Lavinia Van Hansel
Luke felt a rush of nausea. Lavinia had noticed him leaving with Perry, in spite of the fact that they had slipped so stealthily into the garden. What had she construed from this action? Did she know about Perry, and by extension, Luke? For a moment he had a vision of his world crumbling, of vilification and ostracism, of his innermost secrets exposed for the scorn of all who cared to look. He began to shake as he imagined what could happen to him — he would be dismissed from Dr. Christie’s practice, that much was sure, and quite probably hounded from Yorkville. He might even lose his licence. He had no idea where he would go if that happened. The taint would follow him everywhere, even if he returned to Huron resigned to a farmer’s life. And worst of all, his father would find out, the sympathetic fellowship between them smashed beyond repair.
He threw the letter on his bed and went to the window, where he hoped the evening’s breeze might calm him. He drank the air with deep gasps and eventually his breathing slowed and became more regular, the cascade of unwelcome thoughts evened out and resolved into a question. What exactly did Lavinia mean?
He walked over to where the letter lay accusingly on the bed. Gingerly, as though the paper might be infused with a hidden poison, he picked it up by the corner and reread it. It didn’t seem so sinister on the second reading. We enjoyed your company. A standard statement for the hostess of a party. We look forward to furthering our acquaintance. In his panic at the mention of Perry, Luke had overlooked this part of the sentence. As far as he was aware he had contributed absolutely nothing to the evening beyond his mere presence. He neglected to speak to Lavinia after the first greeting. He did his best to ignore the young women present. And then he bolted over the garden fence without saying goodbye. He had, in fact, been extremely rude. Why would Lavinia want to see him again after such a poor showing? On reflection, he found it very puzzling.
As for the rest of it — the mention of Perry as someone he seemed to hit it off with — he decided that he might well have read too much into the observation. It was only natural that they would have sought each other’s company, wasn’t it? Especially at a function that was so over-represented by young women. No, there was no reason to think that anyone suspected anything untoward. His nerves had got the better of him again, that was all.
He would not, however, respond to the invitation. With any luck, Lavinia Van Hansel would conclude that he was abomin-ably boorish and not worthy of any further consideration.
“Lavinia wants something from you,” Perry had said. Well, she wasn’t going to get it. Not if it took Luke anywhere near Hands.
Two days later another letter arrived. It was apparently addressed to Dr. Christie directly, for he appeared at the office door and waved it at Luke.
“Another invitation!” he said. “Well done, Luke. You’ve obviously made a great impression.”
From where he sat behind the desk, Luke could see that the thin sheet of paper Christie held was covered in the same handwriting as the previous two letters.
“I didn’t think I’d made any impression at all,” Luke said. “I can’t imagine why I’m getting another invitation.”
“It’s for Tuesday. For tea,” Christie said, “and we’re both invited.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. We can’t both go.”
“No, we can’t,” Christie agreed, and just for a moment Luke hoped that the matter was resolved, but Christie went on. “I’m relatively certain that I’m not the one the lady would like to take tea with. It’s you she wants to see. You must take advantage of these opportunities, Luke. By all accounts, Phillip Van Hansel is turning heads in the business world. A mover and a shaker. If you’re in his wife’s good graces, he could well be in a position to help you get ahead.”
“I don’t want to get ahead,” Luke said. “I’m perfectly happy here.”
“Nonsense. You won’t feel that way when you have to start collecting your own accounts, trust me. Every practice needs a few patients who are well-heeled enough to pay their bills on time, and this one currently doesn’t have nearly enough of them. You’re a very personable young man, Luke. I think you should take advantage of this unexpected connection. Plan to take Tuesday off so you can attend. I’ll hold the fort.” And with a nod of the head, Christie disappeared into the rear of the house again.
Luke wondered if he should confide his misgivings to his employer. After all, the old doctor could hardly be pleased at an association with someone who Luke knew for a fact controlled at least one brothel in the city and had been involved in several cases of fraud. But when he thought about it, Luke realized that he had no way to prove that Hands was connected with Toronto’s criminal underground. He and Thaddeus had been present when Van Hansel ordered his henchmen to place two dead bodies in one coffin, but anything else they discovered about him was assumption, based on a few overheard conversations and a great deal of guesswork. And any witnesses willing to back their story were either dead or long since disappeared. After all, the matter of fraud had been investigated by the authorities, but no conclusions were reached and no charges were ever laid.
During the confrontation in the cabinetmaker’s yard, Hands claimed to have the local constabulary in his pocket, which, if true, would have afforded him protection during the investigation. Now Christie described him as “a mover and a shaker in the business world.” His empire must have grown in the intervening years, his power consolidated. The investigating officials themselves could well be under his control.
Even if he were sure that Christie could be sworn to secrecy, any accusation against Hands would be a dangerous thing to make. If it ever became known, Luke could well find himself in court for defamation, and he would have no way to defend himself. And if the case were to hinge on the moral rectitude of the complainants, one hint of Luke’s relationship with Ben would sink him.
He would have to go to tea on Tuesday, he decided. There was no way around it. He could only hope that a tea party wasn’t the sort of thing that husbands normally attended. And, he promised himself, if he managed to get through the occasion unscathed, he would save every penny he could and return to the Huron as fast as was humanly possible.
As he was deciding this, he happened to glance over at the skeleton in the corner. He could have sworn that Mul-Sack was laughing at him.
To Luke’s great relief, Lavinia Van Hansel’s tea party proved to be a small and intimate affair.
He once again brushed down his jacket and removed the street dust from his shoes before he boarded an omnibus that took him down into the city. Once again a maid answered the front door as soon as he let the brass knocker fall, but this time he was not ushered into the drawing room, but into a small parlour to the left of the hall. Here a round table with a paisley cloth and six chairs stood in the centre of a cozy room filled with shelves of bric-a-brac. Lavinia was there already, as were Cherub and another young woman whom Luke didn’t know, although she could well have been in attendance at the soiree and he just didn’t remember her. Lavinia rose when he entered the room and ushered him to a seat beside Cherub.
“You two already know each other, so there will be no difficulty in making conversation,” she said. Luke nodded to Cherub, who rolled her eyes at Lavinia’s remark.
“How are you?” he asked politely. “I trust that you have recovered from your attack?”
“An attack?” the other girl squeaked, “How thrilling!”
“It was nothing,” Cherub said. “And I am quite fine, thank you. By the way, this is Grace Thomas. Grace, this is Dr. Luke Lewis.”
“A doctor! How thrilling!” Grace said. “And where do you practise, Dr. Lewis?”
“In Yorkville. And it’s not very thrilling at all actually.”
Grace looked puzzled, but his remark was rewarded by a small twitch of Cherub’s lips.
Just then someone let the knocker fall against the front door and everyone’s attention was diverted in expectation of the arrival of more guests. Luke t
ensed, prepared to duck under the tablecloth and make a pretense of tying his shoe should the newcomer turn out to be Phillip Van Hansel. He had no idea what he would do after that, but the subterfuge might at least buy him a little time. This desperate measure proved unnecessary. Two people were shown into the parlour, Perry Biddulph and a young, remarkably good-looking man with a scowl on his face. In spite of the scowl, his appearance made Luke gasp. The man had a shock of wavy chestnut hair that swept back from a wide brow and a physical presence that dominated the room. He was like a ghost risen from Luke’s past, for he was like the twin of the priest who had laboured in the fever sheds at Kingston. Luke had been quite enamoured of Father Higgins, although he was disturbed by his feelings at the time; as far as he knew, the priest had been unaware of anything untoward. And Higgins had died. Surely he couldn’t have come back to life.
Then as the man walked farther into the room, Luke realized his mistake. This man was taller and more heavily built. His eyes were blue, not brown. His hair wasn’t quite the right shade of chestnut. And Luke began to breathe again.
He wondered if the man had been invited along with Perry, or if the two merely arrived at the same time. Then he became aware that Grace Thomas was making hasty, fluttery adjustments to the voluminous sleeves of her dress, straightening them and brushing away imaginary crumbs.
Lavinia beckoned the young man to the chair beside Grace, which only deepened his scowl. This was a matchmaking exercise, apparently, but only one of the sides seemed at all interested.
Perry remained standing, his eye assessing the china figur-ines that were lined up on the shelves. He walked over and picked one of them up to examine the potter’s mark on the bottom.
“You seem to have quite a taste for shepherdesses,” he remarked. “This one is quite good, but most of the rest of it is dreadful. You might think about getting rid of a lot of it and giving this one a shelf by itself.”
It was an incredibly rude thing to say, but Lavinia laughed. “Oh, those aren’t mine. Mr. Van Hansel collects them. He has terrible taste, doesn’t he?” Then she turned to the guests at the table. “I don’t think everyone has met our special guest yet,” she said. “Everyone, this is Dr. Luke Lewis. Dr. Lewis, this is Grace Thomas and Arthur Ryan to her left. You, of course, know Miss Ebenezer, and you met Mr. Biddulph the other evening.”
Luke was grateful for the introduction. He hadn’t been told Cherub’s last name before, and it seemed disrespectful to continually address her by her first name.
Perry took the seat to Luke’s right. “Yes, Dr. Lewis and I had quite a charming conversation the other night. It’s lovely to see you again, sir.” He smirked a little as he said it.
Luke nodded in acknowledgement and told himself to act normally.
Lavinia rang the bell that connected the parlour to the kitchens and soon two maids bustled in with a large silver tea service and plates of cakes.
As soon as the cups were filled and the plates passed, Lavinia turned to Luke. “I’m so sorry that Dr. Christie couldn’t join us as well,” she said. “He seems such an interesting gentleman. A Scot, I take it from his accent, but in Canada for quite some time?”
Luke understood that Lavinia was making conversation for the benefit of her other guests. “Yes, I believe he’s originally from Edinburgh, but came to Canada in the thirties. I was very fortunate to be taken into the practice, as I had just graduated.”
“And do you enjoy it?”
“Some of it is interesting. A great deal of it is pretty humdrum. Like any practice, I expect, although I originally intended to return to the Clinton area where my brothers farm. I expect medicine would be more challenging there. Machinery accidents, trees falling on people, farmers gored by bulls, that sort of thing.”
Grace Thomas gave a little squeaky gasp and Luke was suddenly aware that his statement was probably inappropriate as teatime conversation. He tried frantically to change the subject, seizing on the first thing that came to mind.
“And what do you do, Mr. Ryan?”
Ryan fixed Luke with an intent gaze. “Oh, father has a mind to put me to work in the family business. He seems to think I should develop a head for figures so he can concentrate on opening the new warehouse.”
“Mr. Ryan’s father owns an ironworks,” Lavinia interjected. “It’s very successful and he has hopes of expanding. And Miss Thomas’s father owns a cooperage.”
A marriage not only of children, but of business concerns, Luke thought. He didn’t give the merger much of a chance, if Arthur Ryan’s scowl was anything to go by.
“What do you hear of the proposal for a Toronto industrial exhibition, Arthur?” Perry asked.
Arthur shrugged. “Oh, I don’t really know,” he said.
“Exhibition?” Luke asked. Both his father and Dr. Christie had been fascinated by newspaper accounts of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations and had spent an entire mealtime regaling each other with snippets of information about the wonders that were on display. The London palace of iron and glass that housed the exhibition was itself a marvel, the perfect setting for thousands of displays of mechanical and industrial ingenuity, from the latest in agricultural implements to a demonstration of Mr. Colt’s repeat action revolver. Thaddeus was intrigued by the newest contraptions; Dr. Christie, on the other hand, read out descriptions of the more novel exhibits like the Koh-i-Noor diamond, the largest in the world; a four-sided piano; huge Russian vases twice the height of a man fashioned from porcelain and malachite; and an elaborate howdah draped across the back of a stuffed elephant. They were both fascinated by the descriptions of the retiring rooms, where a system was set up to flush away human waste using water.
“Everyone wants an exhibition now that the one in London has proved so successful,” Perry said. “The good burghers of Toronto are rubbing their hands in glee at the notion of charging people for the privilege of inspecting their wares. There’s talk of using the Caer Howell Pleasure Grounds, especially if Mrs. Boulton can be persuaded to loan out the horse park next door. No doubt someone will want to build a replica of the Crystal Palace — in which case I would think that Mr. Ryan’s father might do quite well out of it if he moves smartly.”
“What are the Caer Howell Pleasure Grounds?” Luke had a mental vision of harems and Turkish baths, but he found it difficult to believe that anything so exotic could flourish in a city as staid as Toronto.
“Oh, it’s just a place to play cricket and rackets,” Perry said. “Full of sweaty athletic types. It’s quite boring really, but I’ll take you there sometime if you like. There’s an archery range — I could shoot an arrow through you.”
Luke wasn’t sure how to respond to this. Perry’s innuendo made him uncomfortable, although the only other person at the table who appeared to notice was Lavinia, who shot a sharp glance at Perry.
“It would be quite wonderful to see the London Exhibition first hand, wouldn’t it?” Cherub said. There was a dreamy note to her voice. “I’d love to travel to different places, see different things.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Grace said. “It seems such a bother when everything you could want is right here. All the fuss of packing, just for starters. And then there’s the journey itself. I’m sure I’d get quite queasy on a ship. And there’s no guarantee that I’d like anything once I got there. Different food, different customs. No, I’d rather stay put, thank you.”
“And so you shall,” Arthur said. “Much the best plan.”
Cherub indulged herself with a small grimace. Perry laughed. Luke wanted to, but his good manners stopped him just in time.
As it turned out, Arthur Ryan had not travelled with Perry. The party began to break up after they all consumed several cups of tea, exchanged a few bits of gossip, and participated in three or four long conversations about a number of determinedly non-controversial topics. It was a far cry from the spirited debates that took place at Christie’s table. Luke wondered what would happen if he suddenl
y, à la the good doctor, announced that someone or other should be sent to the hangman. He suspected that Perry would laugh. So might Lavinia. And Cherub. He stifled the impulse. He didn’t want to be considered an amusing guest. He didn’t want to be a guest at all.
Perry left first, then Luke said his goodbyes and found himself standing in front of the house with Arthur.
“It was nice to meet you,” he said.
Arthur merely nodded at him and set off down the street, signally quite clearly that he was uninterested in a companionable walk. As he was travelling in the same direction, Luke let him get a good head start, then trudged after him. He had walked as far as the corner when someone hailed him. It was Perry.
“Climb up,” he said. “I’ve got the carriage for the rest of the day. I’ll give you a ride home.”
Luke hesitated. He didn’t really want to associate with Perry any more than he did with the Van Hansels, but unlike Arthur Ryan, he felt it was churlish to decline and walk off when they were going the same way.
“Oh, come on, I don’t bite.”
Luke climbed up into the vehicle.
“Well, that was a tedious afternoon,” Perry announced. “What would you like to do now?”
“I really need to be getting back to Yorkville,” Luke said, although this wasn’t strictly true. Dr. Christie had urged him to take his time and make the most of the occasion.
“Surely you have time for a small drink of something besides tea?” Perry said. “Especially since I’m saving you all sorts of time. I need a reward for being so bored.”
The Burying Ground Page 12