The Gilded Hour (78 page)

“I think it will be all right. The timing is good.”

“Good? For what?”

“Ovulation. Or rather, the lack of it. I’m at the end of my cycle, not in the middle. Promise me we won’t lose our heads like that again.”

“Anna,” he said, brushing a curl off her damp cheek. “We’ll get carried away plenty, but I promise I’ll ask about the cervical cap first.”

She nodded, yawning. “Good,” she said. “I should get up now or you really will catch my cold.”

That made him laugh. He was still laughing when she slipped away, and left him to his dreams.

•   •   •

W
HILE
J
ACK
SLEPT
Anna read the postmortem reports, making notes and charts until she could no longer deny that there was a pattern. She had been so sure that Janine Campbell had tried to operate on herself, because she couldn’t imagine anyone, man or woman, purposefully injuring another human being in such a blatantly cruel way. She was no stranger to violence, to gunshots and stabbings, beatings and burns. Men were endlessly inventive when it came to hurting women, she understood this; and still here was the evidence that she was neither as worldly or cynical as she had believed herself to be.

It all made her miss Sophie more acutely. There was so much to miss about her cousin: the sound of her voice, the way she hummed when she went about some household chore, her dry sense of humor. Anna missed all those things, but just now, sitting with the autopsy reports spread out in front of her, she missed Sophie’s medical mind most. As diagnosticians they complemented each other, and Sophie would have had useful observations that Anna missed entirely.

•   •   •

I
N
THE
AFTERNOON
Jack got up to start his day, and Anna said as much to him. “As I have to do without Sophie, can I ask my cousin Amelie her opinion about the autopsies? She has more experience than Nicholas Lambert and I do, even put together. Something here might trigger a useful association.”

Jack liked the idea, so she wrote out a case-by-case summary along with her own observations, and put it all in an envelope that she addressed to her cousin.

“Ask Ned to mail it for you,” Jack had suggested.

Anna made a sound into her teacup that she hoped he would take for agreement. The truth was, she had a small plan. An innocent plan, really. One that was unlikely to turn up any new information and thus, she told herself, best kept to herself for the time being.

Except Elise came to call in the early evening, and Anna remembered there was another mind available to her. She lacked experience, but that might even work to their favor; clear-sighted and without prior assumptions, Elise might see something.

She debated with herself while Elise talked about what was going on at Roses: Mrs. Lee had declared the little girls to be healthy again,
freeing them to bounce around the house and garden like frogs on a griddle for the entire afternoon. Margaret had predicted tears before bedtime and Aunt Quinlan had made a rude sound to that idea and called the girls to her.

“They wanted to come see you, but your aunt said they had to give you another day.”

Anna wanted to hear the stories Elise had to tell, but her mind kept turning back to the reports.

Elise was saying, “. . . reading a story by Mark Twain that had everybody laughing.” And then: “Are you tired, shall I go?”

“Not in the least. Really. How are things at the hospital?”

It was like offering water to a man in the desert. Elise told her about the surgeries she had observed in the last week, stopping to ask Anna questions and to consider the answers.

“Do you think you might want to take up surgery?”

Elise didn’t have to think about her answer. “I’m more comfortable on the other end of things, working with the patients directly. I like the challenge of . . . figuring out what’s really wrong. Diagnosis.”

Anna said, “That was the impression I had, so I’m wondering if you might find it interesting to read these postmortem reports I’ve been looking at.” She put her hand on the folder.

Elise’s whole posture changed. “I’ve never seen a postmortem.”

“That’s why I thought you might be interested.” She gestured to a chair. “Sit down, let me explain.”

•   •   •

E
LISE
TOOK
AN
hour to read through the reports, and then she sat looking out the window for a good while. The day hadn’t yet begun to wane, though it was already eight. People were drawn outdoors by the light and the fine weather, the silky touch of a warm breeze.

Somewhere in the city was a man who had caused the deaths of at least five women and maybe as many as eight, without anyone taking notice. He went about his business without interference because he showed an unremarkable face to the world. Unless he walked down the street with a bloody knife in his hand, he could go on just as he had started: an apple that looked solid until you bit into it to find your mouth full of worms.

She turned to look across the room. Anna was sitting in the corner of a
sofa, her cheek against her hand while she read. She sensed Elise looking at her, and met her eye.

“Thoughts?”

“A few observations, but I doubt they’re significant.”

“Go on. Don’t leave anything out.”

This felt like a recitation in the lecture hall. Elise organized her thoughts and started.

“This doctor—I think he must be a doctor, given some of these details—started to perform these operations with two goals in mind. He wanted the patient to die in terrible pain, but he wanted the death itself to take place out of his sight.

“With Mrs. Campbell he was too violent, and with Mrs. Liljeström he was so fast that he damaged an artery and she hemorrhaged immediately and bled to death. So neither case satisfied him. But in the third, fourth, and fifth cases he had settled on a procedure that gave him the result he wanted, and then he was exacting. The incisions are all in the fundus between the uterine horns and spaced evenly, like tick marks on a tally sheet: one, two, three. All of them are angled to cut into the intestines to a depth of about two inches. The instrument was not sterilized, and it might even have been purposefully contaminated. That seems likely, given how quickly the infection took hold and spread.”

She looked up from the report in front of her. “Shall I go on? I have just a few more thoughts.”

Anna said, “It’s useful to hear someone else’s interpretation, so please do.”

“I was thinking of how a patient is prepared for surgery of this kind. If these women had marks on their arms and legs that indicated they had been forcibly restrained, would Dr. Lambert have noted that?”

Anna’s brows rose sharply. “Why do you ask?”

“Because if there were no restraints, he must have used anesthesia. The natural impulse would be to twist away from the pain. I’ll tell you what I think probably happened.”

She got up and walked back and forth for a moment to gather her thoughts.

“I think this person must be someone who is very well established. Or at least, has that appearance. He presents himself as a highly educated
medical authority, with broad experience. He won’t be very young, and his fees will be exorbitant. Do you happen to know—”

“Yes, the fees were very high, between two hundred and three hundred dollars.”

It took a moment for Elise to make sense of such a large number.

“So these women would expect someone with a professional demeanor,” she went on, more slowly. “Someone severe, and a little frightening, but not unkind. I’m not being clear. Do you know what I mean?”

“The strict but benevolent father,” Anna said.

Elise was feeling a little more comfortable now, and she let the story come out in the way she imagined it.

“The patients will have high expectations. He must have some kind of medical office or clinic, treatment and operating rooms and the right equipment, everything in good working order and well maintained. A pleasant waiting room, and there must be an assistant or nurse, certainly. Someone to help the patients undress and dress again, and someone—maybe the same person?—to administer anesthesia.

“He does this horrible thing, but then he wants it out of his sight, because he’s feeling vulnerable, maybe, or superstitious, or just guilty. He might be worried about evidence, I suppose. To get her out of his office as quickly as possible he will have to administer a good amount of laudanum, so that she’s far away when she realizes that something is very wrong. There are other autopsy reports coming?”

“There will be,” Anna said. “By the end of the day tomorrow. Would you like to see those when Jack brings them home?”

This question felt very much like a quiz. She wondered what Anna wanted to hear and decided that it didn’t really matter. She told the truth. “I’d be very interested if I can be of help.”

“I think you can,” Anna said, and finally she produced a smile. “It’s immodest of me, but I take some pride in how quickly you’re learning to think like a doctor. And now I’m going to tell you a secret. Ready?”

“Um, yes.”

“If you feel like you’re being tested, you are. In medicine, at least. If that’s the case, don’t watch the person who asked the question, for two reasons. First, the more you look at that person for signs of approval, the less likely you are to see any facial expression at all. Second, don’t be afraid
of silence. It’s an old trick to use silence as another kind of test. It’s a way to determine how confident you are of your answers. If you don’t know, say so. If you do know, say that, and stop talking.”

Elise couldn’t quite keep from smiling.

“Go on,” Anna said. “Say what you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking you remind me of some of the nuns.”

Her mouth twitched at the corner. “Anyone in particular?”

Feeling a little light-headed, Elise stood up and walked to the door. She chanced a look at Anna, who had one brow raised.

Elise said, “Yes.” And left the room without looking back over her shoulder.

D
RESSED
TO
GO
to the shops, Anna told Mrs. Cabot that she would be out for an hour.

Mrs. Cabot said, “Hmmm.”

Anna said, “I’m just going to the post office.” She might have tried to show her dimples, but the housekeeper had already proved herself immune.

Mrs. Cabot said, “Ned will be by any minute. I’ll send him to the post office for you.”

Anna didn’t need Ned along on this outing. She wasn’t entirely sure herself what she hoped to accomplish, a fact that would be immediately obvious when he started asking questions.

“I need the exercise,” Anna said in a tone that any one of her students would recognize as:
enough
.

“I don’t like it.” Mrs. Cabot was more like Mrs. Lee every day.

“My cold is almost completely gone,” Anna countered. “It’s seventy-two degrees with a light breeze, the sun is shining. The fresh air will do me good.”

•   •   •

I
N
FACT
,
THE
air and the exercise did her a great deal of good. It was such a relief to be out of doors that for a few minutes Anna walked at a steady pace feeling nothing but the sun on her face and an odd contentment.

She turned onto Ninth Street and picked up her pace, picked up her skirts, and stepped around the worst of the rubbish in the street. The smell of ripe trash in the sun was unavoidable in New York in the summer. In fact, that meant summer had really arrived, in Anna’s mind.

At the next corner she stopped, fishing in her pocket for coins for an old couple, the man holding out a tin cup. He smiled up at her with such obvious pleasure that she was taken aback for a moment.

“It’s Dr. Anna.” He peered up at her from the rolling platform that did the work of his missing legs; another veteran, one who had survived the worst and was still here, managing from day to day. He elbowed the woman next to him. “Sary, it’s Dr. Anna. You looked after our grandson when his knee went bad in February. Pavel Zolowski, if you recall. Our girl Judy married a Polack, you see. You came out to tell us how things stood after you fixed Pavel up.”

“I remember,” Anna said. “Of course I remember. A very lively boy. How is he?”

“Right as right can be,” said the old woman. Her eyes scanned back and forth, sightless but still seeking.

Anna would stay and listen if they wanted to tell her about their grandson, but she asked no intrusive questions; the poor had every right to their privacy and dignity. After a moment she put coins into the old woman’s hand directly, smiled at her husband, and took her leave.

•   •   •

I
T
WAS
EASY
to get turned around among the market stalls; the aisles were narrow and the crowds shifted in unpredictable ways that seemed designed to halt her progress. Most of the market sellers fell into one of two categories: the overly friendly, loud-voiced but engaging seducer—she passed one who was juggling spoons while he flirted with passersby—and the irascible, curt ones who always had the best merchandise.

She found her way to the little post office on West Tenth Street and mailed the letter to Amelie, then made a plan.

First, a turn around the market. She bought some boiled sweets, a few yards of silk gauze that she rolled into a sausage shape that fit into her reticule, a card of pretty carved shell buttons. She studied ducks hanging in the butcher’s window and shoes in the cobbler’s. On Greenwich a clerk walked back and forth in front of the milliner’s shop, showing off the newest fashion and trying to draw passersby in for a look.

When she had made a full tour of the market Anna crossed Sixth Avenue again and went straight to Smithson’s.

It had been a very long time since she had last been in the apothecary, but it seemed to Anna that nothing had changed: sets of scales hung from the ceiling, heavy wood counters and glass-fronted cabinets, a wall of small drawers with printed labels, jars arranged in neat rows on deep shelves.
Even early on a summer day the gaslights were turned up high, to combat the gloomy, tunnel-like atmosphere of Sixth Avenue over-hung by the elevated train.

A younger man was busy topping up a china canister from a far less attractive stoneware crock. Anna couldn’t see the names from where she stood, but the sweet-sharp tang of bitter orange—
Aurantii cortex
—hung in the air. There was mint, too, and less pleasant but familiar smells, some chemical, some botanical.

A woman came into the shop from a back room, and here was proof that things had indeed changed.

Not a clerk, by her demeanor or dress. Smithson had sons; this might be a daughter-in-law, or a granddaughter. She was neatly and very fashionably dressed in a suit of dark gray summer-weight wool with a tasteful bustle and a waist cinched down to no more than twenty inches. A black velvet band around her neck was held closed by a jet mourning brooch, small but very pretty.

“May I help you?”

“Yes, I hope so.” Anna came closer. “I am trying to get in touch with a midwife who used to work in this neighborhood, but no one seems to know where she’s gone. Do you keep in touch with local midwives?”

“We do. Within limitations.”

Anna skated right by that conversational opening. “Her name is Amelie Savard.”

The cool blue gaze focused on something behind Anna, and then came back to her.

“I’m sorry, I can’t help you with that.” She seemed to remember her manners just that easily. “I’m Nora Smithson. My husband is the apothecary.”

“It’s been a very long time since my last visit,” Anna offered. “I was away in Europe for a good while.”

The secret to successful lying, she had observed over the years, was to stick with just that part of the truth you needed.

Mrs. Smithson said, “You might remember my father-in-law. He retired last year. May I say without presuming—if you are in need of a midwife, there are a number who work with us who have excellent reputations. Would you like a copy of the list we keep?”

Mrs. Smithson smiled at her in the way women sometimes smiled at newly expectant mothers. Anna was glad to be spared the necessity of lying outright.

“I would. Yes, please.”

“If I may suggest,” she went on, her voice lowered. “You might consider a physician. There are specialists in women’s health who also have excellent reputations, and attending privileges at one or more of the local hospitals. Medical science had advanced beyond midwifery.”

“Ah.” Anna hesitated, unsure how to proceed. “Would you have names—?”

This earned her a very sincere smile. “Of course. I’ll give you both lists.”

She turned away to take something out of a drawer; turning back, Anna saw that she had more to say, and was looking for an opening.

“Is something wrong?”

“No. Well, not exactly. May I ask, where did you hear the name Amelie Savard?”

This Anna had prepared for. “Neighbors are very kind with advice about greengrocers and butchers and dry goods stores, and I heard the name from an elderly lady who lives next door. She said that Mrs. Savard was an excellent midwife.”

Mrs. Smithson was chewing delicately on her lower lip. “Does this neighbor have children?”

Anna paused, thinking, and decided to depart from the truth in this much. “I don’t actually know. They would be middle-aged, if she does.”

Another small nod. “Despite what you were told, Amelie Savard was not a midwife.”

Anna raised a brow, as much invitation as she could trust herself to give.

“She was an abortionist in the model of Madame Restell. You have heard of Madame Restell? She lived in a mansion on Fifth Avenue.”

“Ah,” Anna said. “I haven’t kept up with the laws.”

“There are still abortionists about,” Mrs. Smithson said. “But they don’t come in here. They wouldn’t dare. We alerted Mr. Comstock about the Savard woman, and she left town, just like that.” She snapped her fingers.

It would not do to show emotion at this moment, no matter how blatant
the lies and misrepresentations about her cousin. But neither could she leave it completely alone.

“I wonder what a lady does when she has too many children, and no way to feed them. Do the physicians on your list help in that kind of situation?”

Color rushed up Mrs. Smithson’s face so quickly that Anna was taken aback.

“If you came here for that purpose, you have indeed come to the wrong apothecary. I suggest you leave now.”

She reached out to take back the two sheets of paper in Anna’s hands, but Anna saw her purpose and stepped back from the counter.

“You mistake me,” she said, firmly. “I am not looking for an abortionist. I asked a question, and you have insulted me on that basis. Do you regularly abuse and condescend to your customers?”

“I—I—” A hand crept up to her face and then pressed into her mouth. Through her fingers she said, “I apologize. Most sincerely. I overreacted and I apologize.”

Anna stayed where she was, her expression frozen.

“It’s a sensitive subject. I do apologize, Mrs.—”

“Apology accepted.” Anna made her voice as cold as she could. “And now I wish you a good day.”

•   •   •

A
NNA
HATED
WISHING
people a good day. She found it insipid and insincere, and never used the expression. Except just now. Because if she hadn’t said
I wish you a good day
she would have said something far more colorful. She would have called Mrs. Smithson a lying, sanctimonious bitch. Anna said it now in her head.

Now at least she understood why Amelie had given up her midwifery practice. Hundreds and hundreds of children delivered safely, mothers sustained and kept healthy, and all that was left of the goodwill accumulated over those years was this one idea. If Mrs. Smithson had started talking about the color of Amelie’s skin Anna would have called her a bitch, and worse.

As soon as she was around the corner and out of sight, she began to shake. Her hands trembled so that at first she couldn’t even get the lists she
had been given into her reticule. Then she stood quietly and made herself take three deep breaths.

When she looked up she saw the little coffeehouse that sat on the corner where Greenwich, Christopher, and Sixth Avenue converged opposite the Jefferson Market. Before the war she had come here sometimes with Uncle Quinlan. He liked the tobacconist on the next block, and so she would come along first thing and they would have breakfast together. As far as Anna knew, the place had no name, and never had. She sometimes heard it called the Jefferson Market coffeehouse or the blue coffeehouse, and sometimes the French coffeehouse, because the owners had moved down from Montreal and spoke French to each other.

The idea of going home to more chamomile tea was insupportable. Anna crossed Sixth Avenue once again, stepping quickly out of the way of a dray and then a cab, waiting while a stream of people descended from the elevated train platform. She thought again of home. She thought of coffee, and was newly resolved.

It was a small place, very busy, very plain. The wife took her order—coffee and toast—and didn’t seem to recognize Anna, which was what she had hoped. It would be very unfortunate if Mrs. Smithson came in here at exactly the wrong moment and heard someone call her
Dr. Savard
.

The coffee was served in the French way, in a cup like a bowl, milky and slightly sweet. Anna sipped and watched people coming and going, up and down the stairs to the train, across Greenwich to the market, across Sixth to the shops. Two roundsmen came in and were greeted congenially; news and a few bad puns were traded. There was talk of a robbery on the next block, windows broken but little of worth taken. An old man found dead in Knucklebone Alley, another man had lost his job at the refinery, and a third, disgusted with the city, had packed up his family and moved to Ohio.

In the half hour she took to drink her coffee people came and went: more police, shoppers, a doctor she recognized from the Northern Dispensary just down the street. He didn’t notice her and she couldn’t remember his name.

Three finely dressed older men came in, all of them in shining good health, polished and buffed. One had a walking stick with a jewel embedded in its head. Anna guessed them to be judges from the district courthouse
behind the market. They were sure of themselves in this less-than-first-class neighborhood, but then, who would dare rob a judge surrounded by police officers? Anna had known some very handy children who could have managed to pick such pockets, but the cane would be harder to nick.

She counted out fifteen cents for her toast and coffee, added a nickel for a tip, made sure of her reticule, and left, inclining her head to one of the judges, who bowed from the shoulders. As she left the coffeehouse another stream of people came down the stairs from the elevated train platform. Businessmen and lawyers, most likely on their way to one courtroom or another; an irritated middle-aged woman with three school-age boys, and at last one elderly man, moving slowly. His cane was well used and not for show. Step by step he felt his way down, his posture exacting.