Miss Kopp Investigates

by Amy Stewart

  None of this bothered Fleurette, of course. A pile of seamstressing work was exactly the cover she needed to explain the hours she’d be away from home and the money coming in.

  And what a lot of money it would be! Mr. Ward had laughed as he tossed her a dollar for the repairs to his jacket and offered her twenty for an hour’s work at a hotel.

  Twenty dollars! At this rate . . . Fleurette could hardly calculate what her new wages would buy, or the speed at which the money would accumulate.

  Sneaking out of the house was perhaps the riskiest part of the entire operation. She felt like a spy, up in her room putting on her disguise—but not the kind of spy Constance had been during the war, stomping around in factories and printing shops. She was the glamorous kind, with a mission that might involve a glass of Champagne taken in the line of duty.

  But first she had to get past her sisters.

  Bessie had gone to bed early, now that she had plenty of female relations to take care of the children and the washing-up. Norma was paging noisily through a magazine on farm management, and issuing her opinions as though anyone in the house wanted to hear them. (“You’ll never keep goats in a pen like that, and I ought to write and tell them.”) Constance, who stopped in most evenings although she was still living at the boarding-house, sprawled on the sofa, her enormous feet propped up in a manner that Francis never would have allowed, snoring underneath a well-worn paperbound book called Department Store Merchandise Manual, Volume 2.

  What tedium! Fleurette would’ve worked for Mr. Ward for free, if it meant getting away from those two for a night. As she walked out—tiptoed, practically, not wanting to disturb either one of them—Norma looked up from her magazine long enough to say, “Where on earth are you going at this hour?”

  Constance, jolted from her sleep, gave a giant snort and looked up too. “You aren’t leaving, are you?”

  “I’m going to see a lady for a fitting.”

  “A fitting, in the middle of the night?” said Norma.

  “It’s only seven.”

  “I’ll walk with you,” said Constance, “as soon as I can find my boots.” She began rooting around under the sofa for them, still groggy.

  “I’m only going to the street-car. I’m late as it is,” said Fleurette, and practically ran out the door.

  Petey—Mr. McGinnis, but Mr. Ward called him Petey and Fleurette couldn’t help but do so herself—was waiting for her around the corner, just out of sight. He didn’t like her walking after dark any more than Constance did: he stood alongside his automobile, watching for her anxiously.

  “Good evening, Miss Kopp,” he said as she came into view. “It’s chilly tonight, but I’ve brought a blanket—”

  “Let’s get going,” Fleurette said, diving into the auto. “My sister’s right behind me.”

  Petey knew how to make a discreet getaway. Hawthorne was not much more than a village, and it took only a right turn and then a left before they were out of town and rolling toward Paterson.

  Once inside the city, Petey left his auto down the street—not wanting to be remembered by the hotel’s valets and porters—and soon the two of them were walking down an alley behind the Metropolitan Hotel in downtown Paterson, picking their way past the fish bones and milk bottles. Petey pushed open the kitchen door, and they were inside.

  It was Petey’s responsibility to put enough coins in the hands of the bellhops and dishwashers to grant Fleurette safe passage into the hotel. The Metropolitan had no ladies’ entrance and no plans to install one, but that was just as well: according to both Ward and McGinnis, a ladies’ entrance was much more closely chaperoned than a service entrance. This was the safest way for an unescorted woman to walk in.

  The kitchen staff at any hotel are accustomed to a certain amount of illicit trade strolling past the fry station: a hotel that doesn’t have a regular supply of liquor, cash, jewels, and pretty girls sneaking in the back isn’t serving its customers well. As such, not a single head turned when Petey and Fleurette hastened by.

  It occurred to her, as she raced past the kitchen boys, Petey’s arm around her, her head turned demurely away under the brim of a jaunty navy blue hat, that she’d been a fool to think that patching elbows and cuffs would get her anywhere. Seamstresses worked at one rung of the economic ladder, but here was another rung entirely, one populated by attorneys and wealthy clients wanting out of their difficulties.

  In her good blue silk, with a bit of stylish green embroidery at the neck and the wrists, she was one of them. What a delicious rush it gave her to feel like someone else entirely for a night!

  Petey knew the back passages of the Metropolitan well: it was a favorite hotel of the firm. He took her up a narrow set of stairs used only by housekeepers, and stopped in the stairwell, panting a bit, at the fourth floor.

  “You all right, miss?” he asked, looking her over. They hadn’t had a chance to speak since he smuggled her in through the alley.

  “I’m just fine,” she said, although in fact, that high fizzy feeling was spilling over into trepidation. The moment was at hand, the game was about to begin. Could she really do it?

  Until then she’d been thinking only of the preparations: the costume, the alterations to her hairstyle (Should she go ahead and cut it? She hadn’t dared yet), the placement of the hat so that her face could easily be hidden, and the choice of a nom de plume.

  She was handy with invented names. When Constance was working at the Bureau of Investigation, during the war, Fleurette had happily taken up the task of choosing covert names for her sister. Winifred Sedgewick had been a favorite. Henrietta Nutting was, she felt, particularly inspired. Fleurette had participated in one of Constance’s spy operations herself and chosen the name Gloria Blossom. She’d always been partial to the name Gloria and thought Blossom would be easy to remember as it was so closely connected to her own name. But she soon found that choosing a name similar to her own didn’t matter: what mattered was practicing the name, over and over, saying it aloud, and using it in conversation, until it rolled off the tongue effortlessly.

  The name she’d chosen for tonight’s performance (already she liked to think of them as performances, and the names merely stage names) was Ella Bennet, the author of an old dress-making guide whose instructions were no longer of any use to her.

  Her version of Miss Bennet could be a secretary destined for greater things, she decided, who along the way had fallen in love with a junior executive at the firm. He was married, but it couldn’t be helped. They’d fallen hard for one another.

  She’d enjoyed every minute of those preparations—the costuming, the hairstyling, the choosing of a name and a demeanor and an invented past—and even relished the adventure of dashing through the kitchen and up the stairs. How long had it been since she’d done something half as exciting? She’d missed having any sort of intrigue in her life.

  But now, as they stood in the stairway, the truth of what was about to happen dawned on her. She would walk into the room and a man would be waiting. What took place after that was not entirely under her control.

  “Tell me again about Mr. Lyman,” Fleurette said.

  Petey nodded briskly. Reassuring the girls was part of the business. “He’s in advertising. Forty years of age. Enough good years ahead of him to think he can do better than what he has now.”

  “What he has now? Are you referring to his wife?” Fleurette asked.

  Petey put his fingers together under his chin, almost as if he were praying to her. “The wife wants to be released from her marriage vows as much as he does, miss. He’s doing the honorable thing by taking the blame himself. If he had a girl on the side already, he wouldn’t require our services.”

  “If neither of them want to be married to the other, a judge ought to set them free,” Fleurette said.

  “But they don’t. It’s the law. Adultery and willful desertion are the only ways out. Desertion takes too long and it’s a harder case to win.”

 
“All right. And how long will I be alone with him?”

  “Three minutes on the dot.” Petey reached into his vest and held up a pocket watch, placing it next to her ear so she could hear it tick. “Think of a song that runs to just three minutes. Let that run through your head.”

  “I suppose he can’t get up to much mischief in three minutes,” Fleurette conceded.

  “He can’t get up to any mischief, or he’d have to answer to me. And he’ll escort you right out the front door. He put his wife’s name in the guest registry, so nobody will think anything of him walking out with a woman. But keep your head down any-way.”

  “And you’ll meet me outside?”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  With that, Fleurette had received all the reassurances she could possibly ask for. It was time to go to work. She summoned up a little nerve. (She might’ve borrowed a bit of Constance’s, if she wanted to admit it, which she did not.) Nonetheless she squared her shoulders and made ready to march in, looking braver than she felt.

  “Then let’s meet Mr. Lyman,” she said.

  * * *

  MR. LYMAN GREETED them at the door, as jovial as a host at a dinner party. He was an altogether pleasant-looking man, with kind eyes and just a smattering of silver in his hair. He was quick to smile and greeted them with the air of a natural entertainer.

  “My co-conspirator has arrived,” he said, giving Fleurette a wink and Petey a handshake. “Will you both come in and . . .” He cocked his head at Petey, as if suggesting that a cigar and a whiskey soda might be on offer before the proceedings got under way.

  But Petey was looking up and down the hall, ever mindful of his obligations.

  “Three minutes,” he said, and pointed back toward the stairway to indicate where he’d wait. His watch was already in his hand.

  Mr. Lyman stepped aside to allow Fleurette to enter. The lyrics to “Your Lips Are No Man’s Land but Mine” were running through her head: that one went for about three minutes if one sang it at a brisk pace. She had its tempo fixed in her head: the song had already begun.

  The room was a welcoming one, done up in deep green and dark wood. At the foot of the bed—she tried not to stare at the bed—was a settee just spacious enough for two.

  “Mr. Ward—he’s your employer, is that right?” Mr. Lyman inquired. Fleurette nodded. “He knows his business. He likes this hotel because of the way the rooms are arranged. Never stayed here myself.”

  “Nor I,” said Fleurette.

  “Well . . .” Here Mr. Lyman paused and rubbed the back of his neck, searching for a way to say it. “He likes it because we can sit here”—pointing to the little tufted settee—“and you’ll have your back to the door, and I’ll be looking up at the door, over your shoulder, like this . . .”

  Here he mimed a look of surprise so lively and comical that Fleurette laughed. This pleased him and he winked conspiratorially at her. “Is that a good face? I’ve been practicing it.”

  “It’s just right,” Fleurette said, “only don’t smile, not even a little. Think of something that genuinely frightens you.”

  “Another twenty years with my wife?” Mr. Lyman asked.

  “Worse,” Fleurette said. “Your shoelace is caught on the track and a train is coming.”

  He let out a mock gasp. “That is terrifying.”

  “We ought to get ourselves settled,” Fleurette said.

  It occurred to her that Mr. Lyman was not her host, but her client. She could tell him what to do. After tonight, she would be the more experienced of any pairing on one of these jobs—or would some of her clients have been through one divorce already? How much of this sort of thing went on anyway?

  Mr. Lyman took his seat obediently. Fleurette sat next to him, her back squarely to the door.

  “I’ll turn my head just so,” she said, tilting to the left, “and you can look up at the door over my shoulder. We’re to hold quite still until Petey—until Mr. McGinnis takes three or four pictures.”

  They were quite close now, their knees almost touching. Mr. Lyman’s face was so near that she could smell cigarettes and peppermint. “How old are you anyway—Miss Bennet, is that it? I don’t suppose that’s your real name?”

  “Old enough,” she said. “Petey wants a bit of the bed in the picture. He thought it would look more convincing if you threw your jacket down, right there at the corner.”

  Mr. Lyman obliged. It gave Fleurette a little shiver to have a man undressing so close to her. It wasn’t an altogether unpleasant shiver—she’d decided by then that Mr. Lyman meant her no harm. She could feel a warmth coming off of him now, and saw the bulk of his shoulders, the hair at his wrists. She noticed he didn’t wear a ring.

  “Mr. Ward told me to take it off,” he said, following her eye down to his hands. “He said I ought to look like I’m trying to deceive. I’m to put my left hand around here”—he moved carefully, slipping an arm around her but barely touching her back—“so that we can be sure the hand is in the picture.”

  Just then she heard a footstep in the hall. Mr. Lyman smiled down at her. “I’m going to take you in my arms, you know,” he said, his face even closer now. Fleurette became a little entranced by the lines around his eyes. “Don’t let it shock you. I haven’t had a complaint yet from a girl.”

  “You have only to convince the camera,” Fleurette answered.

  Mr. Lyman looked down at her playfully and swept her into an embrace just as the door opened. They were pressed together—heart to heart, as it were—and Mr. Lyman’s rough chin brushed her neck as he turned to look over her shoulder. She shivered a little at the sensation and thought Mr. Lyman might’ve laughed at her reaction.

  “You’ve been caught,” Petey said roughly. Fleurette couldn’t see him but guessed that he’d had to remind Mr. Lyman to look terrified. She heard the shutter click twice—three times—then a fourth—and all at once she was released from Mr. Lyman’s embrace and left alone on the settee to smooth her dress.

  The door had already closed behind Petey. The performance was over. Fleurette felt an urge to rush off stage.

  “Well, that’s all there is to it,” Mr. Lyman said. He shrugged on his jacket and looked around the room. There was a little table in the corner and seating for two. “I could send up for some supper, if you like, or . . .” He looked longingly at the bottles and glasses and ice bucket on the sideboard.

  “Mr. McGinnis is waiting for me,” Fleurette said. “You’re to escort me out through the lobby, but don’t actually leave with me.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” he said. “And where do you go tonight? Back to a room you share with three other girls?”

  “It isn’t as bad as all that,” Fleurette said, but she didn’t offer any other details. The less he knew about her, the better.

  “Then let’s be on our way,” he said, and helped her into her coat.

  That was the end of her assignment. Mr. Lyman ushered her briskly through the lobby, speaking to her in a low voice so that she had a reason to keep her head turned toward him, the brim of her hat low, and a muffler up high under her chin.

  “Who’s the next fellow?” Mr. Lyman asked, bending down to her ear.

  “I don’t know if there will be a next fellow,” Fleurette said. Was she really going to make a habit of this?

  As they neared the doors, she felt him slip something into her pocket.

  “I suspect Mr. Ward doesn’t pay you enough” came his final words to her, and then she was out on the sidewalk, and Petey was rolling up in his automobile.

  Later that night, alone in her room, after she’d handed Bessie the first twenty dollars she’d earned, she remembered what he’d said and pulled an envelope from her coat-pocket.

  Mr. Lyman had given her another twenty dollars. It was only her first time, and already she’d doubled her salary.

  10

  “I’VE JUST NEVER heard of a seamstress making calls at night before,” said Norma at breakfast the next
morning.

  “I told you already,” Fleurette said. “Some of my ladies do their committee work for the relief charities during the day. And some of them have jobs now. You haven’t been home long enough to see it, but the offices are filled with girls these days.”

  “The men are going to want those jobs back, once they’re home.”

  “They might not. It’d be awfully dull compared to what they saw in France.”

  “Hmmph,” said Norma. She steadfastly continued to resist any attempt to bring the conversation around to France. “Nevertheless, if you go out at night, you ought to tell us where you go, and when you’ll be back.”

  “We didn’t know where you were for the better part of a year, and you did just fine,” Fleurette said.

  Norma lifted an eyebrow and began to compose a response, but just then Bessie wandered in, and she let it drop.

  Sunday mornings had become a leisurely affair in the recently reconstituted Kopp household: Norma awoke early, supervised the children’s breakfast, and stole into Bessie’s bedroom with dry toast and tea, which was all she could face at that hour. Fleurette slept late, as was her habit, and Constance turned up around ten and finished any scraps left on the breakfast table.

  “I slept better last night than I have in weeks,” Bessie said, shooting a meaningful glance at Fleurette.

  Was it to be a secret between them that Fleurette had put twenty dollars toward the funeral bill? Fleurette realized that she wasn’t sure how and when she’d be expected to make her contributions to the household coffers. Every penny she’d ever earned, until now, went directly into her own purse, where she could spend it as she pleased. Would Norma tally up their expenses and demand a particular sum each week?

  Fleurette shuddered at the thought. She’d managed to get by just fine without Norma’s constant scrutiny during the war. What exactly would the arrangements be, going forward—financial and otherwise?