by BJ Hoff
Alice stared at Ruth Marriott. In the eerie incandescence filling the room, the younger woman appeared to be trapped in a blaze of phosphor. Her gray suit took on a faint green hue, and her dark eyes smoldered like hot coals against the iridescent gleam of her skin, giving her an almost spectral appearance.
This is not real, Alice told herself. It’s not happening. The light faded, and once again shadows draped the room, broken only by an occasional arc of lightning at the window.
Finally Alice managed to speak, although her voice sounded thin and tremulous, like that of an old woman who has been threatened or vilified. “I think it best that you leave, Miss Marriott. Right away.”
Slowly, the dark eyes never leaving Alice’s face, the young woman rose to her feet. Alice did not miss the effort the movement seemed to require. In a moment of alarm, she feared that Ruth Marriott was about to drop into a dead faint.
But the younger woman stood facing her. “Mrs. Walsh—”
Alice had no intention of hearing anything further from this deluded stranger. “I can’t imagine what all this is about, but you’ve done a very unwise thing in coming here like this, saying such a thing to me about my husband!”
She knew she was rambling, could feel herself losing control. So foolish, getting worked up over what was obviously either a horrible mistake or some sort of cruel scheme…
“Please, Mrs. Walsh, I think you should hear what I have to say. I know this is painful for you—”
“Painful?” Alice repeated incredulously. “Hardly painful, I can assure you. It’s absurd! Now, I really must insist that you leave my home.” Alice had meant to sound firm and in control. Instead, a faint note of hysteria seemed to have crept into her voice, and she cringed.
Unbelievably, Ruth Marriott stood her ground, watching Alice with an expression that seemed to hold both regret and resolve.
“I’m telling you the truth, Mrs. Walsh,” she insisted quietly. “Your husband…Patrick—” She stopped, dropping her gaze to the floor. “We’ve been having an affair for months. I’m going to have a baby, and Patrick is the father.”
“You are lying!” Suddenly angry, Alice felt an irrational desire to strike the pale young woman standing so still, so solemnly, across from her. “My husband would never be unfaithful to me!”
Ruth Marriott looked at her with a strangely pitying expression. “But he has been unfaithful, Mrs. Walsh, though I can certainly understand why you find it difficult to believe. Patrick…is a most convincing liar. He lied to me right from the beginning. He told me that his wife was dead.”
Stunned, Alice reeled as if from a blow. “How dare you?” she choked out. “You’re the liar! I want you out of my house this instant!”
Again the young woman regarded her with that unaccountable look of regret, as if she found Alice a pathetic figure, one to be treated with great pity.
For the first time since this strange young woman had leveled her outrageous charge against Patrick, Alice found herself doubting her husband’s fidelity. A sickness rose up inside her, and an acrid taste filled her mouth.
“I could tell you things about your husband, Mrs. Walsh…intimate things…that only you would know. Please don’t make me do that.” Ruth Marriott spoke more quietly now, a flush spreading over her face. “For both our sakes, please don’t.”
Dazed as she was, Alice heard the threat and hesitated. Her mind raced. Even if Patrick had, during a lapse of judgment, trifled with the girl, it didn’t necessarily mean that he had fathered her child. Obviously, she was bent on extortion.
“Why did you come here?” Alice demanded. “What do you want?”
“I want your husband to take responsibility for his behavior. I’m going to need help—financial help—in raising my child. Patrick’s child. He tried to buy me off with a thousand dollars, but he’s not going to get rid of me so easily. I stand to lose my job, my apartment—everything—any day now, and I’m going to need help caring for the baby.”
Alice stared at her. “Patrick…has given you money?” she said thickly, dread twisting inside her. “You’ve actually confronted him with this?”
Ruth Marriott’s face contorted into a mask of bitterness. “Oh yes,” she said. “I confronted him. Patrick’s solution is for me to either have an abortion—or marry a ‘fat, balding butcher’! He refuses to take any responsibility whatsoever for the baby. I warned him that I would come to you, but he didn’t believe me. He threw me out of his office.”
Alice stood utterly still. A crawling sensation of cold traveled down her shoulders and along her spine. Rain drummed against the window so hard that the glass seemed likely to shatter, while lightning flared and crackled. Alice trembled as if caught in the throes of a fever. She steeled herself against the weakness, clenching her fists until pain shot all the way up her forearms.
“I don’t know what you thought you could possibly gain by coming here with your lies,” she said as evenly as she could manage, “but you should have spared us both. I must tell you that if you don’t leave, I will have to see that you are forcibly removed.”
“You know I’m telling the truth.”
Again Alice would have denied the woman’s accusations, but something in the quiet, even voice and unwavering gaze made her hesitate.
“Mrs. Walsh, I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to come here. You must believe that if I had known Patrick was lying, if I had known he wasn’t really a widower, I would never have become involved with him.” She stopped, pressing a hand to her abdomen in a thoroughly maternal gesture. “I’m not a bad woman, Mrs. Walsh. At least, I never was before I met Patrick. But he promised to marry me. As soon as the children were older, he said, we would be married. Please, try to understand how it happened.”
Something in the appeal of those desperate words, some plea in the wounded dark eyes, pierced Alice’s heart. She knew then, with an awful, wrenching certainty, that Ruth Marriott was telling the truth.
She turned her back on the younger woman and crossed the room, sinking down onto the sofa near the fireplace.
Incredibly, Alice felt no sense of outrage. Somehow she knew that the woman across from her was not the first with whom Patrick had betrayed their marriage vows, not the first to become involved in an illicit affair with him…and probably not the first to be so carelessly discarded when he tired of her.
Strange, that she could summon no real anger for the way he had lied to her, humiliated her. For the first time she realized that she had been lying to herself all along, had indeed been deceiving herself for years.
“Perhaps,” she said, barely able to force the words out, “you should tell me…everything.”
All the way across to the island, Patrick Walsh’s insides churned in rhythm with the storm-driven waves. His head pounded with the thunder, and every furious heave of the boat brought an answering slam from his heart.
Hunched inside the rough, makeshift cabin, he watched the lightning swoop down and skate over the water. He shouldn’t have started across in such a storm; even the ferry wasn’t running. But he wasn’t willing to risk the chance that Ruth might be foolhardy enough to go to his wife.
Not that Alice would believe her, he reassured himself. Not Alice. Not in a lifetime. She trusted him implicitly, always had. Of course, he had been discreet with his affairs over the years, never taking up with local women but instead favoring those assignations convenient to his out-of-town “business trips.” He suspected that for the most part his caution had been unnecessary; Alice, he was sure, would never have thought to question his fidelity.
Alice didn’t think much about anything at all, so far as he could tell. Certainly she would pay no heed to someone like Ruth Marriott. No, his wife would never be susceptible to a strange woman making wild-eyed accusations.
But it was better to be sure. He had worked too hard, had had too much incredible luck, to risk losing even the smallest part of what he had attained over the years.
One little doxy couldn’t do hi
m all that much damage, of course. The worst that might come from her foolishness would be that Jacob Braun, Alice’s father, could turn on him and take back control of one of the hotels and some of the real estate. If it came to that, he had more than enough on the books in legitimate businesses to cover himself, not to mention the taverns and tenements in Five Points.
But it wasn’t money that worried him. Money had never been his primary aim, but the means to attain the power that was his ultimate objective. He already had more money than he could ever spend in a lifetime, certainly enough to ensure a future political position and its accompanying power—with the proper backing and brokerage, of course. Over the past few months he had pulled all the strings, taken all the steps that would be required to play the game of politics from a winning position.
But if old man Braun lost his temper and went against him, even managed to turn Alice against him—unlikely as that seemed—there could be a messy scandal. His political aspirations would end up dust.
Everyone knew that most of the politicians in the state—at least the successful ones—were as rotten as bad meat. No one paid much heed to their crooked schemes, so long as they came through with what their constituents demanded. But just let one of them get caught being unfaithful to his wife, and all of a sudden everyone had a conscience. A man who cheated on his wife—and got found out—made some of the big bosses squirm. And a divorced man was dead in the water. There were too many Irish Catholics and straitlaced Protestants to appease. The voters wouldn’t make their mark for a man who had openly shamed his wife, and the politicos knew it. They would dump a known philanderer without blinking.
Clinging to the rail to keep from sliding against the wall, Patrick reminded himself that Alice would never turn on him, much less seek a divorce. She was totally devoted to him.
Still, it was best not to take chances. He’d feel better once he got home. That way, if Ruth did happen to show up, he’d be there to toss her out before she could get to Alice.
Silently he cursed the little fool for complicating things. Thunder crashed, and the boat gave a violent lurch. He tightened his grip on the rail, for a moment imagining the iron bar under his hands to be Ruth Marriott’s throat.
19
Confrontation
Day of the damned, descend,
And bring man’s deceit to an end.
Day of dread, now reveal
What darkness would strive to conceal.
ANONYMOUS
Utterly drenched from the storm and ridden by a growing anxiety, Patrick Walsh flung the heavy front door open so hard it banged against the wall. Inside, he shook himself like a dog to shed some of the water.
When the housemaid came rushing to see about the noise, he shouted at her. “I could do with a towel! You should have had one ready!”
The maid—Nancy—gaped, wringing her hands at her waist. Her fearful expression only irritated him more. “I’m sorry, sir,” she stammered, “we weren’t expecting you so early! The children aren’t even home from school yet, and they’re usually in long before you arrive.”
He ignored her blather, ordered her to fetch a towel, then stopped her before she could obey. “Where’s my wife?” he snapped, shaking the water from his hair and clothes with no regard for the polished floor under his feet.
The maid turned back, blinking furiously as if she couldn’t quite take in his question. “Why…Mrs. Walsh is upstairs in the sitting room, sir. She has a caller.”
Patrick straightened, staring at her. “A caller?” His stomach knotted. “Who?” Shrugging out of his suit coat, he removed the pistol from the shoulder holster and pocketed it in his trousers.
The woman squinted at the gun for an instant, then pulled her moon face into the exaggerated scowl of disapproval that never failed to annoy him.
“The lady—the caller—didn’t give her name, sir. Invited herself in as if she was royalty, with no calling card at all. But Mrs. Walsh, she said to show her up anyway. They’ve been up there, in the sitting room, for well over an hour now,” she added, darting a glance upstairs.
Then, as if she’d forgotten, she brought a hand to her mouth. “Oh, your towel, sir! I’ll be getting it right away!”
“Never mind.” Patrick stood for a moment looking up at the second floor landing. “Go to your quarters,” he said shortly.
“But, sir, you’ll catch your death—”
“And stay there until you’re sent for!”
He waited until the maid had disappeared down the hall that led to her room behind the kitchen. Then he started up the stairs two at a time.
Alice heard the front door bang open, followed by voices—Patrick’s voice scolding Nancy, and the maid’s shrill return.
With dread settling over her, she got to her feet. “He’s come home early.”
Ruth Marriott also stood, her expression fearful. “He’ll be furious! I must leave at once.”
Alice shook her head. “No, it’s time he faced the two of us. Together.”
“But he threatened me. He—I thought he was going to strangle me right there in his office!”
Alice had listened to the younger woman’s detailed account of her plight for the better part of an hour. She had sat silently, her pulse pounding, her heart breaking, as she heard what she recognized to be a truthful rendering of her husband’s betrayal. As the narrative progressed, she had moved past disbelief and anger, even beyond humiliation, to an unexpected, unexplainable kind of sympathy for the other woman’s dilemma.
But at the moment she felt only impatience. “Patrick may be an…adulterer,” she said, her tone sharp, “but he would never put a hand to a woman. I insist that you stay. There can be no thought of assistance to you until he admits the truth. To both of us.”
Alice was surprised by her own calm. Had she ever once envisioned the agonizing scene of this afternoon, she might have expected that she would collapse with shock and grief, at the least give in to hysterical weeping. Instead, she felt only a gaping emptiness within, as if her very self had been stripped away, leaving nothing but a dry husk, devoid of all feeling, all emotion.
She didn’t even feel anything when she looked up to find Patrick in the doorway. He stood there unmoving, his eyes darting from Ruth Marriott to Alice. “I can’t believe you opened the door to this woman! Surely you realize that she’s utterly mad!”
He was dripping wet, his hair slicked to his head, his face beaded with water. His shirt and trousers looked to be soaked.
Ordinarily, Alice would have run to him and begun to fuss. Now she merely stood watching him as he turned a murderous look on Ruth Marriott.
“What exactly is going on here?” he demanded. As always his tone was authoritative, imperious. But it seemed to Alice that his manner lacked some of its usual confidence.
“You haven’t listened to her preposterous stories, I hope,” he said, turning back to Alice. “I told you, the woman is deranged.”
Alice met his gaze straight on. Her throat felt as if it were lined with gravel, her mouth dry as dust. But she surprised herself by answering him in a quiet, even tone. “How I wish that were the case, Patrick. But Miss Marriott doesn’t strike me as deranged. Not in the least.”
His jaw tightened. “You can disregard whatever she’s told you. She’s quite mad, and I can’t believe you didn’t see as much right away.”
“Please don’t do this,” Alice said. She felt heavy, her arms and legs weighted and cumbersome. “Don’t try to lie. You’re only making it harder on all of us. There’s already been entirely too much lying.”
Incredibly, his look was one of reproach. “You can’t be serious! For the love of heaven, Alice, this woman is a lunatic! You’d listen to the ravings of a madwoman rather than believe your own husband?”
Alice looked at him. A dark, bitter sorrow rose up in her as she recognized what a consummate actor Patrick had always been. Even now, when he had been found out, when he stood in the very presence of the two women he h
ad betrayed—even now, he was frighteningly convincing. She could almost believe his indignation, his outrage, could almost accept his protests of innocence.
Almost…
Before she could weaken, she deliberately allowed fragments of Ruth Marriott’s accusations to surface. The woman obviously knew Patrick well. Intimately.
Disgust renewed itself, and for a moment she turned away from both of them. Ruth Marriott had spoken of things meant to be private, hidden between husband and wife, secrets never intended to be shared outside the sanctity of marriage. Alice shuddered, forcing down a wave of nausea.
She turned around to find Patrick glaring at Ruth Marriott with an expression of undisguised malice, his features contorted to an ugly mask. The other woman apparently failed to recognize the intensity of his anger, for she seemed bent on pressing him to some sort of agreement.
“At least your wife understands my predicament,” she was saying. “You might just as well stop trying to deny it, Patrick! She knows, and she’s willing to help me.”
Alice saw the last of his control shatter, inverting to a dark, pulsing rage. He raised a hand as if to strike Ruth Marriott, who shrank away from him with a look of pure horror.
“You little slut!” he roared, looming over her. “I warned you! I told you not to come here!”
Ruth stumbled back from him, but he caught her wrists and held her with one hand while grasping her throat with the other.
Alice rushed at him. “Patrick! No!”
He seemed deaf to her scream, gave no sign that he even knew she was in the room. At last he released Ruth’s throat, gripped her by the shoulders, and shoved her to the open doorway.
The woman’s terror was unmistakable, yet she seemed determined to stand her ground. “You can’t do this! Your wife believes me. She knows I’m telling the truth!”
Patrick shot a look at Alice over his shoulder as if to say he would deal with her later. She cringed at the fury burning out of his eyes.
He swung back to Ruth Marriott. “You’ve gone too far, you little fool! I warned you!”