Murder at Ebbets Field

by Troy Soos

  I had one more idea. “We’re still guessing about William Daley,” I said. “Can you have him dug up—exhumed—too? And checked for poison?”

  “Well, it’s possible, of course. But I couldn’t make the request on my own. I’m just his brother-in-law, not immediate family. There would have to be a court order. That would mean getting the police involved and publicity.” He thought for a moment. “Later, maybe, if we have to. Let’s see how things work out.”

  “Okay. Hey, I got to get to the ballpark.”

  “All right, I’ll let you know as soon as I have the test results on these things.” As I stood to go, he stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Take care of yourself, Mickey. Be careful ... really careful.”

  I had nine innings on the bench, while Grover Cleveland Alexander and the Phillies beat Jeff Tesreau 3—2 for a split of the four-game series. Nine innings, an hour and a half, to mull over my conversation with Karl Landfors.

  Watching big husky guys like Alexander and Gavvy Cravath of Philadelphia, and our own Tesreau and Fred Merkle, I became skeptical about a ballplayer using poison. Fists maybe, or a bat—something straightforward, where you can feel the impact on your target. Not poison.

  I thought of the game’s craftiest players—Ty Cobb and Johnny Evers—and of the most crooked—Hal Chase and Heinie Zimmerman, who were known to throw games for gamblers. Not even these men would resort to such a cowardly weapon as poison.

  Nor would somebody who had once been a player—Tom Kelly.

  A woman’s murder weapon. I never thought of a woman as a killer.

  But by the time the game was over, there were some questions I wanted to ask Margie Turner.

  At eight o’clock, that’s what I was doing, in her parlor, in her apartment in Red Hook. She’d settled herself on the sofa in a way that suggested I was to sit next to her. Instead, I’d taken an armchair across from her, so as to keep her in full view, to see her reactions to my questions.

  “When we were at the Sea Dip Hotel,” I said, “I asked you who Florence Hampton was with, and you didn’t want to say. It’s time to tell me now. I can’t find out how she died if I don’t know what she was doing when she was alive.”

  Margie’s eyes dropped. “What did you want to know?” she asked quietly. It didn’t sound like she was eager to tell me anything.

  “Tom Kelly. I want to know about Kelly. He was chasing Florence Hampton at the party, and she didn’t like him at all. I saw that. What was going on? His wife was there watching, and he didn’t even care.”

  Margie said softly, “No, he doesn’t care much about Esther at all.” She looked away, seeming to scan the photos that populated her wall.

  “Did he care about Florence Hampton?”

  “Not really, no. I don’t think he cares about anybody but Tom Kelly.”

  “If he didn’t care for her and she didn’t like him, why was he trying to romance her? And why was he so jealous—angry—when she danced with Sloppy Sutherland and Virgil Ewing?”

  “Well . . . no offense, but he thought baseball players were beneath Libby. He thought it looked bad for an actress, especially his own leading lady, to be associating with athletes. See, being a movie actor went to Tom Kelly’s head. He believed every word the fan magazines wrote about him. And he believed that all women adored him. He made passes at a lot of them . . . even me once. As far as I could tell, he usually got turned down, including by me.”

  “Did he think Florence Hampton adored him?”

  “No, I don’t think he had that strong an imagination. But he thought a leading lady should have a romantic interest in her leading man. The fan magazines and the studios always try to pair actors and actresses romantically.”

  “How did his wife feel about that?”

  “Esther Kelly is a sweet lady. She never complained, never seemed bitter. She did get upset sometimes though.”

  “Like she did at the party.”

  Margie nodded. Then she looked me straight in the eye and said, “I would leave a man who ever treated me the way Tom Kelly treats Esther. I’d slap him silly, then I’d leave him.”

  I thought she would probably use her knee on him, too. “Why doesn’t Esther leave Kelly? Doesn’t she have an acting career of her own?”

  “I don’t know why she doesn’t leave. But she hasn’t acted for a few years. Not until the other day at Coney Island. She said she liked doing the picture because there weren’t any lines to memorize.” Margie suddenly waved a finger in the air and blurted, “She gave up her career for that man! She gave up her own career and devoted herself to getting him started in the business. And this is how he repays her. The son of a—” Then she collected herself.

  If Margie could get this agitated about it, I could imagine how his wife might have felt.

  I said, “Do you think—I’m just wondering if it’s possible—could a woman kill another woman if she thought her husband was interested in the other woman?”

  “Esther Kelly?” Margie said incredulously. “No, she’s too ... too sweet, I suppose. Harmless.” Margie sounded sure, but I wasn’t. Esther Kelly had been sitting alone with Florence Hampton at a table in the Sea Dip dining room. Opportunity.

  “No, not necessarily Esther Kelly,” I said. “Just in general. Could a woman do that?”

  “I couldn’t,” Margie said. “Or wouldn’t anyway. Not over a man. Besides, if anybody should be killed, it’s the man.”

  I was starting to feel uneasy.

  Margie started to talk on about the battle of the sexes, not very coherently. She mingled complaints about women not being allowed to vote with assertions that women could be just as good killers as men if they wanted to.

  Now and then I nodded, as if in agreement with her points. I was only half listening, though, as another scenario took form in my mind.

  If a man is chasing other women, his wife would have cause to kill him . . .

  William Daley ran around. “Quite a man with the ladies,” Otis Haines had said. “A bit of a rogue,” Arthur Carlyle had said. Could his wife have killed him? Could Florence Hampton have had Daley murdered while he was on the world tour? And then somebody found out and killed her to get revenge?

  I said nothing about this possibility to Margie. I didn’t know how to suggest that her friend might have been a murderess. And with the way she had just been talking, Margie might have said she approved of Florence Hampton killing her philandering husband. I wouldn’t have wanted to hear that.

  There was too much going unsaid lately, and it started to gnaw at me. Karl Landfors and Margie Turner were both keeping things from me, and I was keeping my thoughts from them.

  I made an excuse to leave early. Margie looked troubled by my departure, but I felt that I had to get away from her and think things out on my own. I wasn’t in the mood for togetherness.

  I went back to Manhattan thinking maybe part of the solution was falling into place. Florence Hampton falls in love with a man, they marry, he cheats on her, so she has somebody kill him while he’s out of the country. A friend of William Daley finds out about it and kills her to avenge Daley’s death.

  Then the pieces stopped fitting. Why kill the batboy? And why try to kill Margie and me?

  That question was coming up a lot lately: Why me?

  Then another bothersome question came to mind: What did Margie mean, Not over a man?

  Chapter Nineteen

  Margie phoned me early the next morning. She offered to call in sick so that the two of us could visit Esther Kelly at home while Tom was at the studio. I wasn’t crazy about her getting into more hot water with Elmer Garvin, but I agreed.

  Two hours later, we were strolling east along Lafayette Avenue toward Clinton Hill, Brooklyn’s most fashionable residential area, near Fort Greene.

  Although Margie said nothing about my early departure the night before, she spoke with an urgent cheerfulness as if trying to effect a reconciliation. I didn’t know how to tell her that there really was no rift. I
hadn’t been angry at her, merely confused. So I tried to show her, taking her hand and interlocking her fingers with mine. She immediately got the message and relaxed.

  We walked on, absorbing the gentle sunshine of a waning summer. August was nearly over, and the weather would soon be getting cooler.

  The Kelly house was a vintage three-story brownstone on Clinton Avenue between Willoughby and Myrtle. Its spacious, carefully tended front lawn was bordered by perky daffodils and delicate white lilies. On any other street, the home would have been the jewel of the block, but here it was dwarfed by the newer, palatial mansions of its neighbors.

  I rapped the brass knocker on the front door. It was promptly pulled open by a stout thirtyish young lady in an ill-fitting black and white maid’s uniform. She had frizzy red hair, and bold brown freckles mottled her fair face.

  “Is Esther Kelly in?” Margie asked.

  “And who might you be?” the maid demanded in a voice that had more of Ireland than Brooklyn in it. From her tone, she wasn’t asking for the information to convey it to Esther but to decide whether she herself approved of us.

  “My name is Marguerite Turner,” Margie answered politely. “And this is Mickey Rawlings.”

  I tipped my boater.

  “Mickey Rawlings the baseball player?” the maid gushed with sudden warmth.

  With all due modesty—none—I admitted I was.

  “I’m a Giants fan!” she bellowed. In a loud voice, as if challenging the neighbors, she added, “I know I’m in Brooklyn now, and maybe I shouldn’t say so, but with Mr. Kelly having been a Giant, I root for John McGraw’s boys.”

  Good as it was to find a Giant fan on this side of the East River, I’d have rather she just let us in.

  But she went on, like Casey Stengel in a talkative mood, “You know, I was at that game where you broke up Sloppy Sutherland’s shutout. Tuesday being my day off, I always go to a ballgame, even if it’s only the Yankees playing. Too bad you boys couldn’t win that game against Sutherland. You did wonderful, laying down that bunt like you did. You know, most people like the big sluggers; me, I like you little infielders—you have to play so much harder.”

  “Well . . . uh, thank you,” I said. Not that it was much of a compliment, but it gave me a chance to interrupt. “Actually, do you think you could tell Mrs. Kelly we’re here? I have to get back for a game this afternoon.”

  “And here I am talking your ear off,” she said with a friendly slap on my shoulder. It fell as heavily as a blow from John McGraw. “Come on in and I’ll tell her you’re here.”

  She led us into a foyer that was as big as a dining hall, then went to get Esther.

  “I think you have an admirer,” Margie said in a teasing voice. She sounded more amused than jealous.

  “Nice house,” I said, ignoring the comment. And it was. It also felt as if I’d been here before, though I knew I hadn’t.

  While Margie’s place didn’t fit the “Homes of the Stars” pictorials that appeared in the movie magazines, the Kelly house looked like a prime candidate for such a photo spread.

  Off the west side of the foyer was a parlor with white wicker furniture, a matching white grand piano, deep green carpeting, gold chintz curtains.... That was it! I had seen the room before, in a Photoplay pictorial on Mary Pickford’s home. Opposite the parlor was a formal dining room; its maple furniture and colorful tapestries were arranged in the same way as Clara Kimball Young’s. The Kellys must have used the fan magazines as decorating guides. I was sure that somewhere in the house Tom Kelly had a den and wondered if it was modeled after William Farnum’s or Francis X. Bushman’s.

  The maid brought Esther in, leading her by the hand like a child. Next to the chunky maid, Esther looked like a little girl, tiny and frail. Her clothes reinforced the impression of youth: a frilly pink dress that came just below her knees, scarlet ribbons tied into her blond hair, and white satin shoes laced on her dainty feet. Her skin was as pale and smooth as porcelain. Except for large blue eyes, her facial features were on the same diminutive scale as her overall size—a button nose, ears with no lobes, and small pouty red lips.

  Margie gave her an affectionate hug. “Esther, dear,” she said. “I hope we didn’t come at a bad time. We should have called first.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” Esther answered. “This is a very good time.” I couldn’t imagine how her high weak voice could have ever been heard in a theater. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. And she did look happy at having company, though there seemed to be a touch of fear in her wide eyes. “Tom isn’t here though. He’s at the studio. Shouldn’t you be there, too?”

  “No, not today,” Margie said.

  “Why don’t you folks come into the parlor, and I’ll fetch some lemonade,” the maid offered.

  “Yes, Bridget,” Esther Kelly said. “Thank you.” She obediently followed the maid into the Mary Pickford parlor, and we followed behind. Bridget helped Esther climb into an oversized rocking chair, then left the room. Margie and I chose a settee with pastel green cushions so thin that I could feel the weave of the wicker through them. The Kellys apparently considered style a higher priority than comfort.

  After we settled into the squeaking couch, Margie and I looked at each other, silently asking which one of us was going to start the questioning. We probably should have planned ahead.

  Esther showed no sign of starting a conversation. She was absorbed in getting the rocking chair to rock. Since her feet didn’t reach the floor, she had to do it by clutching the arms of the chair and shifting her weight back and forth.

  “This is a lovely home,” Margie began. She had the same approach to interrogation that I did—start innocuously, then hit them with the tough questions.

  “Thank you,” Esther said. “We’re very happy here. This house has been in my family since I was a girl. Tom had things redone after we got married, but I still like it. Sometimes I almost get lost though. It’s not like it used to be ...” Pointing to a painting above the white marble fireplace, she said, “That is my father.” The portrait was of a man with severe eyes and black chin whiskers; he wore a naval uniform so old-fashioned that he might have sailed with John Paul Jones. “He built this house,” she added. “Tom let me keep the painting when he redecorated.”

  Margie rolled her eyes at Tom Kelly’s generosity.

  “How long have you and Tom been married?” I asked.

  “We were married on May second, nineteen hundred and eleven.” She recited the sentence as if she had carefully memorized it.

  Bridget brought in the lemonade on a tray. She handed glasses of the yellow drink to each of us, giving me a wink as she handed me mine. I heard Margie try to stifle a giggle.

  After the maid left, Margie asked Esther, “How did you like working in the picture the other day?” We were taking forever to get to the questions about Florence Hampton.

  With a blank look, Esther answered after a pause, “It was very nice.”

  “That was your first picture, wasn’t it?” I said.

  Esther hesitated. Then she said slowly, “The first show I was in was Uncle Tom’s Cabin. At the Century Theatre on West Forty-seventh Street. I was six years old. I played Little Eva. The footlights burned very hot and they scared me, but I liked being in front of an audience. The show was a big hit. It ran for three and a half years.”

  Margie and I exchanged bewildered glances. I didn’t know what to think. I had enough trouble determining if somebody was telling the truth or lying. With Esther Kelly, I wasn’t sure if she was telling us anything at all. She seemed so lost.

  Margie gave it another try. “Florence Hampton used to be on the stage, too. Were you in any plays together?”

  Esther answered flatly, “Florence Hampton was very nice. She wasn’t in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Maude Adams was. She was my understudy. And there was a very nice girl who played Topsy . . .” She went on to give us a full cast list, as well as descriptions of the sets and costumes.

&
nbsp; Bridget came in again. “I have some lovely little cucumber sandwiches,” she announced.

  Cucumber? Yech! A vegetable sandwich was about as appetizing to me as a chaw of tobacco.

  As the maid stood in front of me holding out a tray of sandwiches, an idea popped into my head. I said to Esther, “I’ve heard Tom has a remarkable den. Do you think I could see it?”

  “Yes,” she answered, and she started to pull herself off her chair.

  “No, you two stay here and chat. Maybe Bridget could show me to the den.”

  “I’d be happy to,” said Bridget.

  Margie gave me a quizzical look.

  “Well, okay,” Esther said, as she settled back in her seat.

  After serving sandwiches to the ladies, Bridget said, “Come along now.” She then led me to a room on the second floor.

  Tom Kelly’s den was worse than I expected. It went beyond masculine all the way into the realm of the barbaric. Weapons and dead animals were the motif. A pair of crossed sabers was above the mantel of the flagstone fireplace; above them was the head of a grizzly bear with its mouth agape. There were flintlock rifles, dueling pistols, a blunderbuss, daggers, and halberds around the walls. Tacked alongside the weapons were the hides of zebras, leopards, and tigers. On the floor in front of the fireplace was a lion skin with a massive maned head. A leather armchair and a foot stool were the room’s only furniture.

  Bridget turned to leave. Trying to keep her, I asked, “Did Tom Kelly shoot all these?”

  She laughed. “No, sir. Mr. Kelly bought everything in here. I don’t think he knows how to hunt.”

  “Well, he looks like an outdoorsman. I’ll bet he’s still in good enough shape to play baseball if he wanted to.”

  “Yes sir, he certainly is. He did play baseball this winter. On that world tour, you know.”

  “I heard about that. I didn’t know he played.”

  “It was a wonderful trip,” Bridget said. “I’d never been on a ship before. Well, when I was a little girl, my family and I came over from Ireland. But not since then.”