“I will show myself to my room, I don’t need an escort.”
Lillian strode to the stairs, wondering if Miss Helen would try to stop her.
She did not.
Instead of continuing up to the third floor, Lillian walked out onto the main hallway on the first floor. A parlor maid let out a soft “Oh” as Lillian walked by, but otherwise didn’t call out. If the front door was clear, Lillian would continue, with only the clothes on her back. She had nothing to lose.
But the same beefy footman was outside, standing under the porte-cochère.
Over at the organ niche, she spied Mr. Graham’s leather case resting next to the bench. A quick glance up the stairway showed an open door to the organ chamber, where she and Mr. Danforth had shared that lethal kiss.
She tiptoed up the marble stairs and slipped inside.
Mr. Graham was inspecting one of the pipes near the window. He turned around and wiped his hands on his trousers. “Ah, Miss Lilly. I was just doing a final visit. Mrs. Frick said the sound of organ music reminds her too much of her husband. I’m to play today, but then that’s the end of it. On to bigger and better things.”
How he could blithely make small talk when Lillian’s life had been ripped to shreds infuriated her. “Or maybe they want to get rid of you, after you brought my scandal to their attention?”
“I’m sorry?”
“They know everything, now. If I wasn’t already in trouble, you doubled it.”
“How?” He pushed his glasses farther up on the bridge of his nose.
“You told the private detective who I was, and now they’re about to cart me off to jail.”
“Whatever you’re accusing me of, I didn’t do it.” His cadence was even, not the overemphatic denial of a liar. But maybe he was a good one.
“You overheard Mrs. Whitney call me Angelica. And later, you listened as I admitted the same to Mr. Danforth, in the driveway.”
“Yes, I was there on both counts. And yes, I did suspect who you were. But I would never have told anyone else.”
“I’m guessing you were recompensed generously for the information. I should have known after you came to me in the basement and threatened me.”
“I was trying to warn you.” The words tumbled out. “You see, the niche where the organ is located captures the utterances of anyone in range, like a whispering gallery. Before the family left to bury Mr. Frick in Pennsylvania, I overheard Mrs. Dixie and Mr. Childs talking about the missing cameo, mentioning your name in connection with it. I was trying to tell you to be careful.”
She revisited their conversation. Had she jumped to conclusions, having already been on the defensive, and missed his whole point? She remembered the harsh way that she’d dismissed him. “I didn’t realize . . .” She trailed off, unsure.
“In any case, I don’t find it the least bit scandalous that you are Angelica. The Fricks have quite a double standard, surrounded by hundreds of bronzed nudes yet mortified at the thought of a naked woman in the flesh.”
There was no salaciousness behind his statement. He was simply stating a fact, and his eyes didn’t wander over her body as he spoke, as Mr. Childs’s and the private detective’s had. After all this time, someone besides herself understood the bitter irony of the situation.
She believed him, and all her bluster fell away.
She walked to the small window and leaned on the sill. Too bad it was too small for her to crawl through. “I have to get out of here. I’m in terrible trouble.”
“What can I do to help?”
She turned to him. “I’m at a loss. I’ve tried everything. The family doesn’t care what the truth is. And I don’t know what the truth is, which leaves me vulnerable to their terrible accusations.”
“Defend yourself.”
“I have and they don’t care. No one cares who actually did the things that I’m accused of: killing Mr. Frick, stealing the cameo and diamond that belonged to Martha. I’m simply an easy target.”
“Then you can explain it to the police, and maybe they can investigate.”
“The private detective was hired by Mr. Childs. I don’t stand a chance, especially now they know I’m Angelica.”
“You got here in the first place, that says something. I admit I was quite impressed when I realized who you were, and that you’d been able to wrangle the position of private secretary to the Fricks.”
“That’s the thing, I didn’t mean to pull anything off. I just stumbled into this house hoping for a cup of tea.” Still, she had accomplished the impossible, moving upward in both class and circumstance, adjusting to the whims of Miss Helen, learning how to do things that three months ago she would never have dreamed of. It hadn’t just been luck; she’d used her head, relied on her own wits.
Just then, someone called out her name, followed by heavy steps. The footman was coming for her.
The sky above the park was gray, the trees stripped bare. Lillian stared out of her window and thought of all of the statues of her likeness around the city. If only she could magically trade places with one. She’d remain motionless on top of whatever pedestal she found herself on, staring silently down at the people below, and once day turned to evening, she’d crawl down in the darkness to the street, disappear into the vast anonymity of New York. The police would arrive at her room on the top floor of the Frick mansion to take her away and find only a marble figure standing by the window, as if she’d turned to stone.
“To think what that woman did before she came here.”
Mrs. Dixie’s jagged alto rose up from the garden. Lillian leaned precariously over the sill and spied the tops of the heads of Mrs. Dixie and Mr. Childs. They were standing just below her, on the steps outside that led down to the lawn.
She pulled back a little so that if they looked up, they wouldn’t see her. Their words floated up easily.
“It’s abominable,” answered Mr. Childs.
“Do you think our children were affected?”
“She was barely around them. It’s not like she was their governess.”
“Still. Helen should have known. Should have checked her references. Stupid girl. It’s a good thing Mr. Danforth reached out to you to say he wasn’t going to propose to Helen. Otherwise we’d still be completely in the dark.”
A sharp buzzing rang in Lillian’s ears. Mr. Danforth, the rat, had leaked the truth. All this time she’d thought it couldn’t have been him, and yet the more she considered it, the less she was surprised. This was exactly what Kitty had warned her of, whirlwind courtships that turned ruinous. Lillian had been too naive to realize it, swept up in the possibility that someone might love her.
“I could tell something else was eating away at the old bloke when he showed up to return Father’s check, beyond the fact that he didn’t think he and Helen would make a good match,” intoned Mr. Childs.
“You’ve always been so intuitive, my dear. How on earth did he bring it up?”
“He mentioned that he’d come upon some damaging information and couldn’t bear to see our family’s good name tarnished, then suggested we get rid of Miss Lilly sooner rather than later.”
She’d repelled Mr. Danforth’s advances and, in turn, he’d set out to ruin her. For all of her mother’s training, the caprices of the upper classes were as foreign as some European country where Lillian didn’t speak the language or understand the customs. If she had, maybe she would have realized that Mr. Danforth’s proclamations of love were like the surface of a scummy pond, brilliantly hued but slimy to the touch.
“Good thing Mr. Danforth told you,” Mrs. Dixie sniffed. “Otherwise she might have killed us all off, one by one.”