Doppelgänger (7 page)

It's not Ola—it's Julian!

She was so stunned that she could barely struggle. It did not last long, but it left her with a feeling of violation so powerful and repulsive that she felt physically sick. As Julian got up Anine lay motionless on the bed, arms up over her head, her groin aching.

“Told you it wasn't over,” he muttered. “You can keep your goddamn nigger maid. You just paid for her.”

He left the bedroom, slamming the door behind him. As he walked down the hallway to the stairs she heard the creak of the floorboards beneath the carpet under his feet.

Chapter Six

The Undisclosed Vendetta

The next day Julian hired a manservant, and Anine wondered if it was retaliation for—or perhaps adaptation to—Miss Wicks. She expected he'd hire a proper-looking man with gray hair and long experience as a gentleman's valet; if not a Briton, someone who looked like one. But the man who appeared at the house the next afternoon was barely eighteen. He was a tall youth with tousled brown hair falling in gentle curls and his tie was not quite straight. “My name is Bryan Shoop,” said the boy after Miss Wicks showed him into Anine's Green Parlor. “I'm supposed to start working here today for Mr. Atherton.”

All Anine said was, “Miss Wicks will show you to your room.” She was playing solitaire in the parlor, still dazed from the shock and horror of last night's events, and didn't feel like talking to anyone. Shoop went upstairs and began to busy himself brushing and arranging Julian's suits.

I had no idea it was going to be like this
, Anine thought as she thumbed mindlessly through the cards.
I had no idea Julian had such savagery in him.
She guessed he was sorely provoked by her defiance of his instructions to fire the maid, but she'd never dreamed he would react like
that
. She did not know what to do. She wanted to kill him, but she engaged in this fantasy only a short while. Trying to get even with him seemed futile and would probably only enrage him more. Perhaps, she thought, she should be quiescent—at least for a time—and hope that this was just a passing storm. She felt it beneath her dignity to simply let it go, but she was painfully aware that she had little practical choice.

“Excuse me, ma'am?”

Anine looked up from the cards to see Miss Wicks at the door. “What?”

“There's a Miss Norton here to see you, ma'am.”

Rachael?
Anine was surprised to realize she'd barely thought of her friend since they left Newport. She threw down the cards and stood up. “Show her in. Get us some tea, please.”

Rachael flooded into the room like a burbling stream. She wore a beautiful dress of sky-blue silk; the matching hat included a stuffed blue jay perched on a cloud of lace. “My dear Anine!” she said melodramatically, kissing her on the cheek. “It seems like it's been
ages
since I've seen you.” Rachael winked at her and the message was clear: her ostentatious entrance and pedantic babble was all for show.
She wanted to see the house
.
And she didn't want to wait for me to invite her
.

Rachael Norton did have an ostensible reason for visiting. “I've come to talk about the dinner we're going to have for you,” she said brightly after Wicks brought the tea. “My mother and I are already planning it. Do you think you and your husband would be available next Friday evening?”

“Friday—oh, yes. I think so.”

“Perfect. It's been so dreary around the house. Since we got back from Newport we haven't done a single thing, not one social event, unless you count Daniel's oyster lunch for me at Café Brunswick. My, I just realized—I should have invited you!”

Rachael prattled on, spinning great skeins of social small-talk. She seemed entirely different from the plain-speaking, almost mischievous spirit that Anine had encountered in Newport. She did almost all the talking. Anine nodded politely, drank tea and nibbled cakes. She interjected little. Then when the teapot was drained and the plates of confections reduced to sugary crumbs Rachael drew an artificial-sounding sigh and said, “So, won't you show me around your beautiful house? You know I've been dying to see it.”

This was the main event and both women knew it. Anine brought her into the entryway. Rachael's dark eyes flashed as Anine motioned up toward the top level of the stairs. “I think that's what you came to see,” she said.

“Fascinating.” Rachael wore a half-smile, and the sudden low, husky tone of her voice signaled an entirely different mood than her airy social chatter. “And the maid? Where did she die?”

“You heard about that?”

“Of course. The day after it happened the maids at our house spoke of almost nothing else. No one knew your lady—what was her name? O'Grady?—no one knew her personally, but word got around quickly enough. Naturally everyone thinks the place is haunted.”

Haunted
. Anine had used the Swedish word
spöke—ghost—
with herself, but she had hesitated even to think of the word
hemsökt
—
haunted
. It was like crossing a line in her mind that she wished carefully to remain on one side of. “It's
not
haunted. You should tell your maids not to spread such gossip. I had a difficult time finding a maid because of it. Miss Wicks is the only one who would take the job.”

“What do maids do but spread gossip?” Rachael smiled, looked around and motioned to the door of the Red Parlor. “What's in there?”

“My husband's parlor.”

“Can I see it?”

Anine hesitated a moment, but ultimately walked to the pocket doors and slid them open. Rachael glided in, looking around at the books, the red velvet drapes, the portrait of Jefferson and the leather furniture. “Just like a man,” she pronounced. She seemed amused.

I must tell her
, Anine thought.
I have to tell her about the sounds—the creaking, the spectral laughter
. She didn't know how to do it without unleashing a new salacious ghost story among New York's underclass of domestic servants, but she thought perhaps Rachael could reassure her that there was nothing to fear.

Her hands were still on the handles of the pocket doors. She closed them. She turned her head but did not look at Rachael directly. “I must tell you something, but I beg you not to tell your maids, or anyone else. It's very sensitive.”

“What is it?”

“Promise me first.”

“All right. I promise.”

Anine spoke more to the doors than to Rachael. “I hear things in the night. I've heard footsteps, and sounds—a woman laughing. I heard it the night Mrs. O'Haney died but it wasn't her. I heard it the next night too, exactly the same thing.”

She turned. Rachael's expression was one of intense interest. “Really? You
really
heard something?”

“I think so. Julian says I was imagining it, but I thought I heard it. I've heard it several other nights since.”

“You heard a woman laughing?”

“Yes, I'm sure it was a woman.”

Rachael looked around the Red Parlor again. Her eyes narrowed, as if she was considering something very deeply. “Do you know anything about the history of this place?” she asked.

Anine shrugged. “No. I think it's about twenty years old, but that's all.”

“Do you know if anyone lived here before the Quains?”

“No.”

After a pause Rachael said, “I could try to find out for you, if you like.”

Anine was alarmed at the idea of the ghost story spreading beyond Rachael herself. “Oh, no. Please don't say anything to anyone. It's embarrassing enough—I mean, Bradbury and Mrs. O'Haney and the stories.”

Rachael looked slightly disappointed. “Oh well. If you change your mind, let me know.” The ginned-up social smile returned. “Now I'll be on my way, and I'll report to Mama that Friday night is a go. This is going to be wonderful!”

After Rachael left Anine returned to the Red Parlor, and she wasn't sure why. She stood there, gripping the back of the chair, staring into the cold fireplace and the painted eyes of Thomas Jefferson above it.
Maybe I should have asked her to find out what she could
. Far from reassuring Anine that the footsteps and spectral laughter were just her imagination, Rachael had exacerbated the problem by making it impossible to ignore.
Was
there something real in the house, something terrifying and unexplainable? If so, what—if anything—could be done about it?

These questions had no answers. As Anine left the Red Parlor she passed Bryan Shoop in the entryway. “Please lay a fire in that room, Mr. Shoop. Mr. Atherton will want one, and he'll be home from the office soon.” She returned to her own parlor, closed the door and picked up the cards again. In here too the ticking of the clock seemed loud and obtrusive. Altogether the house was too quiet.

That night she dreaded going to bed. Julian spent the evening in the billiard room, then retired to his own bedroom. Anine didn't think he would attack her two nights in a row but she devoted some thought to what she should do if he tried to force himself upon her again. It seemed a matter of honor and sanity to resist him with everything in her power, but she knew that would probably make the situation worse. She hadn't resolved this conundrum by the time she finally blew out the oil lamp by the bedside and tried to sleep.

Mercifully the nightmare of Ola didn't recur on this night, nor on the one after. If Julian's unconscionable violence against her had any positive effect at least it seemed to have banished the dream once and for all. For the first time since his death Anine began to wish that she could have married Ola Bergenhjelm. She could not imagine him ever doing to her what Julian had done.

The dinner contemplated by Mrs. Belgravia Norton and her daughter—it was announced on handsome gilt-edged invitations with rice paper in the envelopes—was scheduled for Friday, the 24th of September. On Wednesday, September 22, a letter from Mrs. Norton arrived at the Athertons' house. It stated bluntly,
We regret to inform you that the dinner scheduled for Friday next will not take place as planned. Our sincerest apologies
.

“What?” Julian read the letter as he stood at the fireplace in the Green Parlor. Anine, across the room, was embroidering. “That
bitch!
” he sneered. Immediately he crumpled the letter and hurled it into the fire.

“What is it?” Anine asked.

“The Nortons. They canceled. ‘The dinner will not take place as planned.' No explanation.”

Anine was puzzled. “There must be some mistake.”

“No mistake. They canceled the dinner. They're snubbing us.”

An uncomfortable feeling overcame her. She had been snubbed in Stockholm after the awkward announcement of her engagement to Julian, the
faux pas
at the American embassy; that time, however, he seemed to shrug it off and claimed it didn't matter.
It didn't matter because it was Sweden
, she realized,
a country he knew he'd be leaving soon anyway. This is New York.
“Why would they snub us?”

Julian thought a moment, then wagged a finger at her. “It's political,” he insisted. “The Nortons, they're all Republicans. Isn't Mrs. Norton friendly with Mrs. McElroy? She's Chester Arthur's sister, and he's number two on the Republican ticket. They're angry that I'm working for the Democratic Party here in New York. Yes, that's it. I had no idea they were so petty.”

Anine thought that if this was really the reason Mrs. Norton would never have extended the invitation in the first place, but she said nothing.
I bet it has something to do with me
, she thought as she turned back to her embroidery.
Perhaps Rachael knows what happened. Yes—I must speak with her
.

But the next day, when Anine put on her finest afternoon dress, hired a carriage and went down to the Nortons' on West 24th Street the footman informed her that both Mrs. Norton and her daughter were out and would not be back for some time. Yet Anine distinctly saw a female silhouette at one of the windows as the carriage clattered away.
So they won't even receive me
.
Have I done something wrong?

That evening she wrote a brief note to Rachael:
“Must see you. Please name a time and place.”
In the morning—Friday morning, the day of the canceled dinner—the reply note arrived:
“Stern Brothers. Second floor. Today 2:10 o'clock.”

Stern Brothers was the most fashionable ladies' department store in Manhattan, located just off Fifth Avenue. Anine thought the choice of precise meeting time—two-
ten
, not merely two o'clock—was suspicious. She entered the second floor at precisely that time, according to the gold pocket-watch in her little silk handbag. She saw Rachael Norton across the large room browsing the latest Paris fashions. “Why, Mrs. Atherton!” she beamed. “How wonderful to see you here.” Anine understood that the meeting was arranged so that it would appear they had met by chance.

They walked together past the displays of elegant French fashions draped upon wicker mannequins that Anine found vaguely menacing. She hoped there would not be any fatuous chit-chat and luckily Rachael obliged. Speaking softly, but still smiling, she said, “
Please
don't come to our house unannounced. It puts my mother in an awkward position. I think it's shocking and horrible, but until I'm married to Daniel and the keeper of my own house, socially speaking, I have no choice but to defer to what my mother wants as long as I'm living under her roof.”

“I don't understand,” Anine whispered. “Why was the dinner canceled?”

“It isn't obvious?” Seeing an acquaintance—Eleanor Rochefort—across the store, Rachael smiled more broadly and nodded in her direction. “Everyone declined. Only Hector and Julia Kirklow, who are considered coarse, accepted. Everyone else pleaded other engagements. My mother was scandalized.”

Anine knew this language. People
pleaded other engagements
in Stockholm too, and it meant the same thing there as it evidently did in Manhattan. “I didn't realize I was so…disliked,” she whispered.

“Oh, dear, it has nothing to do with
like
. And I know what you're thinking—it's not because you're a foreigner. I'm not entirely sure what it is, but I know it has something to do with your husband.”