Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain by Kirsten Menger-Anderson Read Free Book Online

endless stories to “cheer the Missus,” that her boy would not revive until his killerhad been brought to justice. Or rather, she told herself in order to remain clearheaded, she could not with confidence confirm that her son had died until the murderous black man had been hanged — an event rapidly approaching and so anxiously awaited by the good denizens of New York that it had been moved from the courthouse to the Common to accommodate the expected crowd. “Wrap him again,” she’d demanded, and the lean doctor had complied, admitting that a few more days would confirm, beyond all doubt, what he already suspected.
    For those three days, Sarah sat by her son. Nan fixed tea and biscuits, fetched blankets, and carried the scented oils from the bedroom to the parlor, where Sarah applied them to her wrists and neck. She did not venture out even for her Thursday night dinner, and her absence alarmed the ladies, who called on her en masse the following day. But that afternoon, the Constable would be calling for her, and Sarah was concerned with her preparations and did not answer the door.
    The execution drew Sarah from Nicolas’s settee for the first time since the boy’s return, and she considered her options carefully: pearls or silver? German serge or China taffety? All of New York would be watching her as she stood with her handkerchief unfurled and her hair piled in an exquisite tower by the Constable’s ample side at thefront of the wooden platform, now a full seven feet higher to provide a better view of this execution. She laced her girdle as tightly as her age-swollen fingers could manage, selected her broadest hooped petticoat, which she hoped would draw her waist narrow by comparison, and brushed her cheeks with a thick layer of powder that lessened but did not conceal her unladylike ruddiness.
    â€œNicolas,” she said. He was her son, her fine, growing son who would one day marry a Van Cortlandt or a Beekman or some other society family. “Nicolas. Nicolas. Nicolas.” She wanted to pull back the linen cloth, to hold his face between her hands. She wanted to explain to him that his assassin would soon be hanged and that he could rise safely and return to the warehouse, where things must certainly be in disarray. She leaned low over the prostrate form, her fingers hovering and ready to unfold the tightly wrapped cloth. Behind her, her husband’s portrait regarded the scene with the green-blue the artist had chosen for his eyes. His skin had a gray cast, where the smoke from the unswept fireplace had discolored the paint, ash gray over Mediterranean olive. “Nicolas,” Sarah said again. Nicolas would not recover until after the hanging. Pulling the sheet back now would be premature; pulling the sheet back now might ruin everything.
    â€œMrs. Heathcote.” The Constable stood at the door,which he’d taken the liberty of opening. “I —” He stopped as he took in the widow bent like a bird of prey over her son. Daylight made the room appear dark. Had Sarah not worn a heavy coat of perfumes, she too might have noticed the rancid odor that struck the Constable so hard he nearly stumbled. “Good heavens!” he cried. “Mrs. Heathcote.”
    â€œWhy Constable Morris.” Sarah straightened, clasping her hands behind her back. “How good of you to come.”
    Drawing a last breath of crisp afternoon air, the Constable stepped into the parlor. “The murderer will pay dearly for this. My poor, dear, S —” Though he began to speak her first name, he must have realized that such intimacy was inappropriate, for the word remained unsaid. “Shall we go, then?”
    â€œNan!” Sarah called.
    The girl, who’d been sitting in the corner of the room, jumped, nearly toppling the bowl of peas she’d been shelling.
    â€œYes ma’am.” Though she’d waited attentively on her mistress, Nan no