Murder at Marble House(2)
I was surprised, therefore, when Brady held the ear trumpet out to me the moment I entered the house. He raised a hand to cover the ebony mouthpiece protruding from the oaken call box.
“There you are, Em. Thought you’d run off to elope with Derrick.” He waggled his pale eyebrows at me. Less than twenty-four hours out of his prison cell and the color had already returned to his cheeks, the mischievous sparkle to his eye. His sandy blond hair fell in rakish disarray across his brow, and he wore neither suit coat nor collar, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. Somehow Brady managed to wear his dishabille with a relaxed, thoughtless style that men often envied and women found delightful. It seemed no matter what happened to Brady—the good, the bad, and the drunkenly disastrous—he somehow emerged unscathed and unjaded; unchanged from the boy I’d grown up adoring.
But on this particular day, I was in no mood for his teasing. “I don’t wish to talk to anyone,” I answered wearily. “Whoever it is, tell them I’ll return their call later.” I dragged myself toward the parlor, where Nanny O’Neal, my housekeeper and surrogate grandmother, would embrace me briefly in her pudgy arms and pour me a cup of tea.
He extended the earpiece as far as the wire would allow. “It’s Cousin Consuelo. And she sounds a bit frantic.”
I frowned but didn’t question him. Instead, I moved to switch places with him in the alcove beneath the stairs, waited for Brady to make his way back into the parlor, and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Consuelo? It’s lovely to hear from you, dearest. We missed you at Gertrude’s ball—”
“Emmaline. I don’t have much time. I need you. Can you come over right away?”
“What is it? Is something wrong?” I cringed at my stupid question. Consuelo’s parents, William and Alva Vanderbilt, were recently divorced—quite the scandal of the moment. They’d been bickering for years, and there were rumors of lovers on both their parts. The two younger sons had been at boarding school and were now with relatives on Long Island, so they missed the worst of it. But poor Consuelo had been caught in the middle like a doll fought over by two recalcitrant children, each tugging on an arm until the seams threatened to split.
“No time to explain,” she said in a breathless rush. “You’re my only hope, Emma. Please, can you come? Now?”
“I . . .” Frankly, after some very close scrapes in the past several days and now this morning’s emotional trial, I very badly needed one of Nanny’s strong cups of tea. But Consuelo’s sense of urgency all but made the ear trumpet tremble against my palm. Besides, she had deepened her appeal by calling me Emma. My Vanderbilt relatives almost always insisted on Emmaline, as if that could somehow raise me up to the status of the rest of them. Only Consuelo, and my young cousin Reggie, seemed able to take me as I was.
I glanced with longing through the parlor doorway, where I could just see the rather threadbare edges of Nanny’s velveteen house slippers propped on a footstool. Brady’s and her quiet voices called to me like a soothing aria. With a sigh I spoke into the mouthpiece again. “Yes, all right. I just need time to hitch Barney to the buggy. . . .”
Consuelo gasped. “I have to go!”
The line went dead.
Some twenty minutes later Barney and I rumbled up Bellevue Avenue. Our pace didn’t exactly match the urgency of my cousin’s summons, but I didn’t dare push my aging hack any faster than a sedate walk. And even if I had pushed, it’s doubtful he’d have deigned to oblige.
Gravel sputtered beneath the carriage wheels as we turned through a pair of broad marble columns onto a raised circular drive bordered with stone railings that framed the manicured front lawn in gleaming ivory arcs. Marble House, with its Corinthian-columned entry flanked by two massively solid wings, represented, both to me and the world at large, the fierce competition between the William K. Vanderbilts and the Cornelius Vanderbilts, who lived nearby at The Breakers. Or, perhaps more accurately, the two houses embodied the intense rivalry between my aunts Alva and Alice, who each vied to stand supreme as the queen of all society.
From some unseen door off to one side, a liveried footman ran out to help me down and relieve me of my rig. He blushed to the roots of his slicked-back hair as I bid him good morning, thanked him, and asked after his grandmother, who was a longtime friend of Nanny’s. I always made a point of greeting servants as though they were human beings. Some appreciated the gesture; others, like this young man, were left flustered by my familiarity.
Morning sunlight glittered on the house’s pristine façade. I paused before approaching the front entrance, blinking in the glare and remembering how, after nearly four years of construction behind high, concealing walls, it had been the unveiling of Marble House that had spurred Aunt Alice to have The Breakers rebuilt on such a dizzying scale. Alice Vanderbilt simply could not live in a house smaller and humbler than Alva’s. If Aunt Alice’s one-upmanship had infuriated her sister-in-law, however, Alva never once allowed Alice the satisfaction of seeing her haughty smile slip, not even a notch.