It was the way she and Sophie and Cap had always tackled a difficult problem in geometry or chemistry. She and Sophie continued the practice at college and in medical school studying pharmacology and physiology. And now they sometimes discussed a difficult case.
The letter from the lady signing herself Mrs. Latimer was nothing out of the ordinary, but it had roused Sophie’s suspicions. Given the timing, she feared it was connected to the pamphlet she had sent Mrs. Campbell. If her husband had intercepted the envelope, this could be a trap, yet another effort to manipulate her into violating the Comstock Act.
At Sophie’s elbow was a pile of newspaper clippings that dated back five years, all of which had to do with Comstock’s arrests of physicians, midwives, printers, and druggists for distribution of contraceptives or information about contraceptives. There was a handwritten chart attached, on which Anna had calculated the number of arrests according to the type of evidence, and the outcome of the case. Comstock was not terribly successful in prosecuting these cases, but he was persistent and sometimes, with the right judge, he got what he wanted.
She recognized in herself a kind of compulsion to keep track of Comstock, and a general irritation that such a thing should be necessary. For all they knew other physicians all over the city were just as worried about the possibility of being entrapped, but they were all so afraid of Comstock that they didn’t raise the subject in company.
“We don’t have enough information,” Anna said when they had been going over the facts available to them for ten minutes. “I don’t see any real connection to Mrs. Campbell.”
“Maybe not, but I think we have to assume the worst,” Sophie said. “Mrs. Campbell would have received the pamphlet I sent on Wednesday, probably in the first mail delivery of the day. That was two days after I attended her delivery, and one day after her husband looked at me, directly at me, while he stood next to Comstock. At Clara Garrison’s trial. We have to warn the printer,” she said. “If the pamphlet was traced to me, it could be traced to him, and I will not take that chance.”
“Think about it for one more day,” Anna said. “And think about this too: if Comstock does have someone watching you, that person could follow you to the printer they otherwise would have a difficult time locating and might never suspect.”
Sophie gave her a pointed look. “Why do you want to talk me out of doing what I know is right?”
Anna sat back, picked up her cup, and thought for a moment.
“I don’t. Really, I don’t. But the thought of that man—my hackles rise.”
“You can be sure I’ll take every precaution to avoid him.”
Anna would have to be satisfied with that much.
6
EARLY SUNDAY MORNING Anna came in from checking post-op patients and stretched out on her favorite divan in the parlor, putting her head back to study the mural on the ceiling. It was the work of a visiting artist who had painted because he had no other way, he explained at length, of repaying Aunt Quinlan’s extraordinary hospitality.
Aunt Quinlan was known as a gracious hostess, a supporter of young artists, and an easy touch. Any close friend could write a letter of introduction that would open her door, and she had many close friends. Over the years dozens of young artists had come to call, in need of encouragement and regular feeding and a bed. These young people would stay a few days or a few weeks, and almost all of them left behind a painting or drawing or sculpture of some kind.
Mr. MacLeish had decided that nothing less than a mural would do, and banished them all from the parlor for a full month while he worked.
“And ate,” Mrs. Lee pointed out at every opportunity. Mrs. Lee did not like being shut out of the parlor, and she liked even less that Hamish MacLeish wouldn’t allow her to supervise his progress. By the time the unveiling came around she was determined not to like whatever he had created, but she gave in with good grace as soon as she saw it.
MacLeish won Mrs. Lee over by putting Aunt Quinlan—a much younger Aunt Quinlan, extracted from an early self-portrait—in the center of his mural as Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory.
“Just so,” said Mrs. Lee. “Queens and goddesses forget nothing, except when it suits them.”
“He was a student of Rossetti’s,” Aunt Quinlan reminded them. They were sitting in the parlor studying the mural after MacLeish had gone on to try his luck in the west. “Obsessed with hair, masses of it. All of Rossetti’s crowd were.”
He had painted the muses, too, in a circle around their mother, all draped in flowing jewel-colored robes and each of them with more hair than any human woman could possibly want.
“The hair is well done, but he didn’t get your faces quite right.” This from Cousin Margaret to Anna and Sophie, delivered with a small sniff.
“We didn’t know he was using us as models,” Sophie said, because it was clear now that Margaret felt ignored.
Anna said to her, “I suppose we should be offended that he didn’t ask for permission.”