Not They Who Soar

Book 2: Katharine Wright Mystery

by Amanda Flower

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Historical Mysteries; Mystery

Synopsis

The equally brilliant real-life sister of the famous flying Wright Brothers, Katharine Wright, investigates an unsettling death at the 1904 World's Fair in this radiant new historical mystery from USA Today bestselling author Amanda Flower.

Summer 1904. Katharine and her best friend from Oberlin College, Margaret Goodwin Meacham, are thrilled to attend the St. Louis Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, for the centennial celebration of the Louisiana Purchase. Not only is it a grand, international event, it’s also the first time the young women have seen each other in quite a while, and they are giddy with excitement—despite warnings from Katharine's old family friend, poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, to be careful of the fair’s less seemly side.

Undaunted, the girls have a lovely time—until the exposition turns from a girls’ trip to a misadventure when Katharine stumbles upon a woman in distress. It’s obvious that she has been attacked. Katharine does her best to save her, but tragically, before help can arrive, the woman dies. Yet just before her last breath, she utters the words aeronautics competition. . . . Katharine’s brothers Wilbur and Orville were asked to enter the competition with their successful 1903 flyer but declined. Katharine wonders how this young woman could be connected to such a prestigious event.

Now, unable to get the woman’s face out of her mind, Katharine convinces Margaret to join her investigation—and it’s soon clear that the race to be declared the first in flight might just be the deadliest competition of them all . . .  

 

Release date: May 27, 2025

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

“Welcome to St. Louis!” the slim train conductor shouted at the top of his voice as I stepped out of the passenger car.

Puffs of white steam blew in my face and people of all ages and from all places dashed here and there as they greeted friends and collected their belongings. I had never witnessed such a scene in all my life. Nor had I ever seen such a crowded platform as hundreds of people awaited the next train.

I placed a protective hand on my new hat. It was the first purchase I’d made for myself in six years. My teaching salary was modest, and my income was folded into that of our household. The hat was bleached white straw with a wide brim decorated with pink, white, and yellow roses. Pink ribbons fell from the back of the brim to finish the look. I typically would not spend so much money on such frivolity, but my brother Orville, who was the snappiest dresser in the family, insisted I buy it before leaving for St. Louis. As he said, if I was going to the world’s fair, I needed to look the part.

I also didn’t want to disappoint my very dear friend Margaret, who invited me to the fair.

I adjusted my spectacles on my nose and scanned the crowd but could not spot her. Had I known that the station would be this bustling, I would have asked Margaret to meet me at the ticketing booth. I had no idea how she was going to discover where I was in this utter chaos.

Margaret Goodwin Meacham was my dearest friend in the world. We met as first year students at Oberlin College and were in the same graduating class of 1898. We both had excelled in our studies, and while I was a master of Latin and Greek, she was a student of literature and the star scholar of the Literature Department. I always thought it was fortunate that we had different courses of study. Had we not, we would have been in direct competition with each other, and that would be detrimental to our friendship as neither Margaret nor I liked to lose.

As much as I had wanted to see the fair, I had worried about leaving my father and brothers for such a long period. However, in Margaret’s last letter asking me to join her, I sensed a bit of unease as she had wrote me, “I need my friend during this time.” What time she referred to, I didn’t know. In any case, I knew I had to be there for my friend in her time of need, just as I knew that she would be there for me.

Furthermore, I felt more secure knowing that our young maid Carrie Kayler was there for the day-to-day routine of running the house, and I asked her to make sure that the boys eat at least two meals. That can be a tricky task as they become absorbed in their work. It’s a trait that the whole family carries.

I walked to the end of the train where there was more space in the crowd so that I would find my bearings and hopefully find the Meachams. In the very worst case, I did have the address of their flat in the city and could take a taxi there. However, I knew Margaret would be here looking for me, and I didn’t want to cause my friend any undue worries when she was already dealing with so much.

I removed my glasses and cleaned the train soot from the lenses with a handkerchief.

As I was still cleaning them, I heard a shout. “Stop! Grab her!”

I didn’t put my glasses on in time to see exactly what was happening, but I saw a blurry woman running toward me.

“Grab her!” another shout came.

Was she a thief?

I shoved the glasses on my nose and saw her face. She was young. No more than twenty-two if I had to guess. She had flowing dark curly hair and dark eyes, and in that moment those eyes were filled with abject terror.

“Stop her!”

I reached out my hand and grabbed her by the arm.

She looked into my eyes. “Help me. I need help.”

I gasped. “What is your name?”

“Stop her!” The shouting men pushed their way through the crowd.

She looked over her shoulder and yanked her arm from me before running away. Her abrupt movement caused me to lose my balance, and I would have fallen into the track if someone had not reached out and grabbed my hand just before I tumbled into the trench.

I might have been rescued, but my new hat lay on the tracks.

“Katharine, are you quite all right?” Henry Haskell asked.

I blinked at him. “Harry?” He was looking quite handsome in a freshly brushed brown suit, his dark hair parted smartly down the middle and his mustache neatly combed. I had always thought him to be good-looking in his studious way and manners, but he had never been anything more than a good friend.

As it was, he was married to Isabella Haskell, a woman just a year my junior that he knew from his hometown in Lorain, Ohio.

“Harry, what the blue blazes are you doing here?” I shouted.

He chuckled. He still held my hand, his other hand under my elbow as if he wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t leap onto the track of my own accord.

I pursed my lips together and looked at his hands.

He dropped his hands and blushed. “Katharine, leave it to you to get straight to the point. I’m here for the same reason that you are, I gather: the fair. I’m covering the aeronautics competition for the Kansas City Star. I was surprised to see that your brothers did not enter.”

I sniffed. “The parameters of the competition do not make it feasible for success. How can it be fair for balloons to go up against flyers like that of my brothers’? The cards were stacked against them. Their work is far too important to put their flying machine at risk for an impossible task. Mark my words, as my brothers have not entered the fray, no one will be able to win that one-hundred-thousand-dollar pot.”

“Then you came here alone?” Harry asked. He didn’t even attempt to hide the concern in his voice.

“I’m meeting Margaret here. She and Meacham invited me. The only problem is, I can’t find them in this crush of people.”

“The platform should clear out soon with the whistle that signals the departure, then it will be much easier to see them,” he said. “How did you lose your balance? I remember you being more sure-footed than that.”

“A woman was being chased, and I stopped her. She pulled away from me when her pursuers were near. Surely, you got a good look at her as you were just at my elbow before I would have plummeted to my death.”

The corners of Harry’s mustache twitched as if he was trying his very best to control laughter that was bubbling deep in his gut.

“I don’t know how you can view this as amusing.” I folded my arms.

The mirth disappeared from his face. “I don’t find it amusing that you could have been injured, and I am very glad that I was close enough to assist you. However, it did tickle my funny bone to remember how dramatic you can be. You wouldn’t have died if you had fallen onto the track. You might have been bruised and sprained your ankle, but nothing more than that.”

“How do you know that? A train could have come through just then and smashed me to bits, and furthermore, do you not see the sad state of my hat down there on the tracks?”

He shook his head. “As for the woman, I didn’t see her. I was concentrating on you,” he said. “I saw you from across the platform, and I knew by the look on your face that you were quite concerned. I hoped to offer my assistance. I had not known I was about to save your life.”

“The platform was quite crowded, and I suppose it’s possible that you didn’t see the woman,” I grumbled. “I don’t know who she was, but I heard running footsteps and someone was shouting over and over again to stop her. I reached out to try to do as instructed and she asked me for help. Before I could offer assistance, she was gone again.”

Harry held up his hands. “I believe you. You taught me at Oberlin, even though that was many years ago, that you are trustworthy. Had it not been for you, I would have failed Greek altogether, and you never told a soul that you tutored me. You kept my confidence, and I am indebted to you for that.”

I lifted my chin. “And I will take it to the grave. However, everyone knew that you were tutoring me in math. It never bothered me that it was well-known.”

“You do not have a man’s embarrassment on such matters.”

A tall, blond porter hopped down onto the tracks and retrieved my hat. He set it on the side and climbed out of the deep trench as if it was level with the ground. Had I jumped into the trench, I would have had to be lifted out, which would have been terribly embarrassing.

He handed the hat to me. “Yours, miss?” he asked with a bow.

“It is.” I accepted the hat from his hand. “Thank you kindly for saving my hat.” I examined it. Some of the flowers had been mussed and there was a bit of soot on the back of the brim, but overall, it was no worse for wear.

I thanked him profusely and reached into my pocket to hand him a coin to express my thanks, but to my shock, Harry handed him a five-dollar bill. The young porter’s eyes gleamed.

I secured my hat on my head the very best I could. My hat pin was bent from the fall. I knew the hat would look crooked, but it just didn’t seem right to forego wearing one. Every lady at the station wore a hat.

The young porter—who wasn’t a day older than my high school students back at Steele High School, where I taught Latin when not running the household for my father and two bachelor brothers, Wilbur and Orville—turned to go. “Young man, did you see a woman running along the platform and someone shouting for her to be stopped?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “No, miss.”

He wouldn’t look me in the eye. I could hold my own with teenagers and I knew when they were lying to me. This one most certainly was, but I saw no reason to press him at that moment with Harry looking on.

Even so, I asked, “What is your name?”

“My name, miss?”

“So that I can tell your supervisor of the fine job that you did by saving my hat.”

“Oh,” he said and looked away again. “John Smith.”

That was a lie too.

After the boy who was not named John Smith left us, I turned to Harry. “I know you consider Orville a good friend. When you write to him, do not tell him about this incident. If my father and brothers learn of it, they will never let me leave the house again.”

“I would never tell tales on you, Katharine,” he said with that gleam in his eye again.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“Katharine! Katharine!” Margaret called from the clearing platform. Using her parasol as a prod, she made her way through the crowd. When she finally reached me, she said, “Oh, my dear! There you are. Meacham and I have been looking for you all this time. I was so fearful that you missed the train. I was just heartbroken at the thought of that. I have been worried sick that something awful had happened to you.”

I hugged her closely. “As you can see, sweet Margaret, I am perfectly fine. My hat could use tending to, but everything else is in order.”

She looked quite pretty in a periwinkle dress and matching hat and shoes. Her dark hair was tucked under her hat with just a handful of purposeful wisps breaking free around her pale, lightly freckled face. Her eyes shone brightly, and as I stared at Margaret’s infectious smile, one word flitted in my head: happy. After college graduation, while I became a schoolteacher, she married a fine man by the name of W. C. Meacham, who we always called by his surname alone. Meacham was a good man and an executive at a bank in Chicago, and whisked her away from Ohio to the Windy City. It seemed to me that life in Chicago had done good things for my friend. She flourished as a wife.

“I’m so glad.” She blinked when she saw Harry Haskell standing with me.

Margaret was the only person in the world who knew how I really felt about Harry. “Harry?” She looked back and forth between us. “What are you doing here?”

“It seemed that I was saving Katharine’s life,” he said in a deadpan voice.

I scowled at him and went on to tell my friend a shortened version of my little mishap.

“You just arrived, and you have already had quite the adventure,” Margaret said.

I slipped my arm through hers. “I’m nothing if not exciting, my friend.”

I thanked Harry again for his assistance and then said, “We should not keep Meacham waiting a moment longer than we already have.”

Harry nodded. “I am sure I will see you both around the fair.”

I nodded and said good-bye. It was a pleasure to see Harry again but disconcerting too. I knew I wouldn’t be able to completely avoid him the next several weeks in St. Louis, but I was going to try my hardest to do just that.

Margaret looped her arm through mine and tilted her head toward me. “I was quite shocked to see you there with Harry Haskell. He always did fancy you.” She let the words hang in the air between us.

I gave my friend a withering look. “Nonsense. We are just friends, and I have no interest in anything more with him—or anyone else, for that matter. He’s a very happily married man with a beautiful family, and I’m a very happy spinster. My students are like my children, and I care for them deeply.”

“I know,” Margaret said. “You are the most dedicated teacher. I should not tease you so.”

“I had my chance once, Margaret, to marry my college sweetheart, and I rejected it. I am happy with the life I have chosen just as you are happy with yours.”

She smiled at me. “I know, Kate, and your old college sweetheart wasn’t nearly good enough for you. I have a mind that no one is.”

I laughed. “Spoken like a true friend,” I said as we stepped out of the station.

Just outside the entrance, Meacham stood next to a shiny new motorcar.

I hugged my friend’s husband, who had become a friend to me as well. In the time they had been married, Meacham had been so kind to me and respectful of my close friendship with his wife. In fact, he encouraged Margaret to continue all of her female friendships after marriage. I believed that friendship and time with women she was close to had been a balm for my friend, as she desperately wanted to be a mother but had had no luck as of yet conceiving. I knew from her letters how much it pained her to be unable to give Meacham a child.

However, I liked to remind her that without consulting with a physician there was no real way to know who truly was to blame for the difficulties, and it could just be timing. Even then, I had my doubts in the medical practice that they really knew what led to infertility. It was early days in that medical study. I also knew that male doctors were far more inclined to avoid bruising a rich man’s ego than blaming a woman.

“The porters will deliver your luggage to our flat. I thought we would travel home in style,” Meacham said.

He was a slight man with a full dark beard and very serious face, as if he was always doing complicated mathematics equations and investments in his mind, which was possible.

Margaret removed a silk scarf from her satchel. “You will want to tie this around your hair.”

“My hat is already in shambles. I wouldn’t want the same to become of my hair. The scarf will only mangle it more.” I waved away the scarf.

“If you want to keep the hat on your head and not flying into the wind, you will use it.”

Begrudgingly, I took the scarf from her hand and tied it around my poor hat.

The engine roared to life. I knew that such noise had been known to startle some, but it didn’t bother me in the least. Back home in Dayton, the roar of engines and machinery was a constant in my life as my brothers tried their very best to perfect their flyer. The back room of their bicycle shop always smelled of oil and burnt rubber.

Between the noise and the smell, I tried to go back there as little as possible, but the boys thrived in that environment. I tolerated it, as I knew that they were making history in the back room of the shop. Few people in this world even attempted a fraction of the things that my brothers had accomplished.

Meacham looked over his shoulder at me and shouted over the deafening sound of the engine. “Your brothers should have focused their genius on motorcars. They are the way of the future. It will be a hundred years before anyone travels by air. I read that in the New York Times about a year ago.”

I held fast to the scarf’s knot below my chin. The fabric tickled my face, and the wind was strong enough I didn’t believe that even the scarf could hold my hat onto the top of my head.

“Wilbur finds automobiles to be loud and bothersome,” I said. “No one in my family owns an auto as of yet, but I know that it is just a matter of time. Orville, in particular, likes to jump onto the latest trends. Besides,” I went on, “they want to create something new. Not something that already exists.”

Meacham laughed. “I only mentioned it because I know there is a lot of money to be made in automobiles.”

“And my brothers believe that there is money to be made in the air,” I said.

Meacham shrugged. “To each his own, as I always say. It takes all kinds to make the world go round. That is no more apparent than it is right here at the fair. You are going to be astounded when you see the displays, Katharine. I promise you that.”

“He’s right,” Margaret agreed, smiling at her husband from the passenger seat. “I have only seen a few displays because I wanted you and I to experience the majority of them together, and I have been flabbergasted at everything I have seen so far.”

As she said this, we drove around a traffic circle, and when we spun out the other side, the world’s fair was before me. I gasped as my eyes took it all in. I inhaled deeply as if the sight caused me to forget how to breathe. It was stunning. All around us were vast green lawns, and buildings that were constructed to mimic Greek Revival architecture, and they shone so white, they gleamed in the afternoon sun. The Ferris wheel stood off in the distance and churned slowly through the air.

It was the largest collection of massive buildings I had ever seen in one place.

Margaret turned to face me. She held on to her scarf as well. Her eyes shone. “It’s awe-inspiring, isn’t it?”

“It is,” I murmured. “Truly, these buildings will have put St. Louis on par with New York or even Paris. They are so lovely and well planned. I am shocked by the ornate carvings, sculptures, and columns on each and every one of them.”

Meacham shook his head and was stopped from crossing by a police officer in a crisp uniform and a bobby hat in the style of the British police. “It’s all a ruse.”

“Ruse? What do you mean by that?” I grabbed on to the back of the front seat and leaned forward so I could hear him more clearly.

“Save for a few, the buildings are constructed from mud, water, and hemp. A stiff gust of wind could topple them from their weak foundations. When the fair ends, they will be leveled and a way will be made for a new St. Louis.”

I wrinkled my nose at this. “Why would they do that? Doesn’t the city want to use all these structures after the fair? They are all very beautiful.”

“It was a cost-saving measure. The one building that will be here long after we are all gone is the Palace of Fine Arts. We will be attending a reception there this evening. If you are impressed with the outside of these buildings, wait until you see what they hold within.”

Margaret looked over her shoulder. “I have briefly been inside of the Palace of Fine Arts, only the grand hall, and I have to tell you that I have never seen a thing like it. Gorgeous, priceless pieces from all over the world right here in St. Louis. It is mind-boggling to believe that so many countries and museums would lend their treasured pieces to the fair for all these months. If I owned something which held so much value, I would be terrified to let it out of my sight for a single second.”

“I’m glad that we will be going to this building first. As you know, I have a great interest in the classics and am looking forward especially to seeing pieces from ancient Greece and Rome. I’d love to see anything that I can share with my Latin students when the fall term begins.”

“Then you are in for a treat because there are plenty of both,” Meacham said.

He drove the car down by the Plaza of St. Louis and the statue of the man for which the city had been named. Beyond that I caught a glimpse of the Grand Basin, which was a man-made lake dotted with small boats and gondolas, surrounded on all sides by perfectly manicured hedges and trees. Festival Hall, the centerpiece of the fair, was an ornately carved circular building with columns all the way around and an impressive dome on top. Every sight was grander than the last, and if Meacham spoke the truth, then what was inside of these buildings promised to be even more wonderful. I could hardly wait to take it all in. I had never seen something so grand in all my life.

I was relieved that Margaret had not suggested that we stay in that night so I could. . .