by Amy Stewart
No, Mr. Ward would be of no use. But Alice was mixed up in something that caused her a great deal of distress. She had already run to one lawyer with a tale of divorce and to another with a tale of an inheritance. What did any of it mean?
The street-car came to a stop near Alice’s street. Out of curiosity, if nothing else, Fleurette decided to intervene.
“Mrs. Martin,” she called, coming up behind her on the sidewalk.
Alice jumped and turned, a look of absolute terror on her face, but—to Fleurette’s surprise—that soon melted to relief.
“Oh, Miss . . . Blossom, was it?” said Alice.
Would she ever get away from that name? “That’s only my professional name,” Fleurette said. “Mr. Ward insists on it. Please call me Fleurette. Fleurette Kopp.”
“Fleurette,” said Alice. “Were you coming to see me? Is this about the pictures?”
“No, but I do want to talk to you.” It wouldn’t do to say all of this on the sidewalk. Fleurette started walking, and Alice went along. “Is your husband at home?”
“I expect not. He said he’d be in the city all day,” said Alice.
“Good, then we can go to your house. I hope you won’t be offended, but I overheard you at your lawyer’s office just now. I had gone into the reception room just behind you, and I stopped to listen. You looked awfully worried when you came out of there. It seemed to me that something wasn’t quite right. I’m in no position to advise you, but I do have some experience in the legal profession.”
That was an exaggeration, but Fleurette hoped Alice would find it reassuring.
“Have you any experience with inheritance? Because it sounds so wonderful, but it’s been such a mess.”
“It isn’t so wonderful to lose a family member,” said Fleurette. “Am I to understand that it was an uncle who died?”
“Oh, but I never knew him,” Alice said. “He’d been estranged from our family for years.”
“But it sounds as though he left you quite a bundle,” said Fleurette.
“He did, and he did so precisely because I’m also estranged from the family. We are the two outcasts. Apparently he’d been keeping an eye on me all these years. I only wish I’d known!”
“What a peculiar situation,” Fleurette said. “Why were you both cast out—do you mind my asking?”
“Oh, what does it matter?” said Alice. They’d reached her house by then. Alice fumbled with her keys and, once inside, they settled into the same front room Fleurette had seen before—the upright piano, the theater programs on the wall. “My family was terribly strict. They didn’t approve of music or dancing or anything about Arthur’s way of life. They hated him and blamed him when I broke off another engagement to marry him instead.”
“Your family preferred the other fellow?” asked Fleurette. She didn’t seem, to Fleurette’s eye, to be the sort of girl who would have two suitors competing for her. She was terribly plain and tended toward a nervous and fretful disposition.
Alice nodded and twisted the handkerchief in her hand. “I was to marry a friend of the family. A doctor. I worked summers in his office. He wanted me to take a nursing course and work alongside him every day. I thought I wanted that, too. But I liked the idea of it more than the reality.”
“The idea of nursing or of the man?”
“Both,” said Alice. “I found that I hated tending the sick and couldn’t stand the sight of blood. But medicine was all my husband-to-be cared about, and all he could talk about. He wanted to serve a mission overseas with the church. The very idea of it terrified me. I tried to tell him that we didn’t have any interests in common, but my interests didn’t seem to matter to him. He never asked me what I wanted. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure myself. I just knew that I didn’t want . . .”
“Any of that,” said Fleurette.
“Right,” said Alice. “And then who do you suppose hobbled into his surgery one day? Arthur, fresh off the train, with a broken toe. He’d hooked it on a strap, climbing down from the upper berth. It was so comical, the way he told the story. He had me laughing the entire time Cecil—that was my fiancé, Cecil—splinted his toe. I’m not sure I’d ever laughed so hard. You should’ve seen how Cecil scowled at me for making merry with a patient!”
“Cecil must’ve known he had some competition.”
“He might have,” said Alice musingly. “We hadn’t any small plasters, so I walked with Arthur to the druggist to make sure he had what he needed before he boarded the next train. We weren’t together for more than an hour in all, but by then I couldn’t bear to let him out of my sight. He was such a breath of fresh air. So we exchanged addresses, and before long we were writing almost every day. I had to take a letter box at the post office so my parents wouldn’t know. It was all so daring and exciting.”
“I’m surprised you could keep it from them,” Fleurette said. “My sisters would’ve found out about a private letter box within an hour.”
“Well, it took my father a few weeks, but he did find out. Then he wanted Arthur charged with some sort of crime. I told him that it wasn’t a crime to write to an unmarried woman, and he said it was. So I told him I could remedy that. I ran off on the next train and married Arthur.”
“You were awfully certain of yourself, after a few letters,” Fleurette said.
“Oh, Arthur was so sweet and funny and charming. He didn’t expect me to be his help-mate. He seemed to just like me for my own sake.”
Like her? It didn’t sound like a basis for a marriage, but Fleurette said, “Well, that’s what matters. It’s a shame your family didn’t see it that way.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “He’s not a Baptist, so that disqualified him with my parents. They’re horrified that he makes his living in the theater. They think I’m tainted from living within spitting distance of a vile city like New York. None of them have ever been out of South Carolina, but they pass judgment on the entire world from down there. It’s all right, I don’t want them back.”
“And was it the same for this uncle of yours?” asked Fleurette.
“Apparently it was. I never heard about him, but that’s just like my family not to tell. What I have learned is that my grandfather had another woman on the side, and they had a child together. That child was this uncle, really my half-uncle, I suppose. At some point my grandmother found out about it and insisted that he cut off all ties. My grandfather was a preacher, you understand, and I suppose my grandmother didn’t want the parishioners knowing.”
“And didn’t want the rest of the family knowing, if you’re only just finding out,” said Fleurette.
“That’s right. So Everett—that’s my uncle—grew up without any family at all. It was just him and his mother. When his mother passed away, about ten years ago, he found a few letters and things that she had kept. He went back down to South Carolina and tried to talk to my relations, but they didn’t want anything to do with him. Somehow he found out about me—I don’t know who told him—but he never did approach me. He only . . . Well, according to his will, he only kept an eye on me. Like a fairy godmother.”
“Hmm,” said Fleurette. She’d found the story plausible until that last bit, and then it started to sound too good to be true. “He must’ve died a wealthy man.”
“Oh, he did!” said Alice. “He worked hard all his life, but he was given a very fortunate opportunity, too. When he and his mother were in Virginia—he was about ten, I believe—he saved a little boy from drowning. The boy was the son of a railroad tycoon.”
“And to show his gratitude . . .” Fleurette said, feeling as though she was reading a Sunday serial.
Alice didn’t seem to notice. “Yes, to show his gratitude, the boy’s father put my uncle Everett to work. Everett stayed with it and made good money in railroads, and always owned stock.”
“And he’s left you a nice little country house he bought with that railroad stock, is that it?” said Fleurette.
Alice laughed. “Oh, i
t’s quite a bit more than that. He rented in Manhattan, and that apartment’s gone already. But he owned a lovely summer home on Long Island, with eight bedrooms, a ballroom for dancing, an enormous lawn with a bandstand, a garage with an automobile, and a chauffeur in a little apartment above. It’s in Sands Point, on the North Shore.”
“Have you been to see it?” asked Fleurette, quite reasonably. It wasn’t a long trip.
“Only the pictures. My lawyer warns me that it’s nothing like what the Vanderbilts and the Guggenheims are building out there. He says it’s practically a carriage house by their standards, but comfortable for the summer. I wouldn’t want anything too high-flown anyway. I’d never be able to keep it up.”
“Neither would I,” said Fleurette, just to sound agreeable. “What does Arthur have to say?” She had almost forgotten about the divorce. What an unfortunate time for Arthur to run off with another woman, just when his wife stood to inherit!
But that was when she saw through Alice’s ruse.
Alice must’ve realized she’d been caught in a lie. “If you’ve never been married, you can’t understand,” she said, tentatively. “But when I learned all that I was to inherit, and how my life would be changed by it, I knew in an instant that I didn’t want Arthur to be any part of it. I could see a future for myself again—and he wasn’t in it.”
“You didn’t want him to have half the estate,” said Fleurette.
“It isn’t just the money,” Alice insisted. “I didn’t want him in the picture. I wanted something else. I didn’t want this—my life with Arthur—to be how it all turned out. I realized all at once that I had only settled for Arthur. He had been a way out of a difficulty, but that was never enough to make a marriage. Can’t you understand?”
“You’ve explained it well enough,” said Fleurette briskly. “But why involve Mr. Ward in all this when you already had an attorney?”
“The first time I met Mr. Herman, he was quite insistent that if I had a husband, I had to bring him in, and he would have to sign papers, too, like I did. I told him that we were already in the middle of divorcing. He said that I couldn’t take ownership of the property on my own unless I was an unmarried woman, and he warned me not to mention any of this to Arthur, or I’d never get that divorce.”
“But Mr. Herman wouldn’t help you with the divorce himself ?”
“He told me that he wasn’t that sort of attorney. I’d heard about Ward & McGinnis and the kinds of tricks they get up to. I thought that with Arthur in and out of the theater so much, it would be easy to get a picture of him with a girl. I suppose I didn’t know exactly how to ask for what I wanted.”
“No, you didn’t,” said Fleurette, “and it sounds like you’re running out of time. When exactly are you to receive this inheritance?”
Alice pulled a pillow into her lap and picked at the tassel. “Oh, it’s taking forever. There always seems to be another paper to sign and another fee to pay. Mr. Herman’s been so kind about it, and he always takes the time to explain everything, but I’ve spent every penny I have, and now the jewelry’s gone, and I don’t know what’s next.”
Fleurette sat up at the mention of the jewelry. “What exactly did you give him today?”
“Oh, everything. A few bracelets, a comb and pin set, a nice long string of pearls, the silver spoons, and a good ruby ring in a big gold setting. It was enormous. I never wore it.”
“And you paid him some fees before that?” asked Fleurette.
“Oh yes, there have been all sorts of fees. Twenty dollars here, fifty dollars there, all for notaries and assessors and who knows what. Two hundred for a probate tax.”
“So . . . three or four hundred in all, plus the jewelry . . .”
She was quiet just long enough for Alice to look over at her sharply. “What are you suggesting?”
Fleurette had already guessed at the truth. But she wanted Alice to see it for herself. “How did you first learn of your uncle’s death and of your inheritance?”
“I had a letter from Mr. Herman telling me all that I’ve told you.”
“And you’d never heard of this attorney before? Never spoken to anyone about your . . . well, your personal situation? A chance encounter with a stranger, perhaps, before the letter arrived?”
“No, I’ve told no one! Who would I talk to?”
Fleurette crossed her arms and paced around the room. If there really had been an uncle, he wouldn’t have died alone and unnoticed. She thought of all the mourners at her brother’s funeral, acquaintances and neighbors and club men. “Haven’t you heard from anyone else connected to this uncle? Friends or associates of his?”
“No, it all comes through Mr. Herman. He had everything: the will, the pictures of the house, all of it.”
“Was there an obituary? Did you attend the funeral?”
“I . . . There was no mention of that.”
“And where have your uncle’s personal effects gone? His letters and pictures and things of that sort? People leave papers behind. Usually the heir would get everything.”
Alice stared open-mouthed at Fleurette. “If you’re looking for proof that my uncle Everett even existed, I don’t have any beyond what Mr. Herman has shown me.”
Fleurette stood up and patted down her skirt. “I think I might like to go have a word with Mr. Herman.”
26
ALICE INSISTED ON going along. On the way back to Mr. Herman’s office, she didn’t say a word: she was pale and tight-lipped and once again wrung her gloves into knots as they rode back downtown. Fleurette saw her tugging at the finger where her ring was missing and wanted to reach a hand out to calm her, but thought better of it.
Back on Market Street, at the end of that long soot-stained building where Alice had only just left Mr. Herman an hour or two previously, Fleurette’s suspicions were confirmed.
Mr. Herman was gone. The brass plate bearing his name was gone, too. Only two black holes remained where the screws had held it in place.
Alice stood stricken in the doorway. “Oh, but surely he’s only stepped out. In fact, he was going to take my jewelry over to Mr. . . . Mr. . . .”
“The name was Talbot, but it doesn’t matter,” said Fleurette. “I believe he’s gone, Alice.”
Fleurette, although the shorter and slighter of the two, had to take Alice’s arm to stop her from dropping.
“Steady,” Fleurette muttered. Alice would only attract attention if she fell into a near-swoon in front of an empty doorway. “Take a breath. Calm yourself.”
Alice leaned against the door and dabbed a handkerchief at her forehead. “You can’t mean that he’s just run off,” she whispered, “and all my jewelry . . . and the fees and taxes and things I’ve paid him . . . but what about that house, and my uncle . . . You don’t mean . . .”
She looked at Fleurette with such distress that Fleurette now felt the weight of what she’d done. Before that afternoon, Alice Martin’s troubles had belonged entirely to Alice. Whatever happened next to her—whether Mr. Herman appeared again or didn’t, whether he kept his promises or not—wouldn’t have mattered a bit to Fleurette, because she wouldn’t have known about it.
But Fleurette was the one who’d raised all these questions. She was the one who had seen through Alice’s stories all along, starting with the pointless investigation into her husband’s non-existent affair, and now the very real possibility that Alice had been swindled over a phony inheritance.
This was a mess entirely of Alice’s own making, but now here was Fleurette, squarely in the middle of it. And Alice was staring desperately at her, as if there were anything in the world she could do about it.
“I suspect that when you started to cry, Mr. Herman realized that he wasn’t going to get any more money out of you,” Fleurette said. “Now he’s gone.”
“But where? Couldn’t we . . . Oh, isn’t there a way to find him?”
“You ought to go to the police,” Fleurette said. “Have them look into this Mr.
Herman. They’ll know how to go about it.”
“But we don’t know that there’s anything to look into,” Alice said. “What if it’s all a misunderstanding? Mr. Herman could be back in an hour. The name-plate could’ve fallen off. Besides, I can’t have Arthur finding out. All I’ve wanted was to get through this without him knowing, and to have my house on Long Island and my chauffeur . . .” Her voice gave out. The house, and the garage with the apartment above it, and the man who was to have brought around the auto when she called for it had all seemed so solid only just that morning, but now shimmered and faded under Fleurette’s scrutiny.
It was a good deal too much pressure for Fleurette. She wondered, fleetingly, how Constance had ever learned to handle having the fate of some unfortunate girl in her hands. Fleurette had hardly managed to run her own life lately. What was she supposed to do for Alice?
What came to mind just then was not what Constance would’ve done—Constance, the detective, Constance the lady cop—but what Norma would’ve done.
“You don’t have to go to the police just yet,” she told Alice. “I’ll look into it.”
“But how?”
“I’ll go to the library.”
* * *
THE LIBRARY! Repository of newspapers and directories, cataloger of obituaries, painstaking indexer of names and dates and events both significant and trivial, employer of persnickety women for whom no fact was too elusive, no detail too obscure. Norma had always been a habitué of libraries, consulting them on subjects as varied as bird-keeping, fence-building, and parties of interest to the Kopps of whom she particularly disapproved (candidates for sheriff, vaudeville managers, bankers).
