In a Gilded Cage (9 page)

The group chuckled.

“I’ve popped in there a couple of times and they made me a marvelous mixture for my stomach. Wonderfully calming,” Fanny said.

“Do tell where it is,” Minnie said. “I am in desperate need of a calming mixture. My nerves are really quite upset since we moved to that big new house. And Frank is so often away that I find it hard to sleep.”

“Oh, I’m sure we could make you a great sleeping powder,” Emily said. “We’re on Columbus, not far from Fanny’s.”

“Then I must pay you a visit next time I come into the city,” Minnie said.

“Oh but girls, I use the absolute best of calming tinctures,” Bella said. “My dears, it’s almost pure opium. The joy of it! A few drops in water and the world simply melts away.”

“I don’t think that Anson would approve of that,” Fanny said with a frown. “He doesn’t like me taking things. He even disapproves of smelling salts. He says it should be mind over matter and that feeling faint is all in my head.”

“Of course it’s not in your head,” I said, and all eyes turned on me. “If you will wear those ridiculously tight corsets, you’re going to feel faint any time you’re upset, because you start to breathe rapidly and your lungs won’t let you take in fresh air. You’re actually breathing in your own used breath.”

They looked at me as if I was a strange animal. “But everybody wears corsets,” Dorcas said. “I’m back in mine already and little Toodles isn’t quite two months old.”

“I was told one’s insides would rattle about if one didn’t hold them in place with a corset,” Minnie said.

“Well, I’ve never worn one and never intend to,” I said. I could tell they thought I was remarkably odd.

“But don’t you want to marry? What man would look twice at a woman with a large waist?” Fanny turned those doll-like blue eyes on me.

“I have a young man and he seems to like me just fine the way I am,” I said. I didn’t add that he found it hard to keep his hands off me. They might have swooned on the spot.

“So your young man is good at making concoctions, is he, Emily?” Dorcas chose tactfully to change the subject.

“He is. He’s been trying his hand at ladies’ cosmetics,” Emily said. “I think they’re marvelous.”

“They are,” Fanny agreed. “He’s absolutely as good as anything that comes from Paris. Emily, don’t forget you promised me another jar of that wonderful face cream he makes. I’m almost out of it.”

“So I did. I’ll remind Ned to make you one.”

Dorcas examined Emily’s face. “Your complexion is flawless, Emily, and Fanny’s is certainly perfection. I’d love to try it too.”

“There. You’ve landed Ned his first order,” Fanny said. “And Bella, I wouldn’t say no if you brought a little of your magic calming tincture next time we meet. Anson need never know.”

“How is Anson?” Emily asked.

“Busy.” Fanny frowned. “What with working in the city and then going out to inspect the building of our new house, I hardly see him. If it weren’t for you dear friends, and shopping, of course, my life would be one of utter boredom.”

“I’m so glad we live in the city,” Bella said. “The shopping is wonderful, don’t you think?”

“Nothing like Paris,” Minnie said. “It’s impossible to buy a decent dress off the peg, and most of the dressmakers are so provincial in their taste. I had to tell mine quite firmly that I had a fine bust and I wanted more of it exposed on my evening dress.”

“Minnie!” Alice exclaimed. “And you a married woman, too.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Minnie said with a self-satisfied smile. “A bigger bust is the one advantage to giving birth to a baby. I had nothing to show off before.”

“And what did your dressmaker say?” Fannie asked.

“She turned quite pale and looked at me as if I were a brazen hussy.”

We laughed.

“I hope you fired her,” Bella said.

“I did, but now I’m lost. What will I wear when the summer season starts out in Newport?”

“You’ll be going there for the summer, will you?”

“Oh, definitely. All of Jack’s business acquaintances will be there, so there’s no point in staying here, and he does enjoy the sailing so.”

“I rather wish we were building a house in Newport,” Fanny said, “but Anson has insisted on Great Neck or Little Neck or somewhere with an equally silly name. He wants to be close enough to the city to go back and forth with ease. But then we shall move there and I shall know nobody.”

“We’ll all come and visit you, Fanny dear,” Alice said, reaching across to pat her hand. “We’ll have such fun garden parties and play croquet.”

“And you’ll have to come into the city to shop, of course,” Bella said firmly. “Speaking of which, did I tell you that I’ve discovered the most amazing fabric store? It’s in the most disreputable part of the city, on Canal Street, but they import silks from China. You have never seen anything like it. My eyes nearly popped out of my head. So I gave them my card and told them to bring me a selection to choose from and next time you see me at a ball, I’ll be dazzling in scarlet silk.”

“We must all come to your place when the silk merchant is there,” Fanny said.

“Oh no. This is my little find,” Bella said, laughing. “I have no wish to compete with a bevy of Chinese-clad beauties. You find your own little secret gems.”

“And speaking of gems,” Alice said, “I must show you Arthur’s latest present to me. It’s the most divine ruby necklace you have ever seen.”

“What was the occasion?” Emily asked.

“No occasion really, although it is close to our second anniversary.” Alice blushed. “He just saw it in Mr. Tiffany’s window and had to have it for me. Wasn’t that divine of him?”

“You’ll have to lend it to me for my Chinese silk, Alice,” Bella said.

“I’m not lending it to anyone. At that price Arthur probably won’t allow me to wear it outside of the house.”

I had remained silent since my outburst on the folly of corsets and was following the conversation with interest, mingled with a tinge of alarm. These were presumably all educated women. Two at least had been to Vassar. Yet the conversation had not departed once from shopping and their attire. And their speech had been peppered with such phrases as “Arthur wouldn’t allow me to . . .” Fanny’s husband was building them a house on Long Island even though Fanny, who supposedly had the money, would have liked Newport. Did all women have to surrender their wits and their power when they married? I tried to picture myself saying, “Daniel would not allow me to . . .”

Fanny must have noticed my preoccupied expression because she said suddenly, “Miss Murphy, please do have a cake or some chocolate, and you never did tell us what manner of work you are involved in.”

“You’ll never guess,” Emily said, with an excited look around the group, “but she’s a detective. A lady detective.”

“No. Are there such things?” The news caused quite a stir in the little gathering.

“I assure you I’m real,” I said, “and yes, I run my own detective agency.”

“And are you like Mr. Sherlock Holmes? Do you stalk through New York with your magnifying glass, picking up hairs and cigarette butts and declaring that the murderer was a one-armed Peruvian with a lisp?” Bella giggled as she looked at me.

“I can’t claim to have had Sherlock Holmes’s success,” I said, “but I have concluded some successful cases.”

“Not all sordid divorces, I hope?” Alice said primly.

“I rarely touch divorces for that reason,” I said. “My cases have ranged from missing persons to proving the innocence of those wrongly accused.”

“How terribly exciting,” Fanny said. “But isn’t this kind of work dangerous?”

“Too dangerous at times,” I confessed. “My young man wants me to quit.”

“Well, you will as soon as you marry, won’t you?” Bella said.

“I don’t know.”

“She’s working for me at this very moment,” Emily said. “She’s trying to find out the truth about my parents.”

“But I thought they were missionaries and they died of cholera,” Fanny said.

“So did I. But now I’m wondering if I’ve been deceived,” Emily answered. “Molly is absolutely wonderful. She’s already tracked down somebody who wrote a book on missionaries in China and he will put her in touch with everybody who was there at the time.”

“Well done, Miss Murphy.” Alice patted me on the shoulder.

“Do eat, everybody. Our cook makes the most delicious cakes,” Fanny said. The group needed no urging, even though they expressed concern about their figures as the cream cakes disappeared from the plate.

At last we bid our adieus and left.

“So what did you think of Fanny and her friends?” Emily asked as we stepped out of the Dakota. “Isn’t she an absolute beauty? And so kind, too.”

“She is certainly lovely,” I said. “And she does seem kind.”

“Of course that kind of life would never be for me,” Emily said. “Fanny, Dorcas, and I used to have discussions deep into the night about democracy and the loss of greatness in a democratic society and the justification for colonialism. All kinds of deep topics. We were planning to set the world to rights. I was going to train as a doctor and follow my parents into the mission field. Fanny wanted to be an anthropologist and come with me to Africa to study primitive tribes while I healed their bodies and minds. And Dorcas—she used to read Ovid in Latin for pleasure!”

“And now all they talk about is gowns and cosmetics,” I said.

“It is my observation that most husbands do not want brainy wives. They want an adornment, a good mother but not one who will provide any threat to their authority.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” I said. “I’ve made my own position quite clear to my young man. I want an equal partnership or nothing at all.”

“I expect the same,” Emily said. “Ned respects my intelligence too much to think of me as a plaything or a possession.”

“Then we will stick up for our rights together,” I said. “We will remain the last two intelligent married women in New York City!”

Emily laughed and slipped her arm through mine. We marched, in step, along the side of the park.

Ten

A
fter what I had experienced that afternoon I had second thoughts about cooking dinner for Daniel. Did I want him to become accustomed to seeing me in the role of domestic drudge? After all, I too had been working all week. But then I reasoned that it was up to the woman to do the cooking, however liberated she was. If we waited to marry until Daniel was financially stable again, I should be able to expect at least one servant, presumably one who could cook. So I applied myself to making a good dinner. I had a nice piece of beef that I roasted with potatoes and sprouts. Daniel stood in my hallway, sniffing appreciatively as he took off his hat.

“My, but that smells good,” he said.

“Roast beef,” I said with a certain amount of satisfaction.

I insisted that he carve. He made rather a hash of it, but I wisely kept silent. Then we sat and ate.

“So how was your client this afternoon?” he asked. “Satisfied with the progress you are making?”

I knew he was curious to find out more about the case, but since he was sharing no details of his own work, I merely gave an enigmatic smile. “Very satisfied, thank you. Recommended me to other women at the gathering in the Dakota.”

“The Dakota. So your client moves in high circles.”

“She does.”

“Fascinating.”

I laughed at the expression on his face.

“You’re not going to tell me more, are you?” he asked.

“No, I’m not. Not until you tell me about your work.”

“Ah, but I’m a police officer. My cases are criminal ones. If I talked about them, I might give a defense attorney grounds for dismissal.”

“It’s not as if I’ll go blabbing to all and sundry,” I said. “And a problem shared is a problem halved.”

“Nothing you could do, my dear,” he said. “Completely outside of your sphere. Gang wars among the Chinese over the opium trade. Bodies in back alleys. Large quantities of opium being brought in under our noses. That’s my major concern at the moment, and if that’s not enough, I’ve got cases of apparently random poisonings on my hands.”

“What kind of poisonings?”

“Arsenic.”

“You’re right. Out of my sphere,” I said. “And my own case sounds rather boring in comparison. Trying to find out the truth about my clients’ parents.”

“Interesting,” he said, but he didn’t sound very interested. “Anyway, enough of work. Tell me something amusing.”

So I related my afternoon’s experience at the Dakota. “I don’t ever want to end up like that,” I finished.

Daniel laughed. “No, I can’t see you lounging on your chaise, discussing ball gowns. But don’t worry, my dear. That will never happen to you.”

“Thank you, Daniel.” I beamed at him. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear you say that.”

“Well, it’s obvious, really, isn’t it,” he said. “On a policeman’s salary you won’t be able to afford ball gowns and jewels. You’ll be out hanging the laundry and scrubbing the floors.” He ducked as I went to throw a potato at him.

The next morning’s post brought a reply from Isaac C. Ketler in Pennsylvania.

My dear Miss Murphy:

I am in receipt of your interesting letter of the 12
^th
inst. I personally am not connected with the mission field, although I am personally acquainted with the Simcox family, whose brutal massacre was the impetus for me to write this book. Their parents live close by in Pennsylvania and turned over years of correspondence for my use. I am founder and principal of Grove City College, a small liberal arts institution based on a firm Christian foundation.

I should like to help your friend in her quest for knowledge of her parents and am forwarding to you the names and addresses of each of the missionary organizations active in China. This pre-supposes that your friend is of American heritage, as there are also missionary societies based in London equally active in Asia.

When you have ascertained with which of the missionary organizations they were affiliated, you may wish to contact some of those names I cite in my book, for more personal details on her parents and their life in China.

If I can be of further service, please do not hesitate to write.

Isaac C. Ketler, Ph.D.

Wonderful. I now had a start. Of course I was a little daunted when I saw the number of missionary societies he had included for me: American Baptists, Bible Society, Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Methodists, Presbyterians, Reformed, Protestant Episcopal, and so on. A whole page of them. I had no idea so many people had a burning desire to convert the heathen Chinese!

Well, I had my work cut out for me. I took out a pad of paper and sat down to write to each of the missionary headquarters. Dr. Ketler mentioned in a postscript the large numbers of Catholic missionaries also operating in China. I saw little point in contacting any Catholics, as they had a surfeit of priests and nuns and wouldn’t need the help of lay couples.

As I worked down the list I was pleased to note that some of these societies had their headquarters in New York—two of them were even on Fifth Avenue, practically around the corner from my own house. Those I could visit in person. It took me most of the morning, including several sheets ruined by inkblots and words that couldn’t be repeated in public, before I had my stack of letters to take to the mail.

Now all I had to do was wait. I was itching to do something else, still tempted in fact to visit Emily’s disagreeable uncle. I might well have given in to my impulse and done so, but just as I was setting out to visit the two missionary headquarters on Fifth Avenue I received another letter—this one hand-delivered by a messenger.

My dear Miss Murphy:

It was delightful to make your acquaintance yesterday. I wonder if I could prevail upon you to call on me at your earliest convenience on a matter of great urgency.

P.S. Please call between the hours of ten and four.

Now this was really intriguing. I had seen Fanny’s eyes light up when she heard that I was a detective. The missionary headquarters could wait. I went straight upstairs to put on my most respectable outfit and the one good hat I had rescued from the mud, then I headed uptown to the Dakota.

Fanny was dressed in somber dove-gray this morning, which somehow accentuated the pink of her cheeks and the clear blue of her eyes.

“Miss Murphy!” She sounded breathless. “How good of you to come so quickly. Please take a seat.” I noticed I had become Miss Murphy again now that we were discussing business. I followed suit.

“Thank you, Mrs. Poindexter.”

I sat. Coffee was served.

I waited. We discussed the weather.

“You have a problem, Mrs. Poindexter?” I said at last. “Something you think I could help you with professionally?”

She was twisting a curl around her finger like a little girl. “I believe that my husband keeps a mistress, Miss Murphy,” she blurted out.

“What makes you think this?”

“Silly lies that he has told me. Once he claimed that he was dining with Bella’s husband on a business matter, and later I found out from Bella that she and her husband had been out of town that night. And all those trips to oversee the building of our new home . . . surely no building needs to be overseen that frequently. And the crowning piece of damning evidence. I saw a piece of jewelry in Cartier’s and asked about it and found that such a piece was already purchased by my husband. But I never received it, Miss Murphy.”

“Maybe he is saving it for a special occasion and plans to surprise you with it?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m ashamed to say that I searched the places he’d be likely to hide it and it wasn’t there.”

“At the bank, maybe?”

She shook her head again, violently this time. “No, I’m sure, absolutely sure it wasn’t meant for me. Anson isn’t the sort of person who would buy a piece of jewelry to surprise me with later. He buys me presents for my birthday but apart from that he has never surprised me with flowers even. He does his duty but no more.”

“How does he treat you? Is he not affectionate?”

“At the beginning of our marriage he was—well, to put it bluntly, rather keen in bedroom matters. But I believe that had more to do with wanting an heir than with me. And now over two years have gone by and I have failed to produce that heir, and I noticed his interest waning. Recently he scarcely notices my presence and only comes to my bedroom when he is drunk.”

“Dear me,” I said. “Have you confronted him with any of this?”

“Oh no,” she said. “I don’t want him to have any inkling that I suspect him. I want you to provide the evidence, and if it’s true, I plan to divorce him.”

“Divorce him? Give up all this?”

“Miss Murphy, the money is from my family. Without me Anson would be living in a dreary side street with no hope of a home on Long Island.” She leaned closer to me. “To be honest with you, this match was arranged by our families when we were still children. Anson is—well, a very attractive man. What sixteen-year-old would not be excited at the thought of marrying someone as dashing as he? I agreed to the match before I knew anything about life.”

“And he has not proved to be dashing and exciting?”

“He sees me as a useful adornment, Miss Murphy. Someone to dress up and show off at his business functions. And someone to buy him the house of his dreams. But I do not believe he cares for me one iota. I am a prisoner in a beautiful cage.”

“Do you mean that, Mrs. Poindexter? You have your own life and friends, surely?”

“Anson is a very forceful man,” she said. “He expects to control every aspect of my life—what I wear, whom I meet for luncheon. He wants to know where I am going and with whom. He has to approve of my friends before they come to the apartment. My sister wanted me to accompany her to Paris, but I am not to travel without him. He likes to keep me under his thumb. I am one of his possessions now, Miss Murphy. No more, no less.”

I looked at her with compassion. “Do you have any idea who this woman might be?”

“No, I have no idea. It may even be one of our set. Will you take my case, Miss Murphy? Will you find out the truth for me?” She reached out that delicate white hand, adorned with a perfect, square-cut emerald. I took it and she gripped mine tightly.

“I’ll do my best, Mrs. Poindexter,” I said.

“Please, make sure he doesn’t see you.” Fanny grabbed my sleeve with sudden vehemence. “He must not know about this.”

“I am a professional and skilled in such matters, Mrs.Poindexter,” I said.

“Because if he found out I had hired a detective and was planning to divorce him—I don’t know what would happen,” she said in a small voice.

“You can rely on me,” I said.