Nobody's Secret Part 13

"Did they act as if they knew James was dead? Of course Ursula and my mother don't know." He sank onto a bench against the whitewashed wall. "How did he come to be here? Why hasn't my family been told?"

"No one knew his name. He's here to be identified. The whole town has come through looking at him, but no one recognized him."

"The entire town?" He looked over to the body, as if trying to envision a line of sober townspeople. "But I'm not surprised that no one knew him. He only came to Amherst a few times to visit Uncle. And that was several years ago."

"Your mother . . . "

"Would never think of looking at a body-she'd consider it vulgar. And Ursula is much too squeamish."

Emily nodded. This rang true. When Ursula had seen Emily bleeding from her little pinp.r.i.c.k, she had nearly fainted. "Mr. Langston, there are many mysteries surrounding your cousin's death."

His eyes went to the body. "Do you mean to say that this was not an accidental death?"

"I fear not."

He swallowed hard and looked pale. "In that case, I need to consult with my family. We may possibly need legal advice."

She remembered that he was studying law.

"First you must talk to me," Emily said firmly. "Your cousin was my friend, and I need to discover how he died. And why."

"It's none of your concern . . . " He did a double take. "If you knew him, why is he lying here nameless?"

"We were friends," Emily admitted, "but I didn't know his name."

"That's ridiculous!" His tone was razor-sharp.

"I know, but it's true." To Emily's horror, she felt the tears welling up. She waved her hand in front of her eyes in a futile attempt to stop them.

With automatic courtesy, Mr. Langston reached into his coat and handed her a handkerchief. When she looked up, she saw that his eyes were also filled with tears. Wordlessly, she handed it back to him.

"Miss d.i.c.kinson . . . " His whole demeanor was gentler now, as though her tears had dissolved his anger.

"Emily."

"Emily, I can see you cared about James . . . " He had to stop and clear his throat. "Naturally, I find that a point in your favor."

She sniffed and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. "Then please, Mr. Langston, tell me everything you know."

The only secret people keep

Is Immortality.

CHAPTER 14.

They sat on the steps of the church, under the porch, watching the rain fall in gentle sheets. Finally, he began to speak.

"My mother has two brothers. Sam, whom you met . . . "

"And a courteous gentleman he was, Mr. Langston," Emily said drily.

"Call me Henry," he said with a wry smile. "And to be fair, you were stealing my uncle's honey. He takes that personally." With a tightening of her heart, Emily saw that Henry was even more like his cousin than she had thought.

"My mother's other brother was Jeremiah. Sam is a simple soul. Give him his orchard and hives and he's content. Jeremiah was restless, never staying in one place, always traveling to find his fortune somewhere else. He would disappear for months or years at a time."

"And did he make his fortune?" Emily asked, although she had seen a list of Jeremiah's extensive securities and bank accounts.

"Several times!" Henry chuckled. "And often lost it just as quickly. It drove Father to distraction. He would beg Jeremiah to let him invest it, a safeguard against old age. But Jeremiah said he never intended to grow old and that my father could take his advice and go to the devil." Henry suddenly recalled he was speaking to a lady. "I beg your pardon."

"Your mother mentioned that he pa.s.sed away," Emily prompted, impatient with the social niceties.

He nodded. "We knew he was in the Dakotas. He got lucky and made a fortune. And then we heard nothing for eighteen months. My mother was beside herself with worry."

Having met the shallow Mrs. Langston, Emily doubted this, but she held her tongue.

"About six months ago, we heard he was dead."

Emily calculated. "That's when your family moved here from Boston."

"Yes."

"Why?" Emily asked.

"Mother said she wanted to go to Amherst to be near her only surviving brother, but she really wanted to be close by while my uncle's estate was settled."

"Did your family need the money?" Emily asked, braced for a rebuff for asking such an indiscreet question.

But Henry stood up, walked to the end of the porch, and looked out at the rain for a few moments. Finally, he came back to her and said, "My father was in the midst of a financial crisis in Boston. I was forced to leave school, and we had to sell the house. And Mother was concerned about Ursula. She had fallen into a fast set in Boston and was acc.u.mulating her own debts at an alarming rate."

Emily, despite her oft-protested dislike of gossip, was dying to know more about Ursula's goings-on. Feeling like a wren who had to choose between two juicy worms, she forced herself to concentrate on the story of Jeremiah Wentworth. "So your mother and Sam inherited a fortune?"

"They split everything between them. And I was able to go back to Yale."

Trying to study his face without being obvious, Emily asked the essential question. "Jeremiah had an heir, didn't he? A son. Your cousin, James."

"Uncle Jeremiah had married a girl in the wilds of Texas. She died in childbirth. Jeremiah never had much interest in being a father, so he sent James to school as soon as he was old enough."

"But he never stayed at school very long." Emily remembered how Mr. n.o.body-she would have to get used to calling him James-had scorned the academic life.

"He spoke of that to you?" Henry smiled reminiscently. "He ran away time after time. Finally when he was sixteen he disappeared for good. We thought he might have gone out West, or signed up for a merchant s.h.i.+p."

"I think it was a s.h.i.+p," Emily said. "He spoke of the sea."

"Of course," Henry said. "He loved to travel."

"Tell me what happened then."

"Then we heard he was dead." Henry's story had come to an abrupt halt.

"How?"

He thought and then shook his head. "I don't know. My mother wrote me at school."

"When was this?"

"Last Christmas. But she told me he had died months earlier. Before his father."

The sequence of events seemed suspicious to Emily. And if her suspicions were correct, it was precisely the sequence of events that mattered.

Jeremiah, the rich brother, was out in the wilds of the Dakotas. He could die at any time. James, his son and rightful heir, was-who knew where? In any event, he was unlikely to return. A simple codicil to Jeremiah's will stating that his son was dead meant that the remaining heirs, the Langstons and Sam Wentworth, would get their money that much sooner. If Jeremiah or James ever turned up alive, an unscrupulous clerk could simply destroy the codicil. It was diabolically clever.

"But the rightful heir to Jeremiah's fortune was very much alive," Emily pointed out. "James was eating honeycomb Friday last."

"It was a shock, let me tell you." Henry clasped his hands and began cracking his knuckles. "I hadn't seen him since we were about thirteen-but I recognized him right away. I was glad it was I who met him and not Uncle. He has a heart condition; the shock might have killed him."

"Was your meeting amicable?" Emily asked, her eyes narrowed as she waited for his answer.

"Of course it was." Henry sounded almost puzzled. "I was delighted to see that he was alive."

"Even if it meant the loss of your family's inheritance?"

"What kind of cold-blooded monster do you think I am?" he burst out. "Besides, it wouldn't have mattered. Uncle Jeremiah must have heard his son was dead too. He changed his will to remove James as a beneficiary, leaving my mother and Uncle Sam to inherit."

That was the codicil Emily had found in her father's office. "So James came back to life-and found you and your family in possession of his inheritance?

"It was an honest mistake." Henry p.r.o.nounced each syllable deliberately. "I told James so. There was no one to blame."

Staring at his face, Emily searched for signs of guilty knowledge. "You truly believe that?

He glared at her. "Of course it was a mistake! Even if James had gone to the law, we would have reached some sort of compromise. There was plenty to go around. My Uncle Sam refused to touch his portion anyway."

"Why?" Emily found that most suspicious of all. Surely only a guilty conscience would cause someone to refuse a fortune?

Henry shrugged. "He doesn't need much."

"But luckily for your family, James died again. Suddenly." Emily let the bald words, with all their sinister implications, hang in the humid air.

Henry was silent, and Emily could see that his fists were clenched. Finally he glanced sideways and asked in a low voice, "How did he die?"

"He was found floating in our pond," Emily said.

"Drowned?" The tension drained out of him. "So it was an accident?"

"Possibly," Emily said. "But don't you think it's an odd coincidence that my father, Edward d.i.c.kinson, was Jeremiah Wentworth's lawyer-and Jeremiah's son ends up dead in our pond?"

"Nothing is more common than drowning," Henry said. "Why were you being so melodramatic with your talk of mysterious circ.u.mstances?" He stood up and brushed several raindrops off his trousers. "I don't know what your role, or your father's, is in this tragedy, but my family will take care of its own. Thank you for telling me about James. Good day." Without meeting her eyes, he stalked off toward his mother's house.

Something was wrong with Henry's story. Emily wasn't a lawyer, but she had grown up around the law. The story of the inheritance and the codicil seemed fishy. She wished her father were here to explain it.

But her father was still in Boston, and judging from Henry's hasty departure, she would get no answers from the Langstons. She would have to find a different way.

Death is like the insect

Menacing the tree,

Competent to kill it,

But decoyed may be

CHAPTER 15.

Emily watched Henry as he disappeared on the College grounds. As though his departure were a signal for the heavens, the rain stopped.