A Death of No Importance--A Novel

by Mariah Fredericks

  Uncrossing his arms, Behan reached into his coat pocket and pulled out two sheets of paper. “Story rejected for lack of timeliness and public interest.”

  I unfolded the paper, read the headline: UNSOLVED MURDER IN PHILADELPHIA: THE STRANGE DEATH OF CHARLES FARRAGUT.

  When I got to the part about the eyes, I swallowed bile.

  “Funny, isn’t it?” said Behan. “New York society run by a woman who could do that.”

  “We should show this to the police.”

  “Why? The poor slob’s confessed. Although—‘Humble Worker Framed for Society Murder!’”

  “Would your editor be interested in that story?”

  Behan shrugged to indicate it was unlikely. “I suppose the real murderer could always have a change of heart and confess.”

  He was joking, but I had been thinking the same thing. I wanted to believe that a small sliver of human feeling remained in that tormented individual. I just didn’t know how to reach it.

  Then I thought of something. “Who was your inside source, Mr. Behan?”

  “What does it matter now?”

  “Think about it.”

  He did. And told me. “You’re not going to tell her what we know, are you?”

  The bells at a nearby church began to sound. It was late. “I should go back.”

  Scrambling to his feet, he said, “What are you going to do, Miss Prescott?”

  I climbed the stairs to the servants’ entrance. “Lucinda Newsome is giving a little party next week. I think Louise and Charlotte will need assistance.”

  “Those little parties can be tricky,” he said, looking up at me. “Maybe they need extra staff.”

  “Not for this gathering. But thank you. One thing you could do?”

  He nodded.

  “Mr. Pawlicec wants his nephew’s picture back. The little boy who died. Someone at the prison took it. If you have a ‘friend’ there, maybe you could get it returned to him.”

  * * *

  The next day, I called Mr. Rosenfeld to thank him again for his help. There were, I said, one or two terms I had not understood; could he explain them to me? He could and he did. And when he was done, I not only knew who murdered Norrie Newsome, I had some idea of how we might prove it.

  21

  The evening before Lucinda Newsome’s birthday party, I paid a visit to my uncle. The Gorman Refuge for Lost Women was on East Third Street, close to the Bowery. It was a modest four-story town house that had once been a highly successful brothel. The madam, Mrs. Edith Gorman, had left it to my uncle on the grounds that the “game” had gotten rough with the arrival of syndicates and pimps, and most of her girls wouldn’t last without her guidance and protection. She had seen my uncle wander the streets at night, inviting her employees to services at St. Mark’s Church and secretarial classes at a nearby settlement house. This habit had caused a great deal of whispering among his parishioners, and so when he was offered the house, my uncle took his own chance at a new life.

  The refuge could house as many as twenty women at a time, more if they did not bring children. Two of the floors were dormitories; the basement served as a nursery and laundry. The first floor was a classroom, with a dining room off the kitchen. When I lived here, my uncle and I had most of the top floor, a room for each with a parlor between us.

  That evening, the refuge was full, and as I entered, I could hear the women talking in the dining hall. The talk was lively, but not too loud, which meant my uncle, or one or two of the long-term residents, were present to maintain order. These were women used to fighting for their place in the world, and that made communal living a challenge.

  Stepping inside, I wondered what the murderer would have thought of these women. Of fourteen-year-old Annie, who had worked the coal boats with her friend Sarah since she was twelve, only giving up the life when her friend had her neck broken by a customer. She woke up most nights crying for her.

  Or eighteen-year-old Ruth, whose parents had sold her to Mrs. Gorman because their poor English led them to believe their daughter would be trained as a seamstress. Or forty-year-old Liz, whose husband had left her for the midwife who helped her deliver a stillborn child. She didn’t mind the loss of the husband, but the loss of his income had ruined her. Or nineteen-year-old Maddie, who drank terribly, but my uncle could not ask her to leave because she was seven months pregnant. Some of these women had worked in Frenchtown, as the French brothels near the university were known. They had roamed the park, doing business there, day or night. In the Italian brothels of Greene and Wooster, they had solicited customers by performing, singly, in pairs, or in groups, in front of windows. (All were adamant: they would have nothing to do with the women who worked below Bleecker in what was called Coon Town.)

  Ruth was working at the front desk as I came in. She came around the desk, her arms open. Ruth was very small and very round. She had been eleven when her parents sold her, but she never had any bitterness over their dreadful mistake.

  When she had hugged me, she set her fists on her hips and said, “Guess what? I got a job.”

  Congratulating her, I asked, “Where?”

  “A factory.” She nodded uptown. “Can you believe it? I’m going to be a seamstress after all. You here to see your uncle?” I nodded. “He’s upstairs.”

  As I climbed the stairs to the top floor, I passed a framed piece of embroidery. One of the women had made it for my uncle a long time ago. It read

  FOR ALL HAVE SINNED, AND COME SHORT OF THE GLORY OF GOD. ROMANS 3:23

  When I reached the door of my uncle’s room, I knocked and said, “It’s me, Uncle.”

  He opened the door. “Jane. Is something wrong?”

  I was about to say no out of habit, but hesitated. “May I come in?”

  My uncle was at his desk in the parlor room. As always, he put me in mind of a terrier, one of those dogs employed to catch rats. Like them, he was small, compact, and relentless. Now he put his work aside, pushed a chair toward me, and waited for me to speak.

  I had felt so desperate to talk to him, and now I didn’t know how to begin. I found myself staring above his head at the wall where there were several watercolor prints depicting scenes from the Bible. One of them showed Cain and Abel side by side. Abel, blond and smiling, held a lamb. Cain, dark, stood with his vegetables pulled from the earth, the offering God had found less worthy than Abel’s.

  “I hate that story,” I said.

  My uncle turned to look at the picture. “Why is that?”

  “It’s unfair. They never say why God loves one more than the other. How is a lamb better than vegetables? I’d say the ewe worked harder than Abel did.”

  “A flawed offering wasn’t Cain’s sin. It was his anger.”

  “Why shouldn’t he be angry? If Man ignores God for two seconds, He’s enraged.”

  “And what Cain did with his anger? It wasn’t Abel’s fault God loved him better.”

  “God created that situation by pointlessly favoring one over the other, then He punishes the man He destined to fail—as if He had nothing to do with it.”

  “‘If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?’” quoted my uncle. “Cain had choices.”

  “Easier to be good when you’re the favored son.” I looked away from the picture. “Do you remember that woman who killed a man? She came to the refuge?”

  I had worried my uncle would not remember. But he said, “Yes.”

  “You took her in.” He nodded. “Because you thought she deserved protection?”

  “Because she asked for it.”

  I felt my uncle was deliberately avoiding the point. “But she killed someone.”

  “And if I were a policeman, I would have arrested her. But I am not a policeman.”

  “But when the police came, you didn’t hide her.”

  “Because I am also not a judge.”

  “And if you were?” Challenging my uncle for the first time, I felt a strange flex in my nature, a weak muscle that w
as now being tested. “Would you have found her guilty?”

  My uncle sighed. “Those are very simple words.”

  “Yes, but they’re the ones we use. That man had threatened her, abused her, might have killed her.”

  “She did not kill him because she was afraid,” said my uncle. “She was very clear about that. She hated him and felt her life would be better if he lost his.”

  “He gave her good reason to feel that way.”

  My uncle said nothing.

  “Doesn’t that matter?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Does it matter to you?” He looked at me and I felt the question: why does it matter to you?

  I struggled. “If someone kills someone who threatens them, who is stronger than they are, don’t we call that self-defense?”

  “You’d have to ask that man’s children. He had three.”

  I was about to say that clearly they were better off without him, but my uncle placed his fingers on the desk as if preparing to stand. I felt the stupidity of dismissing that loss.

  Instead I asked, “Did you like her?” My uncle smiled, puzzled. “Did you feel she had any kindness? If her life had not been hard, if she had felt safe…”

  “No,” he said abruptly. “I didn’t like her. She was shortsighted, filled with rage, and unaware of anyone else’s pain. But that’s not why I gave her to the police. I gave her to the police because she had taken a life, and I lack the arrogance to stand against man’s law and God’s and say ‘I know better.’ Murder is a final act. Something stolen can be returned. A life of sin can be redeemed. But a life taken is a life gone. Something must answer it. Someone must speak for the dead.”

  * * *

  The next evening, we drove to the Newsome house. It was customary for a ladies’ maid to accompany her employers to any affair of a certain size and level of prestige. But as I told Mr. Behan, this was to be a smaller gathering. In order to go, I had to impress upon Mrs. Benchley the necessity of my presence to provide that extra support for Charlotte and Louise on what was sure to be a very difficult occasion.

  On the drive over, I could see that Mrs. Benchley was anxious. In her hands was a small lace handkerchief; she tugged on it with such concentration, I did not think it would last the evening. Charlotte’s jaw was set, her gaze stark and unreadable. Louise glanced from her mother to her sister to me for reassurance, but found little. I was too preoccupied by thoughts of how this evening might end.

  Going around to the back, I was greeted by the surly Mrs. Farrell—who, as it happened, was the very person I needed. As she led me up the stairs to the guest rooms, I caught a brief glimpse of Lucinda. Now in half-mourning, she wore a blouse of black and white paisley print with a black velvet collar and a slender necklace of jet beads. The shoes underneath the long skirt were high-laced boots. Though not festive, the outfit suited her far better than that awful meringue she wore Christmas Eve; she looked quite handsome as she shook hands and touched cheeks with her guests.

  “Miss Lucinda looks happy,” I observed as we passed by.

  “The Newsomes don’t inflict their private pain on others,” said Mrs. Farrell.

  No, I thought. But that doesn’t stop you from making a pretty penny on it.

  My second piece of luck came when she took me to the same guest room the Benchley ladies had shared the night of the party. As she was about to leave, I said, “Mrs. Farrell, I wonder if I might ask you a question.”

  She hesitated. “About?”

  “Do you recall our talk at the Rhinebeck house?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said carefully.

  “We talked about salaries, the rising cost of things, elderly relatives…?”

  We had had no such conversation, but she understood, giving the briefest nod.

  “I’m so impressed by the way you’ve managed. Thirty years with one family—that’s an achievement. I’ve only been working for seven years, and already I’ve been with two families. I hate to say it, but the second one isn’t what I was used to with Mrs. Armslow.”

  “Of course it’s not,” she said. “Now you work for trash.”

  “I know,” I lamented. “They’re always getting themselves in the scandal sheets.” I paused. “Which makes me wonder how loyal do we have to be?”

  “You’re thinking you’d like to make some extra money,” she said bluntly.

  “It did occur to me.”

  “And where do I fit in?” The woman’s business sense was incredible, I thought. She would profit off any opportunity that came her way. And like a crocodile, she had teeth enough to make sure they came her way.

  “If you were to steer me in the right direction, it would be wrong not to acknowledge your assistance.”

  “What do you need to know?”

  I asked her things I knew already or did not care about. Who did she speak to at Town Topics? How much did they pay? What sort of stories were they interested in? Mrs. Farrell supplied all this information in a brisk, no-nonsense tone as if she were instructing me on the correct way to fold stockings.

  Then, as if I had just thought of it, I said, “But Mrs. Farrell, what if I don’t have the stories they want?”

  “Then you don’t get paid.”

  “But how did you find out what you know? Did you just … notice things, listen when you weren’t supposed to?”

  Now that we were to be business partners, she relaxed, sitting down on a nearby chair. “You have to gain their trust. Go for the young ones—you look after the daughters, don’t you? When they pour their hearts out to you, give them the sympathy they’re looking for. Ask questions. Then you’ve got your story.”

  “So you got your information from Miss Lucinda?”

  “Of course not. That young woman would never discuss family matters with the staff. It was the other one, the new wife. She doesn’t have the first idea how to run a house like this, and she relies on me completely. Burbles all kinds of things. When Mr. Newsome Jr. died, she couldn’t keep her mouth shut, she was so frightened.”

  “She told you about the Pep Pills, didn’t she?”

  “That’s right. And the fight between Miss Beatrice and your girl. She was worried young Mr. Newsome’d gotten himself tangled in something he shouldn’t have and he’d bring shame on the family.”

  “And when the stories began appearing in the newspaper—Mrs. Newsome didn’t suspect you?”

  “She thought it must have been a policeman. I told you, she trusts me. And she can’t afford to pick a fight with me.”

  Rose Newsome certainly did need Mrs. Farrell, I thought, but not in the way the housekeeper thought.

  “But the fight over Mr. Newsome, the two young ladies—a policeman couldn’t have known that story.”

  “Couldn’t they? Didn’t Charlotte Benchley spill the whole tawdry mess to that detective? That’s why the Newsomes invited the Benchleys to the Rhinebeck house, to get her away from the detectives and the press before she opened her mouth again.”

  As lightly as possible, I said, “Very fortunate to have the lady of the house so talkative. People do speak of her lovely ease of manner.”

  “Oh, she likes to make friends, that one. Thinks she can fool anyone the way she fooled Mr. Newsome. Miss Charlotte seems very free with herself,” she said, rising from the chair. “I’d start there. The other one doesn’t look as if she knows what goes on two feet in front of her. You hear something worth sharing, I’ll see it gets into the right hands.”

  “I’d be very grateful.”

  That I would show such gratitude in a monetary fashion was expressed in a brief smile between us. Then she left, closing the door behind her.

  I took a deep breath. It helped to have a full picture of how the events after Norrie’s death had been managed. So expertly that I felt sure the next step in my plan should be to remove any evidence that might point to Charlotte Benchley. The person who had gone to such lengths to implicate her wouldn’t hesitate to use the dress as evidence if she felt
cornered. What else she might do if she felt cornered was not something I could think about right now.

  Charlotte had said she stuffed the dress under the bed. From the looks of it, this guest room was not the finest the house had to offer; it would be used largely as a changing room for parties—as it had been that night. With the Newsomes in Rhinebeck and the house in general disorder, there was every chance it hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned in the weeks that followed. Dusting and mopping, yes. But only those surfaces that were visible …

  I got on my knees and looked underneath the bed.

  It wasn’t there. Someone had already found it. And taken it for safekeeping.

  I considered the second thing I needed to find: the murder weapon.

  There was no fireplace here; the room was too insignificant for that. There had been nothing else under the bed, I was sure. Quickly, I felt with my feet along the rug. I looked behind chairs, pulled open the drawers of the heavy oak bureau. But I found nothing.

  Could it have been returned to its original place? Sitting there in plain sight, the weapon the entire police force of New York City had been looking for all these weeks?

  Leaving the guest room, I made my way down the backstairs to the kitchen. It was strange to see it for the first time since the night of the murder. The room was far less crowded and chaotic; a cook and two kitchen maids worked the stove and sinks as butlers came and went, bringing in fresh glassware and dainties for the party. A large cake, frosted white and piped in pink, waited to be taken out at the end of the evening.

  Taking a cloth from a table, I ran it quickly under the tap. Muttering something about a spill to the most junior kitchen maid, I hurried out the door—fingers crossed that no one noticed I was not headed back upstairs. Walking with speed and purpose I hoped would discourage questions, I approached the back door to the library.

  Leaning in, I listened for voices beyond the door, although I knew that was unlikely. Then I took a deep breath, held the cloth tight to keep my hands from shaking, and went inside.

  The moment I entered, I could tell I was probably the first person to do so since the police completed their investigations—or perhaps the second. The air was still and heavy with dust. The drapes were closed; unlike that evening, there was no fire to give light. Reaching along the wall, I found a lamp fixture. As it glowed into weak life, I saw that I was standing right by the fireplace.