It was not what I expected. Not at this hour. Not from this man. Not so soon after we’d met.
For a few moments, while the tall-case clock ticked away the seconds in the corner, I wondered how to respond.
As it turned out, I didn’t have a chance.
Charity stepped into the parlor.
‘Perhaps,’ she said, her words like gunshot in the heavy silence, ‘that is a question better left to Mr Barnum rather than Evie.’
Richter stood and offered her a bow. ‘Yes, of course. I thought only to gauge Miss Barnum’s reaction to my proposal before I—’
‘Yes, of course.’ It was clear that, when the bell rang, Charity had been roused from her bed. She was enveloped in her nightgown and a white satin night jacket and had a shawl thrown around her shoulders that was a match to the lace cap tied under her chin. Her sheepskin slippers were as silent against the parlor carpet as they must have been upon the stairs. It was no wonder I’d had no warning of her approach.
She swept farther into the room, the better to intimidate Sebastian Richter. To his credit, he pretended she did.
He gave her another bow. ‘I do believe I shall be going,’ he said, as if it had been his idea all along. ‘I will call another time and speak to your husband, Mrs Barnum.’
She did not wish him a good night.
A minute later, when the front door closed behind Richter, Charity was still looking that way.
‘He’s very pleasant,’ she said and turned to me, a sly smile lighting her expression. ‘And very wealthy.’
‘And I am very tired,’ I said and finished my sherry. I had just stood to leave the room when another thought occurred to me. ‘Did you know the Withnower family back in Bethel?’ I asked Charity. ‘The children of the family were all older than me and we had no mutual acquaintances. Did you know them?’
She sniffed. ‘We would hardly socialize with their like.’
Tired or not, I could not help but laugh. ‘When we lived in Bethel, Phin sold newspapers and worked at our father’s inn. The Barnums were hardly anyone’s social superiors!’
She ran one finger along the surface of the table. ‘That may be true, but that doesn’t mean we were foolish. We wouldn’t have been friendly with the Withnowers. Maynard was a thief.’
‘He was thought to be a thief,’ I reminded her. ‘The accusation proved false.’
Her lips folded in on themselves. ‘Why do you care? What do you know of the Withnowers?’
‘I just thought perhaps you might have heard from someone back home. One of my sisters, perhaps. Have you heard that Frederick, Maynard’s son, has left Bethel and is living now in New York?’
‘Is he?’ The way she twitched her shoulders told me how little she cared, yet I could not help but notice she refused to meet my eyes.
‘You did know.’ Since she would not look my way, I moved to stand in front of Charity so she could not avoid me. ‘You knew Frederick was here in New York.’
‘What difference does it make? Or do you have your eye on him, too?’
She should have known better than to bait a tired woman who had an entire glass of sherry in her.
I propped my fists on my hips. ‘I do not have my eye on Sebastian Richter or Frederick Withnower or anyone else. Besides, I thought you approved of Richter.’
‘Oh, I do. The right sort of marriage would go a long way toward cementing our place in New York society.’
‘No one is talking marriage,’ I reminded her.
‘But you are talking about Frederick Withnower. Why? Why do you care?’
‘Why do you?’
When she studied the chandelier, I moved a step closer. ‘Come now, Charity, you look as if you’ve bitten a lemon, and I doubt you would have such strong feelings about a family you claim you barely know.’
She pressed her lips together. ‘I wouldn’t care. Not at all. Not if your brother …’ She had a way of saying the word that made it seem as if Phin were a creature from some other world, alien and thus impossible to fathom. ‘He can be foolish, and sometimes I need to remind him of such.’ She made to step toward the door, but as I stood between her and it and refused to move, she had no choice but to stay put.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked her. ‘About Phin being foolish?’
She made a tiny clicking sound with her tongue. ‘If he is seen in the company of such as Frederick Withnower, a man whose father took his own life …’ Charity sucked in a breath of horror. ‘How might it affect what people think of us?’
‘So Phin has met with Frederick?’
She gave in with a sigh that ruffled the lace on her night jacket. ‘I told him not to. I told Phin it was the wrong thing to do. But he agreed to a meeting, and Frederick came around to see Phin and ask about employment at the museum. Imagine! It’s not as if they were old friends. Yet there was Frederick, hat in hand.’
‘And has Phin offered him employment?’
‘He has not,’ Charity said. ‘Not as far as I know.’ She dismissed the topic with the wave of one hand. ‘It was months ago.’
Months ago.
I do not know what I expected, but hearing that Frederick had been at the museum long before Andrew met his end there left me feeling more exhausted than ever.
Eager for my bed, I went to the door and stopped there only when Charity spoke again.
‘But then he came back,’ she said, and I turned to see her with her head tilted, thinking. ‘Frederick came back to the museum last week. If I’m not mistaken, it was the very night Andrew Emerson died.’
My exhaustion forgotten, I closed in on her. ‘Do you know the time?’
‘Really, Evie!’ Charity swept past me and out of the parlor. ‘You set your mind on the strangest things. What difference does it make what time Withnower was at the museum? After all his family has been through, I’m surprised he hasn’t just disappeared into the wilderness so as not to cause anyone any embarrassment. And speaking of that …’
It wasn’t what she said, it was the way she said it that made me stop just as I was about to walk out of the parlor. I studied my sister-in-law as carefully as she examined me.
‘I won’t ask where you’ve been,’ she said. ‘I do not need to. I will ask you to keep in mind that your own past is every bit as shameful as the Withnowers’. You mustn’t risk your future and the future of my family with visits to places where you are no longer welcome. My goodness!’ Without excusing herself, she brushed around me and to the stairs and didn’t look at me again until she was on the steps, one hand on the mahogany bannister.
‘What on earth would happen if word got out about your past?’ she asked. ‘You don’t think a man like Sebastian Richter would come to call upon you again if he knew the truth about you, do you?’
TEN
I kept to my bed too long the next morning and was not ready to leave for the museum at my usual hour. As it happened, this was not so terrible a thing because, by the time I was up and dressed, Charity had gone out on a social call. That left me free to visit the nursery and share breakfast with the children. I cradled Walter in my lap while we ate buttery toast and drank warm milk, but nine-year-old Caroline and Helen, just two, did not seem to mind and the youngest, Frances sat with Nurse.
Walter, like the girls, had the high cheekbones of a Barnum and the same honey-toned hair and smile as Phin. His eyes, though, were a bright, fresh green and there were times, like that morning there in the sun-spilled nursery, when I could not look into them without thinking what my life might have been if I had not been forced to give up my own child.
Certainly Sebastian Richter would never have abandoned his dear Marta as James had forsaken me.
The thought crept up on me, and I must have winced for Caroline, who was just singing ‘Yankee Doodle’ for me in her high, sweet soprano, stopped.
‘Are you feeling ill, Aunt Evie?’ she asked.
‘I am fine,’ I assured her. ‘But I must get to the museum.’
‘Wil
l you see my father there?’ she wanted to know.
‘I will.’ After I kissed him on the cheek, I set Walter on his bed. ‘Shall I tell him to come up and see you when he arrives home this evening?’
Caroline pouted. ‘He’s always home too late. Just as you are. You work in the museum all day and have little time for us.’
The criticism clutched at my heart and, as much as I knew it was but the product of a child’s peevishness, I could not help but think about it all that day as I worked in my office.
If they’d been mine, I would have been more than happy to spend my days with the children and not be shut up in the confines of the museum and, if it were my decision, I would never have Nurse there for more than just those times when it was necessary to go out. We would play in the park, the children and I. We would ride ponies and pick flowers in the garden and read books like the animal tales of Edward Augustus Kendall or the fantastical stories of Hans Christian Anderson.
If I were to marry Sebastian Richter, I would have the time and his permission for such things. I would have Frida and Otto to love and perhaps be blessed with more children of my own, and I would live just across the way, where I could watch Walter and the girls grow up and they would be friends to my children.
Coming at me out of nowhere the way it did, the thoughts upended me and I sucked in a breath.
‘I do not love Sebastian Richter,’ I told myself, then laughed. I hardly knew the man well enough to know if I even liked him!
Because I was uncomfortable with my own musings, I rose and did a turn around my small office and went to the window. It was a fine afternoon and the sun shone down on the crowds out on Broadway, so many of them heading here to the museum.
But even the heartening realization that they would relinquish their twenty-five cents to us could not still the murky thoughts that overtook me – if Sebastian Richter knew my real character, if he knew about James, he would never wish to call on me.
Could I ever hope to make a life with a man if I could not find it in myself to tell him the whole truth of my past?
‘It is early days for such as that,’ I reminded myself. For all I knew, Richter had had too much brandy the night before and had not meant a word of what he had said.
I brushed the thought off. The best way to keep it gone was to occupy my hands and my mind, and I knew exactly how to do it.
My passageway was still crammed with the crates and boxes left there on Burke’s instructions, and I opened the door and dragged the nearest box inside. I might as well see what I had spent my hard-earned money to buy.
By the time another hour had passed, I’d been through not just the first crate but three of the other smallest ones besides, and they were piled there in my office, one on top of the other, their contents displayed across my floor. I would give Burke this much, he had eclectic tastes.
The worst of the hodgepodge I set aside and would let our staff look through and take with them if they so desired. There were a number of decks of playing cards, none of them unusual or interesting, and books that, as far as I could tell, were of little value. There were any number of trinkets, too, such as seashells and pen nibs and even a string of blue beads crudely made and similar to those I’d seen Burke wear.
These I picked up and thought of keeping for myself but, just considering the possibility, I could see Burke’s brazen smile and practically hear him purr, ‘Ah, I knew you’d finally have to admit I have good taste!’
‘Indeed!’ I set the beads aside and concentrated instead on the other, more interesting things I’d found in the packing crates. There was a handsome spice chest that would look good displayed in our Oriental gallery and a number of baskets artistically woven from palm leaves. They were certainly not valuable but they were exotic looking, and there was little Phin liked more than the exotic. I set these things on my desk and pulled another small crate into the office.
‘Last one for today,’ I promised myself, and I began my search.
More seashells. A wooden mask carved as a grotesque face with a wide mouth and bulging eyes. Surely Phin would love it, as he would the small replica of a South Seas islands war canoe.
The last thing in the crate was heavy and I hefted it with both hands. It was a little more than a foot long and shaped like a paddle with large areas of geometric incising all around its cylindrical handle. I could not help but smile when I wondered how many other young ladies in the city of New York would recognize a Tongan pakipaki when she saw it, and I supposed I had Phin to thank for that; the museum had a collection of South Seas islands battle clubs.
‘It seems you have very good taste when it comes to some things.’ It was easy to compliment Burke when he wasn’t there. Perhaps when he returned – if he returned as he had so ominously put it – he would see this war club on display with our others.
No sooner had I set the club down on my desk than a thought hit and knocked me into a cocked hat.
‘A South Seas island war club,’ I murmured to myself, and I took off into the museum.
It was not so easy to get to our display as I’d hoped. In the days since, word had gone around about Andrew’s death, and there is nothing that draws a crowd as much as tales of a mysterious murder. Our establishment was even more busy than usual, and I had to excuse myself through crowds of visitors. If any of them thought it odd when I opened the glass case and took out an armful of war clubs, they never said a thing. But then, this was the American Museum and they expected spectacle the moment they were through the doors.
The clubs were heavy and awkward, and when I came upon Bess Buttle in the back passageway that led to my office, I enlisted her help. Together, we went inside and set them down. I closed the office door behind us.
‘You’re fixin’ to start a fight of some sort?’ she asked, her beard twitching.
‘Hardly.’ I lifted the first club, a short instrument that I knew could be thrown at an opponent. If it hit, it was heavy enough to cause serious harm. ‘But I was thinking.’
‘About these here odd things.’
‘War clubs.’ I tried the next. ‘You see, this one has a blunt tip. It’s used for smashing small bones.’ I swung it at Bess but stopped short of hitting her. This did not keep her from pressing a hand to her heart and backing up against the door.
‘I could break your arm with this,’ I told her, putting the club safely on the desk so she no longer needed to feel in peril. ‘But if I hit you on the head with it, it would crush your skull, not make a nice, neat hole.’
Her eyes grew wide. ‘Like the head of the poor unfortunate young man what was killed here.’
‘Exactly.’ I tried the next weapon, but it, too, had the wrong shape, as did all the others arrayed upon my desk. I stood back, fists on my hips. ‘It isn’t here,’ I said.
Bess stepped up beside me. ‘It … isn’t …’
‘I am not intimately familiar with every item we display,’ I told her. ‘But I am willing to wager that we had a war club that is called …’ I thought about it for a moment. ‘A totokia, yes, that’s it. It has a handle, you see, like this one.’ I lifted one of the clubs for Bess to see. ‘But instead of a flat head, it has what looks to be a large acorn on the end of it. Round at the base.’ With one hand, I outlined the shape of the weapon as I did my best to describe it. ‘But with a sharp, pointed end. It’s designed to drive a neat hole through an enemy’s skull.’
Bess sucked in a breath. ‘And you think …’
‘That the totokia we had on display is now missing. I do believe it was used to murder Mr Emerson.’
‘And no wonder the constable never noticed,’ Bess said. ‘I mean, aside from the fact that the man was a pudden-head. Who would think of an instrument such as that!’
‘I never did, not until now,’ I admitted, though I did not point out I never would have if not for Burke.
‘What does it tell us?’ Bess wanted to know.
This, I couldn’t say. Not for certain. My arms crossed
over my chest, I leaned back against the desk to think.
‘That the assailant did not come prepared. That is one possibility,’ I said. ‘He used a weapon close to hand.’
‘And took it along with him.’
This, too, seemed a fact since the totokia was not in the display with the other weapons.
‘But why?’ I wondered.
‘Knew it was valuable? Wanted it as a sort of memento?’ Though she was the one who suggested it, the thought did not sit easy with Bess and she twitched it away. ‘If he was some ruffian off the streets he may have thought he could use it again.’
‘We will never know,’ I admitted. ‘But at least I can tell Phin about the totokia and he can tell the constable. If they could find the weapon—’
‘They would find the murderer what caused that young man to make a die of it.’
‘I will talk to Phin right now.’ I stood and crossed the office. ‘He can send a message around to the constable.’ I paused, my hand on the doorknob. ‘That way we can—’
When I pushed the door, it didn’t budge. I gave off talking and tried it again.
The door didn’t move.
‘It’s as if …’ I put my shoulder to the door and pushed but it did not yield. ‘It’s as if there’s something right up against it,’ I told Bess. I had just stepped back to consider my options when the first curls of smoke snaked under the door.
I simply stared at the thick, gray smoke, too stunned to speak.
Bess had no such problem.
‘Fire!’ Her voice itself was like an alarm, high and shrill. She grasped my arm in both hands and gave me a fierce shake. ‘It’s a fire! And we are trapped!’
She was afraid enough for the both of us. I suppose that is why my voice was calm and my steps sure when I rounded the desk. ‘We will call out for help,’ I told her and opened my window. On the street below there were people coming and going and one woman was nearest. I could see the top of her bonnet, the sweep of her cloak and a flash of green from her gown when she stepped to the street.
Smoke and Mirrors Page 12