Born in New England in 1930, “S. S. Rafferty” worked as a newspaperman and free-lance writer, and was a Marine Corps news correspondent during the Korean conflict. Following military service, he went into the advertising business in Boston and later New York, where he served as vice president of a major agency.
In 1977 he decided to write full time and has now published over sixty short stories in the mystery genre. He is perhaps best known for three series detectives: Captain Jeremy Cork, an eighteenth-century American colonial “fact finder’’; Dr. Amos Phipps, a nineteenth-century New York criminologist known as “The Hawk”; and Chick Kelly, a modern-day stand-up comic who delightfully mixes detection with schtick. The Captain Cork stories were collected under the title Fatal Flourishes, and the other two richly deserve to be.
As much as I prefer the steady ways of New England, I have to agree with Captain Jeremy Cork that the Puritans certainly know how to avoid a good time. They just ignore it. That’s why every twenty-third of December we come to the New York colony from our home base in Connecticut to celebrate the midwinter holidays.
I am often critical of my employer’s inattention to his many business enterprises and his preoccupation with the solution of crime—but I give him credit for the way he keeps Christmas. That is, as long as I can stop him from keeping it clear into February.
In our travels about these colonies, I have witnessed many merry parties, from the lush gentility of the Carolinas to the roughshod ribaldry of the New Hampshire tree line; but nothing can match the excitement of the Port of New York. The place teems with prosperous men who ply their fortunes in furs, potash, naval timber, and other prime goods. And the populace is drawn from everywhere: Sephardim from Brazil, Huguenots from France, visitors from London, expatriates from Naples, Irishmen running to or from something. I once counted eighteen different languages being spoken here.
And so it was in the Christmas week of 1754 that we took our usual rooms at Marshall’s, in John Street, a few steps from the Histrionic Academy, and let the yuletide roll over us. Cork’s celebrity opens many doors to us, and there was the expected flood of invitations for one frivolity after another.
I was seated at a small work table in our rooms on December twenty-third, attempting to arrange our social obligations into a reasonable program. My primary task was to sort out those invitations which begged our presence on Christmas Eve itself, for that would be our high point. Little did I realize that a knock on our door would not only decide the issue, but plunge us into one of the most bizarre of those damnable social puzzles Cork so thoroughly enjoys.
The messenger was a small lad, no more than seven or eight, and he was bundled against the elements from head to toe. Before I could open the envelope to see if an immediate reply was required, the child was gone.
I was opening the message when Cork walked in from the inner bedchamber. Marshall’s is one of the few places on earth with doorways high enough to accommodate his six-foot-six frame.
“I take the liberty,” I said. “It’s addressed to us both.”
“On fine French linen paper, I see.”
“Well, well,” I said, reading fine handscript. “This is quite an honor.”
“From the quality of the paper and the fact that you are ‘honored’ just to read the message, I assume the reader is rich, money being the primer for your respect, Oaks.”
That is not absolutely true. I find nothing wrong with poverty; however, it is a condition I do not wish to experience. In fact, as Cork’s financial yeoman, it is my sworn duty to keep it from our doorsill. The invitation was from none other than Dame Ilsa van Schooner, asking us to take part in her famous Christmas Eve Masque at her great house on the Broad Way. Considering that we had already been invited to such questionable activities as a cockfight, a party at a doss house, a drinking duel at Cosgrove’s, and an evening of sport at the Gentlemen’s Club, I was indeed honored to hear from a leader of New York quality.
Cork was glancing at the invitation when I discovered a smaller piece of paper still in the envelope. “This is odd,” I said, reading it:
van Schooner Haus
22 December
Dear Sirs:
I implore you to accept the enclosed, for I need you very much to investigate a situation of some calamity for us. I shall make myself known at the Masque.
It was unsigned. I passed it to the captain, who studied it for a moment and then picked up the invitation again.
“I’m afraid your being honored is misplaced, my old son,” he said. “The invitation was written by a skilled hand, possibly an Ephrata penman, hired for such work. But our names have been fitted in by a less skilled writer. The author of the note has by some means invited us without the hostess’s knowledge. Our sub rosa bidder must be in some dire difficulty, for she does not dare risk discovery by signing her name.”
“Her?”
“No doubt about it. The hand is feminine, and written in haste. I thought it odd that a mere boy should deliver this. It is usually the task of a footman, who would wait for a reply. This is truly intriguing—an impending calamity stalking the wealthy home in which she lives.”
“How can you be sure of that, sir?”
“I can only surmise. She had access to the invitations and she says ‘calamity for us,’ which implies her family. Hello.” He looked up suddenly as the door opened and a serving girl entered with a tray, followed by a man in royal red. “Sweet Jerusalem!” Cork got to his feet. “Major Tell in the flesh! Sally, my girl, you had better have Marshall send up extra Apple Knock and oysters. Tell, it is prophetic that you should appear just as a new puzzle emerges.”
Prophetic indeed. Major Philip Tell is a King’s agent-at-large, and he invariably embroiled us in some case of skulduggery whenever he was in our purlieu. But I bore him no ill this time, for he had nothing to do with the affair. In fact, his vast knowledge of the colonial scene might prove helpful.
“Well, lads,” Tell said, taking off his rogueloure and tossing his heavy cloak onto a chair. “I knew Christmas would bring you to New York. You look fit, Captain, and I see Oaks is still at his account books.”
When Cork told him of our invitation and the curious accompanying note, the officer gave a low whistle. “The van Schooners, no less! Well, we shall share the festivities, for I am also a guest at the affair. The note is a little disturbing, however. Dame Ilsa is the mistress of a large fortune and extensive land holdings, which could be the spark for foul play.”
“You think she sent the note?” I asked.
“Nonsense,” Cork interjected. “She would not have had to purloin her own invitation. What can you tell us of the household, Major?”
I don’t know if Tell’s fund of knowledge is part of his duties or his general nosiness, but he certainly keeps his ear to the ground. No gossip-monger could hold a candle to him.
“The family fortune was founded by her grandfather, Nils van der Malin—patroon holdings up the Hudson, pearl potash, naval stores, that sort of old money. Under Charles the Second’s Duke of York grant, Nils was rewarded for his support with a baronetcy. The title fell in the distaff side to Dame Ilsa’s mother, old Gretchen van der Malin. She was a terror of a woman, who wore men’s riding clothes and ran her estates with an iron fist and a riding crop. She had a young man of the Orange peerage brought over as consort, and they produced Ilsa. The current Dame, is more genteel than her mother was, but just as stern and autocratic. She, in turn, married a van Schooner—Gustave. I believe, a soldier of some distinction in the Lowland campaigns. He died of drink after fathering two daughters, Gretchen and her younger sister, Wilda.
“The line is certainly Amazonite and breeds true,” Cork said with a chuckle. “Not a climate I would relish, although strong women have their fascination.”
“Breeds true is correct, Captain. The husbands were little more than sire stallions; good blood but ruined by idleness.”
This last, about being “ruined by idleness,” was ignored by Cork, but I marked it, as well he knew.
“Young Gretchen,” Tell went on, “is also true to her namesake. A beauty, but cold as a steel blade, and as well honed. They say she is a dead shot and an adept horsewoman.”
“You have obviously been to the van Schooner Haus, as our correspondent calls it.”
“Oh, yes, on several occasions. It is truly a place to behold.”
“No doubt, Major.” Cork poured a glass of Apple Knock. “Who else lives there besides the servants?”
“The younger daughter, Wilda. of course, and the Dame’s spinster sister, Hetta van der Malin, and an ancient older brother of the dead husband—the brother is named Kaarl. I have only seen him once, but I am told he was quite the wastrel in his day, and suffers from the afflictions of such a life.”
“Mmm,” Cork murmured, offering the glass to Tell. “I change my original Amazonite observation to that of Queen Bee. Well, someone in that house feels in need of help, but we shall have to wait until tomorrow night to find out why.”
“Or who,” I said.
“That,” Cork said, “is the heart of the mystery.”
The snow started falling soon after dinner that night and kept falling into the dawn. By noon of the twenty-fourth, the wind had drifted nature’s white blanket into knee-high banks. When it finally stopped in the late afternoon, New York was well covered under a blotchy sky. The inclemency, however, did not deter attendance at the van Schooner Ball.
I had seen the van Schooner home from the road many times, and always marveled at its striking architecture, which is in the Palladio style. The main section is a three-story structure, and it is flanked by one-story wings at both sides.
The lights and music emanating from the north wing clearly marked it a ballroom of immense size. The front entrance to the main house had a large raised enclosure which people in these parts call a stoop. The interior was as rich and well appointed as any manse I have ever seen. The main hall was a gallery of statuary of the Greek and Roman cast, collected, I assumed, when the family took the mandatory Grand Tour.
Our outer clothes were taken at the main door, and we were escorted through a sculptured archway across a large salon towards the ballroom proper. We had purposely come late to avoid the reception line and any possible discovery by Dame van Schooner. We need not have bothered. There were more than two-hundred people there, making individual acquaintance impossible. Not that some of the guests were without celebrity. The Royal Governor was in attendance, and I saw General Seaton and Solomon deSilva, the fur king, talking with Reeves, the shipping giant.
It was difficult to determine the identity of the majority of the people, for most wore masks, although not all, including Cork and myself. Tell fluttered off on his social duties, and Cork fell to conversation with a man named Downs, who had recently returned from Spanish America and shared common friends there with the Captain.
I helped myself to some hot punch and leaned back to take in the spectacle. It would be hard to say whether the men or the women were the more lushly bedizened. The males were adorned in the latest fashion with those large and, to my mind, cumbersome rolled coat cuffs. The materials of their plumage were a dazzling mixture of gold and silver stuffs, bold brocades, and gaudy flowered velvets. The women, not to be outdone by their peacocks, were visions in fan-hooped gowns of silks and satins and fine damask. Each woman’s tête-de-mouton back curls swung gaily as her partner spun her around the dance floor to madcap tunes such as “Roger de Coverly,” played with spirit by a seven-piece ensemble. To the right of the ballroom entrance was a long table with three different punch bowls dispensing cheer.
The table was laden with all manner of great hams, glistening roast goose, assorted tidbit meats and sweets of unimaginable variety. Frothy syllabub was cupped up for the ladies by liveried footmen, while the gentlemen had their choice of Madeira, rum, champagne, or Holland gin, the last served in small crystal thimbles which were embedded and cooled in a silver bowl mounded with snow.
“This is most lavish,” I said to Cork when he disengaged himself from conversation with Downs. “It’s a good example of what diligent attention to industry can produce.”
“Whose industry, Oaks? Wealth has nothing more to do with industry than privilege has with merit. Our hostess, over there, does not appear to have ever perspired in her life.”
He was true to the mark in his observation, for Dame van Schooner, who stood chatting with the Governor near the buffet, was indeed as cold as fine-cut crystal. Her well formed face was sternly beautiful, almost arrogantly defying any one to marvel at its handsomeness and still maintain normal breathing.
“She is a fine figure of a woman, Captain, and, I might add, a widow.”
He gave me a bored look and said, “A man would die of frostbite in her bedchamber. Ah, Major Tell, congratulations! You are a master at the jig!”
“It’s a fantastical do, but good for the liver, I’m told. Has the mysterious sender of your invitation made herself known to you?”
“Not as yet. Is that young lady now talking with the Dame one of her daughters?”
“Both of them are daughters. The one lifting her mask is Gretchen, and I might add, the catch of the year. I am told she has been elected Queen of the Ball, and will be crowned this evening.”
The girl was the image of her mother. Her sister, however, must have followed the paternal line.
“The younger one is Wilda,” Tell went on, “a dark pigeon in her own right, but Gretchen is the catch.”
“Catch, you say.” I winked at Cork. “Perhaps her bedchamber would be warmer?”
“You’ll find no purchase there, gentlemen,” Tell told us. “Along with being crowned Queen, her betrothal to Brock van Loon will probably be announced this evening.”
“Hand-picked by her mother, no doubt?” Cord asked.
“Everything is hand-picked by the Dame. Van Loon is a stout fellow, although a bit of a tailor’s dummy. Family is well landed, across the river, in Brueckelen. Say, they’re playing ‘The Green Cockade,’ Captain. Let me introduce you to Miss Borden, one of our finest steppers.”
I watched them walk over to a comely piece of frippery, and then Cork and the young lady stepped onto the dance floor. “The Green Cockade” is one of Cork’s favorite tunes, and he dances it with gusto.
I drifted over to the serving table and took another cup of punch, watching all the time for some sign from our mysterious “hostess,” whoever she was. I mused that the calamity mentioned in the note might well have been pure hyperbole, for I could not see how any misfortune could befall this wealthy, joyous home.
With Cork off on the dance floor, Tell returned to my side and offered to find a dance partner for me. I declined, not being the most nimble of men, but did accept his bid to introduce me to a lovely young woman named Lydia Daws-Smith. The surname declared her to be the offspring of a very prominent family in the fur trade, and her breeding showed through a delightfully pretty face and pert figure. We were discussing the weather when I noticed four footmen carrying what appeared to be a closed sedan chair into the hall and through a door at the rear.
“My word, is a sultan among the assemblage?” I asked my companion.
“The sedan chair?” She giggled from behind her fan. “No, Mr. Oaks, no sultan. It’s our Queen’s throne. Gretchen will be transported into the hall at the stroke of midnight, and the Governor will proclaim her our New Year’s Sovereign.” She stopped for a moment, the smile gone. “Then she will step forward to our acclaim, and of course, mandatory idolatry.”
“I take it you do not like Gretchen very much, Miss Daws-Smith.”
“On the contrary, sir. She is one of my best friends. Now you will have to excuse me, for I see Gretchen is getting ready for the crowning, and I must help her.”
I watched the young girl as she followed Gretchen to the rear of the hall, where they entered a portal and closed the door behind them. Seconds later, Lydia Daws-Smith came back into the main hall and spoke with the Dame, who then went through the rear door.
Cork had finished his dance and rejoined me. “This exercise may be good for the liver,” he said, “but it plays hell with my thirst. Shall we get some refills?”
We walked back to the buffet table to slake his thirst, if that were ever possible. From the corner of my eye I caught sight of the Dame reentering the hall from the rear door. She crossed over to the Governor and was about to speak to him, when the orchestra struck up another tune. She seemed angry at the intrusion into what was obviously to have been the beginning of the coronation. But the Dame was ladylike and self-contained until the dancing was over. She then took a deep breath and nervously adjusted the neckline of her dress, which was shamefully bare from the bodice to the neck.
“Looks like the coronation is about to begin,” Major Tell said, coming up to us. “I’ll need a cup for the toast.”
We were joking at the far end of the table when a tremendous crash sounded. We turned to see a distraught Wilda van Schooner looking down at the punch bowl she had just dropped. The punch had splashed down her beautiful velvet dress, leaving her drenched and mortified.
“Oh-Oh,” Tell said under his breath. “Now we’ll hear some fireworks from Dame van Schooner.”
True to his prediction, the Dame sailed across the floor and gave biting instructions to the footmen to bring mops and pails. A woman, who Tell told me in a whisper was Hetta van der Malin, the Dame’s sister, came out of the crowd of tittering guests to cover her niece’s embarrassment.
“She was only trying to help, Ilsa,” the aunt said as she dabbed the girl’s dress with a handkerchief.
The Dame glared at them. “You’d better help her change, Hetta, if she is going to attend the coronation.”
The aunt and niece quickly left the ballroom, and the Dame whirled her skirts and returned to the Governor’s side. I overheard her say her apologies to him, and then she added, “My children don’t seem to know what servants are for. Well, shall we begin?”
At a wave of her hand, the orchestra struck up the “Grenadier’s March,” and six young stalwarts lined up in two ranks before the Governor. At his command, the lads did a left turn and marched off towards the rear portal in the distinctive long step of the regiment whose music they had borrowed for the occasion.
They disappeared into the room where Gretchen waited for transport, and within seconds they returned bearing the ornate screened sedan chair. “Aah’s” filled the room over the beauty and pageantry of the piece. I shot a glance at Dame van Schooner and noted that she was beaming proudly at the impeccably executed production.
When the sedan chair had been placed before the Governor, he stepped forward, took the curtain drawstrings, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our New Year’s Queen.”
The curtains were pulled open, and there she sat in majesty. More “aah’s” from the ladies until there was a screech and then another and, suddenly, pandemonium. Gretchen van Schooner sat on her portable throne, still beautiful, but horribly dead, with a French bayonet through her chest.
“My Lord!” Major Tell gasped and started forward toward the sedan chair. Cork touched his arm.
“You can do no good there. The rear room, man, that’s where the answer lies. Come, Oaks.” He moved quickly through the crowd, and I followed like a setter’s tail on point. When we reached the door, Cork turned to Tell.
“Major, use your authority to guard this door. Let no one enter.” He motioned me inside and closed the door behind us.
It was a small room, furnished in a masculine manner. Game trophies and the heads of local beasts protruded from the walls and were surrounded by a symmetrical display of weaponry such as daggers, blunderbusses, and swords.
“Our killer had not far to look for his instrument of death,” Cork said, pointing to an empty spot on the wall about three feet from the fireplace and six feet up from the floor. “Move with care, Oaks, lest we disturb some piece of evidence.”
I quickly looked around the rest of the chamber. There was a door in the south wall and a small window some ten feet to the left of it.
“The window!” I cried. “The killer must have come in—”
“I’m afraid not, Oaks,” Cork said, after examining it.
“The snow on the sill and panes is undisturbed. Besides, the floor in here is dry. Come, let’s open the other door.”
He drew it open to reveal a short narrow passage that was dimly lit with one sconced candle and had another door at its end. I started toward it and found my way blocked by Cork’s outthrust arm.
“Have a care, Oaks,” he said. “Don’t confound a trail with your own spore. Fetch a candelabrum from the table for more light.”
I did so, and to my amazement he got down on his hands and knees and inched forward along the passageway. I, too, assumed this stance and we crept along like a brace of hounds.
The polished planked floor proved dry and bare of dust until we were in front of the outer door. There, just inside the portal, was a pool of liquid.
“My Lord, it is blood!” I said.
“Mostly water from melted snow.”
“But, Captain, there is a red stain to it.”
“Yes,” he said. “Bloody snow, and yet the bayonet in that woman’s breast was driven with such force that no blood escaped from her body.”
Cork got to his feet and lifted the door latch, opening the passageway to pale white moonlight which reflected off the granules of snow. He carefully looked at the doorstoop and then out into the yard.
“Damnation,” he muttered, “it looks as if an army tramped through here.”
Before us, the snow was a mass of furrows and upheavals with no one set of footprints discernible.
“Probably the servants coming and going from the wood yard down by the gate,” I said, as we stepped out into the cold. At the opposite end of the house, in the left wing, was another door, obviously leading to the kitchen, for a clatter of plates and pots could be heard within the snug and frosty windowpanes. I turned to Cork and found myself alone. He was at the end of the yard, opening a slatted gate in the rear garden wall.
“What ho, Captain,” I called ahead, as I went to meet him.
“The place abounds in footprints,” he snarled in frustration.
“Then the killer has escaped us,” I muttered. “Now we have the whole population of this teeming port to consider.”
He turned slowly, the moonlight glistening off his barba, his eyes taking on a sardonic glint. “For the moment, Oaks, for the moment. Besides, footprints are like empty boots. In the long run we would have had to fill them.”
I started to answer, when a voice called from our backs, at the passage doorway. It was Major Tell.
“Hello, is that you there, Cork? Have you caught the dastard?”
“Some gall,” I said to the captain. “As if we could pull the murderer out of our sleeves like a magician.”
“Not yet, Major,” Cork shouted and then turned to me. “Your powers of simile are improving, Oaks.”
“Well,” I said, with a bit of a splutter. “Do you think magic is involved?”
“No, you ass. Sleight of hand! The quick flick that the eye does not see nor the mind inscribe. We’ll have to use our instincts on this one.”
He strode off towards the house, and I followed. I have seen him rely on instinct over hard evidence only two times in our years together, and in both cases, although he was successful, the things he uncovered were too gruesome to imagine.
The shock that had descended on the van Schooner manse at midnight still lingered three hours later, when the fires in the great fireplaces were reduced to embers, the shocked guests had been questioned, and all but the key witnesses had been sent homeward. Cork, after consultation with the Royal Governor, had been given a free hand in the investigation, with Major Tell stirred in to keep the manner of things official.
Much to my surprise, the captain didn’t embark on a flurry of questions of all concerned, but rather drew up a large baronial chair to the ballroom hearth and brooded into its sinking glow.
“Two squads of cavalry are in the neighbourhood,” Major Tell said. “If any stranger were in the vicinity, he must have been seen.”
“You can discount a stranger, Major,” Cork said, still gazing into the embers.
“How so?”
“Merely a surmise, but with stout legs to it. If a stranger came to kill, he would have brought a weapon with him. No, the murderer knew the contents of the den’s walls. He also seems to have known the coronation schedule.”
“The window,” I interjected. “He could have spied the bayonet, and when the coast was clear, entered and struck.”
“Except for the singular fact that the snow on the ground in front of the window is undisturbed.”
“Well, obviously someone entered by the back passage,” Tell said. “We have the pool of water and the blood.”
“Then where are the wet footprints into the den, Major?”
“Boots!” I shouted louder than I meant to. “He took off his boots and then donned them again on leaving.”
“Good thinking, Oaks,” Tell complimented me. “And in the process, his bloody hands left a trace in the puddle.”
“And what, pray, was the motive?” Cork asked. “Nothing of value was taken that we can determine. No, we will look within this house for an answer.”
Tell was appalled. “Captain Cork, I must remind you that this is the home of a powerful woman, and she was hostess tonight to the cream of New York society. Have a care how you cast aspersions.”
“The killer had best have a care, Major. For a moment, let us consider some facts. Mistress Gretchen went into the den to prepare for her coronation with the aid of—ah—”
“Lydia Daws-Smith,” I supplied.
“So we have one person who saw her before she died. Then these six society bucks who were to transport her entered, and among their company was Brock van Loon, her affianced. Seven people involved between the time we all saw her enter the den and the time she was carried out dead.”
“Eight,” I said, and then could have bit my tongue.
“Who else?” Cork demanded.
“The Dame herself. I saw her enter after Miss Daws- Smith came out.”
“That is highly irresponsible, Oaks,” Tell admonished.
“And interesting,” Cork said. “Thank you, Oaks, you have put some yeast into it with your observation.”
“You’re not suggesting that the Dame killed her own daughter!”
“Major,” Cork said, “she-animals have been known to eat their young when they are endangered. But enough of this conjecture. Let us get down to rocks and hard places. We will have to take it step by step. First, let us have a go at the footmen who carried the chair into the den before Gretchen entered.”
They were summoned, and the senior man, a portly fellow named Trask, spoke for the lot.
“No, sir,” he answered Cork’s question. “I am sure no one was lurking in the room when we entered. There is no place to hide.”
“And the passage to the back door?”
“Empty, sir. You see, the door leading to the passage was open, and I went over to close it against any drafts coming into the den. There was no one in the den, sir, I can swear to it.”
“Is the outside door normally kept locked?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Leastways, it’s supposed to be. It was locked earlier this afternoon when I made my rounds, preparing for the festivities.”
“Tell me, Trask,” Cork asked, “do you consider yourself a good servant, loyal to your mistress’s household?”
The man’s chubby face looked almost silly with its beaming pride. “Twenty-two years in the house, sir, from kitchen boy to head footman, and every day of it in the Dame’s service.”
“Very commendable, Trask, but you are most extravagant with tapers.”
“Sir?” Trask looked surprised.
“If the back-yard door was locked, why did you leave a candle burning in the passageway? Since no one could come in from the outside, no light would be needed as a guide. Certainly any one entering from the den would carry his own.”
“But Captain,” the footman protested, “I left no light in the passageway. When I was closing the inner door, I held a candelabrum in my hand, and could see clear to the other end. There was no candle lit.”
“My apologies, Trask. Thank you, that will be all.”
When the footmen had left, I said, “Yet we found a lit candle out there right after the murder. The killer must have left it, in his haste.”
Cork merely shrugged. Then he said, “So we got a little further. Major, I would like to see Miss Daws-Smith next.”
Despite the circumstances, I was looking forward to seeing the comely Miss Daws-Smith once more. However, she was not alone when she entered, and her escort made it clear by his protective manner that her beauty was his property alone. She sat down in a straight-backed chair opposite Cork, nervously fingering the fan in her lap. Brock van Loon took a stance behind her.
“I prefer to speak to this young lady alone,” Cork said.
“I am aware of your reputation, Captain Cork,” van Loon said defensively, “and I do not intend to have Lydia drawn into this.”
“Young man, she is in it, and from your obvious concern for her, I’d say you are, too.”
“It is more than concern, sir. I love Lydia and she loves me.”
“Brock,” the girl said, turning to him.
“I don’t care, Lydia. I don’t care what my father says and I don’t care what the Dame thinks.”
“That’s a rather anticlimactic statement, young man. Since your betrothed is dead, you are free of that commitment.”
“You see, Brock? Now he suspects that we had something to do with Gretchen’s death. I swear, Captain, we had no hand in it.”
“Possibly not as cohorts. Was Gretchen in love with this fellow?”
“No. I doubt Gretchen could love any man. She was like her mother, and was doing her bidding as far as a marriage went. The van Schooner women devour males. Brock knows what would have become of him. He saw what happened to Gretchen’s father.”
“Her father?”
“Gustave van Schooner,” Brock said, “died a worthless drunkard, locked away on one of the family estates up the Hudson. He had been a valiant soldier, I am told, and yet, once married to the Dame, he was reduced to a captured stallion.”
“Quite poetic,” Cork said. “Now, my dear, can you tell me what happened when you and Gretchen entered the den this evening?”
The girl stopped toying with the fan and sent her left hand to her shoulder, where Brock had placed his. “There’s nothing to tell, really. We went into the den together and I asked her if she wanted a cup of syllabub. She said no.”
“What was her demeanor? Was she excited?”
“About being the Queen? Mercy, no. She saw that as her due. Gretchen was not one to show emotion.” She stopped suddenly in thought and then said, “But now that I think back, she was fidgety. She walked over to the fireplace and tapped on the mantel with her fingers. Then she turned and said, ‘Tell the Dame I’m ready,’ which was strange, because she never called her mother that.”
“Was she being sarcastic?”
“No, Captain, more a poutiness. I went and gave Dame van Schooner the message. That was the last I saw of Gretchen.” Her eyes started to moisten. “The shock is just wearing off, I suppose. She was spoiled and autocratic, but Gretchen was a good friend.”
“Hardly, Miss Daws-Smith. She had appropriated your lover.”
“No. She knew nothing of how I felt towards Brock. We were all children together, you see—Gretchen, Wilda, Brock, and I. When you grow up that way, you don’t always know childish affection from romantic love. I admit that when plans were being made for the betrothal, love for Brock burned in me, but I hid it, Captain. I hid it well. Then, earlier this evening, Brock told me how he felt, and I was both elated and miserable. I decided that both Brock and I would go the Dame tomorrow. Gretchen knew nothing of our love.”
“And you, sir,” Cork said to Brock, “you made no mention of your change of heart to Gretchen?”
The fellow bowed his head. “Not in so many words. This has been coming on me for weeks, this feeling I have for Lydia. Just now, as you were talking to her, I wondered—God, how terrible—if Gretchen could have committed suicide out of despair.”
“Oh, Brock!” Lydia was aghast at his words.
“Come,” Cork commanded sharply, “this affair is burdensome enough without the added baggage of melodrama. Use your obvious good sense, Miss Daws-Smith. Is it likely that this spoiled and haughty woman would take her own life? Over a man?”
Lydia raised her head and looked straight at Cork. “No. No, of course not. It’s ridiculous.”
“Now, Mr. van Loon, when you entered the den with the others in the escort party to bring in the sedan chair, were the curtains pulled shut?”
“Yes, they were.”
“And no one spoke to its occupant?”
“No, we didn’t.”
“Strange, isn’t it? Such a festive occasion, and yet no one spoke?”
“We were in a hurry to get her out to where the Governor was waiting. Wait, someone did say, ‘Hang on, Gretchen’ when we lifted the chair. I don’t remember who said it, though.”
“You heard no sound from inside the chair? No groan or murmur?”
“No, sir, not a sound.”
“Well, thank you for your candor. Oh, yes, Miss Daws-Smith, when you left Gretchen, was she still standing by the fire?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Was her mask on or off?”
She frowned. “Why, she had it on. What a queer question!”
“It’s a queer case, young lady.”
The great clock in the center hall had just tolled three when Cork finished talking with the other five young men who had carried the murdered girl in the sedan chair. They all corroborated Brock’s version. All were ignorant of any expression of love between Brock and Lydia, and they were unanimous in their relief that Brock, and not one of them, had been Gretchen’s intended. As one young man named Langley put it, “At least Brock has an inheritance of his own, and would not have been dependent on his wife and mother-in-law.”
“Dependent?” Cork queried. “Would he not assume her estate under law?”
“No, sir, not in this house,” Langley explained. “I am told it’s a kind of morganatic arrangement and a tradition with the old van der Malin line. I have little income, so Gretchen would have been no bargain for me. Not that I am up to the Dame’s standards.”
When Langley had left, Trask, the footman, entered to tell us that rooms had been prepared for us at the major’s request. Cork thanked him and said, “I know the hour is late, but is your mistress available?”
He told us he would see, and showed us to a small sitting room off the main upstairs hall. It was a tight and cozy chamber with a newly-stirred hearth and the accoutrements of womankind—a small velvet couch with tiny pillows, a secretaire in the corner, buckbaskets of knitting and mending.
Unusual, however, was the portrait of the Dame herself that hung on a wall over the secretaire. It was certainly not the work of a local limner, for the controlled hand of a master painter showed through. Each line was carefully laid down, each color blended one with the other, to produce a perfect likeness of the Dame. She was dressed in a gown almost as beautiful as the one she had worn this evening. At her throat was a remarkable diamond necklace which, despite the two dimensions of the portrait, was lifelike in its cool, blue-white lustre.
Cork was drawn to the portrait and even lifted a candle to study it more closely. I joined him and was about to tell him to be careful of the flame when a voice from behind startled me.
“There are additional candles if you need more light.”
We both turned to find Wilda van Schooner standing in the doorway. She looked twice her seventeen years, with the obvious woe she carried inside her. Her puffed eyes betrayed the tears of grief that had recently welled there.
“Forgive my curiosity, Miss van Schooner,” Cork said, turning back to the portrait. “Inquisitiveness and a passion for details are my afflictions. This work was done in Europe, of course?”
“No, sir, here in New York, although Jan der Trogue is from the continent. He is—was—to have painted all of us eventually.” She broke off into thought and then rejoined us. “My mother is with my sister, gentlemen, and is not available. She insists on seeing to Gretchen herself.”
“That is most admirable.” Cork bid her to seat herself, and she did so. She did not have her sister’s or her mother’s coloring, nor their chiseled beauty, but there was something strangely attractive about this tall, dark-haired girl.
“I understand, Captain, that you are here to help us discover the fiend who did this thing, but you will have to bear with my mother’s grief.”
“To be sure. And what can you tell me, Miss Wilda?”
“I wish I could offer some clue, but my sister and I were not close—we did not exchange confidences.”
“Was she in love with Brock van Loon?”
“Love!” she cried, and then did a strange thing. She giggled almost uncontrollably for a few seconds. “That’s no word to use in this house, Captain.”
“Wilda, my dear,” a female voice said from the open door. “I think you are too upset to make much sense tonight. Perhaps in the morning, gentlemen?”
The speaker was the girl’s aunt, Hetta van der Malin, and we rose as she entered.
“Forgive our intrusion into your sitting room, ma’am,” Cork said with a bow. “Perhaps you are right. Miss Wilda looks exhausted.”
“I agree, Captain Cork,” the aunt said, and she put her arm around the girl and ushered her out the door.
“Pray,” Cork interrupted, “could you spare us some time in your niece’s stead?”
Her smile went faint, but it was a smile all the same. “How did you know this was my room, Captain? Oh, of course. Trask must have—”
“On the contrary, my eyes told me. Your older sister does not fit the image of a woman surrounded by knitting and mending and pert pillowcases.”
“No, she doesn’t. The den is Ilsa’s sitting room. Our mother raised her that way. She is quite a capable person, you know.”
“So it would seem. Miss Hetta, may I ask why you invited us here this evening?”
I was as caught off guard as she was.
“Whatever put that notion into your head? My sister dispatched the invitations herself.”
“Precisely! That’s why you had to purloin one and fill in our names yourself. Come, dear woman, the sample of your hand on the letters on your secretaire matches the hand that penned the unsigned note I received.”
“You have looked through my things!”
“I snoop when forced to. Pretence will fail you, ma’am, for the young lad who delivered this invitation will undoubtedly be found and will identify you. Come, now, you wrote to invite me here and now you deny it. I will have an answer.”
“Captain Cork,” I cautioned him, for the woman was quivering.
“Yes, I sent it.” Her voice was tiny and hollow. “But it had nothing to do with this horrible murder. It was trivial compared to it, and it is senseless to bring it up now. Please believe me, Captain. It was foolish of me.”
“You said ‘calamity’ in your note, and now we have a murder done. Is that not the extreme of calamity?”
“Yes, of course it is. I used too strong a word in my note. I would gladly have told you about it after the coronation. But now it would just muddle things. I can’t.”
“Then, my dear woman, I must dig it out. Must I play the ferret while you play the mute?” His voice was getting sterner. I know how good an actor he is, but was he acting?
“Do you know what a colligation is, Madam?”
She shook her head.
“It is the orderly bringing together of isolated facts. Yet you blunt my efforts; half facts can lead to half truths. Do you want a half truth?” He paused and then spat it out. “Your sister may have killed her older daughter!”
“That is unbearable!” she cried.
“A surmise based on a half truth. She was the last person to see Gretchen alive, if the Daws-Smith girl is to be believed. And why not believe her? If Lydia had killed Gretchen, would she then send the mother into the room to her corpse? Take the honor guards who were to carry the sedan chair: if Gretchen were alive when her mother left her, could one of those young men have killed her in the presence of five witnesses?”
“Anyone could have come in from the outside.” Miss Hetta’s voice was frantic.
“Nonsense. The evidence is against it.”
“Why would Ilsa want to kill her own flesh and blood? It is unthinkable!”
“And yet people will think it, rest assured. The whole ugly affair can be whitewashed and pinned to some mysterious assailant who stalked in the night season, but people will think it just the same, Madam.”
She remained silent now, and I could feel Cork’s mind turning from one tactic to another, searching for leverage. He got to his feet and walked over to the portrait.
“So in the face of silence, I must turn the ferret loose in my mind. Take, for example, the question of this necklace.”
“The van der Malin Chain,” she said, looking up at the portrait. “What about it?”
“If the painter was accurate, it seems of great worth, both in pounds sterling and family prestige. It’s very name proclaims it an heirloom.”
“It is. It has been in our family for generations.”
“Do you wear it at times?”
“No, of course not. It is my sister’s property.”
“Your estates are not commingled?”
“Our family holds with primogeniture.”
“I do not. Exclusive rights to a first born make a fetish of nature’s caprice. But that is philosophy, and beyond a ferret. Where is the necklace, Madam?”
“Why, in my sister’s strong box, I assume. This is most confusing, Captain Cork.”
I could have added my vote to that. I have seen Cork search for answers with hopscratch questions, but this display seemed futile.
“It is I who am confused, Madam. I am muddled by many things in this case. Why, for instance, didn’t your sister wear this necklace to the year’s most important social function? She thought enough of it to have it painted in a portrait for posterity.”
“Our minds sometimes work that way, Captain. Perhaps it didn’t suit her costume.”
Cork turned from the picture as if he had had enough of it. “I am told there is a Uncle Kaarl in the household, yet he was not in attendance at the ball tonight. Did he not suit the occasion?”
“You are most rude, sir. Kaarl is an ill man, confined to his bed for several years.” She got to her feet. “I am very tired, gentlemen.”
“I, too, grow weary, Madam. One last question. Your late niece was irritable this evening, I am told. Did something particular happen recently to cause that demeanor?”
“No. What would she have to sulk about? She was the center of attraction. I really must retire now. Good night.”
When the rustle of her skirts had faded down the silent hallway, I said, “Well, Captain, we’ve certainly had a turn around the mulberry bush.”
He gave me that smirk-a-mouth of his. “Some day, Oaks, you will learn to read between the lines where women are concerned. I am sure you thought me a bully for mistreating her, but it was necessary, and it worked.”
“Worked?”
“To a fair degree. I started on her with several assumptions. Some have more weight now, others are discounted. Don’t look so perplexed. I am sure that Hetta’s note to us did not concern Gretchen directly. She did not fear for the girl’s life in this calamity she now chooses to keep secret.”
“How is that?”
“Use your common sense, man. If she had suspected an attempt on her niece’s life, would she stand mute? No, she would screech her accusations to the sky. Her seeking outside aid from us must have been for another problem. Yes, Trask?”
I hadn’t seen the footman in the shadows, nor had I any idea how long he had been there.
“Beg pardon, Captain Cork, but Major Tell has retired to his room and would like to see you when you have a moment.”
“Thank you, Trask. Is your mistress available to us now?”
“Her maid tells me she is abed, sir.”
“A shame. Maybe you can help me, Trask. My friend and I were wondering why the Dame’s picture hangs in this small room. I say it was executed in such a large size to hang in a larger room. Mr. Oaks, however, says it was meant for Miss Hetta’s room as an expression of love between the two sisters.”
“Well, there is an affection between them, sirs, but the fact is that the portrait hung in the Grand Salon until the Dame ordered it destroyed.”
“When was this, Trask?”
“Two days ago. ‘Trask,’ she said to me, ‘take that abomination out and burn it.’ Strange, she did like it originally, then, just like that, she hated it. Of course, Miss Hetta wouldn’t let me burn it, so we spirited it in here, where the Dame never comes.”
“Ha, you see I was right, Oaks. Thanks for settling the argument, Trask. Where is Major Tell’s room?”
“Right next to yours, if you’ll follow me, gentlemen.”
Tell’s chamber was at the back of the house, where we found him sitting in the unlighted room, looking out at the moonlit yard.
“Nothing yet, Major?” Cork asked, walking to the window to join him.
“Not a sign or a shadow. I have men hiding at the front and down there near the garden gate and over to the left by the stable. Do you really expect him to make a move?”
“Conjecture coasts us nothing, although I have more information now.”
Although the room was bathed in moonlight, as usual I was in the dark. “Would either of you gentlemen mind telling me what this is all about? Who is coming?”
“Going would be more like it,” the major said.
“Going—ah, I see! The killer hid himself in the house somewhere and you expect him to make a break for it when everyone is bedded down. But where could he have hidden? Your men searched the den and passageway for secret panels, did they not?”
“Ask your employer,” Tell said. “I am only following his orders—hold on, Cork, look down by the passage door.”
I looked over Cork’s shoulder to catch a glimpse of a cloaked figure in a cockade, moving among the shadows towards the stable.
“Our mounts are ready, Major?” Tell nodded. “Excellent. Let us be off.”
As I followed them downstairs, I remarked on my own puzzlement. “Why are we going to follow this scoundrel? Why not stop him and unmask him?”
“Because I know who our mysterious figure is, Oaks. It is the destination that is the heart of the matter,” Cork said as we hurried into the ballroom and back to the den door.
Once inside, I saw that Tell had placed our greatcoats in readiness, and we bustled into them. Cork walked over to the weapon wall and looked at two empty hooks.
“A brace of pistols are gone. Our shadow is armed, as expected,” he said.
“I’ll take this one,” I said, reaching for a ball-shot handgun.
“No need, Oaks,” Cork said. “We are not the targets. Come, fellows, we want to be mounted and ready.”
The night was cold as we waited behind a small knoll twenty yards down from the stable yard. Suddenly the doors of the stable burst open and a black stallion charged into the moonlight, bearing its rider to the south. “Now, keep a small distance but do not lose sight for a second,” Cork commanded, and spurred his horse forward.
We followed through the drifts for ten minutes and saw our quarry turn into a small alley. When we reached the spot, we found the lathered mount tied to a stairway which went up the side of the building to a door on the second-story landing. With Cork in the lead, we went up the cold stairs and assembled ourselves in front of the door. “Now!” Cork whispered, and we butted our shoulders against the wood paneling and fell into the room.
Our cloaked figure had a terrified man at gunpoint. The victim was a man in his forties, coiled into a corner. I was about to rush the person with the pistols, when the tricornered hat turned to reveal the chiseled face and cold blue eyes of Dame Ilsa van Schooner.
“Drop the pistols, Madam; you are only compounding your problem,” Cork said firmly.
“He murdered my child!”
“I swear, Dame Ilsa!” The man groveled before her. His voice was foreign in inflection. “Please, you must hear me out. Yes, I am scum, but I am not a murderer.”
Cork walked forward and put his hands over the pistol barrels. For a split second, the Dame looked up at him and her stern face went soft. “He’s going to pay,” she said.
“Yes, but not for your daughter’s death.”
“But only he could have—” She caught herself up in a flash of thought. Her lips quivered, and she released the pistol butts into Cork’s control. He took her by the arm and guided her to a chair.
The tension was broken, and I took my first look about. It was a large and comfortable bachelor’s room. Then I saw the work area at the far end—with an easel, palettes, and paint pots.
“The painter! He’s Jan der Trogue, the one who painted the portrait.”
“You know about the painting?” the Dame said with surprise.
I started to tell her about seeing it in her sister’s sitting room, but never got it out. Der Trogue had grabbed the pistol that Cork had stupidly left on the table and pointed it at us as he edged towards the open door. “Stay where you are,” he warned. “I owe you my life, sir.” He bowed to Cork. “But it is not fitting to die at a woman’s hands.”
“Nor a hangman’s,” Cork said. “For you will surely go to the gallows for your other crime.”
“Not this man, my fine fellow. Now, stay where you are, and no one will get hurt.” He whirled out onto the landing and started to race down the stairs. Cork walked to the door. To my surprise, he had the other pistol in his hand. He stepped out onto the snowy landing.
“Defend yourself!” Cork cried. Then, after a tense moment, Cork took careful aim and fired. I grimaced as I heard der Trogue’s body tumbling down the rest of the stairs.
Cork came back into the room with the smoking pistol in his hand. “Be sure your report says ‘fleeing arrest,’ Major,” he said, shutting the door.
“Escape from what? You said he didn’t kill the girl! This is most confusing and, to say the least, irregular!”
“Precisely put, Major. Confusing from the start and irregular for a finish. But first to the irregularity. What we say, see, and do here tonight stays with us alone.” He turned to the Dame. “We will have to search the room. Will you help, since you have been here before?”
“Yes.” She got up and started to open drawers and cupboards. She turned to us and held out a black felt bag which Cork opened.
“Gentlemen, I give you the van der Malin Chain, and quite exquisite it is.”
“So he did steal it,” I said.
“In a manner of speaking, Oaks, yes. But, Madam, should we not also find what you were so willing to pay a king’s ransom for?”
“Perhaps it is on the easel. I only saw the miniature.”
Cork took the drape from the easel and revealed a portrait of a nude woman reposing on a couch.
“It’s Gretchen!” I gasped. “Was that der Trogue’s game? Blackmail?”
“Yes, Mr. Oaks, it was,” the Dame said. “I knew it was not an artist’s trick of painting one head on another’s body. That strawberry mark on the thigh was Gretchen’s. How did you know of its existence, Captain? I told no one, not even my sister.”
“Your actions helped tell me. You ordered your own portrait burned two days ago, the same day your sister sent me a note and an invitation to the Masque.”
“A note?”
“Portending calamity,” I added.
“Oh, the fool. She must have learned about my failure to raise enough cash to meet that fiend’s demands.”
“Your sudden disdain for a fine portrait betrayed your disgust with the artist, not with the art. Then Wilda told us that you had planned to have your daughters painted by the same man, and, considering the time elapsed since your portrait was finished, I assumed that Gretchen’s had been started.”
“It was, and he seduced her. She confessed it to me after I saw the miniature he brought to me.”
“Why did you not demand its delivery when you gave him the necklace tonight?”
“I never said I gave it to him tonight.”
“But you did. You went into the den, not to see your daughter, but to meet der Trogue at the outside passage door. You lit a taper there, and he examined his booty at the entryway and then left, probably promising to turn over that scandalous painting when he had verified that the necklace was not an imitation.”
“Captain, you sound as if you were there.”
“The clues were. In the puddle just inside the door, there was a red substance. Oaks believed it was blood. It was a natural assumption, but when the question of your anger with a painter came to light, I considered what my eyes now confirm. Painters are sloppy fellows; look at this floor. Besides, blood is rarely magenta. It was paint, red paint, from his boot soles. Then, Madam, your part of the bargain completed, you returned to the den. Your daughter was still by the fire.”
“Yes.”
“And you returned to the ballroom.”
“Yes, leaving my soiled child to be murdered! He came back and killed her!”
“No, Dame van Schooner, he did not, although that is the way it will be recorded officially. The report will show that you entered the den and presented the van der Malin Chain to your daughter to wear on her night of triumph. My observation of the paint in the puddle will stand as the deduction that led us to der Trogue. We will say he gained entry into the house, killed your daughter, and took the necklace. And was later killed resisting capture.”
“But he did kill her!” the Dame insisted. “He had to be the one! She was alive when I left her. No one else entered the room until the honor guard went for her.”
Cork took both her hands.
“Dame van Schooner, I have twisted truth beyond reason for your sake tonight, but now you must face the hard truth. Der Trogue was a scoundrel, but he had no reason to kill Gretchen. What would he gain? And how could he get back in without leaving snow tracks? Gretchen’s executioner was in the den all the time—when Lydia was there, when you were. I think in your heart you know the answer—if you have the courage to face it.”
To watch her face was to see ice melt. Her eyes, her cold, diamond-blue eyes watered. “I can. But must it be said—here?”
“Yes.”
“Wilda. Oh, my God, Wilda.”
“Yes, Wilda. You have a great burden to bear, my dear lady.”
Her tears came freely now. “The curse of the van Schooners,” she cried. “Her father was insane, and his brother, Kaarl, lives in his lunatic’s attic. My mother thought she was infusing quality by our union.”
“Thus your stern exterior and addiction to purifying the bloodline with good stock.”
“Yes, I have been the man in our family far too long. I have had to be hard. I thank you for your consideration, Captain. Wilda will have to be put away, of course. Poor child, I saw the van Schooner blood curse in her years ago, but I never thought it would come to this.” The last was a sob. Then she took a deep breath. “I think I am needed at home.” She rose. “Thank you again, Captain. Will you destroy that?” She pointed to the portrait.
“Rest assured.”
As he opened the door for her, she turned back, with the breaking dawn framing her. “I wish it was I who had invited you to the ball. I saw you dancing and wondered who you were. You are quite tall.”
“Not too tall to bow, Madam,” Cork said, and all six-foot-six of him bent down and kissed her cheek. She left us with an escort from the detachment of soldiers that had followed our trail.
The room was quiet for a moment before Major Tell exploded. “Confound it, Cork, what the deuce is this? I am to falsify records to show der Trogue was a thief and a murderer and yet you say it was Wilda who killed her sister. What’s your proof, man?”
Cork walked over to the painting and smashed it on a chair back. “You deserve particulars, both of you. I said that Wilda was in the den all the time. Your natural query is, how did she get there unseen? Well, we all saw her. She was carried in—in the curtained sedan chair. In her twisted mind, she hated her sister, who would inherit everything, by her mother’s design. One does not put a great fortune into a madwoman’s hands.”
“Very well,” Tell said, “I can see her entry. How the deuce did she get out?”
“Incipient madness sometimes makes the mind clever, Major. She stayed in the sedan chair until her mother had left, then presented herself to Gretchen.”
“And killed her,” I interjected. “But she was back in the ballroom before the honor guard went in to get her sister.”
“There is the nub of it, Oaks. She left the den by the back passage, crossed the yard, and re-entered the house by the kitchen, in the far wing. Who would take any notice of a daughter of the house in a room filled with bustling cooks and servants coming and going with vittles for the buffet?”
“But she would have gotten her skirts wet in the snow,” I started to object. “Of course! The spilled punch bowl! It drenched her!”
Cork smiled broadly. “Yes, my lad. She entered the kitchen, scooped up the punch bowl, carried it into the ballroom, and then deliberately dropped it.”
“Well,” Tell grumped, “she may be sprung in the mind, but she understands the theory of tactical diversion.”
“Self-preservation is the last instinct to go, Major.”
“Yes, I believe you are right, Cork, but how are we to explain all this and still shield the Dame’s secret?”
Cork looked dead at me. “You, Oaks, have given us the answer.”
“I? Oh, when I said the killer took off his boots to avoid tracks in the den? You rejected that out of hand when I mentioned it.”
“I rejected it as a probability, not a possibility. Anything is possible, but not everything is probable. Is it probable that a killer bent on not leaving tracks would take off his boots inside the entry, where they would leave a puddle? No, I couldn’t accept it, but I’m sure the general public will.”
The major looked disturbed. “I can appreciate your desire to protect the Dame,” he said, “but to suppress evidence—”
“Calm yourself, Major, we are just balancing the books of human nature. I have saved the Crown the time and expense of trying and executing an extortionist. God knows how many victims he has fleeced by his artistic trickery over the years. And we have prevented the Dame from the commission of a homicide that any jury, I think, would have found justifiable. Let it stand as it is, Major; it is a neater package. The Dame has had enough tragedy in her life.”
The last of his words were soft and low-toned, and I watched as he stared into the flames. By jing, could it possibly be that this gallivanting, sunburnt American had fallen in love? But I quickly dismissed the thought. We are fated to our roles, we two—he, the unbroken stallion frolicking from pasture to pasture, and I, the frantic ostler following with an empty halter, hoping some day to put the beast to work. I persist.