by Jane Steen
I felt suddenly uncomfortable in the large, luxurious room with its hidden furnishings, an intruder in this world of power and wealth. Of course I was a rich woman, thanks to Martin, but would I ever be part of the society that built this kind of house and commissioned this kind of portrait? After Martin’s arrest, I had sidestepped society, removing myself to its fringes to play the role of an ordinary dressmaker. Was I doing that for Martin . . . or myself?
Martin’s portrait told me, as his words never could, how much he had grown away from the Martin Rutherford of Victory. I had thought so when I’d first seen him in Kansas after a gap of more than three years. And then I’d fallen in love with him, and the acknowledgement of that love between us had seemed to bring me close to him again. His touch, his kiss, his concern for me had bridged the gulf between the Martin of then and the Martin of long ago. I had thought of little more than the practical matters that held us separate, his marriage as the barrier that kept us apart by law.
“But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?” I spoke the words out loud in the parlor, and they were absorbed and dampened by the plush surfaces around me. No wonder I was having trouble reaching Martin now—I had never had what he had lost, the riches and the position in society. Until Lucetta’s murder, he had led a life of which I had never even dreamed.
“How am I supposed to fit into all of this, Martin?” I gestured at the room, speaking to the painting, tears pricking at the back of my eyes. “Look at you—you and she together, fitting into society, belonging to it. I am Nell Lillington of Victory, the daughter of a feed merchant and the mother of an illegitimate child. Whatever my antecedents and my good manners and my—my—deportment,” I spat out the word, “you’ve left the sort of person I am behind you. Is that why you no longer look at me as a man looks at a woman he loves? You know I’m not right for you. She was, but I’m not. You’ve been trying to send me away, and I’ve been too stupid to see it.”
I clenched my fists, trying to get a grip on the trembling in my arms, and turned away from the portraits. I had just begun to recover myself when the housekeeper entered.
“Are you ready, Madam? I’ve opened all the cupboards and cabinets for you. Would you like me to help you remove the dresses? Some of them are heavy.”
“No, I’ll be fine.” I forced a smile to my face. “Thank you.”
She turned, and I followed her. Well, I thought, I could at least finish the job Martin had sent me to do. A menial, degrading job—sending in the potential mistress to search the most intimate possessions of the wife. The rival who would always have defeated me, if she’d lived. Perhaps even now, in death, she had the upper hand.
30
Burdens
I had been searching for two hours, and I was weary. Lucetta had a great deal of clothing. Too much, in my opinion. It was crammed into every available space. Every drawer was so full it barely shut, every closet overloaded with dresses crushed against each other. I wondered at it and asked the housekeeper when she arrived with a cooling drink.
“Why didn’t Mrs. Rutherford’s maid go through her dresses regularly?” I gestured at the pile on the bed. “Some of these are out of date. I can’t imagine why Mrs. Rutherford would want to keep a dress cut for two seasons ago instead of giving it to her maid or a less wealthy relative.”
“Don’t blame her maids, Mrs. Harvey.” The housekeeper shook her head solemnly. “Trudy, the one she had before, was always asking to clean out her closets. Even that Nicolina, although an impertinent, headstrong girl in my opinion, knew her job. Mrs. Rutherford had a real aversion to giving her things away. Once she owned something, she hated to part with it.”
I sighed. “She could at least have given them to her dressmaker to remake. I can’t see how she’d have worn them once they were out of fashion.”
“No more she did, Madam.” The housekeeper smoothed a hand over a paletot cut for the larger bustle of two years ago, in blue velvet trimmed in silver fox fur. “I don’t suppose it ever occurred to her to reuse things. She’d complain sometimes that she didn’t have enough space.”
Lucetta’s bedroom, boudoir, and dressing room were almost the size of my house. I gritted my teeth.
“And everything mixed up so,” I said. “The old dresses among the new—I find that so odd. I thought at first that I could start with the newer dresses, as that would make sense, but see? I’m sure this is from this year, and it was right at the bottom of the pile.”
“Sometimes she would have the maid get things out and then put them back in any order, Madam. She’d spend hours looking at her gowns, even the old ones.”
“Well, I’ve searched through everything on the bed,” I said. “Perhaps you’d be better off not trying to return them to the closets, but packing them up.” I looked up at her from where I was stooping to get at the boots thickly crowding the bottom of the closet and spoke tentatively. “I don’t suppose Mr. Rutherford will care to see them again.”
She gave me a long look. “I don’t suppose he will,” she said. “The poor man.”
Her words were ambiguous. Was Martin a poor man because he had been widowed, or because he had been married to Lucetta? It was hard to discern where her loyalties lay. But she hefted a pile of walking dresses into her thick, muscular arms and carried them out of the room.
I had found precisely two pieces of paper. One was torn from a newspaper advertisement for hats. The other was a folded visiting card of Martin’s, his name looking oddly sharp and clear against the white stock. And I’d found two nickels and a dime, a lace handkerchief, and a broken toothpick.
I didn’t blame her maids for not emptying every pocket. Dressmakers, as I well knew, tended to sew pockets where they could hide them among the trimmings rather than putting them in an obvious place as they did with men’s clothing. Many women, myself included, preferred hidden pockets to the decorative ones you could buy to pin or tie to your skirts. Their existence was something of a hallmark of good dressmaking.
At least my discoveries proved that, as the housekeeper had suggested, nobody had yet searched through the clothing with the thoroughness that was needed.
I finished looking at the boots, leaving them on the floor by the bed, and turned to the next closet. It overflowed with silks, fine wools, gauzes, and rich brocade. Everywhere I saw ruffles, embroidery, fringes, and buttons. Lucetta’s dresses were fashionably overloaded with detail. With all the doors open, I was surrounded by the scents of lavender and cedar from the bags of dried flowers and shavings that guarded against moths. Above those earthier notes, I could detect wisps of Lucetta’s own gardenia scent, a powerful sweetness that yet contained something sharper and more feral, a musk that clung tenaciously to some of her dresses. It was stronger here than in the last closet, I thought. I surveyed the dresses, wondering where to start.
A gleam of gold caught my eye, startlingly clear against the dark brown of the closet’s cedar lining. Martin had said Lucetta had worn gold the last time he’d seen her, at the Santo Stefano dinner given by her father. I shoved hard at the surrounding dresses and extracted the golden gown from a mass of gauze that belonged to another ball gown. It was remarkably heavy, a fact explained by the long train at the back and the richness of the brocade.
I shook it out a little to loosen the creases and held it up, turning it so that I could see it from all sides. It was possibly the most spectacular creation I had ever seen. The more I looked at it, the more my dressmaker’s heart wept that such a glorious work of art had not been more cherished. Particularly since, if I was any judge, it had only been worn once. It was of a cut that not only followed the latest fashion, but anticipated it.
The gold brocade was figured in a pattern of roses and rosebuds on a pale gold silk, the flowers showing a brighter gold so that the dress would catch and throw back any source of light. The lining and underskirt were of the subtlest pale amethyst. There was gold lace at the neck and cuffs to match the tiers of lace that outlined the overski
rt. The train was so wide and heavy that as Lucetta walked, it would have spread out behind her like a peacock’s fan. It was an evening dress of the grandest kind, and only a court dress could have outshone it.
I laid it lovingly on the bed and inspected the lining of the bodice. With a pang of strange, poignant avarice, I found the proof I’d been half expecting—a gold silk label embroidered with the words “Worth – 7. Rue de la Paix. Paris.” So Mr. Worth really did put his name inside his creations. The peculiar notion brought a smile to my face, imagining “Lillington – Chicago” in its place.
I turned back toward the closet, wondering whether Lucetta had more than one gold dress or whether this was really the one she’d worn the day after Christmas. But the recent cut of the dress tempted me to believe it had to be the one. I shoved the other dresses to one side and spread the gown out as much as I could on Lucetta’s high four-poster bed.
Yes, it had been worn. I could see where the hem had been brushed free of dirt, and a small spot of grease on the bodice had been almost entirely removed, probably by using a paste of saleratus. It wouldn’t show unless you were looking for it.
Now that I saw the dress laid out flat on its back, there was something odd about the way the bodice met the overskirt. I unbuttoned the bottom of the bodice and turned back the panels, frowning.
Yes, somebody, presumably Lucetta’s maid, had altered the dress by letting out the sides of the bodice a little and easing the fit of the skirt. The lining hid the seams, but I could feel that they were too slender. Some seams could even give way if the dress was worn too often. I could see that the lining had been unpicked and resewn to give access to the seams.
For a few minutes, I was frozen in place by my swirling thoughts. Mrs. Fairgrieve had suggested something impossible, and this dress confirmed it. For who would alter a Worth dress, presumably made at the start of the season? A dress made to fit the wearer exactly. Unless that wearer needed more room for a belly that had grown since the dress was made.
I could be wrong, of course. A woman’s figure did change, especially as she grew older. I suspected that Lucetta might even be a little older than the age the newspapers had given. At least four years older than Martin, at any rate. But to change so much between the confection of a new dress and the wearing of it . . .
I rarely swore, but I did now. It was the thought of telling Martin that tormented me.
I ran my fingers around the top of the skirt, noting that the train was not detachable, as they often were, but securely sewn. This was not the dress of an economical woman, but of one who liked to look perfect. There would probably be considerable reinforcement on the underneath of the amethyst silk that lined the train and the swag that both hid and drew attention to the most salient portion of the wearer’s rear anatomy. All investigations aside, I owed it to myself as a dressmaker to find out how Worth did it. Five minutes of enjoyment would be a reasonable return for these hours of unpleasantness.
I slid my arms underneath the dress and turned it over, then gathered the heavy train up and turned it inside out. The reinforcing was cleverly done and must have taken hours, even days. I smiled as I ran my hand over the back of the skirt—and then frowned. My fingers had encountered a small, hard lump inside the skirt, about the size of a coin purse.
I turned the dress over again and rummaged inside, then yelped and withdrew my hand, sucking at the tiny blossom of blood that was welling up on my middle finger. Surely, Worth hadn’t left a pin inside the skirt.
I sucked my finger until the bleeding stopped, then returned to my investigation—a little more cautiously. A few moments’ work revealed that the pin had been used to secure the chain of a tiny object. It was not exactly a coin purse, but one of those very small compartment purses a lady would take to a dance, designed to loop over the wrist with a chain while dancing. It was probably solid gold, and set with amethysts—almost certainly purchased to match the dress, which was why it was pinned inside. I couldn’t imagine who’d want to pin a purse inside the skirt when the dress was put away, rather than in the more sensible location at the back of the neck if it were desired to keep the two items together. Still, it would have been Lucetta’s maid who did it rather than Lucetta herself.
I sat down in a fragile-looking chair and fiddled with the purse. It had the usual fittings—slots for nickels and dimes, a hinged clip for holding a dance card, and a mirror. The mirror was set in its own frame and could be raised to reveal a not-so-secret compartment, useful for secreting billets-doux. Which was exactly what the compartment held.
The writing was bold and slanting, almost as if the writer were overconfident of himself. It said, simply, “You look very beautiful tonight. G.”
“What’s wrong?” Martin asked practically the moment I walked through the door of his hotel suite.
“Why should something be wrong?” I replied tartly. I was thoroughly out of sorts by the time I had taken my leave of Martin’s housekeeper, his house, and the ghost of his wife. Still, I doubted Martin would understand. I’d asked the housekeeper to make my excuses to Joe, walked west at a fast clip until I encountered the Clark Street horse car, and ridden north unaccompanied. I had arrived at the Grand Pacific overheated and in a superbly bad temper. Fortunately, I'd happened upon the friendly concierge so was spared a public declaration that I intended to proceed to Mr. Rutherford’s rooms alone.
Martin opened the inner door to admit me into his parlor, stepping back a pace and folding his arms to look at me. It was six in the evening, and the gaslights were already lit to allow him to continue working. The harsh yellow light threw the shadow of his beaky nose across his face and struck gleams from his pale hair.
“Something’s definitely wrong,” he said. “Where’s Joe?” He looked around as if he expected Joe Salazar to appear from the floor, like a stage demon. “Didn’t he bring you?”
“He didn’t know I was leaving. As far as I know, he’s still busy with the Pinkerton people.”
“You came up here by yourself? How?” Martin looked more closely at my face. “Never mind how. You clearly managed just fine on your own, you’re in a very bad mood, and you’re hungry.”
“I’m not hungry.”
My stomach interjected its own opinion on a bass note that could be all too clearly heard. Martin walked to the wall and pushed the service button.
“We’ll have some supper.”
“It’s probably highly improper,” I said sullenly.
“To blazes with the proprieties.” Martin smiled suddenly. “To be quite honest, the thought of being able to eat a quiet supper with you is a pleasure made all the sweeter for being totally unexpected.”
I turned away, annoyed at the blush I felt rising to my cheeks—particularly in view of what I’d been thinking when I looked at those paintings. I stalked to a plushly upholstered settee and seated myself, resisting the temptation to scratch under the top edge of my corset where the damp heat of my clothing was the most irritating. It infuriated me suddenly that Martin should assume I wanted nothing more than to be with him—all the more because it was true.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” Martin sat down in a chair opposite me. “You’re tired and hungry, that’s clear, but it’s something more than that. Something’s shaken you. What is it?”
Did Martin really have to walk around inside my thoughts and feelings as if I were some sort of glasshouse, and make himself so thoroughly at home? I breathed hard through my nose for a moment. Then I plunged my hand inside my reticule and brought out the small gold-and-amethyst purse.
“Do you recognize this?”
Martin shrugged. “No.”
For a moment, relief overcame me. Perhaps it wasn’t Lucetta’s. But then I remembered that the note was only one of the things I needed to tell him.
We were interrupted by the arrival of a hotel employee. He took Martin’s order of white fish and fried chicken with a perfectly impassive face, not looking at me. Martin, perhaps a l
ittle distracted himself, had forgotten to consult me but had automatically ordered my favorite dishes. Somehow that made me angrier.
“Isn’t this Lucetta’s?” I asked when the servant had gone, holding out the purse again. Martin took it, turning it around in his fingers.
“It looks like it could be. It’s the sort of thing she’d own.” He looked up at me. “It’s been some time since I paid any attention to what Lucetta wears—wore.”
“You did remember that she wore gold to the Santo Stefano dinner,” I reminded him, not without a hint of acid. “You said she shone under the lights like treasure.”
Martin looked blankly at me and then at the purse again.
“A gold Worth brocade dress with gold lace and an amethyst lining.” My voice reflected my growing irritation. “Don’t tell me I spent all that time on the wrong dress. This was pinned inside it.”
“I do remember.” Martin sounded almost surprised. “She put this in my pocket for a few minutes while she went to the retiring room.”
There could have been no better way to put the finishing touch on my vexation than by recounting this little piece of marital intimacy. I leaned forward and snatched the purse out of Martin’s hands, opening it and extracting the note.
“This was inside.”
Martin unfolded the paper and read it. “‘You look very beautiful tonight. G.’” He looked at me, puzzled. “It’s fairly anodyne. Given Lucetta’s . . . nature, it’s reasonable to assume that men paid her many compliments.” He frowned. “I do seem to recognize the writing though.”
“Do you suppose it could be Frank Gorton’s?” Treacherously, my body chose that moment to recall that Martin’s fingers had brushed against mine when I’d taken the purse, and how that had felt. I clenched my fist around the tiny purse, closing it with a snap.