Smoke and Mirrors Read online

  ‘It was truly a horrible sight, and I am saddened to think so promising a life has been cut so short. Yet now that the reality has taken hold, I do not find myself as shocked as I do … Heaven help me, Mrs O’Donnell, I do believe that, more than anything, I am curious.’

  As if this was no surprise, she nodded. ‘You’re a bright one, to be sure. It’s only natural you’d wonder what happened.’

  ‘And why,’ I admitted.

  She finished her tea. ‘You’ll get to the heart of it.’

  ‘It isn’t my place,’ I reminded her.

  ‘Just as it isn’t your place there in that grand museum, riding herd on Mr Barnum and making certain things are done right.’ Her eyes gleamed. ‘You will get to the heart of it.’

  I finished my bread and pushed away the plate at the same time I scraped back my chair. ‘I hope you are right. For now …’

  ‘You’re tired, to be sure. You need to rest. No need to rouse yourself too early in the morning. I’ll have one of the girls bring up a tray.’

  My feet were leaden and my legs were heavy, but I was already at the door when her voice stopped me.

  ‘Had he a family?’

  ‘Family?’ As if it might help me find an excuse for what had surely been an unforgivable oversight, I pressed a finger to my lips. ‘I hadn’t thought of it. My goodness! How could I have been so—’

  ‘You’ve been preoccupied. It’s no wonder you didn’t have time to think about it. Not to worry. You’ll make it right.’

  ‘Andrew … Mr Emerson … his mother and his father have passed. But yes, he has a sister. Madeline. Andrew and I are … we were … we were of the same age, and Madeline is but a year younger. We were fast friends back in Bethel. I must …’ My heart bumped and suddenly I wasn’t nearly as exhausted as I had been when I entered the kitchen. ‘I must write to her immediately, and tomorrow I’ll find a way to send the message.’

  ‘No need to wait.’ Cook had followed me to the door and I turned to see her give me a wink. ‘My Patrick, he’s been asleep behind the stables most of the day. You go on up and write that letter and I’ll have him saddle a horse. It’s a far enough ride and bad enough news. It shouldn’t be delayed. He can start out for Bethel tonight.’

  I thanked her and hurried to my room.

  Though I had not asked for it, Charity had insisted I take the bedchamber at the back of the house, and though I was always grateful for the quiet, this night I was most thankful, indeed. My windows overlooked the garden behind the house, not Fifth Avenue, and though if I bent my head and listened hard enough I could still sometimes hear the gentle clop of horses’ hooves and the whirr of carriage wheels out on the street, here with the quiet surrounding me and the deep shadows shielding me from the outside world, I was always better able to collect my thoughts and compose my emotions. I prayed on this night, when it was more important than ever, that I might also be able to find the words to deliver what would surely be a stunning blow to Madeline.

  I lit a lamp and sat down at the desk that had been Phin’s back in Bethel. Here in the great house the great showman had built, Charity had insisted his private rooms be furnished with the newest and the finest. But a country desk was good enough for me and I gratefully accepted it when Phin offered. Now I ran a finger over the pitted surface, drawing strength from the memories and the history, and drew out a sheet of the thick, expensive writing paper Phin bought for household use. I dipped my pen and began my task.

  Fifteen minutes later, I reread the letter and wiped a tear from my eye.

  ‘Poor Madeline.’ I waved the paper in the air, the better to dry the ink, then folded the missive and prepared to take it out to Patrick O’Donnell waiting in the stable. I would have left with it immediately if another thought hadn’t struck.

  ‘Paper.’ I looked at the letter, and the single word from my lips fell dull against the blackness outside the circle of my lamp. ‘I took papers from Andrew.’

  The thought, now hot and fresh, had lain dormant beneath the sorrow that had weighed down on my spirit all night, yet now that it was again real, it touched me like fire. I hurried to the other side of the room to retrieve my reticule and sat down with it so that I might go through it by the light of the lamp.

  Though I knew the memory was blunted by the horror I had felt at the time, I clearly recollected retrieving two papers from Andrew’s pocket, and I found the first and looked it over. It did not surprise me in the least. On it, in his fine, strong hand, Andrew had written the words ‘Franklin House Hotel’ along with the address of that establishment. It was a place with a good reputation and it appealed to professional men such as Andrew. I had no doubt he’d spent his nights in New York there.

  Satisfied, I set aside that paper and turned my attention to the second. This paper was thicker, creamy-colored and I recognized it as the one Andrew had tried to press into my hands – the one he had begged me to read – but, looking over it, I thought its purpose far from clear.

  Hoping that better light might help me interpret the words, I slid my chair closer to the lamp and tipped the paper toward its luminous halo. The writing here was not Andrew’s, surely, for the letters were smaller, finer and far more feminine.

  ‘And drat it all, it is just a draft of some sort,’ I mumbled to myself, seeing the fragments of sentences and places where words had been crossed out and replaced with others. My eyesight had always been good, but it was late and it had been a long and trying day. I squinted and forced myself to focus on what few words I could read.

  My dearest darling … Thinking, I tipped my head. ‘A love letter then.’

  I count the days until we can … Here the words were scratched across with stuttering, anxious lines.

  I count the minutes, the very moments …

  Had some woman sent Andrew these loving lines?

  I turned the paper over but there was no indication of where the letter might have originated or who might have sent it. Failing in that task, I once again concentrated on those few words I could read.

  Until we meet again …

  I long for the touch of your hands, the fire against my bare skin.

  ‘Oh, my.’ I waved a hand in front of my face, feeling suddenly as if I were a party to information I should not possess. Fortunately for me and for the heat that rose in my cheeks, the anonymous writer did not finish these words, though I was left imagining where they might have led.

  Rather than think about it, I squinted and read further.

  I love you with all my heart. I love you, my dearest James.

  Those were the final words on the page and, reading them, my blood ran cold and my heart pounded out a beat that filled my ears and deafened me.

  My dearest James.

  I sat frozen for some moments, staring at the paper in my hand, before I shook myself to reality.

  ‘There are many men named James in this world,’ I told myself, my voice razor sharp. ‘And many a female, too, eager to fall in love.’

  I told myself not to forget it when I tucked the papers back in my reticule and went downstairs to hand Patrick O’Donnell my letter to Madeline so that he might start on his journey.

  And I reminded myself of it all again once I was back in my room and changed into my nightdress, tucked under the blankets but with sleep refusing to come.

  ‘There are many men named James in the world.’

  But that did not keep me from shedding a tear. For myself, for the past, for Andrew and for the poor, lovesick female who had been so foolish to give her heart to her dearest James.

  FOUR

  As wise as I knew it was, I did not follow Cook’s advice and keep to my bed the next morning. It was Saturday and the museum would open at eight as it did every day but Sunday. I had work to do and no desire to shirk it and thus allow my mind to wander and my imagination – and the memories of all I had seen the night before and thoughts of how dear Madeline would grieve so in response to the news – to upend my hard-won compo
sure.

  Before I left the house, long before Charity even thought to be up and about, I stole into the nursery and wished the children a good morning, being sure to give each of them a pat and a cuddle as any doting aunt would, then I was on my way. Once inside the museum and in the Portrait Gallery, I firmly ignored the tremors of foreboding that cascaded over my shoulders when I walked by our Feejee lovely and the newly washed and polished floorboards directly in front of her and went straight to my office. By the time the long line of people who’d been waiting out on Broadway began to snake its way into the museum, I had the lamp lit on my desk, the door closed and my plans for the day firmly in mind.

  I had devoted myself so steadfastly to working the day before in the hopes of avoiding any further confrontation with Andrew Emerson that there was little for me to do that day, and for that I was grateful. I quickly looked over some correspondence, checked the receipts from the day before (colossal, indeed, which only served to again confirm my brother’s genius) and waited – not very patiently – for the clock to strike ten. It was then our human oddities were set to go on display and, once I knew they were away from their rooms, I left my office and climbed the back stairs to the fifth floor of the building.

  I had heard it said (sometimes mumbled from person to person as if it were some great embarrassment to discuss and other times screamed out with righteous indignation) that it was cruel of P.T. Barnum to put on display people who were odd and freakish in nature, that he took advantage of them and profited from their woes.

  Though I could see how this was in some ways true, it was not an equitable telling of the story.

  Yes, the people Phin advertised as the human oddities – or as he sometimes called them, human curiosities – were presented to the public and yes, their strange appearance elicited gasps and finger pointing and, sometimes, ill-mannered comments. But here is the thing … Phin discovered these poor souls living in the streets or touring with circuses. Because of their physical appearance, they were often maligned from birth, rejected by their families and living as outcasts in a society that would pay to see them on the other side of a railing or the bars of a cage but would never think to greet them or talk to them or even acknowledge their existence had they chanced upon them in public.

  Working at the museum gave our curiosities a purpose and provided them with protection. It kept them safe from the cruel impresarios who, before the oddities arrived at our door, often beat them and starved them and imprisoned them as a way to encourage them to work. Phin gave them a home inside the museum and he treated them well. He paid them royally so that each of their rooms was decorated to their taste and adorned with plush carpeting, fine furnishings and other comforts, the likes of which they had never dared dream of when they were on the streets.

  As kind as Phin had always been to them and as much as I both accepted them and cherished their friendships and their talents and the personalities that made me see beyond their physical peculiarities to the essence of their beings, it was natural that only another curiosity could completely understand the challenges of the others. Theirs was a close-knit secret society of sorts, and those of us who were lucky enough to get to know them and who were welcomed into their inner circle had always to be aware that we were strangers there, curiosities in our own way.

  It is no wonder when I opened the door and stepped onto the fifth floor, I felt a trespasser in their inner sanctum.

  At the end of the hallway where the women were housed, I paused. I knew I had little to worry about, that I would not be interrupted, and yet my heart beat like a horse’s hooves inside my chest and my breaths came in quick, short gasps that sounded to my ears like thunder in the thick silence.

  The next time I took a breath, I forced myself to hold it deep in my lungs and raised my chin. So steadying my nerves, I moved into the men’s wing.

  I had been to Bess Buttle’s room any number of times and been welcomed there with her usual good humor. I had talked to our Nova Scotia giantess in her quarters, too, and always marveled at how Phin had somehow been able to provide her with a bed and chairs that accommodated her more than seven feet of height.

  I had never, of course, been in any of the men’s rooms.

  ‘And won’t have a chance to do it now either if you don’t get a move on,’ I advised myself in no uncertain terms and, thus encouraged, I found the door with the small brass plaque on it that said Jeffrey Hollister.

  Though I knew he wasn’t there, I knocked and, when there was no answer, I opened the door and stepped inside.

  Like the other rooms that belonged to his fellow curiosities, Jeffrey’s was neat and tidy, kept so by a staff firmly admonished to treat our performers no differently than they treated me or my brother. Jeffrey’s room was clean but sparse. There was a spool bed against the far wall, so called because its headboard and footboard were made up of multiple spindles that looked like sewing spools, and they gleamed with the beeswax polish the staff applied. To my right was a desk near the window and, to my left and in front of the fireplace, a table and chairs where Jeffrey might sit and entertain guests or partake of a meal.

  The attendant Phin had sent up in search of Jeffrey the night before had been right in his assessment: there were no books anywhere, and Jeffrey cherished his books. There were no clothes in the wardrobe either, and no shoes tucked under the bed.

  Jeffrey Hollister was truly gone.

  The thought weighed on my mind and sat on my shoulders like a stone, and I sighed and sank down in the chair before the desk. Through the sparkling bits of dust that danced in a sunbeam from the window, I caught a glimpse of St Paul’s, the church where George Washington had prayed after his inauguration as president some fifty-three years before and, seeing the church, I silently thanked my brother for his compassion. Jeffrey Hollister was an angry and fragile man, and Phin knew it, just as surely as he knew that giving Jeffrey a room here at the front of the building with a fine view might help reinforce his worth.

  It did not, however, help me think my way to what might have happened to Andrew or what might have caused Jeffrey to flee.

  Had Jeffrey seen something? Did he know something? Had he done something?

  Now, like all the other times the thought crossed my mind, I dismissed this last question instantly.

  ‘I need your help, Jeffrey,’ I mumbled into the still air. ‘I need a clue or some sign of where you might have gone and why.’

  But of course, that was not to come. After a few moments of considering the situation and getting nowhere, I did another turn around the room. Jeffrey’s bed had not been slept in the night before and the blankets were smooth and neat. One pillow, though, sat crooked upon the bed, and even though Jeffrey was not there to see it in disarray, I picked it up and fluffed it. I was ready to put it back down when something caught my eye.

  Something written on the wall behind Jeffrey’s bed.

  I could see but little of whatever was there, the looping tops and bottoms of letters written on the wall in pencil.

  I cannot say why so innocent a thing caused so peculiar a sensation to tingle inside me. I only knew I had to see more. I put my shoulder to the headboard and pushed it away from the wall so that I might read the words.

  In fact, though, it was not words.

  It was one word.

  Just one.

  Written there on the wall over and over again, sometimes soldier straight with heavy, precise letters and other times scrawled as if by the delicate touch of a fairy’s wings, the letters curled and fluttering. One instance of it was written on its side, as if Jeffrey had done the writing while lying down in bed.

  One word.

  One name.

  Evangeline.

  I cannot say how long I stood there and stared at my own name written over and over again on the wall. I do know that in those minutes when time was suspended, my insides turned to ice, my breath caught against a ball of emotion in my throat and my head thumped as if it had been squee
zed between the plates of a letterpress.

  When the door popped open and Bess Buttle called out, ‘And there you are!’ I spun around and put a hand to my heart. It was impossible to contain the shriek of surprise that escaped my lips.

  As if that was exactly the reaction she’d been expecting, Bess grinned, then darted a look into the hallway before she closed the door. ‘When I didn’t find you in your office, I knew where you would be.’

  ‘Am I that transparent?’ I collected what I could of my dignity and hoped I didn’t look the complete fool. ‘I thought that if I might—’

  ‘Look about, yes.’ Bess did just that, her beard jutting out when she lifted her chin and sent a gaze around the room. ‘There’s nothing much here to see, is there?’

  ‘True.’ The single word did not convey my disappointment so much as did the sigh that went along with it.

  ‘And the paper in his pocket?’ she asked. ‘The one you snatched last night from the poor, dead gentleman?’

  Ah, the paper.

  What Bess didn’t know was that there were two papers, the one with a hotel name and address on it and the other …

  Rather than betray the sensations that cascaded through me when I thought of the fragment of love letter I’d found, I turned my back on Bess, the better to collect my thoughts and wayward emotions.

  ‘It was simply the address of the place where Andrew Emerson was staying here in New York,’ I told her, and continued through the lie. ‘My thought is that Mr Emerson hoped to talk to my brother and wanted me to relay the location to him so that they might arrange a meeting.’

  ‘You said he was most especially anxious for you to see that there paper.’

  ‘Yes.’ I whirled again to face her. ‘Mr Emerson must have had urgent business he wished to discuss with Mr Barnum. It is a shame we will never know what that business was.’

  Because Bess is herself an honest woman, she did not think to question me and, for that, I was grateful. Until I knew who had written the letter to ‘dearest James,’ until I knew what it meant and how Andrew thought I might somehow help him in the matter, I thought it best to keep the information to myself. For now, the surest way to do that was to concentrate on the matter at hand.