All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred eighty-six)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Eight

Things Relative

(part one hundred eighty-six)

Weem slid a shame-faced look Élucide’s way. Elmer hauled himself to a second stone, her charcoal between his teeth, working at a job unneeded, with diligence a little desperate.

Which Elmer’s young life might well be.

“Do you go to church on a Sunday?” she asked.

“No. Dad doesn’t care for it.”

“Well, there’s a woman I’m looking for. Her name was Lisette, my grandmother. Her husband’s name was Alain Gremot. I think she may have died in this county. Some of the old people may recall Alain. Ask your mother. And here, I’ll give you a page from my book. My name and address.”

Elmer adjusted himself to button the paper in a trouser pocket. “Cookesville. Where the place is.”

“The lady is an employee of Mr. Ebrach,” Weem said.

Vanquished of its rival, the Vanguard mostly had abandoned editorials. These days it collected reader favorites, from the wires, shocking deaths and appalling accidents, amazing little-known facts. Also, the paper Élucide’s father and Fannie Rutherford owned jointly ran two sheets of advertising. But the Chicago dailies were plunged at full indiscretion into the “Murder on the Lake”, the “Shipboard Slaying”, the “Death Cruise for Wealthy Tennessean”—the scandal of the season.

The “youthful Demrose” sat in a bailiff’s house (his millionaire’s exemption from City Jail); he was under arrest, waiting trial, had been observed by a Times correspondent “listlessly paging a volume of poetry”.

“Ought to be Whittier, dedicated. I sent him one.”

An attorney, a Mr. Phelan, had written. Élucide’s correspondence with Manfred had been discovered in his desk drawer. Cookesvillians were ignorant…she thought in a way to be counted on. Even Dr. Horace, who spoke on “the dignity of a man’s name”, had called Manfred, “That Ryan-O’Brien”.

“This is a sort of hands-off for country spinsters I’m getting right now,” she told Weem. “Mr. Phelan wants my deposition, but will come down himself, not to trouble me with the very thought…he says so…of my traveling to Chicago. Manfred insists we knew each other as secretary and assistant secretary. No romance, all amiability.”

“He insists.”

“And I don’t have to. Some things are unentertainable.” She let Dancer hold his pace, and turned for a hard hold of Weem’s gaze.

“But… Hear me out. If he gets the one thing established, the friendship, he’s got room to play. Starts getting worried about the jury, he can fit you into a lie.”

“Oh, if Manfred lies about me, I’ll face him down. Right in a Chicago courtroom, right before all the press in the world.”

“Ma’am, you don’t know those people. I do.”

199

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred eighty-seven)

(2025, Stephanie Foster)