New York - The Novel

found.

    It was gone midnight before Lily de Chantal decided to turn in for bed. She’d been rehearsing for her part the next day. Not that the role was difficult, but she wanted to be sure she performed it perfectly. And truth to tell, she was savoring it as well.
    Revenge, even for someone with her kindly nature, was sweet.
    Nine in the morning would be about right, she thought. If little Miss Clipp wasn’t back from the wild goose chase she’d been sent on already, she would be by then. Catch her first thing, before she had time to collect her wits.
    “I can’t do it myself, my dear,” Hetty had said, “because if Frank ever found out, he’d hold it against me. But you could do it. A man can forgive his mistress more easily than his wife. Besides,” she’d added with a smile, “you owe me a favor, I think.”
    So the tasks had been assigned. Hetty had written the note, Mary had arranged the delivery, and now she, Lily de Chantal, was going to send the little bitch packing.
    Hetty had given her everything she needed, and Lily had rehearsed her speech precisely.
    “I am afraid, Miss Clipp, that I have proof—absolute proof—that you stole jewelry from Mrs. Linford of Philadelphia. I even have witnesses who can perfectly describe seeing you wearing the items after the theft. You will go to jail, Miss Clipp. Unless, of course, you’d like to leave New York, today—and to leave without saying a word to Mr. Master. And if you make any attempt to contact him in the future, then we shall take all this evidence to the police.”
    Donna Clipp would go fast enough after that. She’d have to.
    The neatness of the plan had been summarized by Hetty, days before.
    “I want Frank to think she’s jilted him. Failed to turn up for the ride upriver, then left before he comes back. That’ll hurt his pride, I’m afraid, but it’ll bring him back to his senses. He’ll be looking for comfort; he’ll be looking to us.”
    “Us?”
    “To you, to me, to the way things were. I think we’re too old to quibble about those details now, aren’t we?”
    “You,” said Lily de Chantal, “are a remarkable woman, and he’s lucky to have you.”
    “Thank you, my dear,” said Hetty. “I quite agree.”
    Yes, thought Lily now, she’d be glad to dispatch little Miss Clipp on her way, for both of them.
    So she was greatly astonished, twenty minutes later, when the doorman knocked upon the apartment door to ask if she wished to receive a visitor. And still more so to see behind him, soaked to the skin, the figure of Frank Master.

    At one in the morning, at Henry’s Hotel, Brooklyn, there was a battle of wills. To the great annoyance of the manager, Donna Clipp had demanded a bedroom and refused to pay for it, on the grounds that it was the hotel’s fault that they hadn’t found her a cab.
    “I could put you out of doors,” he had said.
    “Try it,” she’d replied. “You never heard me scream.”
    He did step out of doors, with a view to ejecting her, all the same. But when he got outside, he discovered something strange. The rain was turning to snow. And the temperature, so warm all week, was dropping like a stone. He was just turning to go back indoors again, when he heard a great growl and a moan from the direction of the river. And a second later, a howling gust of wind rushed down the street, slamming shutters, bending small trees, and almost rolling the manager off his feet as it smacked him with its icy blast. Holding onto the side of a doorway, he pulled himself back into the entrance and slammed the door behind him.
    “Here.” He gave her a key. “Nobody can go out in this weather.” He pointed to the stairs. “Up there. Second on the left.”
    But he didn’t offer to help the bitch with her bags.

    Looking out of her window across Central Park, while Frank sat in a hot bathtub, Lily de Chantal watched the wind whip tornadoes of snowflakes across the empty spaces. In Gramercy Park, for some time, Hetty had gazed in puzzlement at the strange telegram that had come for Frank earlier in the evening, from Boston, asking him if he was selling a railroad. But now, hearing the strange howl and whistle of the wind, she pulled back the curtains and looked out in astonishment to see a maelstrom of snow, and hoped poor Frank was safe, out on the cold waters of the Hudson, on such a terrible night.
    Where on earth, she wondered, could such a blizzard have come from?

    It had come from the west. A great