Chapter Ten
Nellie had Gould’s driver take her back to Harlem. She had barely seen her mother the past two days, and Nellie didn’t like to leave her alone too long. Mary Jane’s mind was slipping, and Nellie worried she would hurt herself or wander out on her own and get lost in this strange city. During the ten days Nellie had spent in Bellevue, she had paid the landlady to look after her mother, but she couldn’t afford that forever. One of her sisters could move to New York, but that would be one more mouth to feed, and the room they rented was too small as it was. Now that Nellie was getting busy on the Emma story, she would have to figure her way out of the conundrum.
It was a good thing she did go home because Mary Jane was in a tizzy over a telegram that had arrived from Nellie’s younger sister Alice. The court case they filed three years ago against the First Pennsylvania Bank was proceeding to trial in two days.
Nellie had waited her whole life for this moment. All the times she had lain awake at night vowing revenge, all the hardships she and her mother and sisters had been forced to endure … she remembered every single one. Her family’s life had been deeply damaged by the bank and its president, Colonel Thaddeus Jackson, who had embezzled all their money and then declared bankruptcy. The bank had refused to make amends and fought all attempts to compensate them, averring that a widow was not entitled to any inheritance and that the children were minors and unable to sue. After living in tenements as a child, Nellie had managed to make ends meet through odd jobs and eventually writing for newspapers, but she’d never lost her hatred for the First Pennsylvania Bank.
The day she turned 21 she filed a lawsuit against it for mismanaging the family funds.
The case had taken three years to make its way through the Armstrong County Court of Common Pleas, and now, finally, it was ready for trial.
Nellie had no illusions about the challenge she faced. Unable to afford a lawyer, she would have to represent herself and her sisters in court. The case would be before a judge who was a part-time lawyer and frequently employed, in all probability, by the First Pennsylvania Bank. The jury would be composed of men who did business with the bank and depended on it for their livelihoods. Both judge and jurors would undoubtedly know Colonel Jackson and want to protect his reputation, as Jackson had commanded the Eleventh Pennsylvania Reserves in the Civil War. And even though he was its president at the time, state agency law would permit the bank to deny all financial responsibility for the actions of Colonel Jackson.
Nevertheless, Nellie was not about to back down. These people had cheated her family and made their lives difficult and cruel. She wanted justice. The cause was not totally hopeless, as she saw it. She had some weapons of her own. But she had to move quickly; two days was not much time. She would also have to put aside the Emma story for a week or two.
“Mother. We have to leave tomorrow.”
Mary Jane was confused. “For where, dear?”
“For home.”
“I don’t understand—”
“The lawsuit against the bank is going to trial.”
“What will they do to us, dear?” asked Mary Jane, cowering. “Will they throw us out of our house again?”
“No, Mother. They can’t hurt us anymore.”
“Are you sure? Perhaps we should just stay here.”
Mary Jane had been irreparably scarred from losing her husband and her home and then living in poverty while raising young children. It had been disruptive to move to New York, but it was also a blessing in that it helped Mary Jane begin to put the awful experience of the past fifteen years behind her. Now, though, she was frightened at the thought of facing those same vicious people again.
“Can you start packing without me?” asked Nellie. “And fix yourself dinner? I need to tell someone I’m leaving.”
“Will you be long?” Mary Jane asked anxiously. It was pitiful, thought Nellie, what life had done to her.
“An hour or two. I will come right back. I promise.”
“All right, dear. But do hurry.”
On Tuesday and Thursday evenings, Ingram worked at the Bellevue Hospital, so Nellie rode the streetcar south to First Avenue and Twenty-Seventh Street, then took the ferry to Blackwell’s Island and the hospital.
Like her mother returning to Apollo, Nellie shuddered at the thought of setting foot in Bellevue. Even more than reliving bad memories, she half-worried the authorities would find a way to keep her there, only this time Pulitzer’s lawyer would not be able to get her out. She would have waited and chosen anywhere else in the city to meet Ingram, but she had to leave the next day and needed to see him before she departed.
The place was as dreary and dank as she remembered. The guard at the elevated front desk, a brutish man in his early forties named Jenkes, whom Nellie had described in her story as “a cold, heartless ogre, a most suitable public face for Bellevue,” snarled when he saw her.
“What do you want?”
“I’m here to see Dr. Ingram. He is expecting me.”
Jenkes grunted resentfully, got up from his chair, and unlocked the door. He didn’t bother to open it for her. She had to let herself in. He started to follow her.
“No need to take me back. I know my way.”
“I don’t trust you,” he said.
“And I don’t trust you.” The women inmates had warned her never to be alone with any of the male guards, especially Jenkes.
“Suit yourself.”
He locked the door and returned to his chair.
“Tell me, Jenkes. Did I spell your name right in the newspaper? The World wants me to do another story on Bellevue, to see if things have changed. I wouldn’t want to misspell it again.”
He got the point. He didn’t like it, but he got it. He trudged over and unlocked the door. After he walked back to his desk, she opened the door.
“One of these days someone’s going to get you alone on the street, missie,” he said. “And you’re going to get all you have coming to you. That’ll be a glorious day.”
“Perhaps so, Jenkes. It’s a pity that someone won’t be you.”
As she stepped inside to a poorly lit brick corridor at least fifty feet long, she shivered involuntarily from her confrontation with Jenkes. She had expected him to be fired after her story, but his sister was the wife of John Kelly, the current head of Tammany Hall, and Kelly was notoriously ruthless—he had betrayed Boss Tweed and arranged for him to be sent to prison fifteen years earlier. The City Council might be outraged by what they saw of Bellevue, but no one thought it worth the trouble to take action against John Kelly’s brother-in-law.
Ingram was in his office at the end of the corridor. Through the small window she could see him poring over a file. She tapped on the window. He looked up, surprised to see her, and unlocked the door.
“Miss Bly.”
“May I come in?”
“Of course.”
She walked inside and sat down by his desk. He closed the door behind her.
Although they were almost magnetically drawn to one another, there was no embrace. They had to be careful in the hospital, as a scandal could ruin them both. He joined her at the desk. Even though the door was closed, they spoke in quiet tones.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I must go away tomorrow, to tend to some matters at home.” She didn’t tell him what they were, and he didn’t ask. She kept her past to herself. Whenever Ingram asked even innocent questions about life before they met, she ignored them. He had stopped asking altogether.
“When will you return?”
“I’m not sure. Within ten days, I suspect.”
She started to reach for his hand, but he shook his head. Physical contact between them was out of the question.
“I was afraid I wouldn’t see you.”
He nodded. It took enormous willpower on both their parts to restrain themselves.
“What happened with the story?” he asked. “It was not in the afternoon paper.”
“Mr. Cockerill declined to run it.”
She told him about the meetings with Cockerill, and then DeKay, and then Gould.
“DeKay insists it was a suicide, and Gould is just as insistent it was a murder.”
“Which one do you believe?”
“Gould.”
“Why?”
“He believed Emma was incapable of taking her own life, and I agree.”
Ingram was skeptical. “There is no scientific connection between character and suicide. Lincoln was a brooder given to dark moments, yet it was his effervescent wife who repeatedly tried to take her own life.”
“Then I really am wasting my time,” she said in frustration. “There is no way of telling how she died.”
“Not necessarily.”
She looked at him, puzzled. “Assuming we could actually show she died of arsenic poisoning and not cancer, how could anyone prove it was a murder and not a suicide?”
“Arsenic is a very unpleasant poison. One looking to kill herself would want to do it quickly to shorten the suffering. One wanting to commit a murder, on the other hand, and have it appear as a cancer would administer it over a much longer period of time.”
“But how could I show which of the two it was?” she asked.
“If you could get me any clothes she wore during the last several months of her life, I could tell you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The body expels arsenic any way it can—through the hair, through the skin, through sweat glands. That, plus the fact that arsenic can be detected after months, even years, means that we could tell how much arsenic was in her system even a year after her death.”
“Simply by examining a dress?”
“We live in an age of science, my dear. Our microscopes can detect almost anything.”
“So,” she said excitedly, “if a nightshirt she wore three months before her death had no arsenic, and one she wore right before her death had a large amount, that would suggest suicide.”
“Exactly. And if the shirt she wore three months before dying had a small amount, and the one before her death had the same or a slightly larger amount, that would suggest a murder.”
She grasped the possibilities.
“Then I have to get my hands on her nightclothes.”
“Or a bed sheet. Or a blanket. Or a chair she sat in, a napkin she used. Anything she touched would reveal the level of arsenic in her system. Remember, however, that she died a year ago. You would have to find items that were not washed or given away.”
“But if I found them, you would be able to tell?”
“Yes.”
“Once again, Dr. Ingram, you have given me hope.” She wanted to add “and more,” but lost her nerve.
“That is how doctors like to think of ourselves, Miss Bly. As purveyors of hope.”
She stood up. “Thank you.”
“Glad I was able to help.”
He opened the door for her. She brushed against him on the way out and looked into his eyes. It was almost too much to ask, to keep their hands off one another.
“Good day, Miss Bly.”
“Good day, Dr. Ingram.”
She gave him a warm smile and passed closely enough to graze against his thigh. Her heart leapt, and she paused to look at his face when a patient’s frightened scream cut through the asylum. He nodded and started to reach for her arm but held back.
She left, to the sounds of the woman screaming.