It wasn’t a long wait. In fact, Prudence Egan appeared so swiftly through an archway that she might have been conjured up out of thin air. She was in her middle thirties, slender and regal in bearing, dressed in an expensive blue tailor-made suit with a jacket bodice. Dark red hair worn in the current upswept and rolled fashion topped a somewhat narrow but not unattractive face. Eyes the color of emeralds regarded Sabina with a blend of wariness, distaste, and controlled anger.
“Mrs. Egan?”
“Yes. Come with me into the parlor.”
She led the way through another archway, into a room decorated with floral wallpaper, overstuffed with rococo furnishings that included a massive sideboard, and scented with patchouli oil. She turned in the middle of the room to face Sabina. Instead of issuing an invitation to be seated, she stood with arms akimbo and studied her again with a critical eye.
At length she said, “You don’t look like a detective.”
“What does a detective look like?”
“Fat, rumpled individuals chewing on cigars.”
“In a word, men.”
“In a word, yes. Men of a certain vulgar type.”
Sabina had nothing to say to that.
“Well, Mrs. Carpenter? What do you want of me?”
“As I told your maid, I’ve come on behalf of—”
“Amity Wellman.” Prudence Egan wrapped the name in a coating of ice. “What about her?”
“She has been receiving anonymous threatening notes, three of them to date.”
“Has she? I’m not surprised, given her character. But what does that have to do with me?”
“Someone, presumably the same person who wrote the notes, tried to kill her Sunday night.”
A slight muscle twitch on one cheek was Prudence Egan’s only visible reaction. “‘Tried’ means the attempt failed, I assume,” she said after a brief pause.
“It did.”
“Was she injured?”
“No, fortunately.”
“Or unfortunately, depending on one’s point of view. I repeat, what does that have to do with me?”
Sabina said, “Mrs. Wellman was candid about her relationship with your husband.”
The woman’s long upper lip curled. “Including all the sordid details, no doubt.”
“She also told me of your encounter with her.”
“I expected as much, since you’ve come here. Do you think I am the one who tried to do away with her?”
“Are you?”
“No. But I don’t mind saying whoever did would have done the world a favor if he’d succeeded. Amity Wellman deserves to be shot.”
“Shot, Mrs. Egan?”
“Yes, shot. Is that how the attempt was made?”
Sabina nodded. “In her garden at about eight o’clock. Would you mind telling me where you were at that time?”
“I would. And so I won’t. I find your insinuations insulting.”
“I haven’t insinuated anything. I’m merely asking questions, trying to find out who is responsible for this reign of terror against my client.”
“Reign of terror. My God. You make it sound as if she is a victim of the Spanish Inquisition. She’s a whore, nothing more or less.”
“A mistake in judgment doesn’t make a woman a whore; it makes her human and entitled to understanding and forgiveness. Especially a woman who has done so much to further the cause of her sisters. Or don’t you believe in woman suffrage?”
“I believe she has made me suffer. No woman who blatantly tries to steal my husband’s affection is entitled to my forgiveness, ever.”
“She had no intention of trying to steal his affection, as you put it. She entered into the affair for the same reasons many women do, loneliness, temptation, and a lapse in judgment. She loves her husband as much as you love yours.”
“I doubt that.”
“Mr. Egan shares in the responsibility for the affair. Surely you don’t deny the fact.”
“Men are weak. You ought to know, looking as you do.”
“Weakness is a poor excuse for infidelity.”
“I will not discuss my husband’s fallibilities or my marriage with you. It is none of your business.”
“It is if it involves harassment and attempted homicide,” Sabina said. “Was Mr. Egan home Sunday night?”
“Now you’re insinuating that Fenton might be the would-be assassin, is that it?”
“Questions, Mrs. Egan, not insinuations. In search of the truth.”
“You won’t find it here,” Prudence Egan said coldly. “You haven’t spoken to him yet, I take it?”
“Not yet.”
“I suggest that you don’t. He takes even less kindly than I do to scandalous and irresponsible probing into our private lives.” Then, almost as an afterthought, “He has absolutely no reason to want to harm his former paramour.”
“Mrs. Wellman thinks differently.”
“I do not care what Mrs. Wellman thinks. Or what you think.” She drew herself up, thrusting her chin forward. Anger was the dominant emotion in her now, a dark red flame to match the color of her hair. “I’ll thank you to leave now. Immediately.”
Sabina couldn’t resist saying, “And never darken your door again, as they say in the melodramas.”
“Precisely. If you do, you and your client shall hear from our attorneys.”
She stalked to the archway, stood glaring imperiously as Sabina went past her, then followed her across the foyer and shut the door firmly behind her. The loud snap of the lock clicking into place struck her as deliberate, a gesture of both aggravation and finality.
9
Sabina
It was half past twelve when the cab deposited her on the corner of Market and Sansome. In view of the fact that Fenton Egan was not due at his office until early afternoon, which likely meant one-thirty or two, she treated herself to a much more satisfactory midday meal than yesterday’s, dining at a nearby brasserie on shrimp salad and broiled sand dabs with melted butter. According to cousin Callie, butter was a product of the devil — bad for one’s digestion and circulation as well as one’s waistline. The irony in this opinion was that Callie regularly consumed gooey cakes and pastries made with a great deal of both butter and sugar, a fact she blithely ignored.
Satisfactorily fortified, Sabina once more made her way to China Basin and Egan and Bradford, Tea and Spice Importers. After this morning’s session with Prudence Egan, she half-expected this visit to be another exercise in futility. But not only was she permitted an audience with Amity’s ex-lover after having her card sent in to him, but he came out to the reception area to greet her personally and then usher her into his private office.
Amity had said that he was superficially charming, and so he was. He had held Sabina’s hand a trifle longer than necessary, appraising her in a bold but not offensive fashion, smiling pleasantly all the while. It was plain that he found her appealing to the eye, an opinion she didn’t reciprocate. He was handsome enough, she supposed, but not in the least the type of man who attracted her. Tallish, lean, with penetrating gray eyes, a considerable amount of black hair that glistened sleekly with pomade, a neatly trimmed mustache, and a small, natty imperial. His gray wool suit was expensive and immaculate, his silk cravat fastened with a not quite ostentatious ruby stickpin matched by a ring on his left pinkie. Sabina noticed that, unlike his wife, he wore no wedding ring.
His office was paneled and furnished in Philippine mahogany, the chairs covered in brightly patterned fabric. A half-smoked green-and-brown-leafed panatela burned in a copper tray on his desk, its smoke aromatic but so strong as to overwhelm the more preferable scents of tea and spices from the attached warehouse. Sabina was not fond of cigars, even the extravagant dollar variety. The only tobacco she found pleasing was the mixtures made for pipes, though the Navy Cut that John preferred was just barely tolerable.