The Gilded Hour (59 page)

“She seemed unwell, that Tuesday evening.”

“As I said.”

“You didn’t call a doctor.”

“Rich people call a doctor for every little thing,” he said. “The rest of us make do. She said she’d be right in the morning, and I believed her. And so she was. Now I’m thinking nothing failed her at all. It was just her way of putting me off the scent, not asking about things being out of order.”

Hawthorn gave a doubtful low hum. “Tell us about that Wednesday morning.”

Campbell didn’t try to hide his impatience. “She went about her business, as she always did. Breakfast and seeing to the boys and so forth. Getting them ready for the train.”

“Did you see her off at the Grand Central Depot?”

“Look,” Campbell said. “It was nothing out of the ordinary. I went to
work; she got herself and the boys to Grand Central by omnibus. I don’t hold with cosseting. My mother raised six boys to good men, and she did it with the Bible in one hand and a hickory switch in the other.”

“All right,” said Hawthorn. His tone was short. “Then we’d like to hear about Wednesday evening when you got home.”

“She was in bed,” Campbell said. “Vomiting into a basin, curled up under the covers. So I got my own dinner—cold meat, again—and read the paper like I always do. I heard her moving around some and so I went to check and she was trying to get a bottle of laudanum open. I opened it for her, and I went back to my paper and then to bed. That was at about nine.”

“Did Mrs. Campbell wake in the night?”

“I slept in the boys’ room. It was her idea, thinking I shouldn’t catch the bug that had her so sick.”

From the jury Dr. Stanton cleared his throat. “You didn’t notice blood, I take it? There would have been a great deal of it.”

Campbell looked distinctly uncomfortable. “She told me she had her monthlies, and I left it at that.”

Abraham Jacobi said, “Were you disappointed to hear that Mrs. Campbell’s menses had started?”

For the first time Campbell looked confused. “I don’t follow you.”

“We heard testimony that you were hoping to increase the size of your family as quickly as possible. Something about a wager with your brothers. The news that your wife wasn’t with child, then, was that a disappointment?”

Beside Anna, Sophie went very still while Campbell’s neck and face flooded with color.

“That’s a private matter. Who told you that? Whose testimony?”

“Mr. Campbell,” said Hawthorn. “Please answer the question.”

Campbell’s head was turning as he scanned the gallery, moving from face to face. Sophie sat quietly, composed, unwilling to let Campbell read anything from her expression, once he found her where she sat.

“Mr. Campbell.”

He turned back to the coroner with clear reluctance. “I wanted a big family,” he said. “She knew that before she married me. She wanted the same.”

Dr. Thalberg said, “She never expressed doubts?”

“Doubts?” Campbell fairly spat the word out. “What do doubts have to do with anything? Man proposes, God disposes, so goes the saying. A woman raised right knows that, and accepts it as her duty.”

“But the evidence indicates that Mrs. Campbell performed an abortion on herself,” said Hawthorn.

“If that’s so,” Campbell said with great deliberation, “then she lied to my face and she’s burning in hell, where she belongs.”

There was a moment of shocked silence in the courtroom.

Jacobi said, “Where do you think your sons are? Do you have any sense of what’s become of them?”

Campbell’s whole face contorted. “If what you’re telling me about my wife is true, then I’d put nothing past her. Maybe she stole away and killed them, to spite me.”

Anna felt flushed with heat. Whatever they had imagined about Janine’s home life, it had been far worse. Casual cruelty and callous indifference could destroy a woman as effectively as fists.

“Then let me ask one more question,” Abraham Jacobi was saying. “Assuming for a moment that your sons will not be returned to you, did you have no idea that your wife held you in such contempt, that she was angry enough with you to do such unspeakable things?”

Campbell stood up suddenly, and so did Anthony Comstock. “The man is not on trial,” Comstock said. “You are making grave accusations without the least bit of evidence.”

“Your own tactics, Comstock. Come home to roost,” noted Dr. Thalberg.

“I beg your pardon!” Comstock bellowed. “How dare you!”

“Sit down, Mr. Comstock, and remember the seriousness of this inquest,” said Hawthorn. “Mr. Campbell, you too, sit down immediately.” He paused to take a deep breath.

“You may find Dr. Jacobi’s question insulting, Mr. Campbell, but it is a reasonable question. If your wife was so deeply unhappy and disturbed enough to do the things we’re talking about, where did those feelings originate?”

Finally,
Anna thought.
Finally.

•   •   •

T
HE
DEBATE
WENT
on and on, it seemed to Anna, but nobody in the gallery moved a muscle. It was as good as a theater production, one with an
excellent director. Her opinion of Mr. Hawthorn grew to considerable proportions as she watched him play the jurors off each other and off Campbell, stepping in exactly when things began to escalate too quickly, providing small jolts when things began to lag.

On her pad she wrote,
no history of mental illness she admitted to
and
French Canadian
and
save the rod
.

Mrs. Campbell did not approve of harsh physical punishment, it seemed. Her husband offered this as evidence of her deceptive character; because, he suggested, there was nothing gentle about a woman who could wrong him the way she had.

Anna had had more than her fill of Archer Campbell when the coroner declared the inquest at an end and cleared the courtroom of everyone but the jury. The hallway, already crowded with reporters, doubled in density. In the tumult of the crowd Anna stayed very close to Sophie, her Gladstone bag bumping against her leg as people pressed forward around islands of reporters who stood scribbling madly on paper held open against a palm. Perspiration was running down her back and sides, and she had never wanted to see an open window as much in her life as she did at that moment.

“Sophie Verhoeven.” A reporter pushed in front of them, his face lowered so that the brim of his hat would have touched Sophie’s forehead, had she not shoved him away.

“Don’t you want people to know—”

“What I want,” Sophie said, “is for you to remove yourself immediately. Immediately.”

Anna took her by the arm and pulled her aside. “Jack, there.”

He was easy to spot in a crowd, a head taller than the tallest man. Anna gave a very solid push in his direction, and Sophie followed.

“Let’s go,” Jack said. He used his body to create a protective wall, a passageway that moved with them. He opened a door and gestured them into another hallway, this one empty and dim and cool.

Anna leaned against the wall for a moment to catch her breath. Sophie stood very stiffly, her mouth pressed hard shut and streaks on her cheeks that had only one origin.

“Oh, Sophie.” Anna put a hand on her cousin’s elbow, and Sophie turned to her, pressed her face to Anna’s shoulder, and wept as though the world had ended.

To his credit, Jack stood back and let them be. Anna smiled wanly at him over Sophie’s head.

“She should have killed him,” Sophie said finally. “And saved herself.”

Anna fumbled a handkerchief out of her sleeve and wiped Sophie’s damp face. “In a just world, yes.” She felt very close to tears herself, until she saw Jack’s face.

“What?”

He said, “Sophie, Sam Reason and his grandmother are waiting in a room just down the hall to talk to you.”

Sophie stiffened. “He was arrested?”

Jack nodded. “But he won’t be charged. He’s free to go home.”

“What? How?”

“Comstock overplayed his hand. And he’s not the only one who knows people in the district attorney’s office. Sophie, be warned, Reason is—”

“Rude. I know,” she said. “But he has cause.”

•   •   •

D
ELILAH
R
EASON
WAS
thinner than she had been, her cheekbones more prominent and the shoulders of her shirtwaist not quite so well filled out. But her smile was genuine, and Sophie was so glad to see that small sign of sincere welcome that her hands began to tremble.

“I’m so glad to see you,” Sophie said. “Though I wish the circumstances weren’t quite so grim.”

“You look like you haven’t got much sleep,” Mrs. Reason said. “Are you taking care of yourself?”

“Dr. Verhoeven has staff to take care of her,” Sam Reason said. He was standing near the door, very straight and tall and so tense he seemed to vibrate.

“Sam,” said Mrs. Reason. “I did not raise you to be impolite. Dr. Savard—”

“Sophie. Please, call me Sophie. Sam has good cause to be angry with me.”

They both looked at her as if she had suddenly started speaking Greek.

Sophie said, “I assumed that Comstock raided your offices because of our pamphlets, that he traced them somehow. That’s not what happened?”

“The other way around,” said Sam Reason. “He—or better said, one of his men—brought one of your pamphlets in to me and asked what it would cost to reprint it.”

“But why were you arrested?” Sophie asked him directly.

“I was caught off guard and I did the first thing that came to mind. I handed him our price sheet. The one I use to calculate estimates, page count and paper stock, and so on. That’s all it took. Next thing Comstock came in himself and arrested me.”

“Because he didn’t reject the job straight out,” Mrs. Reason supplied.

“But it was one of the pamphlets I showed you?”

Sam nodded. “No doubt in my mind, it was my grandfather’s work.”

“It’s none of your doing,” said his grandmother to Sophie.

“I fear it is. I embarrassed Comstock in court yesterday,” Sophie told them. “I can’t help feeling there’s a connection.”

“Maybe so.” Sam Reason turned his hat around and around in his hands. “But it’s over and done now. Maybe you can thank the detective sergeant for speaking up for me. I’d be spending another night in a cell if he hadn’t.”

“I have already asked him to keep an eye out for Comstock on your behalf. You must be very careful from now on. He doesn’t like being bested.”

For the first time she saw a flicker of a smile on Sam Reason’s face. “Nobody does.”

Mrs. Reason picked up her reticule, and, taking a moment to gather her thoughts, she launched into what Sophie thought must have been a rehearsed speech.

“I saw in the newspaper that you married just a few days ago,” she said. “And I’d like to wish you and Mr. Verhoeven every happiness.”

“Thank you.” Sophie resisted the urge to turn away. “I should explain—”

“You don’t owe anybody an explanation,” Sam said. “It’s nobody’s business but your own who you marry.”

Sophie nodded. “Still, I wanted to say that I had hoped to come and visit again, but there have been so many complications. We leave tomorrow for Europe. Cap—my husband—Cap is going into treatment at a sanatorium, for tuberculosis. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“Whenever that is, you are both very welcome at my home. Any time at all. I hope Mr. Verhoeven’s health is restored to him quickly.”

“That’s very unlikely,” Sophie said, and at the look on Mrs. Reason’s face, she realized how heartless she must have sounded.

“He is very ill,” she started again. “It is a matter of months, at the most.”

Sam moved suddenly. “I’ll wait outside.” And just that quickly he was gone.

“Talk of illness makes him uneasy. He has a deep fear of it.”

“Most people do,” Sophie pointed out.

“Sam more than most. He lost his wife to cancer, you see. When you visited us that Sunday, he was gone to Savannah to tell her family in person. He’s been very shut off since her death, but I expect you’re familiar with that kind of thing, as a doctor.”

“I thought he disapproved of my marriage.”

Mrs. Reason lifted a shoulder, as if to shrug off the possibility. “But I do not, and you are welcome in Brooklyn when you come back. You will come back?”

“Oh, yes,” Sophie said. “Of course I will. This is my home.”

•   •   •

NEW YORK TRIBUNE

Wednesday, May 30, 1883

LATE EDITION

CONCLUSION OF THE CORONER’S INQUEST INTO JANINE CAMPBELL’S DEATH

VERDICT OF THE JURY

The jury impaneled to investigate the death of Mrs. Janine Campbell of 19 Charles Street on Thursday, May 24, met this evening at 5 o’clock pursuant to adjournment, in Judge Benedict’s courtroom at the Tombs.

Coroner Hawthorn informed the jurors that Archer Campbell, husband of the deceased, was the final witness to be called. He instructed the jury to give the matter careful consideration and to render a verdict regardless of consequences or public opinion. The jury retired and two hours later rendered the following

Verdict

We, the jury, duly sworn and charged to inquire on behalf of the State and City of New York how and in what manner Janine Campbell came to her death, do upon their oaths and affirmations, say that the said Janine Campbell came to her death by septic peritonitis and blood loss due to an illegal and incompetent abortion
performed late on Tuesday, May 22nd or early Wednesday, May 23rd. On the basis of the available evidence and sworn testimonies we are unable to reach a conclusion on the deceased’s state of mind or sanity at the time of the operation.

Further, we entirely exculpate Dr. Sophie Savard Verhoeven and Dr. Anna Savard, who attended her, from all blame and responsibility.

After close scrutiny of the evidence, we find that the abortion that led to Mrs. Campbell’s death may have been performed by the deceased herself, and otherwise was the work of person or persons unknown. We refer this matter to the police department for further investigation.

Dr. Morgan Hancock, Women’s Hospital
Dr. Manuel Thalberg, German Dispensary
Dr. Nicholas Lambert, Bellevue
Dr. Abraham Jacobi, Children’s Hospital
Dr. Josiah Stanton, Women’s Hospital
Dr. Benjamin Quinn, Bellevue and the Woman’s Medical School
Mr. Anthony Comstock, New York Society for the Suppression of Vice