Murder at Rough Point

Book 4: Gilded Newport Mystery

by Alyssa Maxwell

Genres: Historical Mysteries; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

A party guest hunts for a murderer at a New England mansion: “Pleasantly twisty...will appeal to lovers of atmospheric country house mysteries.”—Publishers Weekly
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In glittering Newport, Rhode Island, status is everything. But despite being a poorer relation to the venerable Vanderbilts, Emma Cross has shaped her own identity—as a reporter and a sleuth.

As the nineteenth century draws to a close, Fancies and Fashion reporter Emma Cross is sent by the Newport Observer to cover an elite house party at Rough Point, a “cottage” owned by her distant cousin Frederick Vanderbilt that has been rented as an artist retreat. To her surprise, the illustrious guests include her estranged Bohemian parents—recently returned from Europe—as well as a variety of notable artists, including author Edith Wharton.

But when one of the artists is discovered dead at the bottom of a cliff, Rough Point becomes anything but a house of mirth. After a second murder, no one is above suspicion—including Emma's parents. As Newport police detective Jesse Whyte searches for a killer, Emma tries to draw her own conclusions—with the help of Mrs. Wharton. But with so many sketchy suspects, she'll need to canvas the crime scenes carefully, before the cunning culprit takes her out of the picture next . . .

Praise for Alyssa Maxwell and her Gilded Newport Mysteries

“Another entertaining entry in this cozy series.” —Library Journal on Murder at Beechwood

“Maxwell's second entry has a credible mystery, solved by a female detective who's likeable.” —Kirkus Reviews on Murder at Marble House

Release date: September 1, 2016

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 294

Sample

“You will come down from there this instant. Now, sir.” I clapped my hands for emphasis, but to no avail. The individual whose disorderly bulk presently concealed the newest tear in the leather seat of my buggy merely tilted his head at me with an infuriating mixture of defiance and incomprehension.

That look begged the question: How could I possibly object to his accompanying me? Yes, well. Such had been my morning thus far. The same individual had earlier spilled water across the kitchen floor and managed to fold the doormat in half so that upon entering from the garden, I’d first stumbled over the mat and then slid sideways across the wet floorboards. These acrobatics culminated with the bumping of my hip on the edge of the kitchen table.

While I did not find this latest antic any more endearing, it was not, however, entirely unexpected.

The rays of an uncertain sun seeped through lacy cloud cover and the sharp tang of low tide permeated the air and settled on my tongue. I stepped closer to the buggy and unceremoniously took hold of a bold red collar. “I must be off, and you, good sir, must vacate this seat immediately.”

Patch, a brown and white spaniel mix and Gull Manor’s newest and unruliest resident, whimpered sadly and resisted my gentle tug for all of a second or two. Then, with a growly whine, he hopped down onto the footboard and from there sprang to the ground beside me.

I bent to stroke his sweetly rounded head, which reached just above my knees. The curling fur slipped like warm velvet between my fingers. “There now, your job is to keep Nanny and Katie company while I’m gone. Be sure no harm comes to them.” Did he understand me? Oftentimes I believed he did. On this occasion he licked my hand and took off at an uneven lope, his shaggy ears flapping and his curling tail feathering in the breeze. He bolted out of sight around the corner of my sprawling if somewhat ramshackle house that had once belonged to my great-aunt Sadie.

I was not about to waste the opportunity, for who knew how long it would be before Patch remembered that Nanny, my housekeeper, and Katie, my housemaid, were fully capable of taking care of themselves. I climbed into my gig and clucked to my old roan hack, Barney. He lurched into a halfhearted stroll. Barney only knew one speed, but his leisurely pace was just fine with me today as I hadn’t far to go.

My front lawn, which had recently benefited from the attentions of my uncle Cornelius Vanderbilt’s gardeners, showed tinges of yellow and brown, a sure sign that autumn had arrived. Though the elms and maples on the perimeter of my property remained heavy with summer growth and showed only hints of the blazing colors to come, the hawthorn, boxwood, and azaleas closer to the house already looked tired and thin.

Despite the fading summer and my trials with a naughty, nearly full-grown pup, my spirits ascended with each of Barney’s labored steps. Mr. Millford, editor-in-chief and my employer at the Newport Observer, had called last night with a new assignment for me, one that promised nothing in the way of danger. That in itself came as a welcome relief, for I’d had enough of danger back in July. Yet neither was this to be one of Bellevue Avenue’s extravagant fetes, about which I had written countless frivolous columns about gowns, jewels, tableware, and decorations. No, for once I would neither be threatened by murderers nor secretly bored by frippery, and, best of all, I had been asked for specifically. Asked for. By name. It seemed I was establishing a reputation as a journalist. Finally.

One question did niggle at the back of my mind, but I resolved to ignore it. Why contemplate vexing riddles in the face of my good fortune?

As we left Gull Manor behind, a sturdy ocean breeze threatened to lift my hat right off my head. I placed one hand on the crown of my straw boater and turned my face into the gusts, letting my eyes fall half closed while I enjoyed the heady promise of a story of substance, the likes of which Newport hadn’t seen in far too long. Decades, actually. I didn’t even mind when the gull feather, dyed blue by Nanny to match my carriage dress, worked loose from my hatband and fluttered away. More than a decade ago, the intelligentsia—artists, writers, and philosophers—who had once inhabited our city in such great numbers had fled before the onslaught of the industrial barons such as my uncle Cornelius. Suddenly they were back, at least a small number of them were, and it seemed they wanted me to be the means through which they announced their return.

Me.

“Barney, do you realize this could be a new beginning, not only for me as a reporter, but for Newport as well?” I let him have his head, and while this only encouraged him to slacken the pace, we’d arrive at our destination in plenty of time. Barney knew the way to Bellevue Avenue as well as he knew his way into his own cozy stall.

For it was to Bellevue that we headed, but where the avenue made its ninety-degree turn north toward the opulent mansions that stretched along its length, we took a sharp right onto the curving driveway of Rough Point, the estate owned by Uncle Cornelius’s youngest brother, Frederick. Here was no palazzo like The Breakers, or Italianate villa like Beechwood, or the neoclassical variation of Versailles’s Le Petit Trianon that was Marble House.

With its granite façade trimmed in red sandstone, diamond-paned windows, and crenellated accents, Rough Point seemed a transplant from the English countryside, at least those whose pictures I had seen in books. Three gabled wings jutted out imposingly from the main structure, while a fourth gabled wing set at a slight angle from the rest made up the kitchen and service quarters. Heavy double doors beneath a Gothic arch stood framed by Ionic pilasters, forming an entrance that seemed to convey a forbidding message: Enter if you dare. Sitting on relatively isolated grounds near the southern tip of Bellevue Avenue, with rear lawns that heaved and tumbled to the Cliff Walk’s rocky precipice, Rough Point had been aptly named.

And yet, for all that, I smiled as Barney brought the buggy closer. Perhaps Rough Point spoke to a dark and defiant part of my nature, one that allowed me to endure danger and death without giving way to despair. Perhaps. At any rate, I had never felt the disquiet here some of my young Vanderbilt cousins experienced. Gertrude termed the place oppressive, Neily called it archaic, and Consuelo feared the shadows no amount of sunlight or electric illumination could dispel from its mahogany interiors.

At the sound of another vehicle crunching along the drive behind me, I looked back and was surprised to see Uncle Frederick’s brougham being brought up from the carriage house. A moment later the front door opened, and both Frederick and Louise Vanderbilt stepped outside. The pair had vacated Rough Point at midsummer, and I had not realized they’d returned. A man with dark hair slicked close to the scalp, angular, European features, and a pencil-thin mustache followed them. I recognized him as their estate manager, Howard Dunn, who handled legal and financial matters on Uncle Frederick’s various properties. As if he were a footman or butler, he carried a valise in each hand.

Aunt Louise saw me and waved. A tall woman with tightly curled hair and a slim figure envied by her sisters-in-law Alice and Alva—and explained by her never having borne children—she always seemed genuinely pleased to see me. “Emmaline, I’m so glad you arrived before we departed. Another few minutes and we would have quite missed you.”

“I’m glad I had a chance to see you, too,” I said, but I couldn’t help a slight sinking in the pit of my stomach. Here I had believed the individuals renting the house for the next two weeks had specifically asked for me to report on their activities. But now I suspected it had been Frederick and Louise who had recommended me for the job. I hadn’t achieved distinction as a journalist after all; I merely had thoughtful relatives.

Matters could be worse, I supposed. Either way I had an opportunity to distinguish myself as a reporter in matters other than fashion and frippery.

“I thought you’d left after the tribulations of the summer,” I continued as Uncle Frederick handed me down from my carriage.

“We most certainly did,” he replied. “Who could bear such vulgar disorder here, in what is supposed to be a peaceful summer enclave of garden parties and festive balls? This past summer, combined with the town’s rabid need to keep up with the Joneses, only served to reinforce our decision that Newport is not for us.”

I hid a grin. Though I couldn’t fault his motives when it came to murder and mayhem, it had been Uncle Frederick’s plans for Rough Point eight years ago that had, in large part, changed the nature of Newport’s summer cottages forever. Before then and with only a few exceptions, our visiting socialites had been content with Newport’s very New England shingle style of mansion with the occasional exception of an Italianate villa or Gothic revival cottage. It had been the startlingly lavish blueprints of Rough Point that prompted a covetous Alva Vanderbilt to erect high walls around her newly acquired Bellevue Avenue property to prevent anyone from glimpsing her triumphant Marble House until its completion. That in turn spawned the rebuilding of The Breakers to its palazzo-inspired glory. Now, Newport boasted one palatial tribute to the owner’s ego after another, with more in the making.

But of course, I wouldn’t remind Uncle Frederick of all that. I believed him sincere in having grown weary of constant one-upmanship. Of his two older brothers, Uncle Frederick most resembled William, but perhaps with kindlier eyes, and a great, dark mustache that curled beyond his cheeks. “We returned only to see our renters settled in,” he told me, “and to pack up any irreplaceable treasures. Now we’re off again to New York.”

Their driver brought the carriage to a stop beside us. Mr. Dunn, having silently held the valises this whole time, moved to load the cases onto the rear of the vehicle. A footman came out of the house with two more bags and piled them on top of the others, then proceeded to strap them all in place.

“You’ve been spending less and less time in Newport. If you stop coming altogether, I’ll miss you terribly,” I said truthfully. Of all my Vanderbilt relatives, Frederick and Louise were the most apt to accept me as I was, and suggested they find a husband for me much less frequently.

The wind stirred the silk flowers adorning Aunt Louise’s wide-brimmed hat, set at an angle over her carefully arranged curls. She gestured with a lace-gloved hand. “I know how much you love Newport, Emmaline.” She smiled at me. “But couldn’t you love it a teensy bit less, just enough to visit us in Hyde Park? You would love it there. This ocean with its constant winds is so unsettling to the constitution. The countryside at Hyde Park is ever so much more tranquil, like a Charles Baker or Thomas Cole painting. So idyllic and soothing and . . . well . . . civilized. We’d so love to have you there. And our neighbor’s youngest son—”

“Thank you, Aunt Louise, perhaps someday. But I have responsibilities here. A household to maintain, and employment.”

“Speaking of which, we’re glad you’ve been asked to report on whatever it is these bohemians plan to do.” Uncle Frederick flicked a disapproving gaze up at the house. “You’ll help Mr. Dunn keep an eye on things for us, won’t you?”

“Yes,” his wife interjected with some degree of agitation, “and alert the authorities should things get out of hand.”

“Out of hand?”

“Yes, you know how these freethinkers are with their modern ideas of art and poetry and theater. As if the traditional and established needed fixing.” Uncle Frederick gave a dramatic shudder.

“Of course,” I promised rather absently. My thoughts fixed on what he’d just said. We’re glad you’ve been asked to report . . . Was he merely trying to conceal his and Louise’s hand in my being here? Or had their tenants truly asked for me? I brightened at the prospect and with unfeigned enthusiasm said, “Can you tell me a bit about this group? Who they are, and their respective art forms.”

“Mr. Dunn will apprise you of all of that, dear.” Aunt Louise patted my cheek. With a careful tilt of her head to avoid our hats from colliding, she leaned and kissed me good-bye. “We really must go. Our luggage has gone ahead and our steamer is waiting to set sail. Adieu, Emmaline!”

Uncle Frederick kissed my cheek and squeezed my hand. “Good-bye, then, Emmaline. Come see us in Hyde Park sometime.”

With that he helped his wife into the carriage and climbed in after her, leaving me with a sense that their departure seemed rushed. With her smiling face and broad hat filling the open window, Aunt Louise called out another good-bye and added in a breezy tone, “It just occurred to me you might be familiar with one of the guests, at least by reputation. Mrs. Edward . . .”

The carriage jolted as it followed the curve of the drive, and the rest of Aunt Louise’s disclosure became lost in the rumble of wheels and the creaking of leather suitcases. I watched until the brougham reached a stand of elm trees and disappeared from view.

I turned to Howard Dunn, the estate manager I knew only vaguely, for I’d never had reason to say more than good day to him when we had met previously. Despite his carrying valises to the coach today, his was not a service role here but rather an administrative one. I opened my mouth to question him about the guests, but he spoke with a twitch of his mustache, so thin it might have been sketched in ink.

“Do come inside, Miss Cross, and I’ll apprise you of all you need to know. Some of our guests are already here. Others should arrive by this afternoon.” With no further attempt at pleasantries, he turned and led the way into the house. Apparently he found me beneath his regard.

The vestibule and foyer of Rough Point left one with a distinct sense of disappointment. Smallish, rectangular rooms with stone flooring, white walls, and coffered ceilings, the entryway rather underwhelmed the first-time visitor. Especially if one had visited, say, Marble House, with its golden Sienna marble entry hall and grand staircase, the eighteenth-century Venetian-painted ceiling, and generous views of the veranda and expansive rear grounds. No, one would not enter Marble House and experience the slightest twinge of letdown.

Here, it was as if the architects, Peabody & Stearns, hadn’t deemed this foyer of great importance and perhaps even added it as an afterthought. Ah, but before taking many steps, the visitor entered Rough Point’s Great Hall, a room of stone and marble that stretched two stories high, with an upper gallery that ran the full length of the room, and opposite, a rotunda of soaring windows that confronted a carefully sculpted scene of lawn and rock and sea. One had a sense of stepping back in time and across the ocean, to the charmed manorial world of the English countryside. Dark marbles and darker woods defined the interiors of Rough Point, creating those shadows Consuelo so abhorred, and lending a Gothic atmosphere to the place that might have leaped out of a Brontë novel.

Unlike Marble House or The Breakers, Rough Point sprawled from one end to the other, with the majority of rooms on the first and second floors facing out over the ocean. It was across the house that Mr. Dunn led me, through the Stair Hall, dining room, and through a heavy door to the servants’ wing. His brisk stride didn’t cease until we reached the butler’s pantry with its locked storage cupboards and equally locked safe. Multiple scheduling boards decorated the walls, and an imposing desk that boasted a telephone dominated nearly a third of the room. He bade me sit, and then ran through a list of instructions rather as a butler might have conveyed the house rules and daily duties to a new housemaid: quickly and tersely. If he thought to intimidate me with the importance of his position, I might have informed him that I had dealt with Newport’s most formidable butlers and housekeepers in the past with little or no permanent bruising. I held my tongue. He went on to explain that I would come and go each day, conduct interviews, view artwork-in-progress, and report on the retreat only once it had concluded and the artists had gone.

This last puzzled me, but I assumed the group had its reasons. Mr. Dunn then escorted me back across the house, leaving me alone in the drawing room to mull over the information while he went off to manage last-minute arrangements. I was instructed to wait, though for what I received no clue. I drifted through the room, making note of the changes since the last time I’d visited. Ming vases, an original Gainsborough, and other priceless items had been supplanted by expensive but not irreplaceable pieces, just as Uncle Frederick had said. He and Aunt Louise were taking no chances with their beloved possessions.

I returned to the central seating arrangement and sighed. That niggling question from earlier had been answered, for I had wondered how a group of artists, never known for possessing wealth, had raised enough funds to lease an estate like Rough Point. Mr. Dunn had confided that one of the guests was no starving artist, but an English baronet with a fortune at his disposal. I found his inclusion in such a group both unusual and interesting, and looked forward to interviewing him.

Wondering how long I would be consigned to the drawing room and what I might be waiting for, I stared at a fire screen I hadn’t seen here before, an elegant piece in carved, gilded wood holding an embroidered design on gold silk. It was a bright spot in this room, which, like the rest of the house, boasted the same dark floors, thick mahogany moldings, and deep, coffered ceilings.

“Your reputation quite precedes you, Miss Cross. Mr. Dunn informed me of your arrival, as I asked him to. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you again.”

Even after more than a decade, I recognized the voice. I also realized it belonged to the person whose name had not fully reached my ears as Aunt Louise and Uncle Frederick drove away. I also understood now why Uncle Frederick had used the term keeping up with the Joneses. For a member of that very family, the daughter of George and Lucretia Jones, was here beneath this roof, in this very room with me. It was her family’s wealth and extravagant lifestyle that had inspired the saying that had grown so prevalent most people had no idea where it originated. But I knew, and I struggled to compose my feelings.

How ironic that an individual I might most wish to avoid—whom I had for the most part avoided through the years—would be the first to greet me today.

I turned to face Mrs. Edward Wharton. Some ten years my elder, she and I had met once before, only briefly, before my mother shooed me away. Run to Nanny, Emma, she had said, and let the grown-ups visit. It had been at our house on Walnut Street in the Easton’s Point neighborhood by the harbor. I had scraped my knee, badly, and sought my mother’s attentions. But she had company, and I’d been too young to understand the significance of such a visitor entering our modest home. Too inexperienced to grasp that my father’s Vanderbilt roots combined with his growing reputation as an artist had garnered the notice of one of society’s wealthiest young women. Edith Wharton.

“Do you not remember me, Miss Cross? I suppose it has been many years, and you were so very young at the time.”

Oh, I remembered. I remembered how my child’s heart had detested her for putting such an avid light in my mother’s eyes, when her own daughter so rarely achieved the same level of enthusiasm. I hadn’t understood the reasons then. I hadn’t understood that this woman would become one of my father’s most ardent patrons, so essential to an artist’s career, and that eventually she and others would persuade my parents to leave Newport for the intellectual stimulation of Paris. But even if I had comprehended all those years ago, all it would have meant to me was that this individual could purchase my parents’ attentions while I could not.

I drew a fortifying breath, forced a courteous smile, and summoned the professionalism I so prized, and which I’d lost, utterly, at the sound of this woman’s greeting. “I certainly do remember you, Mrs. Wharton. I hope you’ve been well?”

“Come, let us sit and become acquainted.” She went to the lovely Regency-era sofa set at a perpendicular angle to the hearth, its gold pin striping setting off larger bands of burgundy and cream and picking up the gold silk design of the fire screen. She patted the cushion beside her. “I’m a great admirer of yours. I’d hoped we might discuss our literary tastes and writing techniques.”

I was taken aback and could do little to hide the fact. “You follow my Fancies and Fashions page?”

“Well, yes, there is that.” She brushed the notion aside with a flutter of her carefully manicured hand. “But your news articles, your reports on the terrible goings-on in Newport these past two summers. I must tell you I’m exceedingly impressed that you convinced your editor-in-chief to allow you to write those articles. Nellie Bly would be proud of you, I should think.”

I confess to experiencing a tiny thrill at being compared to the journalist I most wished to emulate. Nellie Bly, who wrote for the World in New York, had exceeded boundaries no female journalist had ever crossed before. “I confess it wasn’t easy. Mr. Millford resisted my efforts at every turn, as did my fellow reporter at the Observer. Ed Billings attempted to step in each time and claim the byline for his own.” As soon as I’d spoken, I wondered why I’d confided such details to her.

“And yet you persisted, didn’t you, Miss Cross?” She didn’t wait for my answer. “I believe you have grown into a woman of substance. And your style! It is much to be envied.”

Puzzled, I swept a glance downward at my blue carriage dress. It had once belonged to my aunt Sadie, was years out of date, but Nanny, my housekeeper and surrogate grandmother, had refreshed its appearance with jet buttons and, more recently, satin trimmings. Still . . .

Mrs. Wharton must have guessed the train of my thoughts, for presently she laughed, a light, easy sound. “No, Miss Cross, I don’t mean your fashion style. That is neither here nor there. I refer to your writing style. I don’t know if you are aware, but I’ve written a good deal of poetry, and I’m currently working on a manual of interior design I plan to call A Decoration of Houses. That is why I’m here, you see, and I’m hoping . . . well . . .”

She hesitated, seeming uncertain for the first time during our little tête-à-tête. I waited, wondering what she could possibly be leading up to, and took the opportunity to take in details that, in my shock of recognition, had eluded me.

She was dressed simply yet expensively in a cream skirt and, in the current trend that emulated menswear, a gray silk shirtwaist topped by a crisp white collar and a smart black bowtie. A tailored black jacket completed her outfit, the sleeves fashionably wide at the shoulders and tapering to tight cuffs at the wrists. The effect was both masculine yet unmistakably feminine. Confident. There was nothing frilly or superfluous about her, and the ease with which she moved in the outfit aroused my envy.

Yet Edith Wharton was not what I would consider a beautiful woman. She had rather plain, even features, large, earnest eyes, and a small, thin mouth that, in its resting position, did not encourage the viewer to expect more than a polite smile.

“What I hope,” she elaborated, “is that you might deign to look over a bit of what I’d written and give me your honest opinion. Perhaps advise me where and how I might adjust my prose for greater impact.”

I believe my mouth might have dropped open. She in turn looked apologetic, as if she supposed I would say I was far too busy and dismiss he. . .