After Clara had been arrested and taken away to the Tombs, the inspectors had searched her home and practice in the most destructive manner possible. They found an envelope sitting in plain sight on her desk with a half dozen of the same informational pamphlets she had given to Comstock’s undercover inspector, as well as two new female syringes.
Clara Garrison had been the lecturer in obstetrics at the Woman’s Medical School when Anna and Sophie were students. She was an excellent practitioner and teacher, and utterly uncompromising when it came to patient care. Sophie had a theory that Clara Garrison had once been a nun; she had the energy, high standards, and quiet efficiency Sophie associated with the sisters who had taught her as a child in New Orleans. It was from Clara that they had learned what it meant to care for the most vulnerable.
It was Clara’s good fortune that for both her previous arrests the grand jury had simply refused to issue an indictment. This time she had not been so lucky, and tomorrow she would appear in court to answer the charges Anthony Comstock had gone to so much trouble to secure.
“I want to send a pamphlet to Mrs. Campbell anonymously,” Sophie said. “She is truly desperate.”
“Yes,” Anna said, resigned to the necessity that they do at least this much. “And then what will we do when she comes looking for pessaries or a syringe or a dutch cap?”
It was the most difficult problem they faced. A problem without a solution, and repercussions that were all too real: at one extreme another child might be born into a family of six or eight or more, living in a single room without a window or a privy. On the other extreme were the midwives and doctors who might be sent to prison or harassed until nothing remained of their careers. One day Sophie or Anna could very well misstep and end up in front of Judge Benedict, Anthony Comstock’s partner in his endless crusade against empty wombs. The two of them would smirk and frown and see to it that the defendant suffered the maximum possible embarrassment and personal and professional damage.
For a half hour she and Sophie spoke very little, drifting in and out of a light sleep. The house was peaceful, and Anna might have fallen into a deeper sleep and stayed there until morning, if not for the wail rising up the stairwell. It catapulted them out of bed and into the hall, where they leaned over the banister.
? ? ?
COUSIN MARGARET STOOD in the foyer with a delivery boy who was holding a flat, square box in both hands.
Brown packing paper had been torn away, revealing the gilded frame of an oil portrait familiar to everyone in the household.
“Oh dear,” Sophie said. “Isn’t that Mrs. Parker’s delivery boy? What is he doing with one of Auntie’s paintings?”
“Returning it,” Anna said. “Mrs. Parker was using it as a model for—”
“Your ball gown.” Sophie bit her lip, but the smile was there and would not be held back.
Cousin Margaret looked up and caught sight of them. “Not Countess Turchaninov!” Horrified, as Anna had known she would be.
“I’m afraid so,” Anna said.
“But you’ll be half-naked!”
The delivery boy shuffled his feet.
Margaret said, “But your aunt Quinlan said she sent Countess Turchaninov out to be cleaned.”
Anna didn’t doubt that at all; Aunt Quinlan wasn’t above misdirecting attention if it helped her with a plan.
“I believe the canvas was cleaned,” Anna told her. “Before it went to the seamstress. Mrs. Parker had it for two weeks, at least.”
Margaret threw up her hands in disgust and disappeared down the hall to the kitchen.
“I wanted to go as the warrior queen Boadicea,” Anna said on a sigh, “but Aunt Quinlan talked me out of it and into Countess Turchaninov. What there is of her.”
The boy cleared his throat. “You’ll pardon me, but I’m after getting this receipt signed. It don’t matter which one of youse signs it. It don’t matter that your countess here is wearing a night rail; if I’m not away with a signed receipt the mistress will box my ears, so she will.”
Mrs. Lee came marching down the hall, took the receipt from the boy, fished a pencil out of her apron pocket, and signed with a flourish. The boy grabbed the receipt and the coin that Mrs. Lee offered with one hand, tipped his cap with the other, and dashed down the hall to the service entrance in the rear.
Mrs. Lee looked up at Anna and shook her head in disapproval.
“I won’t be alone,” Anna reminded her. “There’s no need to worry about me.”
Mrs. Lee scowled. “If you’re Countess Turchaninov, who is Cap going to be?”
Anna lifted a shoulder. “I have no idea.”
“You can be sure of one thing,” said Sophie, her mouth twitching toward a smile. “It’s not Cap people will be looking at.”
? ? ?
AT TEN SOPHIE went with Anna to watch as Aunt Quinlan examined her.
She was sitting in the upholstered chair that allowed her to look out onto the street, with a gaslight flickering on the wall behind her and a book in her lap, unopened. This was the way Sophie always thought of her aunt, sitting in the high-backed chair, turning toward the door to see who had come to call.