“Miss Lilly, you’re not listening to me.” Miss Helen threw up her hands in exasperation.
“Sorry. You’re creating a book about your father’s artwork.”
Miss Helen nodded. “It’s a gift for his birthday in December.”
“It’s remarkable. He’ll love it.”
“Do you think so?” Miss Helen gave a childlike smile. In many ways, she was quite witchy, but then, all of a sudden, the perpetual frown on her face would disappear and Lillian could imagine what she’d been like as a little girl, trying to cajole her mother out of her melancholy, or please her father with her intelligence and wit. What a lot of pressure for one girl. Her brother appeared to have taken the opposite route, finding an interest that had nothing to do with the family and then creating a family of his own. How easy that must have been for him, being a man, while Miss Helen was still living at home, unmarried, her life a prism of others’ needs.
“He’ll treasure it, I’m sure.”
Miss Helen looked so pleased with herself, happier than Lillian had seen her since they’d met.
“You ought to do this for all of his artwork,” said Lillian. “The home is to be a museum after his death, isn’t that right? That sort of compilation would be an asset for any museum.”
Miss Helen clapped her hands together. “I could do that. Why, I have all of the background material.”
“It would be like a library for his art.”
“Wait a minute, I have a very good idea.” Miss Helen was now pacing the room, hands on her hips. “What if I created a library for art history?”
“That’s what I just—”
Miss Helen spoke over her. “There’s a similar library in England, which I visited during my travels. I can base it on that. A library filled with books about art, a project of my very own, one that will live on after my father’s death, or even mine. I’m sure I wrote something about that London library in my diary. It’s upstairs. I’m going to go find that now. A library for art history. Brilliant, right?”
“Brilliant, Miss Helen.”
Miss Helen pointed at the table. “You stay here. Papsie’s book should be finished up right away so I can put all of my energy into the library idea. There are three paintings left—they’re listed at the top of the last three pages. Go through the trunks and crates and find any mention of them, and then fill it out in the book as I’ve done in the previous entries. And do try to match the handwriting best you can. No mistakes. I’m going upstairs.”
All of Lillian’s pity for Miss Helen vanished. The woman had a very short attention span, and now was on to the next thing, like a dog going after a squirrel.
Wearily, Lillian sat down and spoke through gritted teeth. The thought of being stuck in the basement for the rest of the evening, with no supper, rankled.
“Of course, Miss Helen. Whatever you need.”
Chapter Seven
Practically every night, Lillian woke in the witching hours and wandered the Frick mansion. If she didn’t get up, she’d toss and turn, thinking of her mother’s last heaving breath as she tried to pull air into her lungs, her eyes wide with feverish delirium. That image would then bleed into the one of Mrs. Watkins’s lifeless hand. The upcoming trial was still in the news regularly, but there had been no more drawings of Lillian in the papers, thank goodness.
Her lack of sleep hadn’t helped matters. In the two weeks since she’d begun working for Miss Helen, Lillian had had to be reprimanded daily for some mistake or miscue. Miss Helen’s patience was wearing thin as Lillian was always a step behind, either forgetting to update the daily expenses or misfiling a letter from the florist under Agreeable instead of Disagreeable. She had a headache at the end of every workday, and that same headache woke her up at three in the morning, full of facts and figures to remember that were soon overridden by images of death.
As she passed down the main stairwell, where the organ’s pipes gleamed in the moonlight, like the bars of some gilded jail, Lillian reminded herself that she only had two more weeks to go until she would receive her monthly wages and have enough money for a train ticket. Heartened, she ran her fingertip along the banister as she descended, pretending to be the mistress of the house checking for dust, and walked along the main passageway. If it were her house, she’d switch the paintings around, placing the oversized Turner seascape in the living hall, where it could be viewed from a distance. Yes, that would work much better. The Vermeer of the laughing girl wearing a gold-and-black bodice she’d take into her own bedchamber, and position so it was the first thing she saw in the morning and the last before falling asleep. She loved passing by her favorites every day, noticing how they looked different in the morning light versus the afternoon sun, catching the surprising details that emerged with each viewing. To think that her mother had been raised in a house like this where art adorned the walls. How much had Kitty given up for love?