“No, miss. You gotta buy it. Two cents.”
She found the coins in her purse, then snatched the paper and walked away quickly, back to the safety of the park, where she sat on a bench and read through the article. It hinted at a nefarious relationship between Mr. Watkins and one of his tenants, the bohemian artists’ model known as Angelica, who the police wanted for questioning regarding the death of Mrs. Watkins. Even worse, it included an illustration of a work she’d posed for a few years ago, where most of her body was on full display. It didn’t matter that the statue had won esteemed prizes for its artistry. In newsprint, it came across as utterly indecent.
Just as the policeman had predicted, she’d become infamous. She was ruined. A bohemian, the paper said. The innuendo—that she was a loose woman, immoral—was more than implied. She’d already been tried in the press and found guilty.
But she had one thing in her favor. Angelica wasn’t her legal name, and her last name, Carter, was fairly common. Thank goodness Kitty had insisted on keeping “Lillian” under wraps.
She had to get to the film producer in Los Angeles, and as far away from New York as possible. In California, she could start a new life, a new career. Once the studio was behind her, she’d have some power to fight these silly charges. She just had to cobble enough money together to buy a train ticket out of Grand Central.
A few years ago, she’d done some work in a studio nearby, a former carriage house on East Seventieth Street, off of Madison. The sculptor had tipped her generously. She’d go by and ask him for a loan, explain that her grandmother was sick and she needed to get to her immediately. That she’d pay him back right off.
She located the carriage house easily, but was dismayed to see that the name on the doorbell wasn’t the same as the sculptor’s. He must have relocated. Still, she hit the button and waited. No one answered.
The day was warming up, and she wished more than anything she could have a glass of water, something to drink. There was a water fountain in the park, back where she’d come from, but just before she reached Fifth Avenue, a figure carved above the entrance to a three-story mansion stopped her in her tracks. It was a reclining nude, leaning on one elbow, chin and gaze pointed down, as if assessing the respectability of anyone who dared pass beneath. Lillian had had to don a ridiculous headdress with two long braids as she’d posed for the artist, Sherry Fry. The figure’s stomach rippled with muscles that did not exist in real life, and the shoulders and arms were meaty. Kitty hadn’t liked the final outcome at all. “If he’d wanted a man, he should have had one pose for him,” she’d declared, before allowing that the breasts were quite well done.
“What are you doing, just standing there?”
A woman appeared beneath the archway to the mansion’s porte-cochère. She wore a plain, dark day dress and had one of those faces that made her exact age difficult to guess, with a thick brow and loose jowls.
Lillian braced herself, expecting to be shooed away, but instead, the woman drew close, lifting one hand. It shook slightly, as if affected by some kind of nerves.
“You’re early,” she said with obvious disapproval. “Go in through the servants’ entrance, there.” She pointed to the right, where a passageway between an iron fence and the front of the residence descended into a stairway. “Through the basement. The cook will give you a cup of tea while you wait. She’s not ready for you yet.”
A cup of tea had never sounded so appealing.
Before Lillian could say anything, the woman turned and disappeared into the shadows of the arch.
Lillian’s stone likeness smiled calmly down at her, as if curious as to what she was about to do next.
The woman thought she was someone else. A messenger picking something up, perhaps. Or a scullery maid. Lillian could at least get a cup of tea out of it, until they figured out their mistake. She’d apologize and leave, but until then, why not? These big houses were filled with servants; probably no one would pay her any mind. Luckily, she was very rarely recognized from the statues themselves. Each artist she’d worked with had put his own spin on her visage, playing up whatever features he admired most, making her unlikely to attract attention from strangers when she was out and about in the world.
She’d drink her tea. And then disappear back into the streets.
Chapter Four
The steps the jowly woman had directed Lillian to led to a basement door, which opened up into an anteroom. To the left was an enormous kitchen, where she counted seven maids bent over their work, peeling potatoes or stirring pots, under the watchful eye of a man who had to be the chef, barking out orders in a French accent. The tantalizing smell of caramelized onions almost made her swoon. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was.