The Forgotten Room(82)
“Well, between you and me, I don’t think the P and R lasts more than a week after Cleveland takes office.”
“. . . repeal . . . silver act . . .”
“Don’t matter. Stretched too far, and I hear Morgan’s about to pull the plug—”
The voice became muffled as the owner turned toward the window to knock away a length of ash from his guilty cigar. Olive’s heart thumped into her ribs, making her dizzy. There was a little draft from under the sash, and it fluttered coldly against her long black skirt.
The P&R. That was the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad; even Olive knew that. Everybody knew the P&R; it was one of the largest companies in the world, transporting infinite tons of rich Pennsylvania anthracite coal from the rural mines to the mid-Atlantic ports, and now it wanted to extend its tentacles into New England. Its expensive tentacles, of course. You didn’t build out a hundred miles of track without mountains of money. Railroads ate capital like Gus Pratt ate his breakfast bacon, and they were always one ill wind away from collapsing under the weight of their own debts.
Yes, even Olive knew that.
And she also remembered the fat file in Mr. Pratt’s fat study, labeled PHILADELPHIA & READING.
The dancers blurred past, colorful and frenetic, whirling from prosperous and plentiful 1892 into the dazzling unknown riches of 1893. A handsome face winged before her and disappeared, and it was an instant or two before Olive realized that it was Harry. Harry, cradling his right arm around yet another beautiful girl, clasping her elegant gloved fingers with his left hand. He hadn’t noticed Olive at all.
Not until half past eleven o’clock did Olive find her opportunity to steal into the study upstairs. She had emptied another tray of champagne and made for the stairs to the kitchen, but instead of descending into the basement she had left the tray on the Chippendale lowboy and slipped upward and out of sight.
This time, no hesitation stayed her hands. She knew exactly what she was doing, exactly what she was looking for. The leather portfolios flipped beneath her experienced fingers, until the familiar words appeared once more in the minute glow of the candle: VAN ALAN.
Familiar, and yet foreign. The name hardly seemed to belong to her at all anymore; she felt as if she were no more than a disembodied Olive, belonging to no one and to no particular name. She had spent the last week in a kind of fairyland, knowing that it was a fairyland and entering into it anyway, and now that she was emerging back into the real and practical world, she found she didn’t have a place there, either. That she would never be the same Olive Van Alan as before. That she might never again know who Olive was, or should be.
She opened the portfolio, and the tactile sensation of the leather and the papers within brought her back to the task at hand. The truth: the only thing left to her.
There were perhaps thirty papers in all, arranged immaculately by date. Olive sifted through the early correspondence, detailing the Pratts’ specifications and her father’s tactful responses, referring to blueprints and drawings that must have been stored elsewhere. Then the requests for payment, each one neatly marked PAID in the sleek brown-black strokes of a confident fountain pen. The sums were not large, which didn’t surprise Olive. According to Mrs. Van Alan, the bulk of her father’s fee had been due upon completion and inspection of the mansion, and the sum was large enough that he had agreed to this particular arrangement with a gentleman’s handshake.
Until she came to the last two pages. There was a letter from her father, dated the twentieth of December 1891, noting the successful inspection of the house on the first of December and requesting payment of the balance of his fee for architectural services: nine thousand dollars.
But scribbled at the bottom of this particular letter was not the customary word PAID, which appeared on all the other invoices, followed by a date. Instead, the word—black, in thick, angry block letters—was REFUSED. Dated the second of January 1892.
Her father had shot himself the next day.
“Well, well.”
Lost in contemplation of that single word, REFUSED, Olive had almost forgotten where she was. She started upward, knocking over the candle, righting it again. Hot wax spilled over her fingers.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” came the voice of Miss Prunella Pratt, followed by the young lady’s white figure, emerging from the shadowed doorway. “Am I disturbing you?”
Olive drew her spine straight, her shoulders back. “No,” she said.
Prunella stalked across the rug. She was holding a glass of wine in her hand, half-finished, and the reckless quality of her gait suggested it wasn’t her first of the evening. “You poor dear thing. Shall I guess what you’re doing?”
“I think it’s obvious what I’m doing.”
“Well, I guess it is, at that. Using your position in this household to find out why your poor, innocent father left this house in disgrace. Why those heartless Pratts turned him out in the cold and ruined his good name.” Prunella stopped on the other side of the desk, placed her wineglass on the edge, and leaned forward. “Dear Olive. I could have saved you the trouble. You won’t find it.”
“Won’t I?”
“Oh, no. My father, you see, was actually quite kind, I think, considering the provocation. He was kind enough not to let the world know the real reason he dismissed Mr. Van Alan without payment. Better the world should just think the man hadn’t designed this house to my family’s satisfaction.”