CHAPTER

29

Glowing lights from the town house next door to the Langtons were visible across Washington Square. Carriages pulled up, deposited their passengers, and pulled around the square to park on side streets or in the rear alleys. Music drifted faintly on the cool nighttime air. The front door to Hazel Dockery’s house opened and closed. I leaned forward to look down the front of the mansion but needn’t have bothered. Hazel marched smartly down the stairs, across the street, and through the park to the town house opposite. A footman followed at a discreet distance, no doubt on Graves’s orders. Hazel would scoff at the need of an escort across the well-lit park between the houses.

I turned from the window and surveyed the newspapers strewn around the room. I sighed and picked them up, folding them neatly and making sure to organize them by date, newest on top, as per Hazel’s orders. Her library, which seemed so disorganized and chaotic at first blush, was indeed an elaborate filing system known and understood only by her.

After Henry’s announcement of their grand plan, Graves had rolled the coffee cart into the office. Hazel took up the newspaper Graves handed her and spent the next five minutes with her head between the pages while Graves served the coffee. Henry filled the conversation void by talking of a Jewish deli he’d discovered with the most delicious pastries and sandwiches we could imagine. “I’ll take you there,” he promised.

When Graves left, Hazel handed the paper to me, picked up her coffee cup, and watched me over the rim as she sipped. The front page headline couldn’t be missed:

GEORGE LANGTON’S KILLER SIGHTED IN NEW YORK CITY

I handed the paper to Kindle. “Peg McCord told. The newspapers have already convicted me, I see.”

“The newspapers convicted you months ago,” Hazel replied. “You visited your old house?”

I nodded.

“One half of our plan has been set in motion for us,” Hazel said. “What of the second part?”

“Absolutely not,” I said.

“You have experience masquerading as a man,” Henry said.

“I was only able to pull off my orderly disguise in the war because everyone was distracted by death and dying.”

“It was ten years ago,” Kindle said. “A woman pretending to be a teenager is easier to pull off than a woman trying to be an adult.”

“There are plenty of men with fine features,” Hazel said. “And we would glue a beard on you.”

“Oh, of course.” I threw my hands up. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“I told you earlier, dear, no imagination,” Hazel said. She raised an eyebrow and I knew she’d sent the verbal dart in retaliation for the “eccentric spinster” comment. She continued. “Graves’s grandson, Richard, is in the theater and will help us kit you out.”

“One more person who could potentially betray us,” Kindle said.

“Oh, Richard won’t betray you. I endow his little theater. He would starve if not for me.”

I paced. “I cannot. If I’m caught they will arrest me. It will be more ammunition to use against me.”

“Let’s say for a moment Laura does this,” Kindle said.

“William!”

He held up his hand in a placating gesture. “What then? No one is going to confess to her.”

“Well, of course not,” Hazel said. “But Laura might overhear something that will give us a new direction to investigate. The goal is to find information to take to the police, so they can investigate more fully.”

I laughed. “The police are in the Langtons’ pockets. That’s why I left, remember?” I shook my head. “It’s too risky.”

“Is that your final word?” Hazel asked.

“Yes.”

She slapped her hands on the desk. “Then I’m afraid there’s little else I can do to help you. You’re welcome to stay here until you decide where to go next. In fact, I recommend it. You’re much too recognizable, Major.” Hazel rose from behind the desk and picked up a stack of newspapers from its corner. She walked around and handed them to me. “In case you’re interested in what’s been said about you in your absence.”

Kindle left to retrieve our belongings, and Mrs. Graves, the housekeeper, led me upstairs to the room we would be using. I spent the time alone reading.

I wish I hadn’t.

I was the worst kind of harlot; men to whom I’d barely spoken now told of unwanted advances on my part. Fellow doctors fabricated stories about misdiagnoses and subsequent patient deaths and implied I’d achieved my high graduation rank from medical school by seducing the professors. Jonasz Golik, the resurrection man whose basement lab I’d frequently used, was quick to tell the world—anonymously, of course—that I paid double what other doctors did, and conveniently forgot to mention I’d been dissecting a cadaver the night George Langton had a fireplace poker embedded in his head. When Golik had been arrested months later for grave robbing, my name had been dragged back into the spotlight as one of his best customers.

Depressed and angry, I’d skipped to the bottom of the pile of papers, hoping my reputation had been redeemed somewhat with Henry’s bogus story of my death. The same lies were rehashed, though with less relish, and much was made about the trials I had endured in Texas, and I’d been praised for saving Kindle under dire circumstances, and for my role in managing the dysentery outbreak at Fort Richardson. But there were too many strikes against me—my initial flight, my alleged coercion of a gentleman officer to help me escape, being a woman in a man’s profession, my association with Golik, treating whores on Twenty-Seventh Street—to forgive me completely. Once it became known I was alive again, all benefit of the doubt was at an end. I was a liar and a killer and deserved to swing.

I was working myself into a fine lather when Kindle walked into the room with our baggage.

“I feel like I’ve been hoodwinked,” I said.

Kindle paused, one bag under his arm. He closed the door and set the bags on the floor. He took off his dark spectacles and replaced them with the eye patch. He squeezed his eye shut and looked around like a newborn calf. “God, those glasses are strange.”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes. How have you been hoodwinked?”

I motioned to the newspapers, which I’d gone through again and discarded willy-nilly, stoking my anger at Henry and Hazel. “Hazel gave these to me on purpose. She knew how I would react.”

“Like a Brontë heroine?” Kindle sat on the bed and removed his boots.

I ignored the comment. “Have you read any of this? No, don’t. If you read it enough you start to believe it. I did! I found myself thinking, ‘Who is this woman? She’s a despicable human being!’ Hazel was right. James never once came to my defense. He stood by and let them lie about me.” I held back a sob.

“I never liked him,” Kindle said.

“You don’t know him,” I snapped. I walked to the window and rubbed my arms against the chill that had overtaken me.

“If what they’re saying is all lies, what do you care?” He dropped a boot to the floor.

“If it’s all lies? What is that supposed to mean?”

“Of course it’s lies, Laura. But again, what do you care?”

“Because they’re dragging my name through the mud!”

“You aren’t Catherine Bennett any longer. You’re Laura Kindle. Or have you forgotten?” He dropped the second boot next to its mate.

“It doesn’t mean I want Catherine Bennett to be remembered as a harlot and a murderer.”

“Precisely.” Kindle stood and loosened his tie. “Which is why we’re here. To clear Catherine Bennett’s name, so Laura Kindle can have a life.”

I gasped. “You want me to go along with their plan.”

He shrugged out of his coat, folded it, and laid it on the bed. “I’ve been trying to think of a better plan to and from the hotel.”

“You realize if they find me out they will arrest me, convict me quickly, and hang me. Judge Sheridan and the newspapers will make sure of it. They need the scandal to sell newspapers, and I’ve walked right into their hands.”

“How many times have you mentioned the charades you and your cousin played at?”

“We were children. It was just that: playing. This is my life, William.”

He put his hands on my shoulders and massaged them. “It’s my life, too.”

I looked away. “Of course it is, but …”

“There is one other option.”

“What?”

“Sail for Australia.”

“Australia? But it’s full of criminals and murderers and … Oh. Right.”

There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” Kindle called.

Graves opened the door. “Your bath is ready, sir.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Graves left silently.

“I don’t like the idea of you going into the Langtons’ with no support other than Hazel. But I’m sure of two things: one, you’re the only person who knows what questions to ask to get to the truth. Two, you’re a good enough liar to pull it off.”

“That is the worst compliment I’ve ever heard.”

“Tell one last enormous lie, and you’ll never have to lie again.”