Blind Trust, page 11
“Yes, Dr. Arbuthnot. Thank you.” Darcy rose, nodded at Claude without meeting his eyes, and fled the library. She had won. A tonic, a massage, a drive in the park. Claude had not been able to influence the doctor, after all his sordid accusations. Now she could turn her mind to other things, like how she was going to manage to see Tavish Finn again.
Thoughtfully, Tavish went down the marble stairs of the Van Cormandt mansion. Dusk was setting in, and he paused at the bottom to look around him. Across the street, the palace of Cornelius Vanderbilt II blazed, an impressive block of red brick with white trimmings that managed to simultaneously suggest Versailles and an English country house while dazzling the eye with its amazing size. Next to its magnificence, the Van Cormandt mansion in mellow light brownstone looked almost puny.
Tavish turned left, toward downtown. He walked down Fifth through the gathering darkness, past the Renaissance palaces, the medieval castles, the eighteenth-century chateaux of the new millionaires of New York. The styles elbowed each other with a hauteur that was undeniably vulgar, Gothic and baroque and Greek and Byzantine and rococo, and sometimes a horrifying melange of all of these. Call them shoddyites or swells or bouncers, the folk that inhabited these mansions were a force to be reckoned with, and they had succeeded in grinding the Golden Age of little old New York to dust. The genteel age was gone now, the quiet life that went on behind the brownstones of the Jones’s and the Kings and the Roosevelts—it had been for a generation, perhaps two. The Golden Age had turned to the Gilded Age, as Mark Twain had said. Now the copper kings, the silver kings, the wire kings, the trolley kings ruled. They were who mattered.
And chief among them was the king of them all, Claude Statton, in the white marble palace built to rival them all. Leave it to Claude to build in marble when everyone else thought it unlucky—A. T. Stewart had died soon after completing his marble mansion, and then had the misfortune, it was said, to have his body snatched from his grave and held for ransom. And hadn’t William Backhouse Astor died after his marble palace was built?
But Claude Statton flung the superstition in their faces—there could not exist a grander, more ostentatious marble edifice than this. Tavish stopped in front for a moment, staring at the lighted windows, wondering which room Darcy was passing through, wondering if she thought of him. A terrible vision was taking place in his mind, a vision of what really lay behind these palaces, these sumptuous dinners on gold plates, this careful talk that never once touched on anything more real than yesterday’s weather. Would his terrible vision destroy Darcy Statton, a product of elegant Old New York trapped in the rushing, threshing machine of the new age?
He went on, down past Alva Vanderbilt’s lovely replica of the Chateau de Blois, past the twin mansions her father-in-law, William Henry, had built on Fifty-first to Fifty-second. He saluted St. Pat’s and stopped for a minute to gaze at Jay Gould’s mansion at Forty-seventh, wondering if the infamous Gould, slowly wasting away from consumption now, it was rumored, would be interested to see how his cutthroat techniques had spawned a new kind of monster in a world that was changing fast. He passed the enormous Croton Reservoir at Forty-second and saluted Mrs. Astor at Thirty-fourth for gallantry under fire, trying to maintain a solid footing in a social world now suddenly turned to quicksand. Now the huge mansions gave way to the quieter mellow brownstones of the Old Guard. And he finally turned off Fifth when he reached the upper Twenties and found himself at Mrs. Fleur Ganay’s door.
She, Tavish had been assured, ran the first-class sporting house of all New York, which was saying something. Only twenty years before, a Methodist bishop had made headlines by claiming that there were as many prostitutes in New York as there were Methodists in the city. Now the numbers had surpassed even Bishop Simpson’s outrage. There were the whispered horrors of Water Street and the shame of the Greene Street houses, there were the waiter-girls in concert saloons, there were the Sixth Avenue streetwalkers, and there were places like this one, an elegant Greek revival mansion with scrubbed marble steps right off Fifth Avenue, frequented by the cream of New York society, for Fleur Ganay was as rigid in her exclusion as Mrs. Astor.
He rang the bell and was admitted by an elegant butler. He had a letter of introduction from Ned Van Cormandt, and he was expected.
The house surpassed even Ned’s enthusiastic descriptions. It gleamed with slick marble, it cosseted with rich brocade and velvet, and it titillated with a mural one took for Boucher until a closer glance revealed scenes a Boucher would not dare to flaunt. The sound of a Mozart concerto tinkled from a room somewhere in the back of the house. Camelias bloomed in silver vases. There was a reflecting pool in the interior courtyard that gleamed with the light of candles that floated by on lilypads. It was extravagant and overdone, it teetered on the edge of the ridiculous, and Tavish admired it immensely for its knowing cheek.
And as Fleur Ganay rustled to meet him, gowned in green silk trimmed with black lace, with only a single spray of diamonds in her hair, he saw in a moment why she had been able to rise from a “flower girl” on Wall Street—those pretty young girls, some as young as fourteen, who sold flowers to the men in their offices and offered other favors, as well—to the madam of the finest house in the city. It wasn’t just her beauty—her thick brown hair with a sheen of copper, her large liquid-brown eyes, or even the lush pale skin that brought thick English cream to Tavish’s mind in a rare rush of homesickness; it was the mysterious conveyance of absolute elegance with the hint of absolute eroticism this woman projected, should a man be lucky enough to be allowed to explore it. It was said she took no clients anymore, though she could not be older than forty and looked ten years younger.
“I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Finn. Perhaps the private parlor is in order,” Fleur Ganay said. “I have some very good Madeira.”
Tavish bowed. “I would be delighted, Mrs. Ganay.”
He followed her down the purple-carpeted hall past several sitting rooms, one of which was filled with gentlemen with glasses of brandy in their hands who were laughing uproariously at some joke. Beautifully gowned women laughed along with them, leaning over to relight cigars and refill brandy glasses. A tall golden-haired beauty said something quietly, and the men burst into loud laughter again. Mrs. Ganay’s girls were known for their wit as well as their inventiveness upstairs.
Tavish was led to the rear to a small, exquisite room paneled in painted wood. The colors were shades of rose and soft blue, the cornices and wainscoting were gilded, and Tiffany-shaded lamps in red and pink cast a lovely glow. Fleur Ganay’s perfect skin appeared even more ravishing in the light.
“Please sit down, Mr. Finn,” she said as a butler appeared with a tray holding a crystal decanter and two glasses.
Tavish sat on the blue damask couch next to her. They exchanged pleasantries while she poured the sherry.
After a few sips, she put down her glass purposefully. “Mr. Van Cormandt feels that we may be able to help each other, Mr. Finn.”
Tavish nodded. “He came to you when he was blackmailed, he said. And you suggested that you might know who was behind it.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Finn, but I do suspect. His letter, the method of payment, is remarkably similiar to … something I’m familiar with. But perhaps you can tell me what your interest is in this.”
Tavish had already decided upon seeing her that he would resort to the practice he was most unfamiliar with: honesty. He knew that Fleur Ganay would not settle for less and just might throw him out on the street should he toy with her.
“I’m tracing the members of a blind trust that operates in California under the name of the Pacific Improvement Company. While trying to find the members, I keep running into something odd on the fringes—blackmail. And the reason for blackmail usually has its origin in a house such as yours—someone has informed on the victim, you see. I’ve found one too many coincidences for comfort. So, I’ve finally given in. Instead of conducting my investigation on Wall Street, I’ve finally realized I should do it in, shall we say, more pleasant surroundings.”
Fleur Ganay inclined her head.
“When Ned Van Cormandt told me that you were willing to speak to me, I was very glad. I’ve tried to talk to several girls around town, but I’m afraid they were uncooperative. You see, an acquaintance of mine is in a society that offers aid to such girls, and I went there first for information.”
Fleur Ganay smiled. “You speak of Mrs. Nash?”
“Yes. I suppose she wouldn’t be a friend of yours, Mrs. Ganay.”
“I wouldn’t say that, Mr. Finn. More sherry? No, I would say that in a strange way, Mrs. Nash and I are on the same side. I do not exploit my girls, Mr. Finn. Why should I, since I started just as they did? I give them a beautiful house and beautiful clothes, I bank their money, and if they choose to leave I let them go with their money—with interest—unless, of course, they go to another house. I’ve always taken great pride in that, Mr. Finn. Better they should find their way here than in some den on Greene Street. But lately things have changed.” Her eyes glinted, and Tavish caught sight of something there. It reminded him of the look on Artemis Hinkle’s face—the look of someone who has had enough, who has faced a wall and spun around to face his attacker and make a last stand.
“Yes, Mrs. Ganay?”
“I started this house with a loan from a friend, which I paid back with interest in three years. Since then I have been independent. But someone threatened me with ruin if I did not pay a percentage of the house’s earnings. Fifty percent, Mr. Finn. I refused, of course, and within one week I had no customers. I found that rumors had been spread concerning the health of my girls—it was said that they were all diseased. And a prominent customer, a man I’ve known for years, was mentioned in Colonel Mann’s paper as frequenting my establishment, though he was newly married.”
Tavish nodded. He knew of the notorious Colonel Mann and his paper, Town Topics. He had a solid network all over town composed of servants and service people who gladly traded their intimate knowledge of society folk for cash. If the unfortunate refused to pay the colonel to suppress the information, he found himself featured in the next issue. Though Colonel Mann could not print scandalous news outright, he had devised an ingenious method—the delectable tidbit would use no names, yet one had only to look at the next paragraph or across the column to find the name in a harmless social mention. It was said he had received over twenty thousand dollars from a Vanderbilt alone.
Fleur Ganay sipped at her sherry. “Within another week I had capitulated. And now every week I put money in an envelope and hand it over to a messenger boy. Even though this person has forced me to steadily raise prices, my girls don’t see the profits, nor do I. When Ned came to me with his problem and showed me his letter, I was very distressed, indeed. For this goes beyond intimidation—I am paying my percentage—and it means that my house is being used as some kind of conduit to blackmail. I have always been very scrupulous with regard to my girls. I demand integrity. A man must feel safe in a house. Now girls are sent to me, and I must take them. And I find that they inform on my customers. I’ve had enough. So I told Ned I would talk with you.”
“Your clients, Mrs. Ganay—they’re from the cream of society, the Old Guard primarily?”
“Oh, yes.”
“So this man was able to spread his rumor through that society.
“I see what you mean, Mr. Finn. He would have to be one of them himself, wouldn’t he?” Fleur Ganay’s eyes widened. “He would have to be a gentleman.”
“Exactly.” Tavish frowned, thinking hard. Something had tickled at his brain, something he’d not thought important at the time. What had Columbine been telling him about the new problems of her girls? Something about paying more for sheets …
Could it be, he thought, horrified. He was almost tempted to laugh at the perverse audacity of it. A brothel trust?
“Mrs. Ganay,” he started cautiously, “has by any chance this unknown person insisted that you charge more for board and linens? Or insisted on your dismissing girls should they get sick or in trouble?”
“Yes, it is abominable, a great trial to me.” Fleur Ganay looked at him with new interest. “How did you know this?”
“Because those other girls I talked to—through Mrs. Nash—have been complaining about the same thing. So that means that other houses have been blackmailed, just as you have. And they are all steadily raising their prices.”
“So someone is making a great deal of money,” Mrs. Ganay said grimly. “But I think I know his weakness, Mr. Finn. He is greedy. He is pushing us too far, and our girls. The latest demand is that I turn over the girls’ incomes to him to bank. I have resisted for weeks, put him off. This is something I cannot do! What if those savings, small as they are now with these new charges, should disappear? I shouldn’t be able to face my girls, or myself. Already things have gone too far. This house depends on laughter, on gaiety. Soon the girls will not be able to conceal their anxiety and worry. Even the price of abortions has risen through the roof! Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Finn, I forgot myself. I apologize for distressing you—”
Trying to hide his excitement, Tavish sat forward. He hadn’t been offended; suddenly, a light had appeared. “Abortionists,” he murmured. Mrs. Usenko. Claude’s messenger boy had gone to her door. What if the money mentioned hadn’t been to pay for services rendered? What if it wasn’t a bill for Claude to pay but a percentage of the profits Mrs. Usenko would have to pay to Claude? Tavish put down his sherry glass, almost dashing it to the floor in his excitment.
“That’s quite all right, Mrs. Ganay,” he said quickly. “I’m not distressed at all. By the way, did you say whether your tormentor has a name?”
“Oh, I didn’t mention it. A Mr. Dargent, he calls himself.”
“And you’ve never met him.”
“No. I’ve never seen him. Only one of my girls has.”
Shock snapped Tavish’s spine straight. “Someone here? Who? May I speak to her?”
Fleur Ganay fluttered a hand. “Oh, the girl disappeared long ago. She was recruited by Mr. Dargent. Apparently she was fired from her job and wound up on Wall Street as a flower girl. That’s where he found her. He sent her to me. I found out later that she had agreed to give him part of her earnings under the table. That was his entree into my house. I don’t know if he forced her, or if he was her lover, but she did tell him how the house was run. Eventually, she left—just disappeared one day—and Mr. Dargent offered me his ‘proposition.’ I suppose he missed her earnings and got a taste of what money he could make. You know the rest.”
“You have no idea where this girl has gone?”
“None at all. She didn’t stay in New York, that I know. I would have heard, somehow, were she at another house. She was very pretty,” she mused. “Smart as a whip, but there was a kind of shining innocence in her eyes that she never lost. Some clients pay well for that.”
“And her name? Do you remember?”
“I remember all my girls, Mr. Finn. Her name was Annie O’Day.”
Tavish made a mental note of the name. “Tell me, Mrs. Ganay. Have you a client by the name of Claude Statton?”
She gave a sour smile. “I’m afraid my girls are too sophisticated for Mr. Statton. He was here once or twice, but not for years. I believe he frequents Irene Trimble’s.” She sniffed. “Her girls are young and depraved, an enticing combination.”
“Young?”
“Well, young-looking, at least. There are some men, Mr. Finn, who enjoy girls who have not passed into womanhood. Is there something about Mr. Statton I should know, Mr. Finn?”
“No,” Tavish said. Darcy, his heart cried. To be allied to such a man. “Nothing at all. May I have another glass of that excellent Madeira?”
Tavish waited underneath a large oak in the park. He tried not to look at his watch more than once every five minutes. She would come, he told himself. Somehow, she would manage. He had taken a risk by leaving a message at her house, but he had checked to make sure Claude was downtown first. Tavish looked at his watch again.
He was in a mess, that was certain. He wasn’t sure enough that Claude was Dargent to tell Darcy. But he had to tell her he suspected him. If Claude wasn’t the man himself, he was surely involved up to his neck. He could have committed the murder in San Francisco—Edward had told him that Claude was in Boston for three straight weeks in January. It would have been difficult, but it was possible. He knew it was foolish, he knew he was letting his heart lead him, but he had to warn Darcy.
He looked up and he saw her. She was heading down the snow-banked path, her hands hidden in her muff, her cheeks aglow with the exercise. Her coat was plum-colored trimmed with dark fur, and a dark green dress hung beneath it. She hadn’t seen him yet, and then he moved out of the shadow of the tree and she recognized him. A slight scamper to her step was instantly corrected back to her ladylike pace, but then she gave in. With a grin, she grabbed her skirts and ran toward him.
Tavish’s heart squeezed with something like pain and something close to joy. As he watched her run toward him, he looked truth in the face. He loved her. He knew the feeling for what it was, though he had never felt it. It was like the first taste of champagne his father had given him, festive and bubbling on his lips and in his throat, surprising him, then a cold draft that slid into his belly and changed, warmed and glowed and spread out through his body to his fingertips.
It shook him to the core. He had never been so shaken. It was inconvenient to say the least. It was mad. To fall in love with the wife of your enemy! Bad enough when he’d thought himself merely attracted. This would weaken him, it would tempt him toward mistakes. It could ruin him.
Closer now, she saw his expression and her steps slowed. A question rose in her gray eyes. He walked toward her. He took her gloved hand in his and remembered how he’d held it at the Van Cormandts’. The feeling had started then, though he hadn’t been able to put a name to it. Now that he had, he knew he was lost. His heart beat furiously in fear, but he managed a smile.
