The shifty look she gave them was less than assuring, but Grace followed her into the dim hallway anyway.
There were knickknacks on every surface, cluttered but immaculate, and Grace examined them on the way into Vera’s small parlor.
Wallpaper was peeling around framed baby silhouettes and through the window, Grace glimpsed a small vegetable garden.
Vera sat. “What is this about?” she asked.
“We need to speak to you about Harriet Forbes,” Lillie said.
Thankfully, the woman didn’t try to play dumb.
“What do you want to know?” she asked. Her eyes shifted from Lillie to Grace and back again.
Grace’s neck prickled as she felt something watching her. She turned her head to see a cat, staring at her from the basement stairs.
“You were following Harriet Forbes,” Lillie said. “Spying on her.”
“Oh, come,” the woman said with a nervous titter. “‘Spying’ is a little sensational.”
“I disagree. Not when that same woman was murdered not long after,” Grace said.
When Vera remained silent, Lillie prodded, “Did my mother hire you?”
Vera cleared her throat. She seemed young for the gray beginning to streak through her mousey brown hair. “Yes. I was hired by your mother to watch Harriet and Oliver.”
“Why?” Lillie asked.
Vera clasped her hands. “She suspected there was something going on between them, despite their claims to the contrary. I was merely to follow them and report what I saw.”
“And then she wound up dead. On a night you were there,” Grace said.
Lillie shot her a look from the corner of her eye, and Grace backed off.
“Mrs. Carter didn’t hire me to kill her, if that’s what you’re inferring,” Vera said coldly.
“I just think the timing is interesting,” Grace said. “Do the police know about this arrangement?”
“You think turning suspicions from one family member to another is going to help your case?”
Vera laughed and stood, picking up the cat. It slunk beneath her, rubbing its face along her neck and purring. There was a doll in the corner, looking at them with dead glass eyes.
Lillie touched Grace lightly on the hand, and Grace knew she had to tread carefully. Her cousins wouldn’t want to see their mother wind up in jail, either.
“When you were following Harriet, did you see her go into the Tunnels at all?” Grace asked.
Vera shook her head.
“Did you see her meet with her sister, Penelope Forbes?”
Vera shrugged.
“I don’t have anything to hide,” Vera said, but the way she said it sounded almost like a threat. “I told Mrs. Carter that Oliver and Harriet were in a relationship, and that you knew about it, Grace. And she paid me handsomely for it. But I didn’t have anything to do with killing Harriet Forbes.”
She showed them to the door. “Go ahead, tell the police. But you’ll only be creating more problems and more suspicion for your family.”
Grace knew that was true.
She believed Oliver would never have killed Harriet.
But as she climbed into Theodore’s carriage, she realized she wasn’t so sure about Aunt Clove.
Grace’s mind sorted theories that night at the orchestra concert in Festival Hall. She tested them, rolling them around like marbles, as she slid back into the half-waking dream world of the fairgrounds. Being there felt like putting on a coat of mist and champagne bubbles.
Lillie sat beside her, wearing a midnight satin dress and a glittering neck of jewels. Grace was re-wearing the rose-colored mousseline dress, but she didn’t care because it made her feel so effortlessly lovely.
She was irritated to realize how much she wished Theo could see her in it.
Frannie was there too, swathed in sea-foam tulle, her hair glittering with pins.
She was on Copper’s arm, his red hair slicked back and his suit looking sharp and expensive.
They ignored Grace entirely and gave Lillie an only slightly warmer reception.
Earnest seemed annoyed by this and made up for it by showering Lillie with attention.
He reached for her hand as the violins swelled.
Grace clasped her own palms in her lap.
She watched the orchestra responding to the conductor’s effervescent direction, the musicians moving in choreographed tandem like wind over grasslands, or what Grace imagined the waves of a sea might look like.
As the evening went on, she felt like her heart might explode in her chest. The musicians played as though their instruments had souls that could be brought to life beneath their touch.
She felt that quickening again of being near to the pulsing heart of being alive, and rose to her feet, applauding.
Perhaps she felt it even more keenly because she had witnessed death, and this felt like the opposite of decay: explosions of color and sound ripping through cobwebs of sadness.
“Shall we walk?” Earnest asked after the final encore. The evening outside was a perfect spring temperature, a cool breeze rustling the tree branches and the light fabric draped along Grace’s arm.
Festival Hall and the four major Palaces around it were illuminated with incandescent bulbs, so that each became slashes of ivory marble against the velvet sky. The fountains erupted from the Grand Basin in sprays of mist and light. Above it, the moon was a crisp slice.
They walked past Jerusalem’s walled gates and eventually turned off into the cool quiet of the Japanese Pavilion, with Earnest leading the way.
They passed a bazaar with hand fans and silks for sale and a teahouse offering green tea and tea cakes, instead choosing to wander dreamily across a bridge set near a waterfall.
There was a replica of a temple from Kyoto alongside two-hundred-year-old imported bonsai trees, their twisted limbs set among cool stone lanterns.
Grace relished the quiet stillness that stood in such contrast to the rest of the fairgrounds.
She caught the look on Lillie’s face that meant she was pondering, and she pulled her back from the group.
“What are you thinking? About Oliver?”
“I think we find Penelope Forbes next. Ask her about the meeting with Harriet,” Lillie said.
“Maybe she knows something about the man who threatened Harriet at the restaurant, too,” Grace said.
And Grace still planned to have a talk with her dear aunt Clove.
“You’re writing about all of this for that gossip rag, are you?” Earnest asked Grace, looping back toward them. He lit a cigarette, shielding it from the breeze as it sparked.