The Gilded Hour (44 page)

Cap was trying, but to Anna he looked to be in pain. She watched him stifle a cough, which meant that the laudanum he took to see him through the ceremony was wearing off. Through one course and two more Anna talked to Jack and the trio of little girls—Martha had joined forces with Lia and Rosa—who came to her with one scheme after the other, and she watched Cap, comforting herself with the knowledge that in just a few hours he would be away to the docks and what she hoped would be a peaceful Atlantic crossing.

The knowledge that time was so short also made her terribly sad, and so she left Jack to his conversations with curious relatives and little girls
and went to the head of the table to crouch down beside Sophie. Her cousin leaned over and pressed her cheek to Anna’s but said nothing, though her throat worked.

“So, Mrs. Verhoeven.” Anna put a hand on Sophie’s shoulder and squeezed gently.

Sophie’s smile was a little weary but there was also a deep content in her expression. She said, “I will miss you so.”

“Well, of course.” Then Anna pressed her mouth together to keep silent, because anything she might have been able to say would have made all three of them lose what was left of their composure. Instead she went around Sophie to Cap. He held up a hand in warning and she laughed at him, violating the perimeter he had set around himself to hug him, this bonier, slighter version of the boy and man she thought of as a brother.

“Provocative as ever,” he said, grumpily.

Anna made a face. “You can’t begrudge me a single hug on the day you marry. And I need another one, as you’ll be gone tomorrow on my birthday.”

But he turned away to cough into his handkerchief. When he began breathing again, he said, “I hope you have something better to do on your birthday than sit in a sickroom looking at me. Even if I were here to look at.”

Sophie shook her head at Anna. He was at the very end of his energy and irritated with himself.

“Look,” Sophie said. “Adam is about to start the toasts. It won’t be long now.”

The double doors at the far end of the room opened a crack, enough to let Mrs. Harrison slip in. She stood there, one fist pressed to her diaphragm in a way that spoke of distress. With her free hand she crooked a finger at Jack, who looked puzzled but not particularly concerned.

He shrugged at Anna and slipped away just as Adam began his toast with a story about Sophie and Cap. As the door opened wider to let him out, Anna saw that Oscar Maroney was waiting in the hall, and that another man, a stranger, stood beside him.

“This is about a prank that turned into a love story,” Adam was saying. Later Anna couldn’t recall a single sentence of what followed.

•   •   •

“O
SCAR
. C
APTAIN
B
AKER
.”

The captain had appeared at Sophie Savard’s wedding luncheon for no
reason Jack could imagine until the older man held up a distinctive roll of paper. Jack shot an alarmed look at Oscar, who closed his eyes briefly and then held up one palm.
Wait
, that palm said. But Jack could not.

“What is that?”

“Damn coroner,” Baker huffed. “Useless bugger. It’s a summons, as you know damn well.”

He looked apologetic and even embarrassed. The captain embarrassed was something new to Jack, and far more unsettling than one of his rages.

“What’s this about?”

Oscar cleared his throat. “A Mrs. Campbell, deceased yesterday,” he said. “Postmortem came back this morning suggesting malpractice. Coroner Hawthorn wants to see both the lady doctors today,” he added. “Seems they both treated her.”

If he hadn’t been so distracted, Jack told himself, he might have anticipated that the emergency surgery of the previous afternoon was likely to have quick repercussions.

“Does the coroner realize that Sophie Savard—I should say, Mr. and Mrs. Verhoeven—that they are supposed to board a ship for Europe this afternoon?”

Captain Baker cleared his throat. “He does know, yes.”

Oscar gave a brief jerk of the head, a silent warning to Jack to hold back his commentary. Right now they had the captain on their side, and it was important to keep it that way.

Jack said, “Give me five minutes,” and slipped back into the dining room without waiting for permission.

•   •   •

A
DAM
WAS
COMING
to the end of his toast with the attention of every person in the room firmly in hand. Every person except Anna, who was looking right at Jack. He gave her a grim smile—he would put off disrupting things as long as possible—and, turning, gestured to one of the servants who stood at the rear of the room. A man of forty or more, blank faced, not likely to make a fuss.

“I need to get a message to Conrad Belmont.”

Getting a quiet message to a blind man in the middle of a boisterous party would be a challenge, but the servant inclined his head and spread out a hand, waiting.

Once Conrad had left the room to meet the two unexpected visitors, it didn’t take long to explain the situation. While Jack read the summons out loud he canted his head to listen.

Dr. Anna Savard and Dr. Sophie Savard are hereby summoned to appear before Lorenzo Hawthorn, Coroner of the City of New York, on the 28th day of May, 1883, at two o’clock, in his office then and there to answer questions in the matter of the death of Mrs. Janine Campbell.

“Do you know this Hawthorn?” Jack asked Conrad.

“I’ve heard the name, but I’ve never dealt with the man. Damn me if I’m going to break up this wedding luncheon. Hawthorn will have to wait. Will one of you talk to him? Captain Baker? Tell him we’ll be there by four.” He turned toward Oscar and said, “Would you be so kind as to send a telegram to Cunard and let them know that Mr. and Mrs. Verhoeven won’t be sailing today? Mrs. Harrison will have to do something about the luggage that’s gone ahead.”

Just that easily Belmont had gotten both men out of the house, and then he turned on Jack. He let out a deep sigh and pressed three fingers to his brow as if to locate a headache. “You’re not on duty.”

Jack said, “No. My allegiance here is to Anna and Sophie, and Cap.”

“Good. Good.” He was silent for another long moment. Jack could almost hear him thinking, his mind sorting through hundreds of questions and options. Jack had more than a few of his own, but he could bide his time.

“Go back to the luncheon, please, and tell them it’s a business matter that wouldn’t wait. You’ll have to convince Anna to stay where she is, then come find me in Cap’s study. There’s a lot to do before four o’clock.”

Conrad Belmont was a first-class litigator and brilliant attorney, but he didn’t know the Savard women, not really. He seemed to think they could be kept in the dark while the men acted on their behalf.

“You’ll want Anna,” Jack said. “She’d be unhappy—more than unhappy—to be excluded from this business. Sophie, too, under other circumstances.”

“I mean to protect them,” Belmont said, clearly surprised.

“They won’t thank you for it.”

He lifted a hand in surrender. “Tell Anna to come along to the study, but I want to keep Sophie and Cap out of this for as long as possible.”

•   •   •

T
HE
COMING
AND
going did not escape Sophie, who kept her place beside Cap at the head of the table while her uncle Adam talked. First Jack, then Conrad, and finally Anna had disappeared into the hall. She watched the door but none of them came back.

Cap didn’t seem to have noticed, which was proof of what she had known for the last hour: he could take no more. She herself was so weary that she could not formulate even the vaguest plan on how to put a polite end to the celebration.

Aunt Quinlan was saying, “On behalf of my beloved niece Sophie and her new husband, I thank you all for your good wishes and welcome company today. It’s time that the newlyweds withdraw. They need to get ready for the adventure just ahead of them, and then I invite you all to a garden party on Waverly Place.”

Aunt Quinlan had seen and understood and acted. Sophie commanded herself not to weep with relief and thankfulness.

•   •   •

W
HEN
THE
ROOM
was empty—even the servants had withdrawn to leave Cap and Sophie alone for as long as they wanted privacy—Cap let out a long, hoarse sigh. He was trying to smile, and Sophie was trying not to cry. They made an excellent couple.

The only time he had touched her today had been the moment he put the ring on her finger, but now as they rose he took her elbow. His grip was firmer than she would have expected.

“My body is failing me,” he told her. “But my mind is still as it ever was. Tell me what’s going on that took Conrad, Jack, and Anna out of the room.”

She grimaced. “I don’t know. Really, I don’t.”

“Then we have a mystery to solve. I suspect my study is the place to start.”

•   •   •

A
NNA
SAT
AT
the long worktable in Cap’s study and ran her hands over the polished oak. Once the whole surface had been covered with a riot of papers and pens and books; now a single sheet of paper had been laid in the middle. A summons, with her own name on it.

The men sitting at the table with her showed nothing of concern or worry, each of them so relaxed that they might have settled here to drink brandy and play poker. Anna took little comfort in this, because, as she had told Jack just yesterday evening, that aura of utter calm was a kind of camouflage that doctors had to employ too, lest they alarm patients and make things worse. Now she was learning what it felt like to want answers and get only a pleasantly blank expression.

The coroner wanted to see her and Sophie both. The idea kept surfacing like a cork in a stormy sea. Clearly the autopsy report had raised questions, and the coroner wasn’t satisfied with the cause of death. Mrs. Campbell had died on her operating table, but Anna knew without doubt that she had not caused the death or even contributed to it. Any competent doctor performing the postmortem would see that, too. The coroner was a very different matter.

In Albany and Boston and every city of any size, coroners were the source of countless stories. Anna had heard many over the years, sometimes troubling, sometimes amusing, but most often just irritating for the depth of incompetence of the work done. She said something like this aloud.

“That’s what happens,” Jack pointed out, “when you ask a man who manufactures boilers or runs a silk factory to gather twelve of his friends to interpret medical evidence.”

“Nothing they say or do is binding by law,” Conrad reminded her.

“But we still have to appear when summoned,” Anna said dryly.

At that moment the door opened and Sophie came in, followed by Cap.

He said, “Uncle Conrad, I hope you don’t mind if we join the party. Tell me, what is that official-looking paper on the table?”

•   •   •

C
AP
HAD
COVERED
his lower face with a gauze mask and now he settled far back from the table, listening intently as Jack first read the summons out loud. Anna studied him, but she could make out little of what he was thinking.

Sophie said, “I imagined a dozen things that might have disrupted this day, from old ladies throwing themselves across the church door to”—she hesitated—“to medical emergencies. I never imagined a summons. And I still don’t know what we’re being accused of. Malpractice?”

“No reason to jump to that conclusion,” Conrad said. “The inquiry is a nuisance and an inconvenience, but nothing more than that.”

Cap said, “Comstock is behind this, I just know it.”

“That may be,” Conrad said. “But more likely it’s the family who is agitating, in my experience.”

“They are looking for someone to blame,” Anna said.

Conrad inclined his head in agreement.

Today was meant to be a happy one for Sophie and Cap, but when Anna looked at them she saw exhaustion and weariness and worry. She was overcome by anger she could not give voice to, and so she leaned over and covered Sophie’s hand with her own. “This is nothing more than a delay. Do you hear me, Sophie? A delay.”

Sophie forced a small smile. “I have to ask again, what kind of charges might we see?”

“Nobody is being charged with anything yet,” Jack said. “The coroner can only send the case to the grand jury if he finds sufficient cause to suspect something other than natural causes. At that point the grand jury may issue indictments, for anything from—”

“It won’t get that far,” Cap interrupted.

“It will not,” his uncle echoed. “But until we know what the autopsy says, it’s difficult to know how best to approach the matter.”

He turned toward Anna. “We have to start somewhere. Can you tell me about the case?”

It was a question Jack would have asked before all others, had he had the chance to talk to Anna alone. She seemed to have been expecting it, because she sat up straighter and folded her hands in her lap.

“She was brought to the New Amsterdam by ambulance, near death. I took her straight into surgery but as soon as I began I knew there was nothing to be done. If you’re asking me for an exact cause of death, I’m sorry to say it’s not a straightforward matter. Cryptogenic pyaemia was certainly the immediate cause, and that was the result of damage to the uterus and intestines.”

Conrad started visibly, and Anna realized that he really knew nothing at all about what had transpired. The idea of being charged with malpractice had not evoked for him what it did for every practicing physician: abortion.

He said, “This Mrs. Campbell died of complications of an illegal operation?”

So he was familiar with the euphemisms.

“Yes,” Anna said. “An attempted abortion. Under the law it would be seen as a criminal abortion.”

“If she was with child at all,” Sophie volunteered.

“That’s a valid point,” Anna said. “So to be more exact, she died of a massive infection following from an attempted abortion. Some kind of probe or instrument was introduced through the vagina that punctured the cervix and uterus and the adjoining internal organs, most notably the descending colon. Something with a curved or oval head, with a keen but not an especially sharp edge. I am sorry to speak so bluntly, Conrad, but there’s no delicate way to describe these things.”