Deception’s Daughter
A Martha Beale Mystery
For Cordelia Dietrich Zanger
daughter, friend, reader, writer
“Love all things, so your heart is shown.”
PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF CORDELIA FRANCES BIDDLE
“Biddle, from one of Philadelphia’s old Main Line families, knows her manners and her city, and shows both to great advantage. … The reader, as in all good historical mysteries, learns as much about a time and place as about the crime.” —The Plain Dealer
“A first-rate mystery featuring rich period authenticity and beguiling characters, The Conjurer succeeds on all levels—as top-flight historical fiction and as a classic whodunit.” —Julia Spencer-Fleming, New York Times–bestselling author of Through the Evil Days
“A feast for those fans who enjoy engaging characters and may attract readers who loved Caleb Carr’s attention to detail in The Alienist and Jacqueline Winspear’s appealing sleuth, Maisie Dobbs.” —Library Journal
“Masterful storytelling … transports readers to 1842—complete with sights, sounds, and a narrative that rings true to the period.” —Rhys Bowen, author of Heirs and Graces
“Biddle successfully uses 19th-century Philadelphia, mining the landscape for the kinds of jewels that illuminate a good mystery, and shaping characters that ring true.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Martha is a winning sleuth in the tradition of Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs and Tasha Alexander’s Lady Emily Ashton.” —Booklist
“Well crafted, the plot moves along quickly without sacrificing the authentic details of life in Philadelphia during the period. While this book is the second in the series, the plot and characters are not dependent on familiarity with The Conjurer (Thomas Dunne, 2008). Mystery fans will enjoy the suspense and pacing, while fans of historical fiction will revel in the rich detail of the setting. A romantic subplot about Martha and the criminal investigator adds to the mounting tension as the mystery unfolds.” —School Library Journal
Oh Yet We Trust
From In Memoriam A.H.H.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy’d,
Or cast as rubbish to the void
When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivell’d in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another’s gain.
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last—far off—at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
IN THE WIND, GHOSTS
THE GUSTS GROW IN STRENGTH and purpose, swirling over the ground in rust-colored eddies that pluck up and then discharge particles of desiccated leaves, ocher-brown twigs, gritty pebbles, and the sere, yellowish grasses that were once the verdant summer-scented lawns and meadows of Beale House. When the breeze spins away in order to buffet another area of the property, the wake smells acrid, brittle, and dead, as if no flowery plants had ever graced its path, no fresh green shoot had ever ripened, no inch of soil had ever yielded up a nurturing loam and the dense aroma of burgeoning life.
Standing on the veranda of her father’s country estate—her house and property now—Martha raises a hand to her bonnet as she gazes past the gardens with their artfully arrayed statuary, past the jardinières imported from Europe, past the formal promenades and rose walks until her view takes in the fields and woods that stretch down to the Schuylkill River’s distant banks. And yet the heavens are blue, she thinks, and the river, half full and sluggish though it may be, is as azurine as hope. Despite the scorching September afternoon, despite the sun and cloudless sky, she shivers.
Then a voice calling her from within disturbs her reverie; and she turns, as she always does, in habitual and brisk compliance. It will take her many months or many years to unlearn the patterns of her youth.
“Mother,” she hears again, and Ella flies outside, her high-buttoned boots tapping across the stone flags, the skirts of her traveling costume creating miniature storms from the powdery soil that has blown up against the house. “Must we leave? Must we? And why today? Why?”
Martha’s green-gray eyes don’t lose their clouded apprehension, and her long, aristocratic face retains its pensive stamp, but she smiles for the child’s sake. “We must return to town for your schooling, dearheart. As you well know. For your schooling and for Cai’s.”
Ella’s expression remains defiant. Since she became Martha Beale’s ward seven months before, the eleven-year-old’s sallow complexion has grown pink with health, her thin shoulders have rounded, and her hair has taken on a lustrous flaxen hue; but her eyes can still spark with mistrust as though she cannot help but anticipate the loss of everything she has come to know and love.
“All pleasant occasions must come to an end eventually,” Martha continues, her words accompanied by a frown that for a moment replicates Ella’s.
“But why? We’re happy here. You and I and Cai.”
“Mistress Why and Wherefore.” Martha tilts her head and smiles in earnest. “Because the summer has reached its conclusion as it does every year, and always will. And we three must leave the countryside and journey to our home in the city. But we’ll return here. This house and these barns and fields won’t vanish. They’ll patiently await our coming again, just as they awaited me during the times I traveled back and forth to Philadelphia with my father. There will be many more holidays, and many more hours of idle pleasure. Now, you go and find Cai, and then we can have a final tramp in the gardens while the footmen load the trunks into the carriages in preparation for our departure.”
“He’s with Jacob and the dogs” is the short reply. “Cai was crying. Jacob took him to see the hens in order to cheer him.”
“Just so.” Martha nods in agreement with this decision. Jacob Oberholtzer is the estate’s head gardener and was one of her father’s most faithful servants. The old man, for he surely is that by now, will know precisely what to do with an unhappy five-and-a-half-year-old boy. “Well, you go and ask Jacob if he can spare our Caspar for a few moments.”
But before Ella can do as she’s bidden, the wind kicks up again, racing across the veranda where the two stand and beating hard against Martha’s dark purple peau de soie skirts. They fly out stiff and loud while her bonnet, too loosely tied, flies upward before crashing earthward and rolling end over end across the bristled lawn.
“Oh, this wretched wind,” she mutters through clenched teeth as she smooths and rewraps her tangled mantilla. Her hands, unfashionably bronzed by a season spent out of doors, are tense. “And no rain in sight. What will become of the crops? What will become of the wild creatures who dwell in the woods?”
“But the wind cannot be wretched, Mother” is Ella’s staunch reply. “It bears the ghosts of all the souls who have gone before us.”
“Who says such things?” Martha’s voice is unexpectedly sharp.
“Miss Pettiman. She told me that is why I hear howling in the chimney flue in my bedroom or in the day nursery. She says it’s a soul crying out, but it cannot make human noise until it enters a human dwelling.”
“That’s nonsense, Ella. When people die, their souls escape to either Heaven or to Hell—”
“Not all of them, Mother,” her adopted child argues in return. “Miss Pettiman said there are folk who cannot quit the earth, that either anger over some outrage accomplished during their lifetime, or grief at forever forsaking loved ones, holds them here. Miss also said that’s why Cai is so often quiet and why he sometimes falls into that awful trembling state, because he’s listening to the murmurs of the parents he cannot recall. It’s doubly hard for him, she told me, being a mulatto child and being born so frail and sickly and everyone believing he was no better than a deaf mute.”
“Oh, goodness me! What foolishness is that nursery maid teaching you?” Martha’s cheeks are flushed with irritation. She relinquishes her place on the stone veranda floor and marches away to retrieve her wandering bonnet while Ella, now chagrined and a little frightened by her adoptive parent’s quick wrath, trudges warily behind.
“And are Miss Pettiman’s heedless words the reason Cai is weeping with Jacob?” Martha demands as she swoops up the dark headdress and thrusts it haphazardly onto her ringlets, retying the long mulberry-colored ribbons in a tight and clumsy knot.
“No. He doesn’t want to leave the countryside. And neither do I.” The tone, however, has lost its boldness. Ella has reverted to the supplication and hesitation that were the mark of her younger days. Then she regains a little of her bravado. “Is it because of Mr. Kelman that we’re returning to the city?”
“Is that Miss Pettiman’s opinion you’re quoting?” Martha demands with more warmth than she intends, and Ella’s reaction is swift contrition.
“No. It’s mine … because he was a guest here on occasion. And he hasn’t visited us in a long while.”
“Mr. Kelman was helpful to me during a difficult period in my life. Of course, I would be grateful for his friendship—and happy to see him, as well,” Martha states, although by now her cheeks are very red, and she realizes she’s doing precisely what she’s warned the children against: She’s lying. The problem of her relationship with Thomas Kelman is very much on her mind.
“Cai likes Mr. Kelman,” Ella continues.
“I hope Cai will like many people. And that you will, too” is the ambiguous answer; then Martha adds a more forthright “Now please fetch Caspar, or we will be late for our departure.”
BUT LEAVE AT THE HOUR allotted, they do. The servants, both the house and grounds servants, line up in front of the entry portico to bid farewell to their young mistress, her two wards, and their nursery maid, who, in a breach of custom, has been consigned to the second carriage with Martha’s lady’s maid and the various trunks and valises that have accompanied the group for their summer sojourn. Miss Pettiman has already taken her place among the piled boxes, staring straight ahead as if she were studying a distant mountain, although no such heights can be found on the banks of the Schuylkill River.
The housemaids and the cook drop curtsies as Martha passes; the stablemen and farmers bow bared heads, their caps twiddling in their calloused fingers, their eyes fixed to the dirt of the drive. Every face evinces sadness at Martha’s leave-taking. Her father garnered respect but a dearth of kindly thoughts from those who served him; the daughter has gained loyalty because all employed at Beale House, from the youngest scullery maid of thirteen to the senior laundress or the most laconic groom, carry in their hearts a desire to please her. She shakes each hand: wide, narrow, rough-skinned and red, or hard and smooth as stone; and extends her thanks on behalf of herself and the children.
Then a footman helps her into the coach, decorously offering her long skirts into her lace-gloved hands before he closes the glossy door. Ella clambers in at the carriage’s other side, followed by a silent, stricken Cai. The coachman cracks his whip; the four black geldings strain forward in their traces; the wheels, crafted of wych elm, heart of oak, and ash, begin to turn; and the procession commences.
Martha looks backward as Beale House dodges out of sight: its Gothic Revival turrets and stone tracery, its slate roof and clipped boxwood hedges, its kitchen garden and outlying buildings hidden for a moment and then springing back into view as the carriages proceed along the dappled and winding trail. The unexpected angles are disconcertingly unfamiliar, as if the house were in the midst of being reformed and refashioned.
She turns her head this way and that, pondering the strange mutations to a place she knows so well. Then a gust catches a tree bough, pushing it downward with a sighing snap. The horses start in fear at the creaking wood and the sudden roar of wind rioting in the neighboring branches. The coach buckets from side to side; and Cai, now Caspar Beale, begins to whimper about invisible demons winging through the air. For an anxious moment, his hands quiver spasmodically as though one of his epileptic fits were imminent. Martha coos to him, stroking his fingers, repeating his name, and gazing into his eyes until the threat passes. Then she tries to convince him that the unseen spirits are not ghouls or wraiths come to haunt and harm him, but angels with enormous and shining wings flying close to earth in order to protect him. Cai remains steadfast in his belief that ghosts are riding in the wind.
THE JOURNEY BACK INTO PHILADELPHIA consumes over two hours; a man on horseback would require an hour or a little more, but the roads in the area known as Falls of Schuylkill are often no better than cart tracks, and the large, laden carriages must go slowly. Inaccessibility is precisely what drew Martha’s father to the spot where he built his grand and aloof mansion. In the Philadelphia in which he rose to fortune and fame—as in the current city of 1842—the country estates of the prominent were customarily chosen for their convenience to visiting friends and acquaintances; such was not the desire of Lemuel Beale. When he removed himself and his only child from their house in town, he expected no one to follow.
Within the drowsy heat of the carriage, Martha alternatively watches the passing scenery and the children, who are now asleep. As he slumps in a doze, Cai’s expression remains fearful, his brown face wizened and preternaturally aged as if no amount of healthy sustenance and kindly encouragement will ever be enough to satisfy or fully cure him of his brain disease. Ella looks merely vexed; her legs kick in time to the coach’s jouncing motion.
Martha sighs and shakes her head, wondering again—as she does at least once every day—how she can gain the necessary wisdom to raise these two needy children. For a moment, she considers whether her decision to bring them into her home was a wise one, then immediately counters the question with a brisk But what could I do? Leave them on the streets? Let them starve? Kittens and horses are rescued; shouldn’t children be, too?
So debating with herself, she removes her bonnet, gloves, and mantilla, tosses them aside, then briefly touches the elaborately curled braid that lies at the base of her neck. Finding the plait has come unpinned and the chestnut-colored locks in which she takes secret pride are tumbling down her back, she mutters in frustration as she stabs the long hairpins back in place. Ringlets, braided bands, hats, capottes, petticoats, and stays despite this grueling heat … an underskirt and overskirt, and a flannelette chemise. It’s a wonder ladies do not expire in such voluminous and ill-considered costumes! She fans herself energetically, switching her skirts from side to side, but instead of cooling the coach’s cabin, the cloth turns as dusty as the air, which increases her irritation. At the august age of twenty-six, she knows she should behave with greater decorum. No man wishes a wife who’s as careless and precipitous as a child. Not even the daughter of the illustrious Lemuel Beale.
But that reminder leads directly to her quandary over Thomas Kelman. For Ella is correct in guessing that her adoptive mother is far happier in his company than without it. Oh, Thomas! Martha’s brain demands. Where do we stand, you and I? I believed we’d reached an understanding, but was I wrong? Has your time in my company been no more than empathy for my father’s death? Or a noble sense of duty? Or can it be that the great Beale wealth prevents you from seeking my hand? Or … or perhaps, the opposite is true, and my sole attraction is—? Here her thoughts crash to a halt, leaving her to stare disconsolately at the passing scenery until she becomes aware that the carriage has reached the northwestern outskirts of the city.
Where the road winds close to the river’s tree-dotted banks, the Schuylkill is clearly visible. In the small, rock-strewn pools that lap the stream’s earthen borders lie puddles of yellow sycamore leaves. Against the slowly swirling water and the dense green of the reeds and riverine grasses, the leaves gleam like purest gold, and Martha cannot help but feel her spirits start to revive. She’s ordered the coachman to follow the river rather than turn eastward into the heart of the town, reasoning that Ella and Cai would enjoy the longer journey, but it’s Martha who takes pleasure in the sight.
As she watches, a figure catches her notice—a woman on the opposite shore, standing upstream from where the ferry crosses from Philadelphia’s prosperous environs toward the almshouse built in the pastureland along the Darby Road. She’s yellow-haired and hatless in the sun, and although her clothes are drab she carries herself with purposefulness and pride. In her hands is a new wicker-ware basket; she lowers it to the water’s edge, then bends to reach inside. As she does, the light from the liquid at her feet spills upward into her face, turning it an incandescent white.
Wading ankle-deep in the water, the woman propels the basket along, then spins backward, startled; and Martha follows the unknown female’s gaze. On the promontory above her ranges a group of boys. All are raggedy; all are barefooted; all are thin. They call down to the rocky strand, and the object of their attention appears to respond before turning away and continuing her progress through the shallows.
Then the sight is lost as the carriage and river road part company, and the city’s streets begin in earnest. Martha straightens her spine against the horsehair cushion, then reaches for her cast-aside bonnet and mantilla, pulls on her gloves, and begins to awaken the sleeping children.
WHEN THE PAIR OF RESPLENDENT coaches with their equally grand steeds and obviously wealthy passengers vanish among the trees, the boys’ shouts intensify. In frustration, they throw clods of earth, stones, sticks, and handfuls of brittle grass down upon the wading figure, howling for her return.
Her response to their shrieks is to sing in a soft, unfocused lilt.
“Hush! my dear, lie still and slumber;
Holy angels guard thy bed …
Soft and easy is thy cradle;
Coarse and hard thy Savior lay …”
The boys know the hymn well. They’re forced to sing it every night by the warders in the children’s asylum of the almshouse as they pace among the rows of beds, exhorting their charges to greater heights of ardor with a rod each man carries in his right hand. The fact that their quarry can so heedlessly warble the detested words makes the boys all the more fierce in their determination to call her back. None can venture down to the river, however, because none can swim, and they’ve learned by heart the tales they’ve been taught: how devils lurk in the Schuylkill’s depths waiting to snag a foot from a slippery rock, or suck the mud beneath your legs; and how once you are pulled into the waves, the devils work in consort to drag you down to their black and lethal lairs.
The boys wail out their distress, their bodies crouching forward while their prey’s indifferent voice continues to assail their ears.
“May’st thou live to know and fear Him,
Trust and love Him all thy days;
Then go dwell for ever near Him,
See His face and sing His praise.”
With that, she sets the basket adrift, pushing it well beyond her reach with a mighty shove that seems to take all her diminishing strength. The basket bobs and spins, dips to one side as the burden within rolls in response to the sudden motion. The high-pitched mewl of a newborn infant rends the air; and the children on the embankment scream at the cry, raining down a fresh avalanche of missiles. “You will burn in Hell forever for what you’ve done!” the eldest of the pack bellows.
But the threat goes unnoticed. Her tormentors cannot know that her mind is envisioning not a river in Philadelphia on a hot September day but the far-off land of Egypt and the baby Moses set adrift on the stream. Set adrift to be discovered by the daughter of a mighty king.
“See His face and sing His praise,” she repeats in a singsong fashion that has now become tuneless and weary. Then she adds a whispered “A morteper petua … ab omnipeccato … That thou would’st spare us …”
She watches the basket take to the currents; she hears another milky cry, imagines the red and wrinkled face, the miniature hands, the legs still sticky with blood. Then she walks deeper into the water, slipping on the slimy stones, falling and righting herself until she sets herself adrift.
AS ONE BODY THE BOYS run, then stop as one body. What can they do? They, who have defied all rules to follow the woman and her baby. Surely the punishment meted out for such an infraction will be terrible. Fear of those who rule the almshouse paralyzes them. Then the threat of eternal damnation sends them on their way again. If they say nothing, the infant and its mother will surely drown. Why, the two may be dying already! The devils might already have lured them to their nasty graves!
By now the bare and filthy feet are flying along. In panted breaths, it’s agreed that the eldest among them, a runty and cunning boy who goes by the name of Findal Stokes, will sound the alarm alone—while the others creep away and return to such pastimes as they’ve stealthily forsaken.
As Martha’s twin carriages arrive in noisy splendor at the equally grand house on Chestnut Street, young Findal reaches the less consoling destination known as Blockley House.
A TRICK OF THE LIGHT
THE BOY WAS ALONE WHEN he came upon the mother and her child?” It’s Thomas Kelman who poses this question while he, the constable in command of the day watch in Blockley Township, and the president of the Humane Society, whose mission it is to rescue drowning persons, wait on the almshouse portico. It’s a space designed by William Strickland and so graced with Doric columns and commanding such a pleasing view of river and meadow that it appears to be fronting a country estate rather than an institution for the destitute.
The physical elegance of Blockley House combined with its distance from the city never ceases to perturb Kelman; one hundred eighty seven acres encompassing kitchens, washhouses, workhouses, a surgical amphitheater, and a chapel: all built of stone and at vast expense, although, the poor within its protection subsist on gruel and exhortations to improve their slothful habits.
“The boy was alone” is the constable’s guarded answer. Unlike Kelman, who is tall and uncompromising in his stillness, the constable jerks with movement, like a hedgehog trying unsuccessfully to roll itself into a ball. True, he would rather the infant and mother had taken themselves to another part of the river—to be dealt with by another member of the day watch—but he especially wishes he weren’t under the scrutiny of Thomas Kelman.
The man’s black eyes and steady stare, his somber clothes, his habit of quiet vigilance would make anyone nervous, but it’s Kelman’s association with the mayor that causes the most anxiety. With no unified police force, the constable knows, the mayor privately relies upon Kelman to sort out criminal matters that lie beyond the scope of the day and night watches that have patrolled the city’s districts and boroughs since colonial days. But who tells Kelman if he’s correct or not when he claims a person is guilty? If he were to declare a member of the watch derelict, who could argue against the charge? Not a mere fellow who lives on sleepy Darby Road. No wonder the constable wishes he could transform himself into a prickly circle of fur and hide under the nearest bit of shrubbery.
Instead, he begins rattling off information. “Findal Stokes, twelve or thirteen years old according to what history the authorities were able to procure when the lad first came here. Of slight stature. He arrived malnourished, so his age is hard to gauge. One parent, a father, residing in the men’s ward. Findal and his father have been at Blockley two years. The parent works now and then, sometimes displaying a strong desire to quit the place and resume his former trade, but more often succumbing to lethargy and drunken oblivion—which in turn depletes his meager coffers. The boy insists he was alone. He shouldn’t have been wandering from the institution grounds, and has been disciplined for such infractions and other misdemeanors many times in the past.”
Kelman makes no comment, but the president of the Humane Society does. Easby is his name, and he’s an avuncular figure, exceedingly portly, with a weakness for colored silks, elaborate waistcoats, and satin cravats. It’s as if his nature were warring with itself, and he would rather organize a dancing school for cultured young gentlemen and ladies than urge his fellow missioners to retrieve the bodies of the despairing from the river. “We owe that boy a debt of thanks. It was most fortuitous that he spotted the woman and her baby when he did. Else we could not have rescued the child. It’s tragic about the mother, of course. She must have filled her pockets with stones to have so successfully vanished from view, although I imagine her body will resurface. They generally do.”
Kelman doesn’t respond to this final comment. Instead, he turns away from his examination of the deceptively benign vista—the far-off city no more than colored air, and the river like a soft silk sash. “And this young Findal Stokes can’t describe the missing mother?”
“He said the glare was playing tricks on his eyes,” the constable answers with regimental swiftness.
“Is he poorly sighted, then?”
But any reply is interrupted as the main doors to Blockley House open, admitting the three visitors, who are then escorted to a second-floor office where the boy himself is waiting.
Amid the comfortable appointments provided for the institution’s director, the handsome Turkey carpet and burnished mahogany of the furniture, Findal is an anomaly. It’s clear he’s been in this room before, for his eyes don’t dash about in wonder at the richness of his surroundings. But neither do they rest. Fear is what Kelman reads in the child’s expression. Fear whose refuge is deceit.
The boy looks at the constable with eyes that are as pale as standing water, then at Easby, sizing up the lazy girth of the latter and the fretfulness of the former, but the colorless eyes avoid Kelman’s unflinching gaze. Kelman notes that the boy makes much use of his hearing, that his head tilts and twists with minute but intentional motions, and that his ears have an oddly pointed quality like those of a bat.
“Did you take anything from the missing woman?” Kelman asks before the director has time to make the appropriate introductions.
Findal’s head snaps upward, although he doesn’t regard his interlocutor. “How could I, with her already down in the water and me atop the embankment?”
“Sir,” the director barks. He raps the boy’s ankle with a cane, and Findal automatically stiffens and straightens.
“Sir … Didn’t I say I spotted her in the river, trying to drown her poor newly born babe? That’s a crime, that is. Murdering an innocent who’s naught but a few moments old.”
Easby sighs in gargantuan empathy, and the boy’s quick ears hearken to the sound. “I was right to come running, wasn’t I, sir? If I hadn’t, that wee infant would be dead, too. And now I must suffer for my good deed.” He looks at Easby with practiced appeal; the president of the Humane Society seems on the verge of making a conciliatory remark when Kelman interrupts.
“But you would have pilfered something if you could. You’ve been disciplined before for stealing from your fellow inmates, have you not, Master Stokes?” Kelman doesn’t wait for an answer; instead, he produces another query. “What were you doing outside the institution grounds?”
“Running away.” The response is daring. Findal’s bat ears flush pink; his eyes stare Kelman full in the face as if defying further interrogation. Noting the thin white scar that cuts across the man’s left cheek, however, the boy reflexively reaches up to his own cheek, and an expression like admiration flits across his brow.
“Leaving your boots and your worldly possessions behind?”
In answer, Findal’s gaze slides toward Easby, who has now squeezed his bulky frame into a chair and is rapidly fanning himself with a handkerchief whose color is the crimson of fire. “If it weren’t for me, that baby would be no more alive than his mother,” the boy whines. “I should be praised for my act, not punished. He’d be feed for the fish, were it not for me. Or the bog demons would have got him.”
“For someone who claims to have been at a distance when the act occurred—and to be unable to identify the mother—you seem quite certain the child is not only a newborn but a boy. When the basket was found, the baby was tightly swaddled in a cloth. Perhaps you could explain these riddles for us? Or how you came to know the child had been newly birthed? And don’t tell us you were blinded by the glare.”
The boy opens his mouth, then pinches it shut again. It’s obvious that no amount of browbeating will elicit further information.
AS HE RETURNS TO THE sternwheel paddle steamer that will carry him and Easby back to the Schuylkill’s eastern shore, Kelman parts company with the constable, whose relief is all too apparent. “A female vagrant,” he speculates while his body gratefully uncoils itself and his gaze seeks out the welcome path toward home. “We get them out here now and then—even along the Darby Road. Escaping rough treatment at the hands of her family or masters. Likely, this one was turned out for immoral behavior and she was journeying into the city’s anonymous streets when her labor pains came upon her—”
“Ah, yes,” Easby concurs as he steps into the welcome shade of an elm growing beside Blockley’s chapel. “What you say makes perfect sense. And having given birth, the poor soul places her baby in the basket she was carrying when she fled her dwelling place. Then, in a fit of melancholy and terror at an unknown future, takes herself down into the river. It’s not uncharacteristic for new mothers to behave irrationally. Indeed, for some months following parturition their humors can be quite inconsistent.” Easby nods as though agreeing with another’s observation, then hurriedly shakes hands with the constable. Both men are now so anxious to be finished with the dilemma—and with Kelman—that their leave-taking has a disconcerting air of jocularity.
The Humane Society president carries this convivial humor through the rest of the almshouse’s spreading grounds, past the stables and kitchen gardens down to the river and the ferry.
Not Kelman, however. While the boat slips over the heat-flattened waves, he responds to Easby’s remarks with fewer and fewer words. Instead, he gives himself to brooding over the boy Stokes and his father, and the vanished and most probably drowned mother of the infant.
Then, eschewing an offer to ride in Easby’s waiting phaeton, Kelman begins retracing his steps into the city. As he walks he reflects on the changes time has wrought upon it. In ten or twenty years, he knows, little will remain of William Penn’s “greene countrie towne” or the peaceable waterways that border it. Instead, there will be additional wire suspension bridges like the one constructed the previous winter, more coal barges churning through the canal, more pleasure steamers spewing smoke above the falls at Fair Mount. From the banks of the Delaware to the rocky cliffs of the Schuylkill, the city will be nothing but hard, paved streets, brick and stone buildings lined cheek by jowl, abattoirs, woolen mills, match factories, tanneries—and the children of the poor.
For a moment he pauses, recalling the scenes of his youth. Was I any different than young Findal, he wonders, running barefoot through these vanishing fields? Wild and untamed, and filled with the same hard-won valor. True, my father was never relegated to an almshouse, but was that because he was a wiser man than Stokes senior—or merely more fortunate? For he was no saint. Nor any remote approximation of one, either.
Kelman marches on, his shoes chafing at the dust and weeds of the dirt road, his black jacket prickling with heat. By now the elegant homes of the wealthy are beginning to dot the streetscape: new mansions and walled gardens filling what was once open grazing land. It’s all he can do to prevent his path from turning in the direction of Martha Beale’s residence on Chestnut and Eleventh streets. He knows she was expected home the day before, but he has been purposely keeping his distance. Better for her that I remove myself from her acquaintance, he recites in bitter silence. Better that she has a clear choice in a husband and companion, someone of her own means and background. I only cloud the issue. She must forget me. She’ll be happier for it. Happier and more content, by far.
AS KELMAN TRUDGES EAST, MERRIER feet than his flutter through less gloomy air, passing down a set of freshly washed marble stairs that front a home on lower Pine Street. This is Theodora Crowther; and she, in the company of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Crowther, is on her way to visit the newly established daguerreotypist on High Street. The city is abuzz with this marvel—freshly arrived from France, of course, while the man who owns the gallery boasts a name full of hyphenations and ducal-sounding associations: Monsieur Jean-François Baptiste-Gourand, who learned his craft from M. Daguerre himself.
Theodora, or Dora, for this is how her mother and father call her, is nineteen and affianced to Percy VanLennep, who like her is fair-haired and given to quick flushes of embarrassment and impetuous bursts of enthusiasm. Together, they are like fledgling chicks, bobbing up and down with hopeful hops; apart, they are more restrained. Dora, in her parents’ company, can seem no more assured than a girl of fourteen.
“Oh, do come, Mama,” she now trills, lifting her little heart-shaped face, which today is framed in a bonnet of pale pink satin. Like her walking dress, the hat is piped in violet satin and trimmed with silk flowers; and she fairly spins in pride at this new ensemble. Excitement shivers across Dora’s lilac-hued shawl, down her arms in their tight sleeves, and makes her lace gloves dance in the air. “Mama! Do come! Else we’ll be late!”
Georgine Crowther appears in the doorway at that moment. She precedes her husband, whose tall hat rises less than an inch above the top of her own bonnet. Mrs. Harrison Crowther is a commanding presence. Where her daughter dances along the brick walkway, she promenades in a measured gait, with a frame so much broader and higher that she looks as though she might be descended from another race of peoples altogether. Dressed head to toe in moss green, Georgine Crowther resembles a leafy tree moving toward the street.
“Mama, do come!”
But the party is called back again as Harrison Crowther’s elderly maiden aunt Lydia steps outside to stand on the topmost step. The aunt so perfectly resembles her great-niece as to appear a portrait of youth turned old—and at the age of eighty-two, she is indeed ancient. Where Dora’s hearing is sharp though, Lydia’s is failing. Despite repeated applications of Scarpa’s Acoustical Oil, she exists in a realm that encompasses both past and present, and where the remembered conversations of her youth often have more relevance than present ones.
Now Miss Lydia, as the Crowther servants refer to her, totters down the stairs in order to embrace her great-niece and to remind her—loudly—to “mind her manners when in the presence of the general.” Dora’s mother starts to protest the interruption, but Miss Lydia continues speaking as if the tall lady dressed in green were invisible.
“He admires a pretty face,” she states in a rapturous singsong tone, “but not a pert retort. Silence is advisable when in doubt, especially because he’s so often burdened by affairs of state.” The “general” is George Washington, dead for over forty years but alive in Lydia’s mind—as is her father, who served as the great man’s aide-de-camp. “I feel a plume in your hat might be better than those flowers,” she adds, but Dora’s mother interjects a domineering:
“Miss Crowther, we’re tardy in keeping our appointment. Perhaps you could discuss Theodora’s headdress upon our return.”
The old lady can scarcely wave good-bye before her great-niece is hustled away, trailing behind her mother like a small boat sucked into the billowing wake of a larger one. Harrison Crowther tips his hat, and his aunt graces him with an inconclusive smile. She can’t recall the short man with the square face and rectangular torso, but her aged fingers automatically stretch out on either side. If she weren’t suddenly aware of standing beside a busy city street, she would attempt a curtsy. A full révérence straight down to the ground—as the general always desired.
THE RECEPTION ROOM OF THE daguerreian’s gallery is so extravagantly furnished with damask-covered tête-à-têtes, with pier glasses and curio cabinetry, that Dora gasps in pleasure, hurrying into the already bustling space as though entering a thé dansant. Her mother, no less astonished but more circumspect, follows, bestowing haughty nods on several acquaintances while covertly examining the quality of fabrics and choice of color scheme. The crimson hues, vibrant greens, and splashes of gold meet her approval since they reflect an appropriately masculine taste. Given the fact that she considers the daguerreotypist’s art no more than a passing fancy, she finds the surroundings surprisingly to her liking.
“Ah … good … good … Mrs. Crowther,” her husband says, “what say you to the gallery? I trust that observing so many elegant folk has allayed your fears for our Dora.” He doffs his beaver hat but then is forced to hold it in his hands—there being no servant present to receive it.
“Oh, Papa, do come see! There’s a portrait of Becky Grey!”
Georgine Crowther stiffens, as any good mother would on hearing this disconcerting news. Becky Grey is an actress—or was until a foolhardy gentleman decided to make her his wife. As the gentleman is of the Crowthers’ social sphere, his rash undertaking is all the more galling.
“Mistress Grey, indeed” is Harrison’s jovial reply, but Georgine interjects a stentorian:
“How would you have possibly have recognized the woman, Theodora?”
“Oh, Papa took me—”
“Not to the theater, I trust!” Despite the turning of heads and tilting of curious bonnets, Georgine’s voice is nearly a bellow. “And the lady is known as Mrs. Taitt now, Theodora, and that is how you should refer to her. If you must refer to her at all—”
“Dora and I happened to stroll by the American Theater on Walnut Street,” Crowther tells his wife. “As you know, it’s my belief that young ladies should learn the works of the great dramatists, and since Mr. Booth was commencing the role of Hamlet, and Mistress Grey was to play Ophelia, I felt—”
“Surely you did not permit her to view the production, Mr. Crowther?”
The father glances at the daughter. He’s far from chastised; instead, he seems to be enjoying the public altercation. “Alas, the hours allotted for the tragedy weren’t convenient. Another play was running in repertory—the comedy A New Way to Pay Old Debts, which didn’t much interest either of us. And now, of course, it’s too late to see Becky Grey in any role other than dutiful wife and future mother—”
“Oh!” Georgine’s ruddy cheeks flush a deeper hue; her bosom, despite the creaking stays, heaves. She fans herself and stifles another noisy sigh. “Theodora, I will not have you attending theatrical productions.”
“But Papa felt—”
“Your father does not appreciate the impropriety of young unmarried ladies witnessing—”
“Mistress Grey was also an unwed lady at the time,” Harrison interposes; his boxy face beams complacency and bonhomie.
“If you please, sir, I know whereof I speak.” Georgine turns her back on her husband. “Theodora, if your father proposed taking you to the Masonic Hall to witness the trickery and prestidigitations of the Fakir of Ava, surely it would not occur to you—?”
“Oh, Papa, might you?” Dora has completely misunderstood her mother’s meaning; she pirouettes on her dainty heels as she gives her father a loving smile. “Hindoo Miracles, and costumes imported from Hindoostan. I read about the exhibition in your copy of the Philadelphia Gazette. The mysterious young lady who assists the Fakir, and a boy sorcerer with another foreign-sounding name. The card printed in the Gazette was most explicit in describing their acts of wizardry. I noticed it when I was reading a serialized tale entitled The Fortune-Teller’s Ring—”
“Theodora!”
Too late, Dora understands her mother’s meaning. She sends a frightened glance toward her father, who returns a conspiratorial wink, then strolls away on the pretext of admiring the likenesses framed upon the gallery walls. Womenfolk and their foibles, his stance attests, mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces: What a good deal of fuss the distaff side fabricates. When he spots a portrait of Becky Grey he pauses, fully aware of his wife’s reproachful gaze. He settles his shoulders as though relishing her disregard.
WHEN THE CROWTHERS ARE CONDUCTED at length into the daguerreian’s operating room, it’s husband rather than wife who experiences misgivings. A slanting skylight smudged with dirt and ash blocks the sun, making the place appear somber and forbidding; the artist’s backdrops drape the walls, their colors tomb-like and eerie: bluish gray, dark Roman ocher, moleskin. Then there are the cruel-looking iron headrests and armrests that hold a body immobile for the long moments each exposure requires. The entire scene seems suggestive of death. “A trick of the light. It’s no more than a trick of color and light,” Crowther mutters as an assistant to M. Baptiste-Gourand escorts Dora to her place, leaning her delicate neck against a headrest, then pressing her temple against the cold metal and moving one hand to trail a nearby Corinthian column.
Dora’s eyes, so habitually lively, grow dim with discomfort. She affixes a smile on her face, but the expression appears wan and tortured.
“The portrait lens is designed by Josef Petzval of Vienna,” the parents are informed by another assistant, this one with an ingratiating and murmuring manner. “The Voigtländer lens is more famous, but is often counterfeited, having a forged facsimile of the Vbigtländer signature engraved on the tubes. Naturally the forgery is of little consequence …”
Crowther doesn’t reply; instead, he watches a stranger’s hands manipulate his daughter’s body. “Iodide of silver in order to coat the plate,” the second assistant continues, “then vapor of mercury to develop the latent image, and immersion in a solution of sodium hyposulphite, which fixes the features. It is intended as a keepsake for Miss Crowther’s fiancé, is it not?”
Harrison begins to answer but finds he’s standing beside a series of horrifying pictures he hadn’t noticed previously. They’re quarter-plate memorial portraits of dead infants and children, set in ghostly white frames of mother-of-pearl. The daguerreotypes so upset him that he jerks backward in alarm.
“Oh, Papa, must you startle me?” Dora complains. “One would think you didn’t want Percy to have his lovely gift. Please do keep still, or Mama and I will be forced to banish you from the room.”
THE LOST PARASOL
THE DAY AFTER DORA’S VISIT to the daguerreian’s studio, the neighborhood in which she dwells is visited by a force of nature unprecedented in the city. In an instant the afternoon sky above St. Peter’s churchyard turns tarry black while the sun’s gold rays are transformed into a spidery and threatening yellow. The pedestrians strolling along Pine or Fourth Street look upward in alarm, expecting an onslaught of thunderclouds and rain—or hail, as has been reported in the countryside. But not one drop of moisture falls. Instead, the air begins to crackle as though desiccated and sere; and a windspout springs to life on Lombard Street, whipping at the elms and the streetlamps as if trying to pluck them from the earth. The monstrous whirling thing grows in height and breadth until it’s half as tall as a house and as wide as a heavyset man, then veers northward on Third, where it leaps over the brick wall encircling the church’s memorial garden and begins playing havoc among the graves and Osage oranges and shaded brick paths.
Tree limbs as thick as human torsos are snapped in pieces, then hurled to the ground, toppling ancient marble headstones as they plummet. The noise of the spout is like the communal moan of a hundred voices; householders on the facing streets either hurry to their windows in order to witness the extraordinary event or scurry down toward their cellars, shooing their children before them.
Those who watch see three people huddling in terrified positions within the lee of the southern wall. They’re an odd grouping: a woman who is obviously pregnant and whose elegant ensemble bespeaks wealth and a position in society, an older Negro man whom most recognize as the church’s sexton, and another gentleman, shabbily clothed but bearing, despite the awkwardness of his pose, a proud and defiant bravado. The tall hat on his head may have seen better days, but it’s clamped down tight as if the possessing of such an article were a mark of royalty. This unlikely trio touch hands with one another, then clasp their fingers together as though praying that the joined weight of three bodies will be enough to withstand the blast. Remarkably, the beaver hat remains in place.
Then the vicious gust hops away to torture other sections of the city, and the sun reappears, smiling down indifferently.
BECKY GREY—FOR SHE IS THE