by Sara Donati
“I don’t know whether to be alarmed or encouraged.”
Oscar grunted his agreement. “Where’s Anna?”
“Night duty,” Mrs. Cabot answered for Jack, who was making short work of the food she put in front of him. She had turned to get the coffee canister but Oscar shook his head. “Time’s short.”
Her thin face twisted in disapproval. “You two will stop at MacNeil’s for coffee, late or not.”
MacNeil’s coffeehouse opened into the alley behind police headquarters on Mulberry Street. It was crowded and airless, an unpleasant place, and Mrs. Cabot was correct: detectives had been meeting there since the department was first founded. MacNeil’s was a fact of life for coppers out of the Mulberry Street station.
“MacNeil makes something he calls coffee,” Oscar agreed, his good humor returning. “But I have it on good authority that it’s the product of an old boot he’s been boiling for ten years at least.”
“And still you drink it, though it will eat a hole in your stomach.”
“Every copper drinks MacNeil’s boot,” Oscar said solemnly. “It renders us impervious to bullets. But you’re right, there’s no need to rush. May I have more of your fine coffee, Mrs. Cabot? We’ve got a day ahead of us that will be difficult enough without more holes in the stomach.”
Once the coffee had been poured Oscar told Jack what he knew about this new case. He reeled off the facts: the missing woman was Charlotte Louden, wife of Jeremy Louden, a financier, a bank vice president, and a man with connections reaching as far as the mayor’s office and beyond.
“What he’s most known for is stealing the richest and prettiest debutante for himself right at the start of the war when a uniform was still a novelty that made up for his mediocre self.”
Jack blew out a sigh. “What do we know about her?”
“Heir to the Abercrombie shipping fortune. Society darling, on the board of directors of twenty different charities, you know the type.”
“Kids?”
“Four, all grown. The captain’s waiting on us.” He stood up and reached for his hat.
“What’s your gut telling you?” Jack asked.
“Nothing good.” Oscar shrugged. “Same as always.”
* * *
• • •
AT THE STATION house the information they got from the captain didn’t do anything to change Oscar’s dour prognosis. Charlotte Louden had gone off on Friday by cab to do some shopping and then was planning to go on to spend the weekend with her mother, something she did often. On Sunday evening when her husband sent the carriage to bring her home, it turned out she had never shown up at all.
The captain spent a quarter hour reminding them of things they already knew: The Loudens were rich and well connected. The pressure from the mayor’s office would be just the start, and reporters would jump through any and every hoop to get a story that would sell newspapers. Then the captain gave them the first complication, as was often the case with the rich: the husband wasn’t available for questioning. Jeremy Louden was spending the day in a meeting out of town, so he couldn’t be interviewed until this evening or maybe tomorrow morning.
Most of the time when a woman met with violence, the husband was involved one way or another; a man who reported that his wife had been missing for three days and then went off to business meetings was drawing even more of the wrong kind of attention to himself. Jack wondered if somebody had warned him that leaving would not reflect well on him, or if nobody had dared. Or maybe he didn’t care how it looked.
“Is he stupid, or careless, or both?” Oscar put what Jack was thinking into a question for the captain.
“Don’t get your dander up with me,” the captain said. “I don’t like it any more than you do. Start at the house on Gramercy Park. The staff knows you’re coming.”
* * *
• • •
THE MAID WHO answered the door at the Louden residence was pale, her eyes red and swollen. She bobbed a curtsy, showed them into a parlor, and went off to find the housekeeper.
Three quarters of an hour later they were back on the street. The housekeeper was new, only two weeks with the family; the last housekeeper, the one who had been with the Loudens for some twenty-five years, had died of a sudden apoplexy. The new woman knew next to nothing of Mrs. Louden’s habits.
She was happy enough to show them to the lady’s rooms and let them search—instructions from Mr. Louden had made it clear that they were to be allowed to do their work as they saw fit—but she had nothing useful to tell them except that Mrs. Louden’s lady’s maid, the most likely source of useful information, was away visiting her sister. The sister’s address was something they’d have to get from Mr. Louden himself.
A search of Charlotte Louden’s bedroom and dressing and sitting rooms revealed nothing unusual. Her jewelry case seemed to be undisturbed; there were no obvious gaps in the wardrobe that stretched the full length of one wall, every piece of clothing perfectly arranged. They found a hidden compartment in the desk and another in a chest of drawers, but both of these were empty: no brandy flasks or laudanum bottles or opium pipes, no stash of love letters.
An engagement diary was open on the desk. Small, slanted, exacting handwriting, and the details of a life spent managing a household. Dinner guests, meals served, invitations to receptions and balls and weddings, committee meetings, birthdays noted, the start of a letter to a friend in Germany with news of children and grandchildren. Slipped in between the pages were notes to Mrs. Louden from a niece, her French modiste, and the youngest son, studying classical literatures at Princeton.
In the days before she disappeared she had shopped at three of the most exclusive stores, and her milliner had come to the house. For the Friday she disappeared she had printed the word Mother and drawn a line through to Sunday. Glancing through the previous pages Jack saw that this notation repeated itself every two or three weeks. An attentive daughter.
“Worse and worse,” Oscar said as they went back to the carriage. “Let’s go see the mother.” He tucked the diary into his pocket on the way out.
* * *
• • •
THEY PASSED CENTRAL Park’s Scholars’ Gate as they headed north on Fifth Avenue. With Oscar driving Jack had the freedom to take in the park in all its spring abundance. A stand of birch trees in new leaf moved with the breeze, and he imagined what it would be like to nap right there, in dappled shade.
Oscar sneezed into his handkerchief and grumbled to himself as he folded it and tucked it away. “Dust enough to choke a man.”
“Other people travel all the way up here to get out of the city and enjoy the park,” Jack said. “You have a heart of concrete.”
“What else would I have, Five Points raised as I was. And tell me, what’s the use of so many trees, cluttering things up?” He peered at the houses they passed and then pointed. “There it is, and just look. Another old woman forced to live out her last days in desperate poverty.”
Sarcasm was Oscar’s weapon of choice when it came to the rich.
Most of the newer mansions in the city looked like bastardized French castles, but the Abercrombie place had been built in an older style, simple in its lines and elegant in proportions, with tall windows widely spaced. Twenty rooms at least in an oasis of lawn, espaliered fruit trees, and flower beds where a battalion of gardeners was busy pruning, cleaning away winter debris, and turning earth so dark and rich the scent filled the air.
“Where’s the money from, did you say?”
Oscar grimaced. “Abercrombie and Company, shipbuilders, marine engineers, and I think they used to make boilers, too. The old man died, what, five years ago. No scandals I know of, but money to burn.”
Oscar pulled up under the arched roof of the porte cochere on the north side of the house. The battered police department rig looked as out of place here as the a
ged chestnut gelding that pulled it. As if to prove the point, the horse cocked his tail and deposited a pile of manure on the immaculate flagstones.
Oscar said, “An extra ration of oats for you this evening, Timmy, my boy.”
A servant appeared in the doorway just as a stable hand came from the rear courtyard to see to the rig.
Jack nodded to the butler, handed over a business card with one hand, and showed his detective’s shield with the other. “Detective Sergeants Maroney and Mezzanotte. We’re expected.”
“But not welcome,” Oscar muttered, and Jack elbowed him.
They followed the man into the house, down a corridor with marble floors and walls paneled in a dark mahogany. Wide double doors were open to a parlor where the servant stopped and, inclining head and shoulders, gestured for them to enter.
“Mrs. Abercrombie, the detective sergeants.”
It was always a gamble bringing Oscar into this kind of setting; the man was more than willing to be offended by wealth. But the butler had treated them with basic courtesy and good manners, and even better: there was an old lady smiling at them. Oscar liked old ladies and because his interest was sincere, they found him charming. Even old ladies who ran disorderly houses or gambling dens or pawn shops liked Oscar. On the rare occasion he came across a woman of a certain age who was suspicious of him, he took winning her over as a challenge.
“Please, Detective Sergeants. Come in. Sit here, close to me. My eyesight isn’t what it once was.”
Not American, not Irish or Scots or any kind of English that Jack recognized. He glanced at Oscar, who mouthed the answer: Welsh. He made the introductions in his most subdued voice, gentled by her age and fragility and the tragedy that hovered over her, the loss of a daughter.
“Detective Sergeants,” Mrs. Abercrombie said, “I believe I’ve come across your names in the newspapers just recently. A bank robbery?”
“The Bank of Rome,” Jack said. “You have a memory for details, Mrs. Abercrombie.”
She said, “What news do you have of my daughter?”
“None,” said Oscar. “I’m sorry to say. But we’ve just started the investigation. Be assured, we’ll do everything in our power.” He stopped short of making promises they would not be able to keep.
Jack said, “Mrs. Abercrombie, Mr. Louden isn’t available to talk to us until this evening—”
Her mouth jerked and tightened. “A business meeting, no doubt.”
“Yes,” Oscar said. “That’s what we were told. You look doubtful.”
“Oh, no. He had a meeting, I’m sure of that. The man lives for business. Now, how can I help? Please give me something to do.”
“Do you have a likeness of your daughter we might borrow?”
She half turned toward the mantelpiece. “Would any of those serve?”
There were large groupings of formal portraits and photographs and cabinet cards, a few old-fashioned miniatures on small easels, all perfectly framed and arranged. Young men, frowning babies, a boy with a dog, a young woman in an elaborate costume. Wedding portraits. Oscar picked up one of these.
“Is this Charlotte? She was a beautiful bride.”
“Yes, people thought her the prettiest girl in the city when she came out. She married at seventeen,” Mrs. Abercrombie said. “You’ll think me a biased mother, but she has hardly changed in all the years since. On the far right is a more recent portrait, you can compare the two.”
When Oscar had placed the two portraits side by side, Jack saw that Mrs. Abercrombie wasn’t exaggerating. At something more than forty Charlotte Louden was still beautiful and looked far younger than her years.
“She met Jeremy Louden at a ball, just after South Carolina seceded from the Union. He was a lieutenant and he looked very well in his uniform. You will remember, Detective Sergeant Maroney, how high passions were running. That worked to his advantage. He proposed and she insisted she would have him, though her father and I objected. She could have had her choice of far more worthy men.”
She cleared her throat and looked down at her hands for a long moment. When she raised her head, her smile was tremulous. “She’s done well, even when she was unhappy. She has always done well.”
Now was the time to ask the hardest question, the one that would permit this woman to speak of the things that frightened her most, of the secrets she held most closely.
A servant came in pushing a cart with a coffee service, but as soon as she had left Jack began.
He said, “Mrs. Abercrombie, do you know where your daughter is, or do you have any thoughts on what might have happened to her?”
The old lady spread her hands out on her lap. “I do not. I expected her on that Friday for the weekend, but then when she didn’t come I assumed I had got the dates confused. It happens sometimes, at my age.” This admission cost her something, but she looked Oscar in the eye. Her daughter was more important to her than her pride.
“Do you fear she’s met with violence?”
Her gaze sharpened. “If you are thinking of Mr. Louden, let me assure you, you can put that suspicion aside. He’s too dull to plan an abduction, to put it plainly, and beyond that, he likes his life the way it is. My daughter is the sole heir to my entire family estate, and he gets nothing if she dies first. My husband made that a condition of agreeing to the marriage. So you see, her husband cannot afford to be a widower.”
It was a surprise, one that robbed them of their most likely suspect.
Oscar went on asking the questions that they knew Mrs. Abercrombie would find objectionable: Were her daughter’s affections with another man? Was there some acquaintance who paid her an inordinate amount of attention, either with her encouragement or without it? Had she had any threats? Were there any old grudges or unresolved arguments?
She rejected every inquiry calmly and with short, precise explanations.
“Was she unwell?” Oscar asked. “In body or spirit?”
“No,” said Mrs. Abercrombie, very firmly. “She was always healthy, the very picture of health. She bore four children with ease, and nursed Anderson—her youngest—through typhoid without coming down with it herself. Her first three grandchildren came along this past winter. Charles and his wife had a daughter, and Minnie had twin boys. Charlotte sat right there”—she pointed to a low chair near the fire—“and she said to me, ‘Mama, grandchildren are the reward for raising your own. I hope I have twenty of them. All of the joy and only a portion of the worry.’ She was well satisfied with her life, Detective Sergeants.”
She drew in a deep breath. “Let me ask you a question. If someone intended to demand money for her return, they would have done that already, isn’t that so?” There was a new wobble in her voice, but no tears.
When Oscar agreed that she was right, she stared into the middle distance for a few seconds. “Then I think it’s most likely that a stranger took her for reasons I would prefer not to contemplate. I’m sure I don’t need to explain it to you.”
“We won’t assume the worst,” Jack said. Not yet, he added to himself.
“I don’t know where she went, or why or how. But I do know that she would never leave me without an explanation, not if it were in her power to do anything else. If she knew there was some chance that she wouldn’t return home she would have told me, and she would have told Minnie, her oldest. Or she would have confided in Leontine.”
“Leontine?”
“Her maid. You haven’t spoken to Leontine?”
“We were told that she’s away visiting her sister.”
Mrs. Abercrombie put back her head and sighed. “Oh, yes,” she said finally. “I lost track of the date. She has two weeks every year and she goes to spend that time with family.”
“We’d like to talk to this Miss—”
“Mrs. Reed. Leontine Reed, a war widow. I’m afraid I can’t tell you where
to find her. I believe she’s visiting her sister Alice, but Alice is married so I can’t even give you her full name.”
“Would your granddaughter know more?”
She began to pick at her shawl, worrying a thread with fingers that trembled ever so slightly. “I think she must. Of course she must.”
“Then we thank you for your help,” Oscar said. “And we will be on our way.”
“Wait, please. Let me be clear, Detectives. You must call on me without hesitation at any hour if you have questions, or if you—if you have new information.”
“We will not leave you to wonder,” Jack said.
“We follow every lead,” Oscar added. Mrs. Abercrombie closed her eyes, and then she nodded.
* * *
• • •
WHILE MRS. ABERCROMBIE’S home had been peaceful, the Gillespie household on Thirty-eighth Street was just the opposite. The brownstone where Minnie Louden Gillespie lived with her husband, three-month-old twin boys, a household staff, and a nanny was much like a circus. They were greeted at the door by the wailing of infants and the echo of squabbling from the kitchen punctuated by shattering crockery.
The housekeeper flinched at the noise but showed them into the parlor, gave an awkward bob, and rushed off, almost crashing into the lady of the house. Mrs. Gillespie appeared in the doorway with a wailing infant on each arm and a look on her flushed face that could only be interpreted as desperation.
“Detective Sergeants,” she said, “I’m afraid this isn’t the best time. My nanny has deserted me.”
Oscar said, “I’ve got a dozen nieces and nephews and Detective Sergeant Mezzanotte has—how many is it now, Jack?”
“I’ve lost track.”
“We’re used to babies.” Oscar gave her his trustworthy-uncle smile.
