Anyway, Thursday afternoon arrived and we drove uptown in the covered calash. The average daily temperature had been steadily going up as we dragged deeper into July, and by the eighth it was rising so fast that it was causing that depressing type of warm summer rain that always fails to cool or cleanse the city. Sloshing our way through particularly nasty-smelling horse waste, we rolled over Murray Hill and then entered the mansion district in the Fifties, eventually passing the other Vanderbilt palaces, what had all been built within a few blocks of Cornelius II’s. The main purpose of each of those mansions, it’d always seemed to me, was nothing more than to outdo the rest, even if that meant piling on so many details and extras that the structures themselves crossed over into what you might call laughable, or just plain unsightly.
This was true of One West Fifty-seventh Street most of all: the bright red color of the bricks against the whiteness of the limestone used for the window frames and detailing may’ve been supposed to re-create the look of the French Renaissance, but for my money it came a lot closer to a circus tent. The addition that’d been built onto the back of the house by Mr. Richard Morris Hunt-him what had designed the new wing of the Metropolitan Museum-was much easier on the eyes, and could even be considered handsome, if looked at apart from the rest. But the effect of the front of the house, when you came at it from downtown, was to make you think that you were on your way to see some kind of high-class joker. Which, of course, you were; it was just too bad that Cornelius II himself didn’t get the gag.
About half a block south of Fifty-seventh Street the noise of our carriage, along with those around us, suddenly died: huge sheets of some kind of padding-it looked like tree bark-had been laid down on the blocks around One West Fifty-seventh, so that the ailing Mr. Vanderbilt wouldn’t be disturbed by the sounds of passing horses and rigs. It might seem unbelievable, nowadays, to think that whole city blocks would be repaved just to let one man rest easier; but Cornelius II was that important to the city, mostly because of his philanthropic work. Of course, it wasn’t noise that was making him sick, as the Doctor pointed out: you could’ve put the man into a room lined with concrete and lead, and, so long as he had the thought of how little control he’d been able to exercise over his son to keep him company, his body would’ve continued to deteriorate.
When we got to One West Fifty-seventh, the Doctor informed Mr. Moore that, especially as the interview had been so tough to obtain, he was not to enter it intending to tweak Mr. Vanderbilt’s nose, as he’d said he wanted to. They’d just tell the sorry old invalid that they were trying to trace Mrs. Hatch’s movements in order to contact her, being as they thought she could be of some assistance with a case the Doctor was working on; nothing else. Mr. Moore reluctantly agreed, and then they walked on up the front steps to the big, arched limestone doorway. Mr. Moore rang the doorbell and a footman answered, saying that they were expected by Mr. Vanderbilt in the “Moorish room” at the back of the house. Knowing enough to realize that he was talking about a smoking room what probably looked like a plate illustration for A Thousand and One Nights-such rooms being all the rage among rich people in those days-I got down off the calash’s driver’s seat and, when the footman returned, asked him if he wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on the carriage for a minute, as I had an errand I had to run for the Doctor a few blocks uptown. The man very decently obliged, and I tore off to and around the corner of Fifth Avenue. When I reached the back of the house, near the handsome porte cochere what Mr. Hunt had designed, I found that a fairly high cast-iron fence separated me from the backyard. I wouldn’t have any trouble getting over the thing, of course, but there were a few strollers around, even on that wet afternoon, and so a bit of caginess was called for.
I tried an old trick: looking to the high roof of the mansion across the street, which was only a bit less luxurious than Mr. Vanderbilt’s, I pointed up and screamed:
“He’s going to jump!”
This, of course, is the single statement guaranteed to get any and all New Yorkers to stop whatever they’re doing and turn to search the direction indicated. The strollers out on Fifth Avenue that afternoon were no exceptions, and in the few seconds it took them to realize that I’d been putting them on I got over the Vanderbilts’ fence and ran to hide behind one of the square columns of the porte cochere. Scanning the back of the house, I soon caught sight of an open bay window on the western end, out of which were drifting voices. I could easily hide on the far side of the bay, and did, allowing myself just one peek inside the room.
If there’s one word to describe the Vanderbilt family’s taste, I’m not in possession of it. You could, I suppose, just say that they liked “more”: more stone with their stone, more frills with their frills, more artwork with their artwork, more food with their food. The “Moorish room” that I peered into that day was a very good example of all this. It wasn’t enough that the wood of the walls-fully two stories high-was as expensive as possible or that it was carved in more complicated patterns than the Arabian models what it’d been based on; no, the walls also had to be inlaid with other precious substances, including, if you can believe it, mother-of-pearl. Mother-of-pearl in your walls… if you can order that kind of nonsensical detail-and order it from no less a designer than Mr. Louis Comfort Tiffany-then it’s no wonder, I suppose, that you’d have a stroke when your own kid refused to do what you told him. Hanging from the high ceiling was a gigantic, bulbous Tiffany lamp, with smaller lamps, also of Tiffany glass, suspended in a circle from the top of this central fixture. Below that conglomeration, set in front of a marble Moorish fireplace and on top of several enormous, thick Persian carpets, were some straight-backed velvet chairs. In two of these sat the Doctor and Mr. Moore, seeming very small in that room; and opposite them-covered, in spite of the July heat, by a rich fur blanket-was Mr. Vanderbilt, looking like what he was: a man on a slow but steady course to death. His long face and glaring eyes, which once could intimidate most men even from a good distance, were now full of a beaten sadness, and his voice was rough.
“And what reason can you possibly have to come to me for such information?” he was asking.
I ducked back down to hide and listen as Mr. Moore responded, “The woman was a servant of yours, Mr. Vanderbilt, for a time-at least, she listed you as her employer on some hospital forms we’ve seen.”
“What of it?” Mr. Vanderbilt answered, in a tone what you might politely call condescending. “Yes, she was employed here. But as to her private dealings-they were precisely that, and respected as such. Elspeth Hatch was a trusted servant. She had been since her arrival in the city.”
“And that was-” the Doctor asked.
I heard a hoarse sigh of exasperation come out of their host, causing Mr. Moore to add, “If the matter weren’t so urgent, Mr. Vanderbilt-”
“Urgent?” old man Vanderbilt cut in. “Urgent, yet you will not tell me what it is?”
“The confidentiality of patient and physician,” the Doctor replied. “I’m sure you understand.”
“And we really wouldn’t impose on you,” Mr. Moore said, “if we had any choice.”
“Well,” Mr. Vanderbilt grunted, “At the very least you recognize that it is an imposition. Had I any less regard for your family, Mr. Moore-”
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Moore answered. “Quite.”
Another irritated sigh got out of Mr. Vanderbilt. “We engaged Elspeth Hatch in-I should say it was in the summer of 1894. Very soon after the tragedy. We had heard of her misfortune from friends upstate, and my wife thought that offering her a position-we needed a maid in any case-would offer her a chance to leave her home and put the past behind her. Mrs. Vanderbilt is a woman of uncommon compassion.” He grunted again. “And breeding…”