Anna Godbersen: The Luxe

Diana entered her room and picked up Henry’s hat. The things she had done yesterday had been thoughtless, but their result was horrific and everlasting. She had never really known guilt, and now it was overpowering her. Diana lay down on the crisply made bed, put the hat over her face, and let her whole body be racked by tears.

…And then there is the American princess who met with the waters of the Hudson in an untimely fashion. The mysterious case of Elizabeth Holland is being called an accident, but there are a number of reasons to believe it was the opposite. There are simply too many loose details, including some reports that a man tall, slender, and well dressed was witnessed at the river’s edge….

— FROM THE “POLICE BLOTTER” COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK IMPERIAL , THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1899

ON THURSDAY MORNING, LINA ROUSED HERSELF AND chose a dark-colored skirt and a light-colored shirtwaist. These pieces were not quite so flashy as the red dress she had put on two nights ago, but Lina had had her fill of red for the moment. And anyway, what she was wearing was nice enough to impress her sister without making her feel jealous. During her hurried departure from the Hollands’ home, she and Claire had agreed to meet at eleven on Thursday the one hour when her older sister was reasonably sure she would not be needed by her mistresses on one of the benches in the park in Union Square. Lina was still feeling a residual shame for her drunken behavior of the other night, and hoped that, when and if she managed to find Will, he wouldn’t somehow sense the depths of her depravity. It was some relief that she couldn’t remember much of the episode in the saloon.

She did her hair the old way, with a sharp part and a low bun, and then she put on a little tailored jacket. When she realized how late it was getting, she tucked her purse under her arm and scuttled down the stairs.

She hurried through the small lobby, past the single drowsing clerk. Outside she could see the rain was falling heavily. It occurred to her that, given the weather, Claire might not even be able to make it to their meeting. But Lina felt she must go. Her sister would do everything in her power to be there, so she must do the same. And besides, she was harboring a secret hope that Claire would have heard something about Will. Perhaps she knew something that would help Lina find him. As there was no forgotten umbrella upstairs, she swiped the copy of the Imperial that was lying at the clerk’s desk.

She stepped tentatively onto the one little step down to the street, where she was still protected from the rain by an awning. The sky was an ominous slate color, and the air smelled of all the grime being washed out of crevices and into the street. A few people ran by, shielded under black umbrellas, and those passersby who had not thought to bring such protection were quickly soaked to the bone. She unfolded her paper, propping it open so that she could at least shield her head from the onslaught. A chill set in at the back of her neck when she saw Elizabeth’s name.

There it was, on page eleven. Elizabeth Holland had been plunged into the Hudson River and was presumed dead. It would have been less surprising to see a front-page banner headline proclaiming that the end of the world had been scheduled for later that afternoon. Lina had felt so many things for Elizabeth adoration, envy, jealousy, and fury it seemed impossible that she might simply… die . This thought revived something in Lina’s memory, but she couldn’t quite grasp hold of it. As the news settled into her consciousness, Lina began to feel a little sick and dizzy.

She forced herself to step forward and onto the sidewalk. As she did, she brought the paper up above her head so that it made a kind of tent. The water was into her shoes within seconds. She started off at a run, moving eastward along the street. She only managed to make it a few blocks before her newspaper was entirely soaked, and she had to take cover on a little ledge that led into a flower shop and was sheltered by an awning.

She could see, down the street, the expanse of Fifth Avenue. She was still quite far off from her destination, but she was now very close to the site of her humiliation at the hotel. The rain was pounding the uneven pavement, and there was a crack of thunder somewhere in the distance. Lina looked up, and saw a man across the street, partially obscured from her view by a gigantic black umbrella. She was suddenly reminded of the phrase tall, slender, and well dressed, which had appeared in the item about Elizabeth. She was beginning to feel very nervous all of a sudden. She saw the man with the umbrella move forward and cross toward her with long, quick strides. She wanted to move, but the newspaper in her hands was too sopping to be of any use.

The man was close enough to her now that she could make out a neat, fair stubble on his cheeks and a sculptured nose. Soon he was close enough that she recognized him as someone she had met. He was without a doubt Tristan from Lord & Taylor. She thought back to the evening with him in the saloon and the note he’d left, and she stepped away from him as he approached.

“Remember me?” he said, as he brought his huge umbrella over her head. The raindrops fell against it loudly. Her face was completely wet, and she had to blink back the rain from her sage-colored eyes.

“Yes,” she said in a small voice.

“Miss Carolina, whose face I simply can’t get out of my head. I see you’ve read the Imperial already,” he said, and Lina looked away quickly. The ink from the paper had run and was now all over her fingers. “What do you say we go get breakfast, and I tell you what you’ve missed?”

Lina nodded. She didn’t know what else to do. She was confused and cold and she felt fearful and nauseated. At least she was no longer being soaked by the rain. Tristan tipped his head and gave her a reassuring smile. But she couldn’t help but wonder, standing under the protection of a Lord & Taylor umbrella in the drenched streets of New York, what it was she had wrought.

The dramatic loss of one of society’s rising stars is made doubly tragic by the fact that Elizabeth Holland was to have wed one of New York’s choicest bachelors this very Sunday. All who loved Miss Holland are said to be congregating at the home of her fiancé, Henry Schoonmaker, in a sort of vigil. The father of the ill-fated bridegroom, William Sackhouse Schoonmaker, has tripled the reward offered by Mayor Van Wyck for any information leading to the recovery of Miss Holland’s body. There has been much whispering about Miss Penelope Hayes’s attendance at these places, she being the last person to have seen Elizabeth alive, as well as a onetime paramour of young Schoonmaker.

— FROM CITÉ CHATTER , FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1899

“IT IS SHOCKING, UNCONSCIONABLY SHOCKING, THAT there is no sign of her.” Henry’s father’s voice boomed through the drawing room of their Fifth Avenue home. “The mayor should be ashamed.”

Henry winced as his father made the gross connection between Elizabeth’s death and Mayor Van Wyck’s corruption and incompetence. He had to stand next to the man, however, and nod along. It was too tragic a time for Henry to risk being seen as cavalier, especially not when a reporter from the New York World was his father’s chosen audience. Not to mention, all of the Schoonmaker and Holland relatives and friends who had crowded into their home, to sob together and wait for any news of Elizabeth.

So Henry stood beside his father, looking slight and pale by comparison, and nodded. “No body,” the elder Schoonmaker went on, “not even a piece of clothing floating by the piers. For all we know, she could have been fished out by a tugboat crew and sold into white slavery. Every week, the papers bring stories of that ilk. And I hold the mayor fully responsible. He is just a shill for Tammany no reason for him to actually do something.”