Veil of Doubt, page 16
“Why, you dirty—You are accusing me of murdering my nieces!” Lloyd was fuming. “Get off my property. Get the hell out of here before I do something you’ll regret.”
“These are questions that we must ask in order to find the truth,” Powell said. “Either you answer them now or you’ll be compelled to answer before a judge and jury later.”
“Y’all come to my home and threaten me?” Lloyd’s anger rushed over his face as he took another menacing step toward Powell. “How ’bout I come to your home and threaten you?”
JW moved forward, placing himself between Powell and Lloyd.
“No one is threatening you, Mr. Lloyd,” JW said, his hands raised in submission. “We just want to know the timing of when you delivered the milk.”
“You want to know when I delivered milk? I tell you I don’t remember when I delivered milk. And if you dare accuse me, Mr. Goddamn Lawyer Harrison, you’ll be sorry you ever crossed paths with Billy Ray Lloyd.”
• • •
JW pounded on the door of the other half of Emily’s house as Powell pulled his collar tight around his neck. Dusk was falling, and the weather had turned disagreeable, drizzle pooling on their coats and gathering into small streams that ran down their shoulders and sleeves. Rain dripped from the roof onto Powell’s hat as he leaned to peer in the window of Emily’s neighbors’ parlor.
“No light that I can see.” Stepping back from the drip line, he squinted through the raindrops, looking up. “And no smoke from the chimney. It seems no one is here.”
“Well, I’m not leaving until we’ve had a look inside for clues as to who these elusive women are,” JW said, with another loud rap. “There’s a dead bolt on this door. Why don’t we go around back and see if that door is as secure?”
Powell raised a brow. “What are you suggesting?”
“Come with me. And don’t ask questions if you don’t want answers.”
They walked through the side yard, water from the saturated ground sloshing above the soles of their shoes. Stepping onto the back porch, JW tried the door. “Locked but no dead bolt,” he said, and pulled a metal ruler from his coat pocket.
“What are you doing?”
“Captain Foster came prepared,” JW announced. He shoved the ruler between the edge of the mortise lock and the jamb. With a little jiggling, the mechanism released, and the door opened.
“This is breaking and entering,” Powell protested.
“Don’t worry,” JW said, striding into the house. “I know a good lawyer.”
The house was dark and damp. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the dim light filtering through the heavy curtains.
“Hopefully they’re not lying in wait with a shotgun to greet us,” Powell whispered.
“Hello?” JW called out. “Hello? We’re attorneys representing your neighbor Mrs. Lloyd and wish to ask you a few questions. Hello?”
“There’s no one home. Let’s have a look around,” Powell suggested as he reached for a lantern on a shelf and lit it.
They wandered through the kitchen and down the hall to the front parlor and stairs.
“It doesn’t appear that anyone’s been here for months.” Powell dragged a finger over the top of a chest that sat in the hall. “And the furnishings seem decrepit.”
The furnishings were old. And sparse. A braided rug in the foyer. No rug at all in the parlor. Just a worn settee, a rocking chair, and a small serving table. A large, ornate cross hung in the center of the wall.
“Shall we try our luck upstairs?” JW asked, taking the lantern from Powell and leading the way.
The house mirrored Emily’s home, with three rooms on the second floor, one at the front of the house and two facing the rear. When JW reached the top of the landing, there was a thud.
Powell’s heart jumped as something moved along the corridor floor.
“Rats,” said JW with a knock on the first door. “Hello?”
Hearing no response, JW opened the door. Extending the lamp through the doorway, he squinted. “It’s empty.” He closed the door, and Powell followed him down the hall to the second chamber. JW’s knock and announcement were met with silence again.
When he opened the door, Powell could see that this one had been occupied. There was clothing strewn over an unmade bed and on a chair by the window.
“Someone left in a hurry,” JW said as he walked toward the bed.
“Or she’s simply untidy,” Powell suggested.
A dressing table caught Powell’s attention. It, too, was disorderly, with perfume bottles and various tubs of creams and beauty powders scattered across the surface. He picked up a silver-plated brush.
“Looks like the lady is fair,” he said, noting the light-brown hair entwined in its bristles.
“Well, hello, darling!” JW said, holding a cylindrical white object with rounded ends between his thumb and index finger.
Powell looked over at JW. “What is it?”
“It’s an old maid’s friend.”
“A what?” Powell asked, his brow pinched.
“A dildo, my friend. And there, on the night table, are a couple of French ticklers for when the lady has company.”
Powell glanced at the knobbed rubber rings on the table in silent curiosity. “Emily said that the one called Lilith is a woman without morals.”
“She certainly seems to be without inhibition. Even I’d be taken aback if one of my lady friends had these on her night table.”
“I don’t want to know. Do you see anything that identifies her? A letter or anything?”
JW dropped the dildo on the bed where he had found it and looked around. “Nothing.”
Other than clothing and cosmetics, they found no clues that identified the room’s occupant. They left the room and headed to the chamber that fronted the street.
This bedroom was decorated in the same sparse style as the parlor. A small bed with a metal headboard was neatly made and covered with a yellowed quilt. The only items on the night table were a Bible and a glass kerosene lamp. A rocking chair was positioned by the window. And a carved wooden cross hung on the wall. Powell thumbed through the pages of the Bible, looking for any inscriptions. Finding none, he placed it back on the stand and walked to a chest of drawers in the far corner of the room. He opened the drawers. Inside were only a few pieces of clothing, most of which had been fashioned much earlier in the century. They were larger than the clothes in what Powell presumed to be Lilith’s room. On top of the dresser was a framed photograph of a bearded man with three girls—two older, perhaps six and ten, and the youngest, a toddler.
JW opened a door on the wall abutting Emily’s side of the house.
“This is a big closet.”
“Hold on,” Powell said and stood the silver frame back on the chest. He crossed the room and took the lantern from JW, stepping into the closet. The pungent odor of mothballs filled his nostrils as he pushed aside the clothing hanging at the back. There it was. Not disguised by wallpaper, but a short, painted door with a handle. He lifted it and the door opened. Behind was a foot or so of space running parallel between the two sides of the house. There was no floor, only floor joists. To the left, Powell could make out the chimney at the far end. In front of him was the back side of another door that most certainly adjoined Emily’s closet.
“What is it?” JW asked.
“I’m not quite certain. Mrs. Lloyd said it was an access space to the shared kitchen chimney. Beyond the gap, there’s a door that opens into Mrs. Lloyd’s closet on the other side.”
“Could they access Mrs. Lloyd’s home from here?”
“Possibly. It doesn’t look like there’s a keyhole on this side. But the door is locked on Emily’s side, and she doesn’t have the key.” Powell stepped onto a floor joist and pushed against Emily’s door, trying to force it open. The door wouldn’t budge.
“Won’t open?” JW asked as Powell came back through the doorway.
Powell shook his head and shut the little door.
Chapter 17
Wednesday, July 24, 1872
A crack of thunder caused Moore to flinch. Pelting waves of rain whipped across the tin roof and sideways against the batten boards of the house. A decade ago, during a similar storm on the battlefields of Williamsburg, there had been no batten boards sheltering him, no protection from assault and the unrelenting battering. No rain could have washed away the carnage of that night. There was no thunder loud enough to wake the dead strewn across the sodden fields in that inky blackness. The storm had poured further agony on the wounded and dying and more misery on doctors like himself, who remained behind after the battle to ease their suffering.
“It never fades,” said Bentley. “Ten years ago for you, sixty for me. No matter how much time goes by, it never fades away.”
Moore lifted his eyes to his father-in-law at the opposite end of a long mahogany table.
“Autumn of ’14, and I remember it like it was yesterday,” Bentley continued. “Camped to the south of Baltimore, we were. A nor’easter just like this one. Drenching cold rain. Lightning. Sky so loud you couldn’t tell if it was thunder or one of them damned rockets exploding. I don’t know which was worse—the beating the Brits gave those poor souls at Fort McHenry or the pounding that bitch of a storm gave us up there on Hampstead Hill.”
“Papa!” scolded Virginia, Moore’s wife. “We don’t curse or speak of war in front of the children!”
Moore followed her eyes around the table to the three children, who were paying little attention to the adults as they devoured the potato cakes and gravy on their plates.
“Hogwash,” Bentley responded loudly, the volume of his voice compensating for his hearing loss. “War is the price we pay for liberty, Virgie. No need to protect them from that. And I’m not saying anything the older ones didn’t witness in that last damned war. Goddamned Yankees!”
“Stop with the cursing, Papa,” Virginia said, the disapproval in her voice mounting. “And, Randy, stop encouraging him!” Her eyes fired at her husband like a warning shot.
I haven’t said a thing! Moore thought.
Before she became Virginia Moore, the woman sitting to Moore’s right had been Virginia Bentley—a strong-willed debutante with a pretty face and bright eyes who had melted his heart. But twenty years, seven children, a long war, and loss had hardened her temperament and the gentleness of her youth. Her hair, once deep chestnut with spicy glints of cinnamon and paprika, had faded to the cold gray of rusted metal flecked with pepper and salt. The bright and curious eyes he had so adored were now filled with skepticism and judgment. Her bewitching smile had long since turned unhappy. And somehow, he was to blame. The bride who had taken his breath away was now the wife who had him holding it in trepidation and despair.
“Why it always poured from the heavens during the worst battles, I’ll never understand,” the old man said, ignoring his daughter’s glare. “Just adds to a soldier’s burden.”
“Perhaps it’s God’s hand, Bobby,” Moore said. “His way of washing it clean.”
“From the earth, yes. But never from our minds,” said Bentley. His distant look landed between the sideboard and the clock above Virginia’s head as if the memory were a painting on the wall.
“Dr. Moore?” interrupted a voice from behind him. Moore turned to find Silas, the family butler, wearing a crisp white jacket and a somber face.
“Deputy Roberts is here to see you, sir,” Silas said as another clash of thunder shook the house.
Silas’s interruption had provoked his wife further. “Don’t tell me that woman is calling for you again.”
“Let me find out what the trouble might be,” Moore said.
“This is the third time this week,” Virginia barked.
Moore excused himself from the table to find Freddie dripping in the hall, his coat soaked as glistening droplets of water clung to the ends of his blond curls.
“Dr. Moore, we need you over at the jail.”
“Mrs. Lloyd?”
Freddie nodded. “She’s in a state of hysteria. Started this morning. Wouldn’t take breakfast and has been pacing all day. Talking to herself, hollerin’ and a crying. Sheriff says you need to give her something to calm her down.”
“I will need to go to my store,” Moore said.
“I’ll drop you by there on our way.”
• • •
Moore heard the wails when he entered the sheriff’s office.
“By God, I hope you brought something to shut her up,” Sheriff Atwell said.
“How long has she been in distress?” Moore asked, medical bag in hand and worry etched on his brow.
“All day. And getting worse by the hour.”
Sheriff Atwell led Dr. Moore into the cellblock. Tearful cries intensified as they neared Emily’s cell.
“I must get to him! He will not rest unless I go to him. My poor Georgie! Sweet Georgie!”
Emily was lying on the bed, her hands tied to the headboard’s metal bars with baling string, and her feet bound together with rope. Her wrists were bleeding where the twine had cut her skin. Her forehead was bruised and swollen, and there was dried blood on the side of her face.
“Randy,” she cried, her eyes darting over his face when she saw him. “I need to get to him. You must take me to him. Please.” She arched her back and pulled against the bindings.
“What have you done to her?” Moore exclaimed as Atwell unlocked the cell door.
“Had no choice, Doc,” Atwell said, yanking the door open. “She was trying to get out and was banging her head against the cell door so hard we thought she might knock herself unconscious.”
Moore rushed to Emily’s bedside.
“I need to go to him!” she shouted, thrashing on the bed.
“Emily, please, you need to calm yourself,” Moore said, and placed his hand on her cheek while examining the contusions on her forehead. She turned her face from his touch.
“You tell them to cut me loose! I need to get to Georgie!” She pulled against the ropes again, blood oozing from her wrists.
Moore brought his eyes to Emily’s. They were wide, wild, and filled with desperation.
“I need you two over here,” Moore said to Atwell and Freddie as Emily screamed again. He opened his bag and pulled out a syringe. “You’ll need to keep her still.”
Atwell grabbed Emily’s shoulders and pushed her body firmly into the mattress.
“Untie her right arm, Freddie, and hold it steady,” Moore said. “I need to find her vein.”
Freddie pulled a knife from his pocket and cut the rope that constrained her. When her right arm was freed, Emily struck at Moore. Freddie grabbed her wrist and forced her arm to extend as Moore prepared the injection. Moore moved his fingers gently over her skin in the crook of her arm, searching for a vein.
“Let me go!” she shouted as she struggled against them.
“Got one,” Moore said. “Now hold her tight.” He patted the vein with two fingers to encourage it to rise. “Steady now.” He pushed the needle into her flesh and pressed the plunger that released the tranquilizer into her body. Emily screamed at the puncture, arching her back and kicking her bound feet. Within a minute, her body relaxed.
“There’s my girl,” Moore said under his breath as Emily quieted. He brushed the hair from her face and touched the bruises lightly with his fingertips. He turned to the sheriff. “Let’s get these ropes off.”
The sheriff nodded to Freddie, who cut the other arm loose.
“Mrs. Lloyd,” Moore said, taking her bloody wrists and holding them in his hands while Freddie released the binding at her feet.
With heavy lids, Emily’s eyes met Moore’s.
“What’s all this fuss about George?” Moore asked, rubbing his thumbs over the base of her palms above the cuts.
“Today is July 24. The day he died,” she said, slurring the words. “I have to get to the cemetery. Put flowers on the grave. So he can rest another year.”
“I see.” Moore offered a sympathetic smile. “Why don’t you let me clean up these abrasions and put a little arnica on those bruises, and then, after I’ve got you all patched up, I’ll stop by the cemetery and pay George a visit. And perhaps, if the sheriff agrees, maybe tomorrow, he’ll take you over there so you can put flowers on all the children’s graves.” Moore glanced at Sheriff Atwell, who was leaning against the cell wall. Atwell thought for a moment and nodded. “How’s that sound, Mrs. Lloyd?”
Emily smiled as she dozed off.
“She gonna be all right?” Freddie asked.
“She’ll sleep through the night, then starting tomorrow, I will want you to administer some powders to her with her meals and at bedtime. I’ll drop them off first thing in the morning.”
“Sure thing, Doc,” Freddie said.
“You really want me to take her to the cemetery?” Atwell asked as Moore applied a salve to Emily’s wrists.
“A visit to the cemetery will do her better than any medicine. And I’ll bring a bouquet of gladiola from my garden for the occasion.”
Chapter 18
Saturday, July 27, 1872
Powell was getting dressed for the day when he heard screams. With no socks on his feet and shirttails flying, he raced down the stairs to the source of the cries. The front door was wide open, and Janet was standing on the porch. She was holding a lid in one hand with the other palm against her cheek. “Oh, dear God! Oh, dear God!” she wailed over and over.
Powell rushed to her, taking her into his arms. She buried her face in his chest and held him tightly. “What is it, darling? What’s wrong?” he asked.
