“How can I help you, Miss Bly?” she asked with a chill, ignoring the question.
“I understand you visited Miss Lazarus before her death.”
“That’s right.”
“On two occasions, I’m told.”
“Yes.”
“And the first one ended with you shouting at her.”
“And in the second one I apologized for my behavior.”
“What was it that made you scream at a dying woman?”
“Jealousy.” Unlike Helena, Molly spoke impulsively, uncensored. “I learned that Miss Lazarus had taken my place as Helena’s … confidante. After she returned from England, I visited her and behaved badly. Years of frustration came out, I’m sorry to say.”
“You had no idea Helena and Emma were intimate?”
“Helena had lied to me. She said that Charles had taken up with a Jewess and that of course it would lead nowhere. I believed her until Richard mentioned in passing that Emma had taken my place.”
Molly winced as she heard herself utter those words.
“Why did it bother you so? You had moved away and started a family, made a life for yourself in the West.”
“Helena and I had vowed that our souls would remain as one forever.” She said it with pride and defiance.
“And what made you apologize to Miss Lazarus?”
“Helena convinced me that nothing had changed. Emma was simply keeping my seat warm. I paid Emma another visit, to offer an apology, and she graciously accepted.”
The callousness of these women was appalling. Helena and Molly deserved each other. But Nellie remained focused on the task at hand.
“I need to know who poisoned Emma, Mrs. Foote. I know it was not you.”
“Why is that? Do I strike you as too genteel?”
“No. I’m sure you would have considered it if you’d had the chance. But whoever poisoned her did it over the course of several weeks. You were there only twice.”
“I am relieved to be out from under your suspicions,” she said caustically.
“Did you see anyone put unusual items in her food or drink? Some powder? Or liquids? Anything that might have been out of the ordinary?”
“No one. And certainly not Charles. He did not poison Emma.”
“I take it Mr. and Mrs. Gilder urged you to tell me that.”
“Not at all.”
“But then, you would not tell me if they had,” Nellie said, not intimidated by the eastern artist. “They are your publishers and your primary source of income, now that your husband’s engineering firm is struggling. No doubt that is another reason you communicate with Mrs. Gilder in writing rather than in person: Mr. Gilder must have no reason to end your publishing relationship.”
Molly blanched. She wasn’t used to being spoken to this way by someone of inferior stock. Nellie could tell the words hit home. Molly Foote prided herself on saying or doing whatever she pleased, but she was beholden to Richard Gilder, the man who had taken the love of her life, and it made her chafe inside.
“If you knew I would heed Mr. and Mrs. Gilder,” Molly said, containing her ire, “then why are you here?”
“You apologized to Miss Lazarus. That means you respected her.”
“Yes. I did. As a woman and as a writer.”
“Then I assume you want to see her murderer brought to justice.”
“Possibly. But the murderer was not Charles.”
“He had every opportunity for it. Miss Lazarus always took tea in the afternoon, a habit she developed in England. I’m told he visited then and often prepared her tea.”
“So did several other people. Her sisters. Her maidservant. Other friends.”
“But none of them had reason to kill Miss Lazarus. I assume Helena told you about his arrangement with Judge Hilton.”
“Helena has always confided in me and always will, until the day she dies. Whatever his arrangement with Judge Hilton, Charles is not a murderer. He lacks the stomach. I learned that living in the West. Some men are sickened at the sight of blood; others see it as a fact of life. Charles was seventeen when the war ended and never had to serve. He was extremely relieved. He would have paid whatever it took to stay out.”
“He is a champion fencer. He founded the New York Fencers Club.”
“There is a big difference between a college fencer and a swordsman. Charles is a critic, not a player.” It was true, Nellie realized. She had suspected all along but had resisted facing it. She remembered Charles when he begged her not to publish the first article. He was lying that day, but she saw that he lacked the ruthlessness of Hilton, or of Carnegie or Frick or Gould, men who would vanquish anything in their path if necessary. Molly Foote was right: Charles DeKay had never killed another person, and he never committed murder for one, either.
“Then who poisoned Miss Lazarus?”
“What difference does it make?” shrugged Molly. “Emma is dead and buried.”
“She was a great woman. I would like to know how she died.”
“The public does not care. No one cares, not even her family. Most of the public do not know Emma Lazarus or appreciate her.”
“But I know her. And I appreciate her. And apparently so did Mrs. DeKay.”
Molly went flush. The old jealousy was not completely put to rest, even after a year. “I cannot help you, Miss Bly. If you’ll excuse me, I have business to tend to.”
She headed off to a group of male artists who were delighted to receive her.
Nellie was short of breath and sick to her stomach. Her entire theory of the case—that Charles had poisoned Emma at Henry Hilton’s bidding—had just exploded in her face. It caused her to question everything about the story. She wondered if Hilton was even behind it and how it had been done. She even wondered if Ingram was wrong and Emma had not been poisoned at all but instead had died of cancer, as Barker had insisted.
She decided to clear her head and walk back to the World along Tenth Avenue instead of taking a streetcar. It was a cool January day, much like when she’d entered the asylum a year before. That had been an incredibly exhilarating moment, filled as it was with opportunity. This was the opposite, a sinking feeling, the air leaving a balloon. She had been so close, and now everything was falling apart. It had happened so many times in her life. The jury finding in her favor against that thief Jackson and then the judge stealing it. The front-page stories in the Pittsburg papers that riveted the public but then the publisher assigning her to garden stories and fashion. The beautiful house she lived in as a little girl that was suddenly taken from her, consigning her to live in tenements and scrub floors as a ten-year-old. That was the pattern, she reflected bitterly; that would always be the pattern.
She forced away the panic and tried to think rationally. Emma had been murdered. That was a fact. Ingram had found arsenic on both the pillowcase and the letters to Julia. Whoever had administered the poison had been part of her inner circle. That was another fact. They may have had their own reasons, which she could not fathom as yet, but they were almost certainly acting at the behest of Henry Hilton, who had more than enough reason to want Emma Lazarus dead: revenge for the boycott that damaged his fortune and reputation, plus the threat she posed to the new port at Montauk.
She went over the list in her mind of everyone who had been with Emma during those final months, and one by one eliminated each one as a suspect. Helena was in love with Emma and too haughty to do Hilton’s bidding. Richard was editing Emma’s papers and would want to keep his literary star alive as long as possible. Charles, as Molly had pointed out, lacked the backbone to kill anyone, especially someone whose murder would require repeated acts of chilling betrayal. Sarah was the only servant Emma allowed near her, and by her actions and demeanor, it was obvious Sarah was not the murderer.
Then who could it be?
Without realizing it, Nellie had arrived at Battery Park. She looked around at the chaos surrounding the arri
ving immigrants at Castle Garden, the poverty-stricken families carrying little more than the clothes on their backs, descended on by hustlers preying on their innocence and dreams. Relatives who had gone ahead to America fought through the hordes to locate loved ones. Over by the docks, two tall sailing ships were joined by a giant steamship that dwarfed the older ships. An endless stream of passengers disembarked from the ships. Nellie could swear the hustlers’ eyes got wider and wider.
By the entrance to the Garden a play was going on in Yiddish. The audience, children and adults waiting for their next step in the New World, was enthralled. Nellie had to smile. Emma would have liked this.
She surveyed the bay, crowded with ferries shuttling passengers from New Jersey and Long Island to Manhattan. In the distance she saw the Statue of Liberty, shiny and gleaming in its copper patina. Not far from the statue, dozens of workers removed sand from a giant barge and shoveled landfill on to tiny Ellis Island, the home of the new federal immigration center. Two huge barges loaded with sand headed toward the island, and Nellie followed the line back to the dock at Battery Park, where twenty or so horse-drawn carriages piled high with sand were lined up one after the other, and workmen transferred the sand to another huge barge waiting on the dock.
Nellie walked over to the carriages. An officious man in his early forties, with a bushy mustache and suit and tie, made notes and kept a tally on a tablet.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“We are doubling the size of Ellis Island, miss,” he said proudly.
“The island is not big enough as it is?”
“No, miss. The new center will accommodate twice as many people as pass through Castle Gardens every day.”
“Twice as many?” she said. “Are there that many ships coming over?”
“Same number of ships, miss. But these new steel hulls can carry three times the number of people. Eleven hundred passengers, eight hundred crew. We can’t keep them waiting on the ships for a week.”
“But if you add to the size of the island, won’t they run aground?”
“A good question, miss. The new land has to go straight down rather than gradual. We have divers making sure of that. If it sets like a continental shelf, that’s right, the ships can’t land.”
Something went off in her brain.
“How deep is the harbor here?” she asked.
“Twenty-four feet here at Castle Garden. Ellis Island is farther out, about thirty feet.”
“Is thirty feet enough to accommodate the new ships?”
“Barely. It used to be seventeen feet here. It took years and years to get it to twenty-four. But we’re blessed that this is an island rather than part of the shelf. It’s easier to dig near an island.”
“And if this were part of the shelf and not an island?”
“Then the federal government would have to look elsewhere for its new immigration depot.”
Once again she could scarcely breathe, only this time it was from excitement. It didn’t make complete sense quite yet, but she knew she was on to something.
“Thank you, sir,” she said effusively. “You have been most helpful.”
“Not at all, miss.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Patchogue, Long Island Railroad Station
Over Nellie’s objections, Ingram had opted to forego his research for the afternoon and ride the train with her out to Montauk. He had grown increasingly worried about her safety. After the near-rape in Brooklyn and her other mysterious near-accidents on the streets, he had retained a detective agency to provide full-time protection, and a guard accompanied the two of them and Mary Jane on the trip. Nellie had protested all the security as unnecessary, but Ingram wouldn’t hear of it. He was determined to be cautious.
Ingram said almost nothing the entire ride, and it was not simply that the sea air aggravated his respiratory problems. The night before, they had broached the subject of marriage once again, and the discussion again left them both in tears. He wanted to build a life with her, but they both knew she would never be happy living with him in Europe. She had too much drive, too much ambition. Some newspapers assigned reporters to work in foreign countries, but they were almost always in London or Paris. Ingram’s work would take him to Vienna and Leipzig and Moscow. That was where the advances in psychology were taking place. The only way they could become husband and wife was if he gave up his interest in psychology and practiced medicine as a conventional doctor.
He offered to take that path, but he could not hide his dismay at the prospect. It was not that conventional medicine bored him. He was a natural healer, and as a scientist everything about the human body fascinated him. But he was convinced that so much of the physical pain and mental anguish humans encountered in life was due to forces beyond their control, as if they were afflicted with an emotional virus. He wanted to understand these viruses and find ways to treat and even cure them. There was so much work to be done in that area, and his research at Bellevue and with private patients had made him one of the three or four most forward-thinking physicians in the world in that regard. He could not give all of that up, any more than Nellie could give up her reporting. Try as they might, they could not see a way out.
He glanced over at her and saw her staring at the sand dunes getting swept about by the bitter cold January wind. She smiled at him and resumed looking out the window. It tormented them both to be so near and yet have no future together. If she was right about this harbor, Nellie thought to herself, her story would be finished soon, and she would move on to other things. There would be no need to protect her any longer. He would to go Germany, and she would remain here in New York.
“I think Mrs. Foote is right about Charles DeKay,” he blurted out unexpectedly. “I don’t think he poisoned Miss Lazarus.”
It was a bold statement for him. Usually he confined his responses as a scientist, or a sounding board.
“Why do you say that?”
“DeKay is very comfortable with women. Women have always saved him. His mother, his sister, Emma. He is grateful to them. And he needs them. I don’t think he could bring himself to harm a woman.”
“That is speaking as a scientist?”
“As a psychologist, yes. That is what my training tells me. I take it from your skepticism you are now even less likely to join me abroad after this case?”
“Don’t joke about that, Ingram. Please.”
He nodded and resumed his silence. But personal feelings aside, she was impressed. She had reached the same conclusion after speaking to DeKay, Helena, and Mary Foote. His science had led him to the same result, and he had spent no more than five minutes with Charles DeKay. She wasn’t skeptical of his new field, she was admiring. But she dare not tell him that or they would be embroiled in a difficult discussion all over again.
They arrived at Montauk, on the tip of Long Island that looked out to the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound. To the east was a gray ocean with pounding waves as far as the eye could see. To the northwest they could see Block Island and, in the distance, Newport. Bundled up against the cold, they made their way through the small whaling town to a large clapboard house located among some fishing boats and a few luxury yachts moored for the winter and bearing the sign MONTAUK YACHT CLUB. By the dock a crusty man with deep, weather-beaten lines in his face sat in a mildewed shack with an open window despite the freezing temperature. Ingram and Nellie stepped forward as Mary Jane and the guard lingered behind.
“Mr. Blake?” said Ingram.
“That’s me.”
“I’m Dr. Ingram. And this is my wife. I sent you a telegram.”
“Yes. Good afternoon, doctor. Mrs. Ingram.”
She had to smile. It did have a nice ring to it. “Good afternoon, Captain Blake.”
Blake’s chest puffed out at being addressed as Captain.
“I would like to inquire about joining the yacht club,” said Ingram.
“Are you familiar with the area, doctor?”
“Somewhat. I work in Manhattan and recently profited from some fortunate investments. I decided the best use of my profits was to take advantage of your marvelous setting.”
“A wise decision, doctor. May I ask the size of your yacht?”
“I have my eye on a sixty-foot schooner.”
“A hundred and twenty feet,” piped up Nellie.
“A hundred and twenty feet,” conceded Ingram, the good husband going along.
Blake frowned. “How deep is the hull?”
“Twelve feet. Maybe fifteen.”
“I’m sorry, doctor. The deepest we can accommodate is ten feet.”
“We will be glad to pay extra,” said Nellie.
“It’s not a matter of payment, ma’am. Our harbor cannot take in anything larger than ten feet.”
“Are you sure of that?” said Nellie. “We so want to dock our boat here.”
“I am sure, Mrs. Ingram. I would like nothing more than to make you and your husband a member of our club. But the laws of nature are governing us, not the laws of men.”
“What about these plans to make Montauk Harbor the new landing point from Europe?” asked Nellie. “I’ve been reading about that in the paper.”
“As long as the ships go no deeper than ten feet, they should have no problem.”
“But most of the ships will have hulls that sit twenty feet or so,” she said. “There must be plans to make the harbor deeper.”
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