Murder at the Breakers

Book 1: Gilded Newport Mystery

by Alyssa Maxwell

Genres: Biographical; Amateur Sleuth; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

In a historical mystery for Downton Abbey fans, a society reporter covers a killer party in Gilded Age Newport.



Newport, Rhode Island, August 1895: She may be a less well-heeled relation, but as second cousin to millionaire patriarch Cornelius Vanderbilt, twenty-one-year-old Emma Cross is on the guest list for a grand ball at the Breakers, the Vanderbilts' summer home. She also has a job to do—report on the event for the society page of the Newport Observer.



But Emma observes much more than glitz and gaiety when she witnesses a murder. The victim is Cornelius Vanderbilt's financial secretary, who plunges off a balcony faster than falling stock prices. Emma's black sheep brother Brady is found in Cornelius's bedroom passed out next to a bottle of bourbon and stolen plans for a new railroad line. Brady has barely come to before the police have arrested him for the murder. But Emma is sure someone is trying to railroad her brother and resolves to find the real killer at any cost . . .

Release date: March 25, 2014

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 305

Sample

Newport, Rhode Island, August 1895


Here the nib of my pen ran dry and scratched across the paper, threatening to leave a tear. If not for the what? I knew what I wanted to say; this was to be a novel of mystery and danger, but I was having a dickens of a time that morning finding the right words.

As I pondered, my gaze drifted to another page I’d shoved aside last night. Sitting on my desktop inches from my elbow, the words I’d hastily scrawled before going to bed mocked me with their insipidness. “Mrs. Astor Plants a Rose Garden,” the title read. Who could possibly care, I wondered. Yet people apparently did care, or I wouldn’t have been sent by my employer, Mr. Millford of the Newport Observer, to cover the auspicious event. Not that Mrs. Astor actually wielded anything resembling a garden tool, mind you, or chanced pricking her tender fingers on a thorn. No, she’d barked brisk orders at her groundskeepers until the placement of the bushes suited her taste, and then ushered her dozen or so guests onto the terrace for tea.

I sighed, looking up from my desk to stare out my bedroom window. The scene outside perfectly matched the mysterious one I’d just described: a glowering, blustery day that promised intermittent rains and salty winds. The inclement weather heralded ominous tidings for my protagonist, not to mention wreaking real-life havoc on the tightest of coiffeurs.

No matter, I had no plans to stray from home until much later in the evening. I dipped my pen in the inkwell and was about to try again when from behind me a hand descended on my shoulder.

With a yelp I sprang from my chair, shoving it away with the backs of my knees. I sucked in a breath and prepared to cry out in earnest, but before I could utter a sound, a second hand clamped my mouth.

“Shush! For crying out loud, Em, don’t scream. I thought you heard me. Ouch!”

I’d instinctively bitten one of the fingers pressed against my lips, even as recognition of the familiar voice poured through me and sent my fear draining from my limbs. Still, I had no intention of apologizing. Wrenching from his grip, I turned and slapped my brother’s hands away.

“Blast it, Brady! What are you doing here? Neither Katie nor Nanny would have let you upstairs without asking me first.”

“The front door was unlocked. I called out, but when no one answered I let myself in.” A flick of his head sent a shank of damp, sandy blond hair off his forehead—and assured me he was lying. That particular gesture had accompanied Brady’s fibs for as long as I could remember. The only truth to his statement was that he’d let himself in.

“You sneaked in, didn’t you?” I folded my arms in front of me. “Why?”

“I need your help, Em.”

“Oh, Brady, what now?” My arms fell to my sides, and with a sigh that melted into a yawn, I walked to the foot of my bed and reached for my robe. “I suppose you must be in real trouble again, or you’d never be out and about this early.”

“Are you going to The Breakers tonight?” He referred to the ball our relatives were holding that evening.

“Of course. But—”

“I need you to do something for me.” He threw himself into the chintz overstuffed chair beside the hearth. I remained standing, glaring down at him, braced for the inevitable. “I, uh . . . I did something I shouldn’t have. . . .”

“Really? What else is new?” Several scenarios sprang to mind. A brawl. A drunken tirade. Cheating at cards. An affair with yet another wife of an irate husband bent on revenge. One simply never knew what antics my half brother, Stuart Braden Gale IV, might stir up on any given day. Or night. Despite hailing from two of Newport’s oldest and most respected families—on both our mother’s and his father’s sides—Brady had seen the inside of the Newport jail nearly as often as the town’s most unsavory rapscallions. And on many a morning, I’d paid the bailiff on his behalf more times than I, or my purse, cared to count.

“I want to make it right,” he hurried on. “The Breakers will be mobbed later and I’ll be able to sneak in, but I’ll need your help.”

“I don’t like the sound of this one bit, Brady. Whatever it is, you know you should just come clean. You can’t hide from Uncle Cornelius for long.”

Before he could reply, a pounding echoed from the hall below. I heard a tread on the staircase and moments later there came a rap at my bedroom door. With an imploring look, Brady shook his head and put a finger to his lips. He jumped up from the chair and moved to the corner of the room where my armoire would hide him from view. A sense of foreboding had me dragging my feet as I went to the door.

“Good mornin’, Miss Emma.” Katie, my young housemaid, peered in at me and tucked an errant red curl under the cap she’d obviously donned in haste. Her soft brogue plunged to a murmur. “Sorry to disturb you so early, miss, but Mr. Neily’s below. Shall I tell him you ain’t receivin’ yet?”

“Neily?” A burst of wind rattled the windows, sending a chill down my back. “On a morning like this?” My maid didn’t answer, and I managed to refrain from angling a glance into the shadows cloaking my brother. “Thank you, Katie. Tell him I’ll be down in a few minutes. Show him into the morning room, please, and bring in coffee.”

“Aye, miss.” The girl hesitated and then bobbed an awkward curtsy.

I closed the door.

“You won’t tell him I’m here, will you, Em?”

With pursed lips I met my brother’s eager blue gaze. “He’s looking for you, is he?”

“One would assume.”

Going to my dressing table, I pinned my braided hair into a coil at my nape, secured the sash of my robe into a knot, and slipped my feet into a pair of tattered satin slippers. In the bathroom my great aunt Sadie had installed before she died, I turned the creaky faucet and splashed cold water onto my face. Ordinarily I wouldn’t dream of greeting company in such a state of dishabille, but this was my cousin Neily, here on a blustery August morning hours before he typically showed his face beyond the gates of his family’s summer home.

Would I keep my brother’s secret? Blindly lend him the help he asked for?

I sighed once more. Didn’t I always?

When I stepped back into the bedroom, Brady was nowhere to be seen, though I thought I heard the telltale click of the attic door closing.

Downstairs, I paused in the morning-room doorway. A coffeepot and two cups waited on the table; fruit, muffins, and a tureen of steaming oatmeal occupied the sideboard. Under any other circumstances, my stomach would have rumbled. Not today.

It didn’t appear as if my cousin had brought an appetite either, as he hadn’t helped himself to any of the repast. I pasted on a smile and stepped into the room. “Good morning, Neily. What brings you here so early, and in such weather? Not that it isn’t always good to see you.” Could he hear the hesitation in my tone? “Will you join me in some coffee?”

He had been standing with his broad back to me, staring out at the ocean, his dark hair boyishly tousled in the way that had become fashionable among the sporting young gentlemen here for the summer season. He turned, his somber expression framed by the tossing gray waves and the ragged clouds scuttling past like ripped, wind-born sheets.

“Good morning, Emmaline,” he said curtly, a civility to be gotten over quickly so he could come to the point of his visit. He held his black bowler between his hands. “Is Brady here?”

I blinked and clutched the ruffled neckline of my robe. For once I didn’t bother correcting Neily on my name. I preferred Emma, but my more illustrious relatives insisted on using my full name, as they did with all the girls in the family. “Brady,” I repeated. I paused, hating to lie, but for now I’d do what I could to protect my brother, at least until I knew more.

I discreetly crossed two fingers. “You know Brady’s never up this early. Is something wrong?”

“He’s up today and, yes, something’s wrong.” His overcoat billowing behind him, he came toward me so quickly I almost backed up a step, but managed to hold my ground. “If I were to look around, are you sure I wouldn’t find him?”

Only if you look in the attic. But please don’t. Then again, by now Brady might be somewhere on the first floor, perhaps in the adjoining service hallway, listening to every word.

Aloud, I said, “Look all you like.” I was sure Neily could hear my heart pounding. “Did you check around town?”

“He’s not at his digs, and he’s not sleeping it off at any of his usual haunts. This is important, Emmaline, and I need your help. So does Brady, as a matter of fact.”

Good heavens, did he think I hadn’t figured that out for myself? But I raised my eyebrows in a show of ignorance.

Neily’s grip on his hat tightened, leaving fingerprints on the rain-dampened felt. “If you happen to see him, if he shows up here . . .”

“Yes, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him. Now, about that coffee . . .” I started toward the table, but Neily’s next words stopped me cold.

“No, don’t tell Brady anything. Call the house. Immediately. Ask for me. Tell no one else anything. No one. Not even Father.”

That reference to Cornelius Vanderbilt II held just enough emphasis to send a lump of dread sinking to the pit of my belly. “You’re scaring me, Neily. What exactly has Brady done?”

In a rare occurrence, Cornelius Vanderbilt III, heir to a fortune that had surpassed the $200 million mark a generation ago, shifted both his feet and his gaze, obviously no longer able to meet my eye. “I . . . I don’t like to say, Emmaline, not just now. It could all just be a . . . a misunderstanding.”

I strode closer to him. Realizing I was clutching my robe again, I dropped my hands to my sides and squared my shoulders. “What could be a misunderstanding, Neily? Stop being mysterious. If Brady’s in trouble, I have a right to know.”

“It’s railroad business.” A faint blush stained those prominent cheekbones of his, raising my curiosity tenfold and making me wonder, Brady’s present crisis aside, what business machinations the family had gotten up to now. “Please, Emmaline, that’s all I can tell you.”

I knew I wouldn’t get any more from him. “All right. If I see Brady or hear from him, I’ll call. He was invited for tonight, wasn’t he?”

Tonight’s ball was to be both a coming-out party for my cousin Gertrude and a housewarming event for Alice and Cornelius Vanderbilt’s newly rebuilt summer “cottage”—an affair that promised to be the most extravagant Newport had ever seen.

“He’s invited, but it’s doubtful he’ll show.” Neily started past me, then hesitated, staring down at the patent leather toecaps of his costly boots. “I couldn’t help but notice that . . . that Katie isn’t . . .”

Ah. Early that spring, a few weeks after the family had come up from New York to supervise the final touches on The Breakers, a young maid in their employ had shown up at my door, distraught and with nowhere else to turn. Katie Dillon had told me little more than what was obvious, but I’d surmised the rest. I’d been furious with Neily, and vastly disappointed with the cousin I’d known all my life and had come to admire.

“No, Katie isn’t,” I said coldly. I tugged my robe tighter around me and pushed away images of that awful night of blood and pain and tears. Katie had been in her third month, had hardly begun to show yet. “Not any longer. The child died and nearly took Katie with it.”

For the briefest moment Neily hung his head, quite a show of remorse for a Vanderbilt. “But she is . . . she’s . . .”

“Fine now, thank you for inquiring.” My tone rang of dismissal. I had far more important concerns than soothing his conscience.

Neily lingered a moment longer as if searching for words. Then he was gone, leaving me staring past the foggy windows to the waves pluming over the rocks that marked the end of the spit of land on which my house, Gull Manor, perched boldly above the Atlantic Ocean.

A half an hour earlier I’d been imagining mysterious happenings, but suddenly I’d entered a very real mystery of my own. Who was the villain? Who the victim?

A step behind me broke my troubled trance. I didn’t bother turning around. I knew my brother’s skulking footsteps when I heard them. “Right now Neily only suspects I did what I did,” he said softly. “If I undo it, there’ll be nothing to hide. All I need for you to do is be my lookout later.”

I walked to the window and reached out, pressing my palm to the cool pane. “Brady, I don’t see why I should help you if you won’t trust me enough to tell me what you did.”

“Of course I trust you. But it’s better you don’t know too much. I don’t want you implicated.”

I whirled, true fear for Brady knotting my throat. His clothes and hair had dried, but his rumpled appearance lent him a vulnerable, lost air that tugged at my heartstrings. “Oh, Brady. If you don’t change your ways, someday you’ll be beyond anyone’s help.”

He held up a hand, palm up. “Just keep an eye on the old man, Em. That’s all. Right before midnight. Everyone should be in that cavernous hall of theirs toasting cousin Gertrude before the midnight supper. But if you see Uncle Cornelius edging toward the staircase at any time between eleven forty-five and midnight, do something, anything, to stop him. All right, Em? Can you do that for me?”

I regarded his trim, compact frame, his fine, even features, and the smudges of sleeplessness beneath his eyes. Brady was my elder brother by four years. Our parents were alive and well, but living in Paris among all the other expatriated artists searching for inspiration, many of whom had once, in a simpler time, called Newport home. Arthur Cross, my father, was a painter and, yes, a Vanderbilt, but a poor one, descended from one of the daughters of the first Cornelius. Brady wasn’t a Vanderbilt at all but Mother’s son from her first marriage. His father had died before he was born, a Newport dandy with a penchant for spending rather than earning and who had been presumed dead in a yachting accident, though his body was never found.

With no available parents, somehow I had become the guiding force in Brady’s life. Even at twenty-one I was the steadier of the two of us, the more practical, the one who remembered that food and clothing and a roof over one’s head couldn’t be won at poker or dicing. But when I couldn’t guide him, I picked him up, dusted him off, gave him a lecture, and fed him honey cakes and tea. Why that last? Because despite his many failings—and they were numerous—there remained some endearing quality about Brady that brought out my motherly instincts. What can I say? I loved my brother. And I would do what I could to keep him on the straight and narrow.

“Promise me your intentions are honorable,” I demanded in a whisper.

“I swear it, Em.”

With a nod and an audible breath, I agreed to help him. I just prayed I wouldn’t regret it.

At a little after nine that evening, I turned my buggy onto Victoria Avenue and drove the short distance to the end of Ochre Point. Half-stone walls topped by gleaming, curling wrought-iron fences and backed by immaculately trimmed hedges marked the perimeter of The Breakers property along Ochre Point Avenue. Flanked by two pairs of massive stone pillars, the soaring iron gates stood open to the long sweep of drive leading up to the house’s hulking outlines, illuminated against the night sky by the interior lights and countless gas lanterns.

Shipley, the gatekeeper, stood ready to turn away anyone who didn’t hold up one of Alice Vanderbilt’s gilded foolscap invitations. He hailed when he recognized me and waved me on through the gates, chuckling only slightly. He knew as well as I that I’d raise eyebrows driving my own carriage, especially after Aunt Alice offered to have one of her drivers collect me. I hoped I could pass my horse and vehicle off to a footman before either of the elder Vanderbilts saw me and tsked at my “outlandish behavior.”

I maneuvered carefully past the stylish black victorias and sleek broughams lining the drive and occupying the open pavement in front of the grand porte cochere. With so many footmen and drivers milling about in their colorful livery, the area had taken on the festive atmosphere of a midsummer fair. A footman in the Vanderbilts’ distinctive maroon livery came running to help me down.

“Good evening, Miss Emmaline. Beautiful night, isn’t it? You’re looking mighty fine, if you don’t mind my saying.”

Such was my rapport with many of the servants here; after all, I was closer in circumstances to most of them than to my well-heeled relatives. I thanked him heartily and made my way beneath the arched portico that jutted from the ornate marble façade of the four-story, seventy-room “summer cottage.” The Venetian-style villa easily dwarfed its Bellevue Avenue neighbors, even the stately Marble House, built two years earlier by yet another branch of the Vanderbilt family.

The absence of one servant in particular was enough to make me stop just inside the door. “Bateman,” I said to the head footman, “where is Mr. Mason tonight? Surely he isn’t ill?”

I could think of no other reason that would prompt the Vanderbilts’ long-time butler, Theodore Mason, to miss such an important event.

The good-looking, fair-haired young man cast a glance over his shoulder at the bustling entrance hall, then leaned closer to me. “He’s been dismissed, Miss Emmaline. For stealing. Mr. Goddard caught him at it.”

I gasped in disbelief. But before I could ask questions, more guests entered behind me, forcing me to continue on down the marbled hallway, through a set of wrought-iron doors, and to the steps of the Great Hall, where the family waited to greet their pre-ball dinner guests.

There, Aunt Alice stood at the head of the informal receiving line. “Why, Emmaline, how enchanting you look, my dear.” She gave my sash a tug and smoothed her plump hands over my gown’s newly refurbished sleeves as if she could somehow fuss my attire into a more fashionable state. A thoughtful gleam entered her eye, and if she was remembering my pale green gown from last year’s midsummer cotillion at Rough Point, well, she would be correct.

“Thank you for inviting me for dinner, Aunt Alice.”

The actual fête wouldn’t begin for another two hours. I and about thirty other “close family and friends” had been invited to a pre-ball meal.

“Yes, yes, of course, dear,” she said heartily. Her gaze dropped to my right hand; she, of course, knew better than to wonder if I’d brought along a lady’s maid. “No valise?” she observed.

“No, Aunt. I won’t be changing for the ball.” No, I’d been hard put to come up with one dress appropriate enough for a night at The Breakers. Meanwhile, I longed to ask her about Mr. Mason, but I knew tonight would be the wrong time to raise the subject. Instead, I leaned down to kiss her round cheek.

She gave my shoulders an affectionate squeeze. “You know, Emmaline, our nice Mr. Goddard has been eager for your arrival. I’ve seated him beside you for dinner. Be pleasant with him. I do believe he wishes to ask you to dance later.”

I mumbled something noncommittal, but Aunt Alice heard what she wished.

“Oh, good, he’ll be so pleased. Cornelius, here is our lovely Emmaline. . . . Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Greerson . . . and Mrs. Astor, how very good of you to come. . . .” With practiced finesse, Aunt Alice handed me off down the receiving line.

Uncle Cornelius tweaked my cheek. Of average height and build, with graying hair and the sloping posture of an accounting clerk who spent long hours poring over ledgers, the fifty-three-year-old head of the Vanderbilt family would hardly have turned heads on a busy sidewalk. Until, of course, one met his gaze; those dark eyes seared and skewered and gave no quarter. And yet for me, he very nearly beamed with one of his rare smiles.

“You’re looking robust, Emmaline. Comes from breathing the sea air year-round, I expect. How are your parents?”

“They write that they’re well, Uncle, thank you for asking.”

“Your father sell any paintings lately?”

“Yes, just last month,” I was happy to be able to tell him.

“Make a good margin on it?”

I hadn’t the vaguest idea what Father made on his paintings. Occasionally my parents wired me a few dollars to help with the running of Gull Manor, but otherwise I made due with the small annuity Aunt Sadie had left me along with the house, and what wages I earned on my own. But I smiled and said, “I believe so, yes, Uncle.”

“Good. Though for the life of me I’ll never understand why he didn’t want the position I offered him at New York Central. Artists—bah!”

There was little I could say to that, so I merely smiled. Strictly speaking, Cornelius Vanderbilt wasn’t my uncle. We were second cousins twice or thrice removed, but addressing that steadfast, imposing old gentleman by merely his first name—or his equally formidable wife, for that matter—was a notion more daunting than even my stout heart could rise to.

His attention, too, passed to the Greersons and Mrs. Astor, and I moved on to greet the rest of the family. Neily kissed the air near my cheek and mumbled a stiff good evening. Gertrude, the star of the evening and a good head taller than I, hugged me enthusiastically. We paused to admire each other’s gowns, hers a feminine confection of white chiffon, mine a flounced watered silk that had seen the better part of a decade. At least the mossy color set off my hazel eyes nicely.

“Nanny did a splendid job,” she whispered with a genuine smile, knowing full well my gown had been turned more than once, with new sleeves, fresh lace, and a beaded sash recently added in an attempt to bring the frock up to date.

“They won’t let me stay up for the ball,” Gladys, the youngest Vanderbilt, complained in my ear when I bent down to hug her.

“I’ll try to sneak up later to keep you company,” I whispered back. “And you can help me write my article about the ball for the society page.”

She giggled and kissed my cheek. “Don’t forget.”

I promised I wouldn’t and moved up the wide, carpeted steps into the Great Hall. I’d been in the house a handful of times since its unofficial reopening in the spring, but the breadth and depth and soaring height of this room, with its ornate gilding and carved Italian marble, still forced the air from my lungs in a giddy rush. I glanced up at the faraway ceiling, painted to give the illusion of the sky poised above an open courtyard.

The original house had been a larger version of my own Gull Manor—timbered and shingled, with gabled rooftops and sprawling wings. But when that house burned to the ground three years ago, Cornelius and Alice had commissioned a stone and marble gargantuan to be built in its place, insisting it be the grandest, most sumptuous mansion New England had ever seen. I couldn’t imagine one more majestic.

Or more ostentatious. But that was an opinion I kept to myself.

The moment our intimate dinner ended the servants rushed into the dining room to set up for the 300-odd guests who would be supping there at midnight. I ran upstairs to a guest room to freshen up, and by the time I descended the grand staircase the festivities were in full swing.

Although much of the house had been fitted out with electricity, Aunt Alice favored the richer glow of traditional illumination, especially for an event such as this. I couldn’t say which glittered brighter, the gaslight and candlelight shimmering on the myriad treasures and artwork that filled my view, or the guests who had spent small fortunes on tuxedos and ball gowns and rummaged deep into the family vaults for their finest jewelry. I fingered the cameo pinned to the ribbon at my throat—a gift from Aunt Sadie—and nearly felt ashamed of the tiny teardrop diamonds hanging from my ears.

Then again, when I considered how many disgraced maids I could help with the kind of money these people tossed blithely away on an average afternoon, well . . .

A lively Strauss waltz filled the air. As I made my way through the hall, greeting. . .