She guessed my reason for trailing off. “I’m Mrs. Hendricks.”
“Mrs. Hendricks, please also keep a close eye on Miss Ilsa.”
She had poured the necklace back into the bag and leaned over to slide the parcel back beneath the mattress. At my words she looked up and froze. She asked no questions and I saw no need to explain. We both knew I had placed on her an onerous burden.
Chapter 8
Katie finished bringing out dinner and took her own seat at the table. I ran a lax household in my aunt Alice Vanderbilt’s opinion, but ever since Katie Dylan had come to me—after being dismissed by Aunt Alice’s housekeeper at The Breakers—I had come to think of her more as a younger sister than merely my maid. She had been pregnant and terrified three years ago, and after losing the child, both devastated and relieved. And all the more devastated because of her relief.
I asked Nanny what she knew about Camille Tate. She sliced off a thin piece of pot roast and set it on her plate. “Very little. She’s not a Newport girl.”
“That much I know. But has there been any talk about her?”
Nanny chewed and shook her head slowly. “Nothing to make you blink twice. But no one enters this city without my circle knowing about it.”
Nanny’s circle, as she called it, or network, as I thought of it, consisted of servants from nearly every notable house in Newport. Most of them had grown up here in the city, and Nanny had known them for decades. Tidings about the social set, good and bad, traveled this network in the same way an ocean breeze sweeps the island. They had little need of telephones, which most of them didn’t entirely trust anyway. At the markets, apothecaries, and tradesmen’s shops, on the sidewalks and trolleys, stories and rumors forged their trails, invisible to all but those along this trusted route. The servants knew things about the quality they themselves didn’t know about each other.
“Stealin’ a diamond necklace . . .” Katie sipped her water, drawn from our well beside the house. “How can she ever think to get away with a thing like that?”
“If she stole it, and it wasn’t placed in her room to incriminate her, my question is did she steal it before or after Miss Cooper-Smith died?”
“And carryin’ on with an officer,” Katie continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Someone ought to remind that lass of her place, and soon.”
I studied Katie as she continued eating as if she had said nothing out of the ordinary. Her linen cap hardly contained her spiraling auburn hair, and a faint dusting of powder had done little to hide her freckles. Though I valued her place in my household, I hoped someday she would meet a man and make a life for herself. I set my fork on my plate. “Katie, have you considered that perhaps Camille and Lieutenant Norris aren’t carrying on, as you say, but truly care for each other?”
She gave me a dumbfounded stare. “He’s a Knickerbocker, isn’t he?”
I nodded. “But what has that got to do with a young man’s feelings, or a young woman’s worthiness?”
“But she’s a thief.” Katie looked to Nanny for consensus, but Nanny only watched us with a vague expression.
“Maybe she is a thief. As I said, I don’t know for certain. Besides, that’s another matter. We’re talking about who may consort with whom. I see no reason why a perfectly respectable young woman of limited means cannot marry a respectable young man of abundant means, if they both wish it.”
“But you know what they say about such women, Miss Emma. They call them gold diggers. Like . . .”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “Like whom?”
Katie lowered her chin and stared down at her plate. “Never mind. I spoke out of turn.”
I continued studying the top of her cap and the fiery blush just visible on her downcast face. It didn’t take many guesses to realize she had been referring to my own friend and cousin’s wife, Grace Wilson. Despite Grace’s family being vastly well off, she and her sisters—and even their brother, Orme—were the objects of some very unkind accusations merely because their father had amassed the family’s wealth, rather than some ancestor several generations removed. Society gossips called them the Marrying Wilsons, because each sibling had married prosperously. For myself, I saw no difference between that and my aunt Alva forcing her daughter, Consuelo, to marry a duke, or my cousin Gertrude marrying Harry Payne Whitney. Though the latter couple had found happiness and the former had not, neither had married initially for love.
“Katie,” I said gently, and waited for her to look up. “If you were to meet a Knickerbocker and the two of you wished to marry, I would not raise a whisper in objection.”
Her blush deepened, became alarmingly scarlet. “It’ll never happen,” she murmured. “A nice merchant or tradesman would be lovely, though.”
As the meal progressed, I brought up the other things I had learned. “I’d like to know more about Patrick Floyd’s wife and how she died.”
“That I do know a bit about,” Nanny said. “There wasn’t a servant in that house who believed it was an accident.”
“Could one of the servants have been at fault, either intentionally or unintentionally?”
Nanny gave my question a moment’s serious consideration, then shook her head. “The only person who would have been in the room with Mrs. Floyd before she retired for the night would be her personal maid, a woman who had been with the Floyds for several years and came to them with impeccable references.”
“Do you know where she went after Mrs. Floyd’s death?”
“I’m told she’s taken the year off. Mr. Floyd paid her a handsome severance fee. I don’t wonder why,” she added with a knowing glint.
“What does that mean?”
“Well . . .” Nanny leaned a bit over the table toward me. “I heard from Mrs. Fish’s second-floor maid who heard it from her cousin, who worked as a footman for the Floyds in New York, that they all suspected a dalliance on Mr. Floyd’s part.”
“Yes, I know.”
Nanny looked disappointed that she hadn’t shocked me.
“But with whom?” I sighed. “Could it have been Cleo Cooper-Smith?”
Katie looked up at that. “Why her?”
“Only because these people seem so interconnected. And then there’s the fact that she had been practically engaged to Oliver Kipp. His mother told me she broke it off, but his fellow soldiers, the captain and the lieutenant, claim he did.” With my fork, I moved potatoes around on my plate. “Perhaps he discovered she had not been true to him, that she wasn’t the unspoiled girl he had believed.”
“Because she had been carrying on with Mr. Floyd a year ago?” Nanny pursed her lips in obvious skepticism.
“Maybe they were still carrying on,” I countered. “Nothing I’ve learned so far about Cleo Cooper-Smith suggests she had been an innocent, proper young lady. A broken engagement, a piece of a broken diamond necklace hidden away in a bedside cabinet . . . She had secrets, and I believe she had some sort of plan she never had time to implement.”
Katie, her plate empty, stood up. “I’ll start clearin’ the dinner things and get dessert.”
I waited for her to leave through the pantry before saying to Nanny, “I suppose I shouldn’t discuss such matters in front of Katie. It makes her uncomfortable, dear soul.”
“What you shouldn’t do, Emma, is put ideas into her head. A Knickerbocker, indeed.” Nanny once more pursed her lips, this time with a shake of her head.
I opened my mouth to defend my position, but no words came out. Hadn’t I counseled Brady not long ago against setting his sights on marrying a woman of that class, because he’d never fully be accepted as one of them? What about my own qualms about ever being truly welcomed into Derrick’s family? Unfortunately, Nanny was right. My reassurances to Katie had been idealistic at best, misguided at the worst. As for Camille Tate and Dorian Norris, how they proceeded was their business, and mine to neither approve nor judge.
The ringing of the telephone saved me from having to respond at all. I eagerly hurried
away.
In the hallway, I ducked into the alcove beneath the stairs and grabbed the ear trumpet from its cradle. “Yes? Emma Cross here.”
A throat clearing erupted from the device, prompting me to whisk it away from my ear. From several inches away, then, I heard, “Emma, it’s Joe Millford. Do you have a moment?”
My former boss? What could he possibly want? I pulled the ear trumpet back in place. “What can I do for you, Mr. Millford?”
“I was wondering if you might stop by the office sometime soon. I’d like to speak with you.”
My heart began racing and my pulse points thumped. I sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. I willed myself to remain calm as I responded, “I suppose I might be able to manage that, sir. Do you have a time in mind?”
“Tomorrow morning?”
I was close to hyperventilating. I pressed my free hand to my mouth and breathed through my fingers to slow my rate of respiration. “I do believe I have might some free moments in the morning, yes.”
“Good, glad to hear it. See you in the morning, then. I’ll tell Donald I’m expecting you.”
* * *
Need I say I slept very little that night? A year ago, Mr. Millford had summarily fired me for crossing a boundary he, and many others, felt no woman had a right to cross. The results I had achieved hadn’t mattered a whit. And in the end, he hadn’t been protecting me from myself, as was his claim, so much as protecting his male sensibilities from the notion of a woman daring to presume what might be best for herself.
So then . . . what could I expect from him now? That Mr. Millford might offer me my job back as society columnist? That he might offer me a position as a real reporter, covering all manner of news in town? The lift of my spirits at the latter and the sinking of my stomach at the former left me tossing and turning well toward morning.
I’m also rather ashamed to admit how much time and care I put into preparing for this meeting. Several outfits lay across my bed, along with a selection of hats, gloves, and brooches. Nanny came to help, and her suggestions of something feminine yet professional, fastidious yet indifferent, only confused me more.
“Look your best, but don’t look as if you tried too hard,” she clarified. She made a quick assessment. “Wear your blue, with the houndstooth scarf, the onyx brooch, and the gray silk hat with the burgundy ribbon.”
I studied each of her selections and then, pushing other items out of the way, arranged them together on the coverlet. I grinned. “You’re right. That will do nicely.”
“Of course I am. Let’s get you dressed and on your way.”
Before I left Gull Manor, I stepped around back to visit Barney. Katie had already put him on his lead in the yard, where he could stroll around the old scarlet oak tree and munch crispy dandelion greens, sedge grass, and the long, pointy leaves of the deep purple buddleia. He lifted his head as I approached. Did I only imagine it, or did his liquid brown eyes hold a mournful quality, tired and sad? I ran my hand down his warm neck, and he swung his head around to rest his chin on my shoulder. I felt a deep sigh rush out of him.
“What is it, boy?” Suddenly alarmed, I stepped back to fully view him. I checked both eyes for clarity, his mouth, his nose. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed my ear against him to listen to his breathing. At the slam of the kitchen door, I turned around to see Katie coming out with the laundry. “Katie, how has Barney seemed to you? I’m wondering if I need to call Dr. Sheehan.”
She set her basket down in the laundry yard and crossed the lawn to me. “I don’t think a veterinarian can cure what ails our Barney, Miss Emma.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s been moping since yesterday, when Maestro showed up. If you ask me, he’s feeling left out. And as if he’s no longer needed around here.”
This revelation sent my chin dropping. “You mean he thinks he’s being replaced?” Katie nodded, and I shook my head. “That can’t be. He can’t reason like that.”
“Can’t he, miss?”
I turned back to Barney, who had once more dropped his head to nibble at summer lush greens. “Good heavens, I would have thought he’d be relieved not to have to make the long trudges into town and back.” I combed my fingers through his mane. “Well, don’t worry, boy. No one is putting you out to pasture. But you do need a rest. Let’s let Maestro take over for a while, and then we’ll see.”
“Don’t worry, miss. I’ll come out and visit with him as often as I can while you’re away from home.”
I thanked her and, with a pang of guilt I hadn’t expected to feel, hitched Maestro to the carriage. Carroll Avenue took me north to Lower Thames Street, where commotion slowed my pace to a crawl. A crowd of some thirty men had gathered in front of the gates of the Newport Illuminating Company not far from the offices of the Observer. Some of the men were shouting while others held signs and a few waved fists in the air. Most were dressed in the corduroys and coveralls of workmen. Inside the gates, several men in dark suits and derbies hovered uncertainly, sometimes seeming to answer the shouts, other times conferring with one another.
Had the company that electrified our street rail system, and that had begun slowly replacing gas and coal power with electricity, laid off these workers? I brought Maestro to a stop and listened.
A young man stood at the fringe of the crowd. He occasionally lifted his voice to chant with the others, but his efforts seemed half-hearted at best. I waited until I could catch his eye and waved him over.
“Yeah, miss?” He removed his cap as he spoke.
“Can you tell me what’s going on here?”
“Sure, miss. These are all men from the Newport Gas Light Company.”
“I see. But what’s the problem?”
“Electricity’s the problem. It was one thing when they decided to run the trolleys on electricity. The old horse trolleys were slow and undependable. But now they want to start replacing the gas lines in homes. We say it isn’t fair. Electric systems’ll put the gas works out of business.”
“I noticed you don’t seem too enthusiastic about being here.”
He shrugged. “I came because my workmates are here, but I’m planning to apprentice with an electrician, so I won’t be left behind like some of the others.”
“But so many houses are still dependent on gas for lighting and heat. It’s going to be a very long time before gas is no longer needed, if ever.”
“I suppose, miss.” Obviously no longer interested in discussing the matter, he had resorted to being polite.
“Well, thank you.” I fished in my handbag for a coin, but he shook his head and moved away. I clucked to Maestro to continue on. It was as I was stepping down outside the Observer that I remembered that Max Brentworth, owner of the Newport Gas Light Company, had been a guest at Mrs. Goelet’s ball.
Did he, too, resent the advent of electricity in a town where he had for years enjoyed a veritable monopoly on lighting and fuel?
But to sacrifice a young woman’s life? Surely not. But what if he hadn’t meant for Cleo Cooper-Smith to die? Her death could have been a miscalculation. He might have believed she’d receive merely a shock and recover quickly enough. Meanwhile, all those watching might have been warned away from introducing electricity into their homes. I myself wondered at the safety of wires crisscrossing inside the walls of a home. In a structure such as Ochre Court or The Breakers, or some of the newer cottages presently being built, where the floors and walls were of marble, there might not be the same danger. But fires and electrocutions were known to happen, especially when too many circuits were crossed and too many appliances used at once.
Perhaps it seemed unlikely, but I had no choice but to add Max Brentworth’s name to the list of possible suspects in Cleo’s death. Mr. Brentworth, or someone who worked for him.
With a tug at my carriage jacket and a deep breath that squared my shoulders, I pushed my way through the door of the Newport Observer. Donald Larimer, the bespectacled front de
sk clerk, glanced up with an expression of inquiry. Upon seeing me, that neutral expression became more than a little interested, not to mention speculative.
“Miss Cross, how good to see you after all this time.”
“It’s only been a year, Mr. Larimer. I trust you’ve been well?”
“I have, thank you. How is New York? Do you like it there?” His eager tone spoke of dreams of possibly trying his own luck in the city someday.
“I’ve missed Newport,” I said evasively. “Is Mr. Millford in?” I knew quite well he would be, but, no longer an employee, I couldn’t very well go barging into his office unannounced. Mr. Larimer pushed a button on his desk and spoke into a cone attached to a length of rubber tubing connected to a box on the wall. “Miss Cross to see you, sir.”
From the receiver on the box came, “Send her right in.”
I clutched my handbag to keep my hands from trembling with excitement. Mr. Millford stood as I entered his office and he hurried around the desk. “Emma, it’s good to have you back.”
Was I back? Did he mean in Newport, or at the paper? “Thank you, Mr. Millford. It’s good to be home.” I left him to wonder, as I did, if by home I meant the city or these offices.
“Please, sit.” He gestured to one of two leather armchairs in front of his desk. After resuming his own seat, he set his elbows on the desktop and leaned toward me. “Can I get you anything? Coffee?”
“No, thank you.” I folded my hands and waited. If there was anything I’d learned about Mr. Millford while working here, it was that remaining silent was the best way to prompt him to speak his mind.
He leaned back, his gaze never wavering from mine, his smile never slipping. I had the distinct impression we were gingerly dancing around each other. “I’ve been thinking,” he finally said so abruptly and so stridently, I winced.
“Yes?”
“Emma, I’ve been following your career at the Herald and I don’t mind telling you I’m more than a little impressed. I’m prepared to offer you a full page in the Observer. How would you like to work here again?”
Murder at Ochre Court Page 12
