EPILOGUE
A t the Excelsior Hotel in Manhattan City, winter is a distant memory. Grandfather and I will return to the mountains for the summer season soon.
The fiasco of the murder trial has concluded.
They released me from the Women’s Annex of the King’s County Jail yesterday afternoon.
A long hot soak in the hotel tub removed that place from my body, but not my soul.
I won’t soon forget the women still imprisoned there, those lost and irretrievable souls.
Last night a waiter brought us dinner on a rolling cart. Juicy steaks, baked potatoes, fresh rolls, butter, and green beans almondine followed by chocolate cake and coffee. Afterwards my belly ached but in a good, satisfying way. I slept as I hadn’t slept since childhood.
We are hiding from the reporters until I regain my strength.
A trunk with my clothes sits in a corner.
The familiar dresses hang loose on this new person I’ve become.
Grandfather had gone to the house to remove my things.
He’d placed the contents of my desk drawer in a satchel.
The worn wool uniform would fit me again, I think.
I don’t know how much longer I can avoid writing it all down, hiding behind inconsequential details.
Ada’s painting of the dawn summit leans against the wall.
It has always brought me solace. This room is lovely, all lush like living inside a velvet tiger lily.
Polished furniture with gilded edges surrounds me.
The soap has scented my skin with bergamot and lemon.
It’s French. An open box of chocolates from Charlotte sits nearby.
I ate three and built a pyramid with the rest. This made me think of Millie, and I am angry all over again.
My books sit in another, smaller trunk. There are no newspapers for now, until the fervor over my release dies down. My ability to concentrate often fractures. Yet my hand dips the pen to the ink and forms the words on the page
I can’t
There. I’ve opened a window. Sunshine pours in a pool on the carpet. Street noises creep in. The rhythmic clop of horse’s hooves, the grind of carriage wheels against the cobblestones, happy—free—voices calling out. The cooing pigeons roost on the nearby sills.
Grandfather is on one of his many errands.
I think he deliberately left me here with myself.
My diary is my loyal companion, but they would not let me have it in prison.
Grandfather urged us to diary writing as children.
The place to confront our weaknesses and for deep soul searching. An accounting.
I spent much of my time talking—listening—to the poor souls in the jail. These women are not far from my thoughts.
The ceiling is blue with tiny gold stars.
The carpet is emerald with large orange flowers woven in.
It makes me think of a jungle, perhaps the Amazon, of a stalking tiger hiding in the foliage.
The tiger may wear many faces, but at heart he is a killer.
A predator. In the eyes of the world, a woman who kills her husband is an aberration.
For a short time, Lawrence remained my legal husband and myself his widow. But in New York state law, if one marries another under a false name, this nullifies the marriage.
Henry’s letter confirmed Lawrence was a confidence man with a diabolical plot to murder both my grandfather and myself to inherit grandfather’s money, but all my witnesses were dead.
My lawyer couldn’t establish Lawrence murdered his brother and his wife to gain her inheritance before we met.
Henry’s letter appeared to be only speculation and didn’t reveal his source.
Finally, a friend of Detective Day’s, a decoder during the war, broke the code on Lawrence’s notebook revealing his evil thoughts and intentions.
Thus, he provided himself as a witness at what became his trial.
My lawyer read the pertinent excerpts before the judge in a private session.
I testified again to the details of Lawrence’s last moments, my voice shaking from the revelations on the infernal pages.
I confess it made me glad I’d killed him all over again.
He also wrote about his continued frustration at his inability to trap my grandfather and me. Every time he got close, I twisted out of his grip, embroiled in the drama of Daphne’s murder. Henry. Helen. Millie. His confession to the murders of the Frosts and Mrs. Drew. And so I was set free.
Yet I will never be free of him.
I am beyond lucky. Women more innocent than me are rotting away in the depths of jails and asylums because of some fiendish man in their lives. It was a close thing I would not be joining them.
He wrote how he disliked my moods, found me half mad, spoiled beyond reason, a stubborn harridan.
All the time he played the loving husband, he indulged me because he felt sorry for me.
Because he planned to kill me. Grandfather and I should have been dead many times over.
Geneva’s party. Christmas Day. Robbed and murdered together at home while Lawrence was at his office gathering the books Grandfather required of him.
Failing this, he planned to bury me alive in an insane asylum while he murdered my grandfather.
And finally, my kidnapping and murder after he got the ransom from Grandfather.
Dear God, he looked forward to it. But this was nothing compared to my own horrible truth.
I put the Frosts in his path. I endangered my beloved grandfather and my good friend Ruth.
Will he haunt me, continue to hunt me like Tom Perley?
I am innocent, yet as guilty as him.
The front desk clerk has brought the mail. A cheerful missive from Charlotte and an encouraging one from Ruth. Detective Day had written to me nearly every day while I sat in jail. My disappointment surprised me when I found no letter from him today.
Millie’s letter helped to clear Benedict, but the notebook gave all the details.
Benedict is free but will Geneva keep my secret?
Though it was a despicable thing to do, if she had not forced my hand, Grandfather and I likely would be dead, biding our time until Lawrence killed us instead of investigating.
There are disturbing notes in my correspondences.
Hateful letters written by men filled with vitriol against me.
Moralizing letters from women and clergy accusing me of—all manner of things.
Collusion with Lawrence. Having a corrupting influence on a good man simply because I am a woman.
Viciousness and immorality of various types.
It’s little wonder, because the newspapers published speculation as revelation while the true story took its time revealing itself.
I’ll keep them all until I can build a bonfire of them.
It doesn’t matter. I’m leaving. I’d fought too hard for a life with a man who was not who I thought he was. I cannot bear the house on Cranberry Street, for that last fatal hour resonates throughout its rooms and into my very marrow.
There’s another letter. It coils like a snake on the desk, propped against the green glass vase veined with silver.
The postmark says Boston. The handwriting is Grandmother Stanbury’s, my mother’s mother.
I dread what it will say. I’ve tucked it now unopened under the blotter with all the others I’ve received from her.
No one came forward to stand for the dead man, Lawrence Gladney.
I’m happy to have shed his name and take Jack’s name back.
I’m glad to have won out against such a monstrous trickster.
I couldn’t have avoided Lawrence Gladney, not from the moment he’d set his sights upon me.
I can be—resigned he chose me. No other woman would have survived him.
***