A Fall of Marigolds (21 page)

“Miss Wood, do please consider your own safety.”

A new revelation suddenly slammed into me like a bullet.

Lily had never planned to see her trunk again.

She wouldn’t have put a necklace worth fifty thousand pounds in a trunk that she planned to leave with Andrew when she disappeared on the pretense of retrieving a lost glove.

She wouldn’t have wanted the necklace on the ship at all.

If she needed the necklace to make good her escape she would want it to be waiting for her when she got to New York. Could it be that I already knew where it was?

Could it be she had etched the address of where the necklace waited on a key and then hidden it in the hem of her favorite scarf?

I had to get back to Manhattan and see what, if anything, was at 92 Chambers Street. And I needed to find the tailor shop before Hartwell did. But I needed time, and I needed Hartwell to back off under the pretense that I was reconsidering.

“I . . . don’t know how I can help you, Mr. Hartwell. But I would like to think about what you have said. Perhaps you could give your card back to me?”

He studied me for a moment before extending the card. I was certain he wasn’t completely convinced that I had so quickly changed my mind.

“Sometimes I remember something a patient said long after he’s said it, Mr. Hartwell,” I said.

“Indeed. I am staying at the Waldorf, Miss Wood, while I make further inquiries.”

“The Waldorf?”

But I knew what the Waldorf was. And where it was.

The hotel was a mere taxi ride from Greenwich Village, where I had to find a tailor shop.

“At Fifth Avenue and Thirty-third,” he continued. “You can ask for me there.”

“Of course.” I tucked the card in my apron pocket. “I’m afraid I must get back to my duties, Mr. Hartwell.”

His mouth was curved into a genial smile, but his gaze was penetrating. “Don’t think on it too long, Miss Wood. I will find him. With you or without you.”

I turned from him and forced myself not to run. It took everything in me not to.

As soon as I was out of the main hall I ducked into the women’s restroom, and left through the back door to return to the hospital, unseen, as quickly as I could.

I had to get to Manhattan.

AS
I left the main island and hurried toward the ferry house, I looked for Mr. Hartwell as surreptitiously as I could. I didn’t see him following me, but I was fairly certain he would continue his search for someone on the island who was willing—for a price—to tell him what he wanted to know. I anticipated that he would use all his skills of persuasion to entice someone—a baggage boy, a clerk at the telegraph office, a hospital aid, even another immigrant—to give him a clue as to where Andrew Gwynn was headed when he left the island.

I didn’t see him, so I quickened my pace, the interpreter I was supposed to find forgotten. As I made my way back to my quarters on island three, jumbled thoughts crowded my brain.

For only a moment I considered going to my room, grabbing Lily’s letter, finding Chester Hartwell, and showing him that Andrew had no idea what Lily had done. But surely that wouldn’t satisfy him. Angus Ravenhouse wanted his stolen necklace back. The letter in Mr. Hartwell’s hands would only hasten him to find the tailor shop, where he’d plop that terrible letter down in front of Andrew and ask him where the necklace was.

The thought of Andrew reading the letter that way cut me to the core. If at last he was to read its terrible contents, I wanted to be the one to give it to him. I wanted to prepare him for Hartwell’s imminent arrival.

I doubled my speed to get to my room, retrieve the wrapped package that contained the letter and scarf, grab my handbag, and board the next ferry.

•   •   •

IT
took less than ten minutes for me to change out of my uniform into street clothes and head to the main building. I needed to tell Mrs. Crowley that an emergency had arisen and I had to leave for the rest of the day. She’d be angry, but what more could she do? I was within a week of leaving the island.

I made my way to the reception area but halted to a quick stop when I heard Mrs. Crowley speaking to someone whom I couldn’t see from my angle in the corridor.

Then I heard the person introduce himself as Chester Hartwell, a private investigator on urgent business that involved a recent patient at the hospital.

I knew Mrs. Crowley would likely tell him nothing and he would soon be on his way. But I didn’t want him on his way yet. I wanted him occupied with his snooping so that I could make my escape.

But how to stall him?

I turned and headed back the way I had come, looking for the first side door that led to the outside. I had gone only a few paces when the door to the doctors’ lounge opened, and Ethan and another doctor stepped out.

Ethan’s eyes widened as he took in what I was wearing—street clothes in the middle of a workday—and my panicked expression. “Clara. What is it? What’s wrong?”

The other doctor excused himself and I waited only a few seconds before pulling Ethan close to me and telling him in rapid, incomplete sentences what had happened.

“I don’t understand. What are you going to do?” he said.

“I’ve got to find the tailor shop before that private investigator does. I need to give Andrew the letter and the certificate. It’s his only proof he didn’t know Lily was already married and that whatever she did with that necklace, she acted alone.”

“You don’t have to do anything.”

“Of course I do! This is all my fault! If I hadn’t inserted myself into this—”

“Clara, if you had never found the letter it would be gone and Andrew Gwynn would be no worse off. This investigator still would have come. If he finds Andrew Gwynn, the result would’ve been the same. It has nothing to do with you.”

But it did. It did have to do with me.

“Please just do me a favor. Go to the reception area and distract him,” I pleaded. “I don’t want him seeing me walking to the ferry house. Please?”

“Clara, I—”

“Please, Ethan! Don’t do it for him; do it for me. Please?”

I had never said his first name out loud before. Not in his presence or anyone else’s. It surprised me how easily it fell off my lips. He seemed likewise aware that I’d said his name the same way he had already been saying mine. Effortlessly.

“I don’t want you going alone.”

“But I’m not afraid.”

For a moment he said nothing. I could see that he was turning my request over in his mind. He wanted to please me, but he also didn’t like my plan. “You don’t know where to begin looking,” he finally said.

“He told me his brother’s shop was in Greenwich Village. How many tailor shops can there be in Greenwich Village owned by someone named Nigel Gwynn?”

A second of silence passed.

“Go back to the newspaper office,” he said. “Ask the woman who helped us before to look it up for you in the business directory. If Nigel and his brother have a telephone, their shop will be in it.”

I squeezed his arm in gratitude. “Thank you! I will come straight back tonight. I promise.”

“Even if you can’t find him today?”

I nodded.

“And try again tomorrow, I suppose.”

“I have to, Ethan. It’s the right thing to do. I would do the same for you if what had happened to Andrew happened to you.”

The moment I said this, I knew it was completely true. I would do this for Ethan.

He nodded once and something in the way he was looking at me changed. It was as if he fully understood in that moment that I needed to do for Andrew what no one had been able to do for me: rescue something precious from the clutches of deception. I knew he would help me.

Ethan reached for me, cupped his hand under my jaw, and drew me to him. His kiss on my forehead was soft and yet urgent. “Please be careful.”

“I will. I promise.”

We moved soundlessly to the edge of the corridor, where we could see Mrs. Crowley and Hartwell’s back as he faced the reception desk.

Hartwell apparently hadn’t gotten much further with Mrs. Crowley, for now he was telling her that Andrew Gwynn had been involved in theft and the police were likely to be notified. Ethan squeezed my arm and then rounded the corner. A few seconds later I heard him ask Hartwell whether there was something he could help him with. Hartwell would have to start all over. I sped back down the corridor and out a side door. Picking up my skirts, I ran for the long connecting hall to the ferry house, drawing stares from everyone I passed. At the ticket counter I learned the next ferry wouldn’t leave for another twenty minutes. I bought my ticket and moved as far forward as I could to lose myself in the growing crowd of people waiting for the next boat. I could only hope that Chester Hartwell was still in the hospital retelling his story to Ethan.

I took a seat on a bench, and then pulled the packaged scarf onto my lap, opening it and placing the letter and certificate safe in my handbag. I wound the scarf around my neck and waited, keeping my profile low. At last the passengers were told to board and again I moved as quickly as I could to secure a seat among the other travelers, glancing up tentatively to make sure I hadn’t been spotted.

The ferry ride seemed to take far too long, but the only apprehension I felt was that we weren’t traveling fast enough. When at last I was through the gates, I made my way to the curb and the row of hansoms waiting there.

As soon as I was seated inside one, I slipped my fingernail into the seam of the scarf, and worked free the little brass key.

The driver turned to me.

“Ninety-two Chambers Street,” I said.

And we were off.

I
didn’t know in which part of Manhattan Chambers Street was located, and I was surprised when only a few minutes later the driver pulled up in front of a boardinghouse, not unlike the one I had lived in during those two weeks when Manhattan was my home.

I also didn’t know what to expect when I stepped inside, or how long I might be there, and I was reluctant to lose the hansom. I checked the contents of my handbag to make sure I had the money to keep the driver at the curb for me.

“Will you stay for a few minutes if I pay you?” I asked him.

“How much?” he quickly responded.

He had brought me there for fifty cents. I handed him that and an extra dollar and asked that he give me fifteen minutes. He grunted his assent.

I tightened Lily’s scarf around my neck and emerged from the carriage. The building in front of me was well kept but not extravagantly so. A cat sat in the front window, which was framed by lace curtains yellow with age. The stoop was clean but cobwebs decorated a pot of thirsty geraniums. A beggar woman a few yards away nodded to me and started to approach, but when I rang the bell she slunk back to the curb.

A stout woman answered the door, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

“I’ve no vacancies, miss,” she said, sizing me up even as I stood there. “Maybe at the end of the month I might. You’re welcome to come back then.”

“I’m actually not looking for a room. I’m here because, well . . .” A lie fell off my lips before I could contemplate the wisdom of uttering it. “My cousin, Lily uh,” I hesitated a second before deciding to try her maiden name. “Broadman contacted you about—”

“Where the dickens is she?” the woman exclaimed, half in consternation and half in concern. “She said she’d be here nearly a month ago. Why didn’t she write me? What was I supposed to think when she didn’t come?”

I didn’t know which question to address first. “She’s so sorry about that. She’s been detained.”

The woman frowned, but only for a second. “Well, is she coming? Or have you come for her trunk? I’ve people asking about the room. It’s only paid up through the end of this month, you know.”

Her trunk.

“I’ve, um, I’ve actually come for her trunk. I’m so very sorry. Things haven’t worked out like we thought they would.”

The lies kept bubbling out of me like a frothy drink poured too fast. My face began to grow warm. But the woman swung the door open wide and stepped back. “Well, come on in then. It’s not like I was going to give the room away when she’s already paid up through the month. Still. What was I supposed to do with that trunk? No forwarding address or anything. That’s not usually how I operate. I don’t like accepting boarders by mail and this is why. I don’t care that she paid me extra.”

“Yes, I’m so sorry about that,” I muttered. “It couldn’t be helped.”

We stepped over the threshold into a narrow entryway with closed doors on either side. She opened a drawer in a narrow telephone table just inside the front door and grabbed a ring of keys. Then she proceeded to lead me to the stairs at the far end of the hallway. “Well, like I say, I don’t usually rent a room to someone I’ve never met. I felt sorry for her when she wrote me that her parents had died. I hope whatever it was that kept you was important.”

“I was . . . was ill. I should have sent a telegram. I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

The woman swung around to stare at me as she put her foot on the first step. “You don’t sound English.”

I knew the fewer lies I told, the better I’d be able to keep up this ruse. I had no idea whether what I was doing was illegal, immoral, or plain foolish. It felt like a hearty concoction of all three. “I was born here in the States.”

“I don’t give money back on the month’s rent. You’re welcome to her room until the end of the month. If you want her room after that, I’ll offer it to you first. But if you decline, you need to be gone on the last day of the month.”

“I’m . . . I’m not sure what my plans are,” I said, and it wasn’t a lie.

The woman nodded and turned back around. “My living quarters are at the first door on the left when you come in the house. I don’t like to be disturbed before seven in the morning and there’s to be no coming and going after ten o’clock at night. And no men. You get breakfast with your room. I serve it at seven thirty in the dining room, first door on your right when you come in the house. There’s a café across the street for your other meals. No food in the rooms. I don’t want mice.”

At the top of the stairs we took a right and then walked past another staircase leading up, past two closed doors and finally stopping in front of a third. The woman selected a key from her ring and opened it.

“Your key’s on top of the bureau.”

I wanted to thank her by name but I couldn’t, and she apparently assumed I already knew it so I just said, “Thank you.”

She grunted and brushed past me to head back down the stairs.

The room Lily had secured was simply furnished. A bed, a bureau, a chair, and a desk. The furnishings were clean but had clearly seen better years. On an oval rug sat a steamer trunk with a brass lock and decorated with shipping labels. Several stamped envelopes lay on top, addressed to Lily Broadman at 92 Chambers Street. The return addresses were all jewelry stores in Manhattan. I set them on the bed and then knelt in front of the trunk. The date on the shipping label was late June; Lily had sent it from London two months before meeting Andrew in Liverpool. The brass key was warm in my hand. I thrust it into the lock and turned it, knowing it would open.

And I knew what I would find in the trunk, past the dresses, extra shoes, hair combs, and capes.

At the bottom of the trunk was a simple red velvet jewelry box. And inside, a shimmering circle of rubies and sapphires, dazzlingly bright and without a doubt costly beyond words. I had never seen anything so precious. Dozens of sun rays from the window across from me reached for the necklace like eager hands. I fingered one of the gems. It was hard and cold and unyielding.

•   •   •

I
didn’t rush down the stairs, though I’d lost track of time. I didn’t know whether ten minutes had passed since I’d left the hansom or closer to half an hour. But from the window at the front door I could see the driver was still at the curb, napping. I placed my hand on the door, ready to head to the newspaper office, when my gaze fell upon the telephone table where the landlady had retrieved her ring of keys. Under the telephone was a bound book of thin pages. I reached for the phone base and moved it to read the lettering. The book was a Manhattan business directory.

I grabbed the directory and fluttered through its pages to the Ts. With my finger I traced the names of the tailor shops. It took only seconds to find it, which was both exhilarating and disconcerting. Greenwich City Tailor Shop, Nigel Gwynn, proprietor, Seventh Avenue and Morton, New York, NY. I slapped the directory back to its place under the telephone and opened the front door.

I hurried to the carriage and climbed back in. The driver swung his head around. “Where to now, love?”

“Seventh and Morton.”

As we drove it occurred to me that Lily might have taken only what Angus had taken from her. She had written in the letter that Angus Ravenhouse had ruined her father financially. Not only that, but Ravenhouse had made off with Lily’s inheritance when she was forced to marry him. It seemed a shame that Angus Ravenhouse would get the necklace back and never be held accountable for how his actions had led Lily to make such disastrous choices.

I nearly felt Ethan beside me, telling me I couldn’t single-handedly right all the world’s wrongs. I had tried to do right by Andrew Gwynn; indeed, I had given love every opportunity to stay golden in his eyes, as I wished it had stayed golden in mine.

I prayed silently as we neared Seventh Avenue that Andrew would not despise me for my blatant and uncalled-for dabbling in his private affairs.

At least he would find out the truth from someone who cared enough about him and the virtue of love to have wanted to protect them both.

When the hansom pulled to a stop, I paid the driver and stepped out, trying to gather strength from the beat of the city as it pulsed around me. The Greenwich City Tailor Shop was one of several small businesses arranged like children’s building blocks in a long row. The paint on the shop’s window frames and door was cracked and peeling, but the panes of glass were freshly scrubbed. On the other side of the window I could see two wooden tailor forms, one with a completed suit coat hanging on it, and the other bare. There was a long wooden counter and behind that, the back of a man’s head—surely Andrew’s—as he bent over a sewing machine. I could smell the wool and gabardine and linen even before I opened the door, steeled myself, and went inside.

The tinkling of the bell on the door startled me and I wanted to hush it so that I could stand there for a moment before launching into my confession. But the bell had alerted him and he turned to me. The courage I had summoned as I had opened the door now seemed to evaporate with the dissipating trills of the bell. As Andrew’s face filled the doorway, I reached into my pocketbook to touch the letter, to remind myself again why I was there.

And then he spoke to me. “May I help you?”

For a shimmering second I could almost believe it had all been a dream, that it was March again, I had only just arrived in Manhattan, and nothing bad had happened to any of us. Andrew didn’t know me and I didn’t know him. That was why he didn’t recognize me. It had all been a dream.

But then I realized as I opened my mouth to speak that the man in front of me wasn’t Andrew. It was a man who looked very much like him.

His brother.

“May I help you, miss?” he said again.

“Nigel.” The name came from remembered conversations while Andrew had lain riddled with fever and loss, and I had cooled his brow.

“Yes. Do I know you?”

“I’m . . . I am a nurse at Ellis Island. I have some news for your brother, Andrew. I was his nurse when he was a patient at the hospital there.”

“Oh. He’s not here at the moment, I’m afraid.”

I was about to ask him how long Andrew might be gone when the door behind me opened and the tinkling bell announced someone else was stepping into the store.

I turned to see whether perhaps it was Andrew, but that was not who it was.

“Good afternoon, Miss Wood.” Chester Hartwell tipped his hat and smiled at me, as polite and genteel as a table host.