Murder in Midtown

by Liz Freeland

  I took a brief nap on the sofa and then changed clothes and left the flat again before nine o’clock.

  This time Mr. McChesney and I were in an open visitors’ room with a guard standing watch at the center of the long table provided. His gaze tracked our movements as if he expected to catch me slipping a weapon to the prisoner.

  Mr. McChesney seemed to be shrinking by the day. His rough clothing drooped over his thinning frame.

  “Aren’t they feeding you?” I asked.

  “Oh yes. The food is adequate. Your dear aunt even sent me a package through Mr. Faber. It contained a copy of David Copperfield and a bit of Bernice’s lemon cake that I’ve always loved so.”

  “Novels and cake.” I smiled. “Book people are easy to please.”

  He let out something approaching a laugh. Mr. Faber was right. Something had changed.

  “Irene included a lovely note, too, urging me not to give up hope. She told me a man who’d asked for her hand as many times as I had couldn’t be easily discouraged.”

  I was glad my aunt had reached out to him, but he couldn’t have summoned me here just to tell me about that. “Have you remembered anything that might be helpful?”

  He looked down at the table, then cleared his throat. “Not remembered, exactly, but I have an idea that might explain what happened to Guy.”

  I leaned toward him.

  “The more I think on it, I do believe he might have taken his own life.”

  I remained perched forward, breath bated, until I realized that this was all he had to offer. It was the same idea, first put in my head by Jacob, that Muldoon had talked me out of weeks ago. “That seems unlikely.”

  “I don’t see why,” Mr. McChesney said. “Guy was always in some scrape or another. Perhaps he’d gotten himself in a particularly bad way—debts and so forth.”

  “But we know Cain paid him three thousand dollars before his death. It would be strange for a man to receive a large sum and then take his own life. The money would have given him hope.”

  “Whose word but Cain’s do we have that Guy ever received the three thousand dollars?” he asked. “I never saw it.”

  “You said you didn’t go into Guy’s office.”

  He frowned. “Yes, that’s true.”

  “Anyway, Muldoon told me that some of the ashes found on the first floor looked as if they might be the residue of bank notes. Large ones. It gives credence to that part of Cain’s story.” Much as I would have liked to find the man culpable.

  Mr. McChesney slumped in his chair. “I’m so alone with my thoughts here, Louise. All I do is go over everything. I guess I convinced myself that suicide made sense.”

  Crazy Cora syndrome. I sympathized.

  “It would make sense if we could come up with an unsolvable problem that had been preying on Guy’s mind—something for which three thousand dollars wouldn’t have been enough. Think. Did you have any arguments with Guy over the financial straits the company was in?” I asked. “Could he have been depressed about that?”

  “He didn’t care about the company enough to argue. I was always frustrated with him when it came to the business. He would ask me about where we stood, and I would tell him that we stood very stubbornly in the red. And he would laugh at that. Laugh!” He shook his head. “As if it were all just a joke. Cyrus would have seen that the firm was put into the black, but Guy felt no responsibility for it. He was only there because it kept him from having to do something more taxing, like working at a job downtown. If we went under, as we were sure to do, one of his family connections would have found him a better sinecure in another business.”

  “So you never argued over the financial books,” I said.

  He chuckled. “The books? Heavens, no. He never even glimpsed at them.”

  “If we had evidence of Guy’s seeing the hopelessness of Van Hooten and McChesney’s financial position, it might have backed up the idea that he would’ve taken his own life in despair.” I frowned in thought. “Not that it matters, I suppose, if all the financial records of the company went up in smoke.” I remembered something then, and sucked in a breath. “Except they didn’t, did they? You told Bob that you’d kept some at your flat.”

  His eyes widened in alarm. “When?”

  “The morning of the fire. You told Bob to come see you at your flat to look them over and talk about the future of the company.”

  He waved a hand dismissively. “Those books were of no importance. I passed them along to someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone I trusted.”

  “Was it Bob?” It would have made sense for him to entrust them to the accountant, and I’d suspected Bob was taking something out of the apartment when I’d bumped into him at Mr. McChesney’s. Bob had denied the existence of the financial books, but I hadn’t believed him.

  “No, not Bob. You’re looking in the wrong direction.” He shook his head. “You should forget about those ledgers. There was nothing in them.”

  “Are you sure? If there’s any trace of evidence, some hint at an aggrieved creditor who might have wanted to attack Guy . . .”

  “There wasn’t,” he said. “I can assure you of that.”

  “Then why would it matter if I looked?”

  He stared at me.

  “There is something incriminating in those books, isn’t there?” I asked.

  “Nothing that incriminates me.”

  “Then why—?”

  “Leave it alone.” He stood up abruptly, so agitated that he almost lost his balance. He placed his palms on the table. “It was a mistake to ask you here. I only did so because I hoped you’d agree with me about Guy’s committing suicide.”

  “Why would you care what I think? Why not tell the theory to Abe Faber directly?”

  His gaze sought mine. “Irene told me that you were now a policewoman, and you know Detective Muldoon, don’t you? I thought, since you might have access to evidence, and the ears of your colleagues. . .”

  I would have given anything in that moment not to have heard him say that. He seemed to believe that by hook or by crook I could simply convince the detectives on the case that Guy committed suicide. That would be a very tidy situation for everyone—a solved case, no messy trial, no Ogden McChesney convicted of murder.

  Yes, it would be very handy just to close cases by pointing the finger at a dead man, or picking the suspect who best suited everybody’s ends. Wasn’t that what had happened last night? Cain needed a charge laid against him, and so they’d found someone who would make it. With my help.

  Bernice’s warnings about crooked cops echoed in my mind. That wasn’t the kind of policewoman I wanted to be.

  “I won’t stop trying to find evidence to clear you of Guy’s murder,” I said. “But it would help if you cooperated. If you’d just tell me whom you gave the books to . . .”

  “I don’t want to be cleared at the expense of an innocent man’s freedom.”

  “But if that man isn’t innocent . . .”

  He smiled sadly. “Goodbye, Louise. It was good of you to come.”

  I wanted to cry in frustration. He knew something. He could have told me exactly whom I was looking for, but he wouldn’t. Why?

  As I left the courthouse, his words stayed with me. “Someone I trusted,” he’d said, when I’d asked him who had the remaining ledgers.

  He’d ruled out Bob. So who could it be?

  As an idea dawned on me, blood drained to my heels. Of course. I knew one person he trusted more than anyone.

  * * *

  Walter must have been taking the dogs out for their afternoon stroll, because Bernice answered the door. “Your aunt’s upstairs. She’s not feeling well.”

  “Then I’m doubly glad I came.”

  Hearing typing, I detoured to Aunt Irene’s study. At my old post sat Miriam, perfectly at ease in her new surroundings. She glanced up.

  “I was looking for my aunt,” I said after we exchanged greetings.


  “She’s in bed with a cold. Could I take a message to her for you?”

  The presumption rankled a bit. After all, she was my aunt. Why shouldn’t I be able to witness her sniffles as well as a relative newcomer to the household?

  It was my own insecurity bubbling up, of course. I felt shaky in my own job, so I was looking at Miriam as some kind of usurper. I took a breath. “You seem to have settled in.”

  She smiled. “Maybe a little more than I expected. I’m staying in the spare room while your aunt’s ill—in case she needs something during the night.”

  Did Aunt Irene really need three people to see her through a head cold? “Doesn’t Jackson miss you?”

  Her smile evaporated. “He could use a little time by himself, I think.”

  I sank down into my aunt’s velvet-covered reading chair. “He seemed troubled the last time I saw him. Has he still not found a job?”

  She shook her head. “The best thing for him to do would be to go back home. To Alabama. He’s never been happy here.”

  No, he never did seem to enjoy his life in this city. “Do you want to go home?”

  “I like it here.” She shifted in her chair and glanced away as she spoke. “I meant Jackson should go home alone.”

  “He wouldn’t leave you.”

  It took longer than I would have thought necessary for her to answer. During the silence, it occurred to me that she might have already left him.

  “His folks would welcome him back in the fold quick enough if I wasn’t with him. He’d be back where he was meant to be.”

  “Where are any of us meant to be?” I asked. “I probably could have stayed in Altoona forever, but circumstances blew me here. I don’t regret it.”

  “That’s you. In Jackson’s case, I was the circumstance. I never meant to make him unhappy, but I have.”

  “It wasn’t all your doing, was it?” I asked. “It takes two to fall in love.”

  “And two to fall out of it.”

  “Maybe once Jackson finds work . . .”

  She shook her head. “He hasn’t been the same since that fire.”

  I understood what she meant, or thought I did. “I wasn’t the same after my roommate’s cousin was killed in our flat. Jackson might need time.”

  Her eyes looked on me dully, and I felt a rupture between us, as if I’d missed something important. “I’d better finish these pages,” she said.

  Perplexed at the abrupt dismissal, I went down the hall to my aunt’s room. She was propped up in bed by a complicated network of pillows, with a carved lap desk in front of her. At the foot of the bed, the empty pillows for Dickens and Trollope confirmed my earlier hunch about Walter’s whereabouts.

  “Oh, Louise—it’s kind of you to come see me.” Her glance at the clock on her bedside table telegraphed that the visit was also inconvenient. “But my cold really isn’t very serious.”

  “I actually came to discuss something related to the case. I’ve just been to see Mr. McChesney.”

  She glanced at me over her glasses and set down her pen. “You’d better pull up a chair.”

  I picked up the embroidered stool by her dressing table and settled it next to her bedside.

  “Not too close,” she instructed. “The last thing you want is to catch whatever I have.” She blew her nose into a monogrammed linen handkerchief.

  “Why are you working?” I said. “You should rest.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “How would bills be paid if I stopped working every time I felt a sniffle coming on?”

  “Surely a day or two to get your strength back . . .”

  “A day or two and I might lose my momentum.” She patted the pages before her. “I’m awfully eager to get to the end of this one.” A chuckle rattled in her chest. “It’s my first mystery and I’m curious to see how it all turns out.”

  I could have told her—all I had to do was recite the events of four months ago—but I didn’t want to interfere with her muse.

  I cleared my throat. “Miriam says she’s staying in the spare bedroom.”

  “She’s such a help to me, I can’t tell you.”

  I wondered if her helping might not be the slightest bit opportunistic. “Things don’t seem to be going well between her and Jackson. I’ve noticed tension between them for a while, but I got the sense just now that she’d like to leave him permanently.”

  “That may be. I always find it advisable not to examine any marriage too closely unless you want reasons to stay single forever. When you’re young you think being an old maid is the worst fate that can befall a woman, but from what I’ve witnessed, no one’s more lonely than a person trapped in an unhappy marriage.”

  Neither possibility seemed especially happy to me.

  “Now, tell me,” Aunt Irene continued, “how was Ogden?”

  “Your gifts lifted his spirits. He’s showing a glimmer of wanting to cooperate with Abe Faber to clear himself of the murder charge.”

  “Good. I only wish there was more I could do for him.”

  “Perhaps there is.”

  Briefly, I recounted my conversation with Mr. McChesney. “So you see,” I concluded, “I need to find the person with these ledgers.”

  “Yes.”

  “And since he said it was someone he trusted, I came here.”

  There was a delay before my meaning registered. She laughed. “Me? Pumpkin, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  I tried not to let my disappointment show. “He trusts you.”

  “Yes, but even tending to my own books usually makes me want to weep. Ogden knows how I hate figuring—especially anytime there are irregularities. Why, just last year I had to go over my own books with him when I suspected a royalty shortf—”

  Her words died, and her gaze fixed on the inkpot in its space on her lap desk.

  “There was a shortfall?” I asked.

  “Yes, for Myrtle in Springtime.”

  The novel Van Hooten and McChesney had published. After that, another company had offered her more money. Even though she’d written it almost two decades ago, Van Hooten and McChesney kept Myrtle in Springtime in print. It was one of their evergreens.

  “I was only guessing, of course,” she said. “But I consulted with Ogden, and a few months later I received a check from him, with his apologies.”

  “This was last year?”

  She nodded.

  “Did he say why the money hadn’t been forthcoming?”

  She sneezed. “It was an oversight, he said.”

  An oversight. “And this had never happened before?”

  “No, not in all the years I knew Ogden. And I’m very thorough in my accounting, however much it pains me.”

  What had changed at Van Hooten and McChesney around that time? Bob had been with the firm for eight years, and must have been an honest bookkeeper, or Mr. McChesney would have let him go. Of course, a year and a half ago was before I’d begun working there.

  But it was just after Jackson had started.

  * * *

  I arrived at Jackson’s flat without advance warning, hoping to catch him in an unguarded moment. I suppose I had in mind an ambush—that he’d be so startled by my perspicacity that a confession would gush out of him.

  And then what? I didn’t plan that far ahead.

  It took a full minute for him to answer my knock. His eyes, which were bloodshot, widened at the sight of me.

  “My old office mate. And now thief of my actual mate.”

  This was not how I’d intended the conversation to begin.

  “I just saw Miriam. She said she was staying there until my aunt got better.”

  He didn’t respond. How inebriated was he?

  “Everyone at my aunt’s is wild about Miriam.”

  He laughed and left me at the door, collapsing into the chair I assumed he’d only vacated at my knock. “Yes, she can be charming when she wants to be.”

  Invited or not, I went inside and took the matching chair opposite
him.

  “That’s right,” he said, “sit down. Might as well take advantage of our chairs while we’ve got ’em. In a week or so they’ll have to be sold to a second-hand store.”

  “You still haven’t been able to find work?”

  He swirled some whiskey in a glass. “I was offered a job just yesterday—as a proofreader! Sixteen dollars a week.”

  That wasn’t much. He’d probably been making twice that at Van Hooten and McChesney.

  “It’s not enough to live on,” he said.

  “Not even with Miriam working, too?”

  His eyes were daggers. “She shouldn’t have to work, and I shouldn’t have to slave for peanuts, especially not for some third-rate publication run by cretins who attended third-rate schools.”

  “Well.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that, knowing that Jackson probably considered me lower than a third-rater.

  “Why are you here?” he asked. “To gloat?”

  “Of course not. I came to ask you a few questions.”

  He struggled to straighten up in his chair. “You already sound like a policeman. Should I be shaking in my boots?”

  “This isn’t really in the way of official police work. I was wondering if you could shed any light on something that happened soon after you started working for Van Hooten and McChesney.”

  He shifted slightly, curious in spite of himself.

  “I believe the company had a little financial trouble around then,” I said. “There might even have been a sudden shortfall in the books.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “You never heard of any whiff of trouble, maybe some kind of discrepancy in the bookkeeping?”

  “Are you trying to hint that someone stole from the company?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “And you think it was me? Sorry to disappoint you, but I never got any nearer to money at that place than my own pay envelope.” When I didn’t react, he asked, “Don’t believe me? When did you ever see me involved in financial discussions with old man McChesney? I’ll remind you—never. I was hired to be an editor, and my activities were limited to that sphere.” His gaze narrowed on me. “What could possibly have made you think that I was cooking the books?”

  I told him a little about my conversation with Mr. McChesney. “He said he gave the surviving ledgers to someone he trusted.”