Spider Dance (44 page)

I didn’t sleep a wink or a blink that night

I’d heard whispers, of course, about certain dissolute noblemen behaving madly. I suppose I knew why, but I never admitted it

Now that awful ghost was hovering over my own house.

Irene’s eyes had darkened to an onyx glitter as she pointed out this unwholesome fact. I realized that this worry had absorbed her from the moment we received the many biographies of Lola Montez. With her more worldly outlook, it must have occurred to her far earlier than when she had finally told me.

We must determine if Lola was her mother, or neither of us would sleep a wink again . . . and Godfrey! Oh, I missed him too, and his ever-so-tactful way of explaining to me confusing worldly matters. Was it not possible, even likely, that if such evil was transmitted to the younger generation it could be transmitted to whomever one . . . um, whomever?

Was it possible that . . . unsanctioned kissing could transmit the curse? Was that why religions were so strict about such matters?

Had Quentin . . . no, I would not think about it. Quentin would never do anything to harm me, and surely, like Irene, was worldly enough to know how to ensure that

But Irene could not help who her mother was . . . or what she had died from.

I tossed and turned, furious at my own ignorance and yet tortured by my speculations. My hair matted against my sopping scalp and face. And then I shivered as the cool air in the room attacked my feverish body.

Madness and death.

Already the unfriendly accounts made Lola look a bit
mad. But then, she’d always behaved like a woman who recognized no limits, and that is considered madness in many circles.

Only one course would answer this dreadful uncertainty. We must discover whether Lola was Irene’s mother, or not. And then we must know how Lola had died and what part this pretty word
syphilis
that signified such disaster might have played in that ending.

I saw now that Irene would not, could not, be turned from this investigation in view of the high personal stakes.

I saw now that I could not, would not, be turned from this quest in view of the high personal stakes.

The means most in my power were the two hidden documents from two vastly different sources—and even periods of time—that Irene had unearthed during our three weeks in New York City. One was the faded, almost illegible scrawls presumably written in Lola’s hand, found in the modest boardinghouse where she died in early 1861. The other was the coded client book of the society abortionist and secret adoption arranger, Madame Restell, found in the imposing Fifth Avenue mansion she had built across from Vanderbilt Row, where she so spectacularly left this earth in 1877.

I arose, lit my bedside lamp, and studied both documents until my vision blurred. Lola’s papers offered some clear passages. The Restell book listed columns and columns of abbreviated words and numbers that seemed vaguely familiar, yet I could still make no sense of them whatsoever. Time and persistence was the only hope here. Meanwhile, I needed my wits for the morning.

I said a quick but fervent prayer that Lola Montez was not the woman she had been reputed to be by her worst enemies.

And then I made a vow that I would find out the truth about Lola, and that not even the beasts who had tormented Father Hawks would stop me.

Oh, and I said a prayer for Quentin, and what it was is not even the business of my own diary.

The notion of combining the exploitation of crime, scandal,
or shocking circumstance with the spirit of a crusade, delivered
into words by a clever and talented writer who donned disguise
to get the story was sensationalist in character and
something altogether new in the field
.
—BROOKE KROEGER,
NELLIE BLY

F
ROM
N
ELLIE
B
LY’S
J
OURNAL

I told Quentin to get some new clothes at a department store.

Off he went, whistling.

That man was determined not to writhe under my thumb. I returned and also went shopping, at a street market, where I found a mended wool shawl, once fine, and some slightly worn women’s clothing, including the ugliest straw hat I have ever seen. When it comes to women’s dress, the hat is the most important piece, for it sits atop the face, and whatever message it gives underlines the veracity of the face beneath. I was going for a “poor but honesf’ impression.

Quentin, once out of his London-tailored garb and into American department-store goods, would do for my slightly well set-up new husband.

We met at my brownstone on Eighty-sixth Street, under the watchful eye of my mother.

“Mrs. Cochrane,” he said with one of those bows the Brits
do so well. “I’m delighted to meet the woman who has reared the formidable Nellie Bly.”

“Oh, go on, Mr. Stanhope! Pink tells me you are quite the swell fellow, and it’s very good of you to aid her in her latest venture. Mind you, not that anyone would be stopping my Pink.”

“I have seen her grit and grace exercised on two continents, madam,” he said, managing not to sound utterly smarmy, which was a miracle.”It’s a privilege to assist her.”

So with the maternal blessing we sallied forth on another of my masquerades.

He eyed my attire with a respectful eye. “Quite plain and even frumpy, my dear Pink. You show deep dedication to your work.”

I surveyed him back. “The store-bought clothes underline your air of Johnny-come-lately petty bourgeoisie. If only you spoke the president’s English.”

“But I do, dear heart,” said he, immediately assuming a Yankee accent so authentic it had me blinking. “Blending into any environment is the chief virtue of a spy. If I can speak Urdu, I can certainly master the American ‘twang.’”

“All right.” I would never admit I was pleasantly surprised that my plan to humiliate Nell and her swain would work so well to my own purposes. I stopped and pulled off my darned cotton glove, slightly gray at the fingertips. “You can put on this last prop.”

He gazed at the plain gold ring I had bought at the flea market. It was probably ten-karat gold, and much nicked, although it had been sold as fourteen.

Quentin frowned. “I would have done better than this.”

“I am a woman who has hooked a man slightly above her station. I’m content with less. The real money will go to buying the infant.”

“And how much will that be?” he asked, producing an admirably scarred brown leather wallet. Apparently he had visited his own flea market.

“I won’t know until we try.”

“And where do we try?”

“The poorer quarters on the Lower East Side. I have some villains’ names to bandy about We’ll see where they lead.”

“What are the names? I should know them as well as you, perhaps better.”

“Joshua Mann and his so-called ‘mother,’ Mrs. T. Anna Swinton.”

“T. Anna’? What kind of name is that for a woman?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care. But that was the old harridan who helped Eva Hamilton produce her rotating cast of infant children. I think her odious son, Joshua, had been Eva’s pimp in her early days. They were the ‘family’ of swindlers, not foolish Robert Roy Hamilton, who was hoodwinked into making an honest woman of his mistress when she started pleading pregnancy.”

“He must have been simple-minded.”

“Especially since his Eva had several so-called ‘husbands’ in her past, and stints in brothels in Philadelphia and even New York.”

“So the first baby ‘produced’ died. Why?’

“One would hope little Eva wished her brat to survive.”

“And this woman bought another baby, who also died?”

“Again, we come back to a simple-minded Robert Roy.” I sighed, not wanting to face more than the bare facts, for the individual fates of the infants were heartbreaking. “I imagine these babies’ mothers were poor and desperate, half-starving, and their infants as well. None of them had half a chance.”

“Babies are sold the world over,” he assured me in acid tones, “and into situations far worse than the Hamilton household.”

“The third baby didn’t look enough like the first one. That tells me it was bought sight unseen, or by Mann or Swinton.”

“And the fourth one?”

“Passed muster with Hamilton, but not the nursemaid.”

“She was a brave woman.”

“And paid for it.”

“Where are the happy couple now . . . meaning this Mann person and his mother, Mrs. Swinton?”

“Out on bail, charged with fraudulent production of an infant under false pretenses. It’s so strange, Quentin. I can understand why Hamilton wanted to move his unconventional family away from gossip to California, but they were both unhappy in the West and he moved back East post haste, bringing Mann and Mrs. Swinton along to Atlantic City! Then they again engaged the same nurse who had seen the third child who’d been given away. Why did that obnoxious trio expect to diddle the nurse as well?”

“It might have made the husband suspicious if she had not been rehired. And . . . she counted for nothing. Mere hired help is expected to be invisible. Perhaps the miscreants thought their ploys would be as invisible to her as to her master.”

“The wife herself is a maze of contradictions. She goes on trial as Eva Hamilton alias Steele alias Parsons alias Mann—”

“Then this Mann was more than her pimp, he was her husband.”

“Among a certain class, that’s usually the case.”

“It makes one long for uncivilized climes, where slavery is open.”

“Pooh, surely you know that the major cities traffic in anything and anybody.”

“I do. But I didn’t know that you did.”

“Do you think that I have made my reputation by blinking at abomination, and swooning?”

“My dear Pink, I don’t contemplate your reputation at all.”

“Perhaps you should. You might stop underestimating me.”

“I doubt it.”

I realized that was as much concession as I would ever get from this cucumber-cool Englishman.

“Are you ready to embark on a charade of baby-seeking?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be. Where do we go for such a thing?”