“Camilla? Well, she has a bit of a complicated history. She went to St. Paul’s—”
“Of course,” Charlotte said, biting into her cheese straw. St. Paul’s was as preppy as schools came, and Charlotte had become fascinated with it at Sheffield after she swam against them and noted the whole girls’ swim team carried monogrammed towels.
“Your favorite. Then Trinity for college, but in her senior year her parents got divorced. You have to have heard of them. It was on Page Six basically constantly. Susan, Souse, is the mother. And her father is Fritz Rutherford.”
“Wait, sorry, Rutherford like Rutherford Rutherford? As in, she probably owns founders’ shares in J. P. Morgan?”
“Sssshh,” said Evelyn, indicating her head toward the Hackings. “Yes.”
“And our heroine couldn’t even get through Camp Trin-Trin?”
Evelyn had dropped her voice to a whisper. “She ended up getting her degree in Hawaii or Ecuador or someplace. She fled town after the parents’ divorce. I looked up the details—apparently it had to do with Fritz’s refusal to support the Guggenheim.”
“I can’t hear you. What was the divorce about?” Charlotte seemed to be increasing her volume on purpose.
“Fritz’s refusal to support the Guggenheim,” Evelyn hissed, again casting a look over her shoulder to see if Mrs. Hacking had heard her.
“We all think we have our problems, but thank God we don’t have husbands who don’t support the Guggenheim.”
“Charlotte, keep your voice down. She does events for Vogue. I think even the heads of PLU will be impressed if I get her.”
“I’m not quite sure what to say, Beegan, but I like your moxie,” Charlotte said.
Mrs. Hacking slowed the boat as they approached Sachem, which was on a private island in the middle of the lake. Scot and Charlotte began peppering Mr. Hacking with questions about how, exactly, provisions for a private island were supplied, but the wind carried their words past the bow of the boat and the American flag whose wake-wetted fabric slapped against Evelyn’s head.
When Mrs. Hacking downshifted again and the boat made grunting leaps toward a dock, Preston sprang out and tied up the Chris-Craft with a few quick knots. The dock was less elegant than Evelyn was expecting, just a wooden roof making a V over a platform with some benches on it, and a long, thin dock bobbing next to it where a variety of motorboats and rowboats were tied up.
Evelyn had gotten out of the boat ahead of everyone else and, trying to look like she knew where she was going, started up a path to an A-frame structure that seemed to be made of giant Lincoln Logs. She heard a whistle from behind her.
“Wrong way, Ev,” Preston said.
“Isn’t that the house?”
“That’s the teepee.”
“That’s a teepee?”
Mr. Hacking, who had overtaken Evelyn on the uphill path and was studying the house like it was a rare raptor, stepped in. “It’s called the Typee. After Melville. Where the men would carouse. Far enough away from the main lodge that they could have their liquor and smoke cigars without the women knowing. The whole hill below it is, legend has it, covered in glass. Can you guess why?”
Evelyn, feeling like she had not done the reading for third-period history, shook her head.
“Liquor bottles,” he said, enunciating. “They would throw bottles over the edge of the railing and shoot them.”
“Oh.” Evelyn looked back down toward the dock, but couldn’t see another path; she looked higher up, and saw another house, about three hundred yards above the first one, looming red and large on the hill. “That’s the main house, then? Up on the hill?”
“No,” Mr. Hacking said, now pleased with his student, “though that’s a good guess. That’s known as the chalet. The Hennings were, of course, great rivals of the Bluestadts, of the barbed-wire fortune, and the Bluestadts had a place just east of this, on East Lake. From the Bluestadts’ house, one could see the top of the hill at Sachem, which at the time held servants’ quarters—the servants were on the hilltop because it was farthest from the water, of course. Well, the Hennings were infuriated that the Bluestadt guests would have a view of the servants’ quarters, so they built a chalet fa?ade for the servants’ quarters just so the Bluestadt guests would not think badly of them.”
Charlotte had caught up to them by now. “The egos of these guys. Jesus,” she said. “A Potemkin village. Or, I guess, a Potemkin chalet.”
“Very good,” Mr. Hacking said happily.
“So the main house?” Charlotte asked.
“We came in through the servants’ boathouse. Easier to find space there during parties. There’s a path to the main house from just off of there. Quite well hidden, really,” Mr. Hacking said.
“Yes, God forbid the servants be able to find their masters,” Charlotte said.