Hush Now, Don’t You Cry

by Rhys Bowen

  The office was busy in spite of the absence of its owner. Two young men were working away at typewriting machines, making such a clatter that I had to shout when a female receptionist asked me what I wanted. I told her that I had just come from the estate in Newport. Her eyes widened. Typing ceased miraculously. “You were there? Then you know all about it? We’ve only heard what we’ve read in the press.”

  “Yes, I was there,” I said. “I took the train down to New York this morning and wondered if I might have a word with Mr. Hannan’s private secretary?”

  “Is it true then?” the girl asked. “They are saying that he was poisoned. Is that really true?”

  “I’m afraid it is,” I said. “I had to come down to the city so I volunteered to help the local police with their investigations.” I neglected to add that the local police had turned down my offer. “So if I might have a word with Mr. Hannan’s secretary, maybe he could shed some light on this awful business.”

  “I hope you can, ma’am,” she said. “We all worshiped Alderman Hannan. We want his killer caught and punished.” She moved closer to me. “Do they think those Tammany boys had anything to do with it? There was an awful ruckus only last week up here in the office, with everyone shouting and Mr. Hannan saying that he couldn’t be bought. And the men stomped out saying that he’d be sorry. So I just wondered. I know how those Tammany thugs work sometimes.”

  “Annie, you shouldn’t be talking like that,” one of the typists said, turning away from his machine. “That kind of talk could get you in trouble.”

  “I don’t care. It’s the truth, isn’t it?” She looked at him defiantly.

  “So men from Tammany Hall were actually up here in this office threatening him, were they?” I said. “Had he received any other threats recently? He was a public figure, after all.”

  Before she could say any more a frosted glass door from the inner office opened and a young man stood there. Everything about him was stiff and efficient from his collar to his haughty expression.

  “Miss Shaw?” he said. “May I ask what is going on? This person is not from the press, is she? Who let her in? Remember I told you that we speak to nobody until we are given instructions from the family.”

  I crossed the room to him, holding out my hand. “I am most certainly not from the press. I am Mrs. Sullivan, wife of Captain Daniel Sullivan. I believe you may have written to us last week on behalf of the alderman to invite us to stay in Newport. I have just come down from the estate and I thought you might have been told very little about the tragedy.”

  “Mrs. Sullivan.” The haughty look melted from his face and he looked absurdly young and embarrassed. “I am Donald Brady, Alderman Hannan’s secretary. It was good of you to think of us. Frankly we have heard absolutely nothing except for the scant information in the newspapers,” he said. “Would you care to step into my office?”

  He held the door open for me and I went inside. The room was sparely furnished with an oak desk and filing cabinets. Clearly Alderman Hannan did not believe in spending unnecessary money. Mr. Brady pulled out a straight-backed chair for me. “Do sit down. Can I have Annie bring you anything? Coffee, water?”

  “No thank you. I have just had coffee and I have a lot of business to cram into today. But I wanted to talk with you first.” I pulled my chair closer to his desk. “I don’t know if you have heard yet but it has been determined that the alderman was poisoned, with cyanide taken from his own garden shed.”

  “We heard a rumor.” His face was white and shocked. “But it’s too terrible for words. Who would want to do such a thing? He was a good man, good for the city of New York. Look how many men he employed building the new subway.”

  “I would like to find out who did this as much as you,” I said. “The police chief seems to think it was a family member. They, of course, are saying nothing and all seem shocked by the death. My husband and I think the alderman must have suspected something, or he would not have invited a well-known New York police detective to be present at the same time as his family. So I wondered—did Alderman Hannan ever mention to you why he was inviting my husband up to Newport?”

  He shook his head. “Mrs. Sullivan. I am merely his secretary. He dictates to me. I write the letters and he signs them. He does not discuss his business with me.”

  “Pity,” I said. “So you would have no way of knowing if anything was worrying him?”

  “Something was,” he said. “He was quite out of sorts for the past couple of weeks. I took it that his anger might have had something to do with the subway tunnel collapse. You heard about that, did you? A sad occurrence—and several men were killed. Mr. Hannan was furious. He thought that maybe someone had been using substandard materials. He and his brother had an argument right here in the office. He said, ‘If I find out you’ve been cheating the company, lining your own pockets at the expense of mens’ lives…’”

  “And what did his brother say?”

  “He said, ‘You can’t threaten me. You forget I’m a partner in the company. You have no right to speak to me like that.’ And he stormed out. But right after, Mr. Hannan had me set up an appointment with his accountant.”

  “I see,” I said. “And where might I find this accountant?”

  His face became immediately guarded again. “Mrs. Sullivan, this is private company business. I couldn’t let outsiders be privy to what Mr. Hannan did or said.”

  “Mr. Brady,” I said carefully. “From what I’ve observed I don’t believe the local police have a chance in hell of finding out who killed Alderman Hannan.” I saw him visibly flinch at the use of such strong language coming from a woman’s lips. I didn’t care. If he needed jolting a little to make him reveal things to me, then I’d jolt. I continued. “I’m sure he invited my husband there for a reason. My husband is now on the spot and the local police can use his expertise. Unfortunately he has been quite sick and is still unable to travel, so I volunteered to undertake this journey for him. I realize all this is unofficial and the New York police really can’t get involved, but Captain Sullivan is your best chance at seeing justice done for your employer.”

  It was a good speech. I was rather proud of it myself, even if it did stretch the truth a little. I saw Donald Brady’s Adam’s apple going up and down above his stiff collar.

  “Of course I would like justice for Alderman Hannan,” he said. “I’d like to do anything I could to help. I’ll give you the accountant’s name, but I can’t guarantee he will divulge any company secrets to you.”

  “I understand.” I watched as he wrote an address on a piece of paper in fine fluid penmanship, and then blotted it dry.

  “Would you happen to know if the alderman changed his will recently?” I asked.

  He reacted to this with surprise. “I have no idea. If he did, he did not ask me to contact his attorney.”

  “If you would be good enough to add his attorney’s name,” I said, pointing to the piece of paper, “at least I could speak with him. If the police chief thinks a family member responsible there has to be a good reason.”

  He was looking more and more uncomfortable and wrote grudgingly.

  “One last thing,” I said. “Would you know if the alderman has received any threats at all recently? I understand that there has been a falling out at Tammany Hall. The alderman was against the choice for the new leader.”

  “He was,” Brady said. “He thought this Murphy was prone to corruption and would want to feather his own nest. Clearly Murphy has paid off enough men to get himself elected.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that someone from Tammany Hall might want the alderman out of the way?”

  I could see he hadn’t considered this possibility. Then he shook his head. “I think that Charlie Murphy would be elected with or without the alderman. And poisoning wouldn’t be their style either.”

  “Any other threats?”

  “No. The alderman was well liked. Who would want to…” He broke off suddenly and I
saw his expression change. “There was a young man came in here a couple of weeks ago. Very angry he was, because his brother had been killed in the subway cave-in. Apparently the brother had left four small children and a widow. Alderman Hannan offered him money as compensation and the young man flung it back in his face. Then the alderman had him escorted out. The man yelled that he’d get even some way and people like Hannan Construction could not think they were above the law.”

  “What did this young man look like?”

  He thought for a moment. “Ordinary looking. Skinny. Dark hair. Little mustache.”

  “Did he wear a derby and a rather ill-fitting coat?”

  “He did.” Mr. Brady nodded.

  “Then I’d wager he was the same one who showed up outside the estate in Newport right about the time the alderman arrived,” I said. “You wouldn’t happen to know his name, would you?”

  “I think I would.” Mr. Brady went over to a filing cabinet and extracted a file. “We have the names of all those killed in the subway accident. Let me see…” He ran his finger down the page. “Hermann. That was it. He said his name was Joshua Hermann.”

  “And his address?”

  “I couldn’t tell you his address but the man who was killed in the cave-in was Frederick Hermann and he lived at Thirty-eight Hester Street.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I shall pass along this information to the authorities.”

  He looked alarmed. “Are you suggesting that Hermann followed the alderman out to Newport and then killed him?”

  “I’m just examining all possibilities, rounding up as much evidence as possible for my husband,” I said. “Tell me, did you have much to do with Mr. Terrence Hannan, and with the alderman’s great-nephew Sam?”

  “Very little,” Brady said. “Mr. Terrence stopped by at the office occasionally, but the other young man—I believe he was employed down at company headquarters. Since Mr. Hannan has been involved in politics he has left most of the day-to-day running of the company to Mr. Joseph Hannan.”

  “And Terrence?”

  “I understood he was being groomed to take over some day,” Mr. Brady said. “Although I don’t think the alderman felt he was altogether satisfactory. He was too much of a dilettante.”

  While he had been speaking my attention was drawn to the door behind his desk, the door that must lead to an inner sanctum.

  “Would you mind if I took a look at Alderman Hannan’s office?” I said. “I presume that is his office behind you?”

  “It is, but I can’t see any reason…” He moved so that he was guarding the doorway.

  “Can you think of any reason why not?” I demanded, my patience now wearing thin. “It’s not as if the alderman is going to come back, is it? I only want to help and if he scribbled a note to himself, something that’s now residing in the wastebasket…”

  “Mrs. Sullivan, I have the baskets emptied twice a day,” he said primly. “His desk is always kept immaculate. So is his filing system. Alderman Hannan likes everything just so—” he corrected himself, “I mean he liked everything…” And his voice faltered. “I still can’t believe that he’s gone,” he ended quietly.

  “All the more reason to find his killer,” I said. “Would you rest quietly knowing that you could have helped but instead let his killer walk away a free man?”

  “But I don’t see how…” He was clearly upset now. “I mean his office is quite pristine. No paper in wastebaskets…”

  “Then you’d have no objection to my looking,” I said. I pushed past him to the door and opened it. It was, unfortunately exactly as he had described and I had no idea what I had hoped to find there. Men do not rise through Tammany Hall to the rank of alderman and leave around incriminating slips of paper that might name their killer. I stood looking at the polished mahogany desk with its matching Italian red-leather blotter, inkwell, and penholder; the file cabinets; the portrait of the alderman at his investiture; another portrait of him shaking hands with President Roosevelt. I wandered around the room, feeling Donald Brady’s breath down the back of my neck. Would there be anything to be gained by searching through all those drawers of files? Surely Donald Brady did the filing and he’d know what was in them.

  I noticed that a thin film of dust had already accumulated on the polished surface of the desk. Then my eye was drawn to the leather-bound blotter.

  “How often do you change the blotter?” I asked, trying to make out the words that had been blotted onto it.

  “As soon as it is full,” he replied. “The alderman was never one for waste.”

  I leaned over the desk and tried to make out the words. It was as I had suspected—the secretary wrote the letters and Mr. Hannan merely signed them. On the maroon sheet I could discern the alderman’s signature several times, but not much else. There were some scribbled figures, but I had no way of knowing what they were. And on one side of the maroon blotting paper a small list of words. I took my notepad from my purse and tried to make sense of them, as of course they were scribbled backward in the Alderman’s bold hand.

  Berlin

  Salem

  Granville

  Cambridge

  Brandon

  I read out the words to Brady. “Do these mean anything to you? Was the alderman maybe planning a trip to Europe? Or maybe something to do with Massachusetts? There are a Cambridge and a Salem near Boston, are there not?”

  He shook his head blankly. “I have never heard him mention any of those places to me. If indeed they are places. Isn’t there a new songwriter called Berlin? Brandon and Granville sound more like names.”

  I nodded. “They do indeed.” I paused. I had heard one of these words recently, but in what context I couldn’t remember. A name someone had mentioned in connection with the Newport cottages? Maybe the owner of one of the neighboring homes? I frowned then shook my head. “But they mean nothing to you? Not a list of people the alderman had to meet, or deal with in some way?”

  “I just told you, I don’t recall a mention of any of these names.”

  “When did you say you last changed the blotter?”

  He frowned. “Let me see. It would have been about a week before he left to go to Newport. He had a whole slew of dictation for me the day before he went, but just ordinary business letters, nothing of note.”

  “So those words were important enough to jot down within the last week that he was here.”

  “I suppose so,” he agreed grudgingly.

  “I’ll ask the family about them when I return to Newport,” I said. “But in the meantime, I should be getting along. I’ve a lot to accomplish in one day before I return to Newport.”

  He opened the door for me then followed me to the outer office. “You will let us know as soon as you have any news, won’t you?” he said. “And please tell Mr. Joseph Hannan that we are awaiting instructions on several matters to do with the business.”

  “I will tell him,” I said. “I presume he’ll be running the business now, unless the alderman left everything to another family member in his will.”

  “Even if he did, they were partners,” Brady pointed out. “To be sure Mr. Joseph was the junior but he’d still be involved in the running of the company.”

  I held out my hand to Brady. “Thank you for your help,” I said.

  “I wish we could have come up with more,” he replied. “But he was all efficiency at the office. If anything was happening in his life outside of his work, we’d never have heard about it.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said, and went down the stairs, wondering where on earth to go next.

  Thirty-three

  I spent a frustrating hour visiting first Alderman Hannan’s accountant and then his attorney. The former told me in a cold and patronizing voice that he did not intend to discuss Hannan company business with anyone, least of all an unknown woman. For all he knew, I could be yet another member of the press, digging for scandal.

  I assured him I was not only staying at
the estate at the invitation of Alderman Hannan, but that my husband was a New York policeman. Didn’t he want to help solve Mr. Hannan’s murder, I inquired? If the police came to him, naturally he would answer their questions, he replied impassively. Until then … and he personally escorted me to the door.

  The attorney was even more frustrating. His clerk informed me that he was not in the office, in fact he had gone out of town, and he couldn’t say when he would return. I came out onto Pearl Street and stood, letting the commerce of the city flow around me, wondering what else I could do. So far I had come all this way and accomplished very little. Dr. Birnbaum would not visit Kathleen. If Donald Brady knew anything, he had not divulged it to me. The accountant wouldn’t even speak to me. I was tempted to go to police headquarters and find out which officers had been working with Daniel on the investigation into the tunnel collapse and whether negligence had been found, but Daniel would not be happy that I was investigating without authority, and had kept salient facts from him. Besides, I couldn’t expose him to ridicule by his peers, that he now had his wife do his work for him.

  So reluctantly I turned in the other direction, toward Hester Street and the address of the former Mr. Frederick Hermann who had died in the tunnel collapse. Hester Street was all bustle and noise as usual, a jumble of pushcarts, crying babies, grubby children dodging in and out, laundry flapping. I steered my way through the crowds and entered the stairwell of a tall, grim tenement building. The smell was the same as in all those buildings—lack of good plumbing mingled with the lingering odor of various ethnic foods—garlic, cabbage, boiled fish, fried chick peas. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to his widow when I knocked on the door of the third floor apartment, and all thoughts went from my head when the door was opened by none other than the young man I had seen at the gate in Newport.