“Doctor says a short walk every day will aid the digestion.” Ethel smiled, rubbing her belly and trying not to release an unladylike burp. “I’ll show you the nursery and you can help me decide what else needs to be done.”
“Are you sure you should attempt two flights of stairs?”
“I shall be perfectly all right, as long as we take them slowly.”
Left hand on the banister, right elbow supported by Prudence, Ethel climbed steadily to the second-floor landing. She was only slightly out of breath and delighted to have proved to her companion that she was able to accomplish what she’d set out to do.
By the time they reached the third floor, Ethel was pale and panting. A light sheen of moisture lay across her forehead; the hand that reached for support was trembling.
“I don’t think you should go any farther,” Prudence said, lowering her gently into an armchair placed beside a marble-topped table holding a bouquet of fresh flowers.
“Perhaps you’re right.” Ethel held out a small ring of keys. “It’s two doors down the hall on the right. I’ll join you as soon as I catch my breath.”
Trying not to betray her impatience, Prudence walked toward the nursery, stopping once to look back at Ethel as if to ask if she should wait. Ethel shook her head and waved her on.
The key turned effortlessly in the lock; the door opened soundlessly. Prudence stepped inside, reaching for the knob that would turn on the gaslights. The room had a musty, closed-up smell to it. She pulled back the heavy drapes that shut out daylight so baby could nap, and eased the window up a hand’s width. Fresh, cold air poured into the room in a thin stream.
This was the day nursery, where the baby nurse or nanny would care for the child and take her own meals apart from the other servants. A cradle sat by the fireplace, beside it a cushioned rocking chair. On the opposite wall stood a chest of drawers, a wardrobe, a table for changing and dressing the infant, a pitcher and basin for bathing. Rag rugs covered the wooden floor, small knit blankets were stacked in the large crib near the door to the nanny’s bedroom, miniature pillows covered in embroidered linen cases leaned against the bars of the crib. The walls were papered in a cottage print of imaginary animals peering out from the foliage, and here and there hung cross-stitched samplers bearing exhortations to a virtuous childhood.
But was the room newly furnished or were the crib, the cradle, and the rocking chair reminders of another child, who had not lived long enough to leave her mother’s side? It was impossible to tell; there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere. Prudence had never met Catherine Buchanan, and she hadn’t known Ethel long enough to be familiar with her tastes and preferences.
The drawers were full of tiny garments, all neatly folded and arranged. Surely, none of them had been intended for that other infant? Was that a question Prudence could even ask?
“What do you think?” Ethel stood in the doorway, one hand steadying herself against the frame.
“It’s a lovely nursery,” Prudence replied. “May I look into the nanny’s room?”
Ethel nodded, absorbed in some mental list she was making.
When Prudence opened the door to the room where the baby nurse or nanny would sleep, she knew that at least one of her questions had been answered. The room was as clean and free of dust as the adjoining nursery, but it had the feel and smell of a room left long unoccupied and not being readied for a new tenant. The furniture looked as though it had been put in place years ago and never moved. The linens in the drawers she opened were neither new nor freshly laundered.
She supposed it didn’t matter that the nanny would sleep in someone else’s bed, under sheets and blankets meant to be used by that other baby’s caretaker. Dried lavender had been sprinkled in the closed-up spaces, so the mustiness was faint. But if she had been that infant’s father, that dead mother’s widower, she would have ordered the rooms stripped to the walls, everything associated with the dreadful loss burned or given to charity.
Unless the deaths were not unwelcome. Unless instead of mourning a loss, Aaron Sorensen celebrated financial gain.
“My husband says our baby will feel a kinship with its half sister if we leave the nursery untouched,” Ethel said. “I suppose he’s right, but I wonder if some things should be added.” She looked quizzically at Prudence, as if wanting her to agree.
“Have you hired a baby nurse or nanny?” Prudence began.
“Aaron wants to be present at the interviews before I agree to hire anyone. I’ve contacted an agency, but I haven’t made appointments yet.”
“Perhaps some new sleeping bonnets,” Prudence suggested. “I suppose nannies come with their own lists of what they consider the necessities, but I don’t think you could go wrong with head coverings.”
“I’m not very skilled with a needle,” Ethel confessed ruefully. “I hadn’t the patience for it when I was a girl, so I never learned properly.”
“We could go shopping,” Prudence proposed, expecting Ethel to agree delightedly.
But she did not. “Aaron doesn’t like me to go out alone.”
“Now you have a companion.”
“I’m feeling a little light-headed,” Ethel said, abruptly ending the conversation. “Do you mind if we go downstairs? I think I’ll lie down on my bed and try to nap.”
Prudence locked the nursery door behind them, then turned the key again when Ethel started down the corridor. She’d once had to steal keys to open doors in her own house. She’d learned to take precautions when she thought she might want to return alone to a room.
In the space of a few days, she’d become a prowler, as well as a thief. Geoffrey would commend her new skills.
* * *
Ethel Sorensen was not always as even-tempered as she at first appeared to be. When Prudence asked if Mr. Sorensen was expected home soon, Ethel snapped a response and changed the subject. She never knew how long Aaron would stay away and it vexed her to be so ignorant. That evening they dined together in amicable, though awkward, fits and starts of conversation.
It was clear that the household staff didn’t know what to make of the new resident; they couldn’t place her. She wasn’t a member of the family, nor was she precisely a guest, yet she was to be treated in every respect as though she were. Mrs. Hopkins, who had begun her career in service in one of the grander houses of the city, explained the role of lady’s companion.
“I wish someone would pay me just to keep her company,” said the skivvy whose job it was to clean out the coals and lay the new fires every morning. It was the hardest, dirtiest job in the house, and Sally had to do it without ever being seen. Only the prettiest of upstairs maids could aspire to be noticed.
Three days after her arrival Miss Mason came into the parlor a full hour before Mrs. Sorensen was expected to ring for her morning tea. She laid a five-dollar gold coin on Sally’s dirty palm. The skivvy nearly fainted with the shock of holding so much money in her hand.
“Were you here when the first Mrs. Sorensen was still alive, Sally?” Prudence settled herself onto a small sofa, crossing her hands in her lap, tucking her feet under her skirt. Back rigidly straight, she was a picture of the ladylike authority Sally had been trained since childhood to obey.
“Yes, miss. I came before the old master passed away.”
“Tell me what she was like.”
“The kindest lady you’d ever want to meet. Very beautiful, and with a voice like an angel. Though she never sang after the old master died and the new one forbade it.”
“Did you ever hear him tell her not to sing?”
“There were terrible fights, miss. Mr. Sorensen shouted so loud you could hear him all over the house. Mrs. Catherine cried and pleaded with him.” Sally brought her fist up to her mouth as if realizing that she was telling secrets she wasn’t supposed to know.
“That’s all right, Sally. Nothing you say will get you into trouble. I promise.” Prudence pried open the skivvy’s fingers and laid another five-dollar gold piece in h
er hand. “Tell me about what happened when Mrs. Sorensen learned she was going to have a baby.”
“She was already in the family way before I came, miss. Mrs. Catherine was well along when the fighting just stopped one day. There was no more arguing. After that, they hardly ever talked to each other. He started staying away longer on his trips. Whenever he was likely to be gone for a while, she’d leave the house early in the morning, two or three times a week, and stay away for half the day. We knew something was up. She’d been studying to be an opera singer before she married Mr. Sorensen, but he put a stop to that. What we thought was that she was taking lessons again like she did when her father was alive. We all had our fingers crossed that she’d have the baby and then go off to become famous and leave Mr. Sorensen behind.”
“How was it just before the baby was born?”
“Everyone was waiting. You could have heard a pin drop in this house most days. Even when you were doing your work, you’d be listening.”
“Listening for what, Sally?”
“For the baby to start coming, miss. It was terrible, what happened to Mrs. Catherine. None of us thought things would turn out the way they did. You could tell she wanted that baby. And she wasn’t ill the way some ladies are. Mrs. Catherine was strong, right up to the end.”
“Can you tell me about the birth?”
“No, miss. I was never in the room. The midwife came first, and then the doctor. Cook had the stove going to heat water and there was more than enough clean linen. Mrs. Catherine never made a sound that I heard tell of. The first we knew the baby had been born was when we heard her cry. It wasn’t any little mewling squeak, either. Little Miss Ingrid hollered so loud, we thought for sure it was a boy. The doctor left, but the midwife stayed on. She said it was too late for her to go home, and she didn’t have any other patients, so she might as well spend the night. Miss Ingrid was born early, so the nanny’s room was empty. The baby nurse wasn’t expected for another week.”
“What about Mr. Sorensen? Was he here through all of it?”
“He’d been on one of his trips. None of us knew when he’d be back, and when Mrs. Hopkins wanted to send a telegram, Mrs. Catherine said she didn’t know where to reach him.” Sally curled her fist tighter around the gold coins. She had more to say, and now that she’d begun talking, the memories were flooding back. “He came home that night, after the doctor had left. We were all still up. The butler we had then said we should drink to the baby’s health. So we were sitting in the servants’ hall downstairs when we heard the front door open. Mr. Baron went up the stairs as fast as you please, and when he came back down, he had the most peculiar expression on his face.”
“Can you describe it?”
“Like he’d bit down on something sour. He’d told Mr. Sorensen the baby had been born, that it was a girl, and that Mrs. Sorensen and the child were both fine. He said Mr. Sorensen stared at him as if he didn’t understand what he was talking about, then he started up the staircase to the second floor without saying a word. Not fast, either, like someone happy and eager, but slow, his shoulders stiff and hunched over.
“The next morning, early, he came down and told Mr. Baron to call the photographer. They were dead.”
“Where was the midwife?”
“Gone already. And he’d locked the door to Mrs. Sorensen’s bedroom. That’s where they were, the both of them. No one was allowed in until after the photographer had finished.”
“One more question, Sally. Do you know the names of the midwife and the doctor?”
“Mrs. Emerson and Dr. Norbert. The doctor would never have left that night if he’d thought something would go wrong. He’d taken care of both Mrs. Sorensen’s parents and Mrs. Catherine, too, when she was a little girl. I can’t say any more, miss. I shouldn’t have told you anything at all. It’s just that no one ever talks about them, Mrs. Catherine and her baby. It’s like they never existed. That’s not right.”
They both heard footsteps on the staircase at the same time. Ethel was making her slow, careful way down to the breakfast room.
The skivvy turned and fled down the servants’ staircase to the basement before Prudence could reassure her once again that no harm would come to her for having told so much to a stranger.
Sally left the Sorensen house well before dawn the next day, her two gold five-dollar coins wrapped in brown paper and stuffed in the toes of her shoes. She was no more fearful than the next one, but she hadn’t been able to sleep a wink all night. All she could think about was how strange it was that Mrs. Catherine and her baby had died when no one expected them to.
And how angry Mr. Sorensen would be if he ever found out she’d talked about them.
CHAPTER 15
Ethel Sorensen’s doctor had recommended a potion called The Expectant Mother’s Anodyne and Soporific to help her sleep through the night, the caution being to swallow only a few drops dissolved in sherry to kill the unpleasant taste. It was, Prudence thought, a tincture of laudanum dissolved in herbal extracts and honey. Despite her restless, uncomfortable slumbers, Ethel seldom used it. She hadn’t awoken one night in time to reach the chamber pot; the humiliation of wetting her bed like a child had reduced her to tears and near hysterics.
But on Prudence’s third evening in the Sorensen household, Ethel doctored her after-dinner digestif with the mixture that was guaranteed to give her the rest she so badly needed. She offered some to her companion, who declined.
“I’m afraid I would sleep right through the morning hours,” Prudence explained apologetically. “My conversation wouldn’t make sense until well past noon.” The truth was that even a single swallow of laudanum was as dangerous to Prudence as a loaded gun. What had begun as a doctor-recommended aid to calm the nerves had swiftly become an addiction. By sheer force of will she had weaned herself from the opium mixture; she counted herself one of the lucky ones. But the lure would always be a part of her; she didn’t dare give in to it.
“It makes me groggy when I wake up,” Ethel confessed, “but I’m desperate for sleep.” The skin beneath her eyes was dark with fatigue, she was too tired to sit with back straight and not touching her chair as etiquette demanded, and she was having difficulty focusing her attention on what Prudence was saying. “I can’t go on any longer like this.” She counted out the drops, then added a few more for good measure.
No hands of whist that night, no reading aloud by the fire in the small parlor. The piano remained silent. Before the long case clock in the foyer chimed nine, Ethel had summoned her maid and climbed into the great bed, where Aaron hadn’t visited her since she’d told him she was in the family way.
She sighed contently as she felt a blissful release steal over her. Ethel needed sleep and strength to get through the next few weeks until the baby was born. If Aaron remained true to form, he’d be back from this latest trip in a few days. She dreaded the confrontation that was sure to erupt when she had to tell him she’d engaged a companion. She wondered if she could do it with Penelope at her side. Surely, Aaron wouldn’t be so ill-mannered as to berate her in front of a stranger. But as she fell asleep, she knew he would.
Prudence listened for footsteps ascending the uncarpeted servants’ staircase that ran from basement to attic. The last ones up would be Mrs. Hopkins, the housekeeper, and the butler, whose job it was to secure the house for the night. They would also be the last to turn out their lights, remaining awake until they were sure the maids and young male servants were safely asleep in their own beds.
By midnight Prudence judged that everyone in the Sorensen house, except her, was deeply asleep. The more she thought about it, the more she had become convinced that for her own safety she had to decamp as soon as she’d searched Aaron’s study. Ethel had mentioned several times that she expected her husband home any day now. It was time to finish the job and go.
Prudence wrote a note to leave in her sitting room, being deliberately careless with her handwriting, as though she’d been overcome with
emotion and the need for haste when she penned it: Brother-in-law dead in a tragic carriage accident, sister collapsed with grief, six nieces and nephews desperately needing care. There was no logical way to explain how she had gotten the news, so she ignored that complication. Someone, probably the housekeeper, would suggest they count the silver. Someone else was bound to announce that he or she had always thought there was something odd about Miss Mason. At least Ethel would be spared having to explain a companion to an irate husband.
Carpetbag in hand, Prudence descended the main staircase carrying her outdoor boots, her stockinged feet noiseless in the deep silence of the house. The only sound she heard after she tiptoed from her room was Ethel’s soft, distant snore. Her husband had forbidden her the lapdog she’d begged for, and the kitchen mouser was safely below stairs in the basement, presumably about her nightly prowl.
Prudence had no key to Sorensen’s study, but Geoffrey had taught her how to pick a lock one rainy, clientless afternoon. She had insisted, and he had finally given in when she reminded him that the Pinkerton female detectives were trained in all of the same skills as their male counterparts. She had clapped as gleefully as a child the first time a lock clicked open under the careful probing of the pick Geoffrey supplied. And then she had practiced until hours of sore fingers and ears straining for the sound of tumblers turning had made her nearly as skilled as he.
The lock that secured Aaron Sorensen’s study posed very little challenge. Prudence had it open in less than thirty seconds. She slipped inside, closed the door behind her, and relocked it. If someone with a key appeared, she had at least bought herself a few precious seconds in which to hide behind the heavy drapes drawn closed over the windows.
The hallways of the Sorensen mansion were dimly lit at night by low-flamed gaslights, but there was nothing breaking the stygian darkness of the study. She lit a lucifer, locating and lighting the gas lamp on Sorensen’s desk, careful to trim the wick to burn as low as possible without extinguishing it.
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