The Shadow Palace

by Jane Steen

  “We-e-e-e-ll, yes, sometimes. But sometimes they just like each other as friends do. And Mr. Fletcher’s not even a friend, really. He’s a gentleman who helps with money.”

  “Oh.” Sarah was quiet for a moment and then spoke again. “Then is it the gentleman with the nice carriage who’s going to be my Poppa?”

  “Which gentleman?”

  “He has a nice shiny carriage, and he wears a tall hat. His horses are pretty brown ones with black manes and tails.”

  “Mr. Salazar?” I smiled. “No, not in the least. Mr. Salazar is a Poppa already, to three children. I don’t think Mrs. Salazar would like it if I took him away.” I put my hand gently under Sarah’s chin, lifting it so I could see into her eyes. “What on earth makes you think I’m going to present you with a father all of a sudden?”

  To my surprise and dismay, Sarah’s eyes filled with tears. “You’re gone all the time, and nearly every day I don’t see you, and nobody will tell me why. And Zofia told me courting couples like to spend time together. I was watching a lady and gentleman walk around the garden, and I asked her why they just kept walking round and round. And she said that when people are going to get married, they aren’t interested in anybody else.”

  “Oh, Sarah, darling.” I dabbed at her tears with my handkerchief and kissed her several times on her cheeks and forehead. “I’m not off spending time with a gentleman, I assure you.” I hesitated then plunged on. “You remember Mr. Rutherford?”

  “Martin?” Sarah had caught the habit of referring to Martin by his given name from me and Tess. “He’s nice. Where is he?”

  “In Chicago. But he’s been in trouble—grown-up sort of trouble. People are saying he did something he didn’t do. And he’s the best friend I have in the world, and I’m trying to find out who did those things so that Martin can be happy again.” I felt tears prick behind my eyes.

  “Is the pretty lady with the dresses in trouble too?”

  “Mrs. Rutherford? She’s in heaven, sweetheart.” I swallowed hard.

  Sarah’s eyes were as round as marbles. “In heaven? Did she get sick?”

  “Yes.” Because I wasn’t going to breathe a word about murder anywhere near my daughter. Perhaps, one day, when she was a lot bigger and Martin was happy again, I could tell her.

  Sarah threaded her dainty, slim-fingered little hands into the fringe that decorated the bodice of my dress and hummed tunelessly, watching the fringe slide over her fingers. She did this for at least five minutes, giving me a chance to wage battle against the emotions that threatened to overwhelm me. I was tired, no doubt. I was anxious about the prospect of exchanging the known rigors of Gambarelli’s for the new challenges of Rutherford’s. I was fearful that Martin would simply refuse to have me work in his store and destroy the opportunity I had so painstakingly built up.

  “Is Martin going to be my Poppa?” Sarah stopped her fidgeting and became still, resting her head once more on my bosom.

  “I don’t know.” I had to grit my teeth hard so that Sarah wouldn’t feel my chest move and know that I was crying.

  26

  Spy

  “I’d like to see the General Manager, please.”

  “On what business?” The clerk who’d opened the side door of Rutherford’s in response to my persistent rapping eyed my Gambarelli uniform with well-trained indifference.

  The narrow alley in which the door was located was almost completely filled by three large drays. A host of men were unloading packages and placing them on metal ramps that led down into the basement of the store, great mouths that swallowed the merchandise whole. Their shouts and laughter rang out and bounced against the alley walls, windowless for twenty feet up and then studded on both sides with rows of utilitarian rectangles of glass.

  “To ask for a job. Please.” I didn’t quite put my foot in the door, but I thought he could see by the look on my face that I was considering it. “I’m a friend of Mr. Salazar’s wife—he’ll be pleased to see me, I assure you.” I smiled at the clerk, a bald-headed, middle-aged man whose expression was now shading toward the paternal. “I’d come during store hours, but—” I looked down at my uniform.

  “You’d better not be wasting my time.” The clerk opened the door wider and jerked his head to indicate I should step in. “I’ll take you up. I suppose I can give you the benefit of the doubt about your claim to be a friend.”

  He led me through the store, which at this early hour was bustling with employees working on the displays. Some were arriving with new merchandise to add to what was already there; others were ensuring that their area was spotlessly clean. Men on tall, stout ladders with hooks on the top worked on the walls of the central area. Their task was to refresh displays that consisted of a bolt of fine fabric hung high on the walls, cascading downward to end in a glorious artlessness of shimmering folds. Several other men, impeccably dressed, strolled around the floor with their hands behind their backs. They seemed to be checking every detail of the displays and frequently tapped a subordinate on the shoulder to offer advice or reproof.

  Ignoring the elevators, the clerk led me to a side staircase, and we climbed to the third floor, emerging onto a corridor buzzing with a different sort of energy. A purposeful hush would perhaps be the best way to describe it. Or perhaps the muted hum of a hive too busy with producing honey to pay much attention to anything else. As we passed the doors, I could see clerks at desks, muttering to themselves as they counted slips of paper and noted down totals. A huge cash office dominated a large portion of one wall. Its counters were empty except for one or two older men talking to younger people—clearly sales clerks—who were listening respectfully, nodding their heads at intervals.

  We arrived at the middle of the corridor, where a series of large, imposing mahogany doors with brass name plaques were partly open, but not enough that the activity inside was visible. The middle-aged clerk halted in front of one of those doors, the plaque reading “Mr. Jos. Salazar, General Manager,” and looked round at me.

  “What name?”

  “Mrs. Amelia Harvey.”

  I waited outside the door while the clerk insinuated himself around the side of it in a manner that barely opened it any more than it had been. He returned in a moment, a broad smile on his face.

  “He’ll see you, and welcome.” He nodded approvingly. “When you’re done, just go down to the sales floor and ask any of the floor managers to let you out.” He opened the door in an inviting manner, and I walked in.

  Joe Salazar rose to his feet as I entered. Beside him, Martin straightened his tall frame from a stooping position, where he had been inspecting two or three piles of paper on Joe’s desk. My heart engaged in a small frolicking jump as he smiled.

  “How are you, Nellie?” He left the papers he’d been studying and pulled out a chair for me. When I was seated, he retreated to the wall behind Joe’s desk, leaning against it with his arms folded.

  “Amelia Harvey,” he said with a grin. “I wonder what your mother would have said to see you using her maiden name to engage in subterfuge?”

  “She probably would have encouraged me.” I grinned back. “Mama was far braver and more daring than most people gave her credit for. If it weren’t for her illness, I’m sure she’d have had adventures of her own.”

  Martin nodded. “I gather it’s Joe you’ve come to see, not me. Is this to be a private talk?”

  “It concerns you, so no.” But I addressed myself to Joe. “I’d like to apply for a job in dressmaking.”

  Joe pushed aside the papers in front of him and leaned his forearms on the desk, hands clasped, his eyes on my face. “You wouldn’t ask such a thing without good reason. What have you found out?”

  “Nothing you probably don’t already know. Such as, for instance, that Mr. Gorton is as thick as thieves with a certain Christopher Columbus Crabb.”

  Joe’s face darkened. “I’m always surprised Gorton tolerates that conceited puppy. But, of course, what Crabb sells is inf
ormation. He began some time ago by passing along information to Alex Gambarelli about Field and Leiter’s—some of it quite valuable. Since then, he’s extended his reach so that he employs some fifteen or so spies, all clerks in other stores. Not in ours though, I’d stake my life on it.”

  “Not until now.” I tried not to look at Martin’s face. “If you’ll give me a position, I can become the sixteenth or so spy in Mr. Crabb’s employ.”

  Martin drew in his breath with a sharp hiss. “No. Don’t you realize the company that man keeps? Thugs. Brothel keepers. Women of ill repute—”

  “Such as Lizzie Allen,” I interrupted. “I’ve met her.” Gratified at the expression on Martin’s face, I didn’t give him the chance to speak. “At Gambarelli’s, of course, although I understand that she and—what was her name?—Carrie Watson shop at Rutherford’s.” I tilted my head to stare straight into Martin’s eyes.

  A faint flush tinged his cheekbones, and I rejoiced. Anything was better than the flat, pale, dead look I’d seen of late. “I don’t turn them away. I don’t turn any woman away,” he said with a certain stiffness of demeanor. “But that’s not the same as actually consorting with them, which is what you’re proposing to do.”

  I lifted my chin. “If you must know, I explicitly refused any role that would lead me into consorting with such women. What do you take me for? I offered to provide information instead. Crabb seems quite keen on the prospect—if I can get into Rutherford’s.”

  Joe had been watching us, turning his head from one to the other as we bickered, a light in his eyes. “You’d have to be good enough,” he said to me. “I can’t engage anyone who doesn’t come up to Madame Belvoix’s standards.”

  “She’s good enough,” Martin said shortly. “But I don’t agree—”

  “What you agree to is neither here nor there,” I said in my best imitation of Mama. “You can’t claim you’ve given me my independence one moment and try to restrict my actions the next.” Then, dropping my hauteur, I added: “For heaven’s sake, Martin, I’m not proposing to put myself in any kind of danger. Crabb’s provided me with a means to meet him openly, on the street, and I’ve already refused to go elsewhere with him.”

  I saw Martin’s eyes darken at that, but he said nothing. “You can give me just what information you think might be useful to Crabb,” I continued. “All you have to do is make it convincing enough.” I turned to Joe. “Who is Madame Belvoix?”

  “The terror of the dressmaking staff.” Joe’s mouth twitched as if he were trying to suppress laughter. “She’s in command of the workshops—and when I say ‘command,’ I choose my words carefully. She really is French—or at least Alsatian, which is close enough. Came here as a result of the Prussian occupation. She knows her fabrics and her techniques backward, can spot a badly cut dress from twenty yards away, and has been known to reduce a seasoned couturière to tears with a single word.”

  “She sounds delightful,” I said. “When do I meet her?”

  Joe coughed. “On Mr. Rutherford’s recommendation—since he has been kind enough to vouch for you—I could arrange a meeting for tomorrow evening at seven. You’ll have to wear one of your own gowns. But I warn you, she may start you off in a lower position than you think you deserve. Are you tolerant of humiliation?”

  I couldn’t help smiling. Much as I liked Joe, I wasn’t about to tell him about the Poor Farm. Somehow I doubted Martin had regaled him with that story. I turned so that I faced both men and confronted Martin’s exasperated expression with a challenging look.

  “I can work under any number of French tartars if it will advance our case.” I caught the look in Martin’s eyes at the word “our” and swallowed back the lump in my throat. “Besides, it’ll make a nice change from hats. I hope Madame Belvoix approves of me.”

  From Joe’s description of Madame Belvoix, I had pictured a tall, imposing Valkyrie of a woman with a commanding air and fearsome eye. What I found was a small, plump, soft-looking, grandmotherly lady who spoke in the mildest of tones. Only her eyes gave her away, steel-gray balls that remained fixed on me as I spoke. I had the impression that every inch of my person was under her scrutiny, particularly the dress I wore.

  “You are in millinery at Gambarelli’s.” It wasn’t a question. If anything, it was a criticism.

  “Only temporarily.” I knew I sounded apologetic. “I came from Kansas with my daughter in March, and I had to find a situation quickly.” I twisted Hiram’s wedding ring, now returned to my finger. Joe had told me that couturières with children were not unheard of, and however keen I was to get into Rutherford’s, seeing Sarah and Tess only once a week was becoming unbearable.

  “You wish to leave the store at four o’clock.” Again, it sounded like an accusation—and again, Joe had told me it was possible.

  “I’ll come in as early as you wish and work without a break if you want me to.” I looked hard at the little Alsatian woman, trying to impress her with my earnestness. “I’d just like to see my little girl before she goes to bed. She’s only five.”

  “Who looks after her?”

  “A spinster friend.”

  “She does not work, your friend?”

  “She’s a housekeeper. The lady of the house doesn’t mind having the child there.” It worried me, sometimes, how I’d learned to twist the truth.

  “And you live where?”

  “Near the stockyards.”

  “If she is sick, you will disappear for days on end.”

  “She’s not a sickly child.”

  “Hmph. You have only been at Gambarelli’s since March.”

  “That’s right.”

  It was dawning on me that my eagerness for the position, which had at first been due to the possibility of helping Martin, was transmuting itself into a genuine thirst. Before this interrogation, Madame Belvoix had taken me through the dress goods department and thoroughly ransacked my mind for everything I knew about fabric. I’d been dismayed to realize I didn’t know as much as I thought. Certainly not as much as this little woman. Her ability to rattle off the exact origin, designation, and qualities of bolts that had come from faraway China and Japan, India, France, Germany, or England, was encyclopedic. I longed to work with this phenomenon.

  “Well, Gambarelli’s.” Madame Belvoix dismissed her rival with a wave of her fat little hand and a genteel sniff. “You cut your dress?”

  “I cut and sewed this and many more when I had my dressmaking business in Kansas.” My two-piece was of an extremely lightweight wool, a difficult fabric to cut. It had a subtle check woven into it so that the gray was shot through with purple, and I had experimented with the effect of the checks. I had cut it so that the bias met interestingly in the middle and fell away to drape the sides of the narrow skirt before being gathered up in a series of pintucks at the rear. The bodice also used the art of the bias to make the faint purple seem to shift with my own movements.

  “Hmph.” Madame Belvoix began pinching and pulling at my clothing, looking for aberrant creases or carelessly sewn seams. She would find none.

  “Do you embroider or bead? Many of our articles are quite elaborate.” As intimate as a lady’s maid, she put her hand under my arm to indicate I should lift it and ran her finger along the seam of the armscye.

  I shook my head. “I can do both and enjoy it sometimes, but I’d hesitate to claim my work is of the quality you’d require.”

  “What you have done in the front is good.” She bent to inspect the extra insert I’d made in the front of the skirt in the shape of an inverted V, turning back the flaps thus created and fastening them with gray pearl buttons. Inside the V, I had created tiers of pintucks that flowed into the pintucked hem of the underskirt.

  “It allows me to cut the skirt narrower and still walk fast.” I put out one foot in illustration. “The fashion plates are showing quite an elongated form. Since my own figure is somewhat elongated, I can exaggerate the effect a little. This idea could be adapted for a train, d
on’t you think?” I twisted to one side to see my work.

  “Do you draw?” The gimlet eyes gleamed.

  “Yes.”

  “Then show me your idea.” The little woman turned to her neat desk and handed me a sheet of paper and a charcoal pencil.

  I almost forgot her as I worked. It was always absorbing to figure out my ideas on paper. I sketched my concept quickly, adding a separate bodice with pintucking down the sides.

  “The panels could be in a contrast fabric, and you could use a double row of pearl or abalone buttons here.” I added a note to the drawing.

  “Hmmm.” This time the noise that came from Madame Belvoix’s throat had a faintly approving sound. “You come with a strong recommendation from Mr. Salazar.”

  “I hope I’ve justified his confidence in me.”

  She gave a regal half nod. “You evidently have some sense. You may start as an assistant in cutting and piecing, and we will also have you sit in on some of the other stations. You will be allotted an hour each day to study the journals in the reading room for the first month. After that, you must find your own time, and it is imperative that you see every new journal that comes in.” She touched my skirt with a fingernail. “This dress will do, and any other day dress you have of gray, black, or dark blue—but only if the cut is recent and the trimmings restrained. You must have at least three, and do not wear the same one all week. You may have an advance on your wages to purchase the fabric at cost if you don’t have enough, and we will fabricate it at no charge.”

  I nodded, trying not to show the excitement I felt. “Thank you, Madame.”

  “Your hours can be eight till four, with twenty minutes at ten and thirty minutes at two. You must eat, as I do not employ girls who fall down with the hunger when they’re working. You will wash your hands most carefully at the start of each working session.”

  “I always do.”

  “Yes, they are clean and well kept. Your appearance and speech are good, so you may also be present on the sales floor every Thursday to help Mrs. Nippes with advising the clients.”