The Gilded Hour (50 page)

“Here,” Anna said, gesturing for them. “I have a folio in my bag.”

Her hands were trembling a little as she tucked the documents away, but the sight of her own signature, strong and clear, gave her back her equilibrium. They had married in haste, it was true, but they had also married out of affection and common interests and love. Even if she had yet to say the word, it was true.

When she straightened again, he was smiling down at her.

“Here we are,” he said. “Married.”

“So it seems. Now what?”

“Now we check into the hotel and find some dinner.”

The first raindrops fell as they started down the street and so they ran the rest of the way, and stopped under the portico just as the sky opened up
in earnest. The smell of rain hitting earth and cobblestones warm from the sun rose around them, the sweetest of perfumes.

Jack opened the door and looked at her quizzically. “What are you thinking?”

“I hope it rains all night,” she said. “I love this. I love—” She swallowed. “I love summer rain.”

He bent down and kissed the corner of her mouth. Against her ear he said, “I love you too, Anna Savard.”

•   •   •

T
HEY
ATE
AN
early supper in the hotel restaurant: a thick broth full of wide noodles, roasted lamb and buttery mashed turnips, the first salad greens of the season and marinated mushrooms. In between courses they talked about the practical matters they had so studiously avoided before stepping into Justice Baugh’s office.

“I should send a telegram to Aunt Quinlan, and one to Cap and Sophie, too. Do you want to send one to your sisters?”

The corner of his mouth jerked. “Now that would offend my mother, if she heard the news after my sisters.”

“We could go to Greenwood tomorrow,” Anna said. “If we took the ferry to Perth Amboy, we could find transportation from there, no? That would be better than a telegram.”

As soon as the words left her mouth Anna wished she could call them back. The idea of adding a trip to Greenwood had come to her out of a sense of propriety, but it also filled her with dread. Jack saw all that on her face, and in that moment Anna forgave him for his frustrating talent for reading her mind.

“Anna,” he said. “We’ve got a one-day honeymoon, and I’ll be damned if we’ll spend it anywhere but in bed.”

The blossoming of heat on her throat and cheeks made him laugh, and Anna decided she could forgive him for that, too.

•   •   •

A
NNA
WATCHED
FOR
a while as Jack worked on the telegrams for his parents and sisters, his usually confident hand pausing over each word. Just at this moment she was glad she didn’t speak Italian, though at some point she would want to know what he had written. She had never heard him speaking to his parents and had no idea if he would be deferential or self-
assertive. Italians, she had come to understand, could be terribly formal in certain situations.

He had written a telegram for Oscar, too, but it was tucked under the others and Anna had the idea that she should leave well enough alone. Better not to hover. She made another tour of the room and stopped to watch the storm. The rain was moving across the bay in long sinuous strokes that shimmered in the half-light. She shivered a little but didn’t bother to dig the shawl out of her valise. This kind of shivering was not about the chill in the air, but her nerves.

The room was well kept and comfortable with a dresser, a divan, a desk, and a good wide bed with a thick comforter that would be welcome in the cool night salt air. The innkeeper himself had come to bring them a pitcher of fresh water for the washstand and to lay a fire in the grate, nodding toward the window and the rain in explanation. When he had gone and Jack was still bent over the telegram form on the desk, Anna found herself yawning. She stretched out on the divan and let herself be seduced by the falling rain, drifting into sleep only to wake with a start sometime later when lightning streaked across the sky. A blanket had been draped over her, light and warm.

The room was lit only by the trembling touch of lightning and the fire in the hearth. Jack was nowhere to be seen. Most likely he had gone off to arrange for the telegrams to be sent first thing in the morning. Maybe he had even told her he was going to do that, thinking she was awake, and in fact there had been some vague dream in which she was sitting in front of the coroner with a telegram in her hand. She read it out loud, just five words:
Janine Campbell stop. Stop. Stop.

All day she had been successfully forbidding herself to dwell on Monday’s inquest, but it had found a back door into her waking mind. The Russo boy had been in the dream too, sleeping in the arms of a faceless woman.

She got up now and used the water closet and washbasin, and in short order she unpacked her valise and set out the few things she required. The day had been too long and too full of surprises, and she was exhausted. And where had Jack gotten to, anyway?

She cleaned her teeth and let her hair down, forgoing her usual braid because Jack liked her hair unbound. When she was changed and ready for
bed she got out the medical journal she had brought along in case she had time to read, and made herself comfortable.

•   •   •

J
ACK
MEANT
TO
be away for just a few minutes, but the hotel clerk was in no hurry at all; just the opposite, he counted and recounted every word on all five Western Union telegram forms, frowning deeply at the Italian.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t speak this language, whatever it is.”

“It’s Italian, and you don’t need to speak it,” Jack said. “Count the words as you would English. I’ve printed very carefully. The telegraph clerk shouldn’t have any problem.”

“Aubrey doesn’t speak anything but English either,” the young man said.

“He doesn’t need to,” Jack said, again. “Any competent telegraph clerk could handle this. Is this Aubrey around? Maybe I should talk to him directly.”

Aubrey wasn’t available, but he could be fetched if Jack would like to come back in an hour—

Jack would not.

The conscientious, fastidious, and frustrating clerk turned back to his study of the telegrams. He pointed with his stub of pencil.

“If you take out this word and these, and this one, you’ll save—”

“I want to send them exactly as they are,” Jack said.

The young man mumbled to himself as he labored over the short column of figures, adding them three times while Jack fumed silently to himself. Then it turned out that there wasn’t enough change in the cash drawer. If the detective sergeant would wait—

Jack would not. He assured the clerk that morning would be soon enough to collect his change, and left before the young man could find something else that needed counting.

Every once in a while he came across a person who was determined to demonstrate how seriously they regarded the law, as if Jack were watching closely for an excuse to make an arrest. He took the stairs two at a time, stopped to say good evening to a startled older couple with a teenage daughter, and arrived at the door of the room some fifteen minutes later than he had hoped.
Mezzanotte,
he told himself.
You are behaving like a sixteen-year-old. Snap to.

With a deep breath he opened the door.

By the light of the fire he made out her shape in the bed, a small form under the blankets. She was asleep, with a journal open under her hands. Her color was high, from scrubbing or the day’s exercise or the breeze from the window she had cracked open. A heart-shaped face with strong dark brows and deep-set eyes and a wide mouth the color of raspberries just coming into full ripeness.

He saw all this and more, but he must keep it to himself. She could simply not tolerate praise and always found a reason to walk away or change the subject.

Jack took a moment to consider. There was a nightshirt at the very bottom of his valise, along with a facecloth and toothbrush. He didn’t want to wake her, not just yet. He made some tactical decisions.

•   •   •

A
NNA
WOKE
WHEN
Jack slipped into bed, six feet four inches of naked male radiating heat like a giant and very prickly hot-water bottle. His head propped on one hand, he was leaning over her to study the open journal page.

“You know, I’m sure that clinical observations on tracheal tubes by mouth instead of—”

“Tracheostomy,” she supplied.

“Tracheostomy,” Jack echoed, drawing the journal away and dropping it behind him so it fluttered to the floor. “Exactly that interesting topic can wait—”

“Forever,” she finished, grinning so broadly that her cheeks began to ache. She rolled onto her side to face him. “Where have you been?”

“Did you think I hopped a ferry?”

She pressed her forehead under his chin and against his throat, shaking her head because she knew her voice would wobble. And how could she be expected to put together a single sentence while his fingers hooked into her nightdress and skimmed up her leg. He tugged, and she lifted and turned and shivered as the fabric dragged over her skin inch by inch, until it snagged.

“There’s a button caught in your hair. Hold still.”

His arms came around her head as his fingers threaded through individual strands of hair, pulling gently one by one so that gooseflesh ran up
and down her spine. His breath was warm on her scalp, and she shivered and shivered and shivered.

“You’re not cold.” His tone was almost accusatory.

“Not cold,” she agreed.

He pulled the nightdress up and off, and it disappeared behind him to join the medical journal on the floor.

“So now that we’re finally here,” he said, his arms slipping around her waist to pull her close, “what should we do with ourselves?”

•   •   •

T
HEY
LAY
FACE
-
TO
-
FACE
in the shadowy cave of white sheets, damp skinned, swathed in each other’s heat. Quiet but alert, both of them. Anna had the idea that she could hear his heart beating, just as she saw it in the throbbing pulse at his throat and temples. She leaned forward to draw in his scent just there, burrowing into his hair.

She said, “The smell of you puts me in a trance.”

When she pulled away he raised a hand to touch her face. His fingers were long and thick and strong, big knuckled, with blunt, square fingertips, clean nails cut to the quick. She would never have thought that a man’s hands could arouse so much feeling, but nerves fired all along her spine at the simple sight of him holding a newspaper or a fork, lifting a valise. Unbuttoning a shirt.

He cupped her face with one palm, threaded his fingers into her hair, and pulled her close, lingering for a heartbeat, their mouths almost touching. Anna felt him draw in a deeper breath, as if his lungs were suddenly too small. She closed the distance between them, opened her mouth against his, and let herself be drawn down and down into a kiss that rendered her limp, soft and open and welcoming, pressed against him from knee to belly to breast to mouth, where he stroked her tongue with his own and called up her response, small murmurs and gasps.

He took over. She found herself on her back with his weight suspended over her so that she still felt every tensed muscle, the hard planes of his thighs and belly and between them the evidence that he wanted her. He was turgid, arching, weeping, the broad head of his erection seeking blindly, tapping against her belly.

“Come,” she said. “Come to me.”

He made a clucking noise, mock surprise and male satisfaction rolled
into one. “So impatient.” And he slipped down to press his face to the curve of her breast. “We have all night,” he mumbled against her skin. “What’s the hurry?”

She shook her head and laughed and gave in, arching up to rub against him, running a heel down his thigh through rough hair and then stopping when he drew her nipple deep into his mouth and suckled.

The hot pull distracted her so that she didn’t realize they were moving until they sat, face-to-face, Jack on his knees, her legs spread wide over his hips, his hands tangled in the hair that cascaded down her back, holding her just so while he drew hard at her breast, suckled and suckled until she groaned, flexing against him, stretched open and wet.

She reached for him but he blocked one hand and then the other, gathering them behind her to keep them at the small of her back as efficiently as handcuffs. It went against the grain and he knew it, knew she’d struggle and resist, and that she’d stop, as she did, as he used his free hand to fit himself to her.

Anna dropped her head to watch it happen. She wanted to rock against him in welcome, to drag him in and then retreat so that he must follow, but he knew her game. He held her and moved her exactly as he wanted, entering her with excruciating, exacting intention: he penetrated mind and heart and body, insisting that she give in and take all of him, everything he had to offer. When she thought there was no more to surrender he still inched forward, crooning at her,
come and come and come to me
. Finally he released his grip on her wrists and cupped her buttocks in his hands to lift her, just so.

His mouth grazed her jaw, suckled at her earlobe. He whispered to her.

“I fill you up.”

She pulsed and strained against him, took his mouth and the kiss she wanted as he began to rock into her, deep and deeper still. She began to shudder, coming undone by the simple fact of him. Joined at the quick, for once and always.

WESTERN UNION

TOTTENVILLE S.I. N.Y. DIST TELEGRAPH OFFICE XUS23 S902JD
SUN MAY 27 1883 7 A.M.
MRS LILY QUINLAN, MRS MARGARET COOPER, MR AND MRS LEE, ROSA AND LIA RUSSO

18 WAVERLY PLACE NY NY

DEAREST ALL. WE WERE MARRIED SATURDAY AFTERNOON IN TOTTENVILLE S.I. SHOCKINGLY SPONTANEOUS BEHAVIOR BUT WE ARE VERY PLEASED WITH OURSELVES. HOPE THERE IS ROOM FOR US BOTH AT ROSES UNTIL WEEDS IS READY. WILL BE BACK LATER TODAY AFTER SEEING SOPHIE AND CAP AND JACK’S SISTERS. HOPE TO BE THERE BY SIX. PLEASE NO PARTY UNTIL RESOLUTION OF INQUEST. LOVE TO YOU ALL. ANNA AND JACK

WESTERN UNION

TOTTENVILLE S.I. N.Y. DIST TELEGRAPH OFFICE XUS23 S902JD
SUN MAY 27 1883 7:10 A.M.
MR PETER VERHOEVEN ESQ AND DR SOPHIE SAVARD VERHOEVEN

40 PARK PLACE NY NY

DEAREST SOPHIE AND CAP. WE TRIED TO WAIT OUT THE IMPULSE BUT HAVE HAPPILY SUCCUMBED TO A REVOLUTIONARY MINDSET AND FOLLOWED YOU INTO MATRIMONY HERE IN TOTTENVILLE S.I. PLAN TO RETURN ON THE THREE O’CLOCK FERRY AND WILL COME STRAIGHT TO PARK PLACE TO TALK. WITH ALL OUR LOVE. ANNA AND JACK

WESTERN UNION

TOTTENVILLE S.I. N.Y. DIST TELEGRAPH OFFICE XUS23 S902JD
SUN MAY 27 1883 7:15 A.M.
DET SERGEANT OSCAR MARONEY

86 GROVE ST NY NY

WILL BE BACK LATE TONIGHT AND AT HEADQUARTERS FOR FIRST SHIFT TOMORROW. ANY NEWS THAT CANNOT WAIT LEAVE WORD FOR ME ON WAVERLY PLACE WHERE I’LL BE LIVING FOR THE NEXT WHILE AS I FINALLY TALKED ANNA INTO MARRYING ME. JACK

•   •   •

NEW YORK POST

Sunday, May 27, 1883

MORNING EDITION

WHERE ARE ARCHER CAMPBELL’S LITTLE BOYS?

FOUR SONS LAST SEEN THE DAY BEFORE THEIR MOTHER’S SUSPICIOUS DEATH

POLICE DEPARTMENT REQUESTING INFORMATION FROM THE PUBLIC

FOUL PLAY FEARED

Readers following the story of the tragic death of Mrs. Janine Campbell last Thursday will be shocked to learn that her four young sons are missing. Archer Campbell, husband of the deceased, a postal inspector and senior detective for the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice last saw his sons (Archer, Jr., 5 years old, Steven, 4 years old, Gregory, 2 years old, and Michael, 2 months old) just the morning before their mother’s death.

In a statement made to the police, Mr. Campbell related the following facts: Last Tuesday evening his wife announced that she was taking the children to spend a week on the Connecticut farm of his brother Harold Campbell, a common occurrence that raised no suspicion. However, when
Mr. Campbell came home on Wednesday he found his wife had collapsed upon return from Connecticut and retired to her bed. She assured him she would be better after a good night’s sleep, and took laudanum to that end. She was still abed when he left the next morning for work and could not be roused, which he attributed to the effects of the laudanum.

By one o’clock that afternoon Mrs. Campbell was dead, the victim of suspected malpractice and criminal abortion gone wrong. Mr. Campbell spent Thursday afternoon and all of Friday much occupied with the investigation into his wife’s death and the arrangements for her burial. Late Friday evening he sent a telegram to his brother Harold in Connecticut, announcing the death of his wife, plans for the funeral to take place the next afternoon, and a request that the boys be brought home in order to attend.

Early Saturday morning he received an express telegram from his brother in which he learned that his boys were not in Connecticut. It had been many months since Janine Campbell or her sons had last visited the Connecticut farm, and even longer since they had had a letter. Harold Campbell knew nothing of the whereabouts of his nephews.

Mr. Campbell went immediately to police headquarters to report that his sons were missing. Telegrams to family members as far away as Maine have provided no information or help. All that is known with certainty is that Mrs. Campbell left the city with them last Wednesday morning by train, and returned without them later the same day. Police inquiries began on Saturday, and will continue until the boys are found and returned to their grieving father.

The mayor has directed the police department to spare no effort to locate the Campbell boys. In turn, the police and family ask that any person or persons with information about the boys or about Mrs. Campbell’s movements in the days before her death come forward without delay. Information leading to the safe return of the boys will be amply rewarded.

•   •   •

NEW YORK TIMES

Sunday, May 27, 1883

CORONER ASSEMBLES A JURY FOR THE MRS. JANINE CAMPBELL INQUEST

DISTINGUISHED PHYSICIANS AGREE TO SERVE

Coroner Hawthorn has called on some of this city’s most respected physicians to hear testimony and examine evidence in the case of Janine Campbell’s death by criminal abortion.

A postmortem found the cause of death to be infection and blood poisoning following from an illegal operation. The coroner’s jury will meet to determine if an unknown party or parties performed the procedure or if Mrs. Campbell operated on herself. If that is so, there will be an inquiry into who provided her with the information and instruments she used.

The last two physicians to treat Mrs. Campbell, Dr. Anna Savard and Dr. Sophie Savard, will be present at the inquest with their attorney, Conrad Belmont, Esq., and must be prepared to give testimony to a jury of six more experienced experts, as well as an officer of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.

In an unusual twist, Mr. Belmont, attorney for the two lady doctors, approached the coroner to request that the jury include at least two female physicians, who by their sex, experience, and training would be best able to understand and judge the evidence. This request was denied for reasons of law, custom, and propriety, but the coroner will allow female physicians to be present in Judge Benedict’s courtroom, where the inquest will begin at 1 p.m. tomorrow. As is customary, anyone admitted to the gallery may question witnesses.

Whether the disappearance of the four Campbell sons will be addressed in the inquest is unclear, though insiders believe that it will be necessary to take the facts of the case into account.

•   •   •

T
HEY
GOT
TO
the Tottenville train station and onto the train at the very last second. Jack jumped onboard with both valises and then hauled
Anna and her Gladstone bag up behind him, just as they jerked into motion.

The train was crowded, overheated, and awash in tobacco smoke. Anna fell into a seat with a great heaving sigh, lifting her hair off her damp neck. By the time Jack had stowed away the bags and joined her, she was coughing into her handkerchief.

They escaped to the covered vestibule between the two cars, where the window had been left open. It meant standing for the entire hour and swaying hard with every jolt, but it was worth any amount of jostling to stand in the cool rush of air.

“We’re not the only ones with a bright idea.” Jack inclined his head to the two women who had appeared at the vestibule door in search of clean air. They squeezed together to make room.

They were mother and daughter; nothing could be more obvious unless it was the fact that the younger woman was close to giving birth. Mrs. Stillwater and Mrs. Reynolds, as they introduced themselves, on their way to visit friends. Mrs. Reynolds rubbed her great belly with the palm of one hand and could not hide her curiosity.

She said, “I think you must be the newlyweds.”

Her mother’s face lit up with interest.

“My husband is Joe Reynolds; he’s a law clerk. He was one of your witnesses?”

Anna had no real memory of the witnesses whom the justice of the peace had called into his office, but she nodded.

Mrs. Reynolds was saying, “Joe described you. You don’t have any way to know this, but Judge Baugh refuses to marry almost everybody. He says he won’t be a party to a disaster.”

“You impressed him,” added her mother. “It bodes well for your future. Are you really a doctor?”

Anna agreed that she was. She knew where the conversation would go, and so she started it on her own.

“You are very close to your time, I think.”

The younger woman shrugged. “Everybody says so, but I don’t feel so uncomfortable the way most women talk about. Except maybe at night when the kicking and thumping keeps me from getting to sleep.”

“It’s a good time of year to have a baby,” Anna offered, because it was true. “Will you stay here on the island?”

She felt Jack’s attention focus as he realized what she was up to. Anna elbowed him gently to let him know he was not to jump in or offer any comments and heard him huff his resignation all too clear. In her experience mothers and daughters had a set way of telling their maternal histories, and she must let it run its course.

The mother, born and raised herself on Staten Island, had had all of her children right at home with the help of Meg Quinn, the midwife who had delivered almost everybody on the south end of Staten Island.

“She’s only ever lost two children and one mother,” the daughter said. “In thirty years of catching babies.”

“That’s an excellent record,” Anna said, and saw them both relax a little. “We’ve seen quite a few babies this weekend,” Anna went on. “Twins, about three months old—”

“The Dorsey girls,” the mother suggested.

“I wouldn’t care for twins,” her daughter said, but her nervous smile said she wasn’t so sure. Most young women her age did like the idea of twins but found the reality more than they had imagined or wanted to deal with.

“I heard a very young baby crying when we passed a house on the main street this morning—”

“Mrs. Caruthers’s first, poor thing’s got the colic something terrible.”

“—and, then yesterday—” She paused to look at Jack.

“Yes?” the mother prompted, also turning to Jack and smiling in a way that made her look more her daughter’s age.

“We were on the beach very near Mount Loretto,” he said. “We met a family with a friendly little girl who introduced us to her parents and grandmother and her new baby brother.”

“That would be Eamon and Helen Mullen, don’t you think, Allie? Helen is a good friend of both my daughters. She married the same week as my older girl, my Jess.”

“They looked very happy,” Anna said.

“Oh, yes,” said Allie Reynolds, her hand returning to rub her belly in gentle circles. “But they have had some heartache.” She lowered her voice.
“Helen lost her own little boy to a fever when he was just three months old. He was gone so quick, they couldn’t even send for the doctor.”

The story went on for a while, mother and daughter reconstructing the death of the Mullens’ son.

“Then she couldn’t catch again,” said the daughter. “Three years, they tried. It was hard to see her so unhappy.”

“She seems very satisfied now,” Anna said.

“That little boy was a blessing, it’s true. They adopted him, you know. There’s no lack of little Irish orphans in the city, is what we hear. So the new priest arranged for them to get one and it’s made all the difference to the Mullens. Brought them all back to life, you might even say.”

•   •   •

T
HE
PASSENGERS
WERE
coming off the ferry just as Jack and Anna left the train station, a small crowd of people on their way to Tottenville. The last person they passed was a priest in a Roman collar, a man in his fifties or more, rotund, with blazing red cheeks and sharp blue eyes. This would be the evasive Father McKinnawae, Jack was fairly sure. But there was no time to stop and introduce themselves. It was a conversation that would need careful planning.

“Maybe I should write to him again,” Anna said when the ferry had begun its trip north on Raritan Bay.

“It would be better if I approached him,” Jack said. “If you can leave that to me once the inquest is over. At least we know the baby is healthy and in good hands.”

“Yes,” Anna said. “That’s one less thing to worry about. I don’t mind admitting, my head is spinning.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Jack said, slipping an arm around her shoulders.

She gave him a half smile. “It will be a very strange honeymoon. I have surgery all tomorrow morning and then in the afternoon—”

Her expression was almost blank when she was thinking about the inquest. Out of self-preservation, Jack thought. Distancing herself in any way she could in order to better see and understand and analyze.

“We’ll have to be inventive,” he whispered against her ear, and she smiled and shivered a little.

Then he saw her attention shift to the empty seat beside her where an
abandoned newspaper fluttered in the breeze. She leaned over to pick it up, and Jack saw the headline, each word like a slash:

FOUR CAMPBELL SONS MISSING

INQUEST INTO MOTHER’S DEATH STARTS TOMORROW

•   •   •

C
AP
SAID
, “Y
OU
must have that telegram by heart now. How many times have you read it?”

“I’ll keep reading it until they show up at the door and I know it’s really true.”