Anna wondered what Jack and Oscar thought they might gain by going through newspaper advertisements, and if they intended to investigate every one of the practitioners who made outlandish and irresponsible claims under false names. As she folded the paper to put it back on the desk, another ad caught her eye. While she was studying it the clerk came in.
Anna nodded impatiently at the long-winded excuse for his absence and held up the paper. “Is this yours, Mr. Andrews?”
He was tall and slender to the point of emaciation, his skin livid with inflamed eruptions that a luckier person would have outgrown years since. Anna imagined very well that he never looked at his reflection if he could help it. Now sweat broke out on his brow because she had looked at him. She turned her attention back to the paper.
“You’re not in any trouble,” she said in a kinder tone. “I came in with some death certificates, and noticed the paper. I was just wondering if I might take this page of advertisements, or if that would interrupt your reading?”
He raised both hands, palms out, as if he were surrendering to a greater military power.
“Please,” he said. “Help yourself.”
? ? ?
JACK AND OSCAR knocked on Archer Campbell’s door at ten in the morning, and kept knocking until they heard him cursing as he marched through the house. He yanked the door open to glare at them, his eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed.
His sleeves were pushed up to the elbows, his hands and forearms scalded red and dripping with water and soapsuds. His trousers were wet from the knee to the ankle, and his shoes were scuffed and caked with dirt.
“What do you want?”
“A few questions,” Oscar said. His tone was not so sharp as Jack would have anticipated.
“I’ve got a few of my own,” said Campbell. “But I doubt you’ll have any answers. Fuckin useless buggers, every one of youse.”
They followed him into the house, through the small parlor and dining room to a kitchen that had been emptied of furniture, and the windows and rear door stood wide open. The room smelled of lye soap and carbolic. They stepped around a bucket and a scrub brush and followed him into the yard, where a washtub full of clothes waited.
“Get on with it,” Campbell said. “Or were you expecting cake and coffee first?”
Oscar said, “How much money did your wife take with her when she left with the boys that Wednesday morning?”
Campbell’s head jerked up. “What?”
“How much money—”
“Never mind. Why would you care?”
“We’re trying to track down the doctor who treated her,” Jack said. “Money is relevant.”
“She never lacked a thing,” Campbell said hotly. “Her or the boys.”
Oscar glanced at Jack, but they kept their silence.
Campbell put back his head and looked up into the sky. After a long moment he said, “She took it all. One thousand two hundred twenty-two dollars, every penny I’ve saved since I started to work on the day I turned eleven.”
“You kept it in the house.”
“Show me a man who put his trust in a bank, and I’ll show you a fool. It was well hidden, that you can believe, but not well enough. It never occurred to me she’d have the guts to rob her own husband, but then as it turns out, I didn’t know her at all, did I?”
“Have you given up the search for your boys?”
Campbell’s expression hardened. “With what money? Train fares and private detectives and all the rest cost plenty.”
He glanced over his shoulder as if he were worried about being overheard.
“She planned it all out. Took the money so she could pay the doctor, the one who fixed her and did such a grand job of it. I think she already knew how things stood, that she was dying, so she paid somebody to take all four boys in. She stole my savings and used it to hide my boys from me, tied my hands so I couldn’t go looking for them proper. Miserable bitch. I’ll never get the stink of her out of my house.”
? ? ?
ANNA LEFT THE New Amsterdam and hailed a cab, headed all the way uptown on Bloomingdale Road to a little farm that had been one of her favorite places as a child. It was a trip she and Sophie and Aunt Quinlan each made once a month, but Anna had last visited in March, the week before she went to Hoboken. Amelie would not make accusations, but Anna was regretful, nonetheless.
When the cabdriver balked about going so far, she promised him an extra dollar on top of his normal fare if he would wait for her. He stopped in front of the garden gate, heavy with twining flower vines studded with blossoms as big as saucers, bright blue in the sunlight.