man. If he set his mind to something none dared stand in his way.’
‘I heard the son had gambling debts,’ Ivy added.
‘Get on with it,’ Barbara made a speeding up motion with her hand.
‘I’m getting to it,’ Betty replied indignantly, ‘if you would all just stop interrupting.’
‘Married the maid he did,’ Norma suddenly piped up as she pulled her long green anaconda of a scarf from her bag and held it up against Ava’s body, as if she were measuring it. ‘Such a scandal.’
‘It wasn’t the maid,’ Bunty finally intervened. ‘She was a local girl from a well to do family, but she was only sixteen when she married Ephraim, who was by that time forty-three.’
‘Ew,’ Ava murmured.
‘It wasn’t unheard of to marry that young back then. I mean, this would have been,’ Bunty shook her head, gazing skyward as she cast her mind back, ‘1867? Or thereabouts.’
‘It is kinda gross though,’ Ava frowned. ‘I mean, I know some young women like their sugar daddies, but sixteen seems really young. Why would her parents allow it?’
‘I imagine they would have insisted.’
‘Why would they…’ Ava’s voice trailed off as her nose wrinkled. ‘Oh, double ew.’
‘Poor child,’ Bunty shook her head, ‘shotgun wedding at sixteen and she was dead within half a year.’
‘Dead?’ Ava’s brows rose.
‘A seven-month baby and died in childbirth. He was too big for her small body; she bled to death.’
‘God rest her soul,’ Norma murmured as the click clack of her knitting needles resumed.
‘Do you mind,’ Betty replied primly, ‘I’m telling this story.’
‘Go ahead then,’ Bunty flipped her hand.
‘Thank you,’ Betty replied. ‘Now, where was I? Ah yes, the babe, well poor girl died in childbirth, but the boy survived, Ephraim’s son whom he named Edison. Now, he also has an unfortunate story. He grew up alone in the house with only his father and a constant stream of wet nurses and maids, for curiously none of them ever stayed long. When he was in his twenties Edison married. He and his bride left Midnight the very night of the wedding. She did not even spend one night under the roof of her new father in law, instead they left the island and headed to New York. They had not been there long when Edison was involved in a terrible automobile accident, this would have been in eighteen ninety…… three?’
‘Two,’ Bunty corrected.
‘1892,’ Betty nodded shooting Bunty a look. ‘He survived, barely, but he was paralyzed. With no income and no means of supporting themselves they had no choice but to return to Midnight Island and to his father’s house. The following year Edison’s wife Eleanor gave birth to a daughter, Luella.’
‘But how?’ Ava frowned. ‘If he was paralyzed, surely he wouldn’t be able to…’
Ava broke off as Betty’s brows rose and she gave her a very pointed look.
‘You’re not actually suggesting that…’
‘The child was not Edison’s daughter but half-sister? That his wife was impregnated by her father in law?’ Betty replied. ‘There’s no proof of course, there was some local gossip, talk of an affair, but the records show that Eleanor became pregnant several times in the following years as her husband’s health deteriorated. There were four stillbirths, before she gave birth to a son, Edmund, in 1899, six years younger than his sister Luella. Her husband Edison died in Dec 1898 a full seven months before the boy was born. It was reported that Edison had taken a turn for the worse in October of that year, as the weather worsened so did his condition. He simply would have been too frail, too ill to impregnate his wife.’
Ava shook her head slowly as she tried to process what she was being told. Glancing up, she met Bunty’s eyes. The older woman quickly looked away, her cheeks pinching, and her lips pressed together in a tight line. She was holding something back, of that Ava was certain. Bunty McCarthy knew far more than she was letting on to the other women of the historical society and Ava was determined to find out what it was.
‘I heard that the little boy, Edmund is it? died. I was told he drowned in his bath and that it was Luella who killed him.’
‘Stuff of nonsense,’ Bunty sniffed. ‘The boy did drown, but it was nothing more than an accident. Luella was never accused of killing her brother. That’s just juvenile islander gossip.’
‘She was never committed to an asylum then?’ Ava asked.
‘No,’ Bunty shook her head. ‘She did run away from home