by Sara Donati
“There are seven dogs,” Sophie said aloud, tracing around one of the tiles with a fingertip. “Seven ships, seven gentlemen, seven ladies, seven windmills, seven wild animals—once I could have told you which seven, but my mind is hazy at the moment—seven Bible scenes, seven trees, seven houses, but only one tile with birds. You see? Doves.” She touched the cool surface, blue and white, and then looked around herself, on the brink of panic.
The urge to run away was almost impossible to overcome. Because Cap was here; he was everywhere here, and nowhere. Every piece of furniture, every pillow, every lamp made her not just think of Cap but see him. She saw him in his favorite chair, a book on his lap; he leaned over the alabaster-and-ebony chess set that had once belonged to his great-great-grandfather Belmont; he stood at the window to look out at Stuyvesant Square. And she thought her heart would shatter.
Then Pip trotted up to Cap’s chair, jumped onto it, rolled onto his back, and gave a short, confused bark.
“It smells of Cap,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “I suppose it’s odd for him.”
“He has you,” Anna said gently. “And that will be comfort enough. Look here, this may help settle you.” She used both hands to turn around a frame that had been left leaning against a wall.
One of the Savard family portraits. The sight of it here, when it had always hung on the wall in Aunt Quinlan’s room, startled her. This was the painting that had helped her through so many dark days when she first came to the city. It was Aunt Quinlan’s own work that showed the family on the porch at Downhill House, Hannah and Ben Savard’s homestead. Grandfather Ben had his arm around his Hannah, with their children to either side: Sophie’s father at age five, smiling shyly, and her Aunt Amelie’s grin, as contagious as measles.
Anna said, “Conrad and Auntie wanted to ask before hanging it over the mantel. Is that where you’d like to have it?”
“Yes, I’d like it here. The other portraits?”
“In your room.”
“Auntie knew what I needed before I did. As usual.”
Anna bumped her shoulder against Sophie’s, a wordless agreement because words would be too much, right now.
After a moment she cleared her throat. “The pictures you like best—yours and Cap’s both—are here, but none of them have been hung. It’s for you to decide where you want them.”
When she was sure she had banished the tears that brimmed in her eyes, Sophie stepped back, straightened her shoulders, and managed a real smile. “Let’s go see the rest.”
Across the main hall the study had its own fireplace and mantelpiece, this one of carved stone topped with a champlevé clock centered exactly in its middle. Propped against the wall another portrait waited, this one of Cap’s parents soon after they married. The promise of Cap was there, in his father’s jawline and his mother’s brow.
A third of the study was taken up by the table Cap had used in lieu of a desk, with a chair on each of the four sides. Bookcases lined two walls and both sides of the hearth, all of them filled with Cap’s books and her own.
She didn’t realize Anna had gone ahead until she heard her call from the dining room. “You’ve got china enough to feed two dozen people at once.”
Standing a little back to take it all in, it seemed to Sophie that Anna might be underestimating. There were dinner plates, bread and butter plates, salad plates, cake plates, soup plates, berry bowls, custard bowls, sugar and milk and cream, tea and coffee servers, tureens, serving platters, chargers, serving bowls from tiny to titanic, an army of wine glasses, and a drawer lined with velvet where heavy silverware that had come to the continent more than a hundred years ago was laid out in tightly ordered rows.
Anna picked up a tiny fork and frowned at it. “Oysters? Pickles? It would make an excellent pterygoid process tool.”
Sophie pushed her, playfully. “I see your sense of humor hasn’t matured, but I’ll thank you not to go picking through brains with the Belmont silverware.”
“But don’t you wonder what the nurses would think if you snuck one of these onto a sterile instrument tray?”
“Your nurses wouldn’t dare blink,” Sophie said. She laughed, because she couldn’t help herself. And it felt good. “What am I going to do with all this? There’s silver enough here to ransom a king.”
“You’ll be feeding your scholarship students,” Anna said. “It will all be put to use.”
Sophie tried to imagine eating like this every day, with sterling silver and bone china. For her own tastes, far too fussy. But it might be necessary, at least some of the time. The young women who boarded here would have more to learn than anatomy and physiology. They would have to function in a world unfamiliar to them, and do so with confidence.
Pip had disappeared, Sophie realized. She heard someone talking to him in the kitchen and she raised a brow.
“Let’s look upstairs first,” Anna said.
They made their way up the curving staircase. The largest bedroom at the front of the house looked out over the park, where a nurse-maid was sitting on a bench, rocking a buggy with one foot while she read a magazine. A mailman was making his way down the street, sorting through letters as he walked.
“It will be fairly quiet,” Anna observed. “And safe. Governor Fish has a Pinkerton security force that keeps an eye out for the north end of Stuyvesant Square.”
“But I thought he was rarely here?”
“True, but he still keeps a staff. Did you notice the bedding?”
“How could I miss it?” The bed itself was new to Sophie, but it was covered with her own quilt, one she had brought from New Orleans as a girl. There were so many familiar things—first and foremost, her great-great-grandmother Curiosity’s portrait, but also a much-loved embroidered pillow slip, a lamp with violets painted on it, the desk she had used in the Park Place house for the short time she had lived there. The familiar outweighed the strange, such as three boxes of visiting cards.
“Don’t fuss at Conrad,” Anna said softly. “It gave him something to do. I think he took solace in making sure you’ll be comfortable and have everything you might need.”
“I wouldn’t dream of fussing at him,” Sophie said. “But why would I need so many visiting cards?”
“Oh,” Anna said. “Well, he is thorough.” And she took the stacked boxes and laid them out side by side. A sample card had been attached to each, and now Sophie had to laugh, because Conrad really had anticipated every need. Three boxes, for three different versions of her name: Dr. S. E. Savard, Sophie Élodie Savard Verhoeven, and Mrs. Verhoeven.
They peeked into the bathroom with its hip bath and very modern flush toilet; opened a linen closet where piles of neatly folded bed linens, blankets, and bath towels were stacked; and started down the rear staircase that would take them into the kitchen.
And here was the biggest surprise of all: Mrs. Lee’s granddaughter, putting the finishing touches on a tea tray. Laura Lee Washington was young, but she was as efficient and unshakable as her grandmother, small and bristling with wiry strength, plain spoken but sweet natured. Sophie couldn’t think of anyone she would have liked better to keep house for her; she only wished she had thought to write and offer her the position. She hugged the younger woman and told her so.
“But I expect you’ll have to report to your grandmother on my appetite and sleep habits.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” said Laura Lee. “We understand each other, Granny Lee and me. I tell her what she wants to hear, and she pretends she believes me.”
“We’ll need more help in the house—” Sophie began, and Laura Lee waved this off.
“That’s something to talk about tomorrow. Or the day after. Now I thought maybe you two might like to sit on the terrace. There’s a nice sunny spot that should be warm enough, and I’ve got a ginger cake just out the oven an hour ago. In the meantime I’l
l start to unpack your trunks”—Sophie saw that they had been stacked in the hall between the kitchen and the butler’s pantry—“and sort through some things. Go on, now, while you still got the sun.”
* * *
• • •
“I CAN’T BELIEVE how much Conrad got done in such a short time.” From their spot on the terrace Sophie’s gaze followed Pip on his exploration of the garden. “Even the flower beds—” She drew in a deep breath and let it go. “Mr. Lee was here too.”
“You didn’t think he’d stay away? Look, Pip has gone into the next garden.”
“Why is the gate open, I wonder?” Sophie said, half rising. “I hope they don’t have a mean dog.”
She looked down when Anna put a hand on her wrist.
“There is no one in the next house,” Anna said. “I thought you knew that. It’s yours, too.”
Sophie sat abruptly. “But there were tenants.”
“Not anymore. They moved away some time ago.”
“And Conrad hasn’t found new ones?”
Anna pushed out a sigh that made a curl at her hairline jump. “I think he wanted to wait to see how your plans develop.”
“He thinks I might need two houses?” Sophie grinned, wearily. “I hardly know what to do with one.”
She looked at the plate in front of her with its pattern of abstracted stars and blossoms, more blue on white but singular in design. Cap had taken great joy in the nontraditional; gilt rims and pagodas were not for him. Was the second house filled with china and silverware, linen and books, as this one was? It was a subject she couldn’t face at the moment, but here was a slice of ginger cake, her favorite since she first came north as a girl. No doubt Mrs. Lee had passed the recipe on to Laura Lee with instructions: When she needs some cheering up, you try this ginger cake. See if it don’t make her smile and don’t you forget the whipped cream to go on top.
When her vision was clear of tears Sophie raised her head. The stricken look on Anna’s face made it clear that she had followed Sophie’s train of thought without any effort at all.
People who didn’t know Anna well often thought her insensitive, but the exact opposite was true; she felt things almost too strongly. Now she busied herself pouring tea and milk so that Sophie could have the quiet she needed to gather her thoughts and her composure. Unless Sophie voiced a willingness to answer questions, Anna would not ask any. Cap pushed and prodded and teased; Anna waited. They had balanced each other out, but now it was up to Sophie to start conversations on her own.
“So,” Sophie said when the awkward moment had passed. “Tell me about the multipara homicide investigation.”
A spark of interest came into Anna’s face. “You read the report that Jack sent.”
“I did. But there were things left unsaid, surely. After Dr. Cameron moved to Philadelphia, there were no more deaths. And that’s all there is to it?”
“As far as the captain and chief of police are concerned, Cameron’s death was the end of the investigation.”
“But Jack and Oscar don’t agree, I take it.”
“They believe that Cameron must have had an accomplice. But the deaths stopped, and Jack and Oscar were told to let it all go. I think the chief and the mayor are mostly worried about the reporters catching on even after the fact. You can imagine the headlines.”
“Oh, yes,” Sophie said. “‘Madman Stalks Expectant Mothers. Police Do Nothing.’”
Anna grimaced. “Elections are lost over far less.”
“Then that means that whoever was assisting him got off without repercussions.”
Anna flashed a single dimple. “I said that they were told to stand down and drop the investigation. Not that they actually did.” She shook her head. “You would think I’d be accustomed to the idea by now, that there are so many men who take satisfaction in causing women pain. Cameron was a physician, but something inside him, something very dark, permitted him to put aside what he must have known was wrong.”
“Anger,” Sophie said. “A person would have to be consumed by anger to have conceived and carried out those killings. But I wonder why he started when he did. What set him off?”
“That’s why finding his accomplice is so important,” Anna said. “If anyone can answer that question, it’s the person who helped him do the things he did.”
Sophie considered her cousin for a long moment. It was possible that there would be no more murders, and they might never really know who was responsible for the deaths of the last summer. It was an uncertainty that she found difficult to accept.
“We need a distraction,” she said to Anna. “So let me tell you about my plans for this house.”
Anna looked up from her cake, opened her mouth, and then shut it, decisively.
Sophie sat back. “Anna. It’s not like you to hold back your opinion. Do you have doubts about my plans?”
“If I have any doubts, it’s only because you seem to be in such a hurry,” Anna said. “I think a few months of quiet would be in order, and then you can set out to educate every talented girl interested in medicine from here to California, if that will satisfy you. But I’m missing something. What aren’t you saying?”
Sophie gave in to her nerves and got up to pace back and forth. Pip roused and watched her for a long moment before he put his head down on his paws and drifted back to sleep.
“You know that I don’t regret a minute I spent with Cap in Switzerland,” she said. “But it was hard. I was isolated in every way. People generally looked at me and thought—”
“Oh, yes,” Anna supplied, a note of irritation in her voice now. “The boy who asked to see your tail. Listen to me now, cousin. You have nothing to prove, but what you may need is simply to have people around you who value you. If launching this school will do that, then—” She paused, head inclined as she considered. Then her dimples appeared, in full force.
“Full speed ahead.”
6
IN THE EVENING Laura Lee brought a letter that had come by messenger from Waverly Place, then retired to her room off the kitchen.
Sophie wrapped herself in a shawl and took Pip out into the garden where the last of the sunlight gilded every growing thing. It was not a very large garden, compared to Waverly Place, but it was beautifully kept. There were shade trees that would provide cool in the worst of the summer heat, raspberry canes and apple trees, a rose arbor and a trellis over the stable wall, where a clematis was already getting ready to throw out its blossoms. The door in the hedge that opened into the next garden had been closed.
Cap had lived here with his Aunt May and his father after his mother’s death. It was where he would have wanted to raise their children, he told her. Not in the bigger house on Park Place, but here.
She would never have Cap’s children and she was unlikely ever to marry again, but this place could be a home. And it might be that one of her students would need more from her than tuition and medical textbooks. She would make room for young women who were alone in the world. She imagined herself at fifty in this house, her parlor open to former students who would come to show off their own families, talk about a difficult case, share a meal. That would be enough. Her life would be full.
If Cap had never been ill, if he had convinced her in the end that they must make a life together, she knew with utter certainty that he would have loved any child born to them with his whole heart. What she wondered, what she could never know, was whether he would have come to regret the fact that his children would be half something other than white, and look nothing like the towheaded boy he had been.
Now in time she hoped she could free herself from that question and move forward.
In the very last of the light she opened the envelope and found another letter with a note from Mrs. Lee: Arrived this afternoon.
Dear Niece,
Cap is gone and that is
a terrible loss for all of us. He was the brightest of lights.
Now you must do one last thing for him.
You must think of him as free of pain. Imagine him surrounded by those who went before, all of them around a table laid for a feast. He’ll be arguing politics with the menfolk and philosophy with Great-Grandmama Elizabeth, paying outrageous compliments to your mama and his and to all the mothers, Hannah and Curiosity and all of them going back to the beginning of time. All the fathers and uncles and cousins will take him out on a turkey hunt. Think of him walking with Great-Grandda Nathaniel in the endless forests, learning what it means to be a woodsman.
Know this, little girl: in the only heaven I can imagine, all the healers in the family, white and red and black, every one of them will listen and find that his lungs are whole and without blemish, ready to last him an eternity.
Close your eyes and think of him there. And sleep.
As soon as I can I’ll send for you, but be patient. Old bones get older every day, and work never lets up.
Your loving Aunt Amelie
* * *
• • •
THE NEW YORK EVENING SUN
Monday, April 7, 1884
A YOUNG MOTHER’S FATAL ERROR IN JUDGMENT
Park Place is awash in rumors concerning a young matron whose sudden death six months ago has been shrouded in mystery. The disturbing facts of this tragedy are only now starting to come to the fore, but in order to save the family of the deceased the mortification of public notoriety, we are suppressing names and will continue to do so until an investigation by the police renders this gesture futile.
