Summer of Dreams (15 page)

Stella nodded. This wasn’t a pleasant conversation, but it was exactly the sort of thing she needed to know. “Can you describe where in the river she was? One of the early reports said she was directly under the bridge, but another said she was closer to shore.”

“I found her bumped up against the pilings in the middle of the bridge,” Freddie said. “Come on, I’ll take you.”

He pointed to an old skiff tied up to the pier. Her heart squeezed, and a fine sheen of perspiration broke out across her skin. It looked like he wanted to take her there in the boat. There wasn’t much that frightened Stella, but anything to do with getting close to water did the trick.

“Can we see it from the shore?” she asked.

“Nope, it’s around the bend. And it would make more sense in the boat.”

This was what she’d come out here to see, and she’d only have to do it once. She nodded. “Let’s go.”

She refused to let her gaze stray from the skiff. It would be nice if the flat-bottomed boat didn’t seem so ramshackle. Freddie sprang into the boat and began moving rakes, buckets, and oars to make room for her. She drew a steadying breath and gathered up her skirts. In a little bit, this would all be over. Any ten-year-old child could get into a boat and be rowed about. She would do it, too.

Romulus held her elbow as she lowered a foot into the boat. It listed wildly as Freddie helped her board. Soon she and Romulus sat on the front bench, with Mr. McNeill on the seat behind them. The oars thudded as he positioned them in the rowlocks, but after a few sloshing drags, the skiff pulled away from the pier. Every list and bob was unsettling. Water surrounded her on all sides. She couldn’t even close her eyes to escape it, for she could smell the water and feel it jostling her from side to side.

“Tell me about your job,” Stella prompted, scrambling for
anything to get her mind off what was happening. “It must be so interesting seeing different parts of the city.”

“Oh yah,” he said in his broad Boston accent. “I row a different part of the river each day to muck out the drainage pipes. All kinds of stuff gets up in them if you don’t watch it. Mostly plants and river sludge, but I’ve pulled up lots of stuff in my day. Old shoes, broken tools, stuff like that. Mostly fishing tackle, though, which is a shame. People don’t realize that when they throw that gear overboard it goes right on catching stuff. Fish are swimming around down there, minding their own business, then they get caught up in an old net or crab trap and they’re stuck down there forever until they die. Did you know a salamander can drown? Frogs, too. Can’t keep ’em under forever or they suffocate.”

It was getting harder for Stella to breathe. She clung so tightly to the dry wood that a few splinters started working lose.

“What can you tell us about the body you found?” Romulus said.

Freddie let go of the oars to point over her shoulder. “That’s Cooperman’s Bridge. There’s an outflow pipe that runs out from the shore. I first saw her as I was pulling up to clean out that pipe.”

Stella twisted her body to look. Compared with some of the other stretches of this river, it looked rather pretty. It shouldn’t matter what sort of spot Gwendolyn died at, but a tiny piece of her was glad the bridge was lovely, made of old stone and lifting in a gentle arch over the river. The shoreline was lush, with wild grass and cattails swaying gently in the breeze.

Freddie jerked the oars back into place. “I’ll get you closer,” he said, and she was grateful he’d quit rambling about the drowned salamanders.

“You said she was floating,” Stella said. “Don’t people who drown sink?”

“They sink at first, but eventually they float back up,” Freddie said. “They get all bloated, and after a few days they bob back up to the surface and . . .” His voice tapered off, and he looked at the spot where Gwendolyn’s body had been found. “But she wasn’t swollen. Looked like she’d only been in the water a few hours. So yah . . . that’s weird. She should have sank if her lungs were full of water. It takes a few days for them to gas up enough to float again.”

“Did she have any injuries?” Romulus asked. “Something that might have knocked her out so she fell over the bridge?”

Freddie shook his head. “Not that I could see. I rowed alongside her and turned her over to be sure she was dead, but I didn’t do more than a quick look-see. Her skin was ice-cold and not a drop of color on her face. I rowed ashore and summoned the coppers.”

Stella pulled the shawl tight against the chill as she scrutinized the area. The bridge was made of rock, which held heat and took longer to ice over than a wooden bridge would. There were no boulders or other obstructions in the river that Gwendolyn would have hit her head on. Stella analyzed every detail and committed it to memory before saying a silent prayer for Gwendolyn.

“Okay, let’s go back,” she said softly.

She and Romulus were both cold and hungry by the time they reached the shore. They had to hurry to catch the last streetcar heading back into town, but as soon as they arrived in Stella’s neighborhood, Romulus guided them to an Irish pub he swore had the best corned beef and cabbage this side of the Atlantic. She didn’t care for cabbage, but she’d gladly eat weeds if it made Romulus happy, for she was about to ask him for another big favor.

She needed his help getting into the medical examiner’s office. Based on what she’d learned from Freddie, she was even more convinced that Gwendolyn did not drown. She needed to see the autopsy report, but the medical examiner’s office refused to release it to anyone but the police, citing departmental protocol. All she’d been able to see of the postmortem documentation was a terse summary in the official police report, but she wouldn’t be satisfied until she saw and read the original document itself. She also wanted to question Dr. Lentz, and Romulus could help her cut the Gordian knot and get straight through to him.

Inside the pub, the air was thick with the scent of pipe tobacco and yeasty beer. A fiddler played a rousing tune near the back of the pub, prompting Stella to take a seat as close to the front as possible. She didn’t want to shout to be heard.

It wasn’t the type of place she normally dined, but the sheer normalcy of the pub was comforting. People laughing, the clinking of glasses, the thump of footsteps banging in time to the music. Perhaps there was truth to the adage that one couldn’t appreciate the wonder of the ordinary until it had been snatched away.

And this pub was wonderful. Not because the décor was exceptional or the music anything beyond commonplace—it was wonderful because
life
was wonderful, and she had full view of it here from this scarred and pitted bench. It was in these ordinary hours she could appreciate the hearty laughter of men relaxing after a day’s labor, the blessing of familiar food, company, and music. It was in ordinary places that the human spirit was unshackled and free to enjoy the gift of life, transcendent in a way that was almost holy.

Romulus had gone to the counter to order food for them and returned with two tall steins of cider.

“Thank you,” she said. She didn’t realize how thirsty she was until downing half the mug of cider.

“Perhaps you can thank me by making a few lithographs for the next issue of
Scientific World
,” Romulus said. “You can have your choice of topics, and I have a new rotary lithographic press that will tempt the birds from the sky.”

She smiled in reluctant admiration, for Romulus was nothing if not persistent. “I’m sorry. I can’t concentrate on anything until I find out what happened to my sister.” She felt churlish refusing his request, but there was no point in quibbling. On this topic, Romulus had always been relentless, and she knew he would pounce on any opening unless she slammed it firmly closed.

“I would appreciate it if you continued calling me by the name of West,” she said. “If anyone at City Hall knew my name was Westergaard, it would raise all kinds of questions I don’t want to answer. I need to remain as inconspicuous as possible.”

He glanced at her plain wool frock. “I confess that you seemed quite different from what I predicted for an artist. Are the plain clothes part of your attempt to blend in with the staff at City Hall?”

If he could see the clothes she usually wore, it would be quite obvious why she could not wear them to a clerical position. Even among London’s avant-garde set, she was always a little forward when it came to dress.

“Yes. When I went shopping for clothes, I gravitated toward anything that looked like my grandmother might have worn while digging up potatoes.”

She took another sip of cider, trying to think of a delicate way to wrangle a meeting with the medical examiner, but then Romulus fired a question she hadn’t seen coming.

“How long have you been afraid of water?” he asked.

She set down her mug. “Was it that obvious?” She’d thought she’d been flawless, masking her anxiety with a string of questions to Freddie about his work.

“To anyone with eyes in his head.” The way Romulus lounged
in the hard-backed chair was outlandishly attractive. With his long legs stretched forth and a hand casually twirling his mug on the table, he gave the illusion of a man at leisure, but Stella knew it was only an illusion. His languid pose masked a fierce curiosity on his face, and it was oddly appealing. She liked a man whose eye for detail was as sharp as her own.

Which was a problem. She couldn’t afford to let this man’s magnetic attraction lure her away from her goal.

“I’ve always been afraid of water,” she confessed. “One of my earliest memories is standing beside the lake near our house. I was six years old, and Gwendolyn was only four. My mother put us in little sleeveless tunics so we could learn how to swim. My father stood in the lake and tried to coax us in. He told us what fun it would be, how he’d teach us to float like ducks.” She smiled, remembering the squawking duck noises he’d made to encourage her.

“Gwendolyn couldn’t wait, diving in and splashing around like an otter, but I held back. I remember crying so much that my mother gave up and walked me back home. I never did learn how to swim. I’ve avoided water all my life.”

Romulus had been wolfing down his corned beef and cabbage while she spoke. How could men clean their plates so quickly? She’d barely taken three bites, and even though she’d been hungry ten minutes ago, she had entirely lost her appetite now.

“Here. You finish this,” she said, and he gladly pulled the plate toward him.

“What I find curious,” he said as he cut into a juicy slice of corned beef, “is that the first set of lithographs I ever saw of yours was about sea life, with manta rays and conger eels. I specifically remember the delicacy of the way you illustrated the tentacles of the sea anemones. I could almost sense them wafting in the ocean currents. So I am astonished you have such insight into those creatures without firsthand experience.”

“Oh, I had firsthand experience,” she said grimly. Literally. She had held the sea anemone in her hand and seen dozens of marine specimens preserved in formaldehyde at a marine research institute in Portsmouth. The specimens had been floating in tanks, and she had walked among them to scrutinize everything at eye level. Walking down the aisle of tanks caused a suffocating, strangling sense of panic as she studied the long-dead sea creatures trapped in a tank with no oxygen, submerged in water. She was an educated woman, well acquainted with the theories of Dr. Freud and the power of suggestion. The logical piece of her brain told her the massive tanks of liquid were no danger to her, but some raw, primitive fear was stoked to life and impossible to ignore.

But not impossible to overcome. Under the guidance of the marine biologist on duty, she had reached into a tank to lift out a starfish and feel the musculature just beneath its grainy skin. She studied all the other specimens she’d be drawing with equal care, as she had accepted a lucrative commission from the marine society and wouldn’t let irrational fears drive her away. She’d learned long ago that courage was not the absence of fear, but the willingness to confront it.

“I took the commission as a way to face my fear,” she told Romulus. “By signing the contract, I obligated myself to the task, and there was no going back on my word. I hated every second of it, but I got the job done.”

“I wish I could have been there to see it.”

“Then you’re insane. The specimen room stank, it was a literal icebox, and it was full of dead creatures suspended in their perpetual graves.”

“I don’t care about the specimens. I wish I could have seen
you
. Even now, the expression on your face is like Boudicca facing down the Romans. I would have loved to have been there.”

She managed a smile, but the challenge of the marine aquar
ium was paltry compared with other things she had endured. She had buried her sister. She had held her father while he sobbed so hard she feared he couldn’t keep breathing. Reviewing her sister’s postmortem report was merely another task that had to be done. It was time to ask for the favor she needed.

“Thank you for going with me tonight,” she began. “Rowing out to the spot where Gwendolyn died was terrible for me, but I could have done it on my own. What I really need from you is access to Dr. Lentz.”