The Flapper
Elaine Kearney was taking a triple chocolate Bundt cake out of the oven when she heard the doorbell ring.
That must be the girls, she thought, glancing at the clock on the kitchen wall.
It was her turn to host what she and her two friends affectionately referred to as the Three C's Ladies Club, the C's referring to coffee, cake and conversation.
When she answered the door, however, she found a teenager on the stoop.
"Mrs. Kearney?" the girl asked.
"Yes. Can I help you?"
"You don't know me, but my name is Brooklyn Dunton. My mother was one of your students back in 1995: Anastasia Norvin. I was wondering if I could have a few minutes of your time."
"I don't see why not," Elaine, a former history teacher at Puritan Falls High, replied. "Won't you come in?"
"I'm here because I read your book, the one about the Lucy Cowell disappearance."
"I didn't write it by myself. It was a joint effort with two friends of mine."
"Yes, I know. I was hoping you might help me solve a mystery I recently came across."
"I'm not sure if I can. I'm not a detective, just a retiree looking for something to do in my spare time."
Elaine felt sympathy for the girl, whose face took on the countenance of someone who had lost her dog.
"My friends are due to stop by any minute now. Why don't you sit down, have a piece of cake and tell us all about it when they get here? Maybe there's something we can do to help."
Once Maureen McHugh and Glenda Wayman arrived and everyone was seated around the dining room table enjoying the rich chocolaty cake, Elaine suggested Brooklyn tell them about her mystery.
"I was in the Pine Grove Cemetery taking pictures for my photography club," the girl began, "when I literally stumbled upon an old grave. It was way in the back, by the old wrought iron fence, overgrown with weeds. I was backing up, trying to get a photo of the lighthouse in the distance when plop! I fell on my ... behind."
The three senior citizens smiled at the young girl's efforts to speak respectfully in their presence.
"I pushed the fallen branches, dead leaves and weeds out of the way and found a most peculiar headstone."
"What was it that made it so strange?" Maureen, a retired emergency room nurse, asked.
"There was no name or date on it. Just one word: wife."
"Whose wife?" asked Glenda who had been a librarian at the Essex Green campus of the University of Massachusetts for over forty years.
"It didn't say."
"It's no mystery," Elaine said. "It must be a double plot. The grave next to it obviously belongs to the husband."
"There was no grave next to it," Brooklyn explained. "There was a tree to the right of it and the fence to the left."
The three older women looked at each other quizzically.
It was Glenda who suggested, "Maybe we should go see this grave for ourselves."
After they finished their cake and coffee, they piled into Elaine's SUV and drove to the Pine Grove Cemetery. Once there, Brooklyn led the way to the mysterious grave.
"See," the girl said, pointing to the headstone.
"She's right," Maureen announced. "This is a single grave, not a double one."
"It shouldn't be too difficult to learn who's buried here," Glenda declared. "The owner of the cemetery must keep records."
* * *
The following week the three friends met at Maureen McHugh's house on Atlantic Avenue for their weekly get-together.
"Mmmm! I love the smell of cinnamon!" Elaine exclaimed when Maureen opened the front door. "Did you make snickerdoodles?"
"No. It's my streusel coffee cake."
The two women walked into the kitchen where Glenda was pouring cups of coffee for everyone.
"I have some news for your young friend," Maureen announced, as she cut the cake.
"Did you find out who was buried in that grave?" Elaine asked.
"Yes, I did. Lucky for me the owner had the records put on a computer database last year. It saved me a lot of time."
"And who was the poor woman?" Glenda asked, passing out coffee cups.
"No one from around here. The man who bought the plot was named Elgin Winningham. He was from New York City. Theodora, his wife, was buried in Pine Grove back in 1930."
"It's odd that he didn't bury her in New York."
Glenda, who had been silently drinking her coffee, looked from one friend to the other.
"You said the names were Elgin and Theodora Winningham?" the former librarian asked.
"Yes," Maureen replied. "Why? Do you know them?"
"Didn't either of you ever read Noel Gallow?"
"Of course," Elaine replied. "Requiem for Delilah is required reading in practically every high school in America."
"I'm talking about his first novel, The Mighty Savage."
Even though Noel Gallow was considered one of the greatest American authors of all time, neither Maureen nor Elaine had ever read his lesser known works.
"It was a semiautobiographical novel about a young man from the Midwest who moves to New York City and struggles to become a writer," Glenda explained. "The main characters' names were Elgin and Theodora Winningham."
"Surely it's a coincidence," Maureen said.
"Or maybe the man who bought the plot deliberately used a false name," Elaine suggested.
"I agree with Elaine," Glenda said. "It appears as though this man from New York wanted to keep his real identity secret. That would also explain why his wife's name wasn't engraved on the headstone."
"So what do we tell Brooklyn?" Elaine asked.
"You can tell her exactly what Maureen just told us," Glenda replied. "You can also mention that I intend to do a little digging and see if I can learn anything more about Theodora Winningham."
* * *
According to Glenda's search of the 1930 census records, there was no Elgin or Theodora Winningham living in New York or anyplace else in the United States during that time. When she widened her search to include the 1910, 1920 and 1940 records, the result was the same. She also checked immigration records. No one by either name had entered the country—legally, that is.
"That leaves us with two possibilities," she told Maureen when they met for lunch one day at the Green Man Pub. "Either he was living here after illegally entering the country or Elgin Winningham wasn't his real name."
"Which is what you suspected all along," Maureen said. "And if that's the case, how will we ever learn who is buried in that grave? It would be like finding a needle in a haystack."
"Maybe not. Those names could not have been chosen at random. Whoever purchased that cemetery plot was familiar with Noel Gallow's writings."
"Is that surprising?" Maureen asked. "That was back in 1930, the height of Gallow's career. He was quite the celebrity by then."
"True, and had he chosen characters from Requiem for Delilah, it wouldn't have surprised me at all if. It was a bestseller back then and is still considered by many today to be the Great America Novel. But Noel Gallow's first book was quite different. Very few people read it now and even fewer read in when it was published. It wasn't until his third novel was released that he became well known."
Maureen, who once after five minutes of playing with a Rubik's cube tossed it in the trash, was not one to waste time on an unsolvable mystery.
"Like I said, it'll be like searching for a needle in a haystack."
"I'm up for a challenge," Glenda said with a smile.
* * *
"You're being awfully quiet today," Elaine told Glenda as the three friends were strolling down Essex Street for the annual Memorial Day weekend sidewalk sale.
"Sorry. I was just deep in thought."
Maureen saw Rebecca Coffin entering The Quill and Dagger and excused herself.
"I've got to talk to Rebecca about donating a prize for the hospital's silent auction," she said. "Why don't you two go on ahead? I'll catch up with you later. We can go to the Sons of Liberty for lunch—my treat."
"So what's on your mind?" Elaine asked.
"I've been doing a lot of thinking about the grave that Brooklyn Dunton discovered," Glenda replied.
"Have you learned anything more about it?"
"I have a theory but no evidence to back it up."
"Tell me your theory then; perhaps I can help you find the proof."
"Only if you promise not to laugh at the absurdity of it."
"How absurd can it be?" Elaine asked. "Unless you're going to tell me you believe Noel Gallow himself was the mysterious man."
Glenda looked away, embarrassed.
"Oh, my God! You do think it was him! You must have a good reason. What is it?"
"The names Elgin and Theodora Winningham aroused my suspicions. Oh, I know someone else could have chosen those names, but my gut tells me it was him."
"Well, your gut is wrong. Noel Gallow's wife outlived him by eight years."
"Consider this," Glenda said, "The Gallows were the celebrity couple during the Twenties, the 'Brangelina' of their day. They were photographed everywhere they went. When Noel wasn't writing, their life was a never-ending party filled with alcohol, music and playful hjinks. Poppy Gallow is often considered the original flapper. Then in 1927 they leave New York and go to France. They don't live in Paris, where you'd expect such an A-list couple to stay but in a remote area of the French countryside, miles away from their nearest neighbor."
"What's so strange about that? One or both of them must have wanted to pull over and get out of the fast lane."
"Just listen. One year later, Noel Gallow returns to New York, alone. Poppy remains in Europe where she had been hospitalized in what we now know was a psychiatric hospital. Immediately upon his arrival in the states, Noel publishes his masterpiece, Requiem for Delilah, which he wrote while in France."
"See! What did I tell you? They went to Europe so he could devote himself to writing. And thank God he did! That book is one of my all-time favorites."
"There's more to the story. In late 1929 Poppy Gallow was released from the hospital, and Noel went to France to fetch her and bring her home, but not to New York. The Gallows sailed into Boston Harbor. Now this is where the couple's biographers disagree. Some say Noel immediately put his wife into an institution in Pennsylvania. Others claim he bought her a vacation home in Maine, and while they were there, she had the nervous breakdown, which necessitated her commitment."
"Either way, she went to the mental hospital," Elaine said, driving home her point.
"And he went to Hollywood where he became a successful screenwriter and carried on an affair with a magazine photographer that lasted until he died. According to all the sources I've read, in all that time, he never once visited his wife in Pennsylvania."
"So, he was a lousy husband. That still doesn't change the fact that his wife was still alive when he died. Therefore, she couldn't possibly be buried in a grave in Massachusetts."
"What if the woman in the Pennsylvania mental hospital wasn't Poppy Gallow?" Glenda asked. "What if she actually died shortly after coming back from France?"
"Then who was the woman in the mental hospital?"
"I don't know. She died when the hospital burned to the ground. Records say it was Poppy Gallow, but her body was unrecognizable."
"Who paid her bills while she was hospitalized?" Elaine asked.
"Noel Gallow," Glenda replied sheepishly.
"And after he died?"
"He had set up a trust to take care of her."
"And why would he do that for a stranger? Sorry, but I just don't buy it. If Poppy Gallow had died on the way to or from Maine, why not report her death to the authorities, have a proper burial for her in New York or down south where she came from originally?"
"There may have been a reason Noel couldn't report his wife's death," Glenda said.
"Why not? Unless he .... Are you suggesting what I think you are?" Elaine asked with surprise.
"A small cemetery in an out-of-the-way place like Puritan Falls is a good place to hide a body."
Maureen, when she later learned about Glenda's theory, naturally agreed with Elaine. Poppy Gallow died in a fire in a Pennsylvania mental hospital—case closed. Glenda, however, was not about to give up so easily.
"Just the same, I'll keep snooping," she insisted stubbornly. "Even if I'm on a wild goose chase, when it comes to keeping my mind active, it's better than doing Sudoku puzzles."
"I think we should help her," Elaine said to Maureen.
"Not you, too?"
"We can help her by proving that the woman who died in the Pennsylvania fire was Noel Gallow's wife."
Maureen sighed and said, "I suppose we should keep our brains active as well."
"Two against one?" Glenda laughed. "I may need to have someone else on my side."
"Good luck with that!" Elaine exclaimed.
* * *
As Glenda was drinking her morning cup of coffee, her eyes went to the printout of a photograph Maureen had emailed to her the previous day. It was the gravesite of Noel Gallow on Long Island, not far from where the author and his wife had once owned a summer home. There were two marble monuments, one bearing Noel's name, the other Poppy's.
"This is not definitive proof," she emailed back. "Nothing short of a DNA test will convince me."
What began as a vague hunch had metamorphosed into a bona fide suspicion.
I suppose this is how the conspiracy theorists feel, she thought. They have no way to either prove or disprove their ideas.
Even with the Internet at her disposal, Glenda was at a loss as to how to find the answers she sought. She needed someone to help her, but who?
Brooklyn Dunton? No, she came to us for help. Marla Lovejoy, our local psychic? No, I need authoritative proof to satisfy Maureen and Elaine.
What she needed was Fred Gailey to walk into her home with postal bags full of letters addressed to Poppy Gallow and claim they were all delivered to Pine Grove Cemetery!
Suddenly, the image in her mind of John Payne in the role of Santa's lawyer in Miracle on 34th Street gave way to a much more familiar face: Puritan Falls' beloved police officer, Shawn McMurtry.
An hour later, Glenda was sitting at The Quill and Dagger's coffee bar with Shawn, explaining her reasons why she believed Poppy Gallow was buried in the local cemetery. As she spoke, the true-crime buff policeman stared at the photograph of the lonely grave marked only with the word wife.
"Well?" Glenda asked when she was done presenting her case. "What do you think?"
"Sounds like a great plot for a mystery novel—very Brontë-esque. You know, the mad wife locked away from the world who later dies in a fire."
Glenda looked at Shawn with surprise.
"You know, I never saw the correlation between Poppy Gallow's later life and that of Mr. Rochester's wife in Jane Eyre."
McMurtry smiled with pride that he had bested a librarian who had minored in British lit in college.
"I'm not saying your theory is correct," he said, "but if Noel Gallow did kill his wife, he could have gotten the idea for the cover-up from Charlotte Brontë's book."
"I really think you've hit on something there, Shawn!" Glenda exclaimed excitedly. "After all, he used names of characters from his own novel when he purchased the cemetery plot. It fits the pattern."
"I suppose you invited me here to ask for my help in your investigation."
"Would you, Shawn?"
"I'll see what I can do."
* * *
With the arrival of autumn, Brooklyn Dunton lost interest in the gravestone she had discovered earlier in the year. Once school started in September, she had little time for mysteries. Her schoolwork took precedence over everything, except possibly the good-looking boy in her geometry class.
Maureen and Elaine also put their time to better use. Maureen was helping Shannon Devlin, owner of the Green Man Pub, organize the annual Harvest Fair, and Elaine volunteered to tutor several students who planned on taking the SAT. Even Glenda had other things on her mind: her daughter, who lived in Alexandria, Virginia, was expecting her first child.
The grandmother-to-be was busy crocheting a pink-and-blue afghan for the baby one morning when she received a call from Shawn McMurtry.
"About that grave, I've got some news for you," he announced.
"Really? I didn't think you were still looking into it."
"You know me; I love a good mystery! How would you like to meet me for lunch, and I'll tell you all about it?"
"How does the Chinese Lantern sound?" Glenda asked, suddenly developing a craving for General Tso's chicken.
"Great. Noon, okay?"
"I'll be there."
Shawn was already at a table when the retired librarian arrived at the restaurant. When she sat down, he offered her an appetizer: crab Rangoon.
"So what have you got for me?" she asked.
"I checked into the names you got from the cemetery, Elgin and Theodora Winningham. Just as you suspected, that lead went nowhere. You also told me Noel Gallow bought his wife a vacation home in Maine. There's no record of his owning property in that state. However, in 1930, a Winston Squire bought a small cabin in western Maine, about as far away from civilization as you can get."
Glenda's eyes sparkled.
"Winston Squire?"
"Yes," Shawn replied with a smile. "And as I remember from my senior year English class, Winston Squire was the name of the narrator in Requiem for Delilah."
"What became of the house?"
"Oddly enough, the buyer turned around and put the place up for sale a month after he purchased it. That was about the same time the woman identified as Theodora Winningham was buried in Pine Grove Cemetery. What makes the whole vacation home story even more bizarre was that Poppy Gallow returned from France in February. Who wants to vacation in western Maine at that time of the year?"
"There has to be something to my theory!" Glenda exclaimed.
"You haven't heard it all yet," Shawn said, taking a few moments to eat a few forkfuls of his sweet and sour shrimp. "I checked into the records of the former Schuylkill Asylum in Pennsylvania. Poppy Gallow was admitted there in March, one month later, diagnosed with a severe case of paranoid schizophrenia. She was subjected to shock treatments and was often heavily sedated."
Glenda frowned. Perhaps she was wrong. It was possible that Noel Gallow had wanted to take his wife to Maine to rest, unaware how bad off she was. Once he did realize the extent of her mental illness, he might have had no choice but to commit her.
Shawn, who had been washing down his food with Chinese tea, put his cup down and continued.
"Now this is something I can't explain. During their stay in Europe, Poppy Gallow was admitted to the Esquirol Hospital in France. According to her records, the psychiatrist who examined her there said she'd suffered a mild nervous breakdown and with rest would fully recover. In fact, it was only a few months after Gallow returned to New York that the French doctors contacted him and told him his wife was fine; there was no reason for her to be in a hospital."
"The doctors might have been wrong," Glenda said, playing the devil's advocate.
"They might have been," Shawn agreed. "But what if they weren't? If Poppy Gallow was sane when she left France, then how is that just a few months later she's receiving shock treatments for paranoid schizophrenia? I'm thinking the woman in the Pennsylvania asylum might not have been the author's wife at all."
"And that Noel buried the real Poppy here in Puritan Falls?"
"My wife would tell me I read too many mystery novels," Shawn laughed, "but it seems to be the only explanation that fits the facts."
"We've still got to prove the Pennsylvania woman's identity, though."
"The only way we can do that is to exhume the body, extract DNA and compare it to one of Poppy Gallow's relatives."
"She and Noel had a daughter," Glenda said. "The child would have been eight or nine years old when her mother was institutionalized. I wonder if she is still be alive or if she had any children."
"Whoa! I hate to burst your bubble, but no judge will agree to dig up a body based on what we have, not to mention the cost of exhumation would be prohibitive."
* * *
When her daughter gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Glenda went to stay with her in Alexandria for a week. On her way back to Puritan Falls, she couldn't help taking a detour to the Woodland Park Cemetery in Long Island to see Noel Gallow's grave.
I don't know what I expected to see, she thought as she looked at the headstone with Poppy Gallow's name engraved on it.
It was frustrating that just six feet below the ground was the definitive answer to the question that had plagued her for nearly a year, and she had no way of getting to it.
What does it really matter? Whether Poppy Gallow died in 1930 or ten years later, she's still dead.
As Glenda was staring at the weathered flowers someone had placed on the grave, a shadow fell on the ground. Startled, she turned and saw a woman, approximately her own age, standing behind her.
"I'm sorry," the woman apologized. "I didn't mean to startle you."
"That's okay," Glenda said. "I was deep in thought, and I didn't hear you approaching."
"Are you an English teacher? Many people who show up here are."
"No, but before I retired I was a librarian."
"Ah, and you're making a pilgrimage to the shrine of the great Noel Gallow."
"Something like that," Glenda replied. "What about you?"
"He was my grandfather. I'm Rosalie McCrea, my mother was Daisy Gallow."
"Now that you mention it, I can see the family resemblance. You have Poppy's eyes."
"Poor Grandma."
It was odd to think of the tragic flapper as someone's grandmother. She was only forty when she died—assuming she died in the asylum fire. She would have been only thirty if it was her body in Pine Grove Cemetery.
"Obviously, I never knew her, but my mother used to talk about her all the time."
"From what I've read about your grandmother, she must have been a remarkable woman. What a shame she met such a tragic end."
"Yes. My mother visited Poppy not long before she died. She had changed so much that her own daughter didn't recognize her."
Glenda's heart pounded. Why did everything she learned point in the same direction?
"Is something wrong?" Rosalie asked. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
The former librarian took a deep breath and then blurted out her suspicions that Poppy Gallow had died in 1930 and was buried in Massachusetts.
Now it was the other woman's turn to look ill.
"I'm sorry if I've upset you," Glenda apologized. "I just ...."
"No, no. You didn't. I read about the house in Maine, but I never believed it. However, I had no idea there was a woman named Theodora Winningham buried in Massachusetts. That would explain ...."
"Explain what?"
"Why don't we go sit down on that bench and I'll tell you what I know."
Glenda sat on the cold stone seat, holding her breath in anticipation.
"It's no secret that my grandparents led a pretty wild life. My grandfather's drinking got so bad he was unable to write. He decided to leave America and go to France where there wouldn't be as many distractions or temptations. They didn't take my mother with them, preferring to leave her with an aunt."
"Poppy's sister?"
"Yes. Grandma wrote to them several times a week, which is how my mother learned what went on while her parents were in Europe. They rented a small house in a remote area, and Grandpa spent his time writing. Without friends, family or any other distractions, Grandma decided to write to pass the time as well."
Rosalie became silent, her face pensive as though she were contemplating some great decision.
"My mother and I always wondered ... but we never ...."
Glenda waited patiently for the woman to continue.
"Grandma wrote to her sister that my grandfather was writing a novel about an American soldier wounded at the Battle of Argonne Forest."
"But Requiem for Delilah had nothing to do with the war," Glenda needlessly pointed out. "It's about a woman from an old southern family who marries, moves to New York and then kills herself."
"My mother and I always felt it was much more likely for Grandma to have used that plot than Grandpa."
Glenda finally understood Rosalie's consternation. It was possible that Poppy Gallow, not her husband, had written what many claimed was the Great American Novel.
"Poppy Gallow did write several short stories when she was younger," the former librarian said, "but you don't think ...?"
"My grandfather had the book published when he returned to New York. My grandmother was hospitalized in France at the time."
"And you think he claimed her manuscript as his own while she was institutionalized? Why, that's ... that's downright stealing."
As Rosalie slowly nodded her head, her features were etched with sadness.
"He must have known she would eventually find out," Glenda argued.
"Perhaps he thought she'd never be released from the hospital."
"But she was. That could explain why he tried to spirit her off to Maine where she would be less likely to learn the truth."
"But if the woman buried in Massachusetts is really my grandmother ... She must have somehow found out that the manuscript had been published under her husband's name. That could only mean my grandfather .... Oh, no! It's just too horrible to consider."
"We can't jump to conclusions. Maybe Poppy Gallow committed suicide once she returned from France or died in an accident or from natural causes. For all we know, your grandmother really did die in a fire in Pennsylvania."
"As much as I fear what I might learn, I have to know the truth."
* * *
As the granddaughter and sole surviving heir of Noel Gallow, Rosalie McCrea had not only the authority to request an exhumation of her grandmother's remains but also the money to pay for it. It took several weeks for the necessary paperwork to go through and the DNA test to be performed.
When the results came back, they confirmed what Glenda and Rosalie had suspected: the DNA of the person buried next to Noel Gallow indicated no familial relationship to Rosalie. Therefore, the remains of the woman who had died in a tragic fire at a Pennsylvania asylum were not those of Poppy Gallow.
In light of the evidence they had gathered, Glenda, Rosalie and Shawn McMurtry were able to get permission to exhume the body buried in Puritan Falls. Again, samples were sent to the lab for comparison. This time, however, the DNA was a match.
"I don't know what to do next," Rosalie said, crying on Glenda's shoulder. "How can I expose my grandfather as a thief and a murderer?"
"Thief, yes," Shawn said, "but you have no proof he actually murdered your grandmother. She might have killed herself, just like the main character in her book did."
"Still," Rosalie argued, "think of the scandal!"
"Then don't take this any further," Glenda said. "You can trust me and Shawn. We won't say a word to anyone."
"That wouldn't be fair to my grandmother, would it?"
In the end, Rosalie McCrea had her grandmother's remains discreetly taken to Long Island and interred beside those of her husband. Then, since she owned the rights to Requiem for Delilah, she chose to have all future copies of the book give credit to her grandmother as having inspired the story.
There was never any mention of the details surrounding her grandmother's death, however, for Rosalie could not, in all good conscience, destroy her grandfather's memory. She only hoped her grandmother would understand.
I can't bear to tell Salem that Noel Gallow didn't write Requium for Delilah. He has yet to recover from learning that Shakespeare's works might have been written by Christopher Marlowe or Edward de Vere.
