The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewart Page 6

  “Is that why I’m psychic now, too?” I asked Mrs. Northe. “I dreamed about Rachel. I know she’s in trouble. I’ve dreamed of a morgue, of dead bodies sitting up. Am I clairvoyant, now? Prophetic?”

  “Dear God.” Father put his head in his hand, rubbing the crease of his worried brow.

  Mrs. Northe sipped tea before replying. “When your soul communed with Jonathon in the painting, it opened mental doors that could not have been opened otherwise. Jonathon, too, has gained a second sight since his incident. His ability to see auras will help him see danger directly. The paths of light are not leaving you defenseless against the walk of darkness.”

  “Evelyn, please,” my father begged. “Can’t she be spared all this? Can’t you enlist your friends upstate, fellow spiritualists, in this cause instead?”

  “It’s too late,” she replied simply. “Natalie is inextricably a part of the unfolding drama. Jonathon, too. As am I.”

  I closed my eyes briefly, fighting back tears, struggling to speak, struggling to come to terms. “Please do not…talk to Mother again without me,” I managed, dabbing a handkerchief to my eyes.

  I was still reeling about Gareth and Evelyn. Initially, flirtation between my father and Mrs. Northe had been novel. I’d never thought of my father as a possible suitor to anyone. But this was becoming something real that would change the dynamic forever, something that would at long last displace not only me, but my mother. I couldn’t think about that now.

  “Have you been in touch with Rachel since the séance?” I asked, my jaw still clenched.

  “I went to look in on her at the hospital,” Mrs. Northe replied. “But Preston’s wing has gone dark and quiet, and she wasn’t there. A matron at the door said Preston was traveling while his wing is under renovation. Rachel left a note for you. Hopefully her address is therein.”

  “We must go to her tomorrow.”

  My father stared back and forth at us as if he wondered what he’d let into the house.

  I was exhausted and had no more energy left for this or any other conversation.

  “It’s good to be home,” I said, kissing my baffled father on the head and Mrs. Northe on the cheek. “And it will be good to get a good night’s sleep.”

  I took Rachel’s note and went upstairs.

  There, I began reading and wished I hadn’t.

  Chapter 7

  My dear Natalie,

  It’s been too long. Don’t scold me for hiding under rocks. I came to see you, and while I regret I missed you, what a pleasant surprise that there was a woman when I came to call who could speak in sign language! Mrs. Northe signed very lovely things about you and said you were on vacation out west. I hope you are having a lovely time and that this finds you well when you return.

  I’ve thought of you often since I left Connecticut to tend Aunt Miriam in her illness. I still have all your notes from class. I read them to put me in a good mood.

  I’m sorry I never wrote after I left. I got so caught up with Auntie. You remember her, don’t you? From the Seder she hosted when she came to visit?

  Do you speak at all? How is your condition? I kept expecting words to burst out of you. Like a bird from a cage. Not that I would be able to hear them. But I imagine reading your lips would be as amusing as your notes.

  After Aunt Miriam died, it was like I died too. She was so full of fire. To see her waste away was shocking. It wasn’t fair. I was angry at God for taking her. I guess I still am. I’m even more angry that her spirit didn’t stay to keep me company. I guess it means she’s happy and at rest. But I’m very lonely. I’ve written to my family in Germany, but they don’t have any money to bring me home. I’ll have to save for the trip.

  I’m hoping that since you didn’t run away from me when I said I heard the dead, you’ll bear with me now. I need your advice.

  I work for Dr. Preston in the basement of the German Hospital on Seventy-Seventh Street where Aunt Miriam was being treated. The moment I saw him, I heard a voice in my head say: “That man is my husband. He’d give anything in the world to know I am all right. To speak with me. It’s his love for me that won’t let me go…”

  I took a patient’s chart and wrote that message on a blank space. When Dr. Preston saw the words, he was shocked. He told me they could only be from his dead wife, Laura. He said he’d pay me if I spoke with her more and would tell him what she said.

  I agreed. It was the only way I could think of to help support Aunt Miriam—even though I could never tell her about it. Suffragette and union organizer she may have been, but she did have her limits.

  I never saw Laura. I don’t see spirits. I feel them. I hear what they want me to hear. But Laura told Dr. Preston, through me, to let her go and that she would be all right. That she loved him. Everything you’d hope the dead would say.

  Then he started bringing others into his office. He’d call me in while I was helping the maids in the hospital. In his office where wide windows let in bright light, some sorrowful face would look up, hoping I could share something from someone they had lost.

  Sometimes I connected. I’d write out words or phrases. Objects or articles of clothing, trinkets or favorite jewelry helped make contact. I try to make sense of the scraps. But spirits are scattered echoes of us. It isn’t like sending letters. I’m like a faulty telegraph cable. Now and then a choppy message comes through.

  More often than not, though, I don’t connect. I try to scrawl notes saying it means loved ones passed peacefully. Hardly a comfort to those who want “proof.” But I don’t know any more about what happens after death now than I did as a child, clinging to the beliefs of my people.

  My séances have been moved into a small, gray basement room. Dr. Preston calls it my office, but it’s more like a dungeon. I’m a door down from the morgue. Dr. Preston thinks if I’m closer to death, I’ll be able to communicate better with it. Even on warm days, nothing can shake the chill.

  Dr. Preston has started bringing in trinkets on his own, possessions from those who died in his wing of the hospital. Once I touch the items, he puts them in a box and asks me to connect the spirit who owned them. He claims he’s testing how materialistic a spirit is and that I’m helping his experiments on the soul. But I don’t think a spirit should be encouraged by anything but seeking its rest. I’m afraid that by tying spirit to object, I’m participating in an unnatural part of the human relationship between the living and the dead.

  What do you think, Natalie? Am I doing something wrong?

  Dr. Preston was so passionate, so desperate. It’s hard for me to say no to the living. But I wonder what the dead think of it all. All I can sense is sadness, which worries me.

  Today a new box arrived. Again Dr. Preston asked me to connect a spirit with the item therein. But I don’t know what it was. With lockets or other personal items, I have the piece in hand. Not a box to separate the connection. But Preston said it was extremely private and I’d been requested by family members not to touch anything directly. Yet no family members were present. Dr. Preston just had me make sure I asked for a name.

  Even if I wanted to play Pandora with that box, it was locked. All I heard was a spirit’s name. A name and lots of crying.

  I try to pray out my troubles at the synagogue a few blocks away to lift my sorrows up. Like prophets did. But I’m scared. Light a candle for me, Natalie, like in the seder. I’m afraid I’m bad luck. When you receive this, if you could write or visit me, I’d be grateful.

  Your friend,

  Rachel

  Of course, a nightmare followed that night.

  Rachel appeared in that room where I’d first seen her, a small, dim room. Her “office.” She sat at a round table, a leather-bound box before her. A red droplet pooled at one of the corners. The room was freezing cold, making my breath a cloud. Rachel didn’t look at me at first. She was dazed, focused on the box, her hands limp on either side of it.

  I took a step closer, and she turned to me in a jarring m
otion, her dark hair disheveled, her pale face gaunt. Her expression, which was usually so soft and amenable, was horrified, her dark eyes wide and bloodshot.

  “Make it stop,” she signed to me slowly, her hands shaking to form the words.

  Then she put her hands on the lid of the box. And opened it.

  Inside was a severed human hand.

  Voices from unseen bodies started screaming. So did I.

  A moment later my father was at the door, having groggily flung it wide without knocking. “Natalie, what on earth—”

  The sight of my room and my father steadied me.

  “Nightmare,” I said.

  Father rubbed his face, worried. “Mrs. Northe said you needed to go far from the city to clear yourself of the cloud of dark magic. Have you done so? Did you go far enough to break free? Or does the curse linger on in your dreams?”

  These were not terms my father was used to. He hated such talk, so it was valiant of him to try and relate to me. “I…I can’t say. But nightmares are nothing new, Father. I’ve always had them.”

  He came forward and kissed me on the head. “I wish you didn’t,” he soothed, and went back to the door. He turned. “Tomorrow, why don’t you meet me at the end of my workday and we’ll go visit your mother. What do you think?”

  I felt a smile break over my face, and with it, the shadows of nightmare rolled away. “I’d love that.”

  “So would I. Please rest, darling. No matter what you’ve gotten wrapped up in, it’s so good to have you home.”

  A stray tear fell from my eye. “It’s good to be home.”

  Chapter 8

  First thing in the morning, when I came down to the breakfast table for eggs, Father handed me an envelope marked “Cunard.” That was a steamer line.

  In the same instant that my heart thrilled at the prospect of an important note from Jonathon, it chilled. What if it was something terrible? Father stared at me, as if waiting for me to elaborate. I ran to my room, my heart thudding. I didn’t want to open the envelope in front of Father. I was still trying to protect him, even though he was making every effort to keep pace with our strange events.

  “News from your lord, is it?” he called after me, bewildered.

  “I hope…” I called back from the top of the stair.

  “I’m off to work,” he said. “I assume Evelyn is entertaining you today?”

  Evelyn. I was going to have to get used to that familiarity. “Yes,” I called. “Have a lovely day. I’ll meet you in your office this evening and we’ll go to Woodlawn. I love you.”

  “I…love you too,” he said, surprised that I was the first to say it.

  I tore open the envelope. My relief was immediate when I could tell it was not news of doom or death. But it was an odd instruction.

  TRANS-ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH COMPANY

  Across the Veil. Booth’s Theatre. Ask Veil about the last time he saw my family—if he remembers anything odd. —J

  I thought a moment about what or who he meant. I realized he must mean Nat, his actor friend who’d been involved with the London clinic.

  I’d have to ask Mrs. Northe to go with me to the show. I couldn’t afford to be wary of her. She’d so swiftly become inextricably wrapped up in my life that I couldn’t seem to operate without her. This chafed at my increasingly independent sensibilities. But I didn’t understand operating in high society—or much of any society really. I was nowhere without the calm, capable guidance of Mrs. Northe, and I needed to accept that fact. It seemed I needed to accept her increasing presence in my home as well.

  Father is a museum man, a man of static art and the occasional concert. He finds theater a bit silly. Not one for crowds unless they stare silently in appreciation of a canvas, so I couldn’t ask him to go. And if he suspected any more foul play surrounding the Denbury name, I was afraid he’d forbid Jonathon to come anywhere near me.

  Bessie announced that Mrs. Northe’s carriage had pulled up. It was as if Mrs. Northe knew I needed her. Of course she knew.

  I darted out and down the stairs, kissing Bessie once on the cheek, which seemed to surprise her. I was through taking the people in my life for granted.

  Once I ducked in the carriage, I handed Mrs. Northe the letter from Rachel.

  “Read it.”

  She did and paled. “Oh, my. I wonder what’s in those boxes.”

  “If it’s what was in my dream, I fear even more for her,” I murmured. Mrs. Northe stared at me a moment, and thankfully didn’t ask me to elaborate upon my nightmare.

  We gave the driver Rachel’s address on Seventy-Seventh Street. We rang and rang. No one answered. There was no activity in the curtains of her floor. No one was there. We then strode an avenue over to Preston’s wing of the hospital to find it still shuttered. Mrs. Northe paused a moment outside. She closed her eyes.

  “I sense no one within. Just…death.”

  “And Rachel?” I asked fearfully. “Can you sense if she’s alive?”

  “She is, but she’s fled somewhere. Scared. That’s all I can gather.”

  ***

  “I’ve been given an instruction,” I told Mrs. Northe later that afternoon over tea. “Jonathon sent a telegraph. I must attend a performance here in the city. A show called Across the Veil. Do you know it?”

  Mrs. Northe nodded. “Nathaniel Veil. I hear he’s quite the talented young man. Popular with the young ladies, too,” she said with a knowing look. “Take care.”

  “Well, he’s a friend of Lord Denbury. An attractive man like Jonathon invites attractive company,” I said, and had a sudden panic at the thought of him being mobbed by society ladies when he returned to England. “Jonathon thinks Mr. Veil may have seen his parents just before their death.”

  “Any further news from London?”

  I shook my head.

  “Have you a suitable gown? You’ll get more out of Mr. Veil if you’re at your beautiful best,” she said with a smirk.

  I thought of my one evening dress, the green one, the one Maggie and her friends had made fun of. It must have been the look on my face that made her drain her tea, pay the bill, and drag me back to the carriage.

  “Well, then. Ladies’ Mile, my dear. I never did get to take you shopping.”

  I grinned despite myself. Wary as she made me at times, she always pulled me back into her warmth, her spell impossible to break. “You’re too kind, Mrs. Northe.”

  “I do try. Maybe one day you’ll even call me Evelyn.”

  I looked at her a moment. Somehow, I just couldn’t. I felt more comfortable thinking of her in a position of authority, and she was still too mysterious for me to call her by her first name, to accept that she was family.

  Ladies’ Mile.

  On Fifth and Sixth avenues, the boulevards of castle-like stores are filled with unimaginable treasure. It was the only place a respectable woman can walk the street unescorted, as she is there upon the harmless business of beauty and fashion. Ladies’ Mile is the one sphere in the city where women are allowed wholly to rule.

  I’d passed this parade of palaces with trepidation, as I was a woman who could almost be welcome there. My clothes were fine enough not to be escorted from the buildings, but I’d be regarded in the same way I saw the finery: with aspiration. As if it was something I could hope for, nearly reach, but not quite grasp.

  With Mrs. Northe by my side it was a different story.

  The tailors and clerks knew her by name, and in a whirlwind of satin, organza, bombazine, taffeta, lace, and thousands of buttons and clasps, I was transformed time and again into a princess. I didn’t say much through it all. I really couldn’t, in fact.

  Each store was staggering in its interior, as if they were palaces or opera houses.

  The wide, yearning eyes of each seamstress and tailor, counter girl, and milliner—all of them my class and striving, surely wishing they too could have a fairy godmother like mine—were so overwhelming that they triggered that anxious clench in my throat t
hat constricted my speech again. I managed a brief hello, enough that they didn’t think me incapable, but Mrs. Northe did most of the talking. After all, she’d be doing the buying. I hoped Jonathon might offer her something in return for all this kindness; I was doing his bidding in this business, after all. I hated to owe anyone anything, and things like this only put me further in debt to Mrs. Northe.

  It was, ironically, at A. T. Stewart’s (no relation, I only wish) that Mrs. Northe and I finally settled on something, as if everything else had just been whetting our appetites, and I realized she’d been dissatisfied only so that she could save the best for last.

  “Now, from what I know of Veil and his tastes, it has to be something dark. Dark and dramatic. What is your favorite color, Natalie?”

  “Purple,” I managed after a moment, needing to press past my comfort in quiet colors.

  “Indeed, you’ll look ravishing in a deep, dark plum. It should be trimmed darkly with onyx beads and starched black lace. You’ll see why.”

  Jonathon had said something about how Nathaniel was as fond as I was of Poe and dressed daily in mourning. This evening’s costuming should fit his bill.

  We found something breathtaking in a purple that looked nearly blood-black from some angles and then shimmering rich plum in other lights, the sheen of the taffeta making it like a jewel shining darkly in its cut angles. The dress was beaded in black, and satin ribbon trim gathered up the bustle at the rear. Trim gave elegant definition to each ruffle of the layered skirts, the taffeta brushing out around me a foot in each direction with a gathered train. Flattering to curves, the dress had a tapered, V-line bodice, a plunging neckline, and capped sleeves opening to a bell at mid-forearm. Just a bit of wrist was left exposed once netted lace gloves, each clasped by a black pearl, glided over my palms.