“You’ll have to lend it to me for my Chinese silk, Alice,” Bella said.
“I’m not lending it to anyone. At that price Arthur probably won’t allow me to wear it outside of the house.”
I had remained silent since my outburst on the folly of corsets and was following the conversation with interest, mingled with a tinge of alarm. These were presumably all educated women. Two at least had been to Vassar. Yet the conversation had not departed once from shopping and their attire. And their speech had been peppered with such phrases as “Arthur wouldn’t allow me to . . .” Fanny’s husband was building them a house on Long Island even though Fanny, who supposedly had the money, would have liked Newport. Did all women have to surrender their wits and their power when they married? I tried to picture myself saying, “Daniel would not allow me to . . .”
Fanny must have noticed my preoccupied expression because she said suddenly, “Miss Murphy, please do have a cake or some chocolate, and you never did tell us what manner of work you are involved in.”
“You’ll never guess,” Emily said, with an excited look around the group, “but she’s a detective. A lady detective.”
“No. Are there such things?” The news caused quite a stir in the little gathering.
“I assure you I’m real,” I said, “and yes, I run my own detective agency.”
“And are you like Mr. Sherlock Holmes? Do you stalk through New York with your magnifying glass, picking up hairs and cigarette butts and declaring that the murderer was a one-armed Peruvian with a lisp?” Bella giggled as she looked at me.
“I can’t claim to have had Sherlock Holmes’s success,” I said, “but I have concluded some successful cases.”
“Not all sordid divorces, I hope?” Alice said primly.
“I rarely touch divorces for that reason,” I said. “My cases have ranged from missing persons to proving the innocence of those wrongly accused.”
“How terribly exciting,” Fanny said. “But isn’t this kind of work dangerous?”
“Too dangerous at times,” I confessed. “My young man wants me to quit.”
“Well, you will as soon as you marry, won’t you?” Bella said.
“I don’t know.”
“She’s working for me at this very moment,” Emily said. “She’s trying to find out the truth about my parents.”
“But I thought they were missionaries and they died of cholera,” Fanny said.
“So did I. But now I’m wondering if I’ve been deceived,” Emily answered. “Molly is absolutely wonderful. She’s already tracked down somebody who wrote a book on missionaries in China and he will put her in touch with everybody who was there at the time.”
“Well done, Miss Murphy.” Alice patted me on the shoulder.
“Do eat, everybody. Our cook makes the most delicious cakes,” Fanny said. The group needed no urging, even though they expressed concern about their figures as the cream cakes disappeared from the plate.
At last we bid our adieus and left.
“So what did you think of Fanny and her friends?” Emily asked as we stepped out of the Dakota. “Isn’t she an absolute beauty? And so kind, too.”
“She is certainly lovely,” I said. “And she does seem kind.”
“Of course that kind of life would never be for me,” Emily said. “Fanny, Dorcas, and I used to have discussions deep into the night about democracy and the loss of greatness in a democratic society and the justification for colonialism. All kinds of deep topics. We were planning to set the world to rights. I was going to train as a doctor and follow my parents into the mission field. Fanny wanted to be an anthropologist and come with me to Africa to study primitive tribes while I healed their bodies and minds. And Dorcas—she used to read Ovid in Latin for pleasure!”
“And now all they talk about is gowns and cosmetics,” I said.
“It is my observation that most husbands do not want brainy wives. They want an adornment, a good mother but not one who will provide any threat to their authority.”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” I said. “I’ve made my own position quite clear to my young man. I want an equal partnership or nothing at all.”
“I expect the same,” Emily said. “Ned respects my intelligence too much to think of me as a plaything or a possession.”
“Then we will stick up for our rights together,” I said. “We will remain the last two intelligent married women in New York City!”
Emily laughed and slipped her arm through mine. We marched, in step, along the side of the park.