She blushed. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I was.”
“Ned decided to forgo the weekly visit to his mother?”
“Oh no.” She smiled. “He’d never do that. He idolizes that woman. She is in poor health, you see, and she relies on him for everything. They are particularly close.”
“Did his father die?”
A troubled, almost embarrassed, look crossed her face. “Not as far as I know. He has no father—at least none that we know of. He was an illegitimate child and his mother will never speak of his father. She was cast out, you see, and reared him in terrible poverty. He’s done very well to educate himself. He’s remarkable, really.”
“So you’ve mentioned before,” I teased.
She blushed again. “Actually I’m on my way to take tea with a dear friend,” she said. “Fanny Poindexter. She and I were roommates in our freshman year at Vassar. She was Fanny Bradley then, of course. She married Anson Poindexter the moment we graduated and now she’s a respectable and rich married lady.” She looked up suddenly as the thought struck her. “Why don’t you come along?”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to intrude in a meeting between old friends. I’d just be in the way.”
“No, not at all. Fanny is having an afternoon “at home” at her place. Other young women will be there. You’d enjoy it, I’m sure. And Fanny would be tickled pink to meet a lady detective.”
So I was to be brought along as a novelty! I was about to refuse, but then I decided that it might indeed be amusing to meet other women with lively minds. “Very well,” I said. “I accept your kind invitation.”
“Splendid.” She jumped up. “Just wait until I can make this wretched hat sit straight on my head. Oh, why wasn’t I blessed with good hair?”
“You have striking hair,” I said, and indeed she did. It was black and lustrous and today was worn in a thick, smooth roll around her face.
Emily made a face. “But it’s so horribly straight and refuses to take a curl. I can have it in curling papers all night and in the morning it drops like a limp rag again.”
“I suppose we’re never thankful for what we’ve got,” I said. “I just wish my own hair could be tamed and wasn’t this awful flaming red.”
“Oh, but it’s such a magnificent color,” Emily said. “Quite startling.”
‘I’d rather be a little less startling sometimes,” I said. “It’s hard to blend into a crowd.”
Emily stuck a last hat pin into her hair with a fierce jab. “There,” she said. “Now we can go.”
We set off, arm in arm in the spring sunshine. “You’ll adore Fanny,” Emily said. “Everyone does. We had such a good time together at Vassar. I was the shy girl who had been raised by governesses and had no social graces, and she had traveled to Europe and knew how to dance and had the most fashionable wardrobe you could ever imagine. I was in awe of her but she took me under her wing.”
“And now she lives close by?”
“She has an apartment in the Dakota, but they are having a house built out on Long Island so they can be among the fashionable set.”
“How nice to have money,” I said.
“It is she who has the money,” Emily confided. “She is a Bradley, of Bradley Freight and Steamship. He has the name. He comes from a distinguished old family, you know. Came over on the Mayflower, I believe. But they must be happy about an infusion of Bradley cash. Anson is an ambitious young lawyer, so I expect he will do very well for himself. A good match all around.”
We approached the park, which was glowing in leafy splendor. I looked at it longingly, wondering if it would be rude to leave Emily to her friend and go for a walk beside the boating lake. Emily held firmly to my arm as we turned onto Central Park West, and I couldn’t think of a polite way to extricate myself. A doorman in impressive livery opened the front door for us. An elevator page took us up to the ninth floor. I tried to remember if I had ever taken an elevator this high before. This was still a new experience for me and I still didn’t trust them completely. I’d observed the cable going up and down, and it seemed rather thin to be supporting a large iron cage.
Anyway, such anxieties were put aside as we reached the ninth floor and the operator opened the door for us with a smart salute. We could hear laughter coming from behind the door at the end of the hallway. A maid let us in.
“Madam is in the drawing room,” she said, unnecessarily, as a good deal of noise was coming from that direction, and led us in.