Her heart sank, but maybe she could put him off. “Like this?”
She smiled.
“No, not those dimples.” His voice hardened. “Yes or no, Angelica? You decide. If you are in fact the real Angelica, why would that be a problem? Are you the real Angelica?”
Mr. Broderick wasn’t interested in working together to create something wonderful. He wanted to take her story and turn it into something sordid. To portray her as a victim, a childlike creature with no power, instead of a muse to the best artists in the world who had, in fact, done quite well for herself. For a while.
“I lied.”
“What?” he asked.
“I lied. I’m not Angelica. I’m sorry I wasted your time.”
He swore under his breath. “Stupid girl. I knew it the whole time. Your nose is far too big. You’d never last one day in an artist’s studio, never mind a film lot.”
As she left, she heard him bellowing for the assistant to send in the next girl.
Chapter Fourteen
1966
Inside the Frick mansion, a grandfather clock chimed, the sound echoing around the dark house, reaching deep into rooms filled with thickly painted canvases and silk settees. The sound bounced around the spacious cavern of the art gallery, where Veronica reunited with Joshua, the pink diamond tucked deep inside her pocket. She should tell him what she’d found. But then she thought of Polly, and couldn’t quite find the right words.
Armed with a new gas lamp, Joshua offered Veronica a tour of the building now that they’d finished the clues. “A tour that’s reserved for special patrons of the Frick.”
“Inmates with no means of escape, you mean?” she asked.
“Exactly.”
She agreed, figuring that maybe at some point there would be a moment to admit what she’d found. It still wasn’t too late. But Joshua was off to the races, proudly pointing out the new additions since Frick’s day: a fountain-and-plant-filled garden courtyard that used to be a driveway, and a reception area and entrance hall where a porte-cochère once stood. “Did you happen to see the figure above the doorway when you walked in?”
She’d been in a hurry, but she vaguely recalled a naked woman carved in stone, sporting long braids on either side of her head. It had seemed oddly out of place, considering the architecture of the building was so square and stolid. “I did.”
“That was once above the porte-cochère, and was moved to become the new front door of the museum. The model for it was a woman named Angelica, whose likeness can be found in statues all over Manhattan, and she was celebrated in her day for her classic beauty. But then she became embroiled in some kind of murderous love triangle and disappeared.”
Veronica had witnessed firsthand the plight of models who were lauded for their beauty before losing everything, from drug or alcohol abuse, from not eating enough or eating too much. How sad for this Angelica, to have left behind a grand legacy of beauty but not be able to enjoy it. “She disappeared? I wonder what happened to her.”
“I tried to dig into that over the fall, but it appears no one knows.”
They took the elevator all the way up to the top floor, where Joshua pointed out the old fur vault that was now storage, and a linen room where the massive drawers slid out without a creak. “The mechanisms were built using Frick’s steel,” he said.
His unbridled excitement at sharing that detail made her smile.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing. Continue, please.”
One floor below, he opened the door to the director’s office, where a portrait of the magnate hung above a grand piano. “That’s our man, Mr. Henry Clay Frick. He’s got eyes that could bore a hole through you.”
“The Frick Collection is lucky to have you. You’ve been working here for how long?” She wandered farther into the room, running her finger lightly along the piano’s lid.
“Since September.”
“I hope they appreciate you. You could probably give more detailed tours than any of the docents.”
“The staff here are top-notch. I’ve been learning a lot.” He shrugged. “Although sometimes it bothers me what stories aren’t being told.”
“Like what?”
“Like the story behind all this wealth.” He gestured around the room. “Visitors are in awe of the place, but they rarely question how the man behind it amassed all his money. He did it on the backs of the workingman, by busting up strikes, violently. Men were gunned down because they were protesting for better pay, better conditions. All this gilded loveliness hides a dark past. I thought about writing about that for my final project, even raised the idea with my advisor, but he discouraged it. He said maybe by the time I’ve earned my PhD it would be all right, but not as an undergraduate.”