Dangerous and Unseemly Read online

  Dangerous and Unseemly

  book 1 of the Concordia Wells Mysteries

  K.B. Owen

  Contents

  Dangerous and Unseemly

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Ready for the next Concordia adventure?

  Also by K.B. Owen

  About the Author

  Dangerous and Unseemly

  book 1 of the Concordia Wells Mysteries

  by K.B. Owen

  For

  Joan Considine Owen

  You inspired this book.

  We miss you still.

  Chapter 1

  Hartford Women’s College February 1896

  Perhaps one could grow accustomed to the sound of female shrieks at dawn, but Professor Concordia Wells thought otherwise.

  Today, an out-an-out caterwauling yanked her from sleep.

  Mercy! What now?

  Groping for her eye glasses and wrapping herself in a shawl against the morning chill, she listened. Please not another mouse. It was remarkable how one small creature could produce such an uproar. Last week’s intruder had led them a merry chase before Ruby trapped it in the dustbin.

  She tucked her feet under her, just in case.

  Overhead came laughter and the babble of voices mixed in with the wails.

  Concordia rolled her eyes in exasperation and sprang out of bed. No matter what had them in a pucker this time, she had to get them quiet in a hurry. With Willow Cottage being closest to DeLacey House, the residence of no-nonsense Lady Principal Hamilton, the disturbance was bound to reach her ears. Concordia was the cottage’s teacher-in-charge, and responsible for these students. The last thing they needed was Miss Hamilton descending upon them.

  She didn’t even bother to find her slippers, but stomped out of the room, her hair trailing in a fraying braid down her back. She groped her way up the steps in the dim early dawn light.

  Drat! She smothered a yelp as she stubbed her toe on a step.

  Reaching the first freshman room, the pain gave her additional fury as she flung open the door to a group of squalling girls.

  “Stop that noise at once!” she hissed. “Do you want to bring the lady principal down upon our heads? Do you remember the last time this cottage was put on restriction for unseemly behavior?”

  Startled, the girls stared, mouths open at the sight of the wild-haired, angry Miss Wells, hopping and rubbing her toe as she glared at them. Concordia didn’t realize that her appearance was more frightening at the moment than the abstract threat of restriction.

  “That’s better.” At least, there weren’t as many freshmen wailing now. Maybe they still had a chance to avoid the lady principal’s wrath. Concordia whipped out of the room and knocked on the door of the Head Senior, Miss Crandall. A bleary-eyed Charlotte Crandall stuck out her head.

  It was amazing what seniors could sleep through, Concordia thought.

  “Miss Crandall, can you help me get these freshmen settled down? Heaven only knows what has them in a twist this time.” Concordia knew she could count upon Miss Crandall, whose unruffled demeanor and quiet decisiveness carried weight with her peers. She would make a good teacher someday, if she chose that path.

  Miss Crandall suppressed a sigh as she pulled on her mantle and followed Concordia to the freshmen bedrooms.

  It took only a glance in the rooms of the sniffling girls—the pulled-out drawers, the cluttered vanity tables in more disarray than usual—for the Head Senior to appreciate the situation.

  “Ah,” the girl said, face clearing in understanding, “it’s Glove Night. That’s the problem.”

  “And what, pray tell, is Glove Night?” Concordia demanded. This last question sent up a fresh wail from one of the students, who was quickly hushed by the others.

  Concordia was new this year to Hartford Women’s College. But every school has its own set of customs and quirks, and she had seen her fair share of student high jinks in her previous teaching post. She knew she wasn’t going to like the answer.

  “It’s a prank the sophs play on the freshies. It usually happens in January, when we’ve returned from the winter recess,” Miss Crandall explained, smothering a yawn. “The sophomores slip into the freshmen bedrooms during the night and abscond with all of the dress gloves they can find. Then the freshies have to hunt them down.”

  Concordia groaned and closed her eyes. Splendid. A scavenger hunt for stolen gloves. This would not end well.

  “Where would they be hidden?” she asked. The freshman girls, some tear-streaked but all of them quiet now, huddled around Concordia, barefoot and still in their night dresses.

  Miss Crandall smiled. “Oh, all over campus.” She ticked off the list on her fingers. “Broom closets, the dining hall pantry, the ornamental fountain in the quadrangle—at least that’s drained in the winter—between stacks of books on the library’s shelves—”

  The senior girl broke off as Ruby Hitchcock, Willow Cottage’s house matron, huffed down the hall toward them. She was a short, stocky woman of middle age, at the moment clad in a dressing sacque and threadbare slippers.

  One quick look told her the whole story. “Ah, Glove Night,” Ruby said, nodding.

  “Why am I the last person to know about this?” Concordia demanded.

  Ruby gave a chuckle and waved the girls back into their rooms. “You’d best get dressed for chapel. It’s getting late. Go on, now!”

  The girls pouted but shuffled down the hall.

  Miss Crandall looked out the hall window at the brightening sky. “Ruby’s right, there’s not time to retrieve the gloves before morning chapel—the sophs usually plan it that way, frankly—so the girls will have to go bare-handed for now, and look for them later.”

  That was going to be distressing for the gloveless girls, Concordia knew: appearing in chapel bare-handed was akin to walking among the congregation barefoot. It simply could not be done without drawing attention to oneself. She could only hope that the usually strict Lady Principal would be understanding in this case. But this was the same woman who required the girls to be suitably gloved when they stood in front of the class to read their themes aloud.

  With a nod of thanks to Miss Crandall, Concordia follo
wed Ruby back down the stairs.

  Does this happen every year?” Concordia asked the matron.

  Ruby nodded. “And those hiding places—the crazier the better, it seems,” she said. “They’re always trying to out-do each other. A couple of years ago, when Miss Crandall was a sophomore herself—she was a wild one back then—we found the gloves dangling from the beams of the chapel when we walked into the service.” She shook her head at the memory. “Land sakes, I could’n believe my eyes. Three dozen pairs of gloves, hanging from the ceiling. No one ever figured out how they managed that, but the custodian had quite a time of it, even with the tallest ladder, taking them all down.”

  “Don’t the freshman try to guard their gloves? Hide them away?” Concordia asked.

  “Oh, yes, the shrewd ones do,” Ruby answered, grimacing. “Sometimes the sophomores are right wicked, though, and wait a while, until the girls relax their guard.”

  Concordia sighed. Right wicked, indeed.

  Time to get dressed and face the day ahead. They still had chapel to get through.

  Chapter 2

  Week 3, Instructor Calendar, February 1896

  “It will be fine. Everyone will understand,” Concordia soothed, as a distraught freshman balked at going through the chapel doors.

  The girl sniffed. “Why do those sophomores have to be so cruel, Miss Wells?”

  Another freshman – also gloveless – tossed her head and glared in the direction of the smirking sophomores. “Well, I for one do not give a jot about it.”

  Once inside the vestibule, however, the young lady’s bravado failed her. She thrust her hands into her coat pockets and leaned closer to Concordia. “We should be able to find the gloves soon, don’t you think?” she whispered.

  Already straining with the effort of propping open the plank-style doors for the lagging girls, Concordia grunted and prodded them through.

  Just get through chapel. Then the worst of the drama will be over.

  Memorial Chapel, now almost half a century old, was one of the original buildings from the 1850s, when the college was first founded as a ladies’ seminary. Its Gothic-revival features gave the structure a sense of boundless height, from the pointed-arch windows and doors, to the vaulted ceilings and steep gables. The chapel proper was made of wood, with ornate scrollwork moldings throughout the interior. The asymmetrically adjoining bell tower was constructed of local limestone, and topped with a crenellated parapet that made it look like a miniature castle. It had taken a few weeks of passing the building before Concordia could approach it without stopping to stare.

  She followed the students as they filed in. As was the custom, the formal procession started with the senior faculty, then the students by their class: seniors, juniors, and so on. The younger faculty, Concordia among them, came in behind the freshmen, in order to shepherd any stragglers. That meant Lady Principal Hamilton would be near the front, and not likely to notice the gloveless freshmen, at least for a little while. She noticed a lot of the freshman girls from other cottages had their hands thrust in pockets. The residents of Willow Cottage hadn’t been the only victims, apparently.

  Strangely, the usual orderly line into the chapel seemed to disintegrate. From her position in the back, Concordia heard gasps and the chatter of excited voices, as the girls in front crowded along the steps leading up to the altar.

  Concordia pushed past the students, to where the other teachers stood, staring.

  Perched atop the table sat a group of crudely sewn dolls, their likenesses rough but recognizable: of the school’s President, Dean, and Lady Principal, along with Miss Bellini, Miss Jenkins—and Concordia observed an unflattering but unmistakable rendition of herself, complete with red yarn hair and drawn-on eyeglasses. The figures were lined up neatly, save for one.

  The back of Concordia’s neck prickled at the sight of the doll-figure of Lady Principal Hamilton, flung on its back, a knife through its heart. Gloves littered the floor at the altar’s base.

  The sophomores had, at last, outdone their predecessors.

  Chapter 3

  Week 3, Instructor Calendar, February 1896

  “At least the freshmen won’t have to hunt for their gloves,” Miss Pomeroy remarked cheerfully. Gertrude Pomeroy, a classical languages instructor, inevitably found a sunny side. She didn’t look very professorial, though, with her fluffy hair, round baby face, and chubby cheeks. Her wire-rimmed eyeglasses were all that saved her from looking like a china doll instead of a professor.

  The faculty had assembled in the front parlor of DeLacey House, the women’s residence for senior faculty and administrators, to discuss how to respond to the chapel incident.

  DeLacey House had been named after a generous patron of the college’s early expansion project. The building was not only a residence; it accommodated students and guests for those college events customarily held by the lady principal. The Saturday afternoon string quartet, for example, was a favorite on campus.

  The parlor fire had been hastily stoked, but the heat had not really penetrated the chill. Concordia rubbed her hands together in an attempt to warm them, and looked around the room.

  The interior décor was decidedly formal, with tall paneled ceilings, several upholstered settees and chairs in dark velvet, and a grand piano in the corner. The faded draperies were the only discordant note in the room. Most ladies would never have allowed their draperies to get in such a state. But the college’s finances were tight enough, she knew.

  As Concordia continued idly looking around her, she noticed that both President Richter and Ruth Lyman, the college’s bursar, were missing from the group. She knew that Miss Lyman was a chronic over-sleeper and would be happy to have missed the drama, but she wondered at President Richter not being here, or at chapel, this morning. That was unusual.

  Concordia glanced at Miss Hamilton. She, too, was new to the college this year. Tall and angular, with hazel eyes and graying blond hair pulled back at the nape, she exuded a calm, effortless authority, born of her years as headmistress of a prestigious girls’ academy. Immediately after the chapel discovery, Miss Hamilton had quickly squelched what she termed “an indecorous display of hysterics,” and sent the girls back to their cottages in the charge of the resident matrons.

  No doubt Miss Hamilton was accustomed to curbing similar indecorous displays in her former post, Concordia thought. Yet she thought it unlikely Miss Hamilton had ever encountered a likeness of herself impaled on the end of a knife.

  Sitting next to Miss Hamilton was Edward Langdon, the dean. He matched the lady principal’s calm demeanor, although not her dignified air. He was a large man, with a decided paunch that bulged his jacket and strained the buttons. Miss Hamilton looked over at the dean, who stood and waited for silence.

  “We have directed the custodian to clean up the chapel,” he said. “The head teacher from each cottage will return the gloves.”

  “What about those…figures?” Miss Bellini asked. She was a petite woman, with dark hair and eyes, a beautifully fashioned nose completing the classic Roman features of her face. Today, she sat huddled into her shawl. Her usual olive complexion had taken on a sallow tinge.

  “I will be keeping those,” Miss Hamilton answered. “Perhaps there is some information to be gleaned from them.”

  Dean Langdon continued. “Resuming our schedule quickly will serve to diminish the pranksters’ satisfaction. I know that you ladies tend to dwell on such drama,” he smiled, oblivious to the scornful looks sent his way, “but we cannot allow this to—”

  “I grant you, Mr. Langdon, that some of our students may derive some thrill from this event,” Concordia interrupted, ignoring Miss Hamilton’s warning frown, “however, that should be ascribed to their immaturity, rather than their gender. The prank is disturbing, to say the least. Did you not notice the violence of feeling expressed toward Miss Hamilton?”

  Concordia dropped her eyes and self-consciously smoothed back a loose strand of hair. Drat, she w
as in for it now.

  Dean Langdon looked only mildly surprised. “Miss…?”

  “Wells,” she answered. The man still didn’t know her name? She’d been here for months.

  “Yes, Miss Wells, I intended no insult, my dear, I was merely inserting a bit of humor into the meeting.”

  A very little bit of humor, Concordia thought. She adjusted the spectacles sliding down her nose.

  “Miss Hamilton, President Richter, and I will see to disciplining the offenders.” The dean looked over at Miss Hamilton. “No word yet from Arthur?” She shook her head.

  “Well, ladies,” Dean Langdon said, gathering up his coat, “I must attend to a few things. I’ll leave you to figure out the schedule.” With a little bow, he left.

  Miss Bellini sniffed in disdain. “’Dwelling on drama’ indeed. Pah! Men!”

  Concordia smothered a laugh.

  “We have no time for personal animosities, Miss Bellini,” the lady principal chided. “There are plans to be made.”

  Lucia Bellini flushed in annoyance.

  Miss Pomeroy spoke up in her high-pitched voice. “Of course, Miss Hamilton, the presence of the knife is disturbing, but otherwise it seems to be a harmless…”

  “Harmless? Have you taken leave of your senses, Gertrude?” Miss Cowles, the librarian, interrupted. Her long, thin nose quivered. “Unbalanced minds are at work here.”

  Several teachers exchanged anxious glances.

  “Where is the bursar? Is she ill?” one teacher asked.

  Miss Hamilton pursed her lips in disapproval. “Perhaps, although I wasn’t notified. I’ll check on Miss Lyman shortly. At the moment, we must decide upon our course of action.”

  “Perhaps each teacher should question the residents of her house,” Concordia offered. “After all, the girls in question would not only have needed to sneak into freshmen bedrooms, they would have had to slip out of their cottages, travel across the grounds, get into the chapel, and then return without being detected. Someone must have noticed something unusual.”