Cold Spring, 1899
February 10
ANNABELLE FOUND! exclaimed the headline on The New York Journal. But only halfway down the page.
The weather had pushed missing murderesses down the page, beneath reports of cattle freezing in the fields, chunks of ice in the port of New Orleans, and snow in parts of the South that were entirely unused to the phenomenon and not best pleased. In New York, the temperatures had ducked well below zero and seemed set to stay that way, a fact that appeared to have had some effect on the crowd around the courtroom, which seemed smaller than yesterday’s by a large margin.
Or perhaps after yesterday’s dramatic testimony, they thought they had learned all they needed to know?
Once one got past the frozen cattle, the papers had vied to supply sightings of Annabelle Van Duyvil, a.k.a. Georgiana Smith, a.k.a. Goodness Only Knew. She’d been seen boarding the Staten Island Ferry, on a train to Des Moines, and in a bathhouse in Yorkville. The World had offered a $500 reward for reliable information as to her whereabouts; The Journal had upped it to $750 and a large ham haunch.
All of the papers were agreed on one point: Annabelle Van Duyvil was an imposter and a murderess who had killed her husband to escape discovery. It was only on the details that they varied.
Not one, Janie had noticed, made any mention of Georgina Evans, actress.
By now, the courtroom had a strange feeling of familiarity to it, as if she had spent her life sitting on this same bench in this same courtroom, day after day. Janie remembered the long train trips to Saratoga Springs having the same quality in her youth, feeling as though they had been traveling and would go on traveling forever, eating in the same dining car, among the same passengers.
That, of course, was before her mother had discovered the joys of private railcars.
As they passed the press bench, Janie heard one of the reporters say to another, “Sure to be a verdict today.”
And the other replied, “Better hope. I’d like to be home before hell freezes over.”
“It already has,” said the first one, scooting a little closer to the potbellied stove, which was doing an entirely inadequate job of heating the room.
Everyone left their coats on, the high collars and hats and mufflers giving the assemblage a slightly sinister air. Next to Janie, Anne’s head emerged out of a pile of stone martens, each biting the other’s tail, the eyes replaced with jet beads. She looked, thought Janie, like a goddess of the hunt—the sort who changed men into deer and then shot them.
She didn’t see Mr. Burke in the room.
As the coroner took his place and consulted his notes, Janie tried to clear her head. She had discovered Bay—at least in Anne’s version of the story. Her reprieve could last only so long.
The coroner lifted his head, but it wasn’t Janie’s name that he called.
“Mr. Giles Lacey?”
The crowd stirred, heads emerging from mufflers, people sitting straighter on their benches.
Mr. Lacey strutted up to the podium like a society beauty honoring the masses, looking neither to left nor right, acknowledging no one, but preening at the attention all the same. He was news, and he knew it.
He flipped his tails as he took his seat, waiting with an air of exaggerated patience for the coroner to ask the first question.
The coroner took his time, adjusting his spectacles, reviewing his notes, smoothing his mustache.
Giles shifted impatiently, propping one ankle against the opposite thigh.
“Yesterday,” said the coroner, “you alleged that the woman known as Annabelle Van Duyvil was, in truth, one Georgiana Smith. Is that correct?”
“My good man,” drawled Mr. Lacey, “I wouldn’t have said it if it weren’t.”
A titter ran through certain portions of the courtroom.
The coroner didn’t look at them. Instead, he focused his spectacles on Mr. Lacey, saying mildly, “Do you have any proof of this, Mr. Lacey?”
“I knew them both,” said Mr. Lacey impatiently. “Isn’t that proof enough?”
“A record of birth, perhaps,” suggested the coroner.
Mr. Lacey made a dismissive gesture. “The lot of them—my cousin and her brother and Georgie—were all born in India. Would you like me to try to find their old ayah?”
“What about in England?” the coroner asked, and Janie had to admire his doggedness.
“There was an old nurse … but she must be ninety if she’s a day. If she’s still with us. But there’s no need, I tell you. Georgiana Smith was Annabelle’s half sister. They looked alike if you didn’t see them next to each other. Anyone would tell you the same.”
“Do you have any affidavits from these ‘anyones’?”
“Affidavits?” Mr. Lacey sputtered. “Why would I have such a thing?”
The coroner persevered. “Could you provide such affidavits if given the time to do so?”
Mr. Lacey frowned at him, no longer amused. “Most of my cousin’s staff left after his death. The girls weren’t out yet. They might have played with some of the tenant farmers’ children in their youth.”
“In other words, no.” The coroner looked up from his notes, saying, with awful clarity, “Mr. Lacey, can you bring any evidence that the woman known as Annabelle Van Duyvil was, in fact, Georgiana Smith?”
“Don’t you think I would know my own cousin?” Mr. Lacey’s voice echoed through the courtroom, rich with frustration. “I tell you, I saw her. It wasn’t Annabelle; it was Georgie.”
“You saw her?” A current of interest went through the room. The journalists picked up their discarded notebooks.
Mr. Lacey blinked for a moment, looking utterly unnerved. “I mean … I saw a picture of her. Mrs. Van Duyvil showed me a picture.” Gaining confidence, he added, “It wasn’t Annabelle.”
“You determined that from a picture,” said the coroner. He didn’t sound convinced. And neither was Janie.
Mr. Lacey half rose in his seat. “Don’t you understand? She’s a murderess. She killed Annabelle, and she killed her husband. And she’ll probably kill someone else if she isn’t brought to justice.”
His words didn’t have nearly the effect they had had the day before.
“That,” said the coroner placidly, “is a very serious allegation. Do you have any proof, Mr. Lacey?”
Mr. Lacey subsided sulkily into his seat. “Annabelle’s body was never found. Just her shoe. It’s probably what gave Georgie the idea. She knew how to set the scene because she knew what it looked like when someone gets pushed into a river.”
“What were the results of the inquest into Miss Lacey’s disappearance, Mr. Lacey?”
Mr. Lacey mumbled something.
“A bit louder, Mr. Lacey.”
“They wouldn’t declare her dead,” muttered Mr. Lacey.
“Let me make sure I have this correct,” said the coroner. “You have no proof that there was such a person as Georgiana Smith—”
“Other than my word!”
“—and no proof that Annabelle Lacey either died or was murdered.”
“Does a confession count as proof?” demanded Mr. Lacey hotly. “Georgie told me herself, just last month.”
The coroner waited until the noise in the courtroom had subsided before pushing his spectacles up on his nose and saying very carefully, “Told you yourself, you say?”
Mr. Lacey looked him in the eye with a lordly sneer. It was both a little too direct and a little too lordly, thought Janie. No one looked at you like that unless they were lying. “That’s what I said.”
“And by last month, you mean January of this year?” Janie watched as Mr. Lacey’s mouth opened and shut. “By your own testimony, Mr. Lacey, you had not seen your cousin since the year … 1891. Is that correct?”
“I never said I saw her.” Mr. Lacey tugged at his cravat. “I meant that she told me by killing her husband and running. If that’s not an admission of guilt, I don’t know what is.”
The people on the benches were twisting and murmuring to each other, doubt spreading through the courtroom like a disease.
The coroner had to raise his voice to be heard over the hum of voices. “When did you arrive in New York, Mr. Lacey?”
Mr. Lacey hesitated just a moment before saying reluctantly, “The seventh of January.”
“The day after Mr. Van Duyvil’s death.” The coroner made a note to himself. Janie could see Mr. Lacey craning his neck to try to read it. Mr. Lacey abruptly pulled his chin back in again as the coroner looked up. “Did you see Mrs. Van Duyvil—Mrs. Bayard Van Duyvil—here in New York?”
Mr. Lacey cracked his gloves against his knee. “I couldn’t have, could I? She was already dead.”
The coroner frowned at his callousness. “What brought you to New York, Mr. Lacey?”
“I wanted to see my cousin,” said Mr. Lacey impatiently. “The architect fellow wrote me telling me that Van Duyvil wanted to rebuild his wife’s childhood home. So I came to see Annabelle. What else was I to think? I didn’t know that Georgie was holding herself out as Annabelle.”
The coroner looked at Mr. Lacey over his spectacles. “But how could Annabelle Lacey be alive if she had already been killed by Georgiana Smith?”
Mr. Lacey looked as though he were trying very hard not to punch something. “I don’t know!”
The coroner bared his teeth in a smile. “You may step down, Mr. Lacey.”
Mr. Lacey blinked at him. “But … I’m not finished.”
“Thank you, Mr. Lacey. If we need you again, we will call you. Bailiff, will you escort Mr. Lacey back to his seat?”
The bailiff wasn’t large, but he had the majesty of the law about him. Mr. Lacey gave him a dirty look, but went. Janie could see the reporters scribbling frantically in their notebooks, some already slipping out the back.
Janie’s eyes followed Mr. Lacey as he retreated to his seat, folding his arms across his chest in a way that signified both boredom and irritation. The irritation seemed genuine. The boredom didn’t. His right leg was jiggling up and down in a way that spoke of anxiety. Anxiety about what?
Janie jumped as an elbow connected with her ribs.
“Janie!” hissed Anne, and nodded towards the stand, where the coroner was calling. “Miss Van Duyvil?”
The walk to the witness stand felt far longer than Janie would have imagined.
She gathered up her skirts and ascended the steps into the witness stand, grateful for the hat brim that helped hide her face. In front of her, the faces of the people crammed onto the benches seemed distorted into caricatures of themselves, mouths too wide, eyes too large, all of them staring at her, marking her every movement, the press artists scribbling pictures of her into their notebooks.
Despite herself, her eyes sought out Burke, sitting to the side of the press bench. He lowered his chin just a fraction, and Janie, who shouldn’t have felt strengthened by the gesture, did. These past few weeks had changed her, toughened her.
Settling herself in the hard, wood chair, Janie looked to the coroner to let him know she was ready.
“You are Miss Jane Van Duyvil?” said the coroner.
“Genevieve,” Janie corrected the coroner, deliberately not looking at Burke. “Miss Genevieve Van Duyvil.”
The coroner made a note. Janie wondered if he were noting her name, or if it was just a tactic designed to lend an appropriate air of gravity to the proceedings and force witnesses to think very, very carefully before they said anything at all. There was, to be fair, a clerk recording the proceedings, but that didn’t have the same weight as a note in the hand of the grand inquisitor.
Or patent medicine salesman, as the case might be. Janie was beginning to have a great respect for the patent medicine salesman. Perhaps Putnam County’s coroner selection process had more sense in it than her mother claimed.
“Miss Van Duyvil,” said the coroner, in a very different voice than the one he had used for Mr. Lacey, “you were at the entertainment at Duyvil’s Kill on the sixth of January?”
Janie nodded. “Illyria,” she said helpfully. “My brother and his wife called the house Illyria. After the island in the Shakespeare play.”
She caught her mother’s eye on her and subsided.
“Yes, thank you.” The coroner looked like he was going to say something and then changed his mind. When he spoke, he chose his words carefully. “When were you made aware that something was … not as it should be?”
Janie arranged her hands in her lap, and then arranged them again. She felt as though she suddenly had too many fingers. “My cousin Mrs. Newland came to find me. My mother had asked that she find my brother and his wife.”
“Your mother … that would be Mrs. Peter Van Duyvil?”
Janie looked at her mother, who was doing a very good job of pretending the vulgar throng behind her simply didn’t exist. Or, for that matter, the coroner, the stenographer, or her daughter on the witness stand. Mrs. Van Duyvil sat like Patience on a Monument, stony in her stoicism. “Yes.”
“What happened then?” There was something hypnotic about the coroner’s even voice.
“We went outside.” She could feel the cold, a shock after the crush in the house, the way her skin prickled at it, the patterns of light from the house turning the frost to something beautiful and sinister. Janie drew in a deep breath. “There were to be illuminations in the garden at midnight, just before the German. We thought, perhaps, Bay—Mr. Van Duyvil—had gone to make sure everything was in place.”
“Had he?”
“I don’t know.” That was the truth. She didn’t know why Bay had gone outside. The illuminations had been designed to appear over the folly. She could remember the lights crackling and bursting over her head as she knelt by Bay’s body, the incongruity of the triumphal flare in the sky and the devastation below. But there had been nothing in the folly itself, no reason for Bay to be there. The fireworks had been blasted into the sky from elsewhere on the grounds.
Unless he had wanted to look at them from below?
But why? The full effect had been made to be seen from the balcony. She knew, because she had read about it in the papers. The Van Duyvil acorns and rising sun, the Lacey birds and arrows, and, at the culmination, an intertwined A and B.
Annabelle and Bayard.
Her brother’s guests had eaten and danced and oohed at the fireworks, never knowing that their host lay dead in the folly by the river.
“Miss Van Duyvil?”
Janie felt her cheeks flush. “Yes?”
“What did you see then?” The coroner’s voice was very gentle. No wonder. He probably thought he was dealing with a half-wit.
“My brother,” she said. “He was lying on the flagstones of the folly. There was … there was a knife in his chest.”
The coroner nodded to the bailiff. “This knife?”
The bulbous gems still glistened in the hilt, cabochon sapphires and rubies. It looked so innocent, but for the rusty stains along the blade. Janie swallowed the bile rising in her throat. “Yes.”
“Do you know whose it might have been?” There was no urgency to the question; they knew this already.
Janie nodded, doing her best to keep her voice steady. “Yes. My brother’s. It was part of his costume.”
Like her mother’s pearls or the aquamarines sewn into Annabelle’s dress. Nothing but a bauble. A bauble with a blade.
“When you arrived at the folly, was there any sign of Mrs. Bayard Van Duyvil?”
“Yes.” Janie could feel the change of mood in the room. Giles Lacey, looking at her from beneath hooded lids—did he practice? she wondered irrelevantly—her mother, face frozen in the expressionless disdain that was her way of ignoring everything that displeased her; Anne, twisting the tail of a fox around and around one finger. “I saw my sister-in-law in the river.”
“Are you quite certain, Miss Van Duyvil?”
The dark, the snow, the flickering light of the lanterns. Memory played tricks. People remembered what they thought they ought to have seen. But this wasn’t what she thought she ought to have seen; this is what she had seen.
“Yes,” Janie said determinedly. “The river wasn’t frozen yet.”
But cold, so cold.
The coroner beckoned to the bailiff, who came forward bearing a single shoe.
“Miss Van Duyvil, do you recognize this shoe?”
The satin shimmered against the dull tones of the courtroom like Cinderella’s glass slipper.
“That is Annabelle’s shoe. She was wearing pale blue.” Pale blue that sparkled like water. But not like those waters. The waters of the Hudson had been a dark gray that night, cold and treacherous.
The tides in the Hudson ran strong, and Annabelle’s dress had been heavy, sewn with gems.
Of his bones are coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes.
The coroner gestured again to the bailiff, who replaced the shoe on its stand. “And do you recognize this brooch, Miss Van Duyvil?”
The bailiff silently displayed the diamond brooch. In the courtroom, among the peeling paint and the scarred wood, it looked like a child’s bauble, a chunk of glass set in wire. Until the facets caught the light and it blazed as no glass ever had.
Slowly, she shook her head. “That wasn’t Annabelle’s.”
“Are you quite certain, Miss Van Duyvil?” The coroner glanced out the window, where the snow had been falling since morning. Falling and stopping, falling and stopping.
“Yes,” she said. “I am quite certain.”
A little murmur of interest about the room.
“Do you know whose brooch it was?” the coroner inquired.
Janie could almost picture it pinned to a bodice, between two long ropes of pearls. It was like trying to remember the whole of a song from a handful of notes. It taunted her and then slipped away again.
“No,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you know how the brooch might have arrived at that particular spot?”
“There were lanterns in the gardens,” said Janie slowly. Pleasure gardens that no one had visited, because there wasn’t much pleasure to be had in a garden in January. “Anyone might have gone down there at any point in the evening.”
Even as she spoke, Janie thought how unlikely it was that anyone would have lost such a jewel and not reported it missing. Just because the rich were rich didn’t mean they were careless with their belongings.
“Miss Van Duyvil,” said the coroner, “can you recall anything else? Anything at all that might aid us in our inquiries?”
That sensation of not being alone, the creeping feeling of being watched. No, that wasn’t something she could share without feeling foolish. She’d be seeing fairies and hobgoblins in the woods next. But there was something else.
“My brother was still alive when we found him,” said Janie, choosing her words carefully. “He … he tried to speak.”
Pens poised; notebooks out. Half-nodding heads upright again.
The coroner managed to keep his voice even and calm. “What did he say, Miss Van Duyvil? To the best of your recollection.”
George …
“It was hard to hear,” Janie said apologetically. “The river and the wind … his voice wasn’t very strong.”
“Was there anything that you could recognize?”
Feeling her mother’s eyes on her, Janie was beginning to be sorry she’d said anything, but this was a court of law, and she was under oath. “It sounded like it might be a name. It began with G.”
Mr. Lacey popped up like a jack-in-the-box. “Georgie! I told you! She killed him! You have it from Van Duyvil’s own lips, damn you!”
Banging the gavel, the coroner said heatedly, “Mr. Lacey, if you cannot control yourself or your language, I will have you removed. I would remind you that there are ladies present.”
Mr. Lacey subsided into his seat with a curl of his lip, but he looked ready to spring up again at any moment.
Gently, the coroner said, “Miss Van Duyvil, was it Georgie?”
Bay’s lips, barely moving. George …
“It might have been.” At Mr. Lacey’s look of triumph, Janie added, “It might also have been Giles.”
Mr. Lacey’s eyes narrowed on her in a way that made Janie feel the cold straight through to her chemise.
“I don’t know,” Janie said, and at least that was true. She didn’t know. “It was just too hard to hear. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, Miss Van Duyvil. You may stand down.” The coroner looked again at the window and came to a decision. “Given the inclement weather, I hereby adjourn this court until Monday. The jury will deliberate at that time.”
“No further testimony?” shouted a reporter.
“I believe,” said the coroner, shuffling his papers together, “that we have heard quite enough.”
“Or,” murmured Mr. Burke, wiggling his way to Janie’s side to offer her a hand down from the witness stand, “that he needs to get back to work and this is dragging on too long.”
Janie could feel the warmth of his gloved hand on hers, straight through the leather of her gloves. Her gloves had been purchased more for elegance than utility. “Would he really conclude the inquest without an answer?”
Mr. Burke used his body as a shield to provide her a clear path to the side of the room, keeping his voice low. “If you want predictions, get a crystal ball. But my guess is that the verdict will be murder by person or persons unknown, and they’ll leave it at that.”
Janie’s steps slowed. “But … what about justice?”
“The courts are busy. The weather is bad.” Seeing the expression on her face, Burke relented. “That doesn’t mean it’s over. If there are any new leads, the case will be reopened. If there’s anything to find, trust me, I’ll find it.”
Janie could see Mr. Lacey’s tall hat on the other side of the room. He was standing by the exit, in close conference with Janie’s mother and Mr. Tilden.
“They would all very happily see Annabelle hanged,” said Janie quietly. “My mother has ranged herself wholeheartedly with Mr. Lacey.”
“Because he owns an abbey?”
“No. Not entirely. I think she believes she is avenging Bay, that she ought to have protected him from Annabelle, and this is her chance to make amends.”
“If you believe Mr. Lacey,” said Burke flatly.
Janie glanced swiftly at Burke. “Do you think he killed them? Mr. Lacey.”
“I wouldn’t place money against it.” The trio by the door caught sight of Janie and Burke. Lacey’s expression as he looked at Janie was not fond. “You made an enemy today.”
“Say rather that I didn’t make a friend,” said Janie.
“Is there a difference?” inquired Mr. Burke.
“I don’t believe he thinks I’m important enough to dislike,” said Janie frankly. “My mother has invited Mr. Lacey to stay with us at Illyria for the weekend—or, as he calls it, the Saturday to Monday.”
“Are you trying to scare me?” Burke was not amused by her imitation of Mr. Lacey’s accent. “You could come back to town. There’s a train leaving in twenty minutes. You could be back on Monday morning in time for the verdict.”
It was a tempting notion. To get on the train, to be free, even for two days.
“I can’t,” Janie said regretfully. “I can’t leave Mother, not now. She may not look like it, but she is grieving. She’s—” The memory of the carriage ride back to Illyria flashed across Janie’s mind. The crack of her mother’s palm against Anne’s cheek. “She’s not herself.”
“All right,” said Burke reluctantly. “But if Lacey so much as looks at you the wrong way, lock yourself in your room and find yourself a sturdy poker. Strike first, ask questions later.”
“It’s hardly so dire as that. I doubt Mr. Lacey would murder me in my bed. Bodies piling up might give people ideas. And,” Janie added, before Burke could protest, “he wasn’t yet in the country on the night of the ball.”
“Or so he claims. Once I’m back in town, I intend to take a look at the passenger list for that ship. There should also be a few telegrams from across the pond waiting for me in the newsroom.” When Janie looked at him in surprise, Burke’s cheeks reddened above his muffler. Gruffly, he said, “I made you a promise, didn’t I? Find the truth and publish it. I’m still working on the first bit. If anything makes you nervous, anything at all, telephone The World’s offices. If I’m not there, they’ll leave a message for me.”
“If the telephone wires don’t go down,” said Janie. The wind battered against the windows of the courtroom, whipping the bare branches of trees into a frenzied dance. Stray flakes of snow dipped and eddied, a promise of more to come.
Burke scowled at the slate gray sky. “I hate to leave you here.”
“You’re more use to me in town,” said Janie lightly. Her mother, who never essayed a task that could be delegated to someone of inferior station, had sent Mr. Lacey to collect her. She could see him coming for her, his tall hat wending its way through the crowd. “Now go. Or you’ll miss your train.”
Burke gave her hand a quick squeeze. “Be careful. It’s treacherous out there.”
Giles Lacey was nearly upon them. Janie looked from the man who had lied to her to the man who might have killed her brother. “I know,” she said.