I tightened my hold on Phin’s arm. ‘Jeffrey?’ I asked.
Phin is a cagey businessman. That does not mean he is not an open book to those of us who know him well. When the corners of his mouth thinned, I suspected the news wasn’t good. ‘He came to the door last night and told us you were in a hired carriage, wounded and bleeding. We were worried about you, Evie, and Jeffrey didn’t tell us that he’d been injured as well.’ His expression clouded. ‘By the time we had you settled and came back to him … well, there was a great deal of blood and nothing we could do. It was too late.’
Hot tears stung my eyes and I did not brush them away. ‘He saved me, Phin. He fought off my attacker and he somehow …’ Again, as if it would help me fill in the missing pieces of all that had transpired, I glanced around the room. ‘He brought me here. He must have located the carriage I had left waiting. I only wish …’
It did not matter what I wished and Phin knew it. He patted my hand, then, as if he was afraid I might take flight, he wound his fingers through mine. ‘What is going on, Evie? You must tell me. First the fire at the museum and now this terrible assault—’
‘And my carriage being shot at.’ Phin did not know the story, so I relayed it and apologized. ‘I know I should have told you but I didn’t want you to worry. As to why …’ I waited for another sip of water and, when I was done drinking, I pulled in as much of a breath as I was able to considering that I was swaddled around the middle with bandages.
‘I think it is because of Andrew Emerson,’ I told my brother. ‘For I can think of no other reason, nothing that I’ve done that would cause someone to want to silence me. You see, I have been looking into the matter of Andrew’s death.’
My brother, unshakable and composed in the face of everything from horridly deformed oddities to specimens of mummies and the bodies of dead animals, went ashen. ‘That cannot be!’ he announced. ‘Evie, you cannot—’
‘But I have been, because, you see, when Andrew came to see me that day at the museum, he asked for my help. From what I have learned since, I think it was because of Madeline, Madeline and … and James, but I never gave Andrew the chance to tell me. I was so worried that just by talking to him I might somehow reveal the reason I’m really here in New York. So concerned about my own reputation and my own secrets, I made excuses and sent him on his way. He came back that evening. No doubt to plead with me again. And it cost him his life. I owe him this at least, Phin, to find the truth behind his murder. So yes, I have been talking to people and asking questions, for, unlike the constable, I was not convinced that Jeffrey was the killer. Jeffrey can be …’ I swallowed the lump in my throat. ‘He could be quick to anger but Jeffrey did not hold onto his rage for long. He wouldn’t have killed Andrew hours after assaulting him there before the Feejee Mermaid. When I found Jeffrey on Water Street, he told me as much and I believed him. He told me he didn’t do it.’
‘And now he is dead and cannot help us.’ Phin hung his head. ‘And the constable tells me that, with Jeffrey’s death, he is considering the matter of Emerson’s murder to be at an end.’
‘No! We can’t let that happen. Jeffrey told me why he ran from the museum and why he kept himself hidden all this time. He saw the murder happen, Phin. He knew who did it and he was afraid!’
‘And now he cannot tell us. And you …’ Phin gave me a sidelong glance. ‘You cannot continue to look into the matter, Evie. It is too dangerous.’
‘But I must.’ Biting back a stab of pain, I propped myself against the pillows. ‘Now more than ever, Phin, I must continue to try and find a solution to the mystery. If the constable has given up looking, it means there’s a killer out there who will not be brought to justice. Not for Andrew’s murder nor for Jeffrey’s.’
Phin was not convinced, but he knew I was just as stubborn and just as determined as he was himself. He did not encourage me to continue my investigation but he did not forbid it, either, and it was just as well since I would not have listened if he had.
The next day I insisted on going to the museum and promised I would do nothing more strenuous than sit at my desk, but when I did venture out of my office to join Phin for luncheon and later to deliver an accounting of the previous days’ receipts, I did not fail to notice a man – short and slim, with a thin face and beady eyes – who was so intent on studying our displays he spent the entire day there on the second floor. Bless Phin! He would have been embarrassed to accept my thanks for providing me protection, so I did not mention it. I did, though, breathe easier.
Now if only I could determine why anyone would want to kill me!
Back in my office, the thought pounded through my head to the same staccato tempo my fingers beat upon my desk. Whoever wanted to do me harm must think I was close to uncovering the murderer and yet …
Careful so as not to disturb the wound in my side, I shifted in my chair. Fortunately my cloak and gown, along with the layers of my chemise and corset, had prevented the injury from being too serious. Still, I had been cut just below the ribs, and the wound had a way of reminding me to move slowly. I was not about to ignore the advice.
I may have been comfortable enough in my chair but it was a shame I was not so at ease with the one thought that refused to leave me in peace. Try as I might, I could not forget that when I was attacked on Sunday I had caught the scent of roses and lavender.
Yes, it was true many women wore the scent. I had been known to do so myself.
But there was only one I could think of who wore it and was intimately connected with Andrew Emerson.
A shiver skittered up my spine, but even that wasn’t enough to convince me to change my mind about what I knew I must do. Since I had promised Phin I would not stay late at the museum that day, no one questioned me when I called for my carriage a little before six. I did not check to see if I was followed by the beady-eyed man. If he trailed behind me – and I had no doubt he did – he would think nothing more than that I was off to visit a friend.
Was I?
Or was I in search of a foe who had followed me to Water Street and waylaid me?
Knowing I would not rest easy until I discovered the answer, I arrived in Chelsea a short while later and found the robin’s-egg blue door that led into Clarice’s home standing ajar. There was no one in the hallway and no young Bohemians in the studio at the back of the house, either. Clarice’s friends weren’t the only thing missing.
There was an empty space against the wall where, when last I’d visited, the William Kobieta Walker painting had stood. Without the farmyard picture and the vitality and power of the bulls in it, the room seemed chilled and empty.
‘Ah, you’ve come back!’
A voice from the doorway brought me spinning around in time to see Damien LaCrosse prop himself against the doorjamb, the better to keep upright. His long, dark hair was a-tumble over his shoulders, his shirt was open at the neck and he was in his stocking feet. ‘I knew you couldn’t stay far away from me for long.’
‘Actually, I am here to see Clarice,’ I told him. ‘I have much to discuss with her.’
He sauntered close enough for me to catch the scent of brandy and, with a tip of his head, indicated the blank space behind me. ‘That painting, you mean? Don’t tell me you’re as besotted by Walker as everyone else in this town. It seems all of New York City thinks he is a genius.’
‘You don’t agree? The man has a great deal of talent.’
‘The man’ – he lifted his shoulders – ‘has not one bit of talent at all, not real talent. Painting isn’t nearly as demanding as wrestling with words. Yet I hear no one singing my praises as they do Walker’s. Do they pay for my poems? Hardly, and if they did it would not be as heftily as they do for his paint daubs.’
‘You’re jealous.’
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘Though for the life of me I cannot see why. I would hate to be a painter.’ He gave an exaggerated shiver then shot me a grin that had all the heat of a winter night’s fire in it. ‘Exc
ept, of course, for the part about painting nymphs. You would pose as my nymph, would you not? I can picture you now in a sylvan setting, your hair loose and your legs bare.’
I looked beyond him. ‘Did you say Clarice was in?’
‘Clarice is …’ As if he weren’t quite sure, he turned to examine the expanse of empty room dotted here and there with easels and paintings, then turned to smile my way. ‘She has flown the nest and left me here to tend the chicks.’
‘Yet there seem to be no chicks about.’
‘Well, there’s you!’ He inched closer. ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’
‘I would like to find Clarice.’
‘Ah, Clarice!’ Damien threw back his head and laughed. ‘Oh, if you knew the truth, pretty miss.’
‘You mean about Clarice and Walker? I thought they might be acquainted. Is that why his painting was here?’
‘Acquainted.’ As if they were delicious, he rolled the syllables over his tongue. ‘They are far more than acquainted.’
‘And I am hardly interested in gossip.’
‘You would be if you knew the whole of it. You would be greedy for details, begging me to feed you every last morsel.’
‘Or you might simply tell me where Clarice has gone.’
Anyone not as peculiar as a poet might have just answered and been done with it. But Damien was a poet, after all, and if there was one thing I’d learned on my last visit, it was that he had a flare for the dramatic and a love of listening to his own voice. Rather than say anything at all, he turned and strutted to the other side of the room, and I had no doubt he knew full well that, standing there, the evening light from the windows behind him melted over his shoulders and touched his hair with golden glimmers.
‘I have a new poem,’ he said. ‘Would you like to hear it?’
I didn’t, but I did need to know where Clarice was and it looked like LaCrosse was the only one who might be able to help.
I forced a smile. ‘Of course.’
‘Ah, wise as well as pretty.’ He inched back his shoulders. ‘You must listen carefully, for it’s the best work I’ve done.’
‘That’s what you said about the last poem you recited to me,’ I told him, but Damien was hardly listening. He was too busy settling himself like an actor on the stage, his elbows bent and his hands at his waist.
He tossed his head and his voice oozed through the room, each word precise and rounded.
‘Wither do you wander, with your colors and your paints? Your hat upon your head, your scarf over your face. Wither do you travel, my fine and gorgeous dab? To farm and field, through mist. Wither do thou goest, Renaissance man and miss?’
‘Stuff and nonsense,’ I mumbled to myself before I remembered that Damien had information I needed and I could not afford to offend him. ‘It is quite the ode,’ I called across the room to him.
‘Walker is quite the painter.’
‘You said he had no talent.’
‘He hasn’t. None at all.’
More stuff and nonsense, and I was not in the humor for it.
‘Did you say where I might find Clarice?’ I asked him again.
‘At an art salon, of course.’ Damien strolled from one to the other of the paintings still displayed around the room. ‘She wouldn’t miss tonight’s festivities. They will be unveiling the new Walker painting.’
‘The bulls?’
‘Such language!’ He pretended to be outraged, but as he ended up laughing it carried no weight.
‘Why aren’t they exhibiting one of Clarice’s paintings?’ I asked.
‘Clarice’s paintings are …’ He stopped in front of the easel closest to the windows and motioned to it with one hand. It was the painting I’d seen on my first visit there, the man with iron-gray hair, and it was so lifelike as to make me feel as if his blue eyes were watching me.
‘This is one of hers?’ I asked.
‘Portraits.’ The way he spoke the word told me he wasn’t terribly impressed. ‘Clarice does them well.’
‘She does, indeed. Yet hers isn’t the painting that’s being featured at the salon tonight. Will Walker be there?’
Damien shot me a look. ‘If Clarice is there, Walker will be there.’
‘Yet he wasn’t here when I stopped in last week.’
‘Wasn’t he?’ Perhaps Damien really was surprised. Or perhaps he’d been too drunk to remember. ‘They are usually inseparable.’
‘Not so inseparable that Clarice didn’t have the freedom to enjoy an acquaintance with Andrew Emerson.’
Damien’s eyes lost their brandy sheen and he looked at me with new interest. ‘The man who died?’
‘She was angry at him.’
‘Clarice is always angry at men for one thing or another. She’s even been angry at me a time or two.’ A grin split his face. ‘Can you believe it?’
‘I believe the two of them had a falling out the very night Mr Emerson was killed.’
‘And you think Clarice did it?’ Damien threw back his head and laughed. ‘That is golden. Truly. Clarice with a knife in her hand, dripping blood from every finger. Oh, I do love the image it makes inside my head. I may have to write a poem about it.’
‘She might be offended.’
‘She will think it eminently amusing. Clarice is not the murdering type.’
‘But the night Andrew died—’
‘There was a salon. There are always salons! I find them endlessly boring, but then I am intellectually superior to most of those who attend and pretend to be wise and educated and oh-so erudite. But I do remember that one because Clarice came home from dinner that evening in a foul mood and insisted that nothing would cheer her up except me coming along to the salon.’
‘And did you cheer her up?’
Damien’s eyes lit up. ‘The way I remember it, we were both cheered considerably before we even left the house.’
‘You were with her all that evening?’
Damien strolled toward the door. ‘Ask her yourself.’
‘I will.’ My words stopped him as he was about to leave the room. ‘As soon as you tell me where she’s gone.’
‘Eighth Street.’ He disappeared into the hallway with its painted walls, and from there up the stairway. ‘Marie Gradeau’s on Eighth Street, of course. It is where all the artists go to be seen.’
Damien was right. All creation seemed to be at Marie Gradeau’s elegant townhouse and I suppose it was just as well. There was such a crush at the door, no one questioned if I had been invited.
I slipped in behind a woman in a gown of ivory and a man whose mustache was so long it curled along the sides of his cheeks and, once inside, I hoped no one would notice that I was still in my daytime clothing. Around me, the soft light of the overhead chandeliers winked and blinked against satin and silk in pastel shades of pink and blue and yellow. Here and there, those young people who considered themselves Bohemians strolled through, drinks and cigarettes in hand, wrapped in Persian robes and draped with paisley shawls, doing their best to prove how different and original they were. Though I had no knowledge of Marie Gradeau, it was obvious she was a lover of art, for the walls of her home were covered with paintings. There were portraits and landscapes and still lifes of high quality, and when I made my way through the crowd and into the parlor, I saw there was one large painting against the wall, covered with a cloth. What had Damien said? That the Walker painting would be unveiled that night? It looked as if he was right.
Marie Gradeau herself must have been the silvery-haired dowager holding court from the pink brocade chair in the corner. I did not introduce myself as doing so would have necessitated an explanation for why I was there. Instead, I watched our hostess extend her hand to guest after guest, sip her champagne, and laugh with so much abandon the diamonds at her throat sparkled.
What I did not see was any sign of Clarice.
I did two turns around the room and even stepped into the garden as it was a fine evening and there were guests ther
e as well, all of them eager – if their conversations were to be believed – to see the newest work by Walker.
‘I hear Walker’s in the house,’ one woman purred. ‘I wish he’d violate his own rule against meeting with his admirers and join us for a drink.’
‘He’s a genius,’ the man she was with reminded her. ‘Geniuses do not mix with ordinary folk.’
Perhaps he was right, because by the time another twenty minutes had passed, all I heard around me was talk of the great artist. Walker was there! He was going to make an appearance! The great man was about to reveal his latest work!
Still searching for Clarice, I went back into the parlor and, from there, followed the crowd when it snaked into the front foyer. There, a stairway led up to the second floor of the residence and all eyes were on it. One minute melted into two, and two became three, and around me I felt the crowd buzz with barely controlled excitement. Then, from somewhere in the upstairs hallway, we heard the sound of a door closing and the crowd held its collective breath.
A man stepped up to the second-floor railing and, when he waved, the crowd sent up a round of applause. I had seen Walker’s work, both at Clarice’s and at Sebastian Richter’s, and I was certainly impressed by his talent. I cannot say the same for the man himself. I am not sure what I expected. Extraordinary. Dramatic. Striking.
Hardly.
He was as a middle-sized fellow dressed completely in black. Just as Damien had mentioned in the poem I had been forced to listen to, Walker had a hat upon his head, it covered his hair completely and was pushed far enough down on his forehead to shade his eyes. Just as I had done on Sunday night to conceal my identity there on Water Street, he wore a muffler wound around his neck all the way up to his chin.
Before I had a chance to consider why the thought struck me as important, Walker lifted a hand toward the parlor and everyone turned to watch two men whisk the cloth away from his farmyard painting.
Smoke and Mirrors Page 16