Doppelgänger (10 page)

“What did she look like?”

Clea shook her head. “All I see was her hands on the railing. A woman's hands. A white woman.”

The third floor balustrade
. “That's the spot where…Mr. Bradbury tied the rope.”

“Miss Anine, there
is
a spirit in this house. Strong one, I think.”

It seemed hard to imagine it, here in the breakfast nook with the September sunlight pouring over the table, a cup of fresh coffee steaming gently into the slanting beam of yellow sun. Anine said, “Are you frightened, Clea?”

Clea responded, with her usual blank bluntness: “Yes.”

Chapter Nine

The Cold Declaration

That afternoon word finally arrived from Rachael Norton. The note was terse and specific, like instructions to a spy.
The Central Park. Tomorrow 3PM. Hire a carriage but let it go at 57th Street gate. Walk. We can ride in my carriage. RN.

Although it was merely a ride in the park Anine dressed for the occasion. She chose a Princess dress with golden-yellow silk and blue lace overlay—traditional Swedish colors—which she hadn't worn since they left Europe. It was a warm sunny day and the entrance to the Central Park on 59th Street and Fifth Avenue was jammed with carriages. Using a parasol to shade herself from the sun Anine walked boldly through the gates, finding herself on the gravel driveway that was less a path than a promenade ground for upper-class New Yorkers to show off their new buggies and phaetons.

A carriage pulled by a white horse with bright red plumes protruding from its bridle rattled up to her. “Oh, hello there, Mrs. Atherton!” Rachael leaned out of the carriage window, carrying her own parasol. She was dressed in white. “Gone for a stroll around the park? You'll get run over this time of day. Here, come ride in my carriage.”

After Anine climbed into the vehicle the pretense, mercifully, became unnecessary. “Beautiful dress,” said Rachael, and Anine thought she was sincere. “You'd better get all the use out of it you can. I predict Princess dresses will be out of fashion by winter.”

“Why should I care about fashion?” Anine replied, somewhat facetiously. “No one receives me anyway.”

“Yes, but hopefully we'll fix that before too long.”

The coachman prodded the horse and the carriage began moving. The vista of the Central Park with its lawns, hedges and stone bridges began to crawl by around them. Anine had heard that the Central Park was created as America's answer to the great gardens of Europe like London's Kensington or the Trädgårdsföreningen in Göteborg, but she saw virtually no echo of those places in her present surroundings.
Except for business and money, Americans can't quite get anything right
.

“I've got two things to tell you,” said Rachael. “I found out a bit about the history of your house, and I also found out what they've been saying about you. As it turns out the two are related.”

Anine couldn't quite imagine how this could be. “What is it? What are the women saying?”

“As I suspected it has very little to do with you. Your husband is the target of the snubbing. But when women of society wish to make a point they can only do it by acting within the sphere of women, so that's why you're taking the brunt of it. It's a beastly system, to be sure. Society behaves according to its own laws, and they bear little resemblance to anything that makes sense out there in the real world.”

Anine sighed. She wasn't interested in Rachael's views on social conventions. “What are they
saying
?”

“They're saying that your husband was insufferably cruel to Mrs. Quain. The whispers were started by the Minthorns right after Lucius took her in at Newport.”

“How was he cruel to her? I didn't even know he'd met Mrs. Quain.”

“He didn't,” Rachael shrugged. “Here is where the history of your house comes in. Mrs. Quain's maiden name was de Coster. Her sister married Lucius Minthorn. Mrs. Quain's husband was some kind of real estate speculator. He came into a bunch of money about twenty-five, thirty years ago. Mrs. Quain—I mean, Evelyn de Coster—she was Phinneas Quain's second wife. His first wife died giving birth to their son. Phinneas Quain was much older than Evelyn de Coster when he married her. There was a bit of a scandal about that, but everyone says they were quite happy together. He built that house specifically for her. It was a very big deal at the time. Marble imported from Italy, packed with art treasures, that sort of thing. By all accounts they lived there happily for many years. Mr. Quain died about two years ago.”

In the house?
Anine wondered. She knew there was more to hear. “Go on.”

“Mr. Quain's son, Percy, was the executor of the Quain estate. He found out that the old man had squandered most of his fortune. Percy wanted to make sure that his mother could continue to live in the house. He mortgaged it to a bank to pay off the family's debts. But then the Niles brokerage house failed and what was left of the Quains' money went with it. The mortgage went into default. That was when your husband and his firm got involved. They bought the mortgage from the bank and foreclosed it.”

“I remember Julian saying something like that. He said he got the house quite cheaply.”

Rachael nodded. “I remember him saying that too. But he didn't tell the whole story. Percy Quain got the Minthorns to agree to loan him money to pay off the mortgage so his mother could stay. They had the money ready and waiting, but your husband's firm refused to take it. It was a set-up so Julian could get the house himself. He bought it at the foreclosure sale then told his crony at his office, Roman Chenowerth, to have Mrs. Quain out in three days. The Minthorns say that Chenowerth summoned the police, and they physically dragged Mrs. Quain out of the house screaming. They say she was hanging on to the front railing and they had to beat her hands with their nightsticks to get her to let go.
That's
when she went mad.”

Anine's mouth went dry. “That's monstrous. Is it true?”

“Does it matter? The rumor around town is that your husband had an elderly woman beaten about the hands with police batons, her only crime being wanting to stay in the house she'd lived in for over twenty years. Even if it wasn't true, you'd have no hope of making headway against a rumor like
that
. So now you see what you're up against.”

The carriage clattered on, its wheels crunching against the gravel of the pathway.
I can understand why they shun me
, Anine thought.
It
is
horrible
.

“I assume he told you nothing of this,” said Rachael after a long silence.

“No. While we were in London he went to the telegraph office just about every day and I knew his business there had something to do with buying a house, but I never knew any more than that.”

“Well, now you know.” Rachael sighed. “Unfortunately nothing that I learned explains the strange goings-on in the house. I was expecting to hear sordid tales of murders or suicides, but the caretaker hanging himself is the first anyone's heard of such troubles.”

“I've seen a woman,” Anine spoke up. “And my maid has seen her too. We also found a diary left behind by the caretaker. He was mad, but he wrote about seeing things in the house—a child and a child's toys that weren't really there. He was certain there was the spirit of a dead child in the house. It reminded him of his own daughter who died years ago. That's what caused him to go crazy and take his own life.”

“A child and a woman, you say?”

“Yes.”

“The house obviously has a history that we don't know about. Haunted places are the scenes of murders, calamities, dreadful accidents. You must be seeing people who died there.”

Dreadful accidents
. Anine shuddered at the memory (or the imagination) of watching Ola Bergenhjelm's apparition vanish in front of her.

A thought crossed her mind: “You said Mrs. Quain—the one who now lives with Lucius Minthorn—was Mr. Quain's second wife and that his first died in childbirth. A woman and a child. Could that be who's haunting the house?”

“I don't see how. I'm fairly sure they died before the house was even built. By all accounts, it was only Mr. and Mrs. Quain—the second Mrs. Quain—and Percy who ever lived there. Mrs. Quain didn't have any children of her own, so she raised Percy as her son.”

Another silence passed. Anine said, “I'd like to talk to someone from the Minthorn family. Perhaps not Lucius, but maybe his wife or someone, a woman who knows the story.”

“That's completely out of the question. Do you really think they'll receive you?”

“It could be done secretly,” she suggested. “If the Minthorns truly are angry at Julian but not me, wouldn't it stand to reason they would talk to me so long as no one in society found out?”

Rachael thought, her lips pursed. She said: “I'll see if it can be done.”

“Thank you.”

“Anine, tell me one thing.” Rachael's brown eyes were staring intently, almost plaintively, into hers. “This story about your husband—do you believe it's true? Is he capable of doing something like that?”

It shamed her. Anine could only nod. Rachael's eyes seemed to grow slightly colder as she considered it. A moment later she patted Anine's hand. “I feel for you,” she said.

Well, at least someone understands
. When she left the Central Park and returned home that afternoon Anine felt at once deeply dejected about what she'd learned and also hopeful that Rachael, whose morbid curiosity about the house had led her into something of a conspiracy against Julian and society, could ultimately be a source of help.
We have to know more
, she thought as she stared up the ostentatious staircase, its polished balustrades gleaming dully in the gaslight.
Bradbury was not the first person to die here. The spirits in this house are crying out to have their stories told.
For the first time Anine felt more than simple fear of the woman whose spirit walked the halls; she began to feel a little sorry for her, whoever she was.

That day she saw the cat for the first time. The afternoon grew strangely cloudy and foreboding after she returned home from the Central Park and by the time she changed her dress and retired to the Green Parlor where a fire was laid crackling between the andirons large, oily black raindrops had begun to tick against the parlor windows. It was past five o'clock, perhaps only an hour before Julian would be home from his office—or perhaps not, if he chose instead to dine at his club instead of at home, which he'd been doing more often lately. Anine played solitaire, listening to the ticking of the clock and the patter of the rain, and she turned over in her mind all that she knew and suspected. It wasn't a pretty picture.

The mantel clock had just chimed for the quarter hour when Anine, sensing a presence in the room, looked up from the card table. She saw an Abyssinian cat, its fur the color of bronze, prancing slowly toward the fireplace from the direction of the door. She was so startled to see the animal that she stood up quickly and sharply. The cat sprang, its legs splayed in a defensive crouch, and then instantly shot back behind one of the chairs. Anine saw it for a grand total of perhaps two seconds.

“How did you get in here?” she said, walking over to the chair. Peering behind it she saw nothing. She searched the rest of the room but found no trace of the cat. It could not have left the room. The pocket doors leading to the entryway were closed. To be certain, she went to the doors, opened them and called into the gloomy entryway: “Here, kitty. Here, kitty.” Her voice echoed in the dark emptiness. She expected no answer and got none.

She went back to the table, stacked the deck of cards neatly on it, took a book and left the Green Parlor, closing the pocket doors behind her. She decided she would not return to the room today.
So there's a cat too
, she thought, holding up the hem of her skirt as she walked up the stairs, book under her arm. The spectral cat did not frighten her—not in the way seeing the woman in the red and black dress frightened her—but it was extremely unnerving. This was the first manifestation that had occurred during the daytime. She hoped that wouldn't turn out to be an important milestone, but she had a depressing hunch that it would.

Anine did not notice that afternoon that Shoop was also absent from the house. Overall she was relieved that Julian did in fact choose that night to dine at his club—or elsewhere, in any event—and didn't appear for dinner, but she thought it strange that he didn't return home at all until almost ten o'clock. He stumbled in through the doorway, obviously drunk, with Bryan Shoop following him.

“There you go, let me get your coat,” said the valet, reaching for the sleeve of Julian's topcoat. “Come on, hold still.” Shoop had obviously had a few drinks himself. As he led Julian up the stairs, past Anine standing by the bedroom door, she realized they'd been out drinking together.
That's rather odd for a gentleman to bring his valet with him to the saloons
, she thought.

“Oh, look, the ice princess is still awake.” Julian staggered on Shoop's arm as they passed her. “See any ghosts today, Anine?” He laughed and turned his attention away from her.

Shoop nodded in her direction as he passed. “I'll take care of him, ma'am,” said the boy. “You needn't concern yourself.” Anine said nothing. She turned and went into the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

Predictably, Julian slept very late the next morning and did not rise at his usual time to go to the office. As Mrs. Hennessey withdrew from his bedroom, having brought him some tea and breakfast on a platter, through the ajar door Anine saw Julian naked, lying supine on the bed tangled in the covers, one arm hanging down off the bed to the floor. The half-drained crystal glass of amber liquid on the bedside table told her he'd continued drinking even after returning home.
This I will not have
, she resolved firmly.

She met Shoop in the entryway at the bottom of the stairs a few minutes later. “Mr. Shoop,” she said sharply, “your conduct last night was inexcusable. My husband has never been known as a drunkard and I'm determined not to let that reputation attach to him. You are not to accompany him to saloons. If you do so again you'll be discharged. Is that perfectly clear?”

The boy's mouth opened and closed as if he was searching for an answer. Finally he said, “He sent for me. He told me to meet him at his club last night—”