A beautiful poison, p.3
A Beautiful Poison, page 3
And here Birdie was again, after all these years. She didn’t want to go back home to Brooklyn. Their life there was a cancer that was slowly eating away at their worth, and women like the Dreyers—with no money and no patrician blood running through their veins—had precious little to begin with.
It was too late for her mother. Maybe even for Birdie herself. But when Allene’s engagement invitation showed up encased in its cream linen envelope, Birdie’s heart had fluttered with hope. It was the first correspondence she’d received since she’d left. Allene never replied to Birdie’s letters, so she had stopped sending them. There was no pleasure in writing to a void.
Allene didn’t even know Holly existed. But the invitation nudged her optimism. With Birdie’s toe in the door, maybe Allene could meet Holly. Maybe she could help them, somehow, before it was too late. Birdie would swallow her pride for Holly’s sake. She would swallow her fear too. The Cutter house had spit her and her mother out. There was a good chance she’d tear those scarred memories wide open again.
Lucy led her to the study before curtsying. Her dark eyes seemed judging, and she’d been tight on smiles ever since Birdie had arrived that evening. It was no surprise. Lucy had gone from playing chambermaid to filling Birdie’s shoes after she was disinvited from the Cutter house. The way Allene whispered and leaned toward Lucy—it wasn’t the ordering around of any ordinary servant. Allene would have needed someone the way she’d needed Birdie all those years. Lucy was even the same height as Birdie, but with staunch hips and shoulders, used to hard work. But now that Birdie was growing closer in Allene’s heart as the minutes ticked by, Lucy no doubt imagined that her position was already changing. Ranks were falling.
“Thank you, Lucy,” Birdie said. But the maid had already turned her back. Birdie shrugged and picked up the candlestick phone on the desk. When the switch operator answered, Birdie told her it was an emergency. Casual telephone calls were frowned upon due to the war.
The operator rang the apartment, and the landlady—the only tenant in the building with a telephone—answered and went to fetch her mother. Minutes ticked by.
“This is Hazel Dreyer speaking.”
“Mother, it’s me, Birdie,” she said in a low voice, hoping to keep the conversation quiet. “I’m staying over at the Cutter house tonight. There’s been a terrible accident.”
Usually, there was a telltale click of telephones hanging up on the party line, but this time, everyone near Birdie’s building listened. The Bradleys across the street; the Salzki sisters in the building next door. So much for privacy.
“At the Cutter house,” her mother repeated through a crackle of static.
God, yes. Here, of all places. “Yes, Mother. It’s very important. Allene asked me to stay.”
“I see.”
There were a thousand statements in those two words, but the worst was the implication that she was abandoning her family for the Cutters, who’d become monsters in her and her mother’s eyes.
Her mother released a long sigh. “Are you quite sure?”
“Yes.”
Another long sigh. “Well, if you must.”
“Thank you. And Mother? Please stay with Holly tonight.” She bit her lip. “Just Holly.”
“Birdie. You know I can’t. Rent is due soon.”
“I’m asking you. Please stay with Holly. She’ll be frightened without me. I’ll make up for it. I’ll work extra hours at the factory.”
“Very well.” Her mother’s voice sounded ironed out. Birdie hoped there was some room for affection in there, something left over for Holly. As for herself, she didn’t care. It had been a long time since she’d expected anything of that sort for herself. So she was surprised when her mother asked, “How is your tooth?”
“Fine, Mother.” Birdie reached with her other hand to cradle her left jaw. She’d had a sore molar for weeks now, and it was on the verge of falling out. Thank goodness the swelling had calmed enough to go unnoticed at the party, but it hurt to chew. She hadn’t eaten a morsel all day. But her tooth wasn’t the only thing wrong. She hadn’t told Mother or Holly about her aching joints, the pain in her thigh bone, the chronic tiredness that made her cry for more sleep, or the other loose teeth.
In bits and pieces, Birdie was falling apart. She was running out of time. She thought of Allene, and Jasper’s coffee-warm kiss, and Florence’s dead gaze. But mostly, she thought of Holly.
Oh God, Birdie thought. Please give me more time.
The switch operator interrupted. “I am getting another caller on the line.”
“It’s all right. We’re done here,” Birdie said.
Immediately, she heard the click of no less than four other households hanging up.
“Good-bye. I’ll see you—”
Her mother hung up before she finished her sentence. Outside in the corridor, Lucy waited, expressionless, those large black eyes watching everything. The main floor was deserted of servants and guests. An eerie quiet had settled into the bones of the house. Lucy led her down the hallway, and Mr. Cutter bumped into them at the base of the staircase. Birdie shrank from the contact.
“Oh. Miss Dreyer. You look quite like your mother now.” It should have been a compliment, but his voice was flat. There was a curl of a sneer at the corner of his bulbous nose. Unlike most of the men at the party that night, her beauty held no magic for him. He seemed to be waiting for her to say something bitter. But Birdie knew her place.
“Thank you,” Birdie replied. She dropped her eyes and waited for him to order her out of the house. After all, she reminded him of scandals and gossip, and of her mother and his wife.
But he didn’t throw her out. The butler called to Mr. Cutter, and he turned on his heel without another word. And Birdie was grateful.
She followed Lucy to one of the spare bedrooms—Birdie’s old room. Gone were the bits of pink and red ribbon she used to collect, or the playbills she’d acquired and trapped in the edges of the dressing mirror. The room was sterile and simple now, with a woven white spread, white pillows, and white brocade-covered chair. Birdie had been bleached right out of the room.
“I’ve laid out a nightgown for you,” Lucy said, matter-of-factly. She didn’t offer to help her undress. It was no surprise, but it was a snub no less. Like her mother, Birdie had once been used to the maids’ attention. But she didn’t deserve that kind of care anymore.
When the door shut, she peeled off her showy, borrowed dress; unhooked her confining brassiere and underthings; and slipped on the lawn nightgown. She’d only just dropped the hem to her ankles when Allene walked right in, wearing a frilly nightgown and a rose-colored robe cinched about her waist. She didn’t bother to knock. Birdie’s privacy seemed to belong to Allene once again.
Good.
“Look what I’ve got.” Allene held out a loosely balled handkerchief, then carefully unwrapped it in her palm. Inside, a triangle of broken glass shone under the lamplight. “It’s from Florence’s drinking glass. Evidence!” She pulled Birdie’s hand, and they skipped down the hall to Allene’s frilled bedroom. “We’ll hide it in here,” she announced, pulling open the vanity drawer. She placed the parcel inside and locked it, pocketing the brass key. “I’ll be back in a bit. I’m going to have a word with Father.” Her eyes blazed. “It’s all so exciting, really. We have a mystery in our midst, don’t we?”
“Shall I come with you?” Birdie asked, though she was terrified at the prospect of speaking to Mr. Cutter again.
“No. You go to sleep.”
Birdie at first turned toward the guest room, Allene’s slippered feet padding away, but she couldn’t resist following Allene to Mr. Cutter’s bedroom. Her heart pounded. She hated the very walls of this house, and her body reminded her of that truth. She hid behind the half-opened door, hovering in the shadows of the hallway that had been dimmed for the night.
Mr. Cutter, his beard slightly disheveled, sat on the edge of his enormous four-poster bed. Swathes of satin lashed the bed curtains to the carved bedposts, and Allene fiddled with tying and untying them. Mr. Cutter had changed into a striped robe of gray and white that was too small to wrap about his stately belly, and the room smelled of warm tobacco. It used to smell of Mrs. Cutter’s jasmine perfume, but that scent was long since gone.
“What a terrible, terrible evening. It will be in all the papers tomorrow, whether we like it or not. I’m so sorry your party should end in such a way, my dear.” When he looked up at his daughter, his face seemed weary. Life ought to have been easy for him. Inheriting money from the railroads and making sure that people turned that money into more money was his only job, if that could be called a job. But for that well-fed stomach, he looked as if he’d just come off laying down railroad ties himself. Shadows magnified the sagging skin beneath his eyes. The past few years had made him ancient.
Allene took a deep breath. “Father.” She tied the bed-curtain sash tightly, as if attempting to strangle the bedpost. “I believe that Florence may have been . . . murdered.”
His face darkened. “Do not say such things, Allene.”
“But we smelled a chemical on her. It might be poison.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Mr. Cutter’s forehead went lobster red. “You have far too fanciful an imagination when it comes to chemicals. I should have thrown those old books of yours out. They aren’t healthy for the female mind. In any case, the officer himself said she broke her neck in the fall.”
“But we think she fell because she’d been poisoned.”
“We? We? And who is this we?”
“Jasper said—”
“It was a mistake to invite him. I never should have permitted it.”
Allene opened her mouth to argue, but Mr. Cutter stood up. He was immense next to his daughter, a bear overshadowing a fawn.
“I told the police to close the case, for your sake. For everyone’s sake. There’s no good that will come about from an investigation.”
“But Father!”
Mr. Cutter grabbed her upper arms and squeezed so tightly that she gasped with pain.
“The Waxworths have always spoken ill of our family and our circle of friends, always looking for a reason to bring us down. I’ve heard Florence was as ruthless as her mother. If you and those . . . guests of yours hadn’t disappeared upstairs, then Florence would never have had a reason to follow, digging for gossip. She wouldn’t have tripped on the stairs, and she wouldn’t have died. This was your doing, and I am making this go away for you and for us. Do you understand?” He shook her so hard, a loose hairpin fell from Allene’s knot and clinked to the floor. “It ends here, Allene. I’ll hear no more of this, never again.”
He released her, and Allene stumbled. Birdie hastily backed away, padding silently back to the guest room. She switched off the light and dove under the covers, thinking, I should have never been allowed to come either, but here I am.
One silent minute passed, then another. The door quietly opened and Allene’s dark figure entered, sniffling. She paused before the little table by the door and plucked out the rest of her hairpins, dropping them into a china dish. She shed her slippers and robe before climbing into bed. Birdie moved over to make room, but Allene didn’t let her get far; she captured Birdie’s thin torso in her arms and snuggled close until their foreheads were almost touching.
Birdie didn’t ask how the conversation went. She knew better.
“This is like old times, isn’t it?” Allene whispered. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course not.” Birdie’s bones betrayed her with a deep ache, but she ignored it.
After a few minutes, Allene sagged into the mattress. Birdie thought she’d fallen asleep, when Allene sharply inhaled.
“Why, Birdie Dreyer. You’re glowing like a lamp!”
Birdie looked down at herself. Indeed, her hands and forearms possessed a faint greenish, yellowy glow. She had taken her hair down and braided it, and the braid running over her shoulder held a halo of light that illuminated the space about it.
“It’s the radium dust,” Birdie whispered. “We paint it onto the watch dials at the clock factory, so our boys can see them in the dark trenches. I get covered with it after a day’s work.”
Allene went slack jawed for a moment. “You . . . work in a clock factory?”
Birdie could have said, Yes, and it’s your family’s fault. But she didn’t. She was in the Cutter house again with Allene, and wasn’t that all that mattered? “Yes.”
Allene’s expression of surprise softened. “Radium, huh? Lovely element. I hear that Madame Curie used to carry radium around in her pocket, like a glowing little pet of hers. I have a copy of her doctoral thesis. It’s wonderful reading.”
“You do?”
“Yes. It’s under my bed.” Allene yawned. She was so peculiar sometimes. Birdie remembered the time she ignited some elements in the garden in a spectacular fireworks display that set an expensive ornamental maple tree on fire. Mr. Cutter had been far from happy about that. “Well, don’t let the boys see you in the dark. They’ll try to catch you and never let you go.” She hugged Birdie closer. “You don’t belong here on earth with the rest of us, Birdie Dreyer.”
Birdie watched her fall asleep, fighting to keep her eyes open as long as possible.
She saw unwanted fiancés, and Mr. Cutter shaking Allene like a rat. She saw her mother undulating beneath the shadows of countless men, and Holly covering her ears. She saw terrible things that should never, ever happen.
And she saw her own death approaching with a momentum that terrified her.
Tomorrow, she and Allene would deal with pleasanter things in life.
Like finding Florence’s killer.
CHAPTER 4
Allene awoke in a tangle.
Somehow in the middle of the night, she and Birdie had managed to twist their legs together, as if unconsciously attempting to wrestle, conquer, and give in simultaneously. The hems of their cool, cotton nightgowns had ridden up beneath the covers, and now Allene’s bare thigh was clasped by Birdie’s bent knees. She held her breath, afraid to move.
Birdie was dead asleep on the pillow next to her, unmoving save for the tidal rise and fall of her chest and the zigzag of her eyeballs beneath pink satin eyelids. Her hand was a warm weight on Allene’s hip. Allene had no inclination to remove it.
What does she dream of? Allene wondered. Something delicious and wonderful. Maybe she dreams of me and Jasper, she mused. Maybe not.
Birdie stirred and her lips parted. She murmured, “No. No, I don’t.” Her eyes crinkled with sleepy concern.
Well, maybe those dreams weren’t something to covet, after all.
“Birdie. Dear, wake up,” Allene whispered, patting her shoulder.
Birdie’s face struggled, shivering off whatever unpleasantries haunted her. She rubbed her eyes, yawning like an infant. When she blinked her eyes open, wonder filled them as they traveled from the intricate molding along the ceiling to the honeyed Sunday sunshine peeking through the curtains. She smiled at Allene, making no move to disentangle their legs or speak. For an eternal moment, they fed on each other’s warmth and let the silence simmer about them.
But when Allene closed her eyes, she saw Florence’s purpling, dead corpse. It demanded that she speak. Something must be done.
“Last night . . .” But as soon as she started, knuckles rapped smartly on the door. The girls unwound their legs in a mad scramble, sitting up in bed and smoothing the covers. Birdie pulled the duvet up to decently cover her chest. There was no time to cool down the heat that had risen to their cheeks.
Lucy entered with an armful of clean linens. She set them down on the end of the bed and lifted her chin.
“Look at you two. Like twins. Like you always were,” she said. “All you’re missing is Jasper.”
Lucy was smiling at them, but it was a portrait smile—the kind designed to be held in place by sheer willpower. “Miss Birdie, I pressed your gown and mended the burn spot. We had tarlatan scraps that matched nicely. Miss Allene, your father left the house early for church. He said he would be back home for luncheon. I have your things ready in your room.”
“Thank you,” Birdie and Allene chimed together.
“I’ll come to my room in a minute, Lucy,” Allene said. She pretended to yawn but afterward wasn’t sure why she pretended.
“Be quick, miss. Mr. Biddle arrived just a few minutes ago. He waits for you in the salon.” Lucy left, and Allene’s shoulders fell.
“What’s the matter?” Birdie asked.
“I asked Andrew not to come. I wanted to have a day to myself.”
Birdie seemed to shrink inwardly at the comment. “I’ll be out of the house soon. I should get home anyway.”
“No!”
The word came out so quickly she didn’t have time to modulate her voice. A hollowness bored through her at the thought of Birdie leaving. Allene had grown accustomed to the gnawing, empty sensation, but it wasn’t time to return to that. Not yet. “I just meant . . . I can’t imagine having to spend a day with Andrew after last night. I’d much rather have you here.”
“What about Andrew? You’ll be married soon. What will he think?”
“He’s not my husband yet.”
Birdie opened her mouth at this audacity, but Allene adopted an expression that wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“But I have to check on Holly. And Mother.”
“Holly. Who’s Holly?”
“Holly’s my sister.”
Allene sat back, as if the news were a dose of poisonous ptomaine. “What? You have a sister? When? How?”
“I think you know how, Allene.” Birdie smiled. “Holly’s nearly four years old.”
Allene stared at her blankly. Of all the—so Hazel Dreyer had been banished from their home while she was in the family way? Vaguely, she remembered Hazel wearing looser, ill-fitting gowns around the time she’d left. She always thought her mother had been jealous of Hazel’s arresting beauty and that perhaps Hazel had dressed more plainly to tone it down. Well. Allene had no idea it wasn’t her beauty she had attempted to hide.
