George Vanderbilt stepped into his path. “Mr. Tate, I believe it’s time you left. Now.”
Scowling, Dearg stomped toward the main hall.
“Out through the kitchen courtyard with you, meff!” Mrs. Smythe called after him. “I won’t be having the servants tracking more mud out where Mr. Vanderbilt’s guests come and go.”
Dearg whirled, fists clenched as the crowd huddled closer to the tree. A child whimpered, edging closer to his dairyman father.
Dearg’s steps reverberated through the banquet hall as he stormed out through the back corner door toward the kitchens below. For several beats after the echoes of his footsteps faded, nobody spoke.
Tilting his head back to see to the tree’s very top, Vanderbilt spoke pointedly in Italian. “Buono. Sembra buono. Not just good but excellent. And now, Mrs. Smythe, if you could bring some of that mulled cider for everyone as we decorate Biltmore’s first tree.”
Mrs. Smythe reappeared from the breakfast room, an enormous sterling tray in her arms, the air of the banquet hall filling with cinnamon and cloves, brown sugar and apple, on top of the scents of glowing maple wood in the three fireplaces and the Fraser fir.
From below came a crash, as if a whole line of copper pans had been knocked to the floor.
Dearg, Kerry knew. Making his way out through the kitchen courtyard.
With something vicious and raging inside him.
Chapter 30
Christmas Eve 1895
Sliding from the long-legged chestnut Mrs. Smythe had insisted that Kerry use for this errand in town, Kerry led the horse by the reins toward the train station. She wasn’t much of a horsewoman. Their mule, Malvolio, was fully as stubborn as the cliché about his sort would suggest, requiring maximum effort just to make him walk. But this gelding seemed willing enough to comply with whatever she asked, and glad just to be out in the winter air—as she was. She tied him to a white pine in a pool of full sun.
Being here at the station again made it all replay in her head. Like one of Mr. Edison’s sprocketed movies, the pictures rolled in jerks and flashes, but she could see it all: the crushed boneset plant where the rail dog had landed, the reporter’s too-still body, his phylacteries—small black boxes to aid with prayer—there in the mud . . . And before that, his turning around in his seat on the train to speak with her. His face, so alive with purpose and courage, when he spoke of newspapers and democracy.
Kicking snow in front of her, Kerry slowed as she approached the Western Union window. The telegrapher, Farnsworth, was probably more likely than anyone to know who was where in Best—Biltmore Junction—sitting as he did in the busiest part of the village and listening more than he talked. Today, in the few minutes she had before Mrs. Smythe’s order was ready, Kerry needed to find Dearg. Word on the ridge was he and his brother had moved off their farm now for good.
As she kicked at the snow, she thought again of what she’d spotted that night on the ground. The phylacteries. Symbols of the reporter’s faith and background. Little black boxes that had gone . . . where? Did the police have them now?
Kerry reached the window. “Mr. Farnsworth.”
The metal arm of the machine on his desk was tapping out a message. Round glasses sliding low on his nose, he glanced up without raising his head, as if to remind her how busy he was.
“I wonder if you might know where I could find Dearg Tate.”
Farnsworth kept his eyes on the metal arm. “Do I look like I’m paid enough to answer inane questions?”
“As part of your job, probably not. But I was asking you as a part of this village.”
“Village is going to hell, if you ask me. That help?”
Beside Farnsworth was the framed crest on the desk Kerry had spotted earlier. Now, though, she looked more closely. In its swirl of embellishments was a fleur-de-lis and, inside its central shield, a silhouette that looked like her own King Lear posing above the hens at the break of dawn.
A rooster.
“A Gallic rooster?” It was only a guess, an impulse, a flash of recalling the fleur-de-lis in the issue of the Atlantic Monthly that depicted symbols of national pride, including of France. But she’d said it aloud before it occurred to her that caution might be in order in dealing with Farnsworth.
The telegrapher lifted his head. Narrowed his eyes.
“Edward Farnsworth,” she continued. “Not exactly a French name.”
Farnsworth’s lips did not part, but one half of his mouth lifted in almost a smile. Like a chess master finally finding a worthy opponent.
“So the Ligue Nationale Antisémitique . . .”
An unlit cigarette dangled from his lips—just like on the night of the attack. “What the hell is it you’re trying to ask?”
“On the night of the murder here, you’d disappeared, too, just before the reporter—the Jewish reporter—was killed.”
Farnsworth lifted an eyebrow at her, as if daring her to go on.
Kerry’s insides clenched.
From a few feet away, the stationmaster strode over and shook his head at the telegraph operator. “Farnsworth’s been a real ass lately. More than usual, even.”
The telegrapher pressed his thin lips into a line and held Kerry’s gaze. She could see nothing there. Not guilt. Not an attempt at denial. Only . . . what was it? A kind of pride. A viciousness, maybe, too. And a challenge.
“As it happens, Kerry,” the stationmaster offered, “I can answer your question. Hadn’t seen Dearg myself since he got back from Whitnel—day after the attack it was that his train come in. But I heard the Tate brothers took up at a boardinghouse, 48 Spruce over to Asheville. Lived there myself when I first moved here, which is how I’d know. Keep up some with Mrs. Reynolds, lady that runs it.”
“That’s kind. Thank you.” Kerry glanced at the sun. She’d have to ask the chestnut to run if she wanted to cover the three miles to Spruce Street from the village, talk briefly with Dearg—if she could find him—pick up the Biltmore order, then get back to the house in the span of time Mrs. Smythe would expect. And also before dark. The thought of the dark and Dearg together made Kerry queasy.
But, then, so did the thought of standing here with Edward Farnsworth and his crest.
Farnsworth. Now new images joined the others still jerking and flashing through her mind: The telegrapher circling behind the station. Wrenching the rail dog from its hooks. Hauling it high above his head. Bringing it down in one vicious arc on the newspaper reporter.
“He’s here,” Mrs. Reynolds pronounced. “Oddly enough. Because he rarely is.” She sniffed, censorial and disapproving. She squinted at Kerry. “You may meet with him in the parlor just here.” She gestured to the left, a room crowded with overstuffed chairs and fringed lamps. “Or you may go up to his rooms on the third floor. Depending.”
On what type of woman you are went unsaid. But Kerry heard it clearly.
That was the wonderful thing about being from a class of people already suspect. You were free to do as you liked, since no one expected much from you.
“I’ll just be a few moments. So I’ll trot on up.”
The landlady smirked. But Kerry was already mounting the stairs as fast as her skirts would allow.
Dearg opened at the first knock—apparently expecting someone else. At the sight of Kerry, his eyes rounded.