That evening, Maureen called to her, suggesting they slip out to the porch, where they might be afforded some privacy. The Professor was in his study, still fuming, drinking too much rum. He had questioned Coralie after the incident. Had she ever met this young man who had dared to photograph the wonders? She vowed she had never before made his acquaintance, which was true enough. They had never formally been introduced.
“They took him over the bridge,” Maureen confided, for she’d asked the Durante brothers to follow the police wagon and report back to her. “They treated him as you might expect. He did not come out as the winner of this encounter. The authorities made it clear that, should he dare to enter Brooklyn again, he’ll find himself in the Raymond Street Jail, and that’s a place no man deserves to see. Let this be the end of it, Cora, for it can only finish badly for one and all.”
But it was not the end of it, not by far. The museum opened the following day. There were even fewer in attendance than anyone had expected, and several potential customers walked away rather than pay the price for a ticket, declaring forty cents to be an exorbitant fee. Still, it was the beginning of the season, with much to do to prepare for what they all hoped would be a more profitable summer, helped along by overflow crowds from Dreamland, which would reopen in all its glory on the last weekend of May.
The Professor made a special point to warn Coralie against strangers. He told her to report anyone who might be lurking about. They were in the parlor, beside the horrid cereus plant, its twisted brown form bare as sticks, its bitter scent dizzying. Coralie assured her father that she would do as he ordered, though she wished she dared ask what she was to make of the strangers who attended her private shows. She, indeed, looked out of sorts, her cheeks flushed and red, and the Professor insisted on testing her forehead for fever. The burning that consumed her, however, was not an illness, only the hatred she felt for him. All the same, his belief that she was afflicted suggested the beginnings of a plan. The following afternoon, she forced her fingers down her throat so that she might be sick and beg off her performance due to illness. She powdered her face so that she appeared infirm, and circled her eyes with coal so they seemed sunken and hot.
“Don’t think this will be a regular occurrence,” the Professor warned when he agreed to cancel the evening. “We need the income more than ever.”
Coralie took the Professor’s hand and kissed it, as if she were a dog willing to do his bidding. But dogs can bite no matter how well trained, and as soon as she went up to her room, Coralie brought out the keepsakes she had nabbed from the workshop desk. She did so every night, gazing at them, imagining how she might arrange a way to get them to those who were dearest to the drowned girl. Now she knew, her feigned illness would be the first step out the door.
The following morning, she said she was too ill to run errands, and was left in bed. It was Sunday, and the Professor had plans to visit one of the racetracks out on Long Island, where he often tried to double his money, or, at least, not lose it all. It was Maureen’s one day off, and most likely she would spend the afternoon with Mr. Morris. Coralie quickly dressed. She peered down from her window to see that the liveryman had returned. This was luck indeed, for he was not merely a workman but also the means of her escape. The weather was warm, and the liveryman’s shirt was off as he jumped down from the driver’s bench to fasten his horse’s lead to the fence post. Coralie could see what Maureen had whispered was indeed true—he had a great many wounds and scars, as well as a series of tattoos inked in deep reds and blues. On his back there was the image of a bird in flight, black wings stretched from one broad shoulder to the other.
He thought there was no one to spy him, and when men are alone they often present their truest selves. He whistled cheerfully as he set to his work, which consisted of bringing forth the carcass of a gigantic striped bass, one so large he could barely wrestle it out of his carriage. Surely it had been some fisherman’s great prize and had cost a good price at market. A flock of birds had settled in the low-growing shrubbery. When they began their chirping, the liveryman took a moment from the work at hand to toss out a bit of his horse’s feed.
“There you go, my dears,” he said as the birds gathered round.
He had once informed Coralie that such birds were common starlings, black when resting in the shadows, but streaked a brilliant purple and blue and green when they wheeled across the sky. Two decades earlier, one hundred of their species had been brought from Europe, then released in Central Park. At first they were a novelty, with their lovely glittering feathers, but as their population grew, with thousands moving across the state and then the country, people came to despise them and consider them pests; there was even a call for starling potpie to be on the menu of every restaurant. The liveryman, however, believed they were equal to the sparrow and the robin, albeit misjudged and unappreciated.