The Gilded Hour (63 page)

She found herself grinning, and thought she should be appalled to be so easily distracted from such a sad story. But she wasn’t. Not with the way Jack was looking at her.

She said, “What exactly have you got in mind?”

“You,” he said, pulling her up to press all along him. “Exactly you are on my mind.”

She said, “I thought you were going to play handball today.”

Jack stilled. “I did play handball. And?”

“You said that when you were feeling—the need, you played handball to work off energy. Don’t you remember telling me that?”

He buried his face in the crook of her neck and laughed. “Anna,” he said finally. “Having you up against me like this would rouse me out of a coma. The smell of your hair alone could raise Lazarus. I could play handball twelve hours without a break and still want you after. Though I would be pretty ripe by that point.”

Anna knew she was blushing, not out of embarrassment, but pleasure. Because he wanted her, because she pleased him. As inexperienced and clumsy as she might be, it didn’t matter.

“That’s good,” she said. “Because suddenly sleep is the last thing on my mind.”

B
EFORE
THEIR
SHIFT
started Jack found Oscar at MacNeil’s, a cigar clamped between his teeth while he squinted at the newspaper, holding it right up to his face.

He said, “If you’re done analyzing the news of the world, we should get a move on.”

“Mezzanotte,” Oscar said solemnly. “You’ll be bleeding from the ears if you strain any harder for the wit. It’s just not in you, man. Especially these days. Married—how long?”

“A week on Saturday.”

“Nine days married and you’re soft as soap already. And how is the bride?”

They left the diner and took a shortcut down the alley to the police stables, where they claimed a rig for the day. Jack took the reins and turned the horse north, debating with himself on the most direct route. It was the same debate, every time, and he never did seem to guess right. No matter which way he went, the traffic was better someplace else.

Oscar said, “You were telling me about Anna.”

Jack grinned. “I wasn’t, but I will. She’s got more energy than a lightning strike. She worked Friday and Saturday nights, and yesterday when she should have been catching up on her sleep, the freight wagon from Greenwood shows up with a load of furniture, both my sisters, and a niece.”

“Which one?”

“Chiara. She’s going to be helping Margaret with the little girls. So there’s this freight truck piled with furniture my mother sent. It was good luck that there were a half-dozen men from the nursery working in the
garden or Anna would have carried every chair and table and bedpost into the house on her own. Or at least she would have tried.”

They were cut off by an omnibus, which was why Jack had the reins. Oscar would have gone after the driver and might have ended up in a fistfight, but it took more than traffic to rouse Jack’s temper. For a moment he thought Oscar might go after the wagon driver anyway, but then he settled down, grumbling.

“Sounds like you’ve got a circus going. How’s the little nun?”

“She goes by Elise these days. Or Miss Mercier, to you. She’s adjusting.”

“Full house.”

Jack wondered to himself if he could speak his whole mind, and decided that he could trust Oscar to listen without making judgments.

“Alfonso and Massimo send between eight and twelve men every day to work on the house or in the garden, and of course they all need feeding and watering. Mrs. Lee couldn’t keep up with them, so Celestina and Bambina are around all day cooking and running things. Then the Lees brought in their granddaughter Laura to help with the laundry and cleaning. So there’s a half-dozen men, Chiara, Celestina, Bambina, Margaret, Elise, Laura Lee, Rosa, and Lia around for most of the day.”

“Surrounded by females, you poor sod.” Oscar yawned.

Jack laughed as he encouraged the horse into the traffic on Broadway. When they were moving along at a decent clip, Oscar said, “You see the notice in the papers, about the unidentified woman at Bellevue?”

Jack had seen it; in fact, Margaret had drawn it to his attention. “No family’s come forward?”

“It’s been in four different city papers since Friday, and not one inquiry.”

That was unusual. The poor often went unnamed to their graves, but a young woman from a well-to-do family, that was a different matter. “Where did they run the notice?”

“From Philadelphia to Boston.”

“The postmortem?”

“Early tomorrow.”

Jack said, “Her family might not even realize she’s missing yet. Maybe she came in from some small town to stay with friends and isn’t expected back for a while.”

Oscar jerked a shoulder, as if he didn’t especially like this reading but wouldn’t argue. Just now.

“So then what were you thinking?”

“I thought maybe we could stop by a couple of the high-class hotels, see if they’re missing anybody.”

Jack thought about this as he threaded his way through traffic around Madison Square and then west into the Tenderloin. Every city had a neighborhood like this, but Jack had visited some of those places and nothing compared. Every night of the week the whole thing—some thirty blocks—was as loud and raucous as a carnival. Music from every door and window, the bellowing of the crowds watching prizefights or cockfights or dancers or musicales, street and alley brawls where broken bottles were the weapon of choice, the constant flow of men in and out of gambling dens and saloons and disorderly houses, and the women who walked the street or leaned out of windows half-naked, calling out to likely customers. This Monday morning looked like every other: as if a battle had been fought and lost.

The streets were full of trash, the sewers clogged with debris. Adults and children alike sifted through the muck and mire for anything they could sell: a cuff link, scraps of paper, empty bottles, rags. Cigar butts were especially prized because they could be sold back to the cigar factories, a nickel for two dozen.

They had an errand to run at the precinct station, where the whole complement of cops and roundsmen would be busy sorting through the aftermath. Dozens of regulars slept in the drunk tank; cells were crowded with gamblers and shysters not sober or quick enough to get out of the way, with thieves and pickpockets and prostitutes.

A filthy man staggered out of a doorway, bent over double, and vomited into the gutter.

“Oh, the glory,” Oscar said, and tucked a fresh cigar, whole and unblemished, into the corner of his mouth.

•   •   •

I
N
THE
EARLY
afternoon they went first to the Avalon, the most luxurious and expensive hotel on Fifth Avenue. Jack thought they might be overshooting—the dead woman had not been dripping with jewels, after all—but Oscar loved the Avalon almost as much as he disliked the Avalon’s
general manager, and he took any opportunity to visit the former and irritate the latter.

The closest Jack could get to an understanding was the fact that Oscar had grown up in the same Lower East Side tenement with Thomas Roth, who had clearly worked his way up and out. Oscar’s lodgings were evidence that he didn’t put much value on material possessions, but at the same time he resented Thomas Roth for having them. Now he pulled the concierge aside, flashed his badge, and insisted on an immediate meeting with Mr. Roth. They would be waiting in the lobby.

The carpets underfoot were Persian, the deep chairs and sofas of the softest leather, the mahogany tables inlaid with rosewood and pearl, spittoons of hammered copper with carved marble feet, porcelain vases three feet high, chiseled mirrors in carved and gilded frames. As a Christmas present Jack had brought his sisters here for tea on a particularly miserable December afternoon. He had never seen them more enchanted with anything than they were with the Avalon dining room: silver coffee urns, hand-painted china, pristine linen, perfect sandwiches and petit fours, and waiters as straight and exacting as soldiers.

Oscar deposited himself in a deep club chair and sighed, content.

The fuss made Jack antsy. He said, “I’m going to check in.” If not for the perfect ring of smoke floating toward the ceiling, Jack might have thought Oscar had fallen asleep. Jack went back out onto the street and the call box on the corner. He was back not ten minutes later, just in time to see the general manager approaching. Thomas Roth was stalking toward them like a man on a suicide mission.

Jack picked up his pace to intercept and called out: “Oscar. Word from the Gilsey House at headquarters, they’ve got a missing guest who may be our Jane Doe. Jimmy Breslin is waiting for us.”

Oscar waved an arm in the air as he sauntered away. “Never mind, Roth. I’ll be back to deal with you another day.”

•   •   •

T
HE
G
ILSEY
H
OUSE
general manager was an old friend, the brother of Jack’s first partner when he walked a beat.

“Jimmy,” Jack said with real pleasure. “The last time I saw you was on the handball court, what, six months ago. You beat me soundly, if I remember correctly.”

“Sure I did,” Breslin said. “Right after you beat me twice in a row. I’ll be back there someday soon to try my luck again.”

“We hear you’ve misplaced one of your guests,” Oscar said.

For a split second Jack thought Jimmy might take offense, which meant that he was on edge, which meant there really was something to talk about and in fact, he didn’t waste words.

“We had a lady check in last Tuesday, someone we see now and then with her husband, but this time she was alone. She said she was waiting for her sister to join her, but no sister ever showed up.”

Jack took out his notebook and let Oscar lead with the questions. Now and then he glanced up to gauge the look on Breslin’s face, and saw nothing more than the professional demeanor of the general manager of one of Manhattan’s most exclusive hotels. The guest—he identified the missing woman as Abigail Liljeström, the wife of a Buffalo industrialist—had gone out early on Wednesday and asked that no one disturb her room until she specifically requested service. She hadn’t been seen in the dining hall or any other part of the hotel since.

“So that’s five days that nobody’s seen her,” Oscar clarified.

Jimmy nodded. “This morning the matron came to mention it to me, with a copy of the newspaper article—” He dug it out of his pocket to show them. “That’s when I called it in.”

“The matron recognized the description in the article as Abigail Liljeström?”

“She did. So I came up here to see. There’s no sign of trouble but she hasn’t been here for days.”

Jack thought for a moment. “We’ll need to talk to the matron and to any of the maids who dealt with Mrs. Liljeström directly. The desk clerks too. We’ll want one or two of them to come to the morgue to identify the body.”

“Should I send a telegram to her family?”

“We’ll do that,” Jack said. “But not until we’re sure what we have.”

•   •   •

J
ACK
STAYED
BEHIND
to go through the room while Oscar took two maids and the matron to the morgue. It wasn’t something Jack especially liked doing, but he had a knack for the work, a way of piecing things together that he often didn’t understand himself.

He went through the clothes hanging in the wardrobe: day dresses,
carriage and walking dresses, a robe, a nightdress, a pelisse all in silks and velvets and fine wools. He checked the pocketbooks and came up with an unaddressed envelope, a few coins, a handkerchief, but no identification. The clothes were very fine, but it was the shoes that made him pause. They were custom made for someone with very small feet, leather dyed purple or green or red, some with mother-of-pearl buckles, others with silk flowers. There were three hatboxes, and a trunk with fitted drawers for handkerchiefs, stockings, garters, ribbons, and undergarments. It occurred to him that one of the maids must have helped her lace her stays, but none of the three they had interviewed mentioned that particular service.

There were a few books on the bedside table along with framed photos: an older couple, a balding man of thirty-five or forty who was probably the industrialist husband, and two children, a boy and a girl. Well fed, overdressed, looking solemnly into the camera.

He found nothing in the drawers of the desk or dresser and finished quickly, skipped the elevator and ran down six flights to talk to the desk clerk. Thinking to himself that the industrialist had gone wrong somewhere, to have let it come to this.

T
HE
S
ISTERS
OF
Charity did not tolerate idleness. Thinking back, Elise couldn’t ever remember having nothing to do; in the convent the novitiates scrubbed floors, peeled potatoes, carried slop buckets; later there was work in the infirmaries, learning how to clean and bind wounds, dispense medications, handle sick children. If she hadn’t shown an affinity for the infirmary she might have ended up in the laundry, starching and ironing habits. The idea could still make her shudder.

She had never known what it was to be idle, but now with her third full day as Nurse Mercier at the New Amsterdam, she really understood what it meant to be busy. The children she had cared for at the orphanage had come into the infirmary with colds, infected scrapes, sore ears, lice, rickets, upset stomachs. Children with scarlet fever or broken bones or needing surgery had been transferred to St. Vincent’s, where doctors took over. She rarely learned what had happened, and asking was discouraged.

At the New Amsterdam she had already assisted in the setting of a broken ankle; she had debrided and dressed lacerations and burns, recorded temperatures and pulse rates, sterilized surgical instruments, the variety of which was astounding. She gave shots and enemas and emptied her share of bedpans. She learned the names of instruments: bistouries, tenotomes, tenacula, curved and straight scalpels, forceps and bougies and probes. Twice already she had been allowed to assist the circulating nurse during surgeries: one to correct an umbilical hernia, and another to remove a tumor of the breast. Which reminded her, of course, of Sister Xavier, who had been her patient the first time she had come to the New Amsterdam.

She wondered if she would ever miss Sister Xavier the way she missed some of the others, and decided that it was unlikely. In fact every time she
asked a question—and she took every opportunity to do just that—she thought of Sister Xavier’s scowl and she had to suppress a grin.

The freedom to ask questions was the best thing of all, better than the kind generosity on Waverly Place, better than the bed overrun by pillows, better than the simple uniform that let her move unrestricted, and the freedom from the bonnet she had never learned to like. She was careful not to overtax people; she portioned out questions, watching for signs of irritation or distraction, and withdrew.

Of course she also sterilized bedpans, folded sheets and towels, ran errands, fetched medicines from the pharmacist in his little warren of rooms, took care of charts, and filed endless amounts of paper, but none of those things bothered her. She wanted to be of help; she wanted to be indispensable, so that no one ever considered sending her away.

When her shift ended at three, she was going to walk to the Woman’s Medical School and present herself to be interviewed as a prospective student. In her pocket she had a sealed letter of reference from Dr. Savard (Anna, as she was supposed to be called outside the hospital). Then she would walk back to Waverly Place and change out of her uniform while Lia and Rosa and Chiara—fourteen years old but just as impetuous and full of energy as the littler girls—interrogated her about her day, half in English and half in Italian. She would help wherever she was needed until dinnertime, and then she would be at the table with all the good people who had taken her in as if she were a treasured niece rather than a stranger who had come to their door without warning.

She wondered when things would start to go wrong.

•   •   •

D
INNER
AT
A
UNT
Quinlan’s table had never been quiet; she liked discussion and debate, gossip and news of the world, and most of all, she liked stories. Sometimes she told her own. If the table discussion was particularly loud Auntie Quinlan could bring about a magical silence by raising a single finger, which signaled her willingness to talk about her childhood or her years living abroad or her own children.

But this evening they were all lost in their own thoughts. Anna studied the faces around the table one by one, and her attention came to rest on Elise. The girl had been pushing herself at an inhuman pace since she arrived; Anna reasoned that she had finally exhausted her energy,
something that would be fixed by an early night. Just then Elise looked up, saw Anna studying her, and dropped her gaze again, as if she had been caught doing something forbidden.

“All right, Elise,” Jack said suddenly. He had been studying her too, it seemed. “What’s wrong?”

“I am perfectly well.” She produced a stiff smile.

“She’s not,” Lia said. “She’s not well, but she wouldn’t tell me.”

“Folks have a right to their privacy,” Aunt Quinlan said. “And we don’t plague people we like and care about at the dinner table.”

“I’m not placking her,” Lia said, sniffing. “I’m worried.”

Elise closed her eyes briefly and then, opening them, looked at Anna directly. She said, “I spoke to Dr. Montgomery at Woman’s Medical School today.”

Anna drew in a deep breath. “Well, that explains a lot. She told you that you’d never make a doctor and to put away foolish dreams.”

Elise’s mouth fell open. “How did you know?”

“Because,” Aunt Quinlan answered for Anna. “Dr. Montgomery says the same thing to every young woman who comes asking about enrolling.”

“She told me I was far too enamored of what little intellect I had.” Anna could smile at the memory, these many years later. “And she was just getting started.”

Elise looked both affronted and relieved. “But why would she say something like that to you?”

“Because I was too enamored of my intelligence,” Anna said. “Small or large.”

Jack said, “Surely not.”

She elbowed him, and the girls giggled.

“If it’s any comfort to you, Elise, the more insulting she is, the more she hopes you’ll succeed and do well. But she’s superstitious.”

Chiara made very large eyes. In a whisper she said, “
Maloch, Zio Jack.
”

“We don’t allow the evil eye at this dinner table,” Aunt Quinlan said to her. “But if it makes you feel better”—and she tossed a bit of salt over her shoulder—“Dr. Montgomery is protective,” she went on, speaking to Elise. “If she can scare you away, she thinks you didn’t belong in the first place.”

“Oh,” said Rosa. “Like Billy Goat Gruff.”

“Just like that,” said Aunt Quinlan. “She’s daring you to cross the bridge, Elise. Are you going to back away?”

Some color came back into her cheeks. “No,” she said. “Not when I’ve come this far.”

•   •   •

O
SCAR
M
ARONEY
SHOWED
up just as the girls were clearing the last of the dessert dishes and was more than happy to be talked into a serving of pie. For some reason Jack was always surprised at how easily Oscar won over women of all ages. Every face around the table lit up at the sight of him.

His partner understood women; he knew when to tease and when to pay a compliment and when neither would be a good idea, and then he listened, and focused all his attention. Jack watched him weave his usual magic, wondering in another part of his mind what trouble had brought him to their door. Because it was Oscar’s habit to spend Monday nights playing cards, and only something very important would make him miss his chance to fleece his brothers-in-law.

Jack waited until he had finished pie and coffee, and suggested that if he wanted a cigar, they should step out into the garden.

“Why don’t you show me this wonder of a house you bought for your new bride,” Oscar countered. “Let’s bring her along too. I’d like to get her opinion on something.”

So whatever had brought Oscar to the door was something that couldn’t be discussed in front of women and children. He wondered if Anna understood she had been paid a compliment when Oscar excluded her from that group.

•   •   •

A
S
FAR
AS
Anna was concerned, the furniture Jack’s parents had sent from Greenwood rendered the house habitable, and she would have moved in immediately if the idea hadn’t scandalized every other female within ten miles.

“Not until there are curtains on the windows,” Mrs. Lee said, Bambina and Celestina nodding in agreement behind her.

“There are curtains in the bedroom,” Anna said. “It’s not like I’m planning on romping through the rest of the house in a state of undress.”

Bambina’s mouth quirked. “Maybe you aren’t.”

That made Anna draw up in surprise and then retreat until she could ask Jack some pointed questions.

Now she sat at the kitchen table with Jack and Oscar and tried not to fidget. To her own surprise it was difficult not to get up and start sorting through boxes of dishes that had yet to be unpacked. She would have to write to Sophie about the unanticipated streak of domesticity she had uncovered in herself. Cap would weep with laughter at the idea of Anna Savard’s sudden urge to explore the complexities of bed linens and tea services.

Jack was saying, “Anna, Oscar is asking a question.”

“Sorry.” She made more of an effort to focus on Oscar, who had unfolded a piece of paper and smoothed it out on the table. “What’s that?”

“You remember the unidentified woman from late last week,” Jack said. “It turns out she’s from Buffalo and was just in town for a few days.”

Looking across the table, Anna realized she was familiar with the kind of document Oscar had brought.

“Is that the postmortem?”

Oscar slid it across the table toward her. “If you wouldn’t mind having a look, your thoughts on it would be much appreciated.”

“What happened?” Anna asked.

“Read it first,” Jack said. “Then you tell us.”

•   •   •

J
ACK
WATCHED
HER
eyes moving back and forth, her expression calm, her hands spread flat on the table to either side of the report.

She looked up. “What is it you want to know?”

“Whatever strikes you as important.”

She didn’t like vague requests, but he saw she was trying. With a shift of the shoulders she turned her attention back to the report and scanned it again. “The postmortem was done by Nicholas Lambert. He was on the Campbell jury, did you realize? High coloring, dark hair and beard? He’s a forensics specialist, and very good at what he does. This report is far better than the one written for Janine Campbell.”

Her gaze shifted from Jack to Oscar and back again. “Is there some connection between the two women?”

“That’s what we are wondering about,” Oscar said. “Could you go through the report with us, and start from the beginning?”

“It’s very straightforward,” Anna said. “Healthy woman of about twenty-five, no external signs of violence. Evidence of at least one and probably more than one birth.”

“Where does it say that?” Jack leaned toward her and she pointed to the relevant bit of writing.

“‘Striae gravidarum’ is Latin for stretch marks.”

Oscar’s expression made it clear he wasn’t familiar with the phrase, and Jack assumed that his own face did the same.

“In pregnancy the skin of the abdomen is stretched beyond the point of normal elasticity,” she offered. “So there are stress lines that appear purple at first, and eventually fade to white. This lady’s abdomen showed stretch marks of two distinct shades, some almost white, others still pink.” She waited, and got nods from both of them before she went on.

“In addition to stretch marks, there is scarring to the perineum. Wait,” she said, in response to Jack’s raised brow. “I’ll explain. If the birth is difficult—say, the child is large and the mother is weak after a long labor—an attending doctor will often make an incision from the vagina toward the anus to increase the circumference of the birth canal. The idea is to avoid tearing, which can be difficult to stitch. Closing an incision is easier than stitching a tear; at least that’s how the reasoning goes.”

Anna could almost hear Oscar blushing, and Jack, she thought, wasn’t much better, despite the frank discussions they had been having recently. She studied the report for a long minute. When she thought they had had enough time to compose themselves, she went on.

“The surgical procedure is called an episiotomy. It’s done too often, in my opinion, usually by doctors who are in a hurry. In Mrs. Liljeström’s case the person who delivered her made an unusually large incision that didn’t heal well. She had granulomas along the suture line, nodules of scar tissue that indicate that her sutures weren’t removed very carefully. Even tiny bits of suture can cause irritation and infection, and the body reacts by isolating the fragment and walling it off, so to speak.”

Oscar cleared his throat. “That’s in the past, though.”

“Yes,” Anna said. “But a thorough autopsy doesn’t leave anything out.”

Jack said, “The granulomas aren’t relevant to the cause of death?”

Anna considered for a moment. “That would be conjecture on my part.”

“Go on and conject,” said Oscar. “We won’t tattle on you.”

She gave him a half smile. “The scarring indicates that she had at least one very difficult birth. Some women have such bad experiences that they simply can’t face the prospect again. This woman had an abortion, that’s undeniable, but there’s no way to know if she was driven by fear of childbirth. But she had a hard time of it, that’s a certainty.”