by Megan Chance
Howe said, “Mrs. Carelton, I am William Howe, and this is my assistant, Mr. Blake. He is the soul of discretion, I assure you.”
The little man nodded, murmuring a hello in a reedy voice. Howe gave the police officer an impatient glance, and the man drew back, stopping only when I said, “When we’re finished, I’ll call you. Will you escort me back?”
“Of course, Mrs. Carelton,” he said. He left, closing the door behind him. Mr. Blake opened the journal and took a pencil from his pocket.
I took a deep breath to steady myself. So much depended on this visit. “Please, Mr. Howe, do sit down,” I said, as if this were a social call. “Shall I ring for tea?”
“No, thank you,” Howe said. He perched on the very edge of the nearest chair like a fat robin upon a fence rail. Mr. Blake leaned against the wall as if accustomed to never sitting. He didn’t stop writing as Howe said, “There will be a bail hearing soon, within the next few days. I expect you’ll be free then to go about the city as you please. For now you should know that there are reporters clamoring to talk to you, to hear ‘your side’ of the story.”
“I don’t want to talk to anyone,” I said hastily.
“Oh, but you will,” he said. “And soon. I’ve handpicked one of them, a woman by the name of Elizabeth Adler. She writes for the World.”
“The World?” I asked, horrified.
“My dear Mrs. Carelton, the readers of the World will be ready to vilify you simply because you’re a member of the moneyed class, unless we have someone there to raise their sympathy. Believe me, in a case such as this, we need all the public support we can rally. I think you’ll find Elizabeth to be quite sympathetic to your plight—you will have paid her a fortune to be so. When she visits, you will be contrite and regretful. You will say you remember nothing of what happened. You will tell her that your husband was a monster.”
“But William was—”
“I don’t care what he was,” Howe said. “For the purposes of the World, he was intolerable. Do you understand, Mrs. Carelton? You’ve hired me to make sure you don’t spend the rest of your life at Sing Sing. I will require that you follow my directions to the letter.”
I nodded. “I understand.”
“Excellent.” He glanced at Blake, who nodded and turned a page. “Now, then, let me tell you what the district attorney has said. At your arraignment, which I expect to take place in about a week’s time, they will charge you with murder in the shooting death of your husband, which is a very serious crime. Unfortunately, there can be no doubt that you did it, as there were several witnesses. There is much that can be done with the testimony of witnesses—I assure you, no one sees exactly the same thing—but there were several, and though I can shake their credibility in the eyes of the jurors, I can’t make the entire scene disappear. I must tell you, Mrs. Carelton, that if you were going to shoot your husband, I wish you’d chosen a more private place.” His voice softened. “Why don’t you tell me what happened last night?”
“I don’t remember much. It comes to me in bits and pieces.” The lie was easy to say. “I remember being nervous. It was our first party in this house—it’s just been finished, you know, and I am not accustomed— Then I was in the dining room, and he looked up. He had . . . bourbon. And when I shot him, it went everywhere.”
“Bourbon,” said Howe thoughtfully. “Yes.”
“He was anxious that I do well. I’d only just got back—”
“Yes, I’d heard. From the continent.”
“No. From Beechwood Grove.”
Howe frowned. “Beechwood Grove?”
“A private asylum. On the Hudson River. William had me committed there in July.”
“Good God.” Howe’s whole body seemed to become sharp and angular. Blake paused in his writing. “He had you committed to an asylum?”
“I was there for nearly three months.”
“Who knows of your confinement there?”
“My father,” I said. “My doctors.”
“No one else?”
“Only the men William hired to take me there. I don’t know their names.”
“Your husband told your friends that you were visiting the continent. An extended visit, no doubt.”
“Of course.”
“And did none of them suspect anything different?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t say.”
“Just when did you return, Mrs. Carelton?”
“The night before the party,” I told him. “The fifth of October.”
“I assume we’re talking of a lunatic asylum. Beechwood Grove is a lunatic asylum?”
I nodded.
Howe was avid. “Did he commit you there with your full consent?”
“Hardly,” I said bitterly. “He drugged me with laudanum. I had no idea. I would have fought him.”
“Why would he do such a thing?”
“I had grown . . . inconvenient,” I said. “I’m sure you’ll discover that I’ve been treated by many doctors over the last three years.”
“For?”
“Hysteria. What they call uterine monomania.”
“We’ll need the names of those doctors,” Howe said. He said to Blake, “Did you get all that?”
“Yes sir.”
“What did these treatments consist of?”
I took a deep breath. “I took the water cure at Elmira. I was given morphia of all kinds. There were various other tortures.”
“Did none work?”
“Only one,” I said. I crumpled the silk of my gown between my fingers. “This is why I became inconvenient.”
“How so?”
“My last doctor was somewhat of a visionary. He began treating me with hypnosis and electrotherapy. There were . . . surprising results. I began to feel much better. I was so much improved, in fact, that I think William began to believe I wasn’t the wife he’d married. He had wanted me well, but once I became well, it had consequences he didn’t like.”
Howe appeared fascinated. “Such as?”
“I began drawing. He didn’t care for that. Nor for the fact that I began to do things on my own, that I no longer cared so much for social niceties. I stopped holding a calling day. I much preferred to be outside.”
“Inconvenient,” Howe murmured.
“Yes. And there was more. At the beginning of my treatment, William insisted that my doctor accompany us everywhere—under the guise of a friend, you understand. It was when we removed to Newport for the summer . . . Well, William was so busy, and I required my doctor, and William began to believe . . .” I shrugged. “You see?”
“Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “I think I do begin to see.”
“There was . . . an incident,” I went on. “William took badly to it. He banished the doctor from the house and imprisoned me in my room. He gave me laudanum. It was truly as if I had gone insane. I no longer knew what was real, Mr. Howe, nor what was illusion. Without the doctor I’d grown to rely on—at William’s insistence—I was quite undone.”
“That’s a remarkable story.”
“A true one, I fear.”
“Did anyone but your husband witness this . . . incident?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“And this doctor of yours, will he corroborate this?”
“I believe so.”
“What is his name? Do you know where I can locate him?”
“Oh yes,” I said. “His office is on Lower Broadway. On the corner of White Street. There’s a little shop below. I believe it’s called Jenson’s.”
“I’ve got it, sir,” Blake said.
“And his name? Is it Jenson as well?”
“No,” I said. I met William Howe’s gaze. “His name is Victor Seth.”
Howe rose, smiling, his eyes sparkling. “Well, well. I will contact him immediately. I must tell you, Mrs. Carelton, that until today I had little hope for this case.”
“And now?” I asked him.
“Now? Now I think our chance
s are considerably improved.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “An asylum. Can you believe it, Blake? An asylum?” He and his associate went to the door. He turned back to me. “I’ll be visiting you again soon. In the meantime, there’s that reporter—”
“Elizabeth Adler,” I said.
“You are the sympathetic victim in all this, Mrs. Carelton,” he said. “Don’t forget that.”
“I’m not likely to, Mr. Howe,” I said.
His expression went blank. “No,” he said. “I don’t expect you will.”
THE WORLD
New York, Tuesday, October 13, 1885
EXCLUSIVE Interview
Society Murderess Begs for Understanding
Carelton Marriage Made in Hell
All of New York society was shocked by the murder last Tuesday evening of prominent New York stockbroker William Carelton, who was shot by his Knickerbocker wife as guests danced the night away in the elegantly appointed ballroom of the Careltons’ new Fifth Avenue mansion. Mrs. William Carelton (née Lucille Van Berckel) was promptly arrested for her husband’s murder.
This reporter was given an exclusive interview with Mrs. Carelton in her home, where she stays confined to her room, haunting the murder site like some weeping specter. She was enervated and pensive, a Rossetti painting come to life. She was dressed somberly in a gown of gray wool, with her dark hair severely pinned back, a study in quiet rectitude.
A Terrible Nightmare
“Every morning I am horrified to find I have done this terrible thing,” she said, tears falling copiously from her large brown eyes. “And every night I go to sleep praying that I will wake from this nightmare.”
It is indeed a nightmare of which Mrs. Carelton speaks: a nightmare encompassing four years of marriage to a man who drove her to illness with his incessant demands. “William was a stockbroker,” she tells us, “and he was quite ambitious. I’ll never know what drove him, but he could be unmerciful. He was determined to belong; he insisted that I play the part of a society wife even when my constitution required that I rest.”
Her friends confirm that Mrs. Carelton was often ill and that the strain of her marriage kept her nearly bedridden.
“I’ll never know what made her marry him,” says one anonymous friend. “She was so quiet and frail, and he was so completely overpowering. There was something not right about him. And, of course, he was not one of us.”
A Prayer for Clemency
“He wanted me out of the way,” Mrs. Carelton tearfully explained as she told how her husband had committed her to Beechwood Grove, a private lunatic asylum. “It was much easier to control my money when I was not there to question him.”
The night Mrs. Carelton returned home from Beechwood Grove, her husband threatened to send her back if she did not behave.
“I was so afraid. It was as if a black cloud came over me. I hardly remember what I was doing or what I thought.”
Mrs. Carelton shed tears throughout. “I have no hope of God’s forgiveness for the terrible thing I did. All I can hope is that I am not judged too harshly. I know only that I had to escape that hell.”
The accused was unable to control her sorrow and regret, and it is clear that to judge her solely as a society wife is to do her a grave disservice. Mrs. Carelton’s humanity shines from a face wet with remorseful tears. Her devotion to her husband, despite his cruelty, is amply documented. To hear her cry for clemency is to answer the call of all people in their fight against oppression. We can only hope the judge and jury in this case treat her with compassion and mercy despite—or because of—her unremarkable life.
Chapter 30
The rush to William’s funeral was unseemly, held as it was only three days after his death. Papa said William’s body was deteriorating badly, though I knew the truth was that he was afraid I would insist upon attending if I were free, which Howe assured me I would be after my bail hearing, scheduled for the next day. So I was absent from seeing my husband laid to rest—appropriate, I suppose, as I was the one who had sent him there.
From my room I could hear the ringing of the church bells as he was eulogized, but it was left for Papa to tell me about. The service had been short and attended by many of William’s colleagues, stockbrokers and Long Room traders and message boys. But those whom he would have wanted at his funeral—our friends, the people he made money for—had, for the most part, stayed away.
It was hardly surprising. My friends had never truly accepted him, even when his genius in the stock market made them money. The parvenu stink had never left him. Between the two of us—me, with my Knickerbocker heritage, and William, whose origins were unknown but always thought to be inferior—I was the one to whom they would lend their support, even with the taint of an asylum hanging above my head. The article in the World was only one in which William was portrayed as greedy and controlling. The irony was that had our friends known of my commitment to Beechwood Grove before William’s death, I would have been the pariah. For now, confined as I was, with the judgment of a trial still awaiting, I could be their horribly persecuted daughter.
I was more than ready when the day came for my bail hearing. Papa had made arrangements to take me there himself, and he and the carriage were at the house early that morning. I went downstairs quickly, smiling weakly at the police officer guarding the door, wanting only to be free of this house, of William’s presence, of the cursed dining room. The day was damply chill, with pregnant gray clouds overhead. I breathed deeply of the manure-scented air and longed to be free.
In no time we were there, and my father took me inside the District Court, where officers were waiting to escort me into a small open room lined with benches upon which sat all manner of men. At the front of the room was a desk, slightly raised, behind a barred railing.
As I entered, there was a gasp. Some of the men on the back benches swiveled, and I saw that many of them were scribbling away—reporters. I did not wonder what they saw: a woman dressed somberly in gray, no doubt exhausted-looking. I thought grimly of how they would portray me in the papers, how New York City would choke down my description with their breakfast and coffee. My stomach fell; my nerves rattled. A man in the front turned, and I saw with relief that it was William Howe. He smiled reassuringly and nodded slowly, and my nervousness faded.
“Is this Mrs. William Carelton?” asked the judge.
The officer on my right nodded. “Yes sir.”
“Bring her down.”
They led me down the aisle. The judge stared at me as if evaluating my every step, my every expression. As we reached the front, Howe stood.
“Your Honor,” he said, “I’m serving as Mrs. Carelton’s attorney.”
The judge looked surprised and irritated. He shot a glance at me. “Is Mr. Howe your attorney, Mrs. Carelton?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Dear God.” The judge heaved a great sigh. “Very well, then. I see there is probable cause to hold Mrs. Carelton pending a charge in the murder of William Stephen Carelton, lately of New York, originally of Newport, Rhode Island.”
Newport, Rhode Island. I hadn’t known that. He had told me— What had he told me?
“Mr. Scott is the district attorney in this matter, I see. Mr. Scott, we’re here to address the issue of bail. Have you—”
“Your Honor,” Howe interrupted. “We are asking that bail be set for Mrs. Carelton. She is an esteemed member of New York society. Her movements are carefully watched at all times.” Howe reached into his pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper. “If I could just read what the new society page, Town Topics, has to say of her . . .”
“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Howe.”
“I believe it shows how strong Mrs. Carelton’s ties are to the city.”
“I’m sure it does.” The judge looked at the district attorney. “What are your feelings on the matter, Mr. Scott?”
Mr. Scott stood. He was tall and thin, with dark blond hair that fell boyishly into his face. His voic
e wasn’t boyish at all. It was deep and resonant and completely serious. “We’re requesting that Mrs. Carelton be held without bail, Your Honor,” he said. “Regardless of Mr. Howe’s statements, we have some evidence indicating a fragile mental state, and she has ample means to flee should she desire to do so.”
Howe protested, “Your Honor, Mrs. Carelton has responsibilities. She employs several servants who rely on her, and she has many friends. Her father resides here. Mrs. Carelton’s lineage stretches back to the Knickerbockers, sir; her ancestor was a Dutch ambassador. Mrs. Carelton has lived her entire life in New York City—”
“She’s committed murder,” Mr. Scott interrupted. “We believe she’s a danger to society.”
Howe harrumphed so loudly that Scott flushed. “She’s accused of killing her husband, Your Honor. She hardly poses a threat to society. And as you can see, her father is here, ready to put up his considerable estate.”
“Yes, yes, I see,” the judge said. He glanced behind me to Papa. “Hello, DeLancey.”
“How are you, George?”
“Do you think you can keep a leash on your daughter until her trial?”
Papa’s voice was strong. “I guarantee she will be here.”
“Your Honor,” Mr. Scott protested, “this is highly irregular.”
“This whole thing is irregular,” the judge said. “I find that I agree with Mr. Howe. Bail is set at one hundred thousand dollars. Mrs. Carelton, you are free to go once the bond is posted. You cannot leave the city, and you must return for your arraignment after formal charges are filed. Mr. Howe, you will acquaint Mrs. Carelton with her obligations?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“See the bailiff. Mrs. Carelton, I assume you will stay out of trouble. Your father has guaranteed it.”