In the Shadow of Gotham - By Stefanie Pintoff Page 0,46
I don’t like all this twaddle about daydreams and fantasies. I’d feel more comfortable if there were even a shred of hard evidence to connect Fromley with the Wingate girl.” And with that simple desire he succinctly voiced my own doubts.
“I know,” I said. “But from the people we spoke with yesterday, it’s clear Michael Fromley is both violent and deeply troubled. When you put that together with the remarkable coincidences that Alistair claims, then the implications are unsettling. Besides,” I reminded him, “we have no evidence pointing to a different suspect.”
“Well, there was some progress here yesterday,” Joe said. “We got the results from those fingerprints you took at the Wingate home. They were viable prints that did not match those of anyone within the Wingate household.”
I looked at him sharply; since Joe was so adamantly opposed to fingerprinting, I had expected to have to call the laboratory myself to learn the results.
“If I can locate a personal item we know to be Fromley’s,” I said, “then it will show whether the prints are a match.” It would be a relief to have a solid evidentiary link between Fromley and this murder.
“Also, I spoke again with Miss Abigail. She believes the money you found under Sarah’s mattress belongs to Mrs. Wingate.”
“But she’s not sure?”
Joe sighed. “Apparently Mrs. Wingate is in the habit of hiding money all over the house, then forgetting all about it. Miss Abigail finds money everywhere—in clothes pockets, in between the pages of books, even underneath cups in the china cabinet. There’s no reason to believe the money under the mattress is any different.”
No reason, except that a young woman had been brutally murdered within four feet of it. As such, it was evidence I did not want to discount—at least not yet.
Joe was primarily worried, however, on a different count: When he had left the Wingate residence late yesterday, their housemaid Stella remained missing. “The girl probably learned of the murder, got spooked, and ran away to be with friends or family,” he said. “But Miss Abigail insists something is seriously wrong.”
“It’s possible Stella witnessed the murder itself,” I said.
“Sure,” Joe said. “But then why didn’t she say anything to the Wingates about it? She just disappeared.”
I shrugged. “People who have witnessed terrible things sometimes behave completely out of character.”
I did not mention that I, too, urgently wished to find Stella. But with that goal in mind, we would speak with Mrs. Virginia Wingate first thing this morning.
Virginia Wingate sat ramrod straight on a wooden chair, her niece hovering protectively in the rocker next to her.
Abigail Wingate had opposed this interview; worried as she was about Stella’s disappearance, she was even more concerned about her aunt’s fragile mental state.
“You don’t understand,” she had whispered into the telephone when I rang to let her know we would be coming. “She is coping with Sarah’s death by simply refusing to acknowledge it. She pretends Sarah is still alive, certain to return again to visit in just a few weeks. Yet she won’t go upstairs, even for bed, which tells me she knows perfectly well what happened up there—though she won’t admit it. She sleeps nights in the parlor room, and spends all day on the front porch, despite the cold.” She sighed, plainly vexed.
“But it can’t last,” I said. “Plans will be made for a funeral—”
She cut me off. “In Boston—and my aunt will not go.”
She had eventually submitted to the necessity of our talking with her aunt, and in return I had promised—to the extent it was possible—that I would not overtly reference Sarah’s murder.
“And how will you explain our being there to question her?” I had asked, dubious as to how Abigail’s odd request could be accommodated.
“I won’t need to,” she assured me. “If it occurs to Aunt Virginia to wonder why, then she will make up the reason herself. You’ll see. Her mind is an absolute marvel of invention these days.”
Thus forewarned, we all gathered on the front porch where we exchanged a few awkward pleasantries and confirmed that there had been no word from Stella. It was Mrs. Wingate who captivated my attention as we talked. I had remembered her hair to be gray, but in the morning sunlight, it glistened pure silver. The effect was heightened by her skin, which was so pale as to be almost translucent. She was not unlike a piece of fine china: beautiful, fragile, and treated carefully in the hope she would not break.