Yesterday morning a neighbor called on Mrs. Campbell and found her to be very unwell. A police ambulance was summoned, and Dr. Neill Graham of that service examined Mrs. Campbell and declared her to be in danger of her life.

In accordance with her wishes, Mrs. Campbell was transported to the New Amsterdam Charity Hospital to be delivered into the care of Dr. Sophie Savard, who was not present. Instead Mrs. Campbell was seen and operated on by Dr. Anna Savard. She did not survive the surgery.

The coroner was notified by the hospital, and an autopsy was arranged with all speed. The report of the postmortem examination carried out yesterday evening has not yet been made public.

Confusion in this case stems from the fact that two female physicians with the surname Savard were involved in treating Mrs. Campbell. Dr. Anna Savard and Dr. Sophie Savard are reportedly distant cousins who studied together at Woman’s Medical School. Dr. Sophie Savard is a mulatto. How she came to have a white lady of good family as a patient is a matter still under investigation.

Mr. Archer Campbell, a senior postal inspector and husband of the deceased, directed that his wife’s body be taken to his home. This young mother of four was by all accounts a virtuous woman beyond reproach.

•   •   •

JACK STOOD OUTSIDE Trinity Chapel watching a couple dozen people, Bonners and Ballentynes, Scotts and Quinlans and Savards greeting each other. Small groups would drift together and then apart, but nobody ever strayed very far from Anna’s aunt Quinlan. The old lady stood holding the Russo girls by the hand, both of them too excited to do anything but bounce in place while she talked to daughters and grandchildren, cousins and nieces.

As he left Waverly Place the evening before he had been introduced to most of them, returning from the excursion on the river. He made excuses for Anna, who had slipped away upstairs to put herself to rights. Jack wondered what she could have possibly done to chase the flush from her neck and face, and grinned to himself.

All of the family members he had met so far were friendly, but seven-year-old Martha Bonner had assigned herself as his companion and inquisitor. She had come to the city from Albany with her grandfather Adam. Adam Bonner, as he had introduced himself, was lean and straight, with pure white hair cut unfashionably close to the scalp. It set off the warm brown of his complexion and eyes of an unusual shade that could be called golden. Jack was reminded of the glow of Sophie’s skin and realized that the connection must be through the New Orleans branch of the family, though he could not think of a way to ask that would not be rude. He might have come up with something if not for Martha, who demanded his attention.

Like her grandfather the little girl had a complexion that seemed to draw in sunlight. Her eyes were a milder and deeper brown, in stark contrast to the energy that bubbled out of every pore. She wanted to know his whole name, if he had sisters and brothers, how tall he was (too tall, she announced, when he told her), if he liked eggs, and whether he had dogs. Now, it seemed, she had come to a matter of greatest importance just as he realized he had lost the thread of her conversation.

“You’re not listening,” she told him with a touch of impatience.

“Sorry,” Jack said. “Pardon me. My attention wandered, but you have it now. What did you need to know?”

“Who is the flower girl?” And in response to his blank face: “A bride needs a flower girl. Who is Sophie’s flower girl?”

Jack thought back to the chaos at the house on Waverly Place when he had stopped by just an hour ago.

“I don’t think she has one.”

“But she has to,” Martha Bonner said. “Are you sure?”

Jack said, “Fairly sure, yes.”

“Well,” she said, straightening narrow shoulders. “I am Sophie’s second cousin once removed. Her great-grandfather Nathaniel is my great-great-grandfather, and she has no flower girl and really, that’s not the way things are done.”

To his own surprise, Jack followed this reasoning. “They must be very distracted to have forgot something so important.”

She nodded her approval and smiled, showing off the gap where her front teeth were coming in. “Anna says you have lots and lots of flowers at your house.”

“That is true,” Jack acknowledged. “But my house is far away from here.”

“You could take a cab,” she suggested. “I could help you find one.”

“Martha,” said her grandfather as he came up to hear this part of the conversation. “What devilment are you up to now?”

The elderly woman on his arm gestured to her. “Martha, child, come here to me. Nobody has introduced me to this young man, so you’ll have to do it.”

The girl didn’t hesitate. “This is Auntie Martha Bonner. Martha Bonner like me, except old. This is Detective Sergeant Mezza—” She paused.

“Mezzanotte,” Jack finished for her, “Jack Mezzanotte,” and he gently shook the hand the old lady offered, aware of the swollen joints. She looked nothing like any other member of the family; there was still a touch of red in her hair, and her skin was so fair he could see a tracery of veins just below the surface.

“Aunt Martha,” Adam said. “Excuse me, please. Your namesake and I are off in search of flowers.” He winked at her. “So you can conduct your interview in private.”

•   •   •

“YOU INTEND TO marry our Anna,” Martha Bonner said, cutting right to the heart of the matter.

“As soon as she’ll have me,” Jack agreed. “But I may need a little time to learn all your names and faces. Especially the names. How many Martha Bonners are there?”

“Four at last count, but only two of us here today. We are a confusing family,” she said, taking his arm. “So now, pay attention.”

What followed was a rapid-fire sketch of the descendants of Nathaniel Bonner by three different women, one a youthful indiscretion followed by two marriages.

“But not at the same time,” she clarified. “So think of the family as divided into three branches for the three women, Somerville, Wolf, and Middleton.”

“And you are?”

“I married into the Middleton line,” she said. “My husband was Lily’s twin brother. Their little sister Birdie—your Anna’s ma—was a favorite of mine.”

“Lily is—”

“They call her Aunt Quinlan these days, but you’ll have to ask Anna why. Now, Birdie was the youngest of the Middleton line and the twins the oldest, born some twenty years apart, mind you. Adam—” She looked over her shoulder, but he had disappeared with the younger Martha. “Is the Somerville line.”

“And Sophie?”

“Sophie is Hannah’s granddaughter, Wolf line. It would take paper and pencil to draw it all out for you, and that will have to wait. The bride is here.” A kind of sorrowful quiet came over the old woman’s face as she watched Sophie being helped down from the carriage with Anna just behind her. “She doesn’t look anything like her grandmother Hannah, but she has her spirit and her mind. I hate to think of her so far away from family when she’ll most need support.”

After a moment Jack said, “I’ve come to know Sophie fairly well. I don’t think anything could change her mind.”

“Hannah’s granddaughter,” she repeated. “And Curiosity Freeman’s great-great-granddaughter. Strong women with excellent minds, loving hearts, loyal unto death. It’s bred in the bone.”

•   •   •

TOGETHER CONRAD AND Cap had planned the ceremony with two things in mind: Cap was not strong enough to be in public for very long, and he needed to keep his distance from everyone, including the woman he was marrying. Somehow Conrad had convinced the rector and the vicar to go along with these requirements.

Anna was less sanguine about his decision to allow a small group of newspaper reporters into the back of the church, but she was certain that there was some strategy there. The papers couldn’t be controlled, but they could be manipulated by means of favors granted. The rest of the reporters from the cheaper papers waited outside the gate that surrounded the church. Uninterested in the facts, they would write the stories that sold the most newspapers. Only so much could be handled, even by Conrad Belmont.

There would be stories about the fact that none of Cap’s five aunts were present, about Cap’s finances and Sophie’s childhood, and worst, the public would be reminded that Cap Verhoeven was ill unto death. One more titillating fact to add to the mess of innuendo, rumor, and half truths that would be spun into headlines, which she imagined, unable to stop herself.

MULATTO LADY DOCTOR SNAGS DYING KNICKERBOCKER SCION

HE MARRIED IN SHAME AND FLED THE COUNTRY

OLD GUARD SHAKEN BY SCANDAL ON PARK PLACE

With the exception of Conrad, Bram, and Baltus, and a few of Cap’s household staff, the groom’s side of the church was empty until Adam noticed and migrated, taking his granddaughter and a pew full of Bonners and Ballentynes with him. Anna was glad of her family, sensible, observant, kind people who had long ago embraced Cap without hesitation or reservation and never wavered. Doubts they would have, she knew that, but doubts would not be voiced unless Sophie asked specifically about them.