Honor (17 page)

The sparkle of desire in his eyes made Honor’s blood race. “When did you tell him you were interested in another position?”

“Saturday night at the dinner party. I told him I had been with the firm for eight months, and at this rate I’d be an old man before I became successful. He said he admired a man who wanted to get ahead, and to come and talk to him. I did, and he hired me.”

Oh, Robert, she thought, your ambition has blinded you. You’ve taken the bait. He’s got us where he wants us. “What did Hartford Fogg say when you told him you were leaving?”

Robert’s cocksure laughter filled the small office. “He was so furious I thought he was going to have an apoplectic fit. He said that I was too young and didn’t have enough experience under my belt for such a position, that I was too ambitious for my own good.” He sobered. “I am ambitious, Honor, but I know I can handle whatever LaRouche throws at me.”

Honor smiled and rose. “I know you can, too.”
If Nevada LaRouche doesn’t destroy you first.

Robert stood and rounded her desk, taking her into his arms. He kissed her long and hard, like a victorious warrior claiming his prize after battle. He released her. “There’s no limit to what I can do. This is just the beginning.”

Or the end, she thought.

After her husband left, Honor sat at her desk and stared at the bare opposite wall. Despite what Robert had said about men not holding grudges, she was willing to bet her law degree that Nevada LaRouche had an ulterior motive for hiring him. After all, he blamed Honor for costing him five thousand dollars. She wished that she had never asked him not to tell anyone she was a lawyer, but at the time, she couldn’t risk exposing her husband as a liar.

“Now you’re in my debt,” LaRouche had said to her at the Foggs’ party, “and I intend to collect.”

Did he plan to hurt her through her husband? Perhaps in several months he’d tell Robert that his work wasn’t satisfactory and dismiss him without a reference, making it harder, if not impossible, for him to find another position in the city.

“I wouldn’t trust that man as far as I could throw him,” she muttered. “I’ve got to stay one step ahead of him.” She rose and went to the door. “Elroy?”

Her assistant stopped typing and looked up. “Yes,
boss?”

“I want you to investigate someone for me. He’s a powerful, wealthy man, so you must be very discreet.”

Elroy’s freckled face brightened, for he secretly yearned to be a detective like his idol, Sherlock Holmes. “Discretion is my middle name, boss. When do you need my report?”

“As soon as possible. I want you to investigate a man by the name of Nevada LaRouche.”

By the end of the week, Elroy had finished his investigation.

He sat in the chair across from Honor’s desk, a sheaf of papers in his hand, and began his report while Honor listened with rapt attention. For the first twenty minutes he reiterated what Lillie Troy had already told Honor about LaRouche’s early days out west.

Elroy stuck his pencil behind his ear. “He really struck pay dirt when he teamed up with Damon Delancy, the so-called Wolf of Wall Street. Delancy made his fortune in Arizona copper and has been making more money ever since.”

Honor said, “I understand Delancy has been living in England. Something about his wife being arrested. Did you unearth anything about that?”

“Quite a bit, boss. His wife, Dr. Catherine Delancy, was arrested for violating the Comstock Act. She gave her patients anti-conception information, which she received through the mails.”

During her weekly visits to the Criminal Courts Building, Honor had often seen Anthony Comstock, president of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, gleefully hauling into Special Sessions some violator of the federal anti-obscenity law that bore his name. As a special agent of the post office, he was empowered to search the mails for what he considered obscene literature or items. Anti-conception literature and rubber goods, like the pessaries that Aunt Theo had given Honor, were fair game for seizure and prosecution.

Honor personally thought Comstock a zealot and his law outdated, but receiving such items through the mail was a misdemeanor punishable by a fine and up to five years in prison.

“According to all reports,” Elroy continued, “the woman is a saint.”

“A saint? Surely you jest.”

“I’m serious, boss. No one in this city has a bad word to say about her except Anthony Comstock, and we all know he’s a crazy old coot. Dr. Delancy was so dedicated to her patients that she often risked her life for them. Most were poor immigrants who lived in the East Side tenements. She treated them without ever charging them a dime.”

“Commendable.”

“Comstock didn’t think so. When he couldn’t trick her into giving one of his flunkies anti-conception devices, he got a warrant, searched her office, and found so-called obscene literature that had been sent to her through the mail. Before the doctor could go to trial, she, her husband, and their son flew the coop to England.”

“I wonder just how much Mr. LaRouche did to aid and abet them?”

“He claims he didn’t know what they were planning.”

Honor gave a snort of derision. “And I’m from Texas.”

Nevada LaRouche obviously thought he could flout the law and get away with it.

She said, “What about the other women in LaRouche’s life?” One could tell a great deal about a man from what he thought about women.

Elroy sifted through his papers until he located the one he wanted. “He used to frequent a high-class brothel called Ivory’s north of Gramercy Park.”

That didn’t surprise her, for both bachelors and married men patronized the city’s brothels. She did wonder why LaRouche chose to patronize ladies of the evening instead of maintaining a mistress. Did he prefer a variety of women? Did he want immediate physical gratification rather than long-term intimacy?

Elroy said, “Then he courted Catherine Delancy’s friend, another lady doctor named Sybilla Wolcott.”

So he had committed himself to one woman after all. “Where is she now?”

Elroy’s features turned somber. “Dead. She was murdered.”

Honor felt the breath knocked out of her. “Murdered!”

“That’s what it said in the
World.
She was strangled in an alley while going to treat a patient.”

“Did the police ever catch her murderer?”

“It was a banker named August Talmadge. He blamed Damon Delancy for the failure of his bank in the depression of ’93 and had intended to kill Delancy’s wife that night. He sent a little girl with a note for Dr. Delancy, saying that the child’s mother was gravely ill and to come at once. But Dr. Delancy wasn’t there, so Dr. Wolcott went in her place. The alley was dark. Talmadge killed her by mistake.”

“How horrible.” Honor shook her head. “The poor woman.”

“Later the banker tried again to kill Dr. Delancy in her office, but her husband and LaRouche got there just in time to save her.” Elroy looked up. “LaRouche killed the banker.”

Honor grew very still. “Was he arrested?”

“No, boss, he was never charged. According to the police report, he acted in self-defense. While fighting with LaRouche, the banker accidentally fell, hit his head, and broke his neck. The Delancys swore to it.”

“How convenient. Have there been any other women in LaRouche’s life?”

Elroy shook his head. “Nothing serious. He stopped patronizing Ivory’s a while back, and then he met Miss Troy.” He sat back. “I learned that she looks like the lady doctor who was murdered. That might explain why he took up with her.”

“Trying to recapture his lost love?” Honor smiled. “You are such a romantic, Elroy.”

He blushed beneath his freckles. “Nevada LaRouche leads a dull life, boss. Before Delancy left, LaRouche mostly stayed in his shadow. Now he keeps the company on an even keel in Delancy’s absence. He’s not the Wall Street wizard Delancy was, though. Delancy sends him daily cablegrams from London, and LaRouche just follows orders.”

“Most illuminating. Is that all?” When Elroy nodded, Honor extended her hand for his notes. “You’ve done a splendid job. Sherlock Holmes would be proud.”

Elroy grinned. “We aim to please.” He rose and returned to his own desk.

Alone, Honor rose and went to the window to look down on the teeming street that was now as familiar to her as sedate Commonwealth Avenue. A shiver slithered down her arms, a cold seeping into her bones, though the April sunlight warmed the room.

Murdered…

She ran her hands up and down her arms. It always amazed her how one new bit of evidence, hidden or unknown, could suddenly alter one’s perception of a person or incident when it finally came to light. She had thought she knew Robert as well as anyone until she learned of Priscilla Shanks. Now the knowledge that the woman Nevada LaRouche once loved had been brutally murdered touched the most vulnerable corner of her woman’s heart.

Murdered…

Losing her father to the hangman was the same as his being murdered, a life suddenly wrenched from the world of the living, whether by an individual or by the government. For years afterward, the knowledge that he had died so horribly would suddenly overwhelm Honor, leaving her with a sadness so profound she wondered if it would drive her mad. She suspected all loved ones left behind experienced the same lingering, aching sense of loss.

She turned away from the window. “Don’t!” she chided herself. “Don’t let sentiment cloud your judgment.”

While she sympathized with the man’s loss, she couldn’t afford to let down her guard, because he had the power to destroy all she held dear. She prayed that Nevada LaRouche would just leave her and Robert alone.

Her prayers went unanswered.

When she returned home early that evening, an excited Robert told her that LaRouche had invited them to spend the following weekend with him and several other guests at Damon Delancy’s Hudson River estate.

Honor knew better than to argue, so she feigned suitable wifely enthusiasm. Deep inside, she dreaded going.

“It’s not exactly Newport,” Robert said when he first saw Coppermine, the country estate named after the source of Delancy’s vast wealth.

From her seat in the open victoria that had been sent to the train station to collect them late that Friday afternoon, Honor decided she vastly preferred this small Georgian-style house built of white granite to Newport’s opulent French châteaux, staid English manor houses, and Italian villas so sprawling that one could spend days wandering the hallways. This house had been designed for comfort and intimacy rather than to flaunt its owner’s wealth. That a powerful man like Damon Delancy preferred graciousness to ostentation both surprised and impressed her.

As the carriage rattled over an arched stone bridge that spanned a racing, gurgling stream, Coppermine seduced Honor with its bucolic serenity. Taking in the acres of well-kept green lawn stretching out on either side and the stately elm and oak trees rising up to the spring sky, the thick knot of apprehension in the middle of her chest began to unravel.

Beyond the bridge, the victoria swept down the long circular drive. Robert said, “This is the back entrance. The front overlooks the Hudson River, and I’m told the view is quite magnificent.” He grasped her hand. “Someday we’re going to have a summer home even grander than this.”

Though a summer home really didn’t matter to Honor, she respected Robert’s right to cherish his own dreams. “Someday we shall.”

The moment the victoria came to a stop at the door, Nevada LaRouche himself came out and sauntered down the porch steps with his usual predatory grace. Attired for the country in a white shirt with no cravat, unbuttoned waistcoat, and brown twill trousers, he nevertheless still wore his cowboy boots.

He smiled, and Honor felt the serenity vanish.

“Davis, Mrs. Davis…” He walked over to the carriage and extended his hand to help Honor disembark. “Welcome to Coppermine.”

“Thank you for inviting us,” Honor said, avoiding his cool, amused gaze by focusing all her attention on the complex task of gathering her skirt in one hand. She was thankful that her gloves shielded her fingers from the warmth of his clasp as he helped her down. Again Honor avoided looking at him by studying her surroundings. “This is a beautiful estate, very serene and restful after the bustle of New York City.”

“That’s what my partner had in mind when he built it,” LaRouche replied. “Maybe tomorrow you’d like to see the dairy farm and orchards, or go riding.”

Honor managed a small polite smile. “I’m sure Robert and I would enjoy that.”

“Do you come up here every weekend?” Robert asked after he stepped down.

“As often as I can get away, especially in the summer.” As the footmen began unloading his guests’ bags from the carriage, LaRouche drifted toward the house. “Why don’t you come in and meet the others?”

Robert drew Honor’s arm through his, and they followed their host into the house, passing first through a small foyer, then into a spacious central atrium that soared past the second floor.

Honor tilted her head back to stare at the stained-glass skylight made up of squares of translucent white glass in the center and bordered with vivid green grape leaves and twisting brown vines.