The photograph hung above Will’s table at the Stumptown—a wood-framed building, perhaps a hotel, flames, a fire truck out front, a woman fleeing the fire, climbing out a second-story window. He had never noticed it before, though he sat at this table countless times. Funny how you miss things, he thought. He came here because he liked the working class ambience and Howard’s contrariness, but mostly he liked the historic photos.
“That’s the old Portland Emporium.” It was Howard. Will had noticed him at the edge of his vision, wiping down tables during the mid-morning lull. “It was where the Bartlett Trade Building now stands. Burned Christmas Eve, nineteen-seventeen. My granddaddy told me that story. He worked in the woods around here, hooking up the chains to those big old-growth logs, so they could skid them down the hill. Dangerous work. You had to put those chains on fast and get the hell out of the way. It was pretty near impossible for a black man to get a job in the woods. Most of the skidders were big, dumb, racist Swedes.”
Howard put the emphasis on the word “racist,” and Will could imagine how such a job might be especially dangerous for a black man.
“Fortunately, he was saved by a back injury, and went to being a porter.” Howard laughed, and Will could feel the irony. “His sister, Maribella, worked for the Bartletts now and again, cleaning house and all of that. The story is the Emporium was old man Bartlett’s bordello. His young daughter—I forget her name— she was influenced by the temperance movement. She was also a little bit addled in the brain, if you know what I mean. Mama was always upset because the old man spent too much time down there. So the daughter—”
“Sarah,” Will guessed.
“Yes, that was it. Sarah Jane Bartlett. So Sarah goes down to the Emporium with an oil lamp, walks into the lobby, and sets the place on fire. She’s screaming about daddy and mortal sin, when her dress catches on fire. She died, along with a couple of the ladies upstairs.”
“I saw her obituary,” said Will. “Emmy’s grandmother kept a scrapbook. Sarah died of a ‘tragic accident.’”
Howard laughed. “I doubt the Bartletts would have allowed them to print a headline that said ‘Nutty Daughter Toasted while Torching Daddy’s Whorehouse.’”
“Yeah. I suppose not.”
“Granddaddy said it was a cleansing fire. He said ever so often, when the wood gets a pestilence and all the dead wood starts piling up in the forest, a lightning storm comes along, and fire will clean out the forest so healthy trees can start to grow again. Sarah, she was one of those diseased trees just waiting for the lightning to strike.”
Will found himself deep in thought. How much like Great Aunt Sarah Jane was Doug Bartlett? What was it Doug had said after the funeral about the Bartlett family? Was he referring in some way to Sarah Jane? Yet, Sarah Jane’s action seemed like a consequence of her father’s arrogance–a manifestation of some family malaise.
How far had this familial dysfunction gone? Had it reached Doug? Could Doug be a fire starter, too, like Sarah? Trying to burn away the veneer to get at the truth. Will was surprised at how easily he could accept the idea of Doug as a pyromaniac. He could have started the fire at Bartlett house, Will thought and didn’t flinch. How far might Doug go to rid the world of his family’s dark touch? Would he kill?
Will tried to imagine the man who had extended companionship to him, who had cradled Emmy’s ashes in his arms–tried to imagine how this same man could be capable of killing Emmy, his own cousin. Surely, Doug did not believe that Emmy was evil. Nor was Emmy a threat to Doug Bartlett unless she had uncovered something–something damaging to his reputation in the community. There was no evidence of anything like that in Emmy’s things. On the contrary, they seemed to be on very good terms. All Will had that even suggested something amiss about Doug Bartlett was a photo and an alias. And that may have been the result of a misprint, or a reporter’s muddled notes. Except that Rich had remembered David Bowman. Not just the man, but the name.
There was the possibility that the fire wasn’t connected to the murder at all, just an odd coincidence. If Doug were involved, why would he burn down Bartlett House? Will kept thinking that the only person who might help him answer these questions was Edwina Phillips. He didn’t have her phone number. He’d have to start up Emmy’s machine again. It was still sitting on the floor of his office where he had left it among the boxes of her family history research. The rest of Emmy’s belongings were in the storage room in the basement of Lucy’s apartment building. Will had yet to figure out what to do with them.
Will tossed a couple dollars on the table, waved goodbye to Howard, and left for home.
He rigged up Emmy’s computer without moving it off the floor and sent Edwina an email with his phone number, asking her to call. Half an hour later, his phone was ringing.
“This is Edwina Phillips,” she said. “Am I speaking with Will Adelhardt?”
“You are.”
“I expect you are looking for some more answers,” she said.
“Yes, I am. I’d like to come over again, soon.”
“I’d like nothing more. However, I’m in a frame of mind to get out of the house a bit and I’ve been thinking, lately, of my dear friend, Lucretia Toliver. Her home is just a couple of blocks from the Bartletts. I should like to meet you there, at Lucretia’s. Then we can walk down to the Bartlett house. It’ll be a boon to my memory to see the place. Does 3:00 sound good for you?”
“This afternoon?” Will asked.
“Yes, of course.” Edwina gave him Lucretia Toliver’s address and admonished him not to be late. She didn’t like to be kept waiting.
As he approached the large brick house, Will was surprised to see Edwina sitting on a bench in a semicircle carved out of the slope of the lawn. She ought to be inside chatting with her old friend Lucretia, he thought. Except that the house in front of him was no longer a residence. A sign on the carefully manicured green lawn listed all the businesses within. Among them a counselor with a masters in social work, a lawyer, two accountants, and a graphic designer all of whom apparently occupied the upper two floors. The first floor was devoted to a small English tea room and a travel agency specializing in eco-friendly far eastern journeys.
Edwina followed Will’s gaze, looked at the house for a moment. Something altered in her face. Her smile disappeared, but all she said was, “Well, Lucretia isn’t here.”
Standing, she took Will’s arm and said, “It’s a short walk.”
“The trolley stops here,” Edwina said, as they approached the intersection of King street. Bartlett house was on the next block to their left. They walked slowly. Edwina pointed out features as they passed. “Portland has more wrought iron than any city outside of New Orleans.” She lifted her cane and jabbed it at the concrete retaining wall they were passing, pointing out what was plainly not there.
Will held back, searching for something to say. He couldn’t imagine what it would be. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to bring her back to the present. He wanted to see what she was seeing and tried to imagine it. Some things were still evident. The iron street lamps, with their thick ribbed glass globes, might have been the same ones that lit the night when Edwina’s friend still lived one street over.
The gate to the Bartlett property was secured again with a heavy chain and padlock. “Let’s go in the back way. Only strangers knock on the front door,” Edwina said without a hint of dismay.
Will began to worry about her age. This slip of mind —if her mind is unreliable, could her body really be up to this walk? Should Edwina be walking this uphill slant, around the side of the property all the way to the back gate? She didn’t appear to be the least bit short of breath. There was color in her cheeks. The skin of her hand on his arm, and her arm itself, where it brushed against his, was the softest thing he’d ever felt.
The back gate was open and the flagstone path beckoned them inward. Black and green moss grew thickly between the stones. “Slate,” Edwina tapped her cane on the flat grey-black stones. “This slate was once a mountain. An enormous mountain, and along came the rain, year after year. Every year the rain carried a bit of it down the mountain in streams, into rivers, into ponds and lakes, and there in the still waters the bits of mountain fell down to the bottom and laid there, growing deeper with every passing year. Thousands of years, thousands of thousands of years. That many years weigh a great deal more than we can imagine. That many years is a vise that hardens things, hardens clay into rock. And there you have it —this slate.” She squinted up at him. “Know anything about geology, young man?”
“A little,” he smiled uneasily.
But Edwina was not paying attention. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing deeply. “The earth smells good, doesn’t it. Breathe it in.”
He breathed deep, trying to discover that place of Edwina’s joy. The smell of earth entered with his breath, of organic things rotting and releasing their rich essences.
“You won’t find a finer garden anywhere in the city. The Bartlett’s have all manner of plants. There are concord grapes, apple trees, hollyhocks, and lilacs—if only we were here a month ago. French lilacs so deep purple you won’t believe it unless you see them with your own eyes.”
There was nothing that Will could see of the old lilac bushes. They must have died of age and neglect a long time ago. Edwina opened her eyes again and tugged on his arm. “Let’s not keep them waiting.”
They walked between soaring rhododendrons and glossy leafed camellias. Ferns grew out of the crotches of branches on every tree and overgrown bush they passed. Blackberry vines gripped trunks, ran along the branches, twined among the ferns, and threw out a presentiment scent—a promise of delicious harvest—from the petals of their delicate white blossoms.
They stepped out of the overgrowth and the house loomed before them. Stony, with smudges of black smoke feathering outward from the boarded up windows. It was gaunt, and though the sun hit it as sharply as it did everything else on the estate, the basalt was heavy, dreary, and mute.
Edwina and Will approached the steps to the porch. The colonnade of peak-arched stone pillars were structurally reminiscent of gothic architecture. The porch held deep shadows behind the pillars, but the windows of the house were spaced to alternate with the pillars in order to take advantage of any light which might shine between them. Still, it was a poor angle to expect the sun to have much effect, even with southern exposure. Three windows down from the steps someone had pried a board off one of the windows. Will and Edwina stopped and peered inside. It was a room with a hearth, perhaps a library or study.
“Ah, Sarah Jane,” Edwina sighed. “It’s a tragedy. If only Catherine were not in Frisco with baby Emmaline. If she were here, Sarah would never have done this. Catherine will be so devastated. Sarah is the only thing in this family she cares about.”
“So tell me about Sarah. What was she like?”
“Sarah was a sweet-natured girl, but very fragile. That’s the way the men in this family like their women. Unthreatening. Sarah was religious. She got herself mixed up with the Methodists and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. That was her mother’s doing—she didn’t want her baby becoming an immoral socialist like her sister Catherine.”
For a moment, it seemed to Will that Edwina melted against the window casement. He reached out to steady her, but she waved him away. “That is Catherine’s and Sarah’s brother, Anthony. We used to play together in the garden; we even kissed once in the gazebo. Anthony loved to tease. I don’t have a brother of my own. I do so admire Catherine’s. But, now look at him,” Edwina’s voice took on an edge. Was it anger or frustration? “Do you know what he is saying, standing in front of that cold fireplace as though he owns the world. Even his father has the decency to be heartbroken. Perhaps he is not to blame. He just wants what he always believed was his. To have that, to keep it. There are semblances, proprieties one must maintain. Sarah’s death was an accident. An unfortunate accident. It is possible that she died trying to save the lives of those bawdyhouse women. The poor wretches. But fire is an act of purification and it wasn’t the women she meant to save. Her father’s soul is in desperate need. Only Sarah with her pure love could make the necessary sacrifice.
“As long as he can keep it out of the newspapers, it doesn’t matter what everyone knows is true. Everyone will ignore the truth once the official story is printed. The printed story will become the only one that crosses between the classes. The maids will know the truth, their employers will know the truth, but it will be the story in the papers that will be the truth between them. Everyone will settle back into the course of their lives, and Sarah’s grave will grow hollow and be reheaped every year until she has rotted away and the ground no longer sinks.”
Will swallowed. The depth of feeling that had carried Edwina so far into the past touched him. He visualized Sarah as a sort of Iphigenia to her father’s Agamemnon, making the ultimate sacrifice for her father’s carelessness.
Edwina turned away from the window and began to retrace her steps toward the garden. Will remained for a moment longer, willing the room to reveal some memory of Emmy that he could follow to unravel the truth. But the room remained blank, dark, and musty, smelling like dust and smoke. He turned away and followed Edwina.
“This mental fragility that Sarah had, does it run in the Bartlett family, do you think?” Will asked.
Edwina appeared to be deep in thought.
“I mean,” Will went on, “the last time I saw you, you told me that Doug Bartlett’s mother was mentally ill.”
“Oh, yes,” said Edwina, “Lillian. But she was only a Bartlett by marriage. I don’t think you can pin it on genetics. It has more to do with those overbearing men.”
“What about Doug? Can you tell me anything about his mental stability?”
“Does this have anything to do with the death of Catherine’s great granddaughter?”
“Not directly. There was a fire at Bartlett House that night Emmy was killed. But the police say it may not have anything to do with the murder. It’s just that Doug Bartlett seems to show up at fires a lot. Sarah Jane’s story started me thinking.”
“I see what you’re getting at,” said Edwina. “Yes, Doug was troubled as a teenager. After the death of his mother, and then Wesley Dean…it left him very vulnerable, I think. I’m sure he felt no love for that house. His mother…well, I told you that story. But fires, I don’t know about that. It wouldn’t surprise me. You should talk to Frank Alexander, his old ROTC instructor. I understand that he was the one responsible for turning Doug around.”
“Where can I find Frank Alexander?”
“Sorry, young man, some things you will have to learn yourself,” Edwina said. She stopped by a bench that was almost entirely obscured by overgrowth. “Would you be gallant enough to clear this bench for me? I think I’d like to sit here just a little while.”
Obediently and carefully, Will began to clear away the tangle of vegetation. Most of it lifted easily. The concrete bench was moss encrusted, a little cushion for Edwina, Will thought. “There you are, ma’am,” he said.
“You go on now. I’ll be all right here. You go,” she fluttered her hand toward the gate.
“I can’t just leave you here.”
“Of course you can.”
Of course he could. He did. But he looked back several times on his way to the gate to be sure that she had not fallen off the bench, to be sure that she was not dancing around the garden; to be sure that she was still there.
Will left the Bartlett property feeling curiously more enlightened than when he arrived, though he did not really understand why. It was as if Edwina had handed him a key. Yet she had not revealed much, only that Doug had a troubled youth. Something Will already knew. Perhaps Doug had transformed his loneliness and isolation into hatred for Bartlett House itself. But if he was going to burn it down, why wait until now? He could have done it twenty or thirty years ago. Why on the night of Emmy’s murder? Will felt that Doug was present in the puzzle surrounding that night, but was he physically present or merely a remnant shadow in the brooding house?
