“Did you know him?” Franklin Fiske asked again.
“Mr. Rumsey?”
“No, the deceased,” Fiske said, exasperated.
“Not exactly,” I said without thinking. A mistake, and Fiske caught it.
“That’s an unusual response,” he said smoothly.
“Why are you asking the question?” I couldn’t control the irritation in my voice.
“Ah.” He paused, as if we were playing chess and I’d checked him. “Point well taken. I only ask because there’s been quite a bit of speculation amongst the journalistic boys”—he motioned toward a group of gentlemen, as rumpled as himself, who were warming their hands over a fire they had built in a barrel with detritus from the construction site—“about the circumstances of Speyer’s death.”
“You checked with them?”
“Well … I happened their way. I used to be one of them. A foreign correspondent for the New York World—at your service, ma’am.” He clicked his heels and gave a mock salute. “Sent out to pasture at my own volition after acquiring a near-fatal illness in the Philippines during our nation’s glorious and ongoing suppression of that island’s democratic insurrection. Although I’ve given up on journalism, Cousin Susan nonetheless hides the children whenever I come to call, fearing my corruptive influences. I, however, have always considered myself morally upright despite my profession. I see by your dress that you, ma’am, like dear Cousin Susan, are a lady. I hope I have not damned myself forever in your eyes by admitting to my former profession.”
I laughed.
“A laugh? That is your response?”
“I have great admiration for your profession—your former profession, Mr. Fiske. It is one of the few open to women. I have great admiration for the women who practice it.” Ida Tarbell, Nellie Bly—they were heroines of mine.
“Yes, I know several of those women. Maybe one day—under the proper circumstances”—he raised his eyebrows invitingly—“I’ll tell you about them.” He gave me a crooked smile. “Now that I’ve engaged your sympathies, I’ll treat you to a bit of my sad tale. Having left the realm of pencil pushers, and being utterly free from entanglements, emotional or otherwise, I am now fulfilling a longtime dream and pursuing art photography. I’m forging my own, profoundly innovative area of photo-pictorialism, to whit: artistic pictures of industrial sites. Factories, machinery, that sort of thing.”
I recalled Susannah Riley’s watercolors of the power station. “That’s fascinating, Mr. Fiske. Art should try to capture the beauty of the industries that are transforming our lives.”
“Indeed,” Fiske agreed noncommittally. “At any rate, I had an appointment with the deceased this morning. We were going to go to the power station together, and I was going to take photographs of a special generator of which he was unduly proud. Alas, he never appeared. Stood me up. By afternoon, I learned the reason why: He’d been previously engaged—under the waters of this delightful lake. I came here hoping to find someone who could tell me why.”
“You’re rather lighthearted, under the circumstances.”
“Well, yes, that’s my professional demeanor. Or rather, the professional demeanor of my former profession. Others have their own demeanors. For example, some of the boys told me that Thomas Sinclair—you know who he is, don’t you? The director of the power project?”
Tensing, I glanced away. “Yes.”
“Well, Thomas Sinclair was holding forth in his office this morning about how poor ‘Karl’ was like a brother to him, and one of the few men with whom he’d never exchanged a harsh word, and—”
“Really?” Too late I realized that I’d let myself sound surprised.
“‘Really?’ ‘Really’ what?” He was clever, was Franklin Fiske. With his posturing he’d lulled me into complacency, and now he pounced. “Why are you surprised by that?”
“Well, simply because—well, I should think one’s brother is the person that one constantly does exchange harsh words with. At least in childhood. Of course, I’ve never had a brother,” I added lamely.
Franklin Fiske simply gazed at me, leaning forward to study my face. “Forgive me,” he said softly, “but what is your name?”
He disconcerted me. I stepped back, my heel digging into the snow mound. Snow slipped into the top of my boot, making me shiver. Nonetheless I said firmly, “Louisa Barrett.” Still he stared. “I am the headmistress of the Macaulay School.” There it was, my title—my ultimate, automatic, but somehow hollow defense.
“I thought you must be Louisa Barrett.”
“You thought no such thing.”
“I certainly did. I’d been told to look you up, to stop in at your Monday evening salon. You’re the talk of New York, with that—”
“You’re lying.”
He burst out laughing. “Forgive me for teasing, Miss Barrett. You’re an easy mark. But indeed I was told to look you up. By an editor I know. Richard Watson Gilder.”
I stiffened. Richard Watson Gilder was a supposedly talented poet and the editor of the Century magazine. He was also a close friend of former president and Mrs. Grover Cleveland.
“I met him once,” I said, hearing the belligerence in my voice. “Many years ago.”
“Did he do something that upset you?” Fiske asked.
“Not at all,” I said quickly, regretting that I was so transparent. “His snobbery was not to my liking.”
“No surprise there,” Fiske admitted. “Nonetheless Gilder told me that more recently a few of his friends had enjoyed stopping in at your ‘saloon’ for a bit of conversation on Monday evenings. He described you in great detail and quite truthfully, for a poet: tall, slender, blonde, sensitive and basically shy—although sometimes appearing on the surface bossy and know-it-all. In short, a schoolmarm with a heart of gold.”
I felt myself beginning to blush.
“And you see, Miss Barrett, I guessed that you were you, because what other lady of society would be here, walking alone—without a female relative, paid companion, or carriage—at what may soon be declared a murder site? I’ve been warned that you do exactly as you please—within the bounds of propriety necessary to retain your job of course. Yes, I’ve been told that you behave exactly as if you were one of us.”
“One of you? One of whom?”
He appeared extremely pleased with himself. “Don’t worry, Miss Barrett: not a journalist. Not even an editor or a poet. No, something much less evil—I hope: a gentleman. A gentleman free to saunter over to a murder site any time he chooses.”
He made this oddly insightful comment so flirtatiously that I felt quite flustered. I took refuge in my schoolmarm disguise. “Now Mr. Fiske, I don’t believe—”
“The clouds are reflected in your eyes, Miss Barrett,” he interrupted, cutting my attempt to patronize him. “White against blue, like the sky.” I wasn’t used to men treating me as if I were attractive, and I was stirred as he stepped closer. I met his gaze. The clouds were reflected in his eyes too: white and gray merging with green, a flick of yellow near the center. “Gilder left something out—which is how very beautiful you are, for a woman who’s been able to embrace the advantages of a man. How very alluring, the line of your jaw.” He almost touched me. I inhaled sharply. “Are you sure you didn’t know him?”
“Who?”
“Karl Speyer.”
So much for flattery. “Why are you convinced that I did?”
“Because in my experience, people seldom spend more than a few minutes at the site of a shocking public death without some reason. Most come to gape with family and friends and then move on to dinner. But others—those who come alone, who wait patiently … well, they’re interested in something else.” His voice dropped almost to a whisper, and he leaned toward me. “Perhaps they’re here for professional reasons, like my friends over there.” He motioned toward the journalists, who were now joking with a policeman who’d come to warm his hands—the same lanky officer who’d shrugged off the beating of the N
egro strikebreaker. “Or like the detectives and various other public servants hanging about conducting what they like to call investigations.” He flicked his hand at the men making their way across the ice, taking measurements. “Or even our local representative of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan: the esteemed Mr. Frederick Krakauer, dozing in the bandstand over there as he steadfastly protects his employer’s monumental investment in the power station.”
Quickly I turned to look and indeed, there he was, the man I’d seen recently at lectures and concerts and heard rumors about, bundled up in a thick coat, long scarf, and fur hat, exhibiting his usual look of unfocused but somehow watchful sleepiness. Although Krakauer was not at all on Tom’s level, he might easily be thought of as Tom’s local supervisor.
“Or perhaps they’re even here for artistic reasons—to photograph the beautiful lake, for example. Olmsted’s masterpiece.” Fiske’s face was close to mine, his breath warm on my forehead. “But otherwise, Miss Barrett, there is a personal reason for the visit. An intimate reason, even. Relating to their own lives or the life of the deceased. You stood five minutes on that snow mound, staring at the ice. The detective had his eye on you.”
I glanced around, but no one was watching.
“Don’t worry, he’s moved on to other quarry. But I decided to stick with you, determined to discover the reason for your—concern, shall we call it?”
Don’t threaten me, Speyer.
There was a wall in front of me, constructed of all I needed to protect. Grace. Tom. Myself. I resolved to be silent for the moment about my suspicions regarding Tom and Speyer and instead to discover whatever I could on my own. I took a deep breath. “Mr. Fiske, you may know ‘people’ but you do not know me. I am pursuing a study of the efficiency of the police department. I visit the scenes of possible murders totally out of civic concern.”
With that I pushed my foot against the snow mound and strode up the steps. Without looking back, I waited at the roadway for a delivery wagon to pass, and then I resolutely followed Olmsted’s tree-lined parkways back to my home.
CHAPTER IV
You are to be congratulated, Miss Barrett,” said Dexter Rumsey from his place at the head of the table. In his early seventies, Mr. Rumsey held himself straight, like a vicar. He was thin and bald, with a tightly trimmed white beard. Despite his unassuming manner, he was acknowledged to be the most powerful man in the city. “Let us be the first to say it.”
“Hear, hear.” There was a pleasurable pounding on the ornate dining table in the second-floor meeting room of the Buffalo Club, reserved the third Friday of every month for the eight-man Macaulay School board of trustees. The board felt that midday was the proper time to discuss issues relating to a girls’ school, and the Buffalo Club served the best midday meals. The fact that women were not permitted in the Buffalo Club was tacitly ignored by the porter at the door each time I appeared, thus proving Franklin Fiske right: I did enjoy the privileges and comforts (such as they were) of a man.
The Buffalo Club was certainly comfortable. The meeting room boasted a white coffered ceiling, ivy-patterned wallpaper, and a thick Persian carpet designed to absorb the many and varied secrets—business and otherwise—that were exchanged here. Tall windows with burgundy-colored velvet curtains overlooked graceful Delaware Avenue, although my trustees were not the type of men who spent time gazing out windows.
“To you, Miss Barrett,” said John J. Albright, raising his glass of brandy. In his early fifties, Albright had a squarish face accentuated by round glasses; the rest of his body was elongated and overly thin, as if he had the arms and legs of a marionette. His grayish-brown mustache was carefully trimmed. Mr. Albright had started his career as an agent for the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company, collecting twenty-five cents on each ton of coal shipped through Buffalo. Enough tons were shipped to make him a millionaire. Now he was developing a vast steel mill project at Stony Point, south of the city. “Our sincere compliments.”
“To Miss Barrett,” the others joined in.
I wasn’t happy. The men gathered around the table were obviously withholding something important from me and using it to have a bit of fun at my expense. They looked altogether too smug, and I resented their teasing.
We had just enjoyed a hearty luncheon, although not nearly as hearty as we would have had years ago when I first became headmistress—portliness, per se, no longer being the ultimate measure of a man’s success. Nonetheless, we’d managed to partake of oysters, shrimp bisque, lobster Newberg, filet mignon bordelaise, and a variety of individually sized cakes. These men of my board of trustees did nothing in moderation. The fat ones were very fat, and the thin ones, like Albright and Rumsey, were so thin as to be ascetic.
Of course the best of the hearty eating dated back to the days of Grover Cleveland—lawyer, sheriff, mayor, governor, president—whose portrait, triple chins and all, gazed at us from the wall. Lacking any school business to deal with today (I suspected these meetings were held so frequently because the men around me appreciated the opportunity to see Mr. Rumsey), our conversation had begun an hour and a half earlier with a discussion of the new portrait of Grover Cleveland that the club was planning to commission from Lars Sellstedt. It would be a more noble portrait than the one before us now. A portrait more worthy of a two-term president, albeit a Democrat. Full-length, with the White House in the background.
Plans for the portrait had elicited a host of ribald comments from these barons of industry and capitalism.
“We should pose him with Mrs. Halpin and the boy,” one said, referring to Cleveland’s notorious affair with a widowed shop girl in the 1870s and the resulting illegitimate child. While acknowledging the boy, Cleveland had refused to consider marriage to Mrs. Halpin, who was known to have bestowed her favors on other well-to-do men of the community. To console herself, she’d begun drinking, and Cleveland arranged to have his son taken from her by force and adopted by an established local family. When Mrs. Halpin refused to accept this separation, Cleveland had her committed to an insane asylum, where she remained until she saw “reason.” The story was hushed up at the time, but it became public when Cleveland ran for president in 1884. The press ran wild with the revelations, printing material so lurid that newspapers had to be kept hidden from children. The incident became a national trauma, which I’d followed in disbelief from Wellesley Suffragists even called Cleveland a “male prostitute.”
Although my board members could joke, fifteen years later, in ’84 they’d felt intense mortification. To his credit, however, Cleveland never denied the story and told his aides and friends to tell the truth. Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?—that became the Republican rallying cry in the election. Goin’ to the White House, ha, ha, ha, the Democrats had added sardonically after Cleveland’s victory.
“Instead of the White House, maybe a German beer garden would make a better background, don’t you think?” someone offered.
I removed from my mind any recognition of the identity of these speakers, to save the embarrassment I would feel on their behalf. I was certain these men had voted for Cleveland; they were the type of reform-minded Republicans who’d taken pride in becoming Mugwumps and supporting the Democratic ticket in ’84. But they had little personal respect for the roisterer they’d considered “unclubbable” even after he’d finally become a member of this club when he was mayor of the city.
Certainly President Cleveland was coarse. And certainly he preferred German beer gardens to the more refined pleasures of the Buffalo Club—but that had endeared him to me then. Apparently he liked nothing better than to rise up at a crowded beer garden and sing from his favorite song, There’s a hole at the bottom of the sea, there’s a wart on the face of the moon. Even after he’d become governor, there were tales of visits to Buffalo that included late-night drinking binges and good-natured fisticuffs on downtown streets.
“We could include the beautiful Mrs. Cleveland in the picture,” someone piped up.
“
Should we put in any bruises?”
This was greeted with guffaws. During Cleveland’s unsuccessful reelection campaign in 1888 (that was the election in which he won the popular vote but was defeated in the electoral college), there’d been whispers that he beat his popular young wife—so many whispers that she’d felt compelled, or had been compelled by her husband, to deny the rumors publicly. Of course rumors denied are rendered only more convincing.
“If we included Frances, most men would wonder whether we were showing husband and wife or father and daughter!”
Now this comment was below the belt, so to speak. Frances Folsom Cleveland was indeed twenty-seven years younger than her husband (Cleveland had paid his respects to her upon her birth, for she was daughter of his closest friend). However, there were men in this room—including Mr. Rumsey—who were married to women far younger than they: With death in childbirth so common, what was a man to do but find ever-younger women to partner him in the challenges of life’s journey? Someone was needed to supervise the staff that looked after the house and children. Mr. Albright had found the easiest solution to this problem: After his wife died, he advertised at Smith College for a governess-companion for his daughter and within two years married his new employee.
Ah, Louisa, you’re becoming cynical. But the idea of being married to one of these men sent a shiver of horror through me. With the fat ones, their stomachs alone would dominate the bed. How would one find the necessary parts? As to the thin ones, touching them would be like consorting with a skeleton.
The group having exhausted the question of President Cleveland’s portrait, someone turned the conversation to the continuing preoccupation in the yellow press with the possibility that Karl Speyer had been murdered. This caused me to glance around nervously, but as the lobster Newberg was being consumed, no one noticed.
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