The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [299]
“And Elspeth?” the Doctor asked carefully. “Surely she was some help to you.”
Mrs. Franklin laughed: the light, well-oiled sound of a woman what was used to handling men. “Well, I don’t know how many ways I can say it, Doctor, but the girl was never really any good to anyone, not when it came to the practical business of living. Oh, she was pretty enough. And clever, too, especially with her studies. But not useful in any way that would have really been important for a young lady.” I saw Miss Howard near choke on her piece of gingerbread, but she managed to keep a pleasant expression on her face. “A positive fright in the kitchen,” Mrs. Franklin went on. “And as for housework, well… I couldn’t even put her to dusting without her breaking whatever we had that could be broken. A sweet thing, but what does sweetness matter when you’re all grown up? It was no wonder she never had any suitors. Lived with us until she was near an old maid, and not one man ever came to ask for her hand. I didn’t wonder. Men around here work hard—they need a woman who can tend house, not a clever dreamer. And prettiness fades, Doctor, prettiness fades …” The little dog, who’d followed us onto the porch and was panting in excitement beside Mrs. Franklin’s chair, let out another yap. “Oh! Leopold, you want gingerbread, I’m so sorry! Here …” Handing the dog a piece of the cake—which I had to admit was as good as any I’d ever had—Mrs. Franklin began to stroke his head. “Yes, there, my sweet boy. You don’t remember Libby, do you, Leopold? She left before you came to live with us …” The woman looked back up, lost in thought. “We had another dog, then—Libby’s dog. What was his name, Eli?”
“Fitz,” Eli Franklin answered, munching on his gingerbread and swilling his third glass of lemonade.
“Yes, that’s right. Fitz. Oh, she loved that dog. Cried awfully when he died—I thought she might expire herself! Remember, Eli?”
Suddenly Eli Franklin stopped chewing: he looked around at all of us what you might call guardedly, then slowly got the gingerbread in his mouth down his gullet. “No,” he answered, quickly and quietly.
“Well, of course you do!” Mrs. Franklin said. “Don’t be silly—it was just before she left to work with that family in Stillwater—”
“The Muhlenbergs?” Miss Howard said hopefully.
“Oh, then you know the Muhlenbergs, Miss Howard?” Mrs. Franklin replied, happily surprised. “Fine people, Elspeth said—she wrote from there once. Very fine. And just before she left, she had that attack of bilious fever—”
“Mother—” Eli Franklin said, still looking a little alarmed.
“—and the morning after that Fitz died. I’m sure you remember, Eli—we buried him out by the barn. You built a little coffin, and Libby painted a headstone—”
“Mother!” Eli Franklin said, a little harshly now; then he smiled around at the rest of us, though it was a strain. “I’m sure these people don’t want to hear about every little thing that happened to Libby while she was living here—they’re interested in what’s happening to her now.”
“Well…” Mrs. Franklin looked at her son in some shock; but along with the shock there was a trace of sudden, cold anger, of the variety what I’d sometimes seen come into Libby Hatch’s face. “I certainly apologize if I’m embarrassing my own son. But I was telling them about the Muhlenbergs—”
“You were telling them—” Eli Franklin said; then, catching his mother’s look, he dropped it. “All right. Go ahead, tell them—about the Muhlenbergs.”
“They were very fine people,” Mrs. Franklin went on, giving her son one last warning look as her tone became musical again. “That’s what she said in her letter. And of course I was glad, because it seemed the perfect sort of work for her!”
Miss Howard’s face near dropped, and I imagine mine did the same. For anybody to say that being a wet nurse was the “perfect sort of work” for Libby Hatch indicated that they didn’t know her at all; and Mrs. Franklin, however addled she