by Erin Lindsey
“It is,” Mrs. Sellers confirmed. “Being a bachelor, Mr. Wiltshire doesn’t require a large household staff.”
“No coachman?”
“Mr. Wiltshire prefers to use the livery companies,” the housekeeper said, managing to sound only faintly bemused at this eccentric behavior.
Ward grunted and wrote something in his ledger.
“Excuse me,” I began, “but what—”
“Hush, girl.” Mrs. Sellers glared at me.
Ward gestured with a stubby finger. “And when was the last time each of you saw Mr. Wiltshire?” He pronounced it the American way—Wilt-shy-er—in spite of having heard Mrs. Sellers say it properly only moments before.
“Saturday morning,” said the housekeeper, confirming my suspicions from the night before.
“That go for all of you?” The thick finger waved again. My mother used to say that you could tell a lot about a person by the state of his hands. Detective Ward’s hands, with their crusting of dirt and chewed-off fingernails, were telling me that he wasn’t a man for details.
“Yes, sir,” Clara said. “Saturday morning.”
“He left early, before reading the papers,” I added, since that was unusual.
Ward grunted and wrote in his ledger.
“Missing since early Saturday morning,” said Officer O’Leary, “and here it is Monday.”
Missing. The word hit me like a blow to the gut.
“That’s a fair point,” said the detective. “Why is it none of you ladies thought to report this matter to the police?”
“Thinking to cash in, maybe?” O’Leary grinned and winked. “Make off with a bit of the silver?”
All three of us—Clara, Mrs. Sellers, and I—sucked in a lungful of righteous outrage. In that moment, however fleeting, we were allies, three working women wrongly accused. “We were thinking no such thing,” Mrs. Sellers replied, icicles dangling from every word. “I’ll have you know that I have been in the Wiltshires’ employ for nearly fifteen years, and in that time neither Mr. Thomas nor his late uncle ever had cause to complain about my service, let alone my integrity. My name and reputation are well known in the highest society circles. Ask anyone.”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary.” O’Leary’s grin widened. He seemed to find this all very amusing.
“We didn’t contact the police because it isn’t entirely unusual for Mr. Wiltshire to be absent for long stretches,” the housekeeper went on. “Why, only this past spring he was gone for over a week.”
What a trying time that had been. You can imagine Clara’s fury about the cooking, and Mrs. Sellers had begun to fear that he’d gone back to England, cheating her of two weeks’ wages. As for me, I’d just missed him terribly.
Something occurred to me then. “But if none of us reported him missing, who did?”
Detective Ward consulted his ledger. “A Mr. Jonathan R. Burrows of 923 Fifth Avenue.”
“Mr. Burrows?” The housekeeper looked puzzled.
“You know the fella, I take it?”
“Of course. The Burrowses are one of the most prominent families in the country. Mr. Jonathan Burrows is an acquaintance of Mr. Wiltshire’s.”
“His closest acquaintance,” I put in, earning myself another glare.
“Would you say this Burrows is the nervous type?”
“Not that I’ve noticed,” Mrs. Sellers said. “Why do you ask?”
“Just trying to work out why my captain saw fit to drag us in before the crack of dawn to ask after some rounder whose own servants don’t find anything queer in his absence.”
“Oh, I do.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop myself, and suddenly everyone was looking at me.
“That right?” O’Leary narrowed his eyes. “And why’s that, love?”
I swallowed hard. Not because I was afraid of the police. I’d grown up in Five Points, after all; if I had a nickel for every time a copper questioned me about some doing or another in the streets—no, the object of my anxiety was the housekeeper. I could feel Mrs. Sellers’s eyes burning into me like hot coals. I’d spoken out of turn. There would be consequences. “It’s only…” I swallowed again. “I noticed something odd last night when I went to prepare Mr. Wiltshire’s room.”
“And you didn’t see fit to inform me?” Mrs. Sellers snapped.
Ward silenced the housekeeper with a wave. “What’d you notice, darlin’?”
“Opera tickets, for Saturday night’s performance. A pair of them.”
The coppers exchanged a look. “And?”
“Well, Mr. Wiltshire isn’t the forgetful sort. He’s punctual and organized and very conscientious. If he had an engagement for the opera, he wouldn’t have overlooked it.”
O’Leary yawned and scratched his stubble. “Maybe he just didn’t feel like going. These Champagne Charlies, they don’t think twice about wasting money.”
“But there were two tickets. What about his companion for the evening?”
“Maybe they both decided not to go. Found themselves a better occupation, if you take my meaning.” Ward flashed a leering smile, and both officers chuckled.
I took his meaning all right, and it got my back up. I’d held my tongue when they called him a rounder and a Champagne Charlie, as though he were some kind of frivolous man-about-town, but this was too much. “He’s not that sort of person.”
O’Leary gave me a knowing smirk. “I’m sure he’s the perfect gentleman.”
“That’s just what he is,” I said coldly. “Something must have detained him.”
“Or someone,” O’Leary said, just to watch me squirm.
I could feel myself blushing, and the wider the policemen grinned, the worse it got. Even Clara was looking at me with something dangerously close to pity. I tried to explain, but all I could do was stammer. “It isn’t … I’m not … He doesn’t even like Wagner!”
Mrs. Sellers clucked her tongue in disgust. “That’s quite enough from you, Rose. Forgive me for letting her prattle on, officers. I’m afraid the girl suffers from a ridiculous infatuation.”
“You don’t say.” Ward slid his ledger into his breast pocket and picked up his hat. They were through with me.
I was near to tears at this point, and might have said something even more ill-considered had Clara not come to my rescue.
“You should listen to Rose,” she said, giving the coppers a hard look. “You can make fun all you like, but she knows Mr. Wiltshire better than anybody in this house. If she says he’s behaving strangely, you’d best believe it.”
“Clara!” Mrs. Sellers stamped her foot as if she’d just caught a terrier relieving itself on the carpet.
“Mr. Burrows was worried,” Clara went on fearlessly, “and Rose is worried. That’s two people close to Mr. Wiltshire thinking something ain’t right. I’d take that serious if I was you.”
The detective grunted and donned his hat. “We’ll see. Might be I’ll be back to talk to you again. Meantime, he turns up, you be sure and let us know.”
“I certainly will, officer,” Mrs. Sellers said primly, as though she’d been in command of the conversation all along. “I’ll show you out.”
Clara sighed as she watched them go. “She’ll be showing us out next, she has her way.”
“Thanks for standing up for me, though I wish you hadn’t. You’re going to catch it even worse than me.”
Clara shrugged. “She can’t do anything without Mr. Wiltshire’s say-so, and if he really is in trouble, well, I don’t suppose you and me will be top of his to-do list. Besides, there’s worse things than the box factory.” In spite of her words, I could see the worry in her eyes. Our positions in the Wiltshire household were the best either of us could realistically hope to land, and if we lost them, there was a good chance we’d never see their like again. The circle of wealthy families in New York was small; to fall out with any one of them was to be exiled forever from their glittering world.
I sank numbly onto one of M
r. Wiltshire’s upholstered chairs. “I can’t believe it. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen uptown.”
“Things like what? For all we know, he’s snug as a bug somewhere. There’s plenty of innocent explanations—in the eyes of man if not the eyes of the Lord.” Clara arched an eyebrow pointedly.
“Not you, too! He’s not that sort.”
“Rose, honey, you don’t know what sort he is. Mending a man’s stockings might make you less than a stranger, but don’t be mistaking that for intimacy. Have you ever even had a proper conversation?”
“Of course! Just the other day he asked me about Ireland.”
“Uh-huh. And you said?”
“That I had no memory of it. We left when I was a baby.”
“And then he said?”
“He said…” I lowered my gaze, examining my slippered feet. “He said … Is there tea?”
Clara laughed. When I gave her a wounded look, she put a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t…” She bit down on her smile. “I’m sorry. It’s just … look, I know how hard you work to fit in on the Avenue, reading and writing and talking just so, but that ain’t the same as being one of ’em. You don’t know a thing about what goes on in that man’s head, or what he does when he walks out that door in the morning.”
“What about just now, what you said to the coppers? Why should they listen to me if you won’t?”
“I am listening. I’m just saying not to get too lathered up, is all. We don’t know what happened, and there’s nothing we can do about it anyway, so there’s no sense letting it get to you. If he’s really missing, the police’ll find him.”
I snorted. “A girl from your part of town ought to know better.”
“A girl from my part of town knows better than to mess with what ain’t her business,” Clara said soberly, “and so should you.”
“What if Mr. Wiltshire needs help? Don’t tell me you think it’s going to come from that organ grinder and his monkey?”
“And just what do you mean for us to do about it? This ain’t one of your Travel and Adventure columns. This is real life, and—”
“The opera tickets,” I said, springing to my feet.
Clara eyed me warily. “What about ’em?”
“We should take another look.”
“Rose—”
“There are answers in that room, I know it. Some clue about where he went, or who with. I’m going to—”
“What you’re going to do, Rose Gallagher, is polish the silver.” Mrs. Sellers appeared in the doorway, eyes glittering with malice. “And then you’re going to wash the curtains and iron the linens. When you’re through with that, you’ll beat the rugs and do the mending, and if by some miracle you finish all that before midnight, I’ll have thought of a few more chores that need doing. As for you”—she turned to Clara—“Mr. Wiltshire will not look fondly on his servants showing such disrespect for the authorities. I will be withholding your salary until his return, at which point, if I have my way, you will be dismissed.”
“But that’s not fair!” I cried, painfully aware of how childish it sounded. “Clara and I were only trying to help Mr. Wiltshire!”
“I can assure you that Mr. Wiltshire does not need the help of a papist and a negress.”
Clara drew herself up, seeming suddenly taller than her five-foot-two frame. “Mr. Wiltshire can speak for himself,” she said in cool, measured tones. “I don’t work for you. If he wants to dismiss me, I’ll hear it from him, but until then, I got work to do.”
Oh, how I wish I’d looked up to see the expression on the housekeeper’s face as Clara flounced out of the room. But I didn’t dare.
Mrs. Sellers stood there a moment, quivering in mute rage. Then she barked, “Get on with your chores, girl!”
I bolted up to my room. The sooner I got started, the sooner I could finish—and begin unraveling the mystery. Worried as I was for Mr. Wiltshire, I couldn’t help feeling that adventure had found me at last.
I was yet young and foolish enough to relish that.
* * *
Miraculously enough, I did finish my chores before midnight. Even more miraculously, Mrs. Sellers had fallen asleep before she could think of something else to stick me with, so I was free to begin my investigations. Clara grumbled and moaned when I roused her from bed, but faithful friend that she was, she donned her dressing gown, wrapped up her braids, and padded downstairs with me, treading carefully so as not to wake the housekeeper. We closed the door to Mr. Wiltshire’s room behind us, something I’d never dared to do before, and I couldn’t help letting my imagination take flight as I turned the key, picturing myself doing so under very different circumstances. A delicious little shiver skittered down my spine, but I collected myself and got down to business.
“Here they are,” I said, drawing the opera tickets from their envelope. “You see? Saturday night.”
Clara yawned.
I turned the envelope over in my hand, but there was nothing to hint where it might have come from. “Did he mention anything about his engagements for the evening?” Mr. Wiltshire often dined out on Saturdays, giving Clara the afternoon off.
She shook her head. “But I only saw him in passing, at breakfast. He wasn’t at the table long.”
“And when I went in to tidy up, I found the Sun and the Tribune still folded, and the Times barely touched. He must have been in an awful rush to leave without reading his papers.”
“Didn’t look like it to me. When I brought him his breakfast, he was just sitting there staring off into space, winding that fancy watch of his. Looked more thoughtful than rushed.”
I’d learned to respect Clara’s powers of observation (she’d noticed my feelings for Mr. Wiltshire even before I had), but in this case I was doubtful. “He must have been in a hurry or he wouldn’t have left the papers.”
“Could be he saw something in the papers that put him in a hurry.”
“Of course, that must be it! Clara, you’re brilliant!”
“Hush.” She hooked a thumb at the ceiling, reminding me of the specter of Mrs. Sellers. The housekeeper slept soundly (and snored even more soundly), but after the day we’d had, Clara was right to be cautious.
Lowering my voice, I went on, “Something he read in the papers sent him dashing out the door.”
“Could be. I’m just guessing.”
“But it makes perfect sense.” Unfortunately, it also made no difference—not unless we could work out exactly what he’d come across, and my heart sank as I realized that was no longer possible. “I threw the papers away this morning.”
“What was left of ’em, anyway.” Clara couldn’t quite suppress the smug glint in her eye, like a gambler who’s just discovered a trump in his hand. Despite her best efforts, she was being drawn in by the mystery.
“What do you mean?”
“I used the papers to wrap up yesterday’s dinner. Figured Mr. Wiltshire had no use for the ones he’d already read, so I kept ’em to pack up the roast and such.”
I nearly whooped with glee, but at the last moment I remembered the slumbering housekeeper and settled for a silent, manic hug. Clara shook her head, but she was grinning, too, and we fairly flew down to the kitchen in search of what remained of The New-York Times.
This, of course, was patently ludicrous. What did we expect to find, and how would we know it when we saw it? We didn’t pause to ask ourselves these very reasonable questions. Instead we set ourselves to the task, carefully unwrapping each soggy, stained bit of newsprint and spreading it flat until the entirety of Mr. Wiltshire’s Sunday dinner had been stripped naked and every surface of the kitchen papered over.
At which point we were finally struck by the improbability of what we were doing. How were we to know which page, let alone which article, Mr. Wiltshire had seized upon?
Clara sighed. “We could read this all night and be none the wiser.”
“Maybe something will leap out at us.”
&nbs
p; She eyed me doubtfully, but we’d come too far to give up now, so we each hunched over a rumpled square of paper and set to reading.
It was a dull business. MORE SNOW AND COLD WEATHER, read one headline. THE PRISON LABOR PROBLEM, said another. Clara muttered over an article describing the elopement of one Miss Nora Ludlum, “As though it’s anybody’s business but her own.” I could feel my eyelids growing heavy when at length I spied something that didn’t belong: a tiny smear of strawberry preserve. Eagerly, I scanned the headlines on the page.
FACTORY FIRE PHOTOGRAPHED. SMALLPOX BROUGHT FROM BOSTON. A NARROW ESCAPE. Grainy images of billowing smoke, a snippet about a family of four wiped out by smallpox, and the outrageous account of a self-styled treasure hunter who claimed to have been attacked by a ghost in the narrows of the East River. Nothing, in short, that could have interested Mr. Wiltshire. “It’s no use,” I sighed. “We’ll never find it.”
“It was worth a try. Let’s get this put away and hit the straw. Tomorrow’s going to be another long day.” Stretching, she added, “Besides, this is all so much fuss over nothing, you’ll see. Mr. Wiltshire’ll be back before you know it, reading his papers and drinking sherry with Mr. Burrows.”
“Mr. Burrows!” I snapped my fingers. “Of course!”
Clara groaned and rolled her eyes.
“He reported Mr. Wiltshire missing, even before we noticed anything wrong. Why would he do that? He must know something we don’t. Maybe he was expecting to see him, or—”
“Or what, Rose?” Clara snapped, her patience exhausted. “What good is it standing around here guessing what Mr. Jonathan Burrows knows about this or any other thing?”
“None at all.”
She eyed me suspiciously. “Rose…”
“Which is why I need you to cover for me tomorrow.”
“Cover for you.” She gave a brittle laugh and shook her head. “Dear Lord, she’s lost her mind. And just how am I supposed to do that?”
“I need to speak with Mr. Burrows. He must know something.”
