“Who, Mother?”
“Ransom and Nathan! Alastair at least is honest; he never expected anything of me, Tewes that is. Nathan, on the other hand, lied just to use me. He never believed in the idea of profiling the killer. It was all just part of his ruse.”
“Whatever are you talking about, Mother?” Gabby followed her as she stormed about the clinic.
“Only wanted information on Ransom. And to grind Ransom into the ground ’til he can stand no more. Damnable man wants my affections, too!”
“Isn’t Chief Kohler married?”
“Yes, but in a Chicago minute, he’d set me up as his mistress.”
“Mother! Really!” Gabby tried keeping up as Jane stormed each room, lifted something, banged it or tossed it and continued on. “Slow down, Mother, my God. What has happened?”
She told Gabby of the new horror at the fair. Gabby reacted in sullen silence, a pained look creasing her features. “You were at the fair with Ransom?”
When Jane had left Ransom the first time to come home, Gabby had been away with a study group. It was then that Jane had changed to Dr. Tewes and returned to the scene of the double homicide in Lake Park.
“Never again will I be sucked into doing anything that goes ’gainst my better judgment.”
Gabby clapped. “That’s wonderful news!”
“I blame these men ’round me! Kohler, Ransom, Fenger, all of ’em.”
“I like the sound of this.”
“I used to blame your grandfather, for not forcing me to look at reality for what it is! Instead, he taught me to spit in its eye. But too often comes its mocking face, making me the fool!”
“Go ahead, let it all out, dear Mother. You’ve taken on so much, and you’ve sacrificed for my—”
“No, I’ve made my own bed…nightmare really. ’Tisn’t any of your doing, child.”
“Please, you’re far too harsh on yourself.”
She paced the foyer, wandered the living room to the kitchen again, still fuming. Gabby remained near, recognizing a pivotal moment.
Finally Jane said, “This is it…tonight. I make a resolution.”
“What resolution, Mother?”
“I resolve to end this damnable charade and any further involvement with Nathan and Alastair’s feud.” She thought of Kohler’s final words to her: “String ’im along, Jane…sleep with him if it’ll get ’im talking…. One confession of overstepping the law, and by God, we ’ave the bastard!”
Kohler acted in the cold certainty of righteousness, weeding out anyone who had anything whatever to do with Haymarket. And what of Alastair? Ransom brought scrutiny on himself like a man who, at least secretively, wanted to confess to someone, anyone, and if she were in the right place at the right time, during a vulnerable moment, then perhaps it would be to her that he’d confess his sins. She’d be terrified by it, and she was terrified at the idea of standing in a court docket to testify against Alastair.
Gabby’s excited voice snatched Jane from her thoughts. “Good for you, Mother. I agree, and I support your action, whatever you decide, you know that.” Gabby hugged Jane, still in Tewes’s clothing.
Jane snatched off the mustache and ascot. “Safer to listen to the fairies in my head! The ones that spoke to me as a child.”
“Mother, I’ll help you if you’ll help me.”
“Help you how?”
“Define the problem in its particulars, and to your own satisfaction, but I cannot engage in another round of emotional tug-o-war.”
Mother and daughter stared into one another’s eyes, each seeking answers. Gabrielle nervously laughed.
“Don’t laugh. I believe the problem is surmountable, but I’m concerned you hide nothing from me, and that I do likewise, that I should never hide anything, even disturbing, from you if you’ve a right to know, and I am afraid that…I am guilty of this, my sweet.”
“Guilty how? What’re you talking about, Mother?”
“Tewes.”
“My father? But you have told me all about him. How handsome he was, how romantic, how courageously he died for his country in the war.”
“I-I’ve lied.”
“Lied?”
“All save that he was devilishly handsome.”
“But—”
“Let me now tell you the truth about your father, and I do this not to hurt you but to strengthen you. If I’m exposed here in Chicago as a fraud…well, within that exposure all manner of things will come to light.”
“But how would you be exposed? By whom?”
“Promise to be patient. I will tell you all. In the end, we will regain who we are.”
“Then you plan to expose yourself? Before this other party can?”
“Yes.”
“Inspector Ransom finally onto you, isn’t he?”
“No…wish it were so. It’s Chief Kohler. Payback, I suppose, for rejecting him.”
“You broke Nathan Kohler’s heart?”
“If he ever had one.” Jane finally sat.
“What you said about my father…”
“I started running away from myself a long time ago…when your father left me alone with…when I was pregnant with you. Felt like damaged goods. So much hurt and misunderstanding. Not toward you, my child, but toward myself.”
“So you came back to America to stop the pain?”
“No, to confront it, don’t you see? By setting up a practice in New York, but it proved disastrous.”
“So now we’re here, and talk about hiding from your feelings. You’ve become a master at it, Mother, right along with having become Dr. Tewes.”
“Only an expediency…to keep us in—”
“In the money, in the level of comfort to which we’ve become accustomed? Come on, Mother, out with it. To hide. To hide in plain sight is what you proposed from the beginning.”
Gabby grabbed her mother up from her chair and held her. The hug was long and heartfelt. “It’s OK, Mother.”
“But it’s not. In New York, I ran into Nathan, there studying some sort of new identification process he wanted in Chicago, this new fingerprinting thing.”
“It is a miracle of discovery this fingerprint business, Mother, and it is all true.”
“I’ve learned from Inspector Drimmer that Ransom is the one who pushed Kohler to adopt it, he and Dr. Fenger. Christian’s known of it for years from his travels to the Orient, but officials ignored his counsel.”
Gabby nodded. “Always the way with new ideas. Look at the resistance to the Crapper, the telephone, electricity.”
“I so desperately need to calm myself,” said Jane.
“Tea. I’ll make us some fresh,” suggested Gabby.
“Would you? Tea will help.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” And Gabby was away.
An unpleasant shrill symphony of terror played out in Jane’s head, and she feared. She feared what would happen to Gabby should something happen to her. She consciously willed a respite to the panic attack. Poor Gabby. This is no way to live for either of us. “Jane Francis,” she spoke to herself, “you’ve got to reclaim your true self.” She repeated it until the mantra staved off the attack.
Once the tea had brewed, they went into the parlor where the windows overlooked the boulevard. For some time, they people-watched. They spoke of enjoying the house they’d rented. They spoke of the fair. Gabrielle felt that her mother needed time before broaching a larger, distressing matter.
“When you were just a little girl, I was befriended in New York by another woman very like myself she was…her name was Alicia.”
“Alicia…what a lovely name.”
“A lovely soul, and like me, she lived so much inside herself, in her inner world, until…well, she was murdered.”
“Murdered? No…”
“I had hired her in my practice to help keep things in place, to help look after you, to generally take my place when with patients, which, as it happened, was not often, so we spent a lot of time together,
and we spoke of ourselves as problematic women.”
“Problematic?”
“She drowned in the park, but there was more to it. I pointed out the bruises on her neck, her legs, her forearms. Whoever did it knocked her down. I found blood on a stone nearby. I tell you this so you know I understand your pain now.”
“Was she…garroted?”
“No…at the very least all her parts were together when they laid her to rest. But the authorities were not going to be led by some woman—even if I did hold a medical degree. They resented my bullying them, and they wanted it to be an accidental drowning, and so it was labeled. But child, that is not the point of my story.”
“What then?”
“Gabby, this poor woman condemned herself for a sense of weakness drilled into her. In fact, we both shared the myth of feminine weakness”—she held up a hand to stop Gabby’s protest—“and, and shared I daresay with half the female population, even those young women who fall into the abyss of prostitution.”
“Now you’re speaking of Ransom’s Polly Pete?”
“Yes, I suppose her too. Polly, and my dear friend to whom I so often give a prayer, and myself…. None of us ever saw that how we lived—inside our feelings—was power. A positive rather than a negative.”
“Women are constantly told this. It’s one reason we’re uniting. What else are we to do?” Gabby replied, hands flailing like a pair of diving birds.
“We…all of us…are told feelings are a weakness, something we must struggle to combat…to contain if we’re to fit into the world—and for how long were we wrong? How horribly wrong in our perceptions?”
“And the other two, dead now, took it into eternity with them.”
“So sad…only one of three learning the lesson of it.”
“I see…I think.”
“Think how in our day, our generation, child, women were taught to believe every step taken, every dream held was foolish, weak, silly, a woman’s ranting, a woman’s lot, a woman’s hysterics.”
“It has not changed so much. I get the same attitude at university!”
“The weaker of the sexes, the highly emotional and volcanic of the sexes, making us out as given more to the animal nature of our evolutionary ancestors. Should we voice an opinion, medical men call it hysteria femalia. And only now am I finally getting it—”
“Getting what, Mother?”
“That I live with foreign, strange, unfamiliar people around me, like some creature out of one of those mad outer space stories of Jules Verne’s, simple as that!”
“You mean as Byron felt…not of this world, born into the wrong place and time perhaps?”
“No, this euphoric epiphany is just the opposite.”
“But how do you mean, Mother?”
She threw her hands up and shouted, “I am right for this world! It is the rest of the population that is strange and odd and foreign.”
“Really?”
“Indeed! Look at everyone around you—all the city!”
“I have many times over.”
“Look deeper then—it is made up of—of—”
“—of Martian men? Is that what you’re saying?” Gabby genuinely wanted to know.
“Men! Men like Chief Kohler, Christian Fenger, Thomas Carmichael, Mayor Carter Harrison, the governor, Philo Keane, Marshall Field, Alastair Ransom! We are simply not like them.”
“Whataya mean to say?” Gabby asked, confused.
“They will stop at nothing to get what they want, to gain what they perceive are their entitlements!”
“Perhaps it’s part of the character of a Chicagoan.”
“The character of a man,” Jane countered.
“And you believe, Mother, that you’re not at all like them? Frankly, going about as Dr. Tewes…well how like them do you think is Tewes?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. There’s no way we are like them under our clothes, under our skin! They are takers, pickpockets, boodlers, and Machiavellians.”
“But we’re all human, Mother, and—”
“Tewes, for all his faults or due to them, he is accepted by Chicagoans—isn’t he? Still, you miss my point.”
“It all sounds so very cynical, Mother.”
Jane became thoughtful, speaking in a near whisper. “No, no child, it’s not cynicism I feel. My father alone understood the truth about me, but he could not tell me; he knew I had to learn for myself, and I did today.”
“Learned what?”
“Behavior I’ve thought of as defective—brainwashed to think so by men! Behavior that in fact keeps me sane…and Alicia and Polly, and so many trapped women in our society.”
“So does this mean you’ll support our suffrage march?”
Jane gritted her teeth. “I fear for your safety.”
“Oh, come! Who’s gonna throw stones and bottles at women standing in their knickers with a brass band playing?”
“I just want you to know how I feel now. This is so important.”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt, but the vote’s important to me!”
“I pray it’s not wasted energy, like the senseless self-loathing that is spoon-fed to women. Imagine, a lifetime of apology for being different—but no more.”
Seeing her mother’s tears come freely, Gabrielle again wrapped her arms about Jane, saying nothing, just listening.
“All the lost opportunity. But never again will I hide.”
“Hide?”
“Within myself yes…Sadly, it’s taken all these years to come to an accounting of just how bloody distorted my self-perceptions have been.”
“Mother! You never curse!”
“Forget about the cursing and concentrate, child, on what I’m saying. It’s so important that you understand early. You mustn’t waste your most precious commodity—time.”
“Per-perhaps this is what we’re here for; to find ourselves, and maybe shake things up…change things a little!”
“Yes…that’s exactly what I’m feeling, but look closer, more deeply.”
“Sounds like…an epiphany.”
“A threshold…yes, a portal of mind that—”
A rapping noise like a gunshot came at the door. Through the sash, they made out Ransom’s silhouette with cane. Gabby said, “Here is your favorite Martian now.”
Jane erupted in laughter. “That man! Why doesn’t he ring the bell?”
“I rather think he uses that cane for everything.”
“So right, including interrogations.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“I’d like to but…”
“Surely he suspects by now. After all, he’s a detective!”
“It would throw him a good shock!”
Gabby’s evil smile shadowed Jane’s. “Serve him right after what he did at the train station.”
“You’ve heard?”
“It’s all over.”
Again Ransom rapped at the door.
“God,” Jane wondered aloud, “what do you do with a bear at the door?”
“The truth, now!”
“But it could destroy any chance I might have of—”
“You’re attracted to him?”
“Yes!”
“Oh, dear.”
Jane secretly feared doing any harm to Alastair’s sense of self-worth and professional acumen. She grabbed ascot and mustache. “Gabby, stall him!”
“What? No!” As Jane rushed for mirror and glue, Gabby yelled through her locked door. “But you’re finished with masquerades!”
“Not like this…it’s too sudden. Go, do as I say. Answer the door. I shall pop out the back and come around the front door as though Dr. Tewes is home from an appointment.”
“But what of that wonderful speech?”
“Just do it!”
“But your true sentiment?”
“It’ll happen when it happens, not before.”
By now Jane sat at her secret mirror, applying makeup, planning to exit thr
ough a nearby window. She’d stopped short of telling her daughter of her father’s ignoble end; perhaps the tale of his dying a brave soldier could stand, at least for now.
So here she was, Tewes again. This time climbing out a back window. She’d given Polly advice to get clear of Ransom, and here she was concerned about the man’s sensibilities? Whatever is wrong with me?
Despite Gabby’s disappointment in Jane’s latest decision, she followed her mother’s orders, inviting the unsuspecting Inspector into the parlor for tea. As she poured the tea and stalled for time, her mother preened as Dr. Tewes in a back room. Meanwhile, Gabby must field more questions about her “auntie”—Jane Francis Ayers—although Ransom said he was here to see Dr. Tewes.
“Auntie’s abed by this hour every night. An early riser, that one.”
“And what of you?” he asked between sips, favoring a headache that threatened to blind him. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”
They both glanced at the clock. It was nearing midnight.
“Me? Oh…my studies keep me up.”
An awkward silence followed until, noticing the pain he was in, she asked, “Are you all right? I heard about the horrible fire in which your…the lady you were seeing…that is Father told me how difficult it’s been for you.”
“Your father bailed me out of jail. I mean to make good on it.” He pulled forth a twenty-five-dollar note from the Harris Bank and laid it on the table.
“You must speak to Father about your headaches.”
“Aye…it’s why I came—and to repay the note. But it’s rather late for—”
“Nonsense, you must take care of it right away.”
“But the lateness of the hour.”
“I assure you, for his fee, my father won’t turn you away.”
“Then the good doctor, he has not—”
“Retired? Wish it were so. I’m afraid, he doesn’t take care of himself half so well as his patients.”
“He works hard.”
Dr. Tewes came through the front door and into the parlor, saying, “So, you’ve finally come, Inspector, for a complete examination? At such an hour?”
“I do my best work after hours, when others sleep.” He stood and filled Tewes’s hand with the note to repay the bailout.
City for Ransom Page 24
