restore the walled secret garden, to watch it grow and make it her own. A place where she would be safe, where the world would be locked out. Giardino segreto, she repeated over and over. She liked secrets.
Her mind was on fire, and she returned to the hotel at night to lie in her narrow bed in the fresh white sheets, and she could see it; she could see clearly how it would turn out, once she learned, not just to picture it in her mind, but to make it come true with her hands. It was the first thing she had loved for as long as she could remember.
The first thing she had loved in her whole life, since the day in the carriage with her mother and the young soldiers and the rainbow. Finally she had seen the pot of gold they promised her, long ago, and now she would have it, whatever happened. She had almost forgotten about Mr. Malloy and Mr. Fisk.
And then they appeared. One afternoon when she happened to be in her room a meek porter brought a card. And then Mr. Malloy and Mr. Fisk were sitting in her small sitting room, holding their brown hats in their hands. They were of almost identical size and could have been brothers. Mr. Fisk was ruddy in the face, and Mr. Malloy was pale as winter, but both had the same steady blue eyes, and both wore brown suits of anonymous cut and color.
She offered them coffee. She offered them tea. They declined. She almost offered them a glass of beer, which they might have liked-everybody in Saint Louis seemed to drink beer all the time-but she felt it would have been out of character for her, and they might have relayed the information to Truitt.
They opened their identical little notebooks and began to reel off the details. He called himself Tony Moretti. A ridiculously thin pseudonym. His real name, of course, his true father’s name, was Moretti. His given name, his legal name, was Antonio Truitt. Truitt, however, was almost certainly not his father. He had told people his father was a famous Italian pianist. Black hair. Olive skin. Over six feet tall. His shoe size. His preference in shirts. His taste in music. His disastrous fondness for women-this embarrassed them almost into silence. The drinking. The opium. His spendthrift ways with the little money he had. They had missed nothing.
He played the piano in a music hall frequented by ladies of the night, they said, ladies of the demimonde, and gamblers, probably one of the music halls she had passed. He played light classics and popular ditties, and sang sentimental songs of the moment, some in Italian, a language he seemed not to know. He didn’t sing well, they said. He wasn’t Caruso.
He had traveled around. He traveled the country, from San Francisco to New York, always the same, sometimes a different name, playing the piano, lazing the midnights away in whorehouses, opium dens. And each town had gone sour, each town finally had enough of Tony Moretti and he moved on.
That’s why they had a hard time finding him. That’s why several times they had found the wrong man. Each time they found that Mr. Moretti had just left the room, leaving only a shadow that resembled him.
“How long have you looked for him? Have you followed him from town to town?”
“Only two months, and only in Saint Louis. Speaking for Mr. Fisk and myself. Other operatives, detectives, in other cities.”
They, in this case, meant anonymous men like Mr. Malloy and Mr. Fisk. The man they had found may or may not have been the man other investigators had tracked in San Francisco, or New York, or Austin, passing the information along to the home office, which sent it on to Truitt.
“He’s not a good man, Mrs. Truitt.” Mr. Fisk held his notebook open in his hand, as though he had recorded even the points of the conversation so that he might speak clearly, like a telegraph, not a word wasted. “He’s not kind, or good, or particularly talented. He’s lazy. He’s dissolute. He’s illegitimate.”
“You perhaps set high standards for moral character. Modern people, I’m sure…”
“I’m afraid that is not the case, in this instance.” Mr. Malloy looked at her with a seriousness that lacked the slightest trace of humor. “He’s as worthless as a puppet. An exotic toy.”
She was careful to make only the smallest gestures, not to show surprise at the catalog of Truitt’s son’s lurid life.
“He is my husband’s son.”
“ If he is, you mean, Mrs. Truitt. Unlikely.” As though she herself were somehow not quite legitimate. She stared at him with what she hoped was disdain. Mr. Fisk looked back down at his notebook.
Mr. Malloy paused a long time before speaking again. “Sometimes, Mrs. Truitt, we work very hard at something, we exhaust ourselves to accomplish something which seems vital to us.” He chose his words with care. “Our best hope for happiness. And sometimes we find that thing, only to find it has simply not been worth the effort.”
“Mr. Malloy. That is not our choice. It is my husband’s wish. He is my husband’s son. You’re sure?”
Mr. Fisk wiped Mr. Malloy’s slate clean. “He is. Tony Moretti is at least Ralph Truitt’s wife’s son. We have found him, Mrs. Truitt.”
“I want to see him.”
“And you will. We will go to his rooms.”
“I want to see him before he sees me. I want to observe him anonymously, across a room, in the street. I want to measure the son against the father.”
“The place he plays his music, this music hall, would not be suitable.”
She had not thought. Had not thought that far. “That much is clear.”
“There is a restaurant. It is frequented by the proper sort of people. You would not be ashamed. Not feel awkward. He goes there, in the evenings, before he goes to work, if that’s what he calls it, to eat oysters and drink champagne. It is seemingly all he ever consumes.”
“Then we will go there.”
Mr. Malloy and Mr. Fisk waited, as though there were more to say. There was not a speck of dust in the room. It was a fine room, not the best, but fine. It was the sort of room in which she might have served coffee or tea, dressed for dinner or the theater, might have kept a canary, if she had lived there, but she didn’t live there and no bird sang.
Mr. Fisk and Mr. Malloy waited.
“We will go there tomorrow night.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
There were hyacinths, so brief and heavy with peppery scent. Jonquils. Campanula. Dianthus. There was allium, the French onion with its pendulous purple bloom, impossibly heavy, and lilac with its wafting fragrance, and violets, which young girls received as nosegays from their beaux. And the ornamental herbs, rosemary and sage.
There were tulips, which had once driven men mad with their beauty. So delicate, so rare and brief. She read about the sultan, in Istanbul, who had grown over a hundred thousand tulips, brought as favors from the wild steppes of the East. Every spring, he would have an evening party to show them off. Tulips, she read, the ones that are fragrant, are fragrant only at night. Candles would be fixed to the backs of turtles, and the turtles would crawl among the flowers, as the courtiers strolled in their jeweled clothing, whispering amidst the beauty and the impossibly delicate scent, just a hint of fragrance from the East. Catherine could see their jewelry and diadems, their clothes of the thinnest silk, could hear the murmur of pleasure, their quiet singsong voices as they floated through the flickering beauty, drinking cool minted fruit juices.
It takes seven years for a seed to turn into a tulip bulb. She wondered if the turtles that carried the candles were hurt.
There were hydrangeas, which the Italians grew in giant terracotta pots, hydrangeas which change color with the chemistry of the soil. Acid soil would produce blooms of Prussian blue. Alkaline would turn the blooms to pink, a rose that matched the ridiculous extremes of the setting sun.
Anyone can learn. Anyone can read and learn. The hard thing is to do, to act-to speak French, to go to Africa, or to poison an enemy, to plant a garden. Catherine absorbed her hours in learning, waiting for Mr. Malloy and Mr. Fisk, expanding her knowledge and perfecting her scheme, though she hardly knew anymore what her scheme was exactly. A son. The son. The son, obviously, of a harlot and a piano teacher. And Truitt, she was sure, knew this, had known it from the beginning. This extraordinary wish of Truitt’s to bring him home and make him heir to all that
