Murder at the Mansion_A Victorian Village Mystery

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  There is one person who more than any other provided the inspiration and the model for this book: my great-great-grandfather, Silas Abbott Barton.

  I never knew him, but I know a lot about him. He signed up a soldier in the Civil War when he was sixteen (and spent the war bravely defending Boston Harbor without firing a shot at anyone); he opened a small art gallery; he brought electricity to the city of Lynn, Massachusetts; he ran in a congressional primary (and lost); he was part of the founding of Thomson-Houston Electric Company, and stayed on when it merged with Thomas Edison’s company to form the General Electric Company; he must have gotten bored, because he left GE and purchased the Waltham Watch Tool Company (which did not make watches, but made the tools to make watches, for which Waltham is famous).

  He remodeled an old farmhouse in Waltham and turned it into a handsome Victorian building (it was rumored that no two doorknobs in the house were the same) for his wife and only child. For a genealogist he is a treasure trove, and I’ve given him an important role in the Victorian Village Mysteries.

  Acknowledgments

  When I started writing this book, I had a mental picture of two small towns that I knew personally. One was a town where I grew up, and while it was not far from New York City, it had changed surprisingly little over a couple of centuries. The other was Boonsboro, Maryland, where Nora Roberts has a small bookstore. I was invited to be part of a signing there, and in my spare time I wandered around the town and looked at details. The bottom line is that both towns, however far apart in distance and in time, have preserved the original layout and buildings, hidden under a layer of modern siding or plaster or paint.

  I should also acknowledge that a small part of the inspiration for this series was the fact that the town where I now live decided a few years ago to purchase a historic eighteenth-century house on the outskirts of the town. It was built by a then-prominent industrialist for his son, who married the state governor’s daughter. Purchasing the site required a public vote, which passed comfortably (which I guess means that as a resident I own a minuscule percentage of the place), and the house and grounds are now open to the public. If this town could do it, I could certainly create a fictional town to do the same thing.

  One thing that is delightful about picturing fictional Asheboro in the post–Civil War era is the collision of past and present that is evident. While it was and remains a sleepy little town, like so many places in the later nineteenth century it faced problems with transportation, employment, modernization, and more. That’s why Kate was called in to help, but she has a vision for the town. What would happen if you tried to revive a town that time had passed by? That’s what my heroine Kate Hamilton tries to do, although finding a murder victim gets in the way now and then.

  Once I had my setting I needed a long-empty mansion as the focus of the town’s revival. Luckily my great-great-grandfather provided me with one. It’s still standing, although all the elegance has been stripped from both the exterior and the interior. But a model for the interior can be found in the luscious Tiffany interiors of the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut. In addition, I live in an 1870 Victorian house. While it is nowhere near as large and opulent as the mansion in the series, it provides me with a wealth of details of how houses of that era were designed and built.

  I owe many thanks to my tireless agent, Jessica Faust of BookEnds, who put me together at a conference with Hannah Braaten, editor at St. Martin’s. That publishing house was new to me then, and it has been a pleasure getting to know Hannah and the rest of the staff there. I’m glad of the warm welcome they have given this series.

  1

  “Remind me again why I said I’d do this?” I whispered to Lisbeth, who knew me better than almost anyone in the world, except maybe my parents. I kept my voice down because we were waiting in the wings of the high school’s stage, watching the good citizens of Asheboro, Maryland, come in and find seats, so they could listen to me telling them how I thought we could transform the sleepy town into a place that tourists and historians would want to visit—and leave some of their cash behind. If that didn’t work, the town would probably shrivel up and blow away, and I’d get the blame.

  “Because you’re the best person for the job,” Lisbeth whispered. I knew she had my back, because she was the one who had called me and begged me to come help the town, and I’d been foolish enough to say yes. She was also standing behind me so that I couldn’t turn and run away.

  “You know I hate talking to crowds of people,” I whined. She’d seen me botch my one stab at taking part in our high school debate team, in this same auditorium. Come to think of it, that was the last time I’d spoken to more than a dozen people at one time. I’d forgotten how terrifying it could be.

  I checked my watch: ten of eight. Still time for even more people to drift in, ready to throw rotten tomatoes at me. This year there was a bumper crop of ripe tomatoes.

  This was a special event for Asheboro, maybe even unique. While town meetings happened occasionally, seldom in my memory had there been one that affected the future of the town and all its residents. It sounded melodramatic to put it that way, but unfortunately it was true: if I couldn’t help the townspeople find a new source of revenues for this struggling town, it was doomed. I knew I couldn’t use dramatic words like doomed because people probably wouldn’t believe me, but somehow I had to get them to believe that things in Asheboro really were that serious. If I could.

  Over the last month or so I’d come up with a general proposal, but there were still a lot of holes in it, the largest ones in the budget. I could probably spin a good story about what could be done to transform the place, but I couldn’t begin to tell them how to pay for it. The fact that a major storm had swept through recently and damaged a lot of the buildings along the main street, and then the bank manager had embezzled most of what little cash the town still had, didn’t make my job any easier.

  Lisbeth tugged at my jacket. “You might as well get started. A lot of these people have kids at home and will want to get back. Just tell them the truth, and keep it simple. Now, go!” She gave me a gentle push toward the stage.

  Since I couldn’t recall ever attending a town meeting here, although in my own defense I’d left for college and never looked back, I had no idea what kind of reception to expect. Stony silence would not have been my first choice. But here I was, and I had to move forward.

  “Thank you all for coming tonight. I know you’ve got busy lives, so I’ll keep this short and to the point.” I swallowed as many pairs of eyes stared blankly. “If you’ve lived here for any length of time, you may remember me. I’m Kate Hamilton, and I grew up and went to high school here. Until about three years ago my parents lived in the same house they always had, before they moved to Florida.” The crowd still loo
ked like it were made up of zombies. “All right, how many people in this room have lived here for most of their lives?” A few hands went up. “Twenty years?” A couple of dozen hands. “Ten years?” About the same number—which was telling me something: nobody seemed to have any reason to move to Asheboro, and that had been true for a while.

  “Let me be honest with you. When I finished high school, all I wanted was to get out of town.” Several people laughed at that. “I went to college, and then I found jobs in other places. I never planned to come back, especially after my folks left. So why am I here now?” I waited for a response that never came.

  I pushed on. “Because a very good friend of mine, who I’ve known since high school here—Lisbeth Scott—came to me to tell me that the town was broke and things weren’t going to get any better unless something big happened. And she told me flat out that the town was desperate, and I was the only person she could think of who could help. And here I am.”

  Finally someone spoke. “Why’d she think that?” said a guy near the back of the room.

  “You’ll have to ask her that, because I’m still wondering. Look, how many of you know what kind of shape this town is in?”

  “Physically? Financially?” the same guy said.

  “Physically, all you have to do is walk down the main street. It looks shabby, tired, like it got left behind while the world moved on.”

  “Why is that?” someone else asked.

  “Please, don’t throw things at me. I grew up here, so I can say what I see and what I believe. This is and always has been a good town, with good people living in it. But the only industry was the shovel factory, and that closed long before most of us were born, and nothing came along to replace it. We’re too far from Baltimore to make it an easy commute. The train line passed us by a century ago. There was never any kind of important battle or big historical event here. It’s pretty and peaceful and quiet, but you can’t pay the bills or send your kids to college on that. So people have left, and nobody’s replaced them. And Asheboro has just drifted along the way it always did, until very recently.”

  I scanned the crowd to see if I had their attention. At least no one had gone to sleep yet.

  I went on, “And then the town council found some gumption and decided to buy the Barton estate and make something out of it. Which took all the money you had. I applaud the courage and the hope it took to do that, but it’s not enough to have a house, no matter how gorgeous, without any other reason to come to this town. So you people really have only one shot at thinking outside the box and saving the town.”

  “And that’s where you came in?” a middle-aged woman closer to the front spoke. “Why are you qualified to do anything about this mess?”

  I focused on her, because it was a valid question. “I don’t claim to be an expert, in city planning or in finance. The biggest project I’ve ever managed was a Baltimore hotel, and one in Philadelphia before that. But nobody else seems to have stepped up, and all I’ve agreed to was to try to come up with a plan that might work. And in case you’re worried, I’m not getting paid for this. I just don’t want to see the town die.”

  “And you think you have some ideas to fix this?”

  “Maybe. But it’s going to take some cooperation from the people in this town, particularly those who have a business in the center of town.”

  “And money? Higher taxes?”

  “I know there’s no money, and how could anybody raise taxes here when salaries and revenues are in the tank? I may be inexperienced, but I’m not naïve. Just hear me out. You don’t have to vote on it or support it in any other way, at least not yet. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. But let me say one thing: to make this work, you all have to commit to it and work together. If you can’t do that, it’s over.”

  I could see that the natives were getting restless. So much for the big buildup. Time to get my Big Idea out there and let it sink or swim.

  “Settle down, people—I’m just getting to the good stuff. I propose that we turn the central blocks of Asheboro into a Victorian village, as authentic as we can make it. And an extension of that would be the Barton mansion outside of town. In case you don’t remember your local history, Henry Barton was the owner of the factory on the edge of town, and easily the richest man, and his house, if you haven’t seen it, is a magnificent example of high Victorian architecture and it’s in good condition. It wouldn’t take much work or money to make it shine. The challenge is to bring the rest of the town up to that standard.”

  “When you say make this place a Victorian village”—the speaker made air quotes—“what the heck does that mean? Level it and rebuild the whole thing? With what money?”

  “Have you taken a look at the buildings on Main Street?” I challenged him. “Since the storm? Well, I have. And what I discovered—and I’ll admit it surprised me—is that most of the buildings that date back to 1900 or even before are still there under a century of siding. Believe it or not, the village is still there. Now, many of you who kept your insurance paid up will probably get a small settlement for damages from the storm. If you were going to repair your shops, you’d have to peel off the newer stuff anyway, so you can put that money toward repairing what’s underneath. Maybe replace some windows with older models, and patch up the roof. Then you gut the interior and rebuild it to look the way it would have been in 1900, which would probably be cheaper than going modern with it.”

  “What about stuff like lighting and plumbing?”

  “As long as what you see looks authentic, what’s behind the walls and under the floors can be up to the minute—and probably would have to be to meet local building codes.”

  “And why on earth would anybody come to this town to look at all this stuff?” demanded another man.

  “Because up front we decide to make it as authentic as possible, so visitors can believe they really have stepped back in time. It’s a small town. It wouldn’t take much to fix enough buildings so that all anyone standing in the center of town would see is only what would have been there in 1900. All the modern stuff like gas stations and supermarkets and fast-food joints are already outside of that, so normal life could go on. Have any of you been to Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, or Monticello, or Williamsburg? That’s the look I’m aiming for. It would feel real. And this place is close enough to the major battle sites in this state, or even in Pennsylvania, that it wouldn’t be much of a detour for people, if we promoted it right. Okay, that’s the basic outline. What do you think?”

  One woman who I recognized from the town council said thoughtfully, “I’d like to see some more detailed cost analyses for this. And what about people who hate the idea? It sounds like everybody would have to be on board to make it work—you couldn’t have a Starbucks on Main Street because then you’d lose the illusion.”

  “You’re absolutely right. That’s why we’d need some true cooperation to make this work. But let’s think optimistically. If you gag at the idea of running a candy emporium or a corset shop on Main Street, it’s altogether possible that someone else might want to, and would buy you out at a fair market rate.” I took a deep breath. “Let me tell you, nothing has to be decided tonight. I want you all to go home and think about the idea, and then we can meet again and you can say what you think. You love it, or you hate it—you have a right to your opinion. Talk it over among yourselves. Take the time to walk around town and really look at it—at the way it is now, and at the way it could be. But if you want to go on living here, raising your children here, retiring here, something has to be done. Thank you for listening.”

  I turned and walked offstage, mainly because I was exhausted, and I wasn’t prepared to answer any questions because I’d told the crowd pretty much everything there was to this very preliminary plan. If enough people hated it, I’d go back to my prior life and look for a new job. But so far I’d had a lot of fun imagining the possibilities.

  Lisbeth stopped me with a hug bef
ore I could escape. “You were terrific! I think they got the general idea without being swamped with details. Are you going to be able to meet with them in smaller groups if they have questions, which I’m sure they will?”

  “I hope so, although I haven’t made any plans for that.”

  “You’re still staying at the B&B?”

  “For now, at least. Ryan’s okay with it, and the dining room would work well enough for small group meetings. You think they’ll go for it?”

  “Based on the expressions I saw from people in the crowd, I’d say maybe. I think you had them interested by the end there, but not committed.”

  “It’s a lot to take in all at once, I’ll admit. But it’s not like we have a deadline.”

  “You should set a deadline for a decision, though,” Lisbeth said thoughtfully. “If you don’t, they’ll just keep bickering about bits and pieces and never decide anything.”

  “How long is long enough?” I asked.

  “Are you still thinking about having some kind of opening event by fall?”

  “Maybe. I won’t know if that’s even possible until we take a hard look at what kind of shape the buildings are in. And you do know that we don’t have any money—cash or credit—so we’d have to get started on the fundraising side of things ASAP.”

  “True. So set a date two to three weeks out and demand an answer. I know it seems short, but you’ve got to start somewhere.”

  I could feel my eyelids drooping as my adrenaline crashed. “Let’s get together in the morning. Maybe things will look different then.”

  “My place? I’ll give you breakfast and tell the munchkins to keep the noise down to a dull roar.”

  “Great. But not before eight o’clock.”

  “Deal. I’d better head home myself now. See you in the morning.”

  The crowd had dispersed quickly. I made my way to my car in the parking lot and drove the few blocks to the bed-and-breakfast that had previously belonged to my former high school nemesis, Cordelia Walker, now deceased and not widely mourned. Her ex-husband, Ryan Hoffman, owned the building now, but was in no hurry to unload it—he was one of the first to hear my vague plans and he seemed enthusiastic. The fact that he was a corporate attorney was icing on the cake.