The address, p.17
The Address, page 17
Daisy appeared with a cup of coffee, which she almost dropped when she saw the jewelry.
Sara’s mouth was dry, her limbs heavy.
Mr. Douglas rose to his feet. “It appears that we’ve found the missing necklace. In Mrs. Smythe’s desk, of all places.”
Sara shook her head. What was wrong with her? She could barely get out the words to speak. Mr. Douglas and Daisy were both looking at her as if she had two heads, waiting for her to say something. She imagined her other self, the one that she knew so well, who would take charge and get to the bottom of the mystery and at the very least not stand here mute like an idiot. But she could not form the words.
“Is something wrong with her?” said Mr. Douglas.
Sara stared over at Daisy, begging her to keep quiet, not say a word.
Then she fell to the floor, giving in to the blackness with the abandon of a drowsy child.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
New York City, January 1885
When Sara came to, she was in the staff sitting room in the basement, lying on a hard settee. The room was furnished with castoffs from the new residents, including unmatched, scratched-up chairs and a couple of wobbly tea tables. Sometimes the maids gathered here for a game of whist in the evenings, but mostly the room sat unused, as there was simply too much to do and by the end of the day the workers were too exhausted to bother with socializing.
Mr. Douglas sat in a chair opposite her, his round form squeezed in between the arms. She wondered if he’d be able to rise without taking the piece with him. A small giggle escaped from her lips.
“I see you’re recovering,” said Mr. Douglas.
“Sir, yes.” She sat upright, fighting a wave of dizziness. To lie horizontal and not have to speak or be spoken to, that was all she wanted right now.
“Do you remember what’s happened?”
The necklace. Of course. It had been found in her desk.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Douglas, I don’t know what’s wrong.” Her eyelids began drooping. “I haven’t been feeling well, but that’s the first time I’ve seen that necklace, I’m certain. How did I get down here?”
He rubbed his chin with the edge of his nubby index finger. “A couple of the porters carried you down. Thank God there were no tenants coming or going. This is a terrible situation we’re in. Do you need to see a doctor?”
What if the doctor guessed her condition? “No, I’m fine. That’s not necessary. The necklace. I’m sure there’s an explanation. There must be. Please, I must speak with Mr. Camden.”
“He’s not available at the moment.” He breathed out a deep sigh, and his acrid breath made her nose crinkle. “As you can understand, Mrs. Smythe, we cannot have an occurrence such as this at the Dakota. We will need to make a full investigation, and I suggest that you go with the police and answer their questions fully.”
“The police?”
Mr. Douglas stood and opened the door. Two men in uniform came forward and lifted her up by her arms.
She craned her neck, searching for Mr. Douglas. “Where are they taking me?”
“Simply answer their questions and you’ll be back here in no time. Go quietly.” He looked at the men. “Take her up the ramp and out to Seventy-Third Street. Not the main gates.”
The general haze that had wrapped around her thoughts the past week lifted, and for a few seconds her thinking rang clear. She was being arrested for stealing, taken away. “Please, I must speak with Mr. Camden before I go.”
Mr. Douglas patted her arm as he would a child’s. “For now, go along with these men. It’s all a misunderstanding, most likely. The main thing is we have the jewelry and I doubt Mrs. Camden is interested in making a fuss. But we do have to get to the bottom of all this. Don’t you agree? I’m sure you want that as much as I do.” He shook his head and spoke to the policemen. “Of course, I knew we were taking a chance with putting a woman in charge, as sometimes pretty baubles can be too difficult to resist.”
She shook her head. Had she taken it? If only she could sleep for a few hours, the answer would come to her, she was sure of that. It would all be cleared up, just as Mr. Douglas said it would.
“I’ll need my cloak and hat.” Sara managed to get out the words and addressed the smaller of the two policemen, who barely even had a beard, he seemed so young.
The man looked at his partner, who nodded.
Daisy was waiting at the top of the ramp. “Here you go, Mrs. Smythe.” As she handed the cloak and hat over, she gave Sara a reassuring touch of her fingers. “What can I do?”
“No speaking,” said the older policeman.
“At the very least can I tell her where I’m going?” asked Sara.
The man nodded. “To the police court on Sixty-Fifth.”
“Tell Mr. Camden that, ask for him. He’ll be able to help.”
“Of course he will. I’ll tell him right off.”
Sara had passed the police court a dozen or so times. It resembled a fortress, with thick gray stones and a chunky parapet across the roofline. The policemen escorted her there by foot but refused to answer any of her questions about what was going to happen to her. To them, she was a thief, and an addled one at that. She stumbled once or twice on the way and swore she heard the older man mumble “drunkard” under his breath.
Inside the courtroom, dozens of people milled about, some shouting, others slumped on benches. Sara was taken into a back room and placed on a wooden chair outside a door marked JUDGE’S CHAMBERS. After ten minutes of waiting, the door swung open and she was brought forth into a gloomy room filled with books and papers. The judge looked on her kindly over his spectacles. He shooed away the policemen.
“Now, tell me what’s happened, Mrs. Smythe.”
She was about to plead her case, to attempt to explain the preposterous circumstances she’d found herself in, but before she could get a word out, Mr. Douglas and a man carrying a medical bag entered. Her heart began to pound. How had they gotten a doctor here so quickly? If she was subjected to an exam, would he know that she was pregnant? She hadn’t even begun to show yet; her belly didn’t look much different than it had before.
“Judge Harrington, I’m Mr. Douglas, the agent for the Dakota.”
“I see. Next time, please do me the courtesy of knocking.” He leaned forward and looked at Sara. “Where are you from, my dear?”
“Fishbourne, England, sir. I arrived in the country last fall.”
“Fishbourne! I visited the village a number of times, summering in Portsmouth last year. Delightful place. You work at the Dakota Apartment House?”
“As resident managerette, yes.”
“How long have you worked there?”
“I began the day I arrived.” No. That wasn’t the right answer.
The judge frowned.
“Thank you, Mrs. Smythe.” He took off his spectacles and lowered the timbre of his voice. “Tell me what’s happened, Mr. Douglas. You must have a good reason to request a private appearance.”
Mr. Douglas cleared his throat. “Your Honor, Mrs. Smythe has been acting strangely the past few weeks. She’s been found wandering the hallways, seemingly confused. There have been complaints. Then today we found a valuable necklace belonging to a tenant in her desk drawer.”
“Mrs. Smythe, did you take the jewels?”
She shook her head. “No, sir.” Her voice caught in her throat, and tears burned her eyes. “I’ve had a difficult time of it lately. I’ve been ill. But I swear I didn’t take them. I assure you. Someone else did and placed them in my desk.”
“Why don’t you conduct your exam, Dr. Wilde.” The judge waved a hand in her direction. The evidence was against her; she’d lost her early momentum.
“Have you been drinking, Mrs. Smythe?” asked the doctor.
“No. I haven’t.”
“Have you been taking any laudanum or such drugs?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Yet Mr. Douglas says you passed out while being questioned at the Dakota, and that you appeared disoriented.”
“I was, but I think that’s just because I’ve been unwell.”
Mr. Douglas interrupted. “Look, Your Honor, it’s important that this not make the papers. The building just opened and we can’t have current or prospective tenants knowing that there was a thief in our midst. The Clark family and I request that this be taken care of swiftly and quietly.”
“What do you propose, Mr. Douglas? Being that you seem ready to take over my job for me.”
She saw her chance. “Ask Mr. Camden to vouch for me. He’ll say that I didn’t steal the jewels, that someone else did and made it look like it was me.”
“How would he know that?” The judge looked at her from under his bushy eyebrows.
“He knows I wouldn’t do such a thing. We are friends, you see.”
Mr. Douglas shook his head. “She’s deluded, clearly. Mr. Camden is a tenant of the Dakota. He lives there with his wife and family. As a matter of fact, it was the wife’s jewelry that went missing.”
She had no hope. No hope at all.
Mr. Douglas shot Sara a hard look. “Nothing the girl says explains who took the property, if she didn’t. But we don’t want to send her to jail.”
“You don’t?”
“No, sir. As I mentioned before, that would attract unnecessary attention.”
“Then where would you like me to send her?”
“Somewhere she can get help, for whatever is causing her confusion.”
Perhaps she’d misjudged Mr. Douglas. Indeed, he laid a hand on her shoulder, like a father might. She certainly needed to find out what was wrong with her, if it was the baby causing her befuddlement or something else. If she could avoid going to jail, she could straighten herself out, get well, and then figure out what exactly had happened. Without meaning to, she began to weep.
“She is certainly fragile,” offered the doctor.
“So you agree that she should be sent off?”
“I do, Your Honor.”
The judge sighed. “Very well. She can leave for the island this afternoon. They will determine if she can be rehabilitated.”
Rehabilitated?
Mr. Douglas gestured to the doctor, who pulled out a piece of paper from his bag and placed it on the judge’s desk. The judge glanced at it for only a second before signing it at the bottom.
“To the island, then, Mrs. Smythe. And may God help you.”
“What island?”
The policeman practically shoved her up into the wagon, ignoring her question.
“I have a right to know. Where am I being sent?”
After the judge had made his pronouncement, Sara was shuttled out a side door and into a transport where a worn-looking woman sat shivering in the corner, wrapped in a dingy gray blanket. The policeman shut the door, and Sara tried to ask the woman if she knew anything about where they were headed, but she looked back at her blankly. Another girl, wearing garish face paint over a blackened eye, lay against the backboard, mouth open, asleep.
The wagon stopped three times, and each time a new mixture of women climbed on board. Two were seriously confused and babbled to themselves. Several had terrible coughs that made Sara worry about her health, but at least it did seem that they were all going to a hospital of some sort.
Finally, the wagon stopped. Outside, the East River ran fast and cold, fierce waves dodged every which way with the turn of the tide. Across the river, a half dozen enormous buildings emerged through the sleet, spaced out in wide intervals on a thin strip of land.
If she got on this island, how would she get off? Panic built up in her throat, but there was nowhere to run, no means of escape. The women—they now numbered about a dozen or so—lumbered onto a boat that strained wildly in its moorings like a chained, rabid dog. On the other side of the dock, twenty men were being herded onto a separate ferry. A disheveled drunk called them all whores before being clocked by a guard’s baton.
She stared out the grimy window as the boat chugged away from the city. Several stocky officers and two nurses met them on the other side. A list of names was called out. Sara’s was not among them.
“I’m sorry, but what is this? Where are we?” she asked the woman holding the list.
“This is the Charity Hospital. If I didn’t call your name, stay put.”
She sat back as the boat headed off to the next stop, another pier several hundred yards north of the first one. A large sign indicated it was a workhouse for petty criminals and the like. Again, her name wasn’t called.
Sara looked at the four companions who were left with her. Two of them were the babblers.
Finally, near the northern tip of the island, Sara and the other women disembarked. “Out you go. Move along.”
Several orderlies herded them toward a five-story octagonal building of white stone with two wings flanking it at right angles. A windowed cupola on top of the octagon stuck out like an insect’s eye. “What is this?” Sara spoke softly, almost to herself. The woman walking next to her took her hand.
“Do you not know where you’ve been put away?”
Sara looked at her. The woman was young, with kind brown eyes. She didn’t wear a hat, and snowflakes dotted the waves of her hair. “A private hospital?”
“No. We’re going to Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum.”
A madhouse.
They thought she was insane.
“But I’m not mad.”
“Nor am I,” said the woman.
“Shut up, you two. No talking.” A nurse the size of a bear banged the girl hard on the shoulder, causing her to stumble.
They were brought inside the octagon and placed on hard benches that lined the walls. Sara stared about her, trying desperately to get her bearings, to make sense of where she was. A wide staircase rose from the ground floor, twisting upward, and she could see doors off each landing. The place was cold, and most of the nurses wore several layers over their uniforms of brown-and-white-striped dresses and white aprons, making them appear much bigger than normal, and quite threatening. One by one, the new patients were brought into a room. When Sara’s name was called, she stumbled in and sat at a desk opposite a man who introduced himself as Dr. Fields. He asked her the same questions as the judge, her name, where she was from.
“Do you know why you are here?” He took off his glasses. His eyes were bloodshot, with puffy half-moons underneath.
She must make them see their diagnosis was wrong.
“I was told I needed to go to a hospital, and I think if you’ll check, you’ll see that I’ve been ill and my memory’s not been very reliable, and because of that I fell into a bit of trouble. But I don’t belong here. I need to rest and get my strength back, and once I’m well, I’ll be able to explain what happened, I’m sure of it.”
She was rambling on too long. The bored look in his eyes told her he’d heard this before and was immune to her distress.
“Stand up on the scale and we’ll take your measurements.” The nurse called out her weight and height and then grabbed her by the arm. “That’ll do. You can go now.”
“But can I please ask a question?”
The doctor sighed. “Yes, Mrs. Smythe.”
“How long do I have to be here?”
“Indefinitely. Until you are well.”
“But I am well. Don’t I appear well to you? Is there anything at all in my conduct or appearance that seems mad?”
“Illnesses of the mind are notoriously difficult to cure, I’m afraid. You’ll be here until we deem that you are no longer a threat to society. Or yourself. Good day.”
She returned to her bench and avoided the inquiring gazes of the women still to be called. The cold made her teeth chatter and outside a blizzard blew up full force, the sound of the wind muting the mutterings of the other women.
Her mother had been considered mad. They’d been walking back from church once when a group of boys caught up to them. One leaped forward, possibly on a dare from the others, and called her the madwoman of Fishbourne. Sara had prayed that her mother would ignore them, walk forward. The cottage was in sight; they were close to home. But instead, her mother had turned and screamed at the boys until spittle came out of her mouth, her face turning red. They’d taken off, scared witless, at which point her mother had turned to her and smiled. “That takes care of that, then,” she said.
As a madwoman might.
A bell rang and a long line of patients made their way down the spiral staircase. Sara and the other new arrivals stared up at them, taking in every detail. The women didn’t speak, just marched with vacant stares until they reached the door of what had to be the dining room. Then they raced off like children, disappearing out of sight. Sara and the others were told to follow.
In contrast to the detailed beauty of the octagon, the dining room was stark, with no decoration or molding. She found an empty spot at a table where a tin plate and spoon with a piece of bread and a cup of weak tea sat. The bread was stale, the butter rancid, the tea cold. But she forced it all down, knowing that she’d regret missing the meal and her strength had to be kept up. The nurses stood around, bored, and the chatter of the patients almost sounded normal, as if it were mealtime at a boarding school for girls.
“Bath time for the new girls,” announced a nurse with an inordinately large head. Sara heard one of the other nurses call her Nurse Garelick.
Sara followed the queue upstairs to the very top floor and into a large room filled with several sinks and three tubs. Her hopes for a hot bath were dashed when she saw the girl at the head of the line, a small thing whose freckles reminded her of Daisy, stripped of her clothes by the nurses. Crying, she was forced into a tub and cold water was poured over her head, followed by a harsh scrubbing with a sponge. When Sara’s turn came, she took a deep breath as the cascade of freezing water poured over her, into her ears and eyes and down her back. She’d gotten used to taking an unheated bath in England on the warmer summer nights, but this was different, and she cried out in shock. The hard scrub would have almost been a salve to the cold if it hadn’t seemed like they were intent on taking off a layer of skin.
