A week after Anine arrived at Lucretia Atherton’s winter home in St. Augustine Rachael Norton wired to say that she would be coming to visit her. “Have been searching for excuse to get out of N.Y.,” her cheerful cable read. “Thank you for providing one.” She reserved a suite of rooms at the Seminole-Ritz Hotel to which she invited Anine to brunch the morning after Rachael herself arrived. Anine was surprised at Rachael’s sudden reversal of her policy against being seen in public with her, but she was very grateful of the company. She’d been on pins and needles since leaving New York, hearing no word from Julian and hoping desperately that he’d found a new place for them to live. She hated to be in the dark but figured that sending her own wire asking what was happening would only annoy him.
At brunch, which occurred on an open-air terrace looking over the beach, Anine asked Rachael what had changed. “Surely word will get around New York that you’re receiving me here. Isn’t your mother still scandalized?”
“Well, St. Augustine is St. Augustine, not New York,” Rachael shrugged. “In any event I decided that between knowing what was happening with your house and scandalizing my mother, or not knowing what was happening and keeping in her good graces, the latter was much more intolerable. And who knows? Maybe society will take my lead and start to soften toward you, especially now that you and your husband are apart.”
It’s her macabre curiosity again, Anine realized, somewhat dejected. Well, maybe she’s right—if there is a way back into society’s graces, it will probably be through her.
“So, you want to know everything?” She dreaded rehashing the whole horror but knew that Rachael would never cease hounding her until she did. “I’ll tell you. It’s utterly awful, though. Far worse than we imagined.”
Rachael’s eyes blazed hungrily. “How horrid for you,” she said, with relish. “Please tell. I’m all ears.”
So Anine told her everything. Not only did she not spare Rachael the grisly details—the various obscenities shouted by the spöke, the disturbing violation in the entryway, the dreadful sensations of smothering—but in fact she embellished them, knowing that her friend throve on gruesomeness and horror. Anine was surprised that she was able to relate the tale so dispassionately, or, more accurately, without feeling too much like she was reliving the trauma. Rachael’s smile, however, grew thinner and her countenance whiter as the tale went on. By the end of it she was sitting passively, hands in her lap, having abandoned the tea and half-eaten crumpet on the plate in front of her. She looked as if she’d finally had enough.
“Monstrous,” was all she said.
“I pray that it’s over. I want to take Julian at his word—that he’s buying another house, I mean—and I know he was deeply shaken by the experience in the parlor. He can’t abide being run out of his own house, I know that. But the spirit is just too strong. I hope he understands that there’s nothing more to be gained by resisting. All we can do is leave.”
“Your husband was right to ask the doctor what happens when Mrs. Quain dies. That’s what I would have asked too. Knowing your luck, though, she’ll live to be a hundred and six. I agree with you, getting out is the best thing.”
“Now that I’ve told you, I don’t really wish to speak of it anymore.” In a moment of unusual bluntness Anine added: “Will you be going back to New York now that your curiosity is satisfied?”
Rachael deflected the barb with a cheerful smile. “My, you really do believe I’m shallow and hard-hearted, don’t you? As thrilled as I am to know someone who lives in a haunted house—one haunted by a doppelgänger, no less, which I take to be a special honor—I really was excited to hear you were down here by yourself.” She leaned in closer. “I have a confession to make.”
“A confession?”
“Yes.” In a whisper Rachael added, “A rather scandalous one.”
“And you thought you would confide in me?”
“You’ve given me enough of your own confidences. I thought I would give you one of mine in return. It’s the least I can do.”
“Well, what is it?”
Rachael’s smile broadened, and bore a hint of mischief behind it. “Let’s get our parasols and go walking on the beach,” she suggested. “Then I’ll tell you.”
The breeze was stiff today and more than once it tugged Anine’s flimsy parasol with uncomfortable force. The cawing of the seagulls and the soft rushing of the waves was a tranquilizing chorus. Out here on the sand dunes with the ornate filigree-dripping hulk of the hotel shining in the sunlight behind them it seemed to Anine as if all the nightmares back in New York were imagined. As the ocean lapped the shore she felt a twinge of the excitement and hope that had brought her to America months ago. When this is all over, I wonder if Julian and I can truly be happy, she thought. I’d like to think so. There must be something left of that handsome, awkward boy I fell in love with back in Sweden—if the doppelgänger hasn’t eaten away his soul.
“Well, do you want to hear my confession?” said Rachael, after a long period of silence.
“Yes, very much.”
“I’ve been carrying on. It’s part of the reason I came to St. Augustine. I mean, my wire was absolutely truthful—you provided me the exact excuse I needed to get out of New York without arousing suspicion. At this very moment I have my maid out searching for a quiet little house in the old city where nothing will be noticed. There. Are you scandalized?”
Anine thought she missed it. She did not appreciate the meaning of the words carrying on. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you mean.”
“I mean I’m carrying on. I’ve taken a lover. He arrives by train on Friday. I’m desperately hoping that you’ll agree to be my alibi. That is, if anyone asks, to say that I’m with you.”
Anine supposed that several months ago she probably would have been scandalized but after all she’d been through it was very difficult to get worked up over the small issue of Rachael Norton’s infidelities. Still, she was curious. “Who is it?” she asked.
Rachael smiled more broadly. “Oakley Minthorn.”
“Who is that?”
“Lucius and Gertrude Minthorn’s eldest son. He’s engaged also, to Matilda Rochefort. They’re to be married in April. See how low and shocking the whole thing is? Two happy marriages wrecked before they even begin. And I simply can’t be bothered to care!” Rachael giggled airily.
Lucius and Gertrude Minthorn’s son. Anine realized that Rachael’s lover was Mrs. Quain’s nephew, and it made her uneasy. “What about your fiancé, Daniel? You can’t marry him after this, can you?”
“I don’t see why not. He’s a nice enough man, and will make a fine husband, if a dull one. But we both know our marriage is mainly for the benefit of the families. A match between the Nortons of Fifth Avenue and the Wythes of Broadway has been written in the stars since time immemorial, and Daniel and I are merely the executors of the prophecy. But to be honest with you I don’t even much believe in marriage. It’s an old-fashioned custom, just as stodgy and useless as every other old-fashioned custom that New York society pretends to hold dear. Oakley is alive and audacious. I do say he ravishes me in ways I would never have thought possible. That’s passion, Anine. It’s something sorely lacking in almost everyone we know. If you find passion you must hang onto it.”
At these words Anine thought guiltily of Ola Bergenhjelm. She’d felt no passion for him, but it seemed he’d felt it for her. Was it not passion—at least a kind of passion—that had projected his spirit into the parlor at the Vänersborg summer cottage to bid goodbye to her? Likewise, was it not some kind of passion that split Mrs. Quain’s spirit in two and lodged its foul half in the house on 38th Street? She must have had passion with her husband in the early years of their marriage, she thought. Maybe that’s why she was so unwilling to leave.
With a sense of shame Anine realized that the ordeal of the doppelgänger had so affected her that she had begun to see everything through its lens, even Rachael’s love affair. “Well, if you’re happy,” she sighed, “I suppose that’s the most important thing.”
Rachael suddenly stopped walking and turned to her, the parasol flapping in the breeze. “Do you really think so?” she replied, with intensity that was uncommon for her.
“Of course. Why would I think otherwise?”
“If I can be frank, you’ve always been so hard to read, Anine. I never know what you really think—about society, about love, about your husband, about anything. You seem so grimly willing to do your duty, to stick with your husband despite the horrible things he’s done to you, to try to find your way back into society. And yet you say you believe a person’s happiness is the most important thing. Do you really think that? Or did you just say it to placate me?”
Wait, what is she accusing me of? Anine’s brow furrowed, not sure at all whether Rachael was on the verge of becoming hostile or whether this was just the frankness that seemed to come out once the social pretenses dropped. “If you love Oakley Minthorn, then be with him,” she finally replied, with a hint of defensiveness. “Why would I want you to be unhappy just for the sake of keeping up appearances?”
“If you really feel that way, may I give you some advice?” Rachael said, somewhat curtly. “About your own situation.”
“All right.”
“Divorce your husband. Plead cruelty. It’s grounds for divorce in New York, and he’s clearly been cruel to you. Divorce him and go back to Sweden. The scandal doesn’t matter. You’re not happy in New York, or in America, and you never will be. In fact I wouldn’t even go back to New York at all. New Orleans is a day’s train ride away from here. You can catch a ship there for Sweden, I’m sure, or at least England. If you truly believe a person’s happiness is most important, this is the only thing you can do.”
Anine turned away, looking back at the hotel. “You’re the second person to give me that advice in the past few weeks.”
“Well, maybe you should listen to the both of us.”
Does Julian deserve one more chance? She didn’t know why she was trying to sell this to herself; she knew Clea and Rachael were both speaking from their hearts, but for some reason there was an almost instinctive resistance at giving up. Ultimately she decided she would need to think about it. “Let’s start back to the hotel. Aunt Lucretia will be wondering what happened to me.”
When she returned to Lucretia’s winter house Julian’s aunt informed her that here had been a telegram—an unusually long one—for her from New York. “I suspect it’s news about your house,” she said, pressing the fat envelope into Anine’s hand. “Hopefully it’s good news.”
The telegram, from Julian, contained the news of the deal and the move. He gave the details of the transaction and his instructions to her were precise, the wording devoid of emotion. Remain at aunt’s until move complete. Likely to be 1st week December. Make no effort for return to NY until I instruct. She read and re-read the telegram while sitting in Lucretia’s sun-dappled solarium. Now, strangely, the horror in the house did not seem as far away as it had earlier in the day.
Is he sincere? Anine guessed she had no reason to disbelieve Julian, but something instinctive told her that all was not as it seemed. If not for this kernel of doubt she would have been overjoyed at the absolution of ever having to return to Mrs. Quain’s house. The deal with the Minthorns seemed to suggest there was at least the possibility that Julian’s sins could be redeemed, and the Athertons eventually admitted to polite society. But this too had the curious air of a hollow promise.
I’ll believe it when it’s all done, she ultimately decided, and when I’m living in the new house on West 26th Street. She folded the telegram message and put it back into the envelope. Later she secreted the envelope in the bottom of one of her trunks. She did not know why but she thought it might be prudent to keep hold of it, perhaps as a backstop against any duplicity by Julian.
The next weeks passed in an eerie silent agony. There was no further word from Julian. The recurring nightmare of Ola returning from the grave had resumed the first night after Anine left New York and it continued to plague her, if not nightly, often enough to cause her to dread the coming of darkness. She and Lucretia had very little to talk about and thus socialized infrequently. Clea Wicks was ensconced in the servants’ quarters and in any event speaking to her in anything like the familiar fashion Anine was used to was completely improper here. Rachael Norton remained in St. Augustine, but always seemed to be out; presumably she was carrying on with Oakley Minthorn. Anine’s main diversion consisted of walking on the beach and reading books in Lucretia’s parlor. The hours crawled by like languid centuries.
On Tuesday, November 30, another wire finally arrived from Julian. This one was short and even more terse: Move occurring this week. Prepare for your return Monday next, 6th December. That was all.
The instant she read the words scrawled on the telegraph sheet Anine’s heart nearly stopped. A cold terrifying certainty had suddenly seized her: Something terrible is going to happen. And it’s going to happen before I get there. Far from being relieved by what should have been Julian’s good news, she was even more on-edge. Each swing of the brass pendulum of the grandfather clock in Lucretia’s hallway seemed to slice another second closer to the nameless doom that she was sure was impending. Ironically, the prospect of being free from the spöke had caused more anxiety than anything that had come before.
On Friday, December 3, 1880, a plain black carriage drawn by a single horse and driven by a man called Francis Dugan pulled up outside the Grand Central Depot on East 42nd Street in New York and waited for nearly three quarters of an hour. The 12:10 from Newport, on the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, was delayed. It was snowing softly and very cold. A swarthy-looking gentleman in a well-tailored green suit, black frock coat and tall silk hat waited patiently in the carriage. Dugan, a footman in the employ of the Minthorn family, smoked cigars and blew into his hands as he waited.
At long last, amidst a stream of passengers exiting the terminal, two figures came toward the carriage. One was a maid named Deborah Parmly, and on her arm hobbled a frail fiftyish woman in black widow’s weeds. A porter behind them wheeled a cart stacked with three trunks. Evelyn de Coster Quain seemed heedless of everything: the snow, the cold wind, the bustle of carriages and horses around her. It took a long time for her to reach the Minthorn carriage, and when she did the man in the green suit got out and carefully helped her up into it while Dugan loaded the trunks onto the rear of the carriage.
It was a few minutes past one o’clock in the afternoon when the carriage finally began rolling. Dugan turned the horse left, down Madison Avenue, and began heading south. His destination, 11 West 38th Street, was barely more than a third of a mile away from Grand Central Depot as the crow flew.
Just as the carriage passed the corner of Madison and East 41st Street, two men wearing dark suits and identical bowler hats rushed across the street from the corner where they’d been standing, smoking and stamping their feet. They descended upon the carriage. One of the men, the shorter one, drew a pistol; the taller man, whose mouth was strangely crooked in his face, yanked a Bowie knife from his jacket. The shorter thug held the pistol on the driver, who froze, his hands raised. The man with the crooked mouth wrenched open the carriage door. The woman in black inside the carriage screamed.
“Get back! I have a gun!” shouted Lucius Minthorn. In fact he did not, but the man with the Bowie knife lunged, slashing at him. He missed, the blade of the Bowie knife tearing the quilted upholstery. Minthorn’s hand was still in his jacket. Fearing he was drawing a Derringer, the man with the crooked mouth reared back with the knife and stabbed Minthorn brutally in the side. The millionaire gasped—his lung was punctured—and crumpled against the inside corner of the carriage. His hand, empty, fell out of his jacket pocket.
By now the men had already violated their orders, for Minthorn was not to be touched. Though he was still gasping for breath Piker Ryan knew the wound was mortal. He didn’t hesitate; they could leave no witnesses to identify them. “Hit ’em!” he shouted at his companion, but his words went unheard over the screaming of the maid and the woman in the black widow’s weeds. “Shut up!” he cried, plunging the knife into the woman in black. She fell into a bloody heap of black muslin on the floor of the carriage. The maid, who’d decided to save herself, flung open the opposite door of the coach and staggered out. Ryan tried to stab her too but the Bowie knife caught her across the lower back. She collapsed to the street, screaming.
“Hit ’em!” Ryan repeated. A moment later the shorter man pulled the trigger, blasting Dugan backwards onto the driver’s seat. Ryan plunged the Bowie knife into the widow one more time for good measure but the utter lack of reaction told him she was already dead. He knew he should have finished the maid, but there was no time. He heard Clops shout “Coppers! Coppers!” Ryan leaped out of the carriage and the two men ran away down 41st Street, eventually splitting in opposite directions.
The police caught neither of them. At the scene of the bloody carriage attack there was only one survivor, the maid Deborah Parmly. She crawled away from the carriage, leaving a trail of blood in the snow-covered street, screaming “Help me! Help me!” She was inching toward the nearest house which happened to be owned by a minor son of the Astor family. With another policeman and the butler from the Astor house rushing toward her she fell unconscious. Had the edifice of the Astor house in front of them not blocked their view, the witnesses to the scene could have seen, distantly in the snow-hazed air, the roof of the building on 38th Street that contained the house where the woman in black who now lay dead on the floor of the carriage had once lived.
Hundreds of miles away, in the atrium of Lucretia Atherton’s winter house in St. Augustine, at the moment the attack began Anine’s hands began to quiver and quake uncontrollably. She was reading a book and reaching for a cup of tea, but both immediately fell to the floor. It’s happening! she realized with horror, not knowing exactly what calamity was occurring, but certain that something terrible was going on at this instant. She rose from the settee on which she’d been sitting and lurched toward the wall and the bell cord. She didn’t make it. “Miss Wicks!” she cried. Anine’s foot slipped in the puddle of wet tea on the red tile floor and she went sprawling. “Miss Wicks! Clea!” A sharp dagger of pain plunged into her chest, and then another seized her left shoulder. Gasping in sudden agony, her vision clouded. With an outstretched hand she reached for the end table now looming above her, but could only grasp the edge of the knit cloth that covered it. As she lost consciousness she pulled the cover off the table, dumping its contents to the floor. The sharp sound of the tea set shattering occurred at the precise second of Mrs. Quain’s death. After that all was blackness.
Anine awakened on a chaise longue in the rear parlor of Lucretia’s house. A kind-faced doctor with a bald head and thick white whiskers was just folding up his bag. Clea Wicks sat over her placing a warm damp cloth on her forehead. Two white women—it took Anine a moment to recognize Lucretia Atherton and Rachael Norton—stood behind the doctor. Lucretia was vexed, her hands tightly clasped. Rachael, wearing a dark blue velvet dress, looked upon the scene with a cold and emotionless gaze.
“I think she’ll be all right,” said the doctor. “A sudden loss of blood to the head. Make sure she gets plenty of rest. No exertion for several days.”
“Can she travel?” said Rachael.
“Out of the question. At least not for a week or so.” The white-haired doctor nodded in Lucretia’s direction. “Ma’am,” he said pleasantly, and then took his leave.
Anine tried to sit up. “What happened?” There was no pain but a strange woozy cloud hung in the center of her head.
Clea gently pushed her back down on the chaise longue. “You stay put, Miss Anine,” she said. “You mind what the doctor says.”
The pain—it was so sharp, so terrible. The memory of the fear was equally compelling. Whatever she’d been dreading since she read Julian’s telegram had obviously taken place. “Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” She tried to make her voice sound as sharp and commanding as possible. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it?”
“We mustn’t upset Anine,” said Lucretia, but she seemed to be talking to Rachael more than anyone else.
Rachael dismissed her. “Nonsense,” she retorted. “If you’ll not tell her, I will.” She stepped over to the chaise longue and knelt down so her face was level with Anine’s. “Something terrible has happened back in New York. Oakley received a telegram from his mother an hour ago. Lucius Minthorn is dead.”
Anine’s head spun even faster. Even without knowing anything more she could sense that this had something to do with the doppelgänger. “Lucius Minthorn? Dead?” She shifted, not quite sitting up—for Clea was still hovering imperiously over her—but more upright than she had been. “What happened?”
“Robbed in his carriage on Madison Avenue in broad daylight. It’s monstrous.” Rachael suddenly leaned closer to Anine. In a whisper she said, “Mrs. Quain was with him. She was killed too.”
In a rush of terrific clarity Anine suddenly understood everything. Julian murdered her. It can’t be a coincidence. He caused this to happen. He still wants the house—and he eliminated Mrs. Quain to get it. That it was a long-prepared plot was obvious. He’d even sent her here, to St. Augustine, to get her out of town so she couldn’t interfere with his plans. That could be the only explanation.
Rachael seemed to understand this. She stood up and looked at Clea. “How soon can you have Mrs. Atherton’s belongings packed, along with your own?”
Clea shrugged. “An hour, maybe.”
“Well, do it.” Rachael turned to Lucretia. “I’m bringing Anine and her maid to my suite at the Seminole-Ritz.”
“That’s completely unnecessary,” Lucretia protested. “Besides, the doctor said—”
“To hell with what the doctor said! I’m bringing Anine to my hotel. That’s final. There will be no argument.”
“Why would you want to bring her there?”
“She is not safe here.”
“That’s absurd.” To Clea, who was just then exiting the room, Lucretia called, “Miss Wicks, stop.”
“What do you want, Anine?” Rachael said implicitly. “Do you want to come with me or stay here?”
All eyes were upon her. It’s more than just the decision of whether or not go to the hotel, she realized. If I go with Rachel, I’m breaking with Julian—that’s what I think this means.
It wasn’t a hard decision. Although she knew next to nothing about what had happened in New York, even the supposition that Julian was behind it was alarming enough to cause her not to feel secure in Lucretia’s house. If I leave he’ll know he can’t control me. This was perhaps an important message to send now.
Lucretia looked indignant. Her mouth a taut line, she stood before the chaise longue and said coldly: “If you leave here, Mrs. Atherton, you will never be received again in my house, neither here in St. Augustine nor in New York.”
“Miss Wicks, please pack my things,” said Anine. She swung her legs over the side of the chaise longue and brought herself up into a sitting position.
Lucretia Atherton seemed surprised but her stony mask of disapprobation did not break. Anine saw her throat move as she swallowed hard. With as much dignity as she could muster, Lucretia slowly turned and began to walk toward the door of the parlor. The coldness in her manner acknowledged what Anine was grimly certain had just happened: she had finally placed herself on record against her husband, and perhaps in doing so had just broken out of the circle of snubbing and ostracism.
Unfortunately, Anine’s certainty that she had done the right thing began to unravel almost the moment she left Lucretia’s house. She did not feel liberated; in fact, she felt more trapped than ever.