Once they were at the salon Mr. Campbell stayed in the entrance hall and never gave Lydia the satisfaction of seeing him in one of Madame Simone’s delicate chairs. Instead he leaned his massive shoulder against the doorjamb, occasionally glanced toward the street through the window, and sipped tea from a china cup that all but disappeared in the heart of his large palms.
Lydia forgot about him as she tried on two gowns for final alterations and leafed through pattern books and examined the latest Paris designs. She chose material for an evening gown, a riding skirt, and several day dresses while Madame Simone hovered near her shoulder, commenting on all of Lydia’s choices. The salon’s three seamstresses worked on the alterations while Lydia waited, and when the gowns were finished they were wrapped and boxed in the backroom, then handed to George Campbell to carry. Lydia enjoyed the sight of her giant protector carrying dress boxes to the carriage. Perhaps, she thought, he’d think twice before following her everywhere. What sort of danger had he thought Madame Simone’s held?
Once she was home Lydia cut the parcel string and unwrapped her new gowns. Lying between them was a small, flat brown-paper package. She picked it up, turning it over in her hands, wondering if she should open it. It wasn’t hers, of that she was certain. She hadn’t ordered any trimming or fabric for herself. One of the seamstresses had put it with her things by mistake, she decided. She was about to toss it aside when she saw the faint writing in one corner. It was her name and it had been scrawled in pencil with an impatient hand.
“What’s Madame Simone giving me?” she wondered aloud, sitting down on the edge of her bed. Lydia slid the string off the package and unfolded the paper. Her fingers trembled when she saw the contents. She stared, suddenly grateful for her father’s foresight and George Campbell’s constant presence.
Lydia lifted the scrap of yellow bloodstained fabric between her fingertips, knowing full well what she held and still not wanting to believe it. Nathan’s attempt at blackmail was obscene and she shook inwardly now, her skin cold and prickly. She had no difficulty recognizing the material for what it was: the bodice ruffle from her yellow ballgown. It was Charlotte’s blood on the gown, but Lydia remembered it had been left in Ginny’s room where she had changed her clothes.
Nathan had been quick to tell her about returning the borrowed blue gown to Ginny, but he had failed to mention that he was in possession of the hated yellow one. Lydia could think of only one reason for his failure. He had been holding the knowledge in reserve for an occasion such as this, waiting to see if he would need it to bend her to his will.
“Damn him,” she said softly. “Damn him to hell.” There was a note pinned to the ragged end of the ruffle where it had been torn free of the gown. The note was crisply folded into quarters and Lydia opened it carefully, afraid she might tear the sharp seams.We need to discuss this. Silver Lady. Midnight Thursday.
Lydia dropped the scrap of fabric back on the brown paper, wrapped it quickly, and stuffed it under her mattress. Today was Monday. She had three days to prepare for her meeting with Nathan, three days to decide how she was going to handle his ugly, underhanded attempt to make her accept his proposal. She walked briskly to the bellpull and rang for Pei Ling.
“I want you to go to the offices of theGazetteandHerald,”she said without preamble when Pei Ling arrived. “Bring back every issue since the night of my charity ball. Get someone to help you carry them and try not to let Mother or Papa see you bring them into the house.” She thrust a gold piece into Pei Ling’s hands. “I need them quickly, Pei Ling. I need your help and your silence.”
Pei Ling’s hesitation was so brief as to be nonexistent. She could not fathom why there should be any urgency regarding some old newspapers. It was an odd but harmless request, and Pei Ling never considered revealing it to Samuel or Mr. Campbell. She took one of the kitchen helpers with her and gave him change from Lydia’s gold piece to buy his silence.
Lydia excused herself from the dinner table that evening after making a halfhearted attempt at eating. She pretended not to see the worried, puzzled glances that her mother and father exchanged. There was nothing she could share with them. They would be far more concerned if they knew why she was so anxious to return to her room.
Scissors in hand, Lydia cut out every article she found about Ginny Flynt’s death, scouring the papers to make certain she missed nothing. There were only six of them. The longest, most detailed accounts were those in theGazette,written a day and two days after Ginny’s death. TheHerald’sarticles did not contain graphic descriptions. Each paper gave a separate notice in the obituaries. They all had one thing in common, however, and it was a surprise.
Ginny Flynt was not murdered, as Nathan had said. According to the newspapers, she had committed suicide.
Lydia leaned back against her intricately carved walnut headboard and closed her eyes. The clippings lay on her right, the newspapers were scattered all over the quilted bedspread. She held the sharp end of the scissors in her hand and tapped the other end against her knees as she tried to think, tried to make sense of what she had read.
It wasn’t true, of course. Ginny had not committed suicide. Lydia refused to believe it. Certainly the death of Charlotte and the baby had been a hard blow, but Ginny had given no sign that she was hurting to the point of complete hopelessness. Ginny was not despondent.
How would she know? Lydia asked herself, recalling that she had hardly been in a state that night to be aware of another’s feelings. But suicide? Ginny? No, it couldn’t be true. Yet the papers were reporting it as a suicide. She had slashed her wrists, cutting them with a razor blade the police found lying on the floor by her bed. TheGazettereporter described the scene with adjectives like blood-soaked, ghastly, and crimson when referring to the bedsheets, and fair-haired, voluptuous, and naked when referring to Ginny. He recreated the grim events of that evening for the reader, using the facts as he interpreted them, making no apology when his imagination filled in the gaps of real knowledge. He related the deaths in the brothel earlier that evening and drew the conclusion that Ginny was grieving for her friend, for the baby, for herself, and suicide presented itself as a natural, even logical escape from the misery of her existence. He described how Ginny must have taken off the blue gown she was wearing so it would not be spattered with her own blood, how she wielded the razor with deliberate strokes, and how she must have lay there, fearful, curious, and somehow satisfied that life itself was leaving her body.
Lydia dropped the scissors and held her fingers to her temples, willing herself not to be sick. It didn’t matter what the papers reported. Ginny hadn’t killed herself; she would never believe it was true. Nathan hadn’t believed it either. He had never even hinted that the accounts called it anything but murder, and Lydia wondered about that now. Had he based his knowledge on his brief acquaintance with Ginny Flynt and his assessment of her character, or had he another reason for naming her death a murder? In spite of his words to the contrary, was he the murderer?
There was no mention in any account of a certain yellow ballgown, bloodied and crumpled, lying in one corner of Ginny’s bedroom. There was only one reason theGazettereporter had failed to make something of it and that was because it hadn’t been there when he was. Nathan had dropped the blue gown when he left, but he had obviously seen the yellow one and taken it. Instead of destroying it, he’d kept it. Perhaps he had never really considered how it might be of use to him. Indeed, if Lydia had agreed to his marriage offer, she might never have known he had it. But she had humiliated him, made an enemy, and he was showing her now what that meant.
Dazed by her discovery, Lydia slid off the bed and built a fire in her fireplace. She put the clippings in the drawer of her nightstand, but she burned the newspapers and eventually the package Nathan had sent her. The damning reminder that she had also been in Ginny’s room the evening of her death disappeared in light and heat and a curl of smoke. She went to bed then, wondering if she should meet Nathan, wondering if she dared.
In the end, she felt as if she had no choice. She bought a gun. George Campbell helped her choose one, a nickel-plated derringer that she could hold easily in the palm of her hand and keep concealed in her reticule. Lydia couldn’t tell if he was secretly amused by her purchase or a little bit hurt that she thought he couldn’t protect her. Lydia decided it was best she didn’t know. She had no intention of telling him that she was plotting her escape from Nob Hill.
“Where to now, Miss Chadwick?” he asked as they walked out of the gunsmith’s. He opened the door to the carriage and helped her inside.
“The cemetery on Russian Hill,” she said.
Campbell’s craggy features were perfectly still. He gave the driver directions and followed Lydia inside the cab. “The cemetery?” he asked when they were beyond the driver’s hearing. He glanced at the roses on the seat beside her. “That’s why you took those from the garden?”
“Yes.”
“If you don’t mind me asking…the gun, the flowers, the cemetery…it’s not my funeral you’re planning, is it?”
Lydia was so startled by his unexpected conclusion that she burst out laughing.
George Campbell was not particularly comforted that she didn’t answer his question. He received his answer at the cemetery itself. Lydia walked up and down the rows of headstones until she came across the ones she was looking for. They were side by side, just beyond the umbrella shade of a weeping willow. The ground on top of the graves hadn’t settled yet and the tufts of grass were uneven in their sprouting. George looked at the headstones as Lydia bent to arrange the flowers at the base of the first.Charlotte Adams and Child. At Peace.And the second:Virginia Flynt. She Touches Heaven’s Gate.The stones were newer than even the graves, unmarked by last night’s rain. He wondered about the women she was mourning, and why, if they were close friends or relatives, she wasn’t wearing black and why she had difficulty finding the graves. He wondered why there were no dates on the stones.
Lydia straightened and stepped back from the graves. “We can go now, Mr. Campbell. I’ve made my peace.” The stones were exactly as she had requested and she silently thanked Pei Ling for taking care of the things she could not. She felt George Campbell move closer to her back as another carriage wound its way up the hill and a man on horseback appeared above them at the crest. Lydia found his precaution disconcerting when there was nothing remotely sinister about the presence of other mourners in a cemetery. The horse and rider disappeared and the carriage stopped long before it reached them. Lydia wanted to chide her bearish protector but didn’t. She remembered how simple Nathan had found it to reach out to her through Madame Simone. This very night she would be on her own and perhaps she would have reason to regret incautious words.
Leavingthe house was not terribly difficult. Mr. Campbell had gone to his own home hours earlier once Lydia assured him she was not going out for the rest of the evening. It was not strictly a lie, she told herself, since it was now Thursday morning, or at least it was after midnight. Nathan had chosen a poor time to request the meeting since Lydia’s father was only just retiring at that hour. She would be late for her appointment at the Silver Lady, but she would be there.
She had no choice but to walk, but she did have the foresight to wear clothes she lifted from her father’s wardrobe. A pair of his mining dungarees that should have been given to the rag picker long ago were belted around her waist with a cord from her drapes. She wore a baggy flannel shirt, three pairs of woolen socks to fill out the shoes that were already stuffed with paper, and a slouch hat low over her forehead. Her hair had been pulled into a tight knot on the crown of her head and stuffed under the hat. She also wore a navy blue woolen jacket with large pockets to hide her hands, the derringer, and the check she had drafted from her own account at the Bank of America.
