by Jane Steen
“What I don’t understand,” I said, “is why the Gambarellis continue to believe Martin killed Lucetta in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. Do they hate him that much?”
“I’m not sure if it’s a matter of hatred, exactly. They’re beside themselves. Their adoration of Lucetta went almost to the point of idolatry, particularly in the case of Alessandro and Gianbattista, her oldest brothers. Samuele, the youngest, is not nearly so attached. Did you know he is still working for Rutherford’s?”
“I didn’t know. In fact, I didn’t know he existed until this moment. The newspaper articles mention Alex and Jacky Gambarelli, but no Samuele.”
“He has remained in New York,” Mr. Salazar said. “He’s been working as a buyer for Martin’s business enterprise on the frontier. He couldn’t possibly have returned in time for Lucetta’s funeral, so apparently he didn’t try. I was surprised they buried her so quickly, come to that. Young Sam’s an artist and would rather not have to work at all. But his father won’t allow him to live as he pleases, so Lucetta pleaded with Martin for a place for him. Apparently, he does his work fairly well. There’s also a cousin, John Powell, who works for Martin as a business prospector and construction manager on the frontier. Another ne’er-do-well, but he seems to have a knack for finding good locations for the new stores and creating enthusiasm among the towns where they’ll be sited. He was there for Lucetta’s funeral, completely drunk. That fact did not make its way into the newspapers, but I have a few sources of my own.”
“John Powell doesn’t sound like a particularly Italian name.”
Mr. Salazar smiled wryly. “His father was an Irishman. Only tolerated by the Gambarelli family because he had the good grace to die soon after marrying Powell’s mother. That left the boy to be brought up in Domenico’s household, where he was known as Giancarlo.”
“I tend to forget that you worked in the Gambarelli store,” I remarked. “You must know them all quite well.”
“I do. Alex and Jacky are as fine a pair of Sicilians as you’d wish to find. And yet for all their connections, they never realized that Lucetta had taken a lover right under their noses, in the store itself.”
That made me sit up straighter. “You knew about Lucetta’s—peccadilloes.” I also noted that he had used her given name rather than refer to her as Mrs. Rutherford.
“Yes, I did. I was the general manager of the store, and not much escaped me. I wish I’d known Martin better before he met Lucetta because I’d have warned him off her—but it took us a while to become friends. My wife says Martin’s the sort of man who reveals himself to you in layers, each more interesting than the last.”
She was right about that. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had a wife. And here you are risking your good name and deserting your home for my sake. Do you have children?”
He smiled, and the transformation of his face from its usual saturnine watchfulness was so dramatic I couldn’t help smiling in return. “Two girls and a boy. They and my Leah are everything to me.”
“She must be an understanding woman,” I said. “I don’t suppose you get home much, what with the store and the investigation.”
“She likes Martin.” He shrugged. “He’s an enlightened and generous employer, and free of the usual prejudices about Jews. I did not encounter such respect and consideration at Gambarelli’s.”
“Who was Lucetta’s lover there?”
“One François Godin, a Frenchman, as you’d guess by the name. Only he calls himself Frank Gorton at work. He’s the chief buyer and, as such, travels frequently. His mastery of European languages makes him valuable to the Gambarellis, and besides, he’s a talented man.” Mr. Salazar’s heavily lidded eyes held a trace of irony. “And if you’re going to ask whether I think he killed Lucetta, I doubt it. I got the distinct impression that his, let us say, friendship with Lucetta was based on mutual pleasure rather than passionate love. One does not murder a mistress when she makes few demands, and Lucetta had no intention of leaving Martin. I can’t be sure, of course. Gorton was—is—exceptionally discreet.”
“Not discreet enough to escape your notice,” I remarked.
Mr. Salazar looked smug. “I have excellent people working for me.”
“Excellent people? Do you mean spies?”
His mouth twisted. “I suppose I do. The world of the Chicago department stores is a small one, and we all employ, ahem, assistants to keep an eye on each other. We also employ people to be our eyes and ears within our own stores. Of course, we’re usually looking for thieves and the spies of our competitors rather than for love affairs and murderers.”
“It sounds like a dirty business when you put it that way,” I said. “Not at all like Martin.”
“Even Martin can’t afford to be above employing a spy or two or paying protection money against arsonists and the like. This is Chicago, after all.”
“This is Chicago,” I echoed. “You know, Mr. Salazar, I sometimes have the impression that Lucetta has more power over Martin now than she did when she was alive. I feel as if I’m fighting against a ghost, a memory.”
“Don’t think that,” he said gently. “It’s not Lucetta who’s your antagonist now.”
“Isn’t it?” I asked, my own voice grating on my ear. “She told me—not in so many words, but she made it plain—that she would do everything she could to keep Martin. What was it she wanted to tell him that was so important she waited two hours at the store for his return? Would she have succeeded if she’d lived? If we find out the truth, might it not be even more destructive than Lucetta’s death? I’m afraid Martin may lose his fight against the noose, Mr. Salazar, but part of me is also afraid of what we may learn if he wins.”
I shut the door gently behind Mr. Salazar and made the circuit of the parlor, extinguishing the gaslights on the wall one by one. I felt I should call Alice to help me undress, but that would mean disturbing Sarah, and I could manage by myself. I had expected Tess to come out of her room during Mr. Salazar’s visit, and I opened the door to wish her a good night. The room was dark and silent, from which I deduced she had already fallen asleep.
The servant who had lit the gaslights before Mr. Salazar’s visit had also drawn the drapes. I pushed aside one of the heavy velvet panels and looked out into the street. The panes of glass were streaked with rain. April’s whips of wet, windy weather were lashing at Chicago again, not yet the storms that ushered in the warmer days, but the icy remnants of winter, raw and unpleasant. On the prairies of Kansas, where I had spent the last four years, there would be verdant growth and a few flowers, but here all I could see was mud and puddles.
The lights of the street, both moving and stationary, winked at the wet flagstones of the sidewalk. They flashed on the leather hoods of carriages and the umbrellas of the few passersby who had reason to frequent State Street on this Sabbath day. Streaks of light glittered on the churned grit that overlay the pavement, only to be obliterated and reformed by each passing carriage. A horse car rumbled past, gouts of wet mud spraying outward from under the horses’ hooves as they labored for a footing in the murk.
I stared blindly at the rain-soaked street. A tear tracked down my cheek and then another, patterning themselves on the raindrops that slid slowly down the windowpanes.
“Don’t waste your time on tears,” I told myself. “They won’t help Martin.”
And yet for a few minutes, I allowed myself the luxury of despair, wracked with half-suppressed sobs that did little to bring me relief.
16
Rebellion
“Why can’t I learn things by myself?”
Sarah stabbed her buttonhook through one of the buttonholes on her boots, a rebellious scowl on her face. “Why do I have to have lessons with Miss Baker if I don’t feel like having lessons? Maybe I’ll be tired today, or maybe I’ll want to play instead. You let me play when I’m too tired to do lessons. Why do I have to have a nasty old governess?”
My fingers were itching
to grab the buttonhook and fasten Sarah’s boots myself, but I knew there was no point in offering help. “She’s not nasty, and she’s not old,” I said. “And you won’t have that many lessons. Miss Baker says that a child your age should spend more time in play than in sitting in a chair. And she’s friends with lots of other governesses and nursemaids. They meet up in a park together sometimes so that their children can play together. They organize games for them.”
“I don’t like ornized—organized games.” Sarah’s face was red from her efforts to hook the difficult top button. “I like playing games by myself.”
“You like running around with other children in the park.”
“That’s different. They do everything I tell them to.”
I sighed. Sarah was much too used to getting her own way. There had been a time when our day was carefully divided into learning time and playtime, but that routine had been dropped before Martin and Lucetta had visited us in September. And then there had been Martin—and Judah—and all the arrangements needed to move our lives to Chicago. Somehow I had found myself making more and more concessions to Sarah’s wishes. After all, she was only a little girl and I, her mother, had not lived up to my own ideals of an ordered life.
“You’ll like Miss Baker’s games. Isn’t it nice that she’s English?”
“Why can’t I have an American governess?” Sarah stood up and looked critically at her buttoned boots. “Americans are better than foreigners.”
“Well, she’s English-American. She’s an American citizen.”
“She talks funny. I don’t like the way she talks.”
“You’ll get used to her. Now are you ready? Let me brush your hair again. You want to make a good impression for your first day of lessons.”
Sarah narrowed her jade-green eyes at me but then thought better of whatever it was she was about to say. Good children did not talk back to their elders and betters. “My hair is fine, thank you, Momma,” she said with icy dignity.
With Sarah settled—depending how you looked at it—and Tess visiting her family yet again, I was free to take coffee with Elizabeth and regale her with my woes.
“If you’d seen Sarah this morning, pretending not to know arithmetic she mastered months ago, you’d have more sympathy.” I bit into a petit four from the plate Elizabeth had insisted on ordering. “She seemed to have lost all her wits and some of her manners.”
“She’s doing it on purpose,” Elizabeth said airily, stirring cream and sugar into her coffee. “It’s not generally easy to settle a child in with a governess, especially a small child.”
“I’m not sure if a governess is quite American,” I mused. “It seems so undemocratic not to send her to a school. I never had governesses. I went to a dame school when Grandmama wasn’t teaching me, and then to a young ladies’ academy.” And spent much of my time looking out of the window when I wasn’t in danger of the teacher seeing me and hitting my hand with a ruler.
“You know very well why it’s not a good idea to send Sarah to school.” Elizabeth picked up a tiny cake dusted with cocoa powder and disposed of it in three elegant bites, her eyes gleaming. She had rather a sweet tooth. “So stop fretting about your choice. Your anxieties are communicating themselves to your child and making her nervous and mischievous. Have you spoken to her about Mr. Rutherford?”
“Of course not.” I took too large a sip of my black coffee, which burned my tongue. “She’s far too young to understand.”
“But old enough to know that you’re worried about something, so she’ll be worried too. I imagine you hovered over her when Miss Baker arrived, didn’t you?”
I thought back over the events of the morning. “I imagine I did, just a little.”
“Well, then. Mother always turned her back on me the moment anyone arrived to take charge of me. When I was not much older than Sarah, she put me in the care of a Frenchwoman and ordered her to speak only French to me. As soon as I saw her, I would begin to cry and scream, but Mother would leave the room. Naturally, I calmed down once I had no audience. Except for the time when I put a cicada in Mademoiselle Néry’s pocket and she whipped me, we got on quite well in the end. My French is excellent.”
“But to leave her alone with a stranger, and Tess not there either.” I sighed. “I’ve been Tess’s sister in practice for so long that I can’t get over her having real sisters—ones who want to see her all the time.”
“Poor Nell.” Elizabeth selected a petit four covered in pink icing and put it on my plate. “Try that—they’re the best ones. You’re feeling bereft, aren’t you? But don’t worry. Your little birds will come home to roost once you’ve made your nest at Aldine Square.”
“It’s too pink.” I put the cake on Elizabeth’s plate and watched as she ate it. “Besides, I promised Sarah we would eat luncheon together as a treat after her morning with Miss Baker.”
Elizabeth put her hand to her head in mock exasperation. “Really, Nell, you indulge that child far too much.”
Elizabeth and I compensated for the petits fours with a brisk walk in Lake Park. By the time I returned to our rooms, I was looking forward to my luncheon with Sarah. I was sure Elizabeth was right. Sarah—who was generally at ease with grown-ups—would be chatting away to Miss Baker as she always did.
I was wrong. I knew I was wrong the moment I opened the door and Sarah, red-eyed and runny-nosed, catapulted out of her chair and came to a halt in front of me. Behind her, Miss Baker rose to her feet more slowly.
“I want milk and ham, Momma. She says I can’t have any.”
A qualm assailed me. Had Miss Baker whipped Sarah? Was she planning to deprive my child of food? I glared at her. She was a brown-haired, brown-eyed young woman with no particular beauty to recommend her, but I’d found her appearance pleasing. Now I looked for signs of incipient cruelty.
Still, Sarah was not to get away with being impolite. “Is Sarah in trouble?” I asked Miss Baker, and to my daughter I said, “Don’t say ‘she,’ darling. That’s rude. Kindly address or refer to your governess as Miss Baker.”
“Will you tell your Mama what you did?” Miss Baker rubbed a region on the anterior part of her anatomy.
Sarah’s mouth clamped into a straight line. “My mother is not my Ma-MAH. She’s my Momma. She’s American, like me.”
I was beginning to suspect that the fault may not all lie on Miss Baker’s side and fixed my daughter with a stern eye. “You are being insolent, Sarah Amelia Lillington. It’s not your place to criticize Miss Baker’s speech. And kindly don’t try to divert my attention away from yourself.”
“Yes, Momma.” Sarah’s rosebud mouth pinched itself into a tight button of resentment.
“And tell me why Miss Baker is proposing you do without your luncheon.” I darted forward and wiped Sarah’s nose with my handkerchief, then nodded at her to speak.
Sarah turned toward Miss Baker and dropped a half curtsey. “I’m sorry for critishing your speech, Miss Baker.” She turned back to me, and her face, still mutinous as she looked at the governess, transformed into the very picture of wide-eyed innocence.
“I just left some marbles on the floor by accident, Momma. I forgotted them. I didn’t even think Miss Baker would slip on them.”
Her tongue sought the side of her mouth, pushing out the skin of her cheek in a prominent bump. I knew that bump. It meant she was lying. On the few occasions when Sarah told an untruth, her tongue inevitably gave her away. I’d never troubled to inform her of that useful piece of knowledge. A mother had to have some advantages.
“That’s a lie, isn’t it?” I asked her, keeping my voice even. “Don’t try to tell me otherwise, young lady.”
I turned to face the governess. “So going without luncheon is her punishment?”
“I had bread and water in mind, Mrs. Lillington. I don’t generally make a young child go hungry, nor do I use the switch on children under eight.”
I nodded. “It’s an eminently fair punishment. And those
marbles are to be locked in my bureau until further notice.”
Ignoring the trembling of Sarah’s lower lip, which had a slightly theatrical quality to it, I retired to my bedroom and rang the bell for Alice. I now had nobody to eat luncheon with, but I should change out of my walking dress anyway. I unpinned my hat, and then I sat down on my bed and put my face in my hands.
Elizabeth was undoubtedly right. Sarah must have some idea that something was wrong in my life, and that was enough to shake the foundations of a small child’s world. And Tess was frequently absent and not her usual, cheerful self much of the time. Was Sarah’s prank—I couldn’t believe a five-year-old child would deliberately set out to hurt someone—a result of her sensitivity to my moods?
However I tried to excuse her though, some small and selfish part of me saw Sarah’s rebellion as yet another desertion. A well-deserved one, perhaps. A memory surfaced of my workroom in Kansas. The day Martin had come back from riding across the plains, we had all been so happy and comfortable together. But just minutes later, my world had turned upside-down with the realization that I loved Martin Rutherford. Nothing had been the same ever since. The train of events that would lead me to Chicago was put in place. This collision course was due largely to my selfish stupidity when I was a spoiled, flirtatious girl with no thought for the future.
And now I was separated from Martin by the walls of a jail. I was divided from Tess by her competing loyalties. And I was trying to steer the right course with a child too young to understand the social consequences of her illegitimacy and the preoccupations of her adults. The allies of the last six years were drawing away from me, and for a moment I felt that the whole world was ranged on one side of a divide, with me on the other.
17
Aldine Square