Ah, that was it then. A perfect explanation.
But no—
“Sir?” Joseph said.
“What kind of mischief are you playing at?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I prepared that glass myself,” Moody said. “With the picture of a child. I marked the glass in the corner, and I made sure to show you the mark. And when I developed the negative … the mark was there.”
“I assure you,” Joseph said, “I used the marked plate that you prepared. When the woman appeared, I thought that you had decided upon another spirit.”
“I did not put that woman on the plate!” Moody said.
“Nor did I!” Joseph protested.
Surely, if anyone had wanted to play a trick on Edward Moody, Joseph Winter was the man who could have done it. But there was something so different about this picture—something so frighteningly authentic about the image—that to Moody it seemed beyond even Joseph’s capabilities.
“Who is the woman?” Joseph asked. “You know who she is.”
And that’s when Moody saw the eagerness in Joseph’s eyes, an eagerness that Joseph could not conceal. Joseph Winter was no different from any of the others. They all wanted something—wanted some piece of Edward Moody. And the most disheartening part about it was that Edward Moody remained alone.
How was it that she had come back to him?
“She was—” Moody began.
But he stopped, because for the first time he realized what he had never wanted to know: if Isabelle had truly come back to him in this photograph, it would mean that she no longer walked amongst the living.
“She was the one I loved.”
There he was again, in the darkroom, where he had not been with her for more years than he could remember. He had wanted to forget that day. He wished that it had never happened. But he had done it, and the memory of it would never disappear.
She had been close to him, watching him, breathing upon him—she touched him. Her hand had touched him and his entire body had surged with irrepressible fire.
He was methodical—precise. Everything was under his control. Caressing the photographic preparations in the way that he knew she loved.
It had not been an accident. Her hands were on him.
She was sad.
“Isabelle—”
Her breast was heaving.
“Isabelle, what is the matter?”
He placed his hands upon her arms. Her body was also trembling. The amber light was very dull, and darkness was all around them.
“Edward,” she whispered. “I don’t know what to—”
The motion of her mouth … the way her lips swelled and moved. She was saying what he had been longing to hear. Her tears, the apprehension shining in her eyes, were all because of him. Because she loved him but could not say so.
His grip tightened, and he pulled her closer toward his body. And even then she did not resist him.
She barely whispered the words.
“No, Edward,” she said. “Please, no …”
For the first time he could not resist, and surrendered to what he knew he must do. A fevered pushing, a blinding moment of release. It would not take very long for her to forgive him.
But he would never forgive himself. The years would not bring forgiveness.
“We were young, with no hope for a future,” Moody said.
Joseph eyed Moody.
“And what happened to her?” Joseph asked.
“I don’t know,” Moody said. “She left.”
Silence followed that last word, as if the word itself had sent her away.
“This woman is a powerful spirit,” Joseph finally said. “But why did she leave? And where did she go?”
Moody did not answer. In that moment he hated Joseph Winter.
“Mr. Moody,” Joseph said, “I swear there is no trickery here. I coated the plate as you instructed, and verified the corner mark before I began. The plate was prepared as you prepared it—no other was in the rack. My belief is that something did not go wrong; rather, something went terribly right. Even with the damage, you can see that the woman in the photograph is truly … of the divine.”
She had become his, even after his transgression. It was a miracle that she had excused him. He had tried to erase the images—of his groping, of her slapping his face right after he had finished. But nothing about her or that day had ever really left him.
And now Joseph Winter dared to speak of the divine. Moody did not want to hear it.
“When I saw the image,” Joseph said, “I was convinced that you had placed a more powerful spirit there for the Garretts. She is a powerful spirit. Mrs. Garrett could not abide the sight of her. And the senator was unsteady.”
Then Moody turned toward Joseph.
“What are you saying?”
“The spirit,” Joseph said. “That spirit is the one they did not want to see.”
And then it became clear, what Joseph Winter was trying to say. But what Joseph Winter said was preposterous. The spirit in the photograph belonged to Moody—not the Garretts. Isabelle was Moody’s spirit.
“The senator was about to say something when Mrs. Garrett pulled him out of the room,” Joseph said. “She did not want him to speak, and it was evident. But the senator’s face—I can still see it now. The senator was defeated by the spirit.”
“I could not see anything else but the negative,” Moody said.
“The Garretts recognized that woman—I am sure of it,” Joseph said. “Did you not know her to be related to them in some way?”
Isabelle—related to the Garretts?
His Isabelle.
“I don’t know,” Moody said. “She did things … she was gone. I did not know what she did. She worked as a servant—in houses.”
“For the Garretts?”
“Perhaps. I did not know of the Garretts then.”
“Think,” Joseph said. “You must think back to the time you knew her. Is there any reason—any reason at all—why she might want to appear now with the Garretts?”
“No,” Moody said. “I can only think of why she would want to appear to me.”
As he admitted these words, Moody’s face darkened with his own disgust—disgust at what he had believed in all these years, and what he had chosen to forget. The great Edward Moody, the spirit photographer—yes, that was who he was. But he was also someone who had loved a long time ago, and who had died from the inevitability of loving. There was nothing that could change him, nothing that could challenge him—but that one thing, lost and forgotten. And in the confusion that was rapidly dismantling everything he believed in, only this much was clear to him now: this vision of Isabelle could not have been more real had he placed her in the photograph himself.
VII
WHILE MOODY SLEPT, little more than silence pervaded the great house on Louisburg Square. The storm had passed, but a storm of a different sort was brewing quietly indoors. Few words had been spoken during the carriage ride from Moody’s, but the exchange had followed Garrett home, and remained with him.
“It was her,” Elizabeth had said.
“The man is a fraud,” Garrett replied.
“It was her,” Elizabeth repeated.
There was no point in protesting, for Elizabeth was right: it was her, as beautiful as the last time he had seen her. The servant girl, Isabelle—yes, her name had been Isabelle. She had been so tender with William Jeffrey, and the boy had loved her dearly. Other than Jenny, the Garretts had retained no other servants since Isabelle, which had made it difficult for Garrett to forget her.
They returned home after the sitting to find the house dark and still. It sat there in the rain, stony and unimpressed, its silence more admonishing than the beat of any gavel. Elizabeth felt this deeply, and had been feeling it for years. She had never regained comfort there since the time of her boy’s death. The silence reminded her of the emptiness that had followed the removal of William’s body. Garret
t had stood there, no more emotional than a monument. She had wanted to strike him—to hurl at him anything she could reach. The good senator from Boston. She blamed him, and despised the idea of living another day with him in that house. But she knew it was not his or the house’s fault. She mostly blamed herself.
Upstairs, on the third floor, Jenny was sweeping up glass. A window had broken in one of the rooms—the room in which Isabelle had briefly slept. When Elizabeth saw Jenny with the broom and the dustpan, she understood what it meant.
“A window has broken in her room,” she told Garrett. “I wonder if you’ll excuse that too.”
“Elizabeth—” Garrett said. He would try, but fail, to comfort her. She would disappear until she was ready, and there was nothing he could do to stop that.
“Jenny, what happened?” Garrett said.
“While you and Mrs. Garrett were gone,” Jenny said, “the wind was fierce, sir.”
Jenny finished the sweeping and left him alone in the room. He rarely had cause to be on the third floor, as the rooms were smaller, and mainly Jenny’s domain. That room … over the years it had become something of a storage room, where the winter rugs hibernated and the old mirrors hid their faces. It was dark, and Jenny had left the room in haste. There was still a piece of glass on the floor.
He picked it up—a single shard, cleanly cut. Near the window, the remaining intact panes permitted the storm’s grayish light to seep into the room. In the glass shard Garrett could barely see his reflection. When he tilted the shard, it silvered, like a mirror.
It was unusual for him to go up to the third floor in those days too, but back then little William would scale the steps, and Garrett sometimes followed him up there. The boy loved that room. Yes, Garrett remembered now. The boy was always going up to that room because he had such an affection for Isabelle. There was that week when Elizabeth’s mother had gotten sick, and Elizabeth had left suddenly for Philadelphia. She had left William behind because there had been a fever outbreak down south, and Garrett could see him now, sitting at Isabelle’s side on her bed, as Garrett peeked through the crack in the door.
“Does it still hurt, my little cabbage?” she said.
She had placed her hands on his head.
The boy nodded, and Isabelle moved her fingers through his hair. She was gently consoling the child, whispering something Garrett could not hear.
“It hurts at night,” William said. “But sometimes during the day too—like now.”
“Don’t worry,” Isabelle said. “It will be gone soon. It will be gone soon.”
Garrett had pressed his own head against the trim of the door. She was so beautiful—and yet, not his.
• • •
FOR A DAY and a night, Garrett and Elizabeth did not speak, and Garrett was left with the sounds of his own elusive memories. Then at breakfast, after dismissing Jenny, Elizabeth finally addressed him.
“What are you going to do about that picture?” she said.
“Do?” Garrett said.
“The picture,” Elizabeth said, heating. “The picture!”
Her eyes were red; she had not slept through the night.
“There is nothing whatsoever for me to do about it,” Garrett said. “I do not want to see the picture again. It was damaged, in any case. God willing it continued to spoil.”
“If he publishes that picture, it could lead to our ruin.”
“Ruin?” Garrett said. “Elizabeth, don’t be ridiculous. Anyone with a modicum of sense knows that the man is an imposter.”
She looked down into her lap, and then back up at him. He knew that she longed to be away from him.
“The wives of your colleagues—” she continued. “I’ve known them for over twenty years. They’ll shift the debate. They’ll no longer discuss the truth or falsehood of spirits—they’ll instead speculate about nothing but the identity of the spirit itself.”
“No one has seen that girl for years.”
“They’ll remember, James. And people will make … assumptions.”
“He won’t publish the picture,” Garrett said. “At the very least he’ll attempt to extort something from me first.”
“And supposing he doesn’t. You don’t know what he believes, and you don’t know his motives. Suppose he goes straight to the press.”
“So they’ll ask questions. The girl is barely recognizable.”
“The girl is as clear as you sit here before me!”
She was screaming at him now.
“Elizabeth, please—”
“It’s all very well, James … to think that your reputation will shield you from suspicion. But it won’t, and if anyone resolves to learn more about that woman, we’ll be living on the north side of the hill, with the rest of them.”
Garrett was mortified. She had attacked him before, but now his wife was heading someplace dangerous.
“She was always determined,” Elizabeth said. “And she still hasn’t forgiven you.”
Garrett looked at her blankly.
“Forgiven me?”
He stared into her eyes—the eyes of his once-beautiful bride. Her eyes were now full of rage and accusation.
And it was then that he realized that Elizabeth knew. Elizabeth had known all along.
“It was nearly twenty years ago,” he said.
“There is no expiration on disgrace.”
“Elizabeth—” Garrett could barely manage the words. “Elizabeth … it was a mistake.”
“A mistake!” Elizabeth cried. “It was a mistake, he says! A mistake that might have cost us everything! I saw her … I saw her with William. When she left, she took him with her. It was she who took my child. We’d still have him. We’d still have him if—”
The sharp pain began again in Garrett’s head. Elizabeth did not let things go.
“The picture must be destroyed,” she said. “You can’t leave it in that man’s hands. Not to mention that odious coon of an assistant—”
“Elizabeth!” Garrett said, slamming his hand down on the table.
She remained quiet for a moment, but then pressed.
“There is more to this, James, and it is all coming back. The photographer is only a small piece.”
“The man is a scoundrel and an imposter.”
“It is not the man, James. It is her.”
Garrett stared back at his wife. She seemed disgusted by his confusion.
“Her!” Elizabeth repeated. “And don’t try to tell me that it isn’t.”
Garrett thought for a moment. He could not let this turn into a debate. Elizabeth was too far gone, and her own weaknesses were resurfacing. She was susceptible, especially when it came to the child. He would not let her begin talking of Isabelle and of ghosts.
“I could have taken it, Elizabeth. I could have taken it right then. You forced us out so quickly—there was no time to act.”
“You were about to say something unwise,” she said. “I could see that you were not of right mind.”
“Not of right mind!” Garrett exclaimed. “How dare you? It is all fine and good for you to speak of right mind, Elizabeth.”
“And just what do you mean?”
“Of right mind … of right mind … all this ridiculous hocus pocus. Ghosts in photographs. Voices—spirits. Isabelle coming back! It is utter nonsense, Elizabeth. I have faced worse enemies than this.”
She might have been defeated by his outburst, if she hadn’t heard the tremor in his voice.
“You are your own worst enemy,” she said. “The people will find out, and they will judge you.”
“I have not accomplished what I’ve accomplished by distrusting the people,” he said. “The people are of sound mind.”
“Yes, James,” she replied, “the people are of sound mind. Until they find out you brought a nigger into our bed.”
Garrett’s hand raised to strike his wife—but only in his fantasies. He was not and had never been a violent man, and the thought of striking her wa
s repugnant to him. And yet, what was most repugnant seemed at that moment most unavoidable. More than unavoidable—it was alluring. He pressed his fingers into his palm, tightening a fist that he would not lift. He would not lift that fist for anything in the world, though he would have obliterated his wife if he could have.
VIII
BENJAMIN P. DOVEHOUSE leaned much further toward the conservative side of the Republican party than his close friend James B. Garrett. He did not believe, for instance, that blacks should have been given the right to vote so soon after emancipation; nor did he subscribe to the idea that free blacks—even the most educated amongst them—were capable of governing themselves. He came from one of the old Brahmin families and was a longstanding member of the American Colonization Society, though his views on the deportation of freedmen had changed considerably since the end of the war. He lived on Mt. Vernon Street in an imposing brick mansion, which contained amongst other relics the dark old portrait of an ancestor who had served as a juror at the Salem Witch Trials.
Dovehouse held secrets—more secrets perhaps than all of the great houses of Boston combined. Decades of circulating amongst the Brahmins had honed his powers of perception to near perfection, and those who had reason to feared him. He could detect a lie in a change of breath, an indiscretion in the shift of an eye, and very few, though they smiled, approached him without caution. Because judgment ran in his veins, so too did an extreme sense of his own “moral duty.” He believed in the sanctified order of things, and the role of great families in maintaining that order. He did not believe in compromise, and he did not believe in ghosts.
For these reasons, Senator Garrett kept his regular dinner appointment with Dovehouse that week—a tradition that had been continuous since they had met in the Porcellian Club some forty years earlier. To cancel on Benjamin Dovehouse, Garrett knew, was to risk the raising of his suspicions. Only Garrett’s calls to Washington ever interfered with their engagements.
“Well, Garrett,” Dovehouse said, “you got your amendment through. More than once you’ve set out to achieve the impossible, and you’ve done it again. Congratulations.”
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