Louisa and the Missing Heiress Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER ONE - The Hostess Goes Missing

  CHAPTER TWO - Trouble in Paradise

  CHAPTER THREE - Dottie Is Discovered

  CHAPTER FOUR - Reflections at the Morgue

  CHAPTER FIVE - A Case for Murder

  CHAPTER SIX - A Mother Mourns

  CHAPTER SEVEN - The Heir Is Taken Unawares

  CHAPTER EIGHT - An Arrest Is Made

  CHAPTER NINE - An Interview with a Murderer

  CHAPTER TEN - The Weird Sisters Plot a Voyage

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - The Diva Sings

  CHAPTER TWELVE - New Life and Old Problems

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - The Checkered Past Revealed

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Darkening Prospects

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - A Deadly Habit

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Danger in the Fog

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Interlude

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Revelation at the Ball

  CHAPTER NINETEEN - The Nursery

  CHAPTER TWENTY - A Culprit by Any Other Name

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - The Business Concludes

  Teaser chapter

  Praise for the

  LOUISA MAY ALCOTT MYSTERY SERIES

  Louisa and the Missing Heiress

  “A historically accurate and entertaining mystery series.”

  —The New York Review of Books

  “An adventure fit for Louisa May Alcott. A fine tribute to a legendary heroine.”

  —Laura Joh Rowland, author of the Adventures of Charlotte Brontë series and the Sano Ichirō novels

  “This thrilling mystery reads like one of Alcott’s own ‘blood-and-thunder’ tales.”

  —Kelly O’Connor McNees, author of The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott

  “Anna Maclean shows us a side of Louisa May Alcott we never suspected in this fascinating new mystery series.”

  —Victoria Thompson, author of the Gaslight Mystery series

  “[A] lively debut mystery. I was instantly drawn into the characters and culture of America in the late 1880s.”

  —Karen Harper, national bestselling author of The Irish Princess

  “Maclean has a wonderful grasp of the history, language, and style of nineteenth-century Boston . . . enough plot twists to keep me entertained until the satisfying conclusion.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “It was perhaps inevitable that Louisa May Alcott, the pseudonymous author of so many blood-and-thunder tales, would, herself, take up sleuthing. This tale of dark secrets, mysterious men, and heiresses in distress will please any reader who has longed to pursue Jo March’s ‘sensation stories,’ those lucrative tales that allowed Beth to go to the seashore, but of which the good Professor Bhaer so stoutly disapproved. As Jo herself might say, a thumping good read.”

  —Joanne Dobson, author of Death Without Tenure

  “This novel reveals that my great-great-aunt had a secret career that none of us knew about. It’s great fun and a pageturner, and it uses the morals and mores of the time and place to delightful effect.”

  —John Pratt, heir to the Alcott Estate

  “Great fun. . . . Maclean has done a wonderful job of capturing Alcott’s voice and style. . . . I suspect the real Alcott would have liked it and wished she had written it herself.”

  —Woman Writers Magazine

  “Readers will find themselves enthralled with the details of Louisa’s life, family, and friends, as well as with the expertly crafted mystery . . . promises to be a wonderful new series.”

  —Romance Readers Connection

  “A great debut that’s appropriate for all ages.”

  —Mystery Scene

  Louisa and the Country Bachelor

  “Anna Maclean has created an entertaining period piece around Louisa May Alcott and her adventures as an amateur sleuth before she becomes a well-known author. . . . Those readers who enjoy mysteries set in the past, like the Irene Adler series, will want to add this series to the list of their must reads.”

  —Roundtable Reviews

  Louisa and the Crystal Gazer

  “In Louisa and the Crystal Gazer, Louisa continues to grow as a character. . . . This self-growth and self-awareness help keep the book from becoming simply another historical cozy. . . . By relying on her own personal strengths and those of family and friends, Louisa has the ability to find the criminal regardless of the circumstances.”

  —Reviewing the Evidence

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  Published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Signet edition.

  First Obsidian Printing, June 2011

  eISBN : 978-1-101-51554-9

  Copyright © Jeanne Mackin, 2004

  Excerpt from Louisa and the Country Bachelor copyright © Jeanne Mackin, 2004

  All rights reserved

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  Set in Cochin

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  PUBLISHER’S NOTE This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  FOR

  TOM NEWTON

  AND

  MARY K. CLAPP

  Acknowledgments

  AGAIN, AND ALWAYS, heartfelt thanks to my husband, Steve Poleskie, for his faith in me, his support, his humor and goodwill. Thanks also to my steadfast agent, Esmond Harmsworth, who was my compass and my guide in this process. And
thanks to my perceptive and gracious editor, Ellen Edwards.

  Dunreath Place

  Roxbury, Massachusetts

  February 1887

  Gentle Readers,

  I had a letter from an old friend recently. She asked if I remembered Dot and if I had ever thought of writing her story. She is too kind to say outright but she gently reminded me that youth is far behind and that what I am going to write, I should perhaps write now, and quickly. The letter seemed an omen, for that same day Father had sat up in bed and asked if I had heard from Dorothy Brownly recently. His mind wanders and he thought, that morning, that I was perhaps on my way to one of those girlhood afternoon activities that occupied my younger years.

  In my youth, I struggled to write and publish stories. Now I am known and I may even admit beloved. In the streets of Concord I cannot even mail a letter or purchase yarn without being recognized. That is one of the joys of age and success, though I admit to occasionally yearning for those younger days when I could walk the streets anonymously. A certain anonymity no doubt assisted the events of which I now wish to write. While I have never shied away from telling my readers about my family and my childhood, I have—in part because of the deepest personal reservations—kept silent about many of what used to be called my “adventures.” In part from modesty, and a wish not to hurt the living, I have kept secret many of the most interesting years of my life, years in which I found myself in the curious role of lady detective.

  I do find myself reticent, however, I who have already revealed so much of my life in my fictional works. What mother would wish to reveal to her sweet children that their beloved author, Louisa May Alcott, had knowledge of crime and criminals, and deeds so dastardly that if known they would require a night-light to burn in the hall? Yet knowledge of them I had. For many years of my life, I found myself surrounded by unexplained death and unexpected danger, as well as holding the unusual and unmerited position of being the only person able to reach a satisfactory conclusion to the mysterious events.

  I have decided to go through my diaries and reconstruct the events of some of these years. These, then, are the other stories of my youth, of friends and foes who chanced across my path, sometimes gracing it, sometimes causing such distress I would fall into the Slough of Despond and doubt all, even the words on a white page. I begin with the story of my dear childhood friend Dot, and her untimely demise.

  I trust you may gain some enjoyment through the reading of these tales.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Prologue

  “Listen then,” replied the count, “and perhaps you too may share in the excitement of those about you. That box belongs to Josephine. . .”

  I PAUSED, pen in hand, and scratched out the name. It simply did not suit her. I considered following Shakespeare, knowing that my heroine would be as enticing with whatever name God gave her, until I realized that, surely, no reader would become entranced with the lady’s plight were she named Maud or Jo.

  “Josephine won’t do,” I said. “People would be calling her Jo, and this woman is most definitely not a Jo. Jo is a homespun name, tomboyish and striving, not given over to frivolity or melodrama. This woman needs a name that is more Italianate, more romantic. Beatrice. Yes, that’s it. . . . And her rival shall be Therese.”

  “Nay, not so strange as one may fancy, Arthur,” said his friend, “for it is whispered, and with truth, I fear, that she will bestow the hand so many have sought in vain upon the handsome painter yonder. He is a worthy person, but not a fitting husband for a truehearted woman like Beatrice; he is gay, careless, and fickle, too. I fear she is tender and confiding, loving with an Italian’s passionate devotion, if he be true, and taking an Italian’s quick revenge, if he prove false.”

  “And then what, Louisa? Does she give her hand to the faithless painter, Claude?” breathlessly asked Miss Sylvia Shattuck.

  I stopped reading and began marking on the pages, crossing out some words and adding others. On some days the phrases came easily; on others each was a struggle. This day was a struggle, since I was already preoccupied with the events to come . . . though I could not yet know how truly and frighteningly eventful the afternoon would become.

  Sylvia and I were in the attic writing room in my family’s house on Pinckney Street. She stood beside my piles of manuscript wrapped in paper and string, leaning on the huge ancient desk at which I wrote. Behind her on a ledge stood my favorite, much-thumbed books: my father’s gift, Pilgrim’s Progress, and my secret thrill, an edition of Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue. I have always adored Poe for his prose and the suspense and thrill of his writing. But, truth be told, not so much for the mystery of this story, which I solved long before Poe intended me to, an achievement I credit to my education in my father’s philosophical methods and the influence of my mother’s gift for insight. My parents’ careful education in the ways of the world has made me particularly apt at arriving at answers to questions of human nature.

  The one window in my garret was curtained with muslin, not lace—I prefer a gentle light when I work, and of course my family could not waste money on lace. The floor was bare but scrupulously clean. It was 1854, I was twenty-two, Mother had just lost her job with the charity agency, and Father . . . well, he had never had a talent for earning income. Those years of poverty bleed together in my memory, always overpowered by memories of more important problems. That was the year following the election of President Franklin Pierce, and Father, months later, still grumbled to himself about it. We would see him pottering from library to parlor, from parlor to dinner table, jabbing the air with his forefinger as he lectured President Pierce in absentia. Pierce was a will-o’the-wisp, a moral deficient, willing to do anything for a vote, including support slavery.

  That was also the year my beloved older sister, Anna, had gone to Syracuse to work as a governess. I missed her every day, every evening, and perhaps my friendship with Sylvia grew even deeper because of that longing for the wise, gentle, absent Anna.

  That afternoon, as I finished my work, the slanted light coming through that window indicated it was close to three o’clock, the household dinner hour.

  “Well,” Sylvia said impatiently, reading over my shoulder. “Does she leave the stage and pledge herself to the faithless one?”

  I considered Sylvia’s question, replacing my pen in its tray. “She must, else there is no story, I fear. But it will not end happily.”

  “Claude will love another,” Sylvia guessed, leaning forward eagerly.

  “He will be absolutely unreliable,” I admitted. “But Beatrice will have her revenge.”

  “How exciting, Louisa!”

  “Do you think so, Sylvie? Is it, perhaps, too exciting?”

  “Could there be such a thing as too exciting?”

  I scratched my nose, leaving a smudge of ink behind, one of my bad habits, I’m afraid. I contemplated the quality of my writing. It was all blood and thunder. My natural ambition was, I suppose, for the lurid style. I could not help but indulge in gorgeous fancies. Perhaps there was no other way for me to write, I thought as I straightened the manuscript pages into a neat pile. Yet there was this impulse, deep inside, to tell a true story, not a fancy.

  Even then, before I had published my first work, I sensed what would ultimately be the real value of my work. But that day there were three manuscripts on my desk: The Flower Fables, little stories I invented for the Emerson children and was now working into a children’s book; my true short story, “How I Went out to Service”; and my tale of Beatrice and Therese, which I had just named as “The Rival Prima Donnas.” None had yet been published. Next to “How I Went out to Service” was a rejection letter. I hadn’t anticipated how much pain a simple envelope could carry. The rejection had suggested—no, stated—that I should pay more attention to domestic duties, as I had no talent as a writer. The story was one of my first “real” stories about real people, rather than inventions such as Beatrice and her fickle lover, Claude. In fac
t, it was about me, and the rejection had a double sting to it, for it was my life, my experience that was rejected, as well as the story.

  That name Josephine, though. That was not a blood-and-thunder name, nor was it a fairy name for the Fables. The name conjured up a fleeting image. A young woman, a character who sprawled on rugs rather than sitting primly in chairs, a woman who cherished books over new bonnets and rich husbands. Was this too ordinary a character for a novel? What would she say if she spoke? The seed that bloomed into Josephine took root that day . . . but I get ahead of myself.

  Whilst some authors complain that they cannot work without perfect solitude, at this stage in my life I found being with Sylvia Shattuck more natural and more helpful than being alone. We had been friends since childhood, and we had arrived at that wonderful, intimate stage in which words are often unnecessary, so well does one know the other. Of a far less humble background than I, Sylvia was able to enjoy the frivolity that comes with wealth. Unlike so many members of “society,” however, she possessed a deep conscience and dedication to help those less fortunate, and, for this and her sweetness, my parents had accepted her into the bosom of our family. “She can’t help that she was born wealthy,” Father often said, in the same tone in which another person might say, He can’t help that he was born lame, or mute, or some other inescapable and unearned defect of nature.