The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [17]
Miss Howard, having given us a few minutes to adjust to our return, now rubbed her hands in anticipation and again spoke with a kind of hesitation what was unusual for her.
“Señora Linares is in the kitchen, having tea. I’ll just get her.”
She glided back toward the rear of the building, where a dimly lit doorway indicated some sign of life. Again automatically, I walked over and jumped onto one of the windowsills that overlooked the church garden—my accustomed roost in this place—and took a small knife out of my pocket, using its blade to trim my fingernails as Cyrus continued to play and we heard the seemingly faraway sound of the two women’s voices in the kitchen.
Soon a pair of silhouettes appeared against the faint light in the kitchen doorway, and even in the near darkness I could see that Miss Howard was helping the other lady walk—not so much because the woman was physically unable to stand on her own (though she did seem in some pain) but more to help her overcome what I sensed was a kind of terrible dread. As they came into the center of the room, I could see that the woman had a fine figure and was richly dressed in black: layer upon layer of satin and silk, all of it crowned by a broad hat from which drooped a heavy black veil. She held an ivory-handled umbrella in one hand, and as Sara let go of her arm she steadied herself on it.
The rest of us got to our feet, but Señora Linares’s attention was fixed on Cyrus. “Please,” she said, in a pleasantly toned voice what had obviously suffered through hours of weeping. “Do not stop. The song is lovely.”
Cyrus obliged but kept his playing soft. Mr. Moore stepped forward at that point, offering a hand. “Señora Linares—my name is John Schuyler Moore. I suspect that Miss Howard has informed you that I’m a reporter—”
“For The New York Times,” the woman answered from behind the veil as she shook Mr. Moore’s hand lightly. “I must tell you frankly, señor, that were you in the employ of any other newspaper in this city, such as those belonging to Pulitzer and Hearst, I should not have consented to this meeting. They have printed abominable lies about the conduct of my countrymen toward the rebels in Cuba.”
Mr. Moore eyed her carefully for a moment. “I fear that’s so, señora. But I also fear that at least some of what they’ve printed is true.” Señora Linares’s head bent forward just a little, and you could feel her sadness and shame even through the veil. “Fortunately, though,” Mr. Moore went on, “we’re not here to discuss politics, but the disappearance of your daughter. Assuming, that is, that we may be certain the two subjects are not connected?”
Miss Howard gave Mr. Moore a quick look of surprise and disapproval, and Señora Linares’s head snapped back up into a proud position. “I have given my word to Miss Howard—the facts are as I have represented them.”
Miss Howard shook her head. “Honestly, John, how can you—”
“My apologies,” he answered. “To you both. But you must admit that the coincidence is rather remarkable. War between our two countries is spoken of as commonly as the weather these days—and yet of all the children of all the diplomats in New York to mysteriously disappear, it’s the daughter of a high Spanish official.”
“John,” Miss Howard said angrily, “perhaps you and I had better—”
But the Linares woman held up a hand. “No, Miss Howard. Señor Moore’s skepticism is, we must grant, understandable. But tell me this, sir: If I were a mere pawn in some diplomatic game, would I go to these lengths?” At that the woman pulled her veil up and over the black hat and moved further into the light that drifted through the window.
Now, in the part of the Lower East Side where I was born and spent my first eight years, you tended to get pretty used to the sight of women who’d been worked over by their men; and given