A Deadly Affection (26 page)

“I was thinking of something a bit more modern,” Lucille said tartly, making me think that the Earl's delay in proposing to Olivia was indeed becoming something of a sore point.

“I haven't had a chance to speak with the Earl,” I chimed in. “Is he enjoying his stay in New York?”

“I believe he's quite taken with it,” Lucille replied.

“I hope he wasn't upset by that dreadful murder. I'd hate to think he felt he had to worry about his safety while he was here.”

“My dear, murder is hardly unique to New York,” Lucille said with a flutter of her fan. “I'm sure the Earl feels as safe here as he would in Belgrave Square.”

“Besides,” said the woman standing beside Olivia, “I understand they've already caught the murderer, so there's no need to fear it could happen again.”

“Of course, you're right,” I said, still watching Lucille. She hadn't appeared particularly disturbed by my mention of the murder, but I had too much respect for her skills at deception to take her reaction at face value. “I suppose it's just that I myself was so shaken by it. To think that something like that could happen right in our own backyard.”

“It was an unfortunate event, but an isolated one,” Lucille said firmly, as if to bring the subject to an end.

“Did you know the doctor?” I asked her.

“Remotely. He served on the Metropolitan board with Charles.”

“But he's not your physician.”

“Oh no, we've used Dr. Hartness forever.”

Then what, I wondered, was she doing in his office on the Friday before his murder? Emboldened by catching her out in what seemed at least a lie by omission, I continued, “It seems he was something of a jack-of-all-trades. He was known for his work with blood disorders, but he had other interests as well.” I hesitated, gathering my nerve, then added, “Delivering babies, for example.”

Lucille's fan paused in midflutter. “Is that right?”

“Yes, apparently, he's been doing it for years, for a discreet clientele.” I glanced toward Olivia. “Twenty years, at least.”

I would have had to be blind not to see that I had struck a nerve. Lucille's expression was suddenly so frosty that my heart skipped a beat in response.

“You seem very well informed,” she said. “Were you involved with the doctor professionally?”

I licked my lips. It was not a pleasant experience, I was finding, to be on the receiving end of Lucille's scrutiny. I hadn't really intended to go head-to-head with her, but now that I'd gone this far, I couldn't turn back. “No, I learned about it from a patient of mine. A woman from the German district. He delivered her baby years ago.”

“How very…extraordinary,” she said, her eyes glittering like those of a feral animal disturbed in its lair.

“I thought so.”

Her butler approached and stood expectantly at her shoulder. She turned her cheek toward him, but her eyes remained on me as he murmured into her ear. “Very well,” she said. “Tell the orchestra it's time.” She slipped her fan lead over her wrist. “If you'll excuse us, ladies, we have to find the guest of honor. Dinner is about to be served.” She grasped Olivia's elbow and steered her across the floor.

I watched them go, shaken by our exchange and not sure what, if anything, I had achieved. Lucille was now aware that I suspected Olivia's origins and her own connection to Dr. Hauptfuhrer, while I had gained nothing but her doubtless formidable enmity.

With a musical flourish from the orchestra, the doors to the adjacent room were flung open. Lucille crossed the threshold on the Earl's arm, followed by Charles and Olivia. I found my escort and queued up with the other guests, filing into the dining room behind them.

This room was nearly as large as the ballroom, filled from one end to the other with round, damask-covered tables. Gilt monograms sparkled on the white china plates, aligning precisely with vases of red Gloire de Paris roses at the center of each table. My escort, a Harvard student who, I soon learned, was taking a leave of absence to market some novel greeting cards he'd designed, led me toward a table in the middle of the room. Lucille, the Earl, and Olivia were sitting at the far left end of the room, while Charles commanded a table on the far right. From my spot in middle Siberia, I could only watch my suspects from afar, and then only when the guests at the intervening tables obliged me by leaning in the right direction.

I resigned myself to learning more than I would ever need to know about the growing pains of the greeting-card industry, smiling and nodding and picking at my food as a parade of footmen set one course after another in front of me. It was a feast worthy of society's reigning queen: plump oysters served with a dry sauterne; consommé with custard squares and sherry; sole, shrimp, and mussels in a fines herbes sauce with a very cold champagne; a ham mousse; mutton and roast potatoes with an aromatic claret; cold artichokes; frozen punch; and a chaud-froid of quails. Though I did my best, I could eat only a quarter of what I was served, and by the time the cheese arrived I was nearly stuporous from excess. I sat back and glanced across the room, trying to catch another glimpse of Lucille's party. The occupants of the intervening tables had conveniently arranged themselves so as to give me a reasonably good view, and by stretching my neck I could see the Earl, just lifting his glass to make a toast. I craned my neck a little further, trying to read his lips, wondering if a marriage deal had finally been reached.

Olivia sat very erect beside the Earl. Although the other guests at her table were already raising their glasses in response, she appeared to be a beat or two behind. I watched her reach slowly, stiffly, for her glass. It was nearly in her grasp when, for no apparent reason, her hand jerked forward and knocked it onto its side.

Before the Earl could look down, before the ruby liquid had even soaked into the cloth, Lucille reached toward the fan near the top of her own plate, pushing her finger bowl over in the process. The bowl rolled across the table and collided with the overturned glass. Lucille made a great to-do, shaking her head and clapping her hand to her chest in apology, as a footman swooped in to remove the glassware and lay a fresh napkin over the stain.

It was an amazing performance. A casual observer might easily have concluded that the whole accident was of Lucille's doing. I might have doubted my own eyes, if it weren't for the irritation I saw flash across her face when she looked at Olivia once the toast had resumed, and the way Olivia thrust her hands under the table and hung her head in shame. The Earl finished his toast and sat down, eliciting only a lukewarm “here, here”—hardly the celebratory response an announcement would have provoked.

I turned back to my own table, trying to make sense of what I'd seen. The tension in Olivia's arm as she reached for her glass had been decidedly abnormal, the abrupt, twisting hand motion that knocked the glass over very similar to what the literature on Huntington's chorea described. Neither could be attributed to simple fatigue. Considering what my own eyes had just witnessed, along with Bartie's earlier revelations, I was forced to concede that Olivia might have the disease after all. Which, if it were true, meant that Eliza must have it as well.

I swigged my port, trying to ease the growing knot in my stomach. The possibility made it more imperative than ever that I uncover the real murderer before Eliza went to trial. And the evidence pointed increasingly to Lucille. She had been prepared when Olivia spilled her wine, suggesting that this was not the first such episode. She clearly knew there was something wrong with Olivia and was doing her best to hide it. I found myself wondering if she might even have concocted Olivia's “secret beau,” spreading rumors of his existence so that she'd have an excuse to keep Olivia indoors and out of sight while the marriage negotiations were underway.

I absently fingered my empty glass, only pretending to listen as the fish-breathed old man on my left let loose a long tirade concerning the dire effects of unscrupulous copper speculators and the San Francisco earthquake on the current financial markets. I came to full attention, however, when a man with a walrus mustache three chairs down quipped, “I'm sure Charles will keep the country's interests in mind when he finalizes his daughter's marriage settlement.”

“Do you mean you see a connection between the health of our economy and Olivia Fiske's marriage?” asked orange-haired Mrs. Selby, selecting a piece of cheese.

“A very direct connection,” the man replied. “Considering that the Earl is on the board of the Bank of England.”

“What does the Bank of England have to do with our economy?” queried Mrs. Selby, waving the cheese aloft.

“Too damn much,” muttered the fish-breathed man on my left.

“British fire insurance companies had to pay out millions in claims after the San Francisco quake,” the mustachioed man explained. “When the outflow of capital threatened to destabilize the pound, the Bank of England decided to raise its exchange rate, refusing to rediscount American trade notes.”

“Blatant discrimination,” grumbled the old man. “Doubled our indebtedness in a matter of months.”

“Well, that doesn't seem fair,” said Mrs. Selby, biting into her cheese.

Dropping his voice a notch, the man with the mustache continued, “With the Earl's personal fortune so depleted, people are hoping that Charles will see the marriage settlement as an opportunity to make him more sympathetic to our plight.”

I lowered the biscuit I'd been nibbling on. “You mean they're hoping he'll bribe the Earl to persuade the board to lower the rates?” I asked in astonishment.

He winced. “I'd prefer to say they see an opportunity to promote overseas friendship, with an example of American generosity.”

A piece of biscuit seemed to have lodged halfway down my throat. “What if there is no marriage?” I choked out, thinking that if Lucille Fiske was charged with murder or her daughter revealed to have a disease, the engagement would surely fall through.

The old man beside me snorted and shook his head. “Then we're going to have a contracture the likes of which we haven't seen in years.”

The footman had just finished refilling my port glass. I grasped the stem and downed the contents in two gulps. It was bad enough being responsible for what happened to Eliza and the Fiskes; I didn't think I was up to shouldering the national economy as well. I sank back in my chair, caught up in despondent thoughts, as the discussion moved on to Harry Thaw's impending murder trial.

“Genevieve, have you ever heard of this ‘Dementia Americana'?”

I dragged my attention back to the conversation. “I beg your pardon?”

Emily's mother, Mrs. Clark, was addressing me from the other side of the table. “The defense they're planning to use in the Thaw trial; they say it's a kind of temporary insanity brought on in a man whose wife's purity has been violated. Did you ever come across it in your studies?”

“It sounds like a toothpaste to me,” opined Mrs. Selby, burping into her hand.

“I've heard of similar arguments,” I replied, “though never by that name.”

“Well, I think the lawyers have a point,” remarked Mrs. Clark's balding neighbor. “A man has a right to protect his wife's purity, after all.”

“But his wife's affair with Mr. White was over when he married her!” Mrs. Clark objected.

“All the same…” He shook his head. “If someone had been trespassing on my wife, I'd want to take a shot at him.”

“They say Thaw beat her even before he found out about her affair with Stanford White,” the man with the walrus mustache volunteered.

“That's a husband's right as well,” the balding man pronounced. “How else is he supposed to preserve order and propriety in his own home?”

“It seems to me that a man's right to wave his fist ought to end where his wife's body begins,” Mrs. Clark protested.

“Even if she's driving him mad by attracting attention from other men?” the balding man retorted.

“What do you think, Genevieve?” asked Mrs. Clark. “Should a man be excused for murdering out of love?”

I thought again of how a jury would respond if Eliza's lawyer tried to argue that love for her child had caused her to murder Dr. Hauptfuhrer. “That strikes me as more of a moral than a medical question,” I answered. “But I do think that if we grant a husband the right to shoot his wife's lover, we ought to grant the wife the right to shoot her husband if he beats her as well.” I turned to the law and order man. “In the name of protecting her purity, that is.”

“Here, here!” cried Mrs. Clark.

“Two different things entirely,” muttered her balding neighbor.

Fortunately, the baba au rhum arrived just then, interrupting our conversation before it could take a nasty turn. The others applied themselves with gusto, despite the copious amounts already consumed, but I had no interest in dessert. I had to find proof that Lucille was involved in Hauptfuhrer's murder, and if the proof was here in the Fiskes' house, I had to find it tonight. I very much doubted, now that Lucille was aware of my suspicions, that she'd be inviting me back anytime soon. I shook my head at a footman's offer of candied fruit and hothouse strawberries, wondering if I dared try to locate Hagan's room after all. But I wasn't even sure what I'd be looking for. The murder weapon had already been found at the crime scene, and the chances were slim that the footman had left any bloody clothes lying around.

Glancing around the room in frustration, I saw a footman lower a box of cigars onto Charles's table. Although I couldn't see the brand name on the box I had no doubt it contained El Rey del Mundos. Charles took a cigar, clipped it, and lit it with a match from a gold dispenser. Holding the cigar aloft in one hand, he used the other to select a chocolate-glazed petit four from a platter at his elbow, jabbing the little cake in the air for emphasis as he responded to a question. I found myself waiting somewhat anxiously for him to eat the cake before the chocolate could melt all over his hand. It was when he finally popped it into his mouth and reached for a napkin to wipe his fingers that inspiration struck.