Miss Kopp Investigates

by Amy Stewart

  He said it so seriously, but Constance almost laughed at the very idea of it. What was a lawman doing counting pipe fittings?

  “Someone has to, I suppose,” she said. “But you’re not there any longer?”

  He looked over at her and that old understanding passed between them. He couldn’t stand a job like that, and she knew it.

  “The Paterson Police Department has hired me on as a patrolman.”

  Then he was back to policing, after he’d sworn to his wife that he was through with it.

  Constance said mildly, “What does Cordelia say?”

  Mr. Heath rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t want to answer, did he?

  “I thought she made you promise. You were supposed to stay away from any sort of position in law enforcement.”

  “She doesn’t have to live at the jail this time,” he said. “I’m an ordinary patrolman with a beat now. But if she didn’t enjoy being married to a lawman, she doesn’t like living with an office clerk any better. They had me sitting over a column of figures all day. I couldn’t see the point in it.”

  “Well,” Constance said, “I can hardly blame you. I wouldn’t like a column of figures, either.”

  “It’s a good group of cops in Paterson. If you’re interested, I could put in a word for you.”

  That would be useless, and Constance knew it. The Paterson Police Department might take on Mr. Heath, even with a little controversy in his past—as a lowly patrolman, what harm could he do?—but she’d never work in law enforcement again, at least not among people who’d been reading the New Jersey newspapers in 1916.

  Thank goodness those old battles didn’t matter anymore, now that she was off to Washington.

  “That’s kind of you, but I have a job offer from the new director of the Bureau of Investigation.” She tried to sound casual about it, but in fact it still thrilled her to even mention the Bureau. “I’ve had to put it off for a few weeks. I can’t very well run off to Washington with Bessie in tatters, and Norma only just off the boat. I’m keeping my room at the boarding-house in Paterson through the end of the month, just to make sure everything’s settled here before I go.”

  “They’ll be lucky to have you in Washington,” Mr. Heath said.

  “I’m the lucky one,” Constance said. “I’ll be training an entire class of female recruits. The Bureau’s never done anything like it, but I convinced them to try.” She heard the fervor in her voice, and the eagerness to impress her old boss, but remembered just then that she was at a funeral. This was no time for such talk. “It’s a good salary. I’ll be able to send something home every week. We want to see to it that Bessie and the children are looked after. Until that’s settled, I’m staying right here.”

  “Of course,” Mr. Heath said. “If they weren’t provided for, will you let me—”

  “No,” Constance said sharply. “We’ll take care of her. She’s our responsibility. You have your own to look after.”

  “Miss Kopp,” he said, that old formality between them sounding strangely intimate. “I’m someone you can call upon. Would you remember that?”

  * * *

  FLEURETTE WATCHED CONSTANCE and Mr. Heath, and wondered what they had to say to each other. Funerals were funny that way, especially a funeral coming so soon after the war: people took the opportunity to get reacquainted even in this most miserable of circumstances.

  She turned around—she could feel the press of friends and neighbors wanting to pay their respects to the bereaved—and found herself face-to-face with another man connected to Constance’s old job, but who was he? She’d seen him before, but she couldn’t place him.

  He couldn’t have been in law enforcement—he was too well-dressed for it. He wasn’t terribly young or exactly what she’d call handsome, but he was interesting-looking, with a mop of curly hair that flopped across his forehead and into his eyes, and a lanky frame that wore clothes well. His suit was cut nicely, and the stripes flattered him, although they might’ve been a little too smart for a funeral. He looked like he wanted a highball in his hand.

  Mr. Ward—he introduced himself straightaway—turned out to be a lawyer with whom Constance had dealings over the years.

  “John Ward,” he said, bowing a little as he shook Fleurette’s hand. “What was your connection to the departed?”

  “Sister,” she said.

  He dropped her hand and took a step back, appraising her. “You’re a Kopp? You don’t look anything like the other two!”

  “I’m the youngest and the prettiest,” she said—flatly, even somberly. Why did she put it to him like that? She wasn’t trying to make clever conversation. He just seemed to require that sort of response.

  Mr. Ward said, “I believe it. What sort of name did they give you?”

  “Fleurette,” she said. “Kopp, of course. You’re probably going to call me Miss Kopp.”

  “I’ll give it a try. Awfully sorry about your brother, Miss Kopp. Condolences from the firm of Ward & McGinnis. We sent that horseshoe-shaped affair over there. Isn’t it nice?”

  She didn’t bother to look: there were a dozen horseshoes done up in white carnations. What did a horseshoe have to do with putting one’s brother in the ground?

  “Where’s McGinnis?” she asked.

  “Petey’s out on a job,” he said.

  “What do you mean, a job? Aren’t they called cases, or trials?” Fleurette had the vexing sensation that she was flirting with him, without meaning to.

  “A case, then,” he said, “or at least, it will be if he can finish the job.”

  “Is he off chasing an ambulance?” she asked.

  “We haven’t had to resort to that yet,” he said. “Petey’s only after an adulterer.”

  “Oh, you’re that sort of lawyer.”

  “Afraid so. It pays the most, you see, so what choice do we have?”

  “And what does Petey do, catch them in the act?”

  “Petey takes the pictures. Say, what do you intend to do with yourself, après la guerre? Are you in the family business?”

  “And what’s that, exactly?”

  He gave a little shrug and looked over at Norma and Constance. “One’s a soldier. One’s a cop. They seem to like uniforms. Fighting crime, fighting Germans, that sort of thing.”

  “I did help Constance with a case during the war,” said Fleurette, “but I’m in the theater.”

  “That much is obvious.”

  “What are you suggesting?” She was still wrapped in any number of scarves and mufflers, and her hair was pinned up under a demure black hat. There was nothing theatrical about her.

  “Only . . . you’ve got a face for the stage, that’s all,” he said. “Even under that hat.”

  “Well, I don’t have the voice for it. Not at the moment.” She was still hoarse. Everything she said came out sounding like gravel. “I’m going back to seamstressing until I can sing again.”

  “That won’t do for a girl like you,” he said. “Say, wouldn’t you like—”

  She didn’t hear the rest of it, because at that moment Norma came marching over and stood disapprovingly at her side. (Fleurette wondered if Norma had always marched everywhere, even before the war, and remembered that she had.)

  Fleurette said, “This is a lawyer friend of Constance’s, Mr. Ward.”

  Norma looked him up and down appraisingly and said, “We’ve no use for a lawyer. Bessie’s had enough, and so have I. We’re going home.”

  3

  AT THAT MOMENT, Fleurette did not yet have any inkling of the circumstances that would propel her into John Ward’s employment. Of course there would be expenses connected to the funeral, and the doctor would eventually send a bill—she had a vague idea about all that—but she felt safe in her assumption that Francis had left his family provided for.

  Surely if Bessie needed anything extra, she would say so, and then Constance would sort it out. Either Constance or Norma had always managed the sisters’ finances, suc
h as they were, between the bits of land around their farm that they leased or sold off from time to time, to the salary Constance earned as one sort of lady cop or another, to the barters for milk and butter that Norma negotiated with the dairy, and—well, whatever else was involved.

  Fleurette didn’t know what else might be involved. She hadn’t ever given it much thought, and now she didn’t have to. She earned her own wages, and quite gladly used them to provide for herself. During the war she toured the Army camps as one of the Eight Dresden Dolls. Her room and board were provided, and any other small expenses came out of her own pocket. She kept herself in dresses and shoes, which was no small feat.

  She did not, in other words, consider it her responsibility to look after any of her relations in a financial sense. It wasn’t selfishness on her part: she felt she was being more than responsible by simply looking after herself, and not making anyone else do it.

  Wasn’t that enough?

  * * *

  WHEN THEY RETURNED from the cemetery, Fleurette fled to her room and sank into bed, grateful for the quiet and the dark. She’d been occupying Lorraine’s bedroom as she recuperated from her bout of streptococci, forcing poor Lorraine to share a bedroom with her brother.

  The room had been entirely taken over by Fleurette’s possessions, which left no place to walk except from the door to the bed and back again. She’d wedged three trunks between the bed and the wall and stacked hat-boxes atop them, some containing hats but others filled with slippers, scarves, ribbons, pins, combs, stockings, and whatever other bits and pieces remained intact after her months of touring.

  At the foot of her bed perched Laura in her enormous bird-cage. The parrot had been having a rough time of it lately, between Fleurette’s illness and the cramped quarters the two of them now shared.

  Fleurette had acquired the bird while touring to entertain the troops last fall. A soldier named George Simon gave her to Fleurette, because the Army wouldn’t let him take a green Amazonian parrot to France. She’d felt terrible about hauling a caged bird from hotel to train station to Army camp, but she later realized that Laura enjoyed travel and liked the variety of sights and sounds. She’d expected to give Laura back to her owner after the Armistice, but George had written to say that he’d extended his tour of duty overseas and had taken a Parisian bride. The bird was hers to keep.

  Laura had watched worriedly as Fleurette recovered from her illness, but a sick girl isn’t much entertainment for a bird. She’d grown bored and restless and, Fleurette feared, a little listless. She had started to pick at her feathers and tended to sit in broody silence, when before she would whistle and dance and even try to sound out a word or two.

  Laura needed to get away from that tiny room. So did Fleurette.

  Fleurette opened her cage and let the bird step out onto her arm. “Pretty Laura,” she crooned. “Sing for Fleurette.”

  “Or-ette,” she mimicked, or something that sounded very much like it. Fleurette dropped back onto the bed, and Laura walked up and down, picking at loose threads on the coverlet. She was the most magnificent creature, with emerald wings showing a flash of red at the tips, and orange eyes that saw everything.

  Even Norma had been impressed with her when she arrived home the night before. She took her right off Fleurette’s shoulder and turned her upside-down, which so surprised Laura that she spread her wings and her tail-feathers. That was exactly what Norma wanted to see.

  “Healthy skin, sturdy ribs, good strong grip,” she said, running a finger up and down Laura’s underbelly. “You aren’t giving her too much seed.”

  “Not at all,” Fleurette said quickly. She hadn’t ever in her life wanted to impress Norma, but at that moment she very much wanted Norma to approve of her avian husbandry—and she did.

  “That’s a fine parrot,” Norma said, handing her back. “Only this bird wants something to do.”

  Oh, Laura! Poor girl, trapped in this little room! Fleurette had been a miserable companion all that past autumn, sick in bed for weeks and weeks. Of course, back then she had every reason to think she’d recover, put herself back together, and work up a book of songs that she and Laura could sing on stage. She’d even been promised a contract—more than promised, she already had the contract, for three hundred dollars a week and bookings from Paterson to Chicago—and had only to sign it and return it to Mr. Bernstein, and then she and Laura could set off to make a new life for themselves.

  Then Francis died, and all her plans had been pushed aside. But how much longer could she stand to sleep in this room, a room that Francis intended for his daughter? How much longer could she eat at his table, wash her face at his sink, and sit under the light of his lamp in the evenings? It was unbearable, living under his roof, feeling her way around the edges of the enormous hole left by his absence, a hole so vast and dark that she felt as though she might fall in.

  It sounded awful to say it—even to herself—but Fleurette had to get out. She’d been sick and miserable in that house for weeks already. Now everyone was sick and miserable. It was a house gripped by contagion and grief.

  There was nothing Fleurette could do to help anymore. She had kept the children fed—if toast and sandwiches counted as food—on the days when Bessie couldn’t get out of bed. She washed the windows, one afternoon, thinking that any ailment, even heartbreak, could be relieved by letting in the light. She answered the door when well-intentioned neighbors stopped by with their small gifts.

  But Norma was home now, and in need of a place to stay until the farm was made habitable again. She could look after the family and the house, and was better qualified to do so anyway. Fleurette would be doing everyone a favor by moving out and making room for Norma to take over.

  What she hadn’t told Bessie, or her sisters, or even her parrot (because Laura was learning to speak and she was indiscreet) was that she had already found a room to rent. She wouldn’t go far—just to a little boarding-house down in Rutherford, not even an hour away by train, just far enough away from Paterson to make a break from her old life, and close enough to New York to start a new one.

  The boarding-house was a quiet one with only two rooms rented, run by a friendly and generous Mrs. Doyle, whose husband was dead and whose daughters had married and moved out west. Mrs. Doyle liked to have girls in the house, she told Fleurette, and she liked to cook for a crowd. Fleurette would be welcome to invite her friends for dinner. A parrot would make a charming companion. And if Fleurette wanted to practice her singing, her landlady would be delighted by the entertainment. She even kept a piano tuned in the parlor.

  There it was: a little isle of contentment, a soft and welcoming nest for Fleurette and her bird, a place she could afford on just a little dress-making, until her voice returned and her act was ready to take on the road. A place where she could breathe untroubled air, for a little while.

  Fleurette intended to tell Bessie and her sisters tomorrow. Her trunks were already packed, her deposit paid. Mrs. Doyle had given her a key.

  She would leave just as soon as she decently could.

  4

  THE REST OF the afternoon following the funeral was a blur. The evening was called off entirely: everyone was in bed by seven, taking with them a book or a letter to write or a hot-water bottle wrapped in flannel.

  Constance and Norma stayed overnight at Bessie’s, sleeping on a mound of cushions and blankets in the sitting-room. Lorraine and Frankie shared a room as they had since Fleurette moved in. Fleurette slept soundly until quite late, as was her habit, and didn’t make an appearance the next morning until Norma banged on her bedroom door with the edge of a frying pan still sizzling with eggs.

  “Did they teach you that in the Army?” Fleurette groaned, as she stumbled down the hall behind her sister.

  “In the Army you wouldn’t be rewarded with fresh eggs for sleeping late. Sit down and eat before you set a bad example for the children.”

  Fleurette, still in her nightgown, dropped into a chai
r next to Lorraine, who said, “Aunt Fleurette has already taught us her wicked ways.”

  “Let’s not have any talk of wickedness at the breakfast table,” Bessie said. She smiled up at Norma as a fresh plate of toast appeared before her. “You must be exhausted. I never had a chance to ask about your crossing. I hear it’s worse in winter.”

  “I’ve been both ways in winter, so I wouldn’t know the difference,” Norma said. “At least we didn’t have the Germans skulking about this time.”

  “Did you see a U-boat?” Frankie asked.

  “They do their best not to be seen,” Norma said, and left it at that. There was no way to talk about Germans and submarines without eventually coming around to a story about soldiers lost at sea. Even Norma understood that they were all far too bruised and tender for tales of war-time suffering.

  Norma had other reasons for wanting to steer the conversation away from her time in France: she didn’t want to be asked about why she’d been hanging around in Paris after the Armistice. As far as her sisters knew, her official duties had ended. In fact, it took her commanders some time to locate her—not because she’d slipped away unannounced, but because no one could be found quickly in the chaos of winding-down operations and the avalanche of paperwork associated with it.

  Had the telegram arrived just one day later, Norma would’ve missed it entirely. She was bound for Belgium with Aggie Bell, the nurse with whom she’d shared living quarters in France. The two had become close during the war, just as soldiers do, sharing a bond unlike any they’d ever known in their civilian days.

  It had been Aggie’s idea to stay in Europe. Like so many young women who found their first taste of freedom during war-time service, she had no interest in going home. She felt a dread of returning to an old life that would offer her little in the way of adventure. She’d come to love the chaos, the danger, and the frenzied pace of war-time, and feared that any sort of calm might sink her.