Doppelgänger Page 2

  It took her a moment to make sure the man she saw standing in the room now was flesh and blood and not a ghost. An American looked appallingly out of place here, especially one such as Julian. He was only twenty and had barely grown out of the phase of gawky adolescence. Fiery red hair fell lazily to his collar and his sea-green eyes sparkled like a child’s. He smiled broadly as Anine approached. “It’s so wonderful to see you,” he said in his American-accented Swedish. “Please allow me to give you my deepest condolences.”

  She smiled. “Thank you. Would you like some tea?”

  “Yes, that’d be nice.”

  After this exchange they said very little. They faced each other as they ate sweet cakes from china plates. The awkwardness between them was almost unbearable.

  He broke the long silence with words that made her heart pound: “I’ve come to say something. I wanted to come here the moment I heard about Ola’s death but I knew your family wouldn’t receive me until a suitable time had passed.”

  She winced. “Please,” she said in English; her command of the language wasn’t good but it was getting better. “Please, do not. I cannot—”

  He spoke Swedish back to her. “I want to marry you, Anine. I love you, and I have since the moment we met a year and a half ago. I won’t mince words. I wished no harm upon Ola for his own sake, but I’m glad he’s dead. I never dared to hope something like this might happen, that it might actually be possible to marry you. I know there’ll be a scandal. I know society here in Sweden will shun you. But it won’t matter. I’ll take you to New York. My family is very rich. You’ll want for nothing. I know you want to get out of this dreadful country, and I do too. You’ll never have a better chance than this. Please, say yes. Please.”

  Her hand quivered as she reached for her teacup. God is testing me, isn’t he? She thought back to the sight of Ola’s apparition standing there, just feet away from where she now sat, dissolving into nothingness before her eyes. She could not be sure she had really seen it, but the memory of it caused her immense guilt. Was guilt the price of her potential happiness? If she chose to pay that price—to tempt God to punish her—could she ever truly feel that she deserved whatever Julian might offer her?

  No, she thought. I must do the right thing. I must tell him it’s impossible—even though I admit I’m tempted.

  “Well?”

  Julian’s sea-green eyes burned into her soul.

  Twenty-one months later as she walked down the aisle of Grace Church in New York, dragging behind her an immense train of snow-white silk trimmed with hand-stitched Bavarian lace, Anine thought she saw Ola Bergenhjelm in the crowd. The pews of the great cathedral were packed with unfamiliar faces, almost all of them Julian’s relatives and his father’s business partners and political cronies. Amidst the starched front shirts, black silk cravats, mutton-chop sideburns and gleaming monocles Anine caught sight of a young man with a thin face and curly blond hair falling about his ears and to his collar. He was smiling broadly, approvingly, as if giving his blessing. I told you that you would find another, Ola seemed to say, and you did. Be happy, Anine. The new life you wanted is now yours—enjoy it.

  She did not react. She couldn’t. In the stiff sheath of her wedding dress she felt like a waxwork figure held together with wood and glue, and as all eyes were upon her and the organist was playing the wedding march from Lohengrin Anine was afraid even to turn her head. With blood rushing in her ears she moved her eyes to the left to catch another glimpse of Ola, but now she saw that the young man standing there was someone else. He was tall and blond and had a thin face like Ola’s, but she didn’t recognize him. He must have been the son of one of Cornelius Atherton’s friends. Relief flooded through her. It wasn’t Ola.

  Ola Bergenhjelm is dead. He died nearly two years ago in another country, and nothing about him matters anymore. She finally remembered to smile.

  Two minutes later she was Mrs. Julian Atherton, and the bells of Grace Church tolled her marriage in peals of clanging happiness audible all across Manhattan.

  Chapter Two

  Homecoming

  Four Months Later

  After the ship docked it was a two-hour ride by carriage into the heart of Manhattan. The heat and humidity were oppressive. To Anine Atherton the streets seemed to exude a sort of miasma—equal parts sweat, smoke, the stench of horse dung and human urine, and a strange intangible quality that seemed, if not malevolent, at least unfriendly. Sitting in the carriage watching the streets go by around her, she grasped tightly the gloves she’d allowed herself to take off due to the heat. Her small knobby knuckles were nearly white. She was excited to see the new house—thrilled, even, to have the chance to witness the object of her anticipation for the past few months—but her excitement was colored with nervousness.

  For his part, Julian was completely in his element. He sprawled in the carriage seat, one hand hanging limply over the gilded head of his walking stick, his forest-green top hat cocked casually to one side. “New York never changes,” he said, watching Sixth Avenue go by in the carriage window. “That’s both its charm and its curse.”

  It was a sweltering afternoon in August 1880. The Britannic was a day late docking in New York thanks to an unseasonable squall in the North Atlantic that tossed the steamer roughly and left Anine, already exhausted from endless traveling, seasick for the better part of three days. Only this morning had her stomach returned to something resembling normal. Her corset felt like a band of iron around her midsection. She wanted to reach the house quickly if only so she could change into a more comfortable dress. Our servants will be waiting for us, she thought, contemplating relief at the end of a long journey. We’ll have a home-cooked meal and I can sleep in a bed that I’ll be able to call my own. How I’ve looked forward to that.

  “You’re sure everything is in order?” she asked her husband. “I mean, all the furniture and everything arrived as—”

  Julian put a finger to her lips. “No, no, my dear,” he said. “English only from now on. We’re in New York now.”

  She hadn’t even realized she’d spoken to him in Swedish. “I’m sorry.” She repeated her thought in English: “You’re sure everything got done? I mean, the deliveries, the furniture, the staff and everything?”

  Julian’s mouth broke into a grin under the wispy red mustache that he’d begun growing in London and which Anine thought perfectly ridiculous. “Don’t worry, Anine. I’m sure Bradbury took care of everything. He’s even had an extra day to prepare because the ship docked late.”

  She had never met Bradbury, the man Julian had hired to outfit their house during their honeymoon and prepare for their arrival, but she had to trust Julian knew what he was doing. “You went to the telegraph office at the terminal as soon as we docked—you were cabling him?”

  “Yes. And I sent a telegram from Southampton just before we sailed. He’s had plenty of warning of our arrival.”

  “All right.” Anine forced herself to smile. I’m just nervous about seeing the place for the first time. I’m sure everything is fine. She sat still and quiet, still gripping the gloves tightly. The carriage bounced uncomfortably over the dirty manure-strewn street. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine what Lake Vänern was like right now. In August the air would be scented of flowers and grass and the almost mossy smell of the lake itself. It was a very long way from here.

  Anine had never seen the house. Today was her first day back in New York, and prior to this she’d spent a grand total of four days here, culminating with their marriage at Grace Church on the 30th of April. When they sailed on the first of May for their four-month European honeymoon Julian hadn’t yet found a place for them to live permanently. He bought the house sight-unseen, conducting the deal via telegraph from London. “Chenowerth says it’s the most charming house in Manhattan,” Julian had assured her. “Nothing less will do for the most beautiful bride in the world.”
A block off Fifth Avenue, its address wasn’t at the apex of New York’s social geography, but it was at most a stone’s throw away from it. Julian described it to her: a four-story townhouse, a pink-white travertine façade and four Grecian columns supporting the overhanging bay windows on the second story. Roman Chenowerth, who worked at the law firm that Julian’s father had arranged for him to join, told him that the house itself was a work of art, having been designed by a prominent architect. Chenowerth sent detailed sketches of the house which reached the honeymooning couple by post in Marseille. Anine studied them while sitting on a sun-drenched terrace overlooking the Mediterranean. In that setting it was hard to imagine what the house was like in real life.

  Still, she thought it would be quite a wonderful place, if it lived up to Chenowerth’s and Julian’s hyperbole. Its interior was horseshoe-shaped, arranged around a grand entryway with an ascending staircase and a huge chandelier. Above the ground floor with its twin parlors, dining room, breakfast room and library there were two more floors packed with bedrooms, a billiard room and (optimistically) a children’s nursery with an adjoining nurse’s room. All the rooms circled the entryway space and the servants’ quarters in the garret formed the truncated top floor. Looking at the plans Anine found herself both awed and bewildered that Americans would choose to build their houses like this. The huge entryway was a giant empty maw at the heart of the house—a terrible waste of space. It’s grand and innovative, but not very practical, she thought. What will I do with that much space?

  Now the house was approaching in the carriage window. They had already turned the corner and Anine was staring right at it before she recognized it: a sort of pink-white monolith, tall and straight and imposing. It looked more like a fortress than a home. All of the shutters around the windows were closed. As the carriage pulled up, the horses’ hooves clattering on the rough bricks, the house showed no sign of life or habitation. The great wooden front door at the top of the stone stairs leading up from West 38th Street was painted black and the paint was beginning to peel. From the look of it the place might have been abandoned for decades. The harsh August sunlight splashed down on it with uncommon brutality, laying bare the fine cracks in the travertine and the dusty unwashed sills of the windows.

  This is it? It looks rather gloomy.

  The driver got out of the carriage, opened the door and helped Julian down. He reached for Anine’s hand and she descended, using her gloves to shield her eyes from the sudden stab of afternoon sunlight.

  “I’m sure Bradbury will be out to greet us at any moment,” said Julian, glancing up at the front door. “He must have closed the shutters against the heat.” As the driver began unloading the trunks and suitcases piled on the back of the carriage Julian walked up the stone steps to the door. He looked back at his wife. “You coming?”

  Anine was, at that moment, looking up at the façade of her new house. It’s monstrous, she thought. Stone and columns and shutters—built to keep the world out. She guessed that was the way of things in New York, people needed walls to block themselves off from the noisy streets filled with delivery carts, braying horses, pushy cops, shrieking newsboys and plaintive beggars. It was very different from Stockholm, where (she supposed) little had changed in hundreds of years. Looking at this monstrosity looming above her, filling her with foreboding—onda aningar, the Swedish phrase for it, rang in her head—she scarcely believed she was going to live here.

  “Yes, I’m coming.” With her free hand she pulled up her skirt out of the foul-smelling muck trickling through the brick gutter and started up the steps toward the front door.

  “If anyone asks, tell them I carried you over the threshold like a dutiful husband,” Julian laughed. A moment later, with the head of his walking stick, he rapped against the colossal black door.

  Anine forced herself to smile as she looked up again at the façade, the sunlight falling on her face. For a moment she was genuinely cheerful. “Our first home together. It’s a happy moment.”

  Julian was smiling too. But a long pause, during which nothing stirred inside the house, stretched into a puzzling eternity. His smile gradually faded. He rapped again with the walking stick. “Bradbury? Are you there? We’ve arrived!”

  There’s no one home. This worried her. There should have been someone home. And not just Bradbury—where were the cook and the ladies’ maid and the valet he was supposed to hire, the workmen delivering the furniture, carpets and draperies that Anine had ordered from the catalogs? The house should have been buzzing with activity. But it was as still and silent as a tomb.

  “What the hell?” said Julian, after a third knock at the door still elicited no response. He didn’t even have a key. Reticently he reached forward and touched the heavy brass doorknob. It turned. The door was unlocked. Julian pushed it, and on rusty un-oiled hinges that gave a mournful metallic moan the great black door swung open onto a musty-smelling darkness.

  Nothing stirred. There were no servants, no workmen. No lamps were lit. Anine was astounded at how little light there was at this time of the day. The front door was flanked with tall windows of thick leaded glass, but black velvet drapes—drapes that Anine had not ordered from the catalogs—had been drawn around them, blocking out almost all the light. In the glow from the doorway she could see the balustrade of a great stairway leading upwards, but little else.

  She was also struck by the horrible smell. It was more than just dust and mold, the faintly musty aroma of an empty house in the depths of a humid summer. There was a much fouler and ranker odor too. It smelled like rot.

  “Something’s wrong,” said Anine, fear suddenly clutching icily at her throat.

  “Bradbury?” Julian shouted into the darkness of the entryway. Softer, he cursed. “This is outrageous. Nothing has been done. Nothing! I’ve been cabling him with instructions for weeks!”

  She was angry too but the feeling of fear was much stronger, drowning out her indignation. “What is that smell?” she gasped. “It smells like something dead.”

  “Maybe a cat or bird got into the house and died.” Julian stepped toward an arched doorway, barely visible in the darkness, to his left. Anine guessed it communicated with a parlor. “Nothing!” he gasped again, standing in the doorway. “Not a single thing we ordered has been done. The furniture from the previous owners is even still here!”

  Thunk. Anine leapt at the sound, terrified; she whirled and saw the carriage driver was piling the trunks inside the door. Thunk. Thunk.

  We need more light, she thought. The darkness was unnerving. She walked around the driver and pulled back one of the velvet drapes. It admitted slightly more light, but through the thick leaded glass it was diffused, like sunlight on an overcast day. It didn’t help much.

  “This is unconscionable!” Julian roared. “Bradbury embezzled the salary I paid him and ran off without doing a thing! I’ll sue him! I’ll have him in prison!”

  Anine blanched at the sudden rage in her husband’s voice. She walked toward the sound of it and stood next to him in the parlor doorway. Like the entryway it was forebodingly dark. Its windows faced 38th Street, but they too were covered in thick draperies and the shutters on the outside were closed. The dark shapes of the furniture loomed like frozen beasts in the darkness. She felt along the wall, which was covered in velvet wallpaper, for the main light switch. She found it, but it had no effect.

  “The darkness scares me,” she said. “Please, Julian, light the gas.”

  He walked into the parlor, his shoes clacking on the parquet floor. “What about all the furniture we bought? Where is it? My God, if Bradbury sold it—the scoundrel!” Anine saw his darkened shape reach up toward one of the looming frozen animals, a huge spidery bat clinging to the ceiling. Julian snapped a match with his thumb. A moment later the parlor came into view in the soft orange light of the gas lamp. The bat was the light fixture, its burners struggling to come to life, swin
ging gently from Julian’s touch.

  The parlor was almost ghostly in appearance. There was less furniture than there should have been, but a piano and one chair, covered in dusty white sheets, remained. The bookshelves were still full of books. A cobweb streamed from the light fixture. Most alarmingly, Anine found herself being watched. The eyes drew Julian’s attention too. Over the fireplace hung a large portrait of a middle-aged woman in a brilliant sapphire-blue dress about twenty years out of date. She was smiling broadly—quite unusual for a serious portrait—and her face seemed filled with happiness, yet there was something unnerving about her cold blue eyes. They seemed to drill uncomfortably into Anine’s soul.

  “You ain’t got no maid?”

  Anine jumped again. The driver was standing next to her in the doorway of the parlor. She sighed, exhaling the panicked breath she had drawn. “No,” she told him. “No maid.”

  “It’s an outrage!” Julian blasted. “Chenowerth recommended Bradbury highly! He was supposed to be a very able fellow. This is just…unbelievable!”

  “Done with the bags, sir,” said the driver.

  His face a mask of contempt, Julian walked to the doorway, took some coins from his pocket and thrust them into the driver’s hand. “Now get out,” he barked.

  “Please, Julian, let’s go too,” Anine begged as she heard the great front door swing shut behind the driver. “Something’s very, very wrong here. That smell—”

  Julian pushed past her into the entryway. “First we have to find out how much Bradbury stole,” he hissed. “Then I’m calling upon the police.” He tried to light one of the smaller wall sconces, but his match flared out. The darkness—and the stench of rot—remained unbroken. “God damn it! The gas doesn’t even work down here!”

  The rising fear was like a cold claw gripping the back of Anine’s neck. “Julian, please. Take me out of here, please!”