Though the bruises may have been fresh, I thought it unlikely that the girl had been dead when she entered the river. The inward curve of her body was typical of drowning victims, whose head and limbs tended to hang from their more buoyant chest cavities in the water, becoming locked in that position as rigor mortis set in. If someone had thrown her into the river, most likely they’d either mistakenly believed she was dead or had trusted the river to finish her off.
“We’ll know more after the autopsy,” Detective Norton said, straightening from his crouch.
The crowd had grown more unruly and was beginning to press in on the gathering on the esplanade. The police accordingly began a more aggressive clearing of unnecessary personnel, which unfortunately included me. Since Simon still had to make his statement, I continued alone up the esplanade to check on the boys. I spied Frankie’s van parked on the grass a few yards ahead, and then Frankie and his comrades mingling with the oarsmen by the rail. A few seconds later, they spotted me as well and bounded over, pelting me with questions about the dead girl.
After telling them the little I knew, I gently probed the rowers’ reactions to what they had witnessed. For now, at least, excitement over their macabre discovery and disappointment over the race’s interruption seemed to be their primary emotions.
“D’you think they did it on purpose?” Frankie asked me.
“Who?” I replied.
“The Oakley Club.”
I frowned at him. “Are you asking me if I think your competition threw that girl in the water, then had someone call the Wieran team over, just so they could win the race?”
“Yeah, that’s it,” he confirmed.
“No,” I said. “I most certainly do not.”
“I wouldn’t put it past ’em,” Finn opined.
“Well, you’d better not go around saying so,” I cautioned, remembering the alcohol-fueled crowds of Oakley supporters.
Per Simon’s instructions, I told the boys to row the boat back downriver to the launch float, assuring them he’d meet them at the clubhouse that evening for the scheduled bonfire and fireworks. A few minutes later, the boat shoved off, minus its stern pair, while the remaining boys carried the extra oars back to the van. I waited until they were safely away and then started back down the esplanade.
Word of the girl’s death must have spread, for by the time I returned to the pier, the small group of spectators at its foot had grown into a pulsing mass several hundred people strong that spilled onto the adjoining lawn. With families scattered all over the park, I supposed there must be many daughters and sisters unaccounted for, causing the fear I saw in many of the faces. I edged my way through the throng as frantic shouts and murmured prayers rippled all around me.
“Mio Dio! La mia Vittoria!” shrieked one woman, pushing past me and around the overwhelmed policeman. She ran to the body and stared down at it for a frozen moment before dropping to her knees with a moan of relief.
I stepped into the void she’d created at the front of the crowd and called to Simon, who was helping a photographer unload equipment from the nearby police wagon.
“How are they taking it?” he asked as he joined me.
“Almost too well,” I told him. “I let them know I’d be at the clubhouse tonight, in case any of them want to speak to me in private.”
“I appreciate it,” he said, the warmth in his eyes underscoring his words.
We watched in silence as the photographer set up a tall tripod so that its legs were straddling the drowned girl and then climbed a stool to attach his camera to the top of it, with the lens facing straight down. Draping a dark cloth over his head, he removed the lens cap, inserted a glass plate holder, and pulled out the dark slide to make his first exposure.
“What will happen now?” I asked Simon.
“I expect they’ll let all these people file past, once they’re done, to see if anyone can identify her. If that doesn’t work, they’ll likely print up a circular with her photograph and show it around the local lodging houses and women’s shelters to see if anyone recognizes her there. They can use the circular to check for a match in the missing persons files too.”
I hoped it would be enough. But I knew that hundreds of unclaimed bodies were buried every year on Hart’s Island, an unhappy consequence of the record-breaking numbers of foreigners pouring into the city. I hated to think that this sweet-faced young girl might join their ranks, her death dismissed as one more unfortunate but inevitable occurrence of immigrant life.
Detective Norton called to Simon from the police wagon.
“Looks like I’m needed,” Simon said. “You might as well go; there’s nothing more you can do here. I’ll see you tonight, at the clubhouse.” He started toward the detective.
I lingered for a moment longer, watching him confer over the detective’s memorandum book with his hands on his hips and his legs planted solidly on the pavement, admiring the sturdy look of him. How steady he was, I thought with a sigh; how easily he seemed to handle whatever life threw his way…
A piercing voice broke into my thoughts. “Miss! Miss, please!”
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw a dark-haired girl, perhaps thirteen years of age, standing a few feet behind me at the front of the crowd, struggling to escape the grip of a stout old woman in a black dress and shawl. “Please, miss!” she cried again.
With a start, I realized she was calling to me.
She broke free of the old woman and lunged toward me. “Will you help me, miss?” she entreated, anxiety contorting her oval face. Her English, though accented, was easy enough to understand.
“Help you? How?” I asked in astonishment.
“Rosa, torna qui!” the old woman hissed.
The girl ignored her. “My friend is missing,” she said quickly, reaching for a locket that hung from her neck. “If I give you her picture, will you ask the police to make a circolare for her too?”
I stared at her, uncomprehending, until it dawned on me that she must have overheard my conversation with Simon. I was still trying to come up with a response when she unclasped the brass locket and thrust it in front of my face. It contained two small photographs: one of a younger version of the girl standing before me, the other of an older girl, about fifteen years of age at the time it was taken. The older girl was very pretty, with a shy smile that lit up her big, dark eyes.
“This is my friend, Teresa Casoria,” she said, pointing to the older girl. “She came here on a ship to marry Antonio eight days ago. She promised she would come see me on my birthday—but that was four days ago, and she hasn’t come. I fear something bad must have happened to her.”
“Oh, I am sorry,” I sputtered, “but I’m really not in a position to help…”
“You know the police,” she said, gesturing toward Simon and the detective. “You can give them her picture and ask them to look for her too.” She pried the picture out of its frame with her fingernail and pushed it into my hand.
I looked down at the picture and back at her, nonplussed but also moved by her distress. “You know, it’s possible that your friend was simply turned back at Ellis Island. If she contracted infectious eye disease or favus from another steerage passenger—”
“Teresa didn’t come in steerage,” she broke in. “Antonio bought her a cabin ticket. She told me so.”
“Well then,” I said slowly, deciding to try another tack, “perhaps she simply forgot about your birthday. If she’s just arrived in New York, she must have a great deal on her mind. Especially if she’s planning to marry.”
“No,” she said with an emphatic shake of her head. “Teresa wouldn’t forget.”
“Rosa! Dobbiamo andare!” called the old woman, beckoning with a crabbed arm.
The girl glanced over her shoulder and turned back to me, her dark eyes pleading. “In Naples, when my mother died, Teresa was very kind
to me. She used to stay after school to help me with my lessons, and tell me happy stories. She was like the sun to me, shining through a cloudy sky. When I learned we were moving to America, I cried for days because I didn’t want to leave her. But she promised to write to me every month so that I wouldn’t feel too lonely. And then last winter, she wrote to say she was coming to New York to marry, and I was so happy!” She paused, her eyes welling with tears. “But now something has gone wrong. I can feel it! Please, miss, you must help her. You must!”
I hardly knew what to say. “But you don’t know for sure that she’s in trouble,” I insisted. “She could have just had a change in plans and taken a later boat.”
She was shaking her head again. “She posted a letter to me the morning she left, telling me she was on her way and that she was bringing a present for my birthday. Besides, Antonio had already sent her the ticket.”
“Well, have you spoken to this…Antonio? Surely, he would know if she’s gone missing.”
She looked surprised by my question. “I’m an unmarried girl, miss. I’m not allowed to walk out alone. And my grandmother won’t go with me to talk to Antonio or to the police. She says I’m being foolish.”
I was inclined to agree with her grandmother, although I felt it would be unkind to say so.
“His name is Antonio Fabroni,” she added quickly, her expression brightening, as if it had occurred to her that I might ask him for her. “He has a house painting business on 109th Street. Teresa told me he lives with his mother over the shop.”
“I’m sorry,” I said firmly, “but if you’re convinced she’s gone missing, the best advice I can give you is to file a report with the missing persons—” I broke off as her grandmother stepped forward and seized her by the arm. Muttering darkly, the old woman started pulling her back through the crowd.
“Wait!” I called after the girl, holding out the picture. “Your photograph!”
“You can give it back to me after they find her,” she called over her shoulder. “My name is Rosa Velloca, and I live near the church, on 115th Street. Thank you, miss! Thank you with all of my heart!”
Chapter Three
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Simon asked from the other side of the kitchen, where he was mashing a bowlful of potatoes with a carpenter’s mallet.
“Of course I do.” Edging to my right to block his view, I raised my spatula again and searched for the proper angle of attack. I’d been hounding Simon for months to introduce me to his friends; now that he’d finally invited one for supper, I wasn’t about to admit that I was in over my head.
The six spotted trout stared doubtfully up at me, as if all too aware of my domestic inadequacies. After the unsettling events of the morning, I’d thought it would be a comfort to retreat to the Wieran clubrooms and prepare a homey meal for Simon and his friend. It hadn’t occurred to me to worry that I’d never actually learned to cook. I made up for that omission now as I glanced at the sputtering skillet, which my housekeeper, Katie, had advised should be “hot enough to crisp ’em up, but not so hot as to burn ’em.” A moment ago, the butter had been a golden, aromatic puddle, but while I’d been struggling to get the slippery corpses into the pan, it had turned an alarming shade of brown.
Once again, I lowered the spatula and scooped one of the fish off the plate. Once again, it slipped off the spatula’s face—and this time would have landed on the floor, if I hadn’t just managed to catch it in my apron. I shot a glance at Simon, but he appeared to be absorbed in mashing the potatoes. In desperation, I grasped the trout’s tail with my free hand and swung it into the cast iron skillet, where it landed with a satisfying hiss. I grabbed two more and tossed them in after it, gazing down at the trout in relief as they sizzled in the browning fat.
I did so want the evening to go well and for Patrick and me to get along. Unfortunately, this was not a foregone conclusion. Just as many of my acquaintances would never accept as an equal a man who’d once been my family’s stable boy, many of Simon’s milieu, I had learned, felt nothing but scorn for those born into wealth and privilege. Two months ago, I’d taken what I considered the first step in breaching this divide by introducing Simon to my old school friend, Emily Clark, at a picnic in Central Park. To my relief, Emily had delighted in his company. Despite my repeated requests, however, Simon had failed to reciprocate. When I’d finally asked him outright if he was embarrassed to be seen with me, he’d claimed it wasn’t me but his friends he was worried about, fearing they might be “a bit rough” for my taste.
As I believed I’d already demonstrated my ability to get on with people from all walks of life, I didn’t wholeheartedly accept his explanation. In fact, I told him that if he didn’t invite a friend, any friend, to join us for dinner on Independence Day, he needn’t expect me to act as medical officer at the morning’s race, as the participants of said function would surely be too rough for my delicate sensibilities. Though I’d only been teasing, he must have detected my underlying hurt, or perhaps he’d simply been unable to find another medical volunteer. In any event, a few days ago, he’d informed me that his policeman friend, Patrick Branagan, would be joining us on the Fourth for dinner.
“You might want to take that pan off the heat for a minute,” he suggested now, glancing toward the stove, “to let the butter cool down.”
“I was just about to do that,” I said, reaching for the iron handle. I lifted the skillet only a few inches before dropping it back onto the stove. “Ow!”
I heard Simon expel his breath. The next moment, he was at my side, dish towel in hand, pushing the skillet off the burner.
“Our pans at home don’t heat up like that,” I muttered, although I couldn’t actually recall ever handling one.
He gestured toward my hand. “Let’s see it.”
“It’s fine,” I said, curling my fingers into a ball at my side.
He reached for my wrist and turned my hand over, revealing a nasty red stripe across the palm. “Bloody hell, Genna,” he said with a sigh. “Why couldn’t you just let me cook the fish?”
“I’m perfectly capable of cooking six little trout,” I insisted, trying to tug my hand away.
“And what if you’re not?” he asked, refusing to let go. “Is that such a terrible thing?”
As usual, I found it impossible to dissemble under his all-too-penetrating gaze. Abandoning further bravado, I admitted, “I just don’t want your friends to think I’m a…a ‘helpless toff,’” repeating the phrase I’d heard a sailor utter disparagingly in the saloon a week before. “I ought to know how to cook. I don’t know why I never learned.”
“Maybe because you were busy learning other things,” he said with a crooked smile. “Like how to be a doctor.”
“Well, there was that,” I conceded, smiling back a little despite myself.
He traced a line beside the welt with his thumb. “Does it hurt much?”
I didn’t answer immediately, too riveted by the sensations he was generating in the hollow of my hand. “Not much,” I managed finally. “I doubt it will even blister.”
He carefully unfurled my fingers, checking for burns across the upper joints. I had a sudden memory of watching him at work in my family’s stable as his hands moved gently but surely over a sore foreleg or a steaming flank. That one has magic hands, our chauffeur, Maurice, used to say. It was true, I thought now, my eyelids flickering involuntarily as his thumb grazed each paralyzed fingertip.
The sensations stopped. I looked up to find him watching me, his smile gone, his expression very still and intense. I held his gaze, hardly breathing, seeing what I was sure was desire in his eyes. Finally, I thought, my pulse leaping in response. I leaned toward him, lifting my face, my entire body alight.
He abruptly released my hand. “You’d better go run that under some cold water. I can finish the trout.” Turning back to the stove, he wrapped
the towel around the handle and gave the pan a shake.
I hurried to the sink, not wanting him to see the blush of confusion that was racing up my cheeks. Was I the only one who wanted more of what we’d tasted, all those years ago? Even now, my body pulsed with the memory of it: my dizzying expectation as I carried the apples down to the stable, propelled by a yearning I couldn’t even identify; young Simon’s eyes, gleaming like jet in the lamplight, when he came down from the loft and found me standing there. And then, dear God, the brush of his lips across my face, and the pressure of his fingers unbuttoning my chemise, and the bone-deep ache his touch provoked… I closed my eyes with a shiver. Although he’d stopped before we’d done anything “irreversible,” it had been the most thrilling event of my life to date—and neither my mind nor my body seemed to want to forget it.
Unfortunately, I’d never stopped to consider the possible consequences of my actions. Thanks to my foolishly forward behavior, Simon and his mother, who’d been our parlor maid, were removed from our employ—and my life—while I was sent for an extended stay abroad so that I might mingle with more suitable young men. In the years that followed, still filled with shame over the incident, I’d managed to convince myself that my youthful attraction to Simon had been merely a random phenomenon, that he, who as my daily riding escort was the male with whom I’d come in most frequent contact, had simply been the readiest target of my ascending, pubescent chemistry. But when he reappeared out of the blue last winter in magistrate’s court, I felt the same molten charge that I’d experienced in my adolescence, like hot current surging through undergauged wire. I knew then that my attraction to him was rooted in something more than circumstance. I knew I wanted more of him, and the way he made me feel. But it was beginning to seem as though my wanting might be in vain.
There was no time to dwell on this most recent disappointment, however, for Patrick was due to arrive at any moment. Composing my features into a mask of cheerful expectancy, I dried my hands and carried a vase of yellow roses into the dining room. Though no one could call this hard-used room elegant, I thought it looked inviting enough, with the flowers in my mother’s crystal vase on the table and light from flickering candles warming the buff-colored walls. As I rearranged the blossoms, I tried not to think of what my parents would say if they knew I was entertaining male guests in the rooms of the Wieran Club, which was located above Simon’s saloon. I’d taken advantage of their European sojourn to test the limits of social propriety, spending far more unsupervised time in Simon’s company than was strictly proper considering the lack of any formal understanding between us, often in settings I was sure my parents would consider unseemly. I appeased my conscience with the thought that, although the club members weren’t scheduled to arrive until later that evening, the club rooms were at least officially open, which ought to be adequate defense against any allegations of scandalous behavior.
A Promise of Ruin Page 3