A Deadly Affection

by Cuyler Overholt

  I stared at him in disbelief. “Are you suggesting that I owed you something? What, it wasn’t enough that you bragged about me to the other stable hands? Was I supposed to remain at your beck and call? Oh, I know! You encouraged the other boys to have a go at me, is that it? Told them how stupid and gullible I was, how willing to let you touch me?”

  “What are you saying?” he muttered, his eyes very dark in his suddenly ashen face.

  “Ahh, so you didn’t know I’d found out! That would explain how you’d have the gall to stand there and call me dishonest!”

  “I never said a word to anyone about what happened between us.”

  He looked so sincere that, if I hadn’t known better, I would have believed him. “You only discredit yourself further by denying it. The kitchen maid overheard you while she was feeding apples to the horses. She told Father all about the boasts you made to the other boys.”

  “The kitchen maid? You mean cross-eyed little Margaret O’Leary? Why, she had her sights on me from the minute she arrived at the house.”

  I slapped my palm against my forehead. “Thank you so much for sharing that with me!” I cried, unable to keep the hysteria from my voice. “I’m sure I couldn’t have rested easy until my list of your conquests was complete!”

  He moved a rigid step closer. “I wouldn’t have anything to do with her. She was peeved with me for it, but I paid her no mind.”

  “I’m not interested in what happened between you and the kitchen maid,” I told him between gritted teeth.

  “Well, maybe you should be, if she’s the one who accused me.”

  I didn’t take his point at first, but when it finally hit me, it hit me right between the eyes. Details I’d long forgotten started trickling into my mind: how badly Margaret had wanted to take the apples to the stable herself that night, and how I’d practically had to pry the bucket from her hand. I hadn’t wondered about it at the time. Nor had I bothered to hide my own nervous excitement from her.

  She was a cunning girl—when she left our employ a year later, she took a silver teapot with her—and must have realized what was happening between Simon and me. Perhaps she had followed me to the stable that night, or perhaps she’d only guessed. Either way, in her jealousy, she might very well have made up the story about Simon’s boasting, just to spite us both.

  “Sweet Mother of Jesus,” Simon said, raking his hand through his hair. “So that’s why your father threw us out. All because of silly Margaret O’Leary.”

  “Threw you out?” I gaped at him. “What are you talking about? My father didn’t throw you out.”

  This time, his expression was one of such absolute, uncontrived astonishment that I couldn’t doubt its veracity. I felt a terrible sinking sensation, as if the solid pavement I’d been standing on had just developed a sizable crack. “You left,” I said, “because your mother found a better position.”

  Simon had grown very still. “Is that what he told you?”

  I didn’t answer, paralyzed by the cold brilliance of his eyes.

  “And you believed it.”

  “My father has never lied to me,” I said, pulling my coat more tightly around me.

  “He did if he told you it was our idea. He ordered us out the day after you left, without giving any reason. He wouldn’t even write my mother a reference. She couldn’t find decent work without one. She worked in a factory on Orchard Street until her eyes gave out, and then she scrubbed floors in the public baths until I could make enough to make ends meet.”

  I hadn’t asked, when I returned from Europe, what had happened to the stable boy who’d caused me such disgrace; indeed, I don’t believe the question could have been dragged out of me by a team of Percherons. My father had informed me nonetheless, in the clipped tone he used for dealing with necessary unpleasantness, that Simon had gone to Boston with his mother, who’d found a more lucrative position there.

  I believed my father was a fundamentally honest man. But he was also a devoted father who’d thought his daughter had been sullied by an arrogant stable boy. If he’d been angry enough to send me off to Europe, I realized now, it was possible—even likely—that he’d sent the Shaws packing as well. I didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before, except that one didn’t dismiss a servant lightly, especially a single woman with a half-grown son in tow. Mrs. Shaw had done nothing wrong; I wouldn’t have believed my father could treat her so harshly. But the timing, I saw now, was too coincidental. I knew in my heart that what Simon had said must be true. “I didn’t know.”

  He shook his head in disgust. “Maybe you should have asked.”

  He was right. I should have. Instead, I’d avoided him like one of the debased sex fiends in Professor Fowler’s book. Given a choice between acute humiliation and the purposeful obliteration of all tender feeling, I’d chosen the latter. The obliteration must have been incomplete, however, for as I looked at his agitated face, memories of our night in the stable raced through me like a rogue freight train. With a violent uprising of my senses, I remembered the rivers he’d traced along my back and breasts, and the intoxicating sweetness of his kisses, and the way his heart had pounded when I pushed up his coarse shirt to press my ear against it. I remembered too how he’d sounded when he spoke my name. Certain. Determined. As if making a promise no one could ever make him break.

  It had all been very novel and exciting for an inexperienced young girl like me—but also, I saw now, rather innocent. Certainly, he could have gone much further than he had, could easily have pushed my willing body past whatever puny resistance my mind might have tried to impose. But it was he who had finally buttoned me up and stood me on quivering legs, he who had brushed off the strands of hay and urged me to return to the house before I was missed.

  I was swamped by regret. Margaret had lied, Father had lied, but Simon had done nothing wrong. Because of my willingness to believe the worst, something good had been turned into something ugly and hurtful. I wished I could ask for his forgiveness, to explain that my distress at thinking myself deceived by the one person I’d believed cared for me had blinded me to the truth. I wished I could just wave a magic wand that would make the last ten years disappear. But of course, the past could never be undone.

  So I asked for the only thing I felt I had a right to. “Will you help Eliza anyway?”

  He slowly released his breath.

  “It’s not her fault. She shouldn’t pay the price for my mistakes.”

  “You really believe she’s innocent?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “You’ve known her less than a week. How can you be so sure?”

  I considered reiterating the arguments I had made to Detective Maloney, marshaling logic and fact in Eliza’s defense. But in the end, it was neither of these that had persuaded me. “I can’t give you any absolute proof,” I said. “It’s just…what I feel.”

  “What you feel,” he repeated.

  I nodded.

  He looked out over the street. Though he had changed over the years, I could still see the boy I had known in his profile—in the strong, flushed cheekbones and the determined set of his chin. For a moment, the years fell away. I felt a rush of longing, followed by a painful twist in my gut. Simon Shaw: in one fell swoop, found and lost again.

  “All right,” he said flatly, turning back to me. “I’ll get her out.”

  “You’ll what?”

  “I’ll get her released into house arrest on medical grounds. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? To get her out of there?”

  I stared at him. “Is that possible?”

  “Judge Hoffman’s son is running for state assembly. He needs Tammany support, and he has to go through me to get it.” He consulted his pocket watch. “The judge’ll be in session all day; I’ll have to wait for him to break. Is there someone willing to take responsibility for Mrs. Miner after she’s rel
eased?”

  “There’s her mother. They live together over the store.”

  “Tell her to be at the prison by three o’clock. I should have the papers for the warden by then. I’ll send a man to transport her.”

  I nodded in a daze, not quite able to believe what was happening. “Do you really think the judge will agree?”

  “He’ll agree.” He closed his watch. “But he’s going to want to keep it as quiet as possible. I’ll do what I can on this end to make sure no reporters get wind of it. I’ll have to promise him to post a man in front of her building, to make sure she doesn’t leave, and to have a doctor provide updates on her condition. I assume you’re willing to take charge of her medical treatment?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You’ll want to be there when they release her, to make sure she’s in good enough shape to get home.”

  “I’ll be there.” I hesitated, searching his closed face, brimming with emotions I didn’t know how to express. “Simon, I—”

  “I’ll go talk to Hoffman’s clerk, then,” he said, cutting me off, “and find out when the judge will be free.” Pulling up the collar of his coat, he turned his back on me and started toward the courthouse.

  • • •

  I continued on toward Attorney Harlan’s office, which was just a few blocks south on Broadway. I was now more determined than ever to engage the lawyer’s services, even if I had to sell some of the stock Grandfather had left me to pay for them. Imagining Eliza out of jail and Attorney Harlan working on her defense, I could feel something almost like optimism stir inside me.

  When I arrived at Harlan & Bidwell’s bustling office, however, I was advised that Attorney Harlan had been detained in court. The receptionist invited me to wait, but as he had no idea what time the attorney would be back, I arranged instead to return at four o’clock, after Eliza’s release.

  On my way to the Italian restaurant the receptionist had suggested for lunch, I stopped at a Western Union office to send a telegraph to Dr. Huntington in Hopewell Junction. In blunt telegraphic phrasing, I informed him that Dr. Hauptfuhrer had been murdered; that his former patient Elizabeth Miner had been charged with the crime and was being held under house arrest; and that as Elizabeth’s current physician, I urgently needed to know if she was suffering from Huntington’s chorea. I provided my home telephone number and address for his reply. My next stop was a corner telephone booth, where I called Mrs. Braun at the shop to tell her that Eliza was going to be temporarily released. She fretted with characteristic gloom that the release would only falsely raise her daughter’s hopes, but agreed to close up early so that she could be at the prison by three.

  Only when I was seated by the window in the restaurant on Mulberry Street, waiting for my mysterious stufato di vitello to arrive, did I allow myself to fully face what Simon had revealed. If what he’d said was true, I had done him a terrible injustice. Instead of trusting him—or at least giving him a chance to defend himself—I’d turned my back on him, leaving him and his mother to suffer the consequences. The thought made me almost physically ill. Why was it that I always managed to hurt the people I cared most about? Conrad, my parents, Simon—they’d all have been better off if I’d never been born.

  A funeral procession marched slowly past the restaurant window, led by red-coated trumpeters with icicles hanging from the bells of their instruments. Their sorrowful dirge echoed inside me as I thought of what Simon and his mother had lost because of me. Except for a hefty dose of embarrassment, my trip to the stable had cost me nothing but a few months abroad. Mrs. Shaw, however, had apparently been sent into a downward spiral of poverty and ill health, while Simon had been forced to grow up before his time, doing whatever low work he could find to support them both. He’d always believed the future was his if he was only willing to work for it. What might he have achieved if I hadn’t come crashing into the stable that night, hell-bent on romance? I had set the trap, albeit unwittingly, and when it snared him, I’d sailed away and left him dangling. It was no use reminding myself that I’d been young and confused at the time, or of the kitchen maid’s perfidy. Simon and his mother had been made to pay for something that was entirely my fault, and I hadn’t lifted a finger to help them.

  I couldn’t imagine how much he must hate me. Well, yes, I could; he’d made it pretty clear. But was it only his anger speaking, or had he been right when he’d said that I was afraid to face the possibility that my advice had caused Eliza to kill the doctor? Was I only convincing myself that she was innocent because I wanted her to be?

  The waiter lowered a plate in front of me, containing a creamy stew scented with an herb I couldn’t identify. “Buon appetito, signorina. I hope you like it.”

  “I’m sure I will,” I automatically replied. But in truth, I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

  • • •

  It was snowing when the prison door swung open at 3:27 and the matron stepped out into the twilight, followed by Eliza and Mrs. Braun. So he’d actually done it. I watched from a newsstand across the street, hardly able to believe my eyes.

  It was the first time I’d seen Eliza and her mother together, and I was struck by their physical resemblance. Indeed, Eliza’s ordeal seemed to have partially obscured the difference in their ages, stealing the brightness from her face and the bounce from her walk, so that I hardly recognized her in the gray half-light. I started across the street, glad at least that she was on her feet and walking without assistance.

  Mrs. Braun noticed me first. “You needn’t have come,” she said as I stepped up onto the curb. “I told you I’d be here.”

  Eliza bent toward her mother’s ear. “Reverend Palmers must have sent her,” I heard her say.

  “Why, no,” I said in surprise. “I haven’t spoken to the Reverend. Mr. Shaw told me he was arranging your release. Of course, I wanted to be here, to be sure you were strong enough to make it home. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine,” Eliza said tersely, as if she hadn’t been lying unconscious just a few hours before.

  A closed carriage had rolled up alongside us. “I’m here for the prisoner Elizabeth Miner,” the driver called down to the matron in a thick Irish accent.

  “That’s her,” the matron said, gesturing toward Eliza. “Can I see your papers?”

  The driver jumped off the box. He was a big, square-shouldered man with big square hands to match and swollen red knuckles that looked as though they were put to frequent use. He pulled a folded document from his coat pocket and handed it to the matron.

  “I’ll come by your flat once you’re settled in,” I told Eliza as the matron perused it. “I want to give you a thorough examination.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Mrs. Braun said. “I’ll see that she gets everything she needs.”

  “I’m afraid it is necessary,” I replied. “I’ve been asked to tend to her medical care. It’s a condition of her release.”

  “Really, you needn’t bother,” Eliza said uncomfortably. “I told you, I’m feeling fine.”

  I was perplexed—and a bit hurt—by her resistance. “Just because you’re feeling better doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods,” I told her. “I’ll need to keep a close eye on you over the next few days.”

  The matron pocketed the paper and nodded to the driver, who pulled open the carriage door. I reached for Eliza’s elbow to help her in, but to my distress, she recoiled from my hand, climbing into the carriage unaided.

  Where, I wondered, was the sweet-eyed young woman who’d so recently clung to me, entrusting me with her future? She was acting as though she couldn’t get away from me fast enough. Had her mother soured things? Had she been disparaging me to Eliza, blaming me for what had happened? I could think of no other reason for the painful rebuff.

  “You should put her straight to bed when you get home,” I told Mrs. Braun as she started into
the carriage after her, trying not to show my distress. “You can try giving her a little quinine if the stomach pains return. I’ll come by right after I’ve met with her new lawyer.”

  Mrs. Braun paused with one foot on the footplate. “What new lawyer?”

  “Eliza has authorized me to retain Attorney Harlan on her behalf.” So put that in your pipe and smoke it, I silently added.

  She peered into the carriage. “Elizabeth?”

  “I never said any such thing,” Eliza replied from the shadows.

  “Well, of course you did,” I said in astonishment, drawing closer to look into the vehicle. “In the cell at the magistrate’s court. Don’t you remember?”

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “You must be mistaken.”

  Her face was obscured by the collar of her coat, and I couldn’t see her features clearly. Was she afraid to admit it? I wondered. Afraid of going against her mother’s wishes?

  Mrs. Braun hoisted herself into the carriage and sat down. “I told you before,” she said, reaching for the door handle, “we don’t have the money for a fancy lawyer. Now move aside, please, and let me take my daughter home.”

  I remained where I was, willing Eliza to look at me, needing some sign to reassure me. But she continued looking straight ahead, rigid as a post except for her hands, which were twisting and turning in her lap. I jerked back as Mrs. Braun pulled the door shut, nearly closing it on my fingers. The carriage rolled off down the street.

  The matron went back inside while I stared after the carriage, remembering what Mrs. Braun had said about Eliza going “hot and cold.” Is that what I had just experienced? And if so, what did it mean? I decided to chalk it up to exhaustion and her mother’s influence for now, until I’d had a chance to speak with her in private.

  Checking my watch, I saw that it was almost 3:45. I’d have to get moving if I didn’t want to miss Attorney Harlan. I walked to the intersection, and was about to cross Center Street, when I glanced to my right and saw Simon coming out of a building on the opposite corner, which the canopy identified as Tom Foley’s Saloon. With a warm flush of recognition, I changed course and started toward him across Franklin Street, wanting to thank him for the near-miracle he had achieved. I was nearly at the opposite curb before I realized that another man had followed him out of the saloon. I stopped, recognizing the battered hat and slump-shouldered carriage of Detective Maloney.