September, October, November: they moved around their rooms keeping furniture between them. Once, just before Christmas, they’d been about to pass each other on the stairs when Mr. Hallenan stepped out on the landing and said the missus had kicked him out. Alfred and Mary had looked immediately to each other and laughed, she facing up the stairs, he facing down. They’d laughed together at Mr. Hallenan’s expense, and for one instant they stepped outside of that particular moment in time.
Sometimes, very late at night, he told her he knew that all the cruel things she said to him were the truth, and it was easy to talk to him then, to pile on more and more because in those moods he would just accept it, tell her she was right, absolutely right. But during the day, whenever she caught him sober, and worked up the courage and energy to face this thing that was eating away at them, she’d take a breath to speak and before she uttered one single syllable he’d already be cringing, closing his eyes, looking away, bracing himself for the volley that would follow, and it was that cringe, before she’d even said a word, like she wasn’t even allowed to speak, like she wasn’t even allowed to raise the slightest objection to the way he was living his life, the way he winced before she’d even fully turned from the counter, that had driven her to the office to find a situation that would keep her away from him. She told Mr. Haskell, who ran the agency, that a regular day off to come home didn’t matter to her. She was willing to go as far as Connecticut. She’d go up to Tuxedo if they paid her enough, and gave her a private room.
“There is one family that just got in touch yesterday,” Mr. Haskell said as he went through her file. “Bowen is their name.” He looked up to gauge whether the name rang a bell. “There are cooks in front of you, but you have Priority in Placement.” Priority in Placement was a phrase she’d seen on her employment file and scribbled on the envelope where her employers gave the agency honest reviews of her work, her person, how she fit with the family, how open she was to suggestion, how she got on with the other staff. That she had this designation made her lucky, Mr. Haskell wanted her to understand, but she still had to be careful. The Warrens might take that same house in Oyster Bay next summer, and the summer after. Did Mary know how many cooks in New York City would love to spend the summer in Oyster Bay? Did Mary know that President Roosevelt had a home there?
How could Mary not know it? Every head in town was swiveled toward the ugly brown mansion. Mary gathered that not all of the Warrens’ guests had voted for the man, but by God were they happy to be eating and sleeping and swimming so near.
“There was sickness in the Warren family over the summer,” Mr. Haskell said after reading the letter Mary had carried for him all the way from Oyster Bay. “Typhoid. You didn’t get it?”
“No.”
“Ever had it?”
“No.”
“And you stayed on to help nurse those who got it.” He glanced at the letter again as if to double-check what was written there.
“What else could I do? I’ve been near it before and never got it. I helped nurse the Draytons. Remember the Draytons?”
Mr. Haskell frowned, and Mary felt a clutch of panic. Had she gotten the Drayton job through the agency? She couldn’t remember.
“I’m sure the Warrens appreciated it very much.” Mr. Haskell leaned back in his chair. “Did they give you a bonus?”
“They kept paying me the wage we’d agreed on for August, so I got three additional weeks.”
“And no more?”
“No more.”
The more was given in cash and had been deposited in her bank account weeks earlier.
Mr. Haskell regarded her for a moment. “Report to the Bowen residence by noon on Monday,” he said.
TEN
Someone had propped open the doors and the ceiling fans were humming, but none of it made a bit of difference in the sweltering courtroom. Mary heard the creak of Alfred’s chair behind her, and was about to turn when Mr. O’Neill scribbled a word onto his pad and pushed it toward her: “Soper.” She looked up to find the guard crossing the room toward him, and one of the other lawyers announcing his full name. “Do not react,” Mr. O’Neill had warned her during their preparations. “Show that you are paying attention, but be respectful.” Soper stood from his chair as neatly and silently as a paper removed from an envelope and unfolded along the seams.
How had he figured it out? Everyone wanted to know. And, oh, how he loved to tell the story. Mary imagined him perfecting that calm remove in front of a mirror at home. How? It was simple. One merely had to be brilliant and determined. She wanted to point out that the story had been in all the newspapers — surely everyone sitting in the room already knew it — but no, they would give the doctor a platform, and they’d all have to sit through it again. She felt her stomach clench as he sat back in the chair and crossed one leg over the other. Mary closed her eyes, counted to ten.
“Dr. Soper,” the other lawyer said after listing Soper’s credentials, “please explain to us the events leading up to your investigation in Oyster Bay, and your conclusion that Mary Mallon was at the root of the outbreak that struck the Warren family in the summer of 1906.”
Soper relaxed further, placed his hands neatly atop his knees. He was so well rehearsed that Mary wondered if he even had to pay attention to what he was saying.
“I was busy with the subway sanitation problems, but there was something about this case that pushed me on the train to Oyster Bay to have a look. I got there in the second week of January 1907, and I’ll admit that I was no more clever than the other investigators Mr. Thompson hired, at first. Like them, I initially thought the family might have gotten Typhoid after eating soft-shell crabs, and then I thought perhaps it was the water. I dropped blue dye in the commode and then waited to see if the drinking water ran blue. It didn’t. I swabbed the tank but found no typhus bacilli. I stayed for three days and interviewed shopkeepers in town, a police officer, the postman who delivered mail to the Warrens the previous summer. Except for a governess and a music teacher the Warrens had brought with them from Manhattan, they’d hired all local staff, and I went to their homes and asked them to recall everything they could from the week the illness broke out, who among the household had gotten sick and when. Finally, the stable hand, a man named Jack, mentioned in passing at the conclusion of our interview that he didn’t think any of the sick would have made it if it hadn’t been for Mary. I double-checked the notes the other inspectors had forwarded to me, but none mentioned a servant named Mary. The only cook on my list was a woman named Bernadette Doyle. When I pressed Jack, he said that Mrs. Doyle left at the end of July. Her daughter was expecting a baby that came early. So the Warrens sent for another cook. Mary got there on the third day of August.
“I was calm as I made a note, and then checked it against the first sign of fever: August eighteenth. You can imagine how exciting this was.”
The lawyer nodded that he could imagine, and glanced toward the judges.
“I wanted to make absolutely certain,” Soper continued. “ ‘Are you sure about the date?’ I asked Jack.