“I heard rumours about this murder, years ago,” he said. “I never thought I would meet the accused in person. It was rumoured the woman in question had disappeared.”
“I went to Boston,” Madeline said, and then relayed the story to him, save the most private of details about the nature of the cruel game Ferguson, Taylor, and the others had played to win her hand. “When I left Malcolm, he was most certainly alive. I know, because he was calling me every cruel word in the book as I stormed out. The fabricated story has been told with such assurance that I have been made to doubt my memory, but that is the truth.”
Beau wanted to reach across the room and hold Madeline. To tell her how proud he was of her. Her bearing was as it had been when he’d first seen her. Commanding. Proud.
“The blackmailer is obviously close by,” Miller said, unmoved by Madeline’s confession. “If you’ve become a threat to him somehow, he is feeling both emboldened to show himself and confident in his threat.”
“We encountered him in Windsor,” Beau said, relaying the story of his connection with George’s College, and the substantial commission he was going to lose. “This was clearly done to threaten me to rethink the sale of a property I had promised to sell him. And now I think he’s just out for revenge, which given Miss Murray’s story, indicates a certain pattern of behaviour.”
Miller’s eyes narrowed, and Beau realized he’d revealed something he hadn’t intended. The reporter missed nothing.
“It’s interesting to me that he is using her circumstance to threaten you,” he said. “Clearly The Everwell Society is well intentioned, but hardly in a financial position to pay Mr. Taylor what he demands.”
Now Beau was fidgeting in his seat, unwilling to reveal more than he already had. He had his own feelings for Madeline, but she’d made it clear she wasn’t able to return them. And no one here knew the depth of what had happened between them. But Miller, damn him, may have guessed.
“So why did you bring me here?” Miller asked. “Keeping a letter like this away from the public eye seems like the thing to do.”
“We wanted insurance,” Aunt Veronica said, looking carefully at Mrs. Hartley, the two spinning a web between them. “It seemed likely that this Taylor fellow might decide, owing to the rather public nature of both The Everwell Society and my own family, to send a note to the press, or threaten to push the matter. I thought this preemptive measure would give us the opportunity to ask you to help us keep this quiet, at least until we could address it. However, it seems he has taken it upon himself to press the issue.”
Miller closed up the note and handed it back to Aunt Veronica. “An old murder case, a connection to a local charity with a history of rumours?—”
“—no thanks to you,” Miss Jones said, her dark eyes narrowed and filled with accusation.
“I don’t work the society pages, Miss Jones,” he said, waving away her ire with a casual tone. “But as I was about to say, a story like this would sell a lot of papers. What is in it for me to keep it quiet?”
“How about your job?” Aunt Vee said. “I know Simon Nickerson well enough to ask him to help us.”
“Mr. Nickerson seems to like the way I do my job, Mrs. Turnbull,” he said, not budging from her threat. “And we both know he likes it when I sell a lot of papers.”
It was maddening, but at the same time, Beau had to admire the man for not being threatened. It was probably the same guts that allowed him to report on the goings on of the society kings in a way that got other reporters working in papers back home fired.
“What if you get a larger story out it?” Beau said.
“What do you mean?”
“This old murder case is old news, like you said,” he said. “And do you really want to harm an institution like The Everwell Society, given the good work they do? I don’t think that would reflect well on the paper, or on you.”
That seemed to get the man’s attention. “I’m listening.”
“What if I give you something new to report on,” Beau said, talking faster now, excited by the possibility. “You debunk the story, the Turnbull family is grateful, George’s College is spared another scandal, and Everwell’s reputation is intact—saved from a horrible story. You and your paper are heroes.”
Miller closed up his book. “I’ll give you a week.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It had been five days since Beau had left for Saint John. Five days of the women of Everwell watching the paper, holding their breath, hoping that Ben Miller would hold off on publishing his story. To her credit, Veronica Turnbull had, through the society papers and her connections at the New Women’s League, posted some glowing recommendations about Everwell, including the long-promised repudiation of the rumours that had made it into the same society columns a month before. But Ben Miller’s threats to publish the story about Maddy hung over them like Damocles’ sword.
“Mr. Miller is a horrid, wretched man,” Rimple said as she and Maddy headed out to the garden. Her normally bright expression had clouded over at the mere mention of his name. “I hope he trips and breaks his wrists. How can he be so cavalier about something so serious?”
“He’s a journalist,” she said. “A journalist who has to help his employer sell papers.”
“That’s hardly an excuse to ruin someone,” Rimple said, her bottom lip positively pouting. “I knew he was an awful person the moment he came to our Christmas pageant.”
“I thought you didn’t like him because he made fun of your sugarplum jelly”, Maddy said.
“The plums were too heavy for the gelatin. I was explaining it was an experiment,” she said, “but he laughed at it! Horrible man. And one who clearly does not appreciate the trial and error of the scientific method.”
Maddy almost wanted to smile, but her own mood was too heavy. The sun was high overhead, the afternoon air sultry, but with a hint of a breeze moving up from the Northwest Arm. It was a perfect day to be in her garden, away from everything and every care. Except even here, the worries that had haunted her could not be driven away. Nelson Taylor was like the blight on her roses, persisting even with the most diligent treatments.
