I dig my fingers into her thin shoulders. My stomach is cold with fright.
“The nerve of whom?” I ask huskily. Even though I think I already know the answer. I think I already know what she’s going to say.
She whispers back: Lydia.
She didn’t believe him at first, she says. Before he left for Florida, Simon warned her that Lydia might not be dead after all, and that if she reappeared, Clara was to let him know, and to avoid her at all costs, because she had murdered her own father. Because she would do anything to get what she wanted. You can’t believe the deceit of which she is capable, Simon said.
“And then I got the terrible news about Simon.” Clara’s eyes fill with water. “There was this letter, an awful letter from his lawyer, because Simon left me a bequest from his estate, and the very next day she turned up on my doorstep.”
“Lydia?”
“Yes. She demanded the money, she said it was her birthright. She made the most terrible threats, and then she left. I thought she’d return—I went to stay with a friend—but she never did. So I decided to come to Florida and find Samuel and warn him—”
“You’re too late for that. She arrived here in February.”
“Oh, God. And Sammy?”
“Sam,” I say slowly, “is at Maitland. In good hands.”
“Is he? I suppose as long as he’s safe from Lydia . . .”
“Safe from Lydia?”
“Well, he’s Simon’s son, isn’t he, poor chap? My brother must have set something aside for him. And that’s what she wants. Simon’s money. However she can get it.”
However she can get it.
Until this instant—those words—I don’t think I’ve really understood. What this woman is trying to say. That Clara is really Lydia, Lydia Fitzwilliam, the first Mrs. Fitzwilliam, a Lydia Fitzwilliam who is a fiend. A fiend who wants my money. The fortune Simon left to me.
That is all we are, to a woman like that: cards to be played and discarded, according to her desire and our usefulness.
How is this possible? She was so kind. She was so sympathetic. She wanted me to be happy; she wanted me to enjoy myself and to fall in love again. How could she want me to fall in love with Samuel, her own lover?
You cannot conceive the deceit of which she is capable.
“Poor Samuel,” Clara says. “Poor fellow. You see, he wasn’t like Simon. Everybody loved Simon. Lydia was the first girl who took an interest in him. I say, what’s the matter? Where are you bolting off to like that?”
“The hotel!”
She follows me out of Samuel’s office. “But you’re hurt! Look at you! What hotel?”
I fling open the office door, I don’t know from what reservoir of strength, and run down the corridor to the stairs.
“Who’s Evelyn?” Clara calls after me.
“My daughter. Our daughter!”
“My God! And you left her with Lydia?”
I can’t answer her; my terror paralyzes my throat. And I have no breath to waste on words. No time to think through what Clara has told me—the real Clara, she claims, the one I met briefly in Cornwall, with her gray dress and her gray face, and yet so eerily echoing the other Clara, the Lydia-Clara, like two saplings grafted from the same tree, one watered with tears and the other with champagne.
Outside, the street is deserted, except for Samuel’s Ford and the Packard parked on the opposite curb, not far from the entrance to the hotel, just between the umbrellas of light shed by a pair of streetlamps. Relief drenches me. They haven’t left yet; they haven’t taken her away. And then: Of course not. Stupid woman. They need me, don’t they? If this new Clara is telling me the truth. If Simon wrote me the truth.
Or perhaps she clings to this last card—the legal fact of our marriage—in case she finds herself in need again.
They need my fortune, don’t they? The fortune Simon left to me. Or far better, the fortune my father left to me. My God, what a windfall. They need me married to Samuel, perhaps, and then dead by some convenient accident, so common in this unruly state, rife with disease and predators.
Or maybe they haven’t left because this woman is the liar. This woman is the false Clara.
My head hurts. My guts ache. My right hand throbs beneath the bandage.
Clara catches up and joins me on the pavement, breathless, clutching her hat. I turn to her and grip her arm. “Tell me something, quickly. How did your parents die?”
“My parents? What do you mean? They died of the ’flu.”
“Are you certain? Absolutely certain? You were there, you nursed them.”
She looks bewildered. “Of course I’m certain. I came down with it myself, the day after you arrived. It was weeks before I recovered. Poor Simon, he was beside himself.”
Her expression is utterly without guile. I release her arm and say, “Do you know how to drive?”
“Yes.” She hesitates. “Well, a bit.”
“Wait in the Packard. Don’t go inside, or they’ll know I’ve caught on.”
“But what about you?”
I turn away without answering and push my two hands on the revolving door of the Phantom Hotel, until it gives way into the lobby.
The desk clerk looks up with surprise. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam!”
“Good evening, Clay.” (The clock above the lobby mantel reads half past two o’clock.)
“Good—good evening. Mrs. Fitzwilliam. Are you—shall I call a doctor?”
“No, thank you, Clay. I’m not hurt.”
I walk across the lobby carpet without another word, conscious of the blood on my clothes, the state of my hair. I avoid the clerk’s gaze, though I can tell he’s shocked, he’s thinking of reaching for the telephone and calling the police, raising the alarm, and I suppose that Samuel probably had the wit to use the back entrance, where no hotel staff might be encountered at this hour.
I reach the elevator and step inside, and I speak very gently. “Ninth floor, please, Potter.”
Potter starts from his daze and says, “Yes, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.” Operates the grille and the door, turns the lever, and only then does he catch a glimpse of me on the shiny brass interior. He makes another start, fully awake now, and turns his head. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam!”
“Yes, Potter?”
“Have you had an accident, ma’am? Do you need a doctor?”
“No, thank you.” I stare very hard at the elevator dial, the creeping hand. “I don’t suppose Mr. Fitzwilliam and his sister have been out tonight, have they?”
“No, ma’am. Not in my elevator.”
“Thank you, Potter.”
A light appears on the board of numbers next to Potter’s shoulder. The call signal for the ninth floor.
“Why, now. That might be Mr. Fitzwilliam right this second,” Potter says, voice of wonder, waiting for me to reply, to shed some illumination on these mysterious doings, but I don’t reply. I wait for the hands, the damned hands to reach the raised brass 9 at the end of the dial, and the car jolts and stops, and Potter rises from his velvet stool and opens the door, making visible a slight female figure behind the grille, holding a sleeping Evelyn in her slender arms.
“My goodness! Virginia!” she says. “Have you had an accident?”
Chapter 29
Outside Winter Park, Florida, July 22, 1922