The Magnolia Palace(77)

Maybe, with Mr. Frick gone, Miss Helen would be free to figure out where she stood in the world without a parent scrutinizing her at every turn, comparing her unfairly to a long-dead sibling. It might be exciting, thrilling, to watch Miss Helen come into her own. She had every advantage—intelligence, social standing, a passion for her library, money—and maybe that would be enough to eradicate her pettiness and quell her temper so that she would become a softer version of herself. A kinder version.

“Papsie?”

Mr. Frick’s head thumped back on the pillow, his eyes closed.

Miss Helen looked over at Lillian, confused, then back at her father. “What’s happened?”

Lillian joined her at the bedside. She stared at the figure under the comforter, waiting for movement. Nothing.

“Papsie?” Miss Helen patted his cheek, leaned in close, and kept calling to him.

The nurse reappeared and wrapped her fingers around Mr. Frick’s thick wrist. Lillian could tell by the heavy weight of it that there would be no pulse, and the nurse soon confirmed it. “I’m sorry, Miss Helen.”

Miss Helen looked vacantly over at the nurse. “You were too late. He’s gone. Useless woman.” She rose. “We should go tell Mother.”

The disconnect between what had just happened and Miss Helen’s muted reaction was most likely due to shock, Lillian knew. She put her arm around Miss Helen’s shoulders as they walked to the door. “I’m very sorry,” she said.

She looked back at the nurse and shot her a look of what she hoped was apology for her employer’s behavior, though no doubt she had seen worse.

But the nurse wasn’t looking at her. She had lifted the empty glass on the bedside table and was sniffing it strangely.

Lillian turned her attention back to Miss Helen and guided her into the empty hall, in the house that Mr. Frick had spent his entire life imagining, and enjoyed for only five short years.



* * *





Lillian spent the morning and early afternoon frantically organizing a viewing that same day for Mr. Frick. The internment was to take place at the family’s cemetery plot, outside of Pittsburgh, but they wanted an opportunity for an intimate group of his New York friends and business acquaintances to pay their respects at the Frick mansion before then.

Mrs. Frick had hidden away on the second floor, leaving Miss Helen and Lillian to manage the details. Or, to be honest, Lillian to do so, as Miss Helen tended to burst into tears every ten minutes or so and run out of her sitting room. Lillian raced through the to-do list she’d drafted up soon after Mr. Frick took a turn for the worse a couple of weeks ago. An artist was brought in to make deathbed studies; then the body was sent off to the funeral home. In the afternoon, the undertaker would deliver the coffin with Mr. Frick’s remains, which would be taken to the art gallery and covered in roses, lilies of the valley, and tulips. At precisely five thirty, the guests would gather in the living hall, where they would listen to a reading of the Sermon on the Mount before being invited to partake in the viewing, during which time Mr. Graham would play the organ. The invitations had been sent out first thing, and Mr. Danforth’s butler had returned word that his employer was out of town but sent his condolences. Lillian wasn’t sure if Mr. Danforth was lying about his whereabouts, but was relieved to strike him off the list.

The entire family would then leave by train, along with Mr. Frick’s coffin, later that evening, for Pennsylvania.

Lillian was in the front hall, handing various correspondence to the driver to deliver, when Miss Helen called out her name from the second floor.

Lillian took off at a trot up the stairs toward her. “What is it?”

“I want my father’s bed moved into my bedroom.”

“You want what?”

“You heard me.”

“Right now the servants have their hands full preparing for the service.” The chambermaids had been brought downstairs to help rearrange furniture for the viewing, and the parlor maids were stationed in the kitchen assisting the cooking staff. “Can it wait until tomorrow? Remember, you’ll be gone for almost a week in Pittsburgh.”

“No. It must be done right now.”

Lillian stifled a sigh of impatience, but she understood the strange impulse. The day after Kitty had died, she’d lain down in her mother’s bed and breathed in what was left of her essence, a mix of menthol and Pears soap, of sickness and health. Her mother’s body had been taken away and disposed of quickly—it had been the height of the second wave of influenza, and every doctor, hospital, and undertaker was overwhelmed with the dead and dying. She hadn’t even been able to put a rose on her grave.

“Very well. I’ll have the chore man see to it.” She asked Kearns to send the chore man upstairs with a few of the footmen, and watched with Miss Helen as they disassembled both Mr. Frick’s and Miss Helen’s beds, then brought Miss Helen’s down to a storeroom in the basement before reassembling Mr. Frick’s in Miss Helen’s room. The whole time, Miss Helen fretted about, warning them not to scratch the wood.

After they left, Lillian half expected Miss Helen to throw herself on the bed in a fit of hysterics, but instead, she went to her dressing table and sat staring out the window, the bed switch-around entirely forgotten.

“Have my father’s remains come back from the undertaker yet?” she asked.