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Authors: Lauren Belfer
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urns of flowers, its marble benches, covered now with ice.
This was my home. I had a family here, a family I myself had created. The faculty was a band of scholars; the staff approving and supportive; the girls forever themselves. A sense of belonging filled me and held me close and grateful. Someone opened the front door and the scent of cinnamon rushed through the air. Mrs. Schreier, the school secretary, baked cinnamon sugar cookies at home and brought in a fresh batch every few days, placing them on a large platter on the reception desk just outside the office. Whenever anyone opened the front door, the incoming wind carried the scent through the halls, enveloping students, staff, faculty—and me. When I was away, the smell of cinnamon was always a wistful reminder of home.
After checking the afternoon mail, I was about to return to my own office upstairs, when a newspaper on Mrs. Schreier’s desk caught my eye. Was It an Accident? was the headline blazoned across the sensational Buffalo Evening News . I hated the yellow press, but I couldn’t resist reading such papers when they came my way. Reaching for the newspaper, I was smug enough to believe the incident in question was indeed an accident. No doubt tomorrow’s edition would declare this to be so. When I opened the paper to read the story, however, I was shocked. Engineer Hero Dies , read the inside banner. The accompanying article took up the entire page:
World-famous Karl Speyer, chief engineer of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company as well as the Niagara Frontier Power Company, was visiting the Queen City from Pittsburgh to meet with leaders of the hydroelectric power project… .
On and on went the article, describing what was known of Speyer’s visit to the city, his professional credentials, his work for Westinghouse, his wife and two children in Pittsburgh, the shock and grief with which George Westinghouse received the news.
I paused to catch my breath and then read on: As best as the reporters could ascertain, Speyer had attended an evening meeting at the Buffalo Club with the leaders of the hydroelectric power project, including Mr. Francis Lynde Stetson of New York City, chief legal counsel to Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, and Mr. Frederick Krakauer, Mr. Morgan’s local representative. From what I understood about the financing of the power station’s construction, J. Pierpont Morgan was by far the chief investor, although the consortium included such names as Astor, Vanderbilt, Biddle, and Rothschild, as well as several local men of great wealth. Tom (undoubtedly an investor as well) was the working director, answerable only to the consortium—which for practical purposes meant Mr. Morgan himself.
According to the article, after the meeting Speyer refused offers of a lift back to his hotel. He said that he was going to walk—not unreasonable, for the Iroquois Hotel, at Main and Eagle, was less than a mile away. He needed some air, he said. But instead of returning to the hotel, he went to the park. The time was after eleven P.M.
Where was I when this was happening? I thought back. At home. Asleep, after reading in bed. Yes, by then I was asleep, when several blocks away a man I had seen that evening was dying.
The men who’d been at the club reported that Speyer was abstemious in his personal habits. I understood this to mean he wasn’t drunk when he set off on his midnight walk. The newspaper considered the possibility that he hadn’t walked at all but had hailed a cab when he was out of sight of his colleagues to take him on the two-and-a-half-mile journey to the Delaware Park lake. The driver was asked to step forward, if such were the case.
A diagram showed the trail of his footprints across the iced-over surface of the lake, the weak spot where he fell through, and the place some five or six feet beyond the hole where his body had been discovered, contorted beneath the ice. The reason his body was discovered so soon,
This was my home. I had a family here, a family I myself had created. The faculty was a band of scholars; the staff approving and supportive; the girls forever themselves. A sense of belonging filled me and held me close and grateful. Someone opened the front door and the scent of cinnamon rushed through the air. Mrs. Schreier, the school secretary, baked cinnamon sugar cookies at home and brought in a fresh batch every few days, placing them on a large platter on the reception desk just outside the office. Whenever anyone opened the front door, the incoming wind carried the scent through the halls, enveloping students, staff, faculty—and me. When I was away, the smell of cinnamon was always a wistful reminder of home.
After checking the afternoon mail, I was about to return to my own office upstairs, when a newspaper on Mrs. Schreier’s desk caught my eye. Was It an Accident? was the headline blazoned across the sensational Buffalo Evening News . I hated the yellow press, but I couldn’t resist reading such papers when they came my way. Reaching for the newspaper, I was smug enough to believe the incident in question was indeed an accident. No doubt tomorrow’s edition would declare this to be so. When I opened the paper to read the story, however, I was shocked. Engineer Hero Dies , read the inside banner. The accompanying article took up the entire page:
World-famous Karl Speyer, chief engineer of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company as well as the Niagara Frontier Power Company, was visiting the Queen City from Pittsburgh to meet with leaders of the hydroelectric power project… .
On and on went the article, describing what was known of Speyer’s visit to the city, his professional credentials, his work for Westinghouse, his wife and two children in Pittsburgh, the shock and grief with which George Westinghouse received the news.
I paused to catch my breath and then read on: As best as the reporters could ascertain, Speyer had attended an evening meeting at the Buffalo Club with the leaders of the hydroelectric power project, including Mr. Francis Lynde Stetson of New York City, chief legal counsel to Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, and Mr. Frederick Krakauer, Mr. Morgan’s local representative. From what I understood about the financing of the power station’s construction, J. Pierpont Morgan was by far the chief investor, although the consortium included such names as Astor, Vanderbilt, Biddle, and Rothschild, as well as several local men of great wealth. Tom (undoubtedly an investor as well) was the working director, answerable only to the consortium—which for practical purposes meant Mr. Morgan himself.
According to the article, after the meeting Speyer refused offers of a lift back to his hotel. He said that he was going to walk—not unreasonable, for the Iroquois Hotel, at Main and Eagle, was less than a mile away. He needed some air, he said. But instead of returning to the hotel, he went to the park. The time was after eleven P.M.
Where was I when this was happening? I thought back. At home. Asleep, after reading in bed. Yes, by then I was asleep, when several blocks away a man I had seen that evening was dying.
The men who’d been at the club reported that Speyer was abstemious in his personal habits. I understood this to mean he wasn’t drunk when he set off on his midnight walk. The newspaper considered the possibility that he hadn’t walked at all but had hailed a cab when he was out of sight of his colleagues to take him on the two-and-a-half-mile journey to the Delaware Park lake. The driver was asked to step forward, if such were the case.
A diagram showed the trail of his footprints across the iced-over surface of the lake, the weak spot where he fell through, and the place some five or six feet beyond the hole where his body had been discovered, contorted beneath the ice. The reason his body was discovered so soon,
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