“What!” Miss Helen put a hand over her mouth. “Without any clothes on?”
It was a trick that Lillian put to use whenever she posed in the nude for an unfamiliar artist. She’d imagine what he looked like under his smock, all those dangly parts that she’d only seen on statues, which made her less self-conscious and helped her focus on remaining still, although every so often she found herself prone to giggles.
But Miss Helen didn’t need to know the details. “Yes. They’re the ones who are ridiculous, not you.”
Miss Helen burst into peals of laughter. “How risqué! My mother would be mortified at such an idea. You say it works?”
“I promise.”
“Very well. I want to go downstairs now, to try your technique out. But I’m coming back up if it doesn’t work.”
After she was gone, Lillian let in Bertha to clean the mess. She was tempted to ask her about the story of Martha—certainly Bertha would know what had happened; she knew all the gossip—but there was no time, so instead, she rushed downstairs, her heart beating fast. The guests still had fifteen minutes left before dinner. In the butler’s pantry at the far end of the hall, Lillian spied the three footmen assembling slices of melon on silver trays. She turned back and peered in through a crack in the door into the main gallery.
Inside, New York City’s finest citizens were engaging in self-consciously sophisticated conversation with each other in between sips of champagne. The evening gowns on the younger women in attendance ventured to the modern, shimmering with delicate beads, the waistlines barely existent, or lightly draped with a loose tie. A woman in turquoise and black whispered to another wearing a daring clementine-colored chemise dress, while above their heads a framed Van Dyck noblewoman in a bulky neck ruff smiled demurely down, as if listening in.
She’d done it. She’d organized and pulled off a high-class soiree in the Frick residence. If only Kitty were still alive to see what her daughter had accomplished.
“Excuse me.”
Lillian turned to see a woman with a long, pale face punctuated with dark eyebrows and topped with a jet-black head of hair. She recognized her instantly: Mrs. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the well-known patron of the arts and a skilled artist in her own right. They’d met a few times before, when Mrs. Whitney had stopped by the studio of the sculptor Karl Bitter as he developed a figure based on Lillian, one that now stood in front of the Plaza Hotel. Mrs. Whitney had expressed interest in Lillian posing for her, but nothing had ever come to fruition.
Mrs. Whitney narrowed her eyes and held up a shiny gold lorgnette.
“Angelica? Is that you?”
Chapter Eight
1966
Veronica checked her watch. She’d wasted more time than she’d thought up in that room with the organ pipes, reading through the pages of clues, and the train carrying Barnaby and the models had already pulled out of Penn Station. Surely, this blackout was only temporary. If she could just get downtown, she could catch the next train before the storm worsened.
She tried the French doors throughout the ground floor—in the reception area, the living hall—but all were locked.
What were they thinking, leaving her behind? Then again, everyone had probably assumed that she’d left already, walked out on the whole shoot. Which she would never do. She imagined the irate phone call to Sabrina from Vogue, with the vow to never work with Veronica again. Her career would be over. She’d spent a good deal of her wages from the past few months on shoes and scarves and girdles, and she’d been counting on this paycheck to start a savings account for Polly. She had a return ticket home, but nothing else to show for all her trouble. What if the agency made her reimburse the magazine for the hotel room? Or the plane ticket? She’d be in a bigger hole than when she’d started.
The shadows were lengthening, and soon it would be hard to see. Veronica remembered seeing a couple of candles in the room where she got dressed, and took the stairs up one flight. Back in the fancy bedroom, she grabbed a book of matches from the fireplace mantel and lit a tapered candle on a brass holder. It cast a golden, unsteady glow around the room. Above her, sparkling reflections from the crystal chandelier danced across the ceiling.
The administrative offices she’d stumbled into earlier would have phones, she realized. Unfortunately, only a couple were unlocked, and neither phone had a dial tone. She hit 0 for the operator several times before finally slamming down the handset. There was no way of contacting anyone for help, not until the lines were restored.