4
CALVIN BROWN! SARAH THOUGHT. HE’S THE ONE Potter thinks killed Dr. Blackwell! But he was just a boy, hardly more than sixteen or seventeen, and he certainly didn’t look like a killer. Besides, if he’d killed Dr. Blackwell, he’d hardly be demanding admittance to his house today, would he?
Sarah heard Amos Potter gasp, and then he said, “That’s him! The one I told you about. Arrest him, Malloy!”
The boy’s face blanched, but he didn’t look particularly intimidated. Quite the contrary, he looked even more defiant than he had before. “Arrest me for what?” he challenged. “Ain’t no crime to come to see your old man!”
“Who is his father?” Sarah asked of anyone who would listen.
Young Calvin was the only one listening. “He’s Eddie Brown, but that’s not what he calls himself these days. Calls himself Edmund Blackwell, but that don’t change who he is, does it?”
It took Sarah only a moment to judge that the woman upstairs, who was the current Mrs. Blackwell, could not possibly have given birth to this boy. She was no more than five years older than he, if that. Dr. Blackwell had a very interesting history, if Sarah was any judge, but she could tell from the look Malloy was giving her that she’d better not inquire too closely into the subject just now.
Malloy stepped forward, forcing Granger to stand aside so Malloy could confront the boy. “Dr. Blackwell is dead,” he said baldly.
Sarah winced at the coldness of it. If the boy was truly Blackwell’s son, this was needless cruelty.
The boy blinked in surprise, not yet comprehending what Malloy had said. “Dead? How could he be dead? Wasn’t nothing wrong with him a couple days ago.”
“There wasn’t nothing wrong with him at all until somebody shot him on Tuesday,” Malloy replied.
The boy’s jaw dropped, but he still wasn’t ready to believe. He glanced around wildly until his gaze settled with desperation on Sarah. “Is that true, ma’am?”
Sarah was touched. He’d chosen her as the most trustworthy person in sight. “I’m afraid it is, Mr. Brown,” she told him as gently as she could.
They all watched as the emotions played across his young face-shock, confusion, despair, and finally anger. “Well, that’s just something, ain’t it?” he asked of no one in particular as he blinked back tears. “He’s run out on us twice now, and this time it won’t do no good to find him.”
The story was coming clearer to her now. Dr. Blackwell-or whatever his real name was-had abandoned this son and the rest of whatever other family the boy had, changed his name, and made a new life for himself. Somehow the boy had found him, though, and… Oh, dear heaven! No wonder Potter thought Calvin might have killed his father. Potter had said the boy held a grudge against Dr. Blackwell, but this was far more than a grudge. Could such a young, innocent-looking boy have fired a bullet into his father’s brain, no matter what that father had done to deserve it?
“Mr. Malloy, are you going to do your duty and arrest this boy?” Potter was asking, his tone outraged.
Malloy gave him a quelling look that silenced him, then turned back to the boy. “Why don’t you come into the parlor with me, son. I’ve got some questions to ask you.”
“You think I killed him?” the boy asked, even more outraged than Potter had been. “My own father?”
“I didn’t say that,” Malloy reminded him, taking his arm in his strong grip.
The boy instinctively tried to pull away, but the resistance lasted only a moment, until he saw the expression in Malloy’s dark eyes. He seemed almost to shrink with his surrender to Malloy’s superior strength and power. His bravado evaporated, and he was an uncertain boy again.
“Excuse us, please,” Malloy said with uncharacteristic courtesy as he forced Sarah and Potter to give way and allow him and the boy to enter the parlor.
Sarah had a powerful urge to follow them in. Only her knowledge that Malloy would immediately-and not very politely-order her out prevented her from acting on it. She sighed as the parlor doors closed in her face.
“Will he arrest him?” Potter asked her anxiously.
Sarah glanced at the butler, who was listening to every word with the discretion to which he had been bred. His expression betrayed nothing, but Sarah imagined he was mentally recording every word and would repeat it belowstairs to all the servants as soon as he got the opportunity.
“Perhaps we should step into another room,” she suggested. She could simply have brushed off his question and taken her leave-she had no real answer to give him, after all-but she felt certain he had a lot of answers to give her, if she simply asked the right questions. She wasn’t going to ask them in front of the butler, however.
“Oh, yes,” Potter said, instantly realizing they needed some privacy for their discussion. “We could use the study, if you don’t mind…”
The room where Dr. Blackwell had been murdered. Little did Potter know a woman had been murdered in the parlor they had just left, and Sarah had found the body. Sarah wasn’t afraid of the dead. “Not at all,” she said, and allowed him to precede her and open the door.
Sarah looked around with interest at the room which Edmund Blackwell/Eddie Brown had made his own. The furnishings were decidedly masculine: dark woods polished to a bright sheen, overstuffed chairs, several built-in bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes, English hunting scenes hanging in heavy frames on the walls. Nowhere did she see any signs of the man himself, though. The desk had been cleared, of course, and it may have held some personal items that would have given her a clue as to his character. Nothing of him now remained except a dark stain that had been ineffectively scrubbed away from the carpet, so she was left to reconstruct his personality from what others said about him.
“Will Mr. Malloy arrest him?” Potter asked again when they were safely behind closed doors.
Sarah had an urge to check to make sure Granger wasn’t eavesdropping, but she resisted it. “If he decides that the boy killed Dr. Blackwell, he will,” she hedged. “What makes you think he did? He’s awfully young.”
“A viper doesn’t have to be large to be deadly, Mrs. Brandt,” he said with some force. “I suppose you have surmised the relationship between the boy and Dr. Blackwell.”
“Dr. Blackwell was his father,” she said, confirming his suspicion. “And I gather Dr. Blackwell must have deserted the family.”
“Yes, he… he left his first wife and children several years ago. It wasn’t intentional,” he assured her quickly.
Sarah raised her eyebrows, wondering how such a thing could be unintentional, but she didn’t have to ask the question aloud. Mr. Potter anticipated her.
“He explained it all to me. You see, he was always a healer by profession, but he was doing very poorly in Virginia. That’s where he lived then. He couldn’t support his family, so he traveled to Boston to study with a well-known practitioner of the art of magnetic healing there. He thought if he could improve his talents, he could be more successful. He worked as much as he could and continued to send money home to his family. He never intended to leave them permanently.”
“At some point he apparently changed his mind,” Sarah pointed out. “Was it when he met Letitia Symington?”
“Oh, it wasn’t like that at all! Letitia would never… She’s much too… Oh, no, it had nothing to do with her at all!”
“Then what did it have to do with?” Sarah prodded, wondering why Potter felt he had to justify Blackwell to her but glad for his need nonetheless.
“He became quite proficient in the new art of magnetic healing, and so he came here to the city and began to build a following. He lived frugally, still sending money home when he could and depending on his satisfied patients to recommend him to their friends. One of those patients recommended him to Mr. Symington.”