I grasped her hands to comfort and reassure her. “Yes, Susannah. I’ll look after Grace. I always have.”
“Oh, thank you. Thank you.” The smile she offered me was pure and bright. “I knew I was right to talk to you. I knew you’d forgive me for lying before.” Abruptly matter-of-fact she asked, “Do you think they’ll kill me?”
“No, Susannah,” I said, startled. “Of course not. You haven’t murdered anyone; they won’t give you capital punishment.” I smoothed her hair, as if she were a child.
She nodded in agreement and then, as she stared at me, something seemed to shift inside her. Her eyes widened but at the same time became glassy. “No one ever thought it could be me,” she said. “Not even you. It was as if I didn’t even exist. No one ever suspected me.”
“Pardon?”
“Do you ever feel as if you’re invisible, Miss Barrett?”
I strained to understand what she was trying to tell me.
“It was Mr. Bates who sent me to meet him. In the lobby of the Iroquois Hotel. I went right up to him—a complete stranger! Mr. Bates always gives me courage.”
“Who did you go up to?”
“The engineer, of course. Karl Speyer.” She beamed with pride.
“Karl Speyer?”
Her expression turned to self-righteous anger. “Engineer—people say that word as if it’s another word for God himself. I hope I never live to see a world made by engineers.” All at once, with her hair flowing around her, I saw her as a Cassandra staring into the future. “It would be a world of monsters. The machines and the people—all turned into monsters.”
“Susannah.” I gripped her shoulders, shaking her, trying to bring her back to sanity. “What did you say to Karl Speyer when you went up to him in the Iroquois Hotel?”
“Oh, I just went up and introduced myself,” she said, as if to reassure me. “I said I’d done watercolors of the power station, and I wanted to meet the man who’d helped to create such beauty. Mr. Bates called it an ‘encounter.’ An approach. A way to find out the opposition’s plans,” she explained earnestly. “I can make myself very attractive to men when I want to. Right then and there, the engineer took my elbow and led me into the restaurant for lunch, which was delicious, by the way. Afterward he asked me to go upstairs with him, which of course I had to refuse, pleading my youth and virtue.” She giggled. “He was married, with two young children—but there he was, trying to seduce me into visiting his room.” She shook her head in incredulity, as if we were two young ladies sharing gossip over tea at the Twentieth Century Club. “I told him, however, that I would be honored to see him again, that perhaps if we got to know each other better…. Well, he knew what I meant. And off he walked, whistling! From then on he wrote to me a week before each of his visits, arranging an innocent assignation. Luckily he never spent enough time in the city to learn my reputation for interests quite in the opposite direction!” How pleased she was with herself.
“Months passed like this. And the power development went ahead, more and more. We saw that Thomas Sinclair and his friends wouldn’t be satisfied until they had taken all the water—all of it. To make aluminum and abrasives and God knows what else. People even began saying those words—aluminum, abrasives—as if they were quoting holy scripture. Something had to be done to stop them.”
She gazed at me playfully. “I had the idea to kill him myself. I couldn’t tell the others—then they would be implicated if I were caught. So I planned it on my own. I bought a special pair of leather slippers that didn’t make an imprint in the snow at all. I even set up my easel on the banks of the park lake the day before so I could survey the scene at my leisure. I nearly froze! My fingers could barely hold the brush!” From her tone she might have been recounting the planning of a particularly successful surprise birthday party.
“As usual I’d received a letter from him a week before he came to the city. I left a note at the hotel, telling him to meet me at the park lake at eleven P.M. for a walk in the moonlight. I tried to hint that a romantic stroll was all that stood in the way of his attainment of his goal. I wrote that it would be ‘the night of nights’! Isn’t that silly?” She cocked her head at her own disingenuousness. “But he believed it. He met me at the lake even though the moon was covered by clouds, just as I knew he would. He was a little late, because of a meeting at the Buffalo Club, and he apologized twice. I was glad he felt guilty, because it made him more pliable. I said I wanted to walk across the ice-skating area, which was marked off with ropes. It was snowing lightly, off and on. It was a beautiful night, as romantic as anything I could ever imagine. ‘Oh, what’s that?’ I asked him, pretending to see something in the distance. I climbed over the rope, onto the snow mound that’s always made when the skating ice is shoveled, and he followed me. And then—always pretending to look at this mysterious thing in the distance—I ran out across the uncleared ice, stepping lightly in my slipper boots. I was afraid of falling, but I never did. My feet were so cold, but I left almost no trail, I checked that, for certain!
“He called to me that it wasn’t safe, that I should come back. Finally, when I was halfway across the lake, I pretended to realize where I was, and I pretended to be frightened, although I wasn’t frightened at all. I knew what I was doing was right. Nature herself protected me. I felt her power all around me. I felt nature’s power around him too—but against him. I called that I was too scared to move, that I didn’t know what to do.” She smirked. “He fancied himself a gentleman, so he came to rescue me. But the ice that held me couldn’t hold him, the way he was trudging toward me in his heavy boots, with that great coat and that bourgeois bulk of his. He broke through the ice long before he reached me. Closer to shore than I expected. He cried out and tried to save himself, tried to pull himself out, but he was weighted down, soaked through. His coat pulled him down. He tried to take the coat off, but he couldn’t. He became frantic, calling to me to get a stick, anything, to help him. He actually called to me, to help him.” She regarded me with puzzlement. “How could he have thought that I would help him?”
She paused, actually waiting for me to answer her question. As I perceived the depth of her insanity, dread crept over me like a twitching in my arms and fingers.
“When he stopped calling, my ears began to fill with a screeching like a million birds singing. Singing, singing, singing—in victory! Nature herself filling me with her triumph! And I began to run as if I were skimming across the ice, not even touching it, not leaving any trail at all, nature protecting me, the snow falling to protect me, falling onto my face and blessing me and baptizing me and I ran and ran, until I came to a road.
“And then I stopped. The singing of the birds stopped. The snow stopped. I saw I was at Delaware Avenue. The cemetery was in front of me. I could just make out the monuments on the hill. The angels. They were illuminated by the snow. I didn’t know what else to do, so I walked up Delaware Avenue to the circle, turned onto Chapin Parkway, and then I was home. And no one ever suspected.”
She regarded me with a self-effacing smile, as if expecting congratulations.
“Susannah, you let him die a horrible death. You disagreed with what he did, granted, but he was still a human being, with feelings. He didn’t deserve to die that way. He had a wife, and two children—”
Her hand cut the air in dismissal. “What are a wife and two children compared to the preservation of Niagara? Besides, he was happy enough to betray his family when given the chance. Oh no, he had no qualms about betraying them. He was like all those men who believe they’re so high and mighty. They get away with being one way in public, where everyone thinks they’re pure and good and noble, when all along, in private, they’re lewd and selfish.”
Insane as she was, of course she spoke the truth.
“His family’s better off without him. My only regret is that even his death didn’t accomplish what we set out to do. He was replaced by another.”
“James Fitzhugh,” I said, si
ck at heart.
She grinned sheepishly. “He was easier. There was no other choice, Miss Barrett. Some of my friends tried to get at Sinclair by throwing a torch through his window at home—that was useless and stupid; it didn’t accomplish anything. But Fitzhugh—the simplicity of it was beautiful. He took walks, you see. Almost every day. I tried to be there, where he would see me. After a while he began to talk to me. To seek me out. To walk with me. He asked to see my paintings. He wasn’t married, you know. He was timid, in his way. Anyway, he confided to me his doubts. He understood the evil he was doing. He wanted to die. He welcomed it.”
“He told you that?”
“No. But I saw it in his face, at the end.”
“The end?”
“After I led him to the waters. That place on Celinda Eliza where the current sweeps the shore. I took you there—remember?” She brightened at the memory. “I almost got you to walk into the water, didn’t I?” she reflected gleefully. “I would have too,” she assured me, “if that man Fiske hadn’t come along.”
All at once I saw that she would have killed me simply for fun. How could I have been so blind? I steeled myself to self-control: “You were saying about Mr. Fitzhugh?”
“Oh, yes. It was such a hot day. I told him I often waded there, at that spot. He took off his shoes and socks—I had to throw them in after him!” she exclaimed. “It was over so much more quickly than I thought possible. The other one took so long, struggling under the ice. This one barely had time to realize what was happening, before he was swept away.”
She paused, thoughtful. “Little Grace was with me that day. That was the same day you found us. Grace didn’t see anything—I made sure of that. She was working. Hard at work. The man and I walked around the bend, just to that spot where I took you, later. Grace saw nothing. Afterward I told her that he had gone back to the power station.”
I was enraged. I felt like screaming, like slapping her across the face, but I struggled to hold myself back. I needed to learn what she might say next. “You did well, to make sure Grace remained innocent.”
She smiled like a young girl praised for getting an A in spelling. “So then you’ll promise to take care of Grace for me?”
“Of course,” I assured her again.
“And you won’t tell on me? I mean, you won’t tell anyone what I told you, about those men?”
I hadn’t thought about this yet. If I told her story to the police matron standing outside, what would happen? The process of justice would be set in motion, and Susannah would face trial and the electric chair. She wouldn’t show regret or repentance, she would consider herself a martyr. But no. More likely, she would never face trial. When Mr. Rumsey learned of her confession, he would never permit the scandal of a trial, not for this woman who had been admitted to all our homes as a trusted tutor. She would be done away with quietly—as if smothered by rose petals—and her death would be deemed a suicide. Or else she would simply be left to wither away here, branded a raving lunatic.
On the other hand, what would happen if I kept her secret? She would spend some time here, safe from the world, until Francesca maneuvered her release and took her far away. Maybe in that faraway place she could heal, and find her own punishment and redemption. Did I have a duty to tell Francesca the truth? Would Francesca be prompted to protect her more or less because of the knowledge? Shouldn’t Susannah herself be the one to tell Francesca? Dare I place myself between them? I didn’t know, I couldn’t decide. I needed time to think. All I understood for certain was that Tom was innocent of the murders of Speyer and Fitzhugh.
Justice. I couldn’t take Susannah Riley’s fate upon me. Although she had determined the deaths of others, I couldn’t take responsibility for whether she lived or died, was imprisoned or freed. The police would have to gather their evidence on their own—if they could. If she wasn’t completely invisible to them, as she suspected.
All at once I discerned a kind of justice that was mine to dispense. “Susannah, I feel you should know that Karl Speyer actually opposed the exploitation of Niagara. At his death he was fighting the directors, to slow production. To save the cataract. He’d developed a new generator to produce more electricity with less water—that was the generator you and your friends bombed. Even James Fitzhugh, by your own admission, felt disturbed about the route development was taking. You should have let them live, Susannah. They would have been your best allies.”
She studied me suspiciously, her brow knit. Had I reached her? Reached some area of sanity that must still lurk within her?
I continued. “So not only have you murdered your allies, but with this bombing your cause has been hopelessly discredited. You’ve achieved exactly the opposite of what you wanted. You haven’t been a heroine at all.”
The hatred grew slowly in her eyes. “You would say that. You’ve never stopped being jealous of Francesca and me.”
“Whether I’m jealous or not makes no difference,” I replied. “You’ve betrayed your own ideals. Your own goals. You’ve achieved nothing.”
“At this moment our cause may seem ‘discredited,’ but in the end people will understand what we did and why. Our little group may be imprisoned, but others will take our place. In the end our cause will triumph.”
“Perhaps. But you’ve committed murder. For nothing.” I could tell by the fixed expression on her face that I still hadn’t reached her. “Do I have to tell the authorities in order to make you understand the evil you’ve done?”
Abruptly she stood, fierce as a warrior. In a chilling whisper she said, “I had an assistant in what I did. A full assistant.” I had to lean toward her, to hear her. “You would be surprised, should you ever discover who my assistant was. I knew every secret about the power station there was to know, because of my assistant.” Her words were a sinister, threatening legacy. “I’ll say this to you only once, Miss Barrett: If you report me to the authorities, I’ll tell them who my assistant was and quick as can be”—she snapped her fingers in my face—“you’ll have destroyed someone you love.”
She was truly insane. Abruptly I turned and left her, calling my good-bye to the startled Francesca. As I strode down the women’s ward, breakfast over, the patients sitting in loosely grouped chairs and staring straight ahead, I believed Susannah’s threat was nothing but her madness speaking, and I dismissed it from my mind.
CHAPTER XXXIV
I passed through the asylum’s gates and into the bustle of Elmwood Avenue. The city was coming alive, rejoicing in the arrival of President and Mrs. McKinley. The curbs looked as if they’d been scrubbed. Red, white, and blue streamers decorated every streetlamp. But the hoopla felt far removed from me. I blamed myself for the evil Susannah had done. I was the one who’d hired her when she’d first come to Buffalo, granting her the imprimatur of the school, which in turn opened the doors of society.
And yet, how could I have suspected? Her insanity was so intertwined with logic and reality; her outward demeanor was not simply normal but inviting—when she chose to make it so. Of course I knew she’d become passionate about Niagara, but even that day in my office when she presented the drawings to me, I’d picked up no hint of her inward disturbance. The terrible tragedy of the engineers, the disquiet I’d felt for months around Tom, the false leads which Franklin had pursued … She had touched each of us in a singular way. And she’d touched the girls she’d taught and tutored, to what ill effect I’d only discover over time. As much as my heart ached for the engineers and their families, I felt especially anguished over the ways Susannah had affected Grace: infiltrating her life because of her father, murdering Fitzhugh while Grace was only steps away. How easily Grace might have seen this murder. I could imagine her impetuously following Susannah down the path and stumbling upon the sight of her gently, like a touch of love, urging Fitzhugh toward the rapids. How easily Susannah could have done exactly the same to Grace, or even to me, seducing us into forgetfulness and death. I grieved at the thought of how little
safety any of us can ever have. What can we rely on—truly rely on—that won’t turn into water flowing through our hands? Nothing. Not even God will bestir himself to protect us from the threats all around to which we are blind.
I turned onto Forest Avenue, within sight of the Sinclair estate. Although tired from my overnight journey and from my time with Susannah, I needed to see Grace. I hadn’t seen her since Sunday morning at church. I needed the simple reassurance of her presence, offering me a place and a purpose in life. And I wanted to tell her about Susannah’s arrest. Tom wouldn’t necessarily be attuned to his daughter’s attachment to a teacher, even Susannah. Someone would have to tell Grace and much better it be me than a gossiping schoolmate.
Mrs. Sheehan’s niece Blanchette, the shy, dark-haired maid who answered the door, told me that Tom had already left for work but she believed Grace was still on the terrace breakfasting with the housekeeper. That’s where I found them, on the shaded second-floor terrace, where once we’d sat with Maddie and Peter listening to the sounds of the night.
“Aunt Louisa!” Grace exclaimed. “I’m so glad you came! You’re here in time for the spécialité du jour: French toast! I had the idea to make it with cinnamon and nutmeg. Cook and I did it together and now it’s the best I’ve ever had!”
“Good morning, Miss Barrett.” Mrs. Sheehan sighed with the frazzled fatigue of a person who, however good-natured, has no tolerance for youthful exuberance in the morning. “Shall I bring you a pot of coffee?”
“Yes, please,” I said as Grace prepared a plate of French toast and bacon for me from the buffet set up beside the dining table. Vases of roses, apricot-colored and white, decorated both tables. With apparent relief, Mrs. Sheehan went inside. “So, Grace, what have you been doing?” I asked.
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