The Flaming Corsage (9 page)

She and Edward then sat on either side of Katrina, the spirit of Hughie Gahagan separating Edward from his father. Hanorah caught Emmett’s eye and he bowed his head and said silent grace.
Then Hanorah passed the bread and the bubble and squeak, and they all helped themselves.

“There’s talk now of a wedding,” Hanorah said.

“There is,” said Edward.

“When did you meet?”

“When we were children, or at least Katrina was a child. Then all of a sudden she grew up and I saw her at Cleveland’s victory parade, and she looked like this,” and he opened
his hand to Katrina’s face. “I was conquered, or maybe I was victorious, finding what I didn’t even know I’d been looking for all my life.”

“Did you feel that way, too?” Hanorah asked Katrina.

“I thought him quite perfect,” Katrina said. “I’ve tried to discover ways to improve him, but I’ve found none at all.”

“You may find some. You’re still young,” Hanorah said.

“I’m almost twenty. Juliet, had she lived, would’ve been married six years at my age. Perhaps I’m older than I seem.”

“Where would the wedding be?” Hanorah asked.

Katrina looked at Edward. He waited for her to answer, but she did not.

“We’ve made no plans,” Edward said. “We wanted to talk to you before we did anything.”

“My parents want it to be at the Cathedral Chapel of All Saints,” Katrina said.

“That’s where the Episcopalians go,” Hanorah said.

“Yes. Bishop Sloane is a friend of the family.”

“What do you say to that?” Emmett asked Edward.

“I hadn’t heard this,” said Edward.

“You marry in that church, you’re excommunicated,” Emmett said, and he turned to Katrina. “Do you know what you’re doing to the man, taking him out of his
religion?”

“I had no idea,” she said.

“We’ll find a way to solve it,” Edward said.

“Which is your church?” Katrina asked Edward.

“Sacred Heart, here in North Albany.”

“Then we’ll marry there. Will that solve it?”

“Are you sure about this?”

“You can’t marry in the church if you’re not Catholic,” Emmett said.

“Then I’ll become Catholic. How long does it take?”

“You have to take instructions,” Edward said. “A few months, maybe?”

“That’s fine. I was thinking of a spring wedding anyway, weren’t you?”

“Just like that, you become a Catholic?” Emmett said, snapping his fingers.

“I don’t believe it matters which language we use when we talk to God. It’s possible I’m really a pagan. If so, I shall now be a pagan Catholic.”

“What will your parents say?” Hanorah asked.

“They’ll be furious.”

“You certainly make quick decisions,” Emmett said.

“I do what I think I should do, so I can become what I feel I must be.”

The Daughertys fell into silence. Edward stared at Katrina, understanding that with a few words she had transformed herself, become as rare to his parents as he already knew her to be, yet he
could not have predicted any word she said. Emmett and Hanorah stared at her, rancor gone from Emmett’s face, Hanorah a study in bewilderment. What Katrina had done was akin to her action at
the cemetery, and Edward now knew she would have this effect on everyone, that the directness of her idiosyncratic behavior was a singular gift. He coveted it, felt the young man’s ambition
to conquer life with a stroke, as Katrina just had. But he knew he would live a long time before he understood even where to direct such a stroke. Yet, credit where credit is due, Edward: you
intuited the rightness of bringing her here unannounced, and for that much you should congratulate yourself. Blind navigation, a maestro’s talent, won the battle for today.

The bells for the noon hour rang in the church belfry.

“Those are the bells of Sacred Heart,” Edward said.

“It sounds like a requiem,” Katrina said.

“No, just the time of day, the noon hour, time for the Angelus.”

Katrina framed a question in her eyes.

“A prayer to the Immaculate Conception and the mystery of the Incarnation,” Edward said. “ ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to thy word. And
the Word was made flesh. And dwelt among us.’ ”

“It sounds like bells I heard at a neighbor’s funeral,” Katrina said. “I remember his widow getting out of a carriage in front of St. Peter’s church just as the
bells began, and, as she stopped to listen, she swooned and fell on the sidewalk. I thought the slow pealing of the bells was very sorrowful, and yet it was the most beautiful sound I’d ever
heard. Will they ring that way for our wedding?”

“I’ll see that they do,” Edward said.

And he remembered Aristotle: as the eyes of a night bird relate to the bright glare of day, so the soul’s understanding relates to those things that are the clearest and most knowable of
all. Oh, Katrina, most knowable, you speak the dead language of the soul with dazzling fluency.

F
INTAN
(C
LUBBER
) D
OOLEY
, a butcher living on Van Woert Street in Albany, came forward to reveal his role
in the decapitation of a bull the day before the Love Nest killings. This was, he said, a practical joke popularly known as the “Bull-on-the-Porch Joke.” The bull’s owner, Bucky
O’Brien, told an interrogator he was asleep upstairs over his Bull’s Head tavern on the Troy Road (where drovers had penned and watered Boston-bound herds of cattle in years past) and
did not hear the rifle shots that killed his bull. He was awakened by raucous singing, accompanied by the banging of a dishpan as percussion, but O’Brien judged this a normal happening in the
vicinity of his tavern, and he went back to sleep. Dooley said he had banged the dishpan while singing the song “I Want My Mommy” to cover the sound of the rifle shots.

The bull, named Clancy, a long-familiar denizen of the pasture behind the tavern, had only one eye and was known as a peaceful animal. Dooley said Culbert (Cully) Watson, a sometime hotel clerk,
known pander, and erstwhile member of the Sheridan Avenue Gang, shot the bull, whereupon Dooley climbed the pasture fence and, with cleaver, handsaw, and knife, and the expertise gained in the
slaughterhouses of West Albany, cut off the bull’s head and lifted it by the horns over the fence to Watson, who put it in the back of Dooley’s wagon. Dooley and Watson then rode down
the Troy Road to Albany and left the head on the stoop of the Willett Street home of Dr. Giles Fitzroy. Dooley said he had known Dr. Fitzroy for many years, that the doctor was a noted practical
joker, and that, in a bygone year, Dooley had helped the doctor stage the elaborate “Fireman’s Wife Joke.” Dooley was persuaded by Watson that putting the bull’s head on the
doctor’s porch was a hilarious way of joking the joker. Dooley was unaware that the presence of the head might have other than comic implications.

The whereabouts of Culbert Watson are unknown at this time.

“E
VENING
, M
R
. D
AUGHERTY
,” the hall porter of the Delavan House said to Edward.

“Evening, Frank. Cold as hell out there tonight.”

“Back again, Mr. Daugherty,” said Willie Walsh, the liveried bellhop.

“Only place to be on a night like this, Willie,” Edward said, guiding the golden-haired Katrina to the door of the elevator, her hair swept upward into a brilliant soft bun atop her
head, the lynx collar of her coat high around her exposed ears. Toby the dwarf, also in livery, gave the Daughertys a half-bow, and bade them enter his elevator.

“Going up, Mr. Daugherty?”

“Indeed we are, Toby,” Edward said.

Toby closed the door of the small wooden cubicle that accommodated himself and four people, no more, and the car moved upward. Edward and Katrina stepped out at the second floor, walked toward
the dining room, and were greeted by a plump and pretty housemaid, in black dress and starched white apron, sitting on a chair just inside the cloakroom doorway.

“Why it’s Cora,” Katrina said.

“Miss Katrina,” said the housemaid, standing to greet them. “Mr. Daugherty.” She curtsied and smiled. “Don’t you both look elegant. Let me take those coats
from ye.”

“Welcome to them,” said Edward.

“Oh it’s terrible frigid out, isn’t it, sir?”

“Even polar bears are inside tonight,” Edward said.

“Is your sister well?” Katrina asked Cora.

“Oh she is, Miss, she’s just fine. Your sister and parents and all, they’re inside already.”

“They all miss you, Cora. And so do I. I have no one to tell my secrets to anymore.”

“Them were good times, Miss Katrina. I’ll never, never forget them. I miss you all so much, but isn’t that just the way it is?”

Katrina kissed Cora on the cheek. Edward pressed a dollar bill into Cora’s hand and then took Katrina’s arm and walked with her into the dining room. People were eating at all but
two of the dozen tables, and in one corner a harpist and violinist were playing “After the Ball,” a song Edward loathed and Katrina loved. Edward saw Tom Maginn across the room, dining
with two couples, and recognized one of the men as a powerful New York City Assemblyman. Edward caught Maginn’s eye, waved. Katrina nodded to Maginn and smiled.

“Maginn,” said Edward. “Busy at work.”

Edward’s dinner guests were already seated at a round table in the far corner. The party numbered six: Edward and Katrina, Jacob and Geraldine, Katrina’s sister, Adelaide, and her
new husband, Archie Van Slyke, bright young man out of Harvard Law School, now an assistant vice president of the State National Bank, and whose great-grandfather, in collaboration with Jacob
Taylor’s grandfather, had assembled a pair of family fortunes by confiscating Tory estates after the Revolution.

Dinner would begin with oysters, be followed with choices of foie gras, shad with sorrel, partridge and cabbage, tenderloin of beef, lobster gratiné (a Katrina favorite), an array of
wines, fruit, and cheeses, charlotte russe and Roman punch, Napoleon brandy and Spanish coffee. The menu was chosen by Edward to please the palate of Jacob Taylor, who believed the Delavan served
the best food in Albany.

“Can you read your father’s mood at this stage of the evening?” Edward whispered to Katrina as they neared their table.

“He doesn’t see how this dinner can do anything to stop him from loathing the sight of you,” Katrina said.

“I hope to reverse his expectations,” Edward said, and with smiles and formality he greeted Jacob and the others, kissing the hands of his female in-laws.

He had ordered small bunches of violets to be at the place settings of the women, and when they arrived Katrina picked hers up and pinned them as a corsage to the breast of her gown.
“Flowers, like love,” she whispered to Edward, “should lie easy on one’s bosom.”

Her mother pushed the violets to the center of the table, disowning them. Adelaide sniffed hers, threw Edward a kiss.

“How thoughtful you are,” she said.

Of the Taylors, only Adelaide had no censure for Edward; for she had coveted him when he was courting her sister. “If you don’t marry him,” Adelaide told Katrina when she was
abed with indecision, “you’re a fool.”

Edward had reserved this table in the Delavan’s second-floor dining room, which was decorated with sketches and photographs of the luminaries whose visits gave credence to the
Delavan’s boast that it was one of the nation’s greatest hotels. Here was Abraham Lincoln, who supped here before and after he became president, and Jenny Lind, when the hotel was a
temperance bulwark, and P. T. Barnum, Oscar Wilde, Boss Tweed and a generation of his plundering ilk, who had made the Delavan a political mecca. Here were actors Edwin Booth and James
O’Neill, Albany’s Irish tenor Fritz Emmett, the dancers Magdalena Colón (La Última) and Maud Fallon, the actresses Mrs. Drew and Charlotte Cushman, plus one actress who
inhabited the American demimonde, photographed in a gown revealing all of her right breast except the nipple, and whom Edward once glimpsed in the Delavan bar, coquettishly urging a swinish,
kneeling pol to swill champagne from her slipper.

On this penultimate night of 1894 the hotel was in its political but not yet swinish mode, abuzz with the noise, money, and power of the politicians who had come to Albany for the legislative
session that would begin on New Year’s Day. The ritual was familiar to Edward, who had dined here often during the years he covered politics for
The Argus.
The festive air, he decided,
would be a useful distraction from the heavy mood of this dinner party. The opposing political forces were already feasting and roistering in the two grand suites at opposite ends of the second
floor when oysters on the half shell were served to Edward’s table.