Page 13 of Under the Stars

I told him that I had risen at five o’clock, my usual hour, to lay the fires and start Mr. Irving’s coffee. He was an early riser, I said, especially since his wife’s death, and liked to work in the quiet before dawn. When I saw him at the bottom of the back stairs, I had raised the alarm at once.

No, I hadn’t heard anything unusual during the night, but I had always been a sound sleeper.

I had last seen Mr. Irving when he retired to bed at half past ten o’clock.

To the best of my knowledge, there was nobody else in the house.

Mr. Irving was a man of simple needs. He kept no other servants except me.

“I see,” said Mr. Starkweather.

I remember how a silence landed, like the period after a sentence.

I heard the snick of the clock on the mantel, the distant voices from the small sitting room.

By now the sun had risen to a dirty November day, and the commerce had begun to thicken on the street outside.

The clop of hooves and the rattle of wheels.

Mr. Starkweather rose from his seat on the armchair next to mine and walked the perimeter of the room, hands gathered behind his back, looking at nothing in particular until he came to the portrait of Mrs. Irving—one of two, the older one hanging in Mr. Irving’s bedroom—where he stopped.

The painting was by Peale, who had been a dear friend and early mentor to Mr. Irving, and had been commissioned around the time of the Irvings’ marriage, portraying Mrs. Irving at full length in a gown of gossamer pink.

Though I don’t flatter myself any great judge of artistic merit, I always thought Peale had captured the subtle play of her beauty and her intelligence, if not her mischievous spirit.

Starkweather seemed arrested. He studied each luminous brushstroke of her face and neck, until I asked him—in perhaps the same spirit of mischief—whether he had ever met the original.

He did not answer me. Instead, without turning, in that plodding voice of his, he asked me how I would describe my relationship to Mr. Irving.

“Why, as a servant to her master,” I said.

“You don’t think it strange, that he kept no other servants?”

“After Mrs. Irving’s death, Mr. Irving couldn’t bear other people in the house.”

Starkweather turned to face me. “Except you, of course.”

“My situation is different. I’ve lived with the family since I was a child. I took lessons with the Irvings’ children. I believe Mr. Irving saw himself as a kind of father to me—a foster father—or possibly an uncle.”

“And how did Mr. Irving’s children regard this close friendship between the two of you?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” I said, “and what’s more, I don’t see what it’s got to do with poor—poor Mr. Irving—what’s happened—”

For some time, he watched me sob into the handkerchief I drew from the pocket of my dressing gown.

I suppose he’d witnessed dozens of people weeping before him—hundreds, perhaps.

That was the nature of his job. Certainly he betrayed no pity for my grief.

His eyes were set deep beneath a ridge of thick browbone, and he observed me with the same unblinking stare as an ape.

At last my sobs began to ebb. You cannot cry forever—even the most furious storm must eventually exhaust itself—and I could see that he meant to wait out my tears until the last. When the final hiccup had dissolved into my handkerchief, he came forward and seated himself in the chair next to mine.

“Have you somewhere else to stay, Miss Dare? Your family, perhaps, or a friend?”

“Somewhere else? But this is my home.”

He laid one hand—broad, thick of finger—on his knee. “Not in fact, however.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“I mean that the house now belongs to Mr. Irving’s heirs. His children.”

“Why, as if they would turn me out in the streets!”

“You wish to stay here, then? Alone? After what’s happened?”

I fretted at the handkerchief in my lap. “I have nowhere else to go.”

I remember how the gray light from the window laid a dull glow against Mr. Starkweather’s hair as he studied me. Beneath his eyes, the skin was bruised, as if he hadn’t been sleeping well. But the eyes themselves were sharp enough.

I don’t know how long the silence might have continued, had I not risen to my feet and said, in a firm voice, “If you’ve heard enough, I believe I shall lie down for an hour or two.”

“Of course.” He rose too, so that we stood almost eye to eye. I remember feeling as if he were looking into my soul. “Anyone would wish for rest, after such an ordeal.”

You will perhaps say to yourself— why, how benevolent of him. What a kind expression of sympathy.

And I say to you: If you had stood in the room with me and heard him speak those words, you would have thought—as I did—that he’d given me a warning.

—

In spite of my ruminations, in spite of the cold and the violent motion of the ship, I must have fallen unconscious for a moment or two.

I recall jerking to attention, bewildered and nauseated, to some noise I couldn’t name.

I glanced to the porthole—still charcoal-dark, but possibly not quite so dark a charcoal as before?

I slid my hand into the pocket of my coat and searched for the watch, my precious watch—Mr. Irving’s exquisite gold watch. I flipped open the lid, but there was not enough light to read the face.

Up I staggered to the promenade deck, behind the wheelhouse.

The wooden awning overhead did nothing to shield me from the frozen rain that slanted in from the northwest; I clutched a pole with both hands to keep my feet planted beneath me.

From my position on the port side, I searched the dark universe for some sign of my own place in it.

The sky had certainly lightened. The black water churned below, skimmed with foam.

Against the gray horizon skulked an enormous shadow like a sleeping dragon—an island, I thought—but which one?

A hand closed around my shoulder. I heard my name shouted into the wind— Miss Dare! What the devil do you think you’re doing?

Before I could answer, Starkweather dragged me back, away from the rail and into the shelter of the grand saloon.

The room was nearly empty—the passengers had gathered in the main saloon, two decks below—and a single lantern hung from one of the cold gas sconces.

I broke free from Starkweather’s grasp and stumbled backward until I crashed atop a sofa.

Starkweather dropped to his knees and planted each hand on either side of me, gasping for breath. His face was dark with fury.

“My God,” I said, “did you think I was going to jump?”

Starkweather’s expression settled into a menacing frown.

Above the ridge of browbone, his forehead sloped back to meet his dark hair.

The phrenologists had some theory about a forehead like that, but I couldn’t remember what it was.

I didn’t put much stock in phrenology, anyway—according to science, Eph Irving should have been a genius.

Starkweather, on the other hand, looked nothing like a genius. He looked like an assassin.

His voice turned soft, though no less menacing. “I may as well tell you, Miss Dare. I have a warrant for your arrest in the pocket of my valise.”

As he spoke, a wave smashed against the side of the ship with an awful noise that swallowed the howling wind.

“ What did you say?” I demanded.

“I have a warrant for your arrest, Miss Dare. As soon as we land on firm soil, I’ll take you into custody and return you to Boston, where you will await trial for the murder of—”

Starkweather broke off to turn his head toward the row of portholes. Then I heard it, too, through the noise of the wind and the ship struggling against it—a scattering of hoarse shouts.

He climbed to his feet. I rose too swiftly and fell against his chest. He set me on my feet and together we careened to the door that opened to the foredeck. The shouts turned louder and became words—

Ship! Ship ahoy!