CHAPTER 54
Evelyn
The front parlor in this house is the finest room I’ve ever seen. The furniture is upholstered in expensive velvet brocade with satin trim, the wool rugs are Persian, the woodwork gleams, and the crystal chandelier above my head sparkles like it is made of starlight. Fresh flowers in Oriental vases grace every table even though it is October. The teacup in my hand is delicate bone china with gold filigree.
Agnes Prinsen, Ursula’s employer, sits across from me, silver-haired and plump. The young maid who brought in the tea stands just to my left, her demeanor shy and hesitant. Matilda did not know she’d be asked to stay after she’d delivered the tray and I can see she very much wishes to be dismissed back to the kitchen.
But I’ve come to the Prinsen home for help with my patient. At Dr. Bellfield’s direction, I’ve spoken with Ursula several times but have been unable to break through her armor. I’ve also had no luck in finding any of her extended family to help me piece together her history. I’ve searched all the school records and orphanages in Philadelphia for traces of Ursula’s life before she became a maid for the Prinsenhousehold but have found nothing. Ursula seems to be a young woman with no past, but I know that is impossible. Everyone has a past, and everyone’s past matters. When I asked Dr. Bellfield if I might be allowed to go to the home where Ursula had been a maid to speak with those she’d worked with, he’d at first balked. He had never troubled himself to go to a patient’s place of employment for insights the family could not supply.
“You’re too impatient, Miss Bright,” he’d said. “If you just continue your sessions with Ursula, I am sure in time she will reveal to you why she wanted to end her life.”
“But if we could understand the reason why now, we could help her now,” I’d replied. “She just stares out the window, surely trying to think up a new way to kill herself. What if she’d confided in one of the other maids? What if she had told one of them why she is so sad? If I knew what it was, I could help ease her past this heartache without her having to be the one to reveal its source.”
“Sometimes it is part of the patient’s recovery to be the one to reveal the source of her anguish,” he’d replied.
“And the other times?” I had asked. “What about those other times?”
He was silent for a moment as he pondered this. Then he gave me his permission.
Agnes and Walter Prinsen, who’d made their fortune in the furniture business, were only too happy to allow me to speak to their other maid, Matilda, especially since they had little information regarding Ursula themselves. Agnes Prinsen had hired Ursula without references after they had met on the street. Ursula was selling sweets from a trolley and Agnes had taken pity on her and had bought some. They talked and Agnes soon found out the girl was an orphan sleeping on the floor of an overcrowded row house. Moved by compassion, Agnes had offered her a job as a kitchen maid and a place to live. She had not probed for more personal information because Ursula seemed guarded, as though she was hiding from someone. The Prinsens’ cook had hadminimal personal conversation with Ursula in the year she was there, and the housekeeper had had none. But Matilda, the upstairs maid who made the beds and did the laundry and served guests, had shared a room with her. Surely they had become friends, at least to an extent, and had perhaps talked at night as they lay in their beds.
Matilda stands before me now looking as though she thinks Agnes and I are somehow holding her responsible for what Ursula did to herself. She looks younger than her eighteen years. I try to reassure her that Ursula simply needs our help.
“She is feeling better, but she is still very melancholy,” I say. “If we can discover what is making her so sad, we can help her find happiness again. You’d be doing her a great kindness if you could help me. Would you do that?”
Matilda looks from me to her employer and back to me again. “I don’t know how I can help you, miss,” she says, her face pale with worry that her job hangs in the balance.
“Just answer Miss Bright’s questions truthfully, Matilda,” Agnes Prinsen says, “even if you must reveal a secret Ursula told you to keep. Secrets will not help her right now. Surely you can see that.”
“But... but she never told me any secrets.”
“Did she say where she lived after her mother died? After the flu?” I ask.
“She didn’t like to talk about her mother. Or the flu.”
“She never mentioned an orphanage? Or who took her in? Or where she went to school?”
“No, miss.”
“What did she like to talk about?”
Matilda bites her lip in consternation. “Nothing special. I did most of the talking. She just listened. I thought she was shy.”
“Can you tell me if anything out of the ordinary happened on the day she tried to hurt herself? Anything at all? Or the day before?”
Matilda slowly shakes her head. “It was like any other day. Both days were.”
“And she never had visitors or letters sent to her in the mail?” I ask this of both the maid and Agnes, and they shake their heads.
“You never woke to hear her crying in her bed?”
“No, miss,” Matilda replies.
I am gaining no new ground here, and it perplexes me. I don’t want to merely hope that someday Ursula will tell me why she wanted to end her life. I can’t assume that I have the luxury of time. What if she finds another way to kill herself? What if she somehow escapes from the hospital and runs in front of a train or an automobile, or gets ahold of a pair of hospital scissors and slices her wrists? What if the second time she tries to commit suicide she is successful? She would be no different from Sybil then, a beautiful woman I cannot save. Every time I see Conrad Reese visiting Sybil, or holding her hand, or kissing her cheek, my heart feels riven in two. The devotion Conrad has for her is everything I want for myself. It is what I want for Maggie and Willa and even Papa were he to marry again. It is why I don’t think Maggie should settle for marriage to a man she is merely fond of. It is why I can’t keep my gaze off Conrad when he visits his wife. If only there was something I could do to restore Sybil to him. It angers and pains me daily that there isn’t. But I know I can help Ursula. I know I can. If I can just figure out what happened to her.
I am pondering this when Matilda clears her throat.
“She... she did have a secret place in our room where she hid things.” The maid practically whispers this, and her face turns crimson. Matilda had snooped into this secret place; this is obvious.
