Page 4 of The English Wife

January

KNICKERBOCKER MURDERS WIFE

AND KILLS HIMSELF!

MURDER AND SUICIDE ON THE HUDSON!

It was impossible to ignore the headlines; they screamed out in bold black type from either side of the street, in the hands of newspapermen waving the latest editions.

“Miss Van Duyvil! Miss Van Duyvil! Did you see him? Did you see the body?”

“Miss Van Duyvil! Did you know he was going to kill her?”

Police had created cordons on either side of the front steps, keeping the press and sensation seekers at a distance. But they couldn’t contain the sound of them, the babble and rumble of the crowd, pushing and clawing for a better view, shouting out questions and opinions. The family had managed to evade the reporters at Grace Church, but the house was another matter. A jostling crowd had been waiting for them when they returned from the funeral—reporters and curiosity seekers, masses of them, mobs of them—wanting to get a look at the sensation of the hour, a proud old family brought low.

It had been only a week since they had found Bay, but since then, the story had whirled about them like a snowstorm, growing in force with every hour. All of the old nonsense had been dragged up: the whispers of Annabelle’s affairs, Bay’s jealousy, the adultery going on right beneath the marital roof.

Lies, all of it, but so much more compelling than truth.

And what was the truth?

Janie had no more idea than they. She knew only that Bay could never have done what the papers claimed.

“Miss Van Duyvil! Miss Van Duyvil! Is it true that he bashed her head in?”

Janie buried her chin in her fur collar and kept moving. The Cold Spring constable hadn’t believed her, not at first, when she said she’d seen a body in the water. He’d dismissed it as fancy. At least until they found that blue silk slipper on the bank.

They hadn’t found Annabelle’s body—not yet. The ice was too thick, the water too deep. It might never be recovered.

It. It, that had once been a she.

Janie could feel the beginnings of a headache pinching her temples. The noise, the clamor, it was all the stuff of nightmares; the past week was nothing but a bad dream. The funeral service, the flower-laden casket, the solemn pallbearers in their tall hats, the white-robed choristers, none of it had been real. Bay and Annabelle were at Illyria, sitting by the fire, the twins curled between them as Annabelle sang a lullaby, soft and low.

She tried to picture it, but all she could see was Bay, sprawled on the floor of the folly, his lips forming one last word as Annabelle’s body drifted beneath the ice, like something out of a painting by Mr. Millais.

Janie didn’t know what forces her mother had brought to bear to persuade the Putnam County coroner to release Bay’s body. Officially, her mother was in deep mourning, seeing no one, speaking to no one, delegating all the official offices of death to the family lawyer. But a series of notes on black-bordered stationery had made their way from Mrs. Van Duyvil’s desk to state senators and judges. And the coroner, who had initially hemmed and hawed and dithered, had discovered in himself unexpected depths of sensibility, issuing an interim certificate of death and postponing the inquest “until such time as further information might be acquired.”

“Miss Van Duyvil! Did you see it? Did you see him stab her?”

Anne addressed the crowd over her fur-trimmed shoulder, saying, in a carrying voice, “Surely, there must be a brawl at a beer hall somewhere in the city. Go find it. Or, if not, I’m certain you’ll have no trouble starting one.”

The laughter from the crowd stung the journalist into retaliation. He jostled forward, pushing his way free from the crowd. “Mrs. Newland! Where’s your husband?”

Anne went still, like a hunted animal, every sense on alert.

“Leave it,” Janie whispered. “Just go inside.”

But Anne didn’t go. She turned, slowly and deliberately, letting the journalists and gawkers look their fill. A cousin wasn’t required to shroud herself in black, so Anne had adopted half mourning, a bold purple that suited her rose and gold coloring. The evening editions would be full of every detail of her dress, the cut and color provocatively Parisian against the frost-bleached New York street. The sketch artists were already at work, blowing on cold fingers to warm them.

Anne looked the journalist up and down, her very pose a provocation. In a bored drawl, she said, “Why don’t you ask him?”

Janie tugged at her hand, but Anne didn’t need tugging. She turned on her heel, sweeping into the house with one magnificent flounce of her skirt, leaving Janie to scurry along behind.

In the parlor, the drapes were drawn and the lamps were lit; night in the midst of day. Janie shivered in her furs. They weren’t to have returned until Monday, and the house still had the chill of emptiness about it. Or maybe it was a different sort of hollowness entirely.

Janie’s mother looked up from the mirror by the side of the window, an innovation of their Dutch ancestors, glass cleverly angled so that one could spy on the street while seeming to look away.

“You shouldn’t perform for them, Anne. It only encourages them.” Janie’s mother looked narrow and pinched; she seemed, in the lamplight, like a portrait of herself, flat and grim. She turned away from the window, letting her eyes rest full on her niece. “But then we do know how much you love theater.”