Smoke and Mirrors

by Casey Daniels

  ‘Madam! Madam!’ I shouted as loudly as I could, carefully choosing my words so as not to cause a panic. ‘You must get the attendants at the museum. There is a problem here on the second floor. We need help immediately!’

  The woman did not hear me. Without looking up, she rounded the corner to the side of the building and disappeared.

  When I spun back to Bess, I saw the smoke had grown heavier. It curled around my desk like a wraith’s fingers and rose into the air, sticking in my throat.

  When Bess coughed, I hauled her to the window. ‘Here,’ I told her. ‘Breathe deep and, while you’re at it, yell for help!’

  She did and I went back to the door, putting my shoulder to it, kicking and pounding it with my fists. When nothing worked, I had only one choice.

  I snatched up the closest war club and used it as an axe.

  It was an old building and sturdily built; the club bit into the wood but not through it, and I was forced to swing again and again.

  By now, the commotion of Bess’s piercing screams and the thud of the club had attracted attention. On the other side of the door, I heard one of the museum attendants call out. Help was on the way!

  I wasn’t about to wait for it.

  By the time I heard footsteps pounding down the passageway outside, I had smashed a hole through the door, but I could see nothing except the crate that had been pushed against it.

  ‘Coming, Miss Barnum!’ someone called out. ‘We have sand to douse the flames and we’ve called for the fire brigade. We are coming!’

  The smoke bellowed, thicker than ever, and flames licked the crate. They caught the corner of a piece of fabric that peeked from the lid and erupted, and I fell back. Ash speckled my cheeks and smoke caught my lungs. Behind me, Bess cried, but I didn’t spare her a look. The club still in my hands, I swung at the door again. The hole got bigger and, just as it did, someone on the other side hauled the crate away from the door.

  ‘Don’t move, not yet!’ a voice cried out, and I saw four figures through the smoke, buckets of sand in their hands. They doused the flames and the next second the door burst open and Phin strode in, his face smeared with soot. He didn’t say a word, just folded me into his arms, his breaths as rough as mine. He gave me a pat on the back then went to see if Bess was all right, and I was left to stare out into the passageway at the crates that had been wedged in front of the door and at the dark, oily stain on the carpet where someone had put a flame to a puddle of whale oil.

  Phin insisted I go home for the remainder of the day.

  I did not argue with him, for while he was left to ponder how such a terrible accident might have happened, I could not help but remember the figure that had come out of the darkness and shot a pistol so near my carriage horse.

  And now this.

  Any right-thinking person would have known better than to think the two incidents could possibly be related.

  But no one had ever said the Barnums were rational.

  More than ever, I needed answers.

  I stopped home only long enough to race to my room, wash my face and get the piece of paper I needed, then I was back in my carriage. Andrew Emerson had stayed at the Franklin House Hotel on his visits to New York. But among the things Clarice and I had found when we went through his possessions was a receipt for rooms at the Astor House.

  ‘And why would a man who was staying at one hotel need rooms at another?’ I asked myself.

  Rather than have Mercer question where I might be going and why, I had him return me to the museum. I waited until he had taken the carriage around to the stables and then I walked the short distance to the Astor House.

  John Jacob Astor was as much celebrated in New York as my brother. He was a man who’d made his wealth in the fur trade, and just eight years before he had opened the five-story hotel that bore his name. It was considered the finest hostelry in the country.

  I kept the thought in mind when I walked into the lobby and up to the main desk. Like so many establishments in the city, I knew the Astor House would not allow me – a woman alone – to eat in the dining room. I hoped there were no such rules against simply talking to the employees.

  At the sight of me, the man behind the desk raised one silvery eyebrow. When he sniffed every so delicately, I cursed myself for not taking the time to change out of my smoky clothes.

  ‘Yes?’

  I gave him the smile that had been called sweet back in Bethel. Before I met James Crockett. Though I never traded on the fame of my brother’s name, I introduced myself.

  The man’s eyebrow rose another fraction of an inch.

  ‘I am hoping you can help me,’ I told him, and smoothed the paper from Andrew’s valise onto the desk. ‘Mr Andrew Emerson was here not long ago. He paid for a week’s lodging.’

  His lips pursed, the man studied the paper. ‘It’s my writing. And the man—’

  ‘Young, polite. Coppery haired.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ As if it would somehow help him clear the fog from his brain, he lifted the paper for a better look. ‘I remember him now.’

  ‘Did he stay here?’

  The man glanced at me over the paper. ‘I am hardly in a position to tell tales, miss.’

  ‘And I do appreciate that as would … as does Andrew Emerson. But you see, he has gone on a journey and, in his absence, I am to take care of his financial obligations. Before I can enter this expense into his ledger, I would like to know what it is for.’

  He leaned over the desk and lowered his voice. ‘You mean to say, who it is for.’

  I caught the suggestion. ‘It was not for rooms Mr Emerson himself stayed in.’

  He shook his head. ‘Mr Emerson was here asking after a couple, a young man and a woman who registered here as’ – he coughed politely – ‘husband and wife, Mr and Mrs Smith.’

  ‘The woman, Mrs Smith – she had hair like Mr Emerson’s?’

  ‘Only more fiery, if you know what I mean.’

  I did. I had heard the color of Madeline’s hair compared to that of carrots.

  ‘And the man?’ I could hardly make the words form around the sudden knot in my throat. ‘You said he was young, and—’

  ‘Young, fit, handsome of face, or so I imagine the ladies might say. Golden-haired, like one of the gods you see in paintings.’

  A golden-haired god.

  Then the rumor Phin had heard out of Bethel was true: Madeline and James had come to New York together.

  ‘So you are telling me the room Mr Emerson paid for—’

  ‘Was the Smiths’,’ the man said. ‘The young man, this Mr Emerson, he insisted on settling the debt.’

  ‘Because the Smiths had not settled it themselves.’ It was not a question.

  ‘I saw Mr Smith go out one morning,’ the man said. ‘It was very early and he had a bag with him but I thought nothing of it. Not an hour later, Mrs Smith came down asking for him.’

  ‘And you told her …?’

  ‘That I was sure he would be back, though truth be told, I wasn’t. I am sorry to say we see things at a hotel, even at a place as grand as this. Mr Smith, he had that look in his eye. Begging your pardon for bringing it up, Miss Barnum, but as you are in charge of Mr Emerson’s finances I believe you have the right to know. Mr Smith looked as if he was searching for … for new horizons.’

  It was a look I knew all too well, but rather than dwell on it, I asked, ‘And Mrs Smith, what did she do?’

  The man thought it over. ‘Stayed another day. No, two,’ he said. ‘Then one evening I saw her go out and I didn’t greet her because, my gracious, it would have been embarrassing. Her nose was red and her eyes were swollen as if she’d been crying them out. I didn’t see her come back in and I heard the next day that the room hadn’t been slept in and her bag was just left there.’

  ‘And Mr Emerson?’

  ‘Showed up days later, asking after the woman. Said he had been up and down New York searching and was finally led here. When I told him what I
just told you, he said he was sure neither Mr nor Mrs Smith would be back.’

  ‘And paid the bill.’ Andrew had always been an honorable man.

  I thanked the clerk and, while I was at it, I scrawled a note upon a piece of paper that said he and his family were most welcome at the museum as my guests. It was a small price to pay for the information he’d given; I only wished that it had been more hopeful.

  For though the man’s story supported what Phin had heard and confirmed my fears for Madeline, it also told me something else.

  Madeline was alone, abandoned on the streets of New York.

  ELEVEN

  I returned to the museum to find the staff working outside my office to clean up the debris left from the fire. With no place else to go and no answers as to who set the fire – or why – I wandered to the first floor and Phin’s office. It was a lucky thing I was there because a message arrived.

  ‘For you, Miss Barnum.’ The man who usually sat at a desk near the front door handed me an envelope heavily scented with roses and lavender. The paper was thick and expensive and the handwriting was decorated with any number of swirls and curlicues. I was not at all surprised to see that the note had come from Clarice Carrington.

  You absolutely must meet Damien LaCrosse, it said, though Clarice did not bother to mention why this was so important. He is a poet, she continued, which made me think that perhaps I did not want to meet him. He has just written a new work. You cannot wait until my next salon to hear it. You must come, dear Miss Barnum. It is of the utmost importance.

  I was not convinced, but I was also not busy. I called for my carriage and gave Mercer the address Clarice noted in her letter. A short while later I stood in an area of the city known as Chelsea in front of a charming row of red-brick townhouses. I did not need to consult the note from Clarice to know her home was the one to my right. It had a recessed front door gaily painted in robin’s-egg blue. The home of an artist, I decided at once, and went to the door, where I found a note attached to it with a butter knife.

  If I am not here, go right in! it said.

  The note smelled of roses and lavender.

  I knocked and, when there was no answer, I did as instructed and found myself in a long hallway, a stairway to my right and to my left, an expanse of wall covered not with paintings but with images painted right onto the wall. There were flowers, artfully done, and animals (not nearly as skillfully painted). There were everyday objects like fruits and vases and carriages, some painted with great skill and others that looked as if I’d given paints and brushes to Caroline and Walter and told them to go at it. Still, the whole thing was a marvel and I followed the flowing images to where they ended. There was a basket of brushes along with paints in the tin tubes I’d heard had recently been devised by a clever fellow and were all the talk of the art world because they provided a far better way to store paints than the pig bladders that were usually used. There was another note there in the same hand as the missive on the front door that instructed the reader to Paint!

  I did not. Aside from having little talent in that arena, I was now at the back of the house and far more interested in my surroundings than I was in dabbing color to the walls. The room I found myself in had windows that rose floor to ceiling and allowed a flow of marvelous light that spilled over the wooden floor like melted butter. Over on the fireplace mantel, joss sticks like the ones we burned at the museum sent up their scented smoke, and all around me, on tables and the floor itself, cigarette ends overflowed from china plates.

  Around the room there were any number of easels with canvases upon them and I strolled past some that had been simply sketched upon in rough, quick strokes and others that were in the process of being painted. One, larger than the others, showed a silver-haired man in formal clothing, his expression so lifelike it was as if he was sitting right there in front of me. Others were less accomplished but no less interesting. A still life with flowers and crockery. A study of the couch against the far wall and the paisley shawl in shades of brown and orange thrown across the back of it. A woman reposing on a bed with tussled blankets, her bare thighs and breasts exposed.

  None of these was nearly as spectacular as the painting propped against the far wall and, captivated, I closed in on it. It had yet to be framed but the canvas was taller than me and wide enough to fill an entire wall even in a home as large and spectacular as Phin’s. The scene before me was that of a farmyard. There was a stone building in the background, its windows dark and its door shut, and in front of building two ferocious bulls (or as they were known in more polite company, cow brutes) faced off against each other. Both animals were black and massive with eyes dark and fierce and hooves that looked deadly and kicked up eddies of dust. The muscles beneath the animals’ skin rippled with strength and, though I knew I was being fanciful, I could have sworn I could feel their hot breath and hear each labored snort. The animal on the left had haunches larger than dinner plates. The one on the right had a plume of steam coming from its mouth.

  I cannot say I was surprised when I saw the artist’s signature in the corner.

  ‘William Kobieta Walker.’ I read the name aloud – the same artist who had painted the horse fair picture I’d seen at Sebastian Richter’s.

  And his painting, unframed, was here at Clarice’s.

  Before I had a chance to work through how that might be possible – if Clarice had perhaps bought the painting, or if Walker was an associate, a friend or more – the front door banged open and the sounds of footsteps, laughter and singing echoed through the house.

  ‘So take your time, Miss Lucy, Miss Lucy, Lucy, oh!’

  One voice, a man’s, loud and completely out of tune, sang the popular ditty with far more enthusiasm than the others and hung onto that final ‘oh!’ as if he were drowning and needed it for his last breath.

  His mouth still rounded by the word, he tumbled into the room, took one look at me and fell to his knees.

  ‘There is a goddess among us!’ he announced, though truth be told, the half-dozen others who piled into the room behind him did not look completely convinced.

  The man himself had a riot of chestnut curls, a cleft chin and a straight, slim nose. He wore black unmentionables and a shirt that was undone at the front to reveal a good deal of bare flesh. When he came nearer, still on his knees and his eyes wide with wonder, I smelled the strong odor of liquor about him. ‘She has come down to grace the mortals of this world with her beauty!’ he announced.

  ‘Don’t be an ass, Michael. Miss Barnum has come because I invited her.’ Clarice untangled herself from the knot at the doorway and came forward to greet me. Her cheeks were pink and she smelled of champagne and cigarettes. ‘You must forgive Michael,’ she said, her mouth thin with disgust when she tossed a look to where the man crawled away from me and propped himself against the couch. ‘He fancies himself a French intellectual and feels he must say things like that.’

  ‘Then I am not a goddess?’ I asked her.

  Clarice threw back her head and laughed. ‘Each in her own way, we are all goddesses, my dear Evie,’ she said, and she took me around and introduced me to her friends who had come tumbling into the room along with her.

  A woman with blotchy skin and half-closed eyes was Abigail who, even before she could return my cordial greeting, collapsed upon the couch. A fleshy young fellow followed her there before I even learned his name. Another woman, golden-haired, plump and pretty, giggled and greeted me even as the man she was with – older and with bulging eyes – nibbled on her neck. No sooner had they finished saying hello than the couple took flight. Seconds later I heard their footsteps on the stairs.

  ‘And this is Damien,’ Clarice said.

  Damien LaCrosse had hair as dark as ink and it flowed over his shoulders in glorious waves, framing a face with fiery eyes and full lips. He puffed on a cigarette and stepped back to study me in a way that reminded me of the looks the traders gave the horses in that painting I’d seen at Sebasti
an Richter’s.

  ‘Michael has low standards,’ he announced.

  His voice was deep and somehow intimate even in the presence of the others, and it sent prickles along my spine. Rather than stand there tongue-tied, I swallowed the sudden and inexplicable dryness that filled my mouth and managed a smile. ‘Then it is just as I thought – I am not a goddess.’

  ‘Hardly.’ He gave me another look, from the tips of my boots to the top of my bonnet. ‘Though it is difficult to say with woman who is as swaddled as you are.’ He leaned closer, a little unsteady on his feet. ‘Perhaps if you took off your clothes.’

  ‘It is the absinthe talking,’ Clarice said, and the fierce look in her eyes told me it was not the first time she’d used the excuse to apologize for Damien’s behavior. She raised her chin, her shoulders rock steady. ‘Damien is far too imaginative.’

  He shot back, ‘And far too drunk to listen to you moan.’

  She hadn’t moaned and she didn’t comment, but that didn’t keep Clarice from holding in her annoyance by sucking in her bottom lip.

  ‘She’s a terror,’ Damien confided. As if we were longtime friends, he put a hand on my arm. His fingers were cool but his palm was hot and the warmth seeped through the sleeve of my gown and into every pore, surprising in its intensity. ‘And I am but a gentle soul,’ he crooned, ‘looking for a sweet woman who will understand the workings of my heart. I do believe you are her.’ He tightened his hold on my arm and fought for a moment to adjust the focus of his eyes. ‘She.’

  Another second under the gaze of those soulful eyes and I might have told him anything he wanted to hear. It was a good thing the man who had flopped onto the couch chose that particular moment to let out a burp that echoed through the room and brought me to my senses.

  ‘There isn’t a person in all of New York City who would say I am sweet,’ I told Damien. ‘I am sorry to tell you, I am not the woman you are looking for.’