by Lydia Kang
“I appreciate your apology,” Tillie said. “I wish I’d heard it from Tom himself.”
“It’s best you don’t see him again,” she said firmly. Ian nodded in agreement.
“Does he . . . is he able to leave the house?” Tillie asked. “Ever?”
“Of course, he’s able. He chooses not to. We’ve asked him to walk about more to exercise his lungs and his legs. But he likes to stay in his room.”
Ian looked at her gravely. “Are you quite sure that he’s never tried to hurt another woman or one of your husband’s patients?”
“No. Well, yes. That is to say . . . he and the maid, Beatrice. I’ve caught him with her. She’s terrified of him now and keeps her distance.” She wiped her face, and when she dropped her hands, she appeared utterly exhausted. “But I simply didn’t imagine he would have the strength to take it this far. He spends most of his days taking his morphine and sleeping. And reading.” She smiled faintly. “He feeds his mind, because he chooses not to enter society.”
Tillie thought about what she’d said. She was busy delivering medicine all the time. She couldn’t possibly watch Tom all day, or even all night. Her words did not completely dispel the possibility that he was far more violent than she knew.
“Has he ever hurt you?”
“Goodness, no! He is sweet as a child could be to his mother.”
“Your husband . . . has he ever hurt Tom?”
“I think that’s enough talk for one day.” Mrs. Erikkson turned around, putting several bottles into her basket and cushioning them with crumpled newspaper. “If I don’t fetch these deliveries on time, there’ll be more fighting.” She sniffed and headed for the door. When it opened, the bright sunlight sparkled over the dust motes that arose from their movement. “Thank you for your visit. And thank you for allowing me to apologize.”
They thanked her and left. Walking slowly, they saw Mrs. Erikkson, her basket heavy with goods, glance at a paper list and sigh before starting her rounds.
“She seems miserable,” Tillie said.
“No less miserable than a lot of people on this island,” Ian noted.
The sun was beginning to sag near the horizon. “I said I would be home by dinner. They’ll be furious with me. I may never get out of that house again, not until I’m married off.”
“I’ll marry you, and then you can cause whatever mischief you’d like,” Ian said, grinning.
“Would you?” Tillie asked seriously.
“In a heartbeat,” he said and winked. But his voice was so lighthearted that it was obvious he didn’t mean it. “Say. I’ll walk you home, and I’ll make sure no one sees me when we get close.”
“Thank you.”
They said nothing while they walked up Lexington Avenue, past Beth El Synagogue, past the convent and St. Vincent Ferrer church on Sixty-Fifth Street. The silence between them stretched out while the rattle of wagon wheels, the honking of an occasional Klaxon, and the storekeepers chatting with patrons filled the void. Suddenly, Tillie said, “You know, there is one thing we’ve forgotten. All three victims had just recovered from an illness. An infectious illness. We know Lucy visited Dr. Erikkson the day she died, but what about the others?”
“You don’t still think he’s a vampire, do you? After that article you wrote?”
“No, I don’t. But we’ve seen that Dr. Erikkson has a violent streak. He became enraged when I asked about my sister. And I’m fairly sure this isn’t the first time he’s hit his wife.”
“What if . . . what if you were right earlier, and it has more to do with the illnesses themselves? The recovery? I can’t imagine why, but it’s the one thing the victims all had in common. If only we knew of a patient who got sick with an infection of some sort and went to visit Dr. Erikkson . . . then we could watch and see if he or Tom tried to hurt them.”
“If only,” Tillie said. “You can’t predict who’s going to be sick or not.”
“True.” They were silent for a long while again. Tillie liked how Ian would slow his long-legged stride to match hers, and once in a while their shoulders bumped, and their hands swished against each other’s as they crowded closer to avoid other pedestrians. Tillie wished for more collisions like this, but to her disappointment, the sidewalk opened up as they neared Sixty-Eighth Street. The Foundling Hospital and its attached asylum was to the right. Home was only two avenues away.
Tillie stopped suddenly. “This is where Lucy used to do her charity work. I haven’t been by to visit them. I wonder if the sisters know that she died.” A sudden idea ignited in her, a plan. She felt it rush to her fingertips, but it also turned her stomach into a quivering mass. She turned to Ian. “You should stop here. I’m close to home.”
“All right.” He looked troubled and kept kicking a dent in the sidewalk. “Say, I want to apologize. I wasn’t very nice to you up in White Plains.”
“You spoke the truth. I probably haven’t heard much of it lately.” She smiled sadly. “I guess we’re even. I wasn’t truthful to you about all that medicine I was taking, and you weren’t truthful to me about the article.”
“No more lies, eh?” he said.
Tillie bit her tongue and nodded but said nothing. Was it lying to not say what you were thinking?
“I think it may be a very long time before I ever see you again. I’ve an article I’d like to work on, but I have no idea how long it will take.”
“The street rats’ll miss you. I’ll let them know you’ll send a ham when you can.” She laughed, and Ian shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. He mumbled something.
“I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
She cocked her head. “Ian.”
“I said I missed you. When you were in White Plains, and we weren’t talking. I missed our nights researching.”
“I did too.” She stepped a little closer. “Do you remember our picnic on the rooftop with the kids?”
He grinned a yes.
“I think I may have kissed you that night. And I don’t really remember it.”
“Well, you did,” he said seriously.
“I should like to have one to remember you by. Not that one down at Newspaper Row, either.” She cleared her throat. “Uh. If that’s all right with you. Sober this time.”
Ian swallowed. He seemed nervous all of a sudden. He dragged his fingers through his thick hair and swallowed again.
“S’all right,” he croaked.
Tillie came closer, ignoring the passersby on the street, and rose to her tiptoes. She lightly kissed his lips, swaying when she lost her balance. Ian steadied her with hands on her waist. She leaned in closer and let the light kiss blossom into something with intention and strength.
“Indecent!” hissed a lady who walked by. “For shame!”
They separated. For a change, Ian was the one who seemed slightly drunk.
“That I’ll remember for the ages,” Tillie said, blushing. “Off with you now.” She waved him down the street, and Ian turned in the direction from which they’d come. He seemed in a hurry to go, but she recognized it as embarrassment. Tillie rounded the corner onto Sixty-Eighth Street and found the entrance to the Foundling Hospital.
She knew exactly how to find this “vampire,” and the answer lay within these walls. If there was one similarity between the victims, it was that they’d had a disease and recovered.
Surely, there was an illness here that could bring Tillie to her knees and lure the killer as well.
“Time to catch a vampire,” she whispered as she walked up to the gates.
CHAPTER 24
It is only when a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand their true import.
—Jonathan Harker
The New York Foundling Hospital took up much of Sixty-Eighth Street between Lexington Avenue and Third. Tiny crosses adorned the iron railing skirting its border, and marble window lintels contrasted with the imposing redbrick walls. An enormous, dro
oping willow tree swaying in the breeze seemed to gesture for Tillie to enter.
She passed through the marble columns and just inside the heavy doors was greeted by a nun in a simple black-and-white habit. The nun was about her mother’s age, spindly, with spectacles and a smile that was doled out in a very limited quantity.
“I’m very sorry, but we are about to close for the evening. Perhaps come back tomorrow?” she said.
“Please. My name is Mathilda Pembroke. My sister was Lucy Pembroke.”
“Miss Pembroke!” The nun put her hand to her mouth. “Oh! We have heard about the loss of your dear sister. What a terrible tragedy.”
“Yes. And I . . .” The next words seemed to materialize from nowhere, but she meant them with all her heart. “I would like to continue the work that she did. I haven’t much time. It may be a very long while before I have another opportunity to return here. I’d like to speak to whomever my sister worked with, if I may.”
“Of course. That would be Sister Cecilia. She is monitoring the preparations for supper. Come with me.”
They strode through the great hall and up the stairs to the second level. The place was clean and simple, devoid of decoration. A room was open to the right—a long corridor with tiny tables and bins of toys. Several nuns watched over children playing quietly while others listened to one of the sisters reading a book. Another room had a seemingly endless number of cribs lining two sides and tiny children occupying small rocking chairs or splayed out on the floor, warring with tiny wooden figurines. The children were dressed in neat but well-worn clothing.
Another nun, plumper than the one who led Tillie, came toward them and, at the sight of Tillie, stopped, a look of astonishment on her face.
“Sister Cecilia,” Tillie’s guide said, “this is Miss Pembroke, the sister of our dear Lucy. She wished to speak to you.”
“You are a version of your sister, and it took my breath away to see you. Why, you have the same smile!” Sister Cecilia came forward, the crucifix she wore bouncing against her chest. “What brings you here at this time of day? We are readying for supper, and the children will go to bed soon after.”
“I am interested in continuing my sister’s work. Can you tell me where she—can you show me where she used to work?”
“Of course. Perhaps we could do a full day tour tomorrow, or later this week when the children aren’t so tired.”
“I’m afraid I may not be able to come again anytime soon. I’m so sorry for the imposition.”
“Not at all. We are used to the call of duty at all hours.”
“All hours?” Tillie asked.
“Yes—picking up babies in the middle of the night, when the bell is rung and they’re left in the basket on the street. It has been our way since 1867. We have taken in over twenty-seven thousand children since then. Sixty years ago, infanticide was rampant. It is no longer.”
Tillie was shocked at the numbers. Those children could fill a city. “How awful that their mothers did not want them.”
Sister Cecilia smiled kindly. “They are often very much wanted, but poverty prevents their mothers from keeping them. Or madness. Or sickness and death. They despair that their children will suffer with them, so they leave them here. Some families are able to retrieve their children when their circumstances improve.” Tillie followed her down a long corridor; the smell of antiseptic and lemon oil filled her nostrils. “Here we are. You’ll want to see the hospital wing, of course.”
“Yes, I understood she liked to work with the ill children.”
“And it got her sick! It was no surprise. She was here nearly every day. But I thought she had recovered,” Sister Cecilia said, unlocking a door. It opened into a hallway where several nuns wearing long white aprons and white caps were busy rolling small trolleys filled with medicine bottles in and out of rooms.
“She did,” Tillie said, peeking through the windows. Some contained hospital beds covered in gauzy netting; others, tiny cribs with wailing infants. “She was so happy being here.”
Tillie could almost see her sister’s ghost in the hallways, her heart full of all the things she could do to help the children. These were wants and desires unknown to Tillie—as much a crime as Lucy’s death—but she wanted to know them now.
“And she was so generous with her time and her resources.” Sister Cecilia had stopped; she clasped her hands together. “These are our hospital rooms. We opened the hospital wing about twenty years ago.”
“Resources?” Tillie asked. Could her grandmother have been that generous as to give them money?
“It wasn’t much, but it mattered.” The room they stood outside was tiny, and there were only two children. A caretaker, not a nun, was feeding a baby with a rubber teat connected to long tubing. The tube led to a glass bottle half-full of milk in the woman’s hand. The woman looked familiar. Tillie peered closer, trying to see her face better. She looked up, saw Tillie’s face in the window, and promptly dropped the bottle.
“Oh!” Tillie said.
“Do you know that child?” Sister Cecilia asked.
“No. But I know the nurse. It’s Lucy’s maid—”
“Betty Novak. Why, yes. She was the one who was always bringing extra food and medicine for the children.”
“She was?” Tillie said, confused. But wasn’t Lucy the one who was really doing the “stealing”?
“I would say that you could ask her yourself, but she’s in a quarantine room with the smallpox patients.”
Tillie’s heart thrummed fast and warm. Smallpox. She’d been a child when their old doctor, Dr. Peterson, had come by the house to administer the vaccine. She had watched her father, her mother, and Lucy receive theirs. Sleeves rolled up, they were pricked with a tiny double-tipped needle filled with fluid from an ampoule of vaccinia virus. There had been an outbreak in the years before, and Dr. Peterson had been pressing all his patients to get vaccinated.
“Not Mathilda,” her mother had said. “She is far too young.”
“Which is exactly why she should get the vaccine. At her tender age, the illness could ravage her.”
Her mother and father had argued about it viciously, Tillie remembered. Coming from a household where science wrote the rules, her father had been at a loss. He did not know how to address his wife’s dogmatic reasoning.
“I know of women who have gotten the vaccine and still been infected,” Mama had said. “Are you sure it will work?”
“I can assure you, you are far less likely to die or to have a disfigurement if it does pass through the family. You cannot say the same for your daughter if she is not vaccinated.” The doctor looked at Tillie severely, as if it were her fault that her mother was refusing.
“Next year,” her mother had said. “When she’s six, I shall allow it.”
Her father had already rolled down his sleeve and gone back to his study. Tillie remembered watching the vaccine area on her sister’s arm grow red and pustular, then change to a large dark scab that left a telltale dime-size scar. Her mother had decided to employ a new doctor after that. And another, and another. Dr. Erikkson had been their most recent, and he had been fired, too, after what happened with Tom.
Tillie never had received the vaccine.
“May I go inside to speak to Betty?” Tillie asked.
“I cannot allow it.”
“I’ve been vaccinated,” she said, hoping the lie would sound true.
“I’m sorry, Miss Pembroke. We mustn’t disturb her. There are other rooms where you can visit. I can give Betty a message for you.”
Tillie listened to Sister Cecilia go on about the history of the Foundling Hospital, about how they were ever expanding and in need of funds and donations. They were on the cusp of leaving the hospital wing, when one of the younger nuns came up to Sister Cecilia and whispered something in her ear.
“Can you not take care of it? Isn’t Sister Evelyn there to attend to this?”
“No, Sister.”
She sig
hed and turned to Tillie. “There’s a situation in the infant room. I’ll be back in a moment. Wait here.” They exited the hospital wing, but as the two nuns walked away on their silent black boots, Tillie let her hand catch the edge of the door before it could lock shut. When the sisters were out of view, she slipped back into the wing and paused outside the smallpox quarantine room. Betty was back to nursing the child, who was clutching at the tubing with her chubby hands. Tiny round welts dotted the child’s skin every inch or so.
Tillie put her hand on the door. Going in meant she would risk getting the infection. She might infect others too. She could start an epidemic, but that was less likely. Everyone in the house was vaccinated. The servants who weren’t she would demand be sent away until their own vaccines were completed. She could make sure no one else entered the house. She would warn others.
Lucy had been infected with typhus and Albert Weber with cholera. Annetta Green had been sick with consumption. Whether they were all tied to Dr. Erikkson or had been identified another way, she didn’t know, but she had no other avenues to try.
Succumbing to smallpox would be no minor event. Her smooth skin would be forever scarred, possibly terribly so. Tillie had always rested comfortably in the knowledge that she was not visually arresting, like Lucy had been. Yet she had enjoyed the privilege of the appearance of health, of skin that was unmarred by illness.
But to stop the slayings, once and for all? It would be worth the scars. Lucy had risked her life too. She would borrow her sister’s bravery tonight, wear it like a shield.
Tillie opened the door and shut it behind her.
“Miss Pembroke!” Betty exclaimed and nearly dropped the bottle again. “I thought that was you! What are you doing here? You must leave. These children are very sick. It’s not safe.”