Doppelgänger Page 7

  “What do maids do but spread gossip?” Rachael smiled, looked around and motioned to the door of the Red Parlor. “What’s in there?”

  “My husband’s parlor.”

  “Can I see it?”

  Anine hesitated a moment, but ultimately walked to the pocket doors and slid them open. Rachael glided in, looking around at the books, the red velvet drapes, the portrait of Jefferson and the leather furniture. “Just like a man,” she pronounced. She seemed amused.

  I must tell her, Anine thought. I have to tell her about the sounds—the creaking, the spectral laughter. She didn’t know how to do it without unleashing a new salacious ghost story among New York’s underclass of domestic servants, but she thought perhaps Rachael could reassure her that there was nothing to fear.

  Her hands were still on the handles of the pocket doors. She closed them. She turned her head but did not look at Rachael directly. “I must tell you something, but I beg you not to tell your maids, or anyone else. It’s very sensitive.”

  “What is it?”

  “Promise me first.”

  “All right. I promise.”

  Anine spoke more to the doors than to Rachael. “I hear things in the night. I’ve heard footsteps, and sounds—a woman laughing. I heard it the night Mrs. O’Haney died but it wasn’t her. I heard it the next night too, exactly the same thing.”

  She turned. Rachael’s expression was one of intense interest. “Really? You really heard something?”

  “I think so. Julian says I was imagining it, but I thought I heard it. I’ve heard it several other nights since.”

  “You heard a woman laughing?”

  “Yes, I’m sure it was a woman.”

  Rachael looked around the Red Parlor again. Her eyes narrowed, as if she was considering something very deeply. “Do you know anything about the history of this place?” she asked.

  Anine shrugged. “No. I think it’s about twenty years old, but that’s all.”

  “Do you know if anyone lived here before the Quains?”

  “No.”

  After a pause Rachael said, “I could try to find out for you, if you like.”

  Anine was alarmed at the idea of the ghost story spreading beyond Rachael herself. “Oh, no. Please don’t say anything to anyone. It’s embarrassing enough—I mean, Bradbury and Mrs. O’Haney and the stories.”

  Rachael looked slightly disappointed. “Oh well. If you change your mind, let me know.” The ginned-up social smile returned. “Now I’ll be on my way, and I’ll report to Mama that Friday night is a go. This is going to be wonderful!”

  After Rachael left Anine returned to the Red Parlor, and she wasn’t sure why. She stood there, gripping the back of the chair, staring into the cold fireplace and the painted eyes of Thomas Jefferson above it. Maybe I should have asked her to find out what she could. Far from reassuring Anine that the footsteps and spectral laughter were just her imagination, Rachael had exacerbated the problem by making it impossible to ignore. Was there something real in the house, something terrifying and unexplainable? If so, what—if anything—could be done about it?

  These questions had no answers. As Anine left the Red Parlor she passed Bryan Shoop in the entryway. “Please lay a fire in that room, Mr. Shoop. Mr. Atherton will want one, and he’ll be home from the office soon.” She returned to her own parlor, closed the door and picked up the cards again. In here too the ticking of the clock seemed loud and obtrusive. Altogether the house was too quiet.

  That night she dreaded going to bed. Julian spent the evening in the billiard room, then retired to his own bedroom. Anine didn’t think he would attack her two nights in a row but she devoted some thought to what she should do if he tried to force himself upon her again. It seemed a matter of honor and sanity to resist him with everything in her power, but she knew that would probably make the situation worse. She hadn’t resolved this conundrum by the time she finally blew out the oil lamp by the bedside and tried to sleep.

  Mercifully the nightmare of Ola didn’t recur on this night, nor on the one after. If Julian’s unconscionable violence against her had any positive effect at least it seemed to have banished the dream once and for all. For the first time since his death Anine began to wish that she could have married Ola Bergenhjelm. She could not imagine him ever doing to her what Julian had done.

  The dinner contemplated by Mrs. Belgravia Norton and her daughter—it was announced on handsome gilt-edged invitations with rice paper in the envelopes—was scheduled for Friday, the 24th of September. On Wednesday, September 22, a letter from Mrs. Norton arrived at the Athertons’ house. It stated bluntly, We regret to inform you that the dinner scheduled for Friday next will not take place as planned. Our sincerest apologies.

  “What?” Julian read the letter as he stood at the fireplace in the Green Parlor. Anine, across the room, was embroidering. “That bitch!” he sneered. Immediately he crumpled the letter and hurled it into the fire.

  “What is it?” Anine asked.

  “The Nortons. They canceled. ‘The dinner will not take place as planned.’ No explanation.”

  Anine was puzzled. “There must be some mistake.”

  “No mistake. They canceled the dinner. They’re snubbing us.”

  An uncomfortable feeling overcame her. She had been snubbed in Stockholm after the awkward announcement of her engagement to Julian, the faux pas at the American embassy; that time, however, he seemed to shrug it off and claimed it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because it was Sweden, she realized, a country he knew he’d be leaving soon anyway. This is New York. “Why would they snub us?”

  Julian thought a moment, then wagged a finger at her. “It’s political,” he insisted. “The Nortons, they’re all Republicans. Isn’t Mrs. Norton friendly with Mrs. McElroy? She’s Chester Arthur’s sister, and he’s number two on the Republican ticket. They’re angry that I’m working for the Democratic Party here in New York. Yes, that’s it. I had no idea they were so petty.”

  Anine thought that if this was really the reason Mrs. Norton would never have extended the invitation in the first place, but she said nothing. I bet it has something to do with me, she thought as she turned back to her embroidery. Perhaps Rachael knows what happened. Yes—I must speak with her.

  But the next day, when Anine put on her finest afternoon dress, hired a carriage and went down to the Nortons’ on West 24th Street the footman informed her that both Mrs. Norton and her daughter were out and would not be back for some time. Yet Anine distinctly saw a female silhouette at one of the windows as the carriage clattered away. So they won’t even receive me. Have I done something wrong?

  That evening she wrote a brief note to Rachael: “Must see you. Please name a time and place.” In the morning—Friday morning, the day of the canceled dinner—the reply note arrived: “Stern Brothers. Second floor. Today 2:10 o’clock.”

  Stern Brothers was the most fashionable ladies’ department store in Manhattan, located just off Fifth Avenue. Anine thought the choice of precise meeting time—two-ten, not merely two o’clock—was suspicious. She entered the second floor at precisely that time, according to the gold pocket-watch in her little silk handbag. She saw Rachael Norton across the large room browsing the latest Paris fashions. “Why, Mrs. Atherton!” she beamed. “How wonderful to see you here.” Anine understood that the meeting was arranged so that it would appear they had met by chance.

  They walked together past the displays of elegant French fashions draped upon wicker mannequins that Anine found vaguely menacing. She hoped there would not be any fatuous chit-chat and luckily Rachael obliged. Speaking softly, but still smiling, she said, “Please don’t come to our house unannounced. It puts my mother in an awkward position. I think it’s shocking and horrible, but until I’m married to Daniel and the keeper of my own house, socially speaking, I have no choice but to defer to what my mother wan
ts as long as I’m living under her roof.”

  “I don’t understand,” Anine whispered. “Why was the dinner canceled?”

  “It isn’t obvious?” Seeing an acquaintance—Eleanor Rochefort—across the store, Rachael smiled more broadly and nodded in her direction. “Everyone declined. Only Hector and Julia Kirklow, who are considered coarse, accepted. Everyone else pleaded other engagements. My mother was scandalized.”

  Anine knew this language. People pleaded other engagements in Stockholm too, and it meant the same thing there as it evidently did in Manhattan. “I didn’t realize I was so…disliked,” she whispered.

  “Oh, dear, it has nothing to do with like. And I know what you’re thinking—it’s not because you’re a foreigner. I’m not entirely sure what it is, but I know it has something to do with your husband.”

  “Julian?”

  “His father was not exactly welcomed in New York society. Tolerated, yes, but not welcomed. It’s rather unusual for the grand old families not to give the son a chance, though. I mean, Julian’s respectable enough, and handsome enough. I suspect—” Rachael’s voice grew even lower. “I suspect something is being said about him. Something that everyone is keen to make sure doesn’t reach my mother’s ears or mine, probably because they know we received you at Newport.”

  Anine absorbed this. She guessed it made sense, but it irked her. “Can you find out what it is?”

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  Anine flashed a look at Rachael that must have disarmed her, for she backtracked immediately. “I’ll see what I can find out,” she said. “Wait for my message. In the meantime, don’t make the situation worse. Don’t come calling on me or anyone else. If you act defiant you’ll alienate the rigid old biddies like my mother even more. In the end you’ll catch more flies with honey.” She left this idiom—which was incomprehensible to Anine—hanging, and then her face suddenly glazed over with the pedantic society smile. “Well, so wonderful to see you, Mrs. Atherton!” she chirped, louder now. “Do have a lovely afternoon, and give my best to your husband.”

  When she returned home Anine felt much worse than when she left. She ensconced herself in the Green Parlor with a pot of tea and her cards, and while she mindlessly played solitaire for the umpteenth time she considered her situation. So, the women of New York are determined to isolate me. I can’t leave the house and visit a friend without causing scandal. Somebody out there wants me to suffer as penance for something Julian did.

  Strangely Anine did not resent the society women—the “rigid old biddies” at whom Rachael had sneered—for snubbing her. They were as trapped in this bizarre system of customs and rituals as she was. Not long ago she’d been well on the trajectory of becoming one of them, at least in Stockholm society. Anine understood these social movements as a sort of language. New York was expressing its disapproval of Julian Atherton, but for a specific reason. She had to find out what that reason was.

  There came a knock at the door of the Green Parlor. “Excuse me, ma’am?” Clea Wicks called reticently.

  Anine looked up from her cards. She was grateful to have the interruption. “Yes, come in, Miss Wicks.”

  The pocket doors slid open and Wicks entered. There was something in her hand, something small and brown. “I got a strange thing,” she said. “Strange thing to tell you, ma’am.”

  “Yes?”

  “While you was out this afternoon I cleaned up the maid’s quarters. I was noticing some dust last night that hadn’t been cleaned away. I pulled the bed away from the wall and something fell out.” She held out the object in her hand. It was a small book, bound in soft leather. “It belonged to the caretaker. The one you say hunged himself.”

  As Anine took the small book she knew instantly that Miss Wicks had heard the rumors of the house; when she told Miss Wicks about Bradbury Anine had deliberately not mentioned the manner in which he’d committed suicide. Gingerly she opened the cover. Written inside of it in cheap splotchy ink, already turning brown, was the name Erskine Bradbury. Her heart seemed to skip a beat as she suddenly wondered whether it might contain a clue as to what happened.

  But she remained stoic. “Thank you, Miss Wicks. I’ll see to it that it’s returned to Mr. Bradbury’s family.” Anine closed the little book and set it on the table next to her cards. “Would you refresh the teapot, please? And you should set about lighting the gas. Mr. Atherton will be home soon.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Almost as soon as the pocket doors had closed Anine snatched up the book and opened it. It was a small diary book, the kind used for personal accounts, and indeed the first few pages were innocuous lists of various household items—furniture, rugs, books and the like. The next few pages after that were blank. Then on the tenth leaf in the volume something was written in the same brown splotchy ink. The handwriting was the same as the accounts but it seemed somehow different, more jagged, written perhaps with a quivering hand. The note read:

  I CAN NOT TAKE IT ANY MORE

  THE THING IN THIS HOUSE

  IT WANTS MY SOUL

  BUT I WILL NOT GIVE IT.

  Anine’s eyes grew wide. Her stomach lurched and leaped against her tight corset. Before she could read any further there was a perfunctory knock on the pocket doors and they slid open. Miss Wicks brought in the silver tray and the green porcelain teapot, its spout gently venting steam. Anine again set the book on the side of the table next to her cards.

  “Your tea, ma’am,” said Wicks.

  “Thank you.” The maid turned to leave. On impulse Anine called after her. “Oh, Miss Wicks?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Thank you for bringing Mr. Bradbury’s book to my attention. I would appreciate if you don’t mention it to anyone else—Mrs. Hennessey or Mr. Shoop or my husband.”

  The poker face again. Miss Wicks merely nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  When Wicks withdrew a second time Anine’s eyes rested on the little leather-bound diary on her table. It seemed to have a life of its own, almost pulsing, breathing. There was nothing to be afraid of, but she did not deny that she was suddenly terrified.

  Chapter Seven

  The Secret Diary

  Today is June 2, 1880. This record has been written by me, Erskine Darnell Bradbury, so I can be sure of what’s happening. There fore I will write these events down so I know I keep my head. I have seen some things here that do not seem like they should be. I do not think I am “sick in the head” but writing them down will help me separate what is happening from (might be) what I am seeing that may not be real. I do not know that any one will ever read this.

  Aside from the warning in block print capital letters these were the first words Anine read in Bradbury’s diary, and as soon as she saw them she decided she would read no more until she could do so in an absolutely controlled and closed environment—during the day, in full bright sunlight, and with no possibility of being disturbed. She secreted the diary in a lower drawer in the chest in the Green Parlor where no one (especially Julian) would have any cause to look. In the morning after breakfast and after Julian had departed for the office she ordered tea and scones from Mrs. Hennessey, asked Miss Wicks to bring them to the Green Parlor and then instructed her that she did not wish to be interrupted for any reason.

  She made sure the drapes were open. Through the window outside the parlor she could see carriages rattling up 38th Street and well-dressed gentlemen and ladies strolling. Almost normal, she thought. She poured herself a cup of tea, then went to the chest, opened the drawer and sat on the settee. She was at once eager to read Bradbury’s words but terrified at what they might disclose.

  I was hired by Roman Chenowerth as the care taker for the former Quain mansion at 11 W. 38th Street, Manhattan. The new owner is Mr. Chenowerth’s employer who I shall not name here ~ lest this account become public I wish not to be accused of st
arting a scandal. I arrived here Monday eve, the 31st May. My duties were to prepare the house for the new owners, man and wife, and supervise the orders they were to place of furnishings, art, books and such, and to hire domestic staff. I entered this house with the full intention of carrying on these duties.

  When I arrived I found that some of the furnishings of the Quains were still in the house. Not as many as you would see in a lived-in house. But there were a few chairs, tables, some wardrobes in the bedrooms, pictures etc. ~ a painting of Mrs. Quain in the southeast parlor which I felt likely had value to the family ~ other items. I sought about to catalogue these items. My intention was to record them in this book and then send it to Mr. Chenowerth so he could communicate to the Quains what remained of their family’s property ~ whether to assign each item a price so as to sell them to the new owners, or cause to have me remove them, whichever should be his wish.

  After reading this Anine thumbed back through the first few pages of the diary. Indeed the lists were a fairly comprehensive catalogue of what had remained in the house when they arrived in August. “Portrait of smiling woman ~ above fireplace, southeast parlor” was the almost prosaic entry for the picture of Mrs. Quain, whose strange cold eyes had so unnerved her.

  Although I could not complete the catalogue in one night I sought to visit all the rooms so I could see which ones still contained property and which were empty. When I entered the third floor bedroom on the northwest quarter I felt a terrible chill rush through me although the evening was warm and humid. The door was ajar. I pushed it open and saw the room was empty except for two things.

  The first was a child’s hobby horse. It was lying on the floor a few feet from the door. The second was a tiny piano or harpsichord ~ a keyboard instrument, very small, like a child’s ~ it was gold with blue animals painted upon it. There was a giraffe, a bear and a monkey in a pattern that repeated. You will wonder why I record this detail ~ this horrible detail, the child’s piano ~ it shall become evident ~ !