Miss Kopp Investigates

by Amy Stewart

  Constance had dropped into the chair across from her and was quite simply gaping at her, open-mouthed. “What happened? You’ve sounded fine lately.”

  “But not to sing,” said Mr. Martin. “I’m sorry, my dear. It’s been a terrible winter, between the Spanish influenza and every other bug making the rounds. I’ve had a dozen girls that sound just like you lately.”

  “I’ve lost it, haven’t I?” said Fleurette. She’d felt so triumphant only a moment ago, delivering the good news to Alice, but now a fresh wave of misery swept over her. “I won’t go on the stage again.”

  He shook his head sorrowfully. “Not any time soon. If you were one of my girls and you were in a show, I’d have to tell you to call the understudy. You could practice, and learn to sing around it, and perhaps in a year’s time—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” said Constance. “None of us had any idea.”

  Now Fleurette was truly wrung out. She sank into Alice’s sofa and said, “Can we please just tell Mr. Martin why we’re here?”

  Alice said, a little nervously, “Why don’t you start?”

  For the third time in twenty-four hours, Fleurette told—this time with some help from Alice—the convoluted tale of the fortune-teller and the inheritance letter. She wisely skipped the bit about Alice going to John Ward for help in obtaining evidence against her husband for a divorce case, but she knew they’d circle back to that eventually.

  Arthur, for his part, was an attentive if often perplexed listener. With some frequency he turned to his wife, incredulous, with expressions of shock and disbelief and—Fleurette noticed this particularly—a generous and perhaps undeserved amount of sympathy. “If only you’d told me!” he said, more than once, and “I should’ve noticed something was wrong.” He seemed unconcerned about the sums of money Alice had put out (although she had been vague concerning the exact amounts, and Fleurette stayed silent on that subject), and took it as a given that the jewelry and the silver spoons would be recovered.

  He did, however, come around eventually to the part of the story Fleurette had been avoiding.

  “What I still don’t understand,” he said, turning now to Fleurette, “is how you came to be involved. That is, how did the two of you meet?”

  Fleurette wasn’t about to tell. Alice’s marriage was hers to ruin.

  “Remember, darling, that she met you first, at the theater,” Alice put in hastily. “She wasn’t really an understudy, only a friend of one of the other girls, hoping to get hired on. Nonetheless she took your card—didn’t you, Miss Kopp?”

  Fleurette nodded hastily. This part of the story, at least, was true.

  “Oh, I see,” said Arthur. “She came to the house, and I wasn’t here, and the two of you struck up a friendship. Yes, of course. But I still don’t know what led you, Miss Kopp, to pursue this fellow. You went about it like a detective, and even put on a disguise and laid a trap to catch him in the act. Why would you do such a thing?”

  Alice had by now assumed the role of answering for Fleurette and said, “It’s the family business, Arthur. Her sister—this one, Constance—is a real policewoman, and her other sister went to war with the Army. Fleurette comes by it naturally.”

  41

  ON THE SUBJECT of coming by things naturally, Fleurette had nothing to say. Constance’s presence at the Martins’ had been purely ceremonial: she watched over Fleurette as a chaperone might, and injected only the mildest comment or question here and there as the story unfolded, once again, for Arthur’s benefit.

  When they left, Constance had only this to say: “I hope that’s the end of it, as far as we’re concerned.”

  Fleurette, for her part, felt the sense of let-down that comes at the end of a holiday. The momentum that had carried her through these last few weeks—when she’d had something to puzzle over, someone to chase, and the next maneuver to plan—was over now.

  Even the air felt heavy and oppressive as she walked alongside Constance and Officer Heath. When she thought about what she had waiting for her, back at Mrs. Doyle’s—well, she didn’t want to think of it at all.

  She had her head down and was practically dragging her feet along, like a crestfallen child, but she didn’t care about how she looked. She’d been through enough and was by then even more in need of a hearty meal and a good nap than before.

  Constance and Officer Heath talked over the top of her head as they walked back into downtown. They spoke only of their own work: Constance was due back on duty at the department store, and Officer Heath was expected to return to his foot patrol of downtown immediately. They had jobs to do, lives to resume.

  Fleurette thought she might just slip away from the two of them, but then Officer Heath said, “How much does Mr. Ward know about all of this?”

  “Not a great deal,” said Fleurette. “I went to him when it became clear that Alice had been swindled, but he wasn’t interested. He said that no one was paying him to look into it, and that it was a matter for the police.”

  “He was right on both counts. If you haven’t told him anything more, then it will come as a surprise to him when all of this appears in the papers. You’re sure to be mentioned, as will the Martins.”

  Fleurette stopped and looked down Hamilton Street toward Mr. Ward’s office. “I suppose I ought to tell him what’s happened. Will he be kept out of it, him and Petey?”

  “It all depends on how many victims are found,” Officer Heath said. “The livelier the story, the less likely it is that the reporters would be interested in an attorney who didn’t even take part in the investigation.”

  She was by then so tired that she could hardly put a coherent sentence together, but it seemed only fair to warn him. “I’ll stop in. Are the two of you on your way?”

  But of course they were not: it seemed that Fleurette was doomed to have Constance and Officer Heath following her around for the rest of her days. With her spirits sinking lower still, she dragged herself into the building, up the stairs, and down the hall to Mr. Ward’s office. She loathed the idea of having to tell the story for the fourth time, again in the presence of her two overseers, and dreaded the inevitable clash between Constance and Mr. Ward.

  She heard from some distance away a conversation within. She was about to call the visit off on the grounds that Mr. Ward was occupied with a client when she drew just a bit nearer and recognized the voice.

  “What is Norma doing here?” she said, looking up at Constance.

  Just then there was another voice. Constance stopped to listen. “I think Bessie’s with her.”

  That was too much for Fleurette to bear. “I didn’t come here for another lecture, if that was your plan.”

  “It’s not,” Constance insisted. “I told them everything this morning, before I came back to the jail. They know Mr. Ward had almost nothing to do with it.”

  They paused outside his door, but to what end? There was no turning back now. Fleurette pushed the door open, waving away the new girl sitting behind the receptionist’s desk, and walked right into his office.

  Mr. Ward didn’t seem at all surprised to see them. “It’s the rest of the clan, and a police officer to keep things on the level. Afternoon, Bob.”

  Officer Heath nodded. Bessie and Norma turned and rose from their chairs. Bessie rushed right over to Fleurette, smoothed her hair, kissed her cheek, looked her over, and whispered alluring promises of a roast for dinner, and creamed potatoes, and a particular ginger cake Fleurette was fond of.

  Norma only stood with her arms crossed in front of her. “They released you from jail. I hope it didn’t cost us a fortune.”

  “There was no bail. I wasn’t arrested,” Fleurette said. “I was a witness.”

  “You were arrested first, and then Constance came down and straightened everything out so they’d treat you as a witness.” Norma, having had the least involvement in the matter, made it sound as though she knew the most about it.

  “You ought to at least give Officer
Heath the credit,” Fleurette said. “Have you come down here to lecture Mr. Ward? Because Constance has already done that.”

  “That’s not at all why she’s here,” put in Mr. Ward. “Your sister’s quite the business-woman. She tried to turn me upside-down and shake out my pockets.”

  “As I understand it,” Norma said to Fleurette, walking up and down now as if giving a lecture, “from the little that you’ve told us, Mr. Ward was paying you twenty dollars per client, plus some rather generous gratuities, and now I’ve learned about the Martin case, for which you were paid one hundred dollars for a single night’s work.”

  What, exactly, was Norma accusing her of now?

  “And I put every penny toward Francis’s debts,” Fleurette said. “You don’t have to approve of how I earned the money, but the charge accounts are open again and it’s because I paid them. You’re welcome.”

  “We’re all grateful,” said Bessie, “and I don’t suppose Constance has had a chance to tell you, but the parcels of land are starting to sell. We’ll have enough coming in to buy the Wilkinsons’ house and pay off Francis’s mortgage, or most of it.”

  “That’s all fine,” said Fleurette, “but I’m sure Mr. Ward has had enough of the Kopp family’s affairs. I only stopped in to tell him about what happened last night, before you see it in the papers or find the police on your doorstep asking questions, but I can see Norma’s told all.”

  “What I came to tell him was that he’d been cheating you, plain and simple, and it won’t happen again,” Norma said. “I know what lawyers charge for divorces. It’s five hundred dollars if it’s a penny. Twenty dollars for your part in it is robbery. From now on, we’ll be paid professional rates, and if he doesn’t like it, he can pass the bill on to the clients.”

  Now the room erupted in shouting.

  “What do you mean ‘we’?” said Constance. “I won’t have anything to do with manufacturing phony evidence, and neither will anyone else in this family.”

  “And Mr. Ward won’t hire me if I have you and Constance interfering,” said Fleurette, “and I can’t blame him. I won’t argue over this any longer. I’m going back to Mrs. Doyle’s.”

  And she did turn to leave—rattled, her every nerve raw, still famished, still weary—when Norma said, “Well, someone had to interfere. You were treating this like piecework, twenty dollars here and there, subject to Mr. Ward’s whims.”

  “Which is exactly what it was,” Fleurette said, “and I know you don’t approve, so if you don’t mind, I’ve had a long night, and—”

  But Norma cut her off. “You’re not going back to Mrs. Doyle’s. We’re here to form a detective agency. You’ll be the one to run it, and you can’t do that from a boarding-house in Rutherford.”

  Fleurette felt something ominous come over her, like a head cold. What had she just heard?

  From behind her, she could hear Constance working herself up into a fury. “Fleurette can’t run an agency. I’m obviously the eldest, and the only one with any experience. And when did you decide all this?”

  “It was my idea,” said Bessie placidly. “That lady—Alice Martin—talked to Fleurette even though she didn’t want to talk to the police. That’s how it was with your girls, too, at the jail. They confided in you. After you left this morning, I told Norma that I thought there must be any number of situations of this sort that ladies find themselves in. They might not tell the police, but they would go to a private detective—if the detective was a woman.”

  Now there was silence in the room. Fleurette couldn’t help but ponder it. What if there was another Alice Martin out there, another swindler to capture, another parcel of jewels to recover?

  Constance was thinking it over, too, and exchanging glances with Officer Heath. “It isn’t just swindlers,” she said, speaking quietly, as if only to him. “It’s missing girls, too. Runaways.”

  “Family disputes,” said Officer Heath. “Robberies and assaults, if the girl doesn’t want her name in the paper.”

  “Anything with the threat of a scandal attached,” said Constance. “Disappearing husbands.”

  “Wayward children,” Officer Heath said. “They want to know what the child’s been doing, and why, but they don’t want them put into a reformatory.”

  “You’re forgetting about divorce,” Mr. Ward put in. “Adultery’s the most lucrative. Your sister Norma’s going to bleed me dry, but I could use a lady photographer from time to time.”

  Constance seemed to be warming to the idea. “But of course I’ll be the one to run it. Fleurette can’t—”

  Here Norma stepped in. “Fleurette doesn’t like you telling her what to do. I don’t suppose I’d like it, either. She’s the youngest and the prettiest, and she’s clever, too. We can’t do it without her.”

  Fleurette squinted at her sister. It had been a miscalculation for Norma to admit how much she was needed: now Fleurette held all the cards. “Then I’d be the one to decide what cases we’d take.”

  “Not without—” injected Constance, but Fleurette waved her away.

  “And there’d be no more lectures about Mr. Ward and his divorce work.”

  “Not a word,” said Norma, shooting a stern glance at Constance.

  “And I’d be the one telling you two what to do, and when to do it, and how.”

  Even Norma looked aghast at that, and Bessie said gently, “You can trust your sisters to know what needs to be done.”

  Fleurette considered that. She could put Norma to work on the billing and accounts, and that wouldn’t require any oversight. Constance could be sent out on the more unpleasant jobs: lurking all night in a doorway in the rain, for instance, or digging through a missing girl’s garbage.

  “I suppose,” Fleurette said. “And they’d have to trust me to know what needs to be done, too.”

  “Precisely,” said Bessie, already playing the indispensable role of peacemaker. “But why are we discussing this here? Couldn’t we talk it over at home?”

  Fleurette realized, with another thud in her heart, that by home Bessie meant the Wilkinsons’, not Mrs. Doyle’s. Was she really going back with them?

  “Mr. Ward’s going to draw up the papers for us, without charge, of course, considering how he took advantage of you,” said Norma. “But we also came to ask him about our rights as it pertains to Francis’s quarter interest.”

  “Oh, that horrible old basket company!” said Fleurette. “Why don’t you forget about that? Francis made a terrible business deal and we’re left owing the money. There’s nothing to do but to pay it. Don’t bother Mr. Ward with this.”

  “But he had the right idea,” Bessie said. “As there’s no paperwork that sets forth the terms of Francis’s agreement with Mr. Griggs, we are free to interpret it as we like. Mr. Griggs could challenge us in court, but the business is nearly worthless as it is. We can do what we like with our share of the company.”

  Fleurette didn’t like to imagine what that meant. Was it Bessie’s idea that they’d form a detective agency with a sideline in imported baskets?

  “Then what, exactly, do you intend to do with your share of the company?” Fleurette asked, quite fearful of the answer.

  “We’re going to seize the only piece of property that could do us any good,” Norma said. “The automobile.”

  42

  THE AUTOMOBILE! WAS Norma in her right mind? Norma, who had devoted considerable energy to detesting automobiles and criticizing their use even in war-time, even as ambulances? Norma, who despised all modern contrivances and didn’t even like to pick up a telephone, and would’ve happily done without electrical lights at the Wilkinsons’, had her sisters not bodily carried the old gas lanterns out to the shed in back and hidden them there?

  Fleurette could see that her role in running the agency, if she truly was to run it, would consist largely in dealing with modern appurtenances that Norma loathed. She would answer the telephone and operate the typewriter. It was entirely likely that what Norma
meant by “run” the agency actually meant running the machines Norma disliked.

  But if one of those was to be an auto? How perfect for Fleurette! She’d fallen in love with those gleaming, rumbling machines the first time she’d ever seen one, and she felt entirely at ease riding in one: a modern conveyance for a modern woman. Even Officer Heath’s auto—back when he was Sheriff Heath—gave her a thrill, the few times she rode in it. It felt utterly effortless, to be carried along under the power of an enormous engine, so much more spirited and stylish than the plodding and wheezing of a horse.

  How right Norma was to think that they would require an automobile, and to put Fleurette in charge of it. She could see herself behind the wheel already, in a smart hat, dressed in pinstripes or polka dots, or perhaps both. She’d go to work at once assembling the wardrobe of a modern lady detective, one with an automobile and a client list that included the wealthy and soon-to-be-divorced of Park Avenue. Mr. Packard and his glass emerald were nothing compared to the class of customer she could land if she were put in charge of it.

  In the spirit of dashing around in automobiles, they rode over to see Mr. Griggs in a taxicab, the four of them (Officer Heath and John Ward having both returned to their own respective duties, and having no part to play in any further proceedings), and debated Norma’s idea in high spirits and animated voices. Norma had worked it all out: their monthly expenses, the costs of running a business (stationery, advertisements in the local directories, an investigator’s license, a camera and film), and the amount of time it would take to sell the remaining lots, purchase the Wilkinsons’ house, and establish themselves fully as a business concern.

  “You’ll have to stay at Schoonmaker’s until we have enough clients to keep us all busy, which is another reason why you can’t run the agency,” Norma told Constance. “And Fleurette won’t ever be entirely out of the seamstressing business. We’ll need disguises, from time to time and, besides, your ladies could become our clients.”