by John Mead
“Can you answer, sir?” the inspector quietly asked again, though Brandon’s mouth worked still he made no sound. He looked wildly around the room, his eyes avoiding his godson who stood at his side towering over him and came to rest on Martha’s rigid, staring face.
“Tell them, Brandon,” Martha’s voice was small but insistent. “Tell them what you know, what has occurred here with your wife.” Of all the people in the room she alone knew with certainty the robbery and murder were not linked, she was equally certain that Brandon would not murder his wife no matter how much he may have wanted to.
As he looked into Martha’s eyes it was if the years fell away and he remembered telling her how he wished his wife dead so he could marry the ‘widowed’ Martha. However, it had turned out that Martha was not a widow and years had passed during which he had learned to be content with his lot. His faith would not have let him divorce and his sense of honour would not of allowed harm come to his wife, though he thought nothing of betraying her with a number of women. It was to Hank he gave his answer, standing to look his godson in the eye and putting his hand on his shoulder, “I cannot explain how those things came into my room,” his voice was even and controlled, “the clasp looks like the one from your mother’s necklace that she wore at the ball. The handkerchief is mine but I do not know how it became stained. I can’t explain how I slept though what occurred here last night but I can tell you, on my oath, that I am not involved. I slept, as Fellows found me, a deep and restful sleep. Beyond that and the wish that this was nothing but a nightmare part of that sleep, I can add nothing.”
Kitty arrived just as O’Leary and Magnuson were taking Brandon O’Shea, arrested for the murder of his wife, to the police station. Beatrice Partkis had still not returned and was urgently being sought, suspicions growing every moment she was absent. The Pinkertons had slipped away to report back on events to their boss, though they could see no connection with the death of Mary Walsh news of O’Shea’s arrest would be of considerable interest to the detective agency. Fellows went to see to the servants, the ordering of the household and lunch for the four that remained.
Hank railed and fumed, unable to take in all that had occurred, whilst Jack brought an increasingly disbelieving Kitty up to date.
“This is madness,” Kitty clearly told them as Jack completed the story, “why should Brandon steal his own jewels? Though they were gifts to Josephine, everything in the house is his property?”
“I will not stand for this,” Hank stated, bounding out of the room as he spoke, “we have lawyers, I will have them go to the station to obtain my father’s release.”
“You see, Hank thinks so to,” Kitty concluded.
“The police think Brandon staged the robbery to make it look as if his wife was killed by persons unknown, his sleeping through the whole thing is an unconvincing alibi and the finding of the bloodstained handkerchief and the clasp in his room is evidence of his involvement. They have established that it would have been difficult for someone else to have entered the house and, frankly, housebreaker’s may carry guns in their pockets but rarely do they lug shotguns along.”
“You consider yourself an expert no doubt,” Kitty was disdainful. She did not yet know how she felt about Mrs O’Shea’s death but she liked Brandon, he had always been kind to her, and she did not like to see Hank hurting as he obviously now did.
“My husband simply means to explain things to you, they are not his thoughts but those of the police,” Martha told Kitty, who was not so many years younger than her but seemed most girlish in her ways. Kitty scowled in return, she did not like Martha, for one thing she was far too attractive for a woman her age, though at the moment she was pale and drawn, and hastily dressed. She had seen Jack’s wife a number of times, though usually at a distance at a ball or social gathering. Now close up, there was something in her expression that sparked a memory in Kitty’s mind that was immediately extinguished as Jack spoke.
“The police may jump at the obvious but Inspector O’Leary is no fool,” Jack explained. “Given the circumstances he had little choice but to arrest Brandon. It is Hugh’s daughter, Beatrice, I am concerned for as her absence implicates her and adds weight against Brandon’s side of the scale. Although, I expect she will appear at any moment with a completely innocent explanation.”
“I have sent word to our lawyer’s insisting they go to my father urgently,” Hank burst back into the room, his anxiety and frustration exhibiting itself in his need for action. “I am going to the station myself, but you are obviously welcome to stay here.”
“You should go to your wife first,” Martha told him. “Rumours spread like wildfire and she should hear of these events from you.”
“You should leave going to the police station,” Jack informed him, “your presence won’t help, only the lawyers can do that. I am going to visit Hugh Partkis, Beatrice’s father, and will then visit the station on my way home. You need to stay calm, look after your wife and see that the family business continues.”
Hank looked as if he very much wanted to smash something but nodded at Jack’s words, “You are right, before word spreads out of control I need to see a number of men, make certain they do not jump to unfounded conclusions. Then there is mother’s family to be told and our own clan, a funeral to be arranged… ” Hank’s voice trailed off.
“Go with him, Kitty,” Jack told her, as they said their farewells, Martha noting the fleeting and appreciative smile the younger woman flashed at her husband, but then they were parted. Leaving the big O’Shea’s mansion empty, apart from the servants who, under Fellows’ watchful eye, were quickly restoring it to its normal pristine condition.
“If you drop me anywhere near the city centre I have errands to run and people to see,” Martha informed Jack once they were settled in the cab.
“Could you let Andrew know, if I drop you at DeWert Holdings on LaSalle? I suspect he will want to know as might Chester. O’Leary will have made himself a legend by arresting Brandon, on top of his raid on Ruby’s, even if he is released,” Jack would have laughed at the thought, if Martha had not seemed so upset.
“Do you think him guilty?” she asked. “I know Brandon is capable of a great deal but even if he could do the act the manner of it seems wrong.”
“Most men are capable of anything and sensible men will do stupid things,” Jack stated, unhelpfully, but added, “although I agree with you that it is not so much Nina’s being killed as the odd way it was done.”
“It makes no sense, Jack,” Boat, the epitome of a worried parent told Stevens for the fifth or sixth time. “If she were going off somewhere for the day, certainly for the night, she would have told us, wouldn’t she Mother?” Mrs Partkis again nodded in agreement, biting her lip with her red-rimmed, teary eyes fixed on her front door and praying her eldest daughter, Beatrice, would enter the next moment.
“Hugh, sit down, your striding back and forth is not helping,” Jack almost ordered the ex-trooper to do his bidding. He was watching the worry eating away at the pair from the comfort of an armchair in his war buddy’s front parlour. The police had been and gone by the time he had arrived, Hugh had been on his way out to work and had sent a message to say he would not be in that day. The couple had done their best to answer the uniformed officers questions:
“Do you know where your daughter is?”
“Did she tell you she had the day off yesterday?”
“Do you know when she is expected to return to work?”
“Have you seen her at all this week?”
“Is she stepping out with anyone?”
“Have you any idea where she might be?”
“Does she speak about Mrs O”Shea?”
“Is she unhappy working for the O’Shea’s?
“Does she ever talk about Mr O’Shea?”
The answer to each question always being a variation of “No”
, though Mrs Partkis was able to give a fuller answer to who Beatrice’s friends were.
Finally Hugh’s temper snapped when the elder of the two officers asked, “Has she ever talked about her relationship with Mr O’Shea, has she found him particularly friendly or more informal with her than might normally be expected?” It was only too evident why his war comrades had nicknamed him ‘boat’ as he tore into the enemy all guns blazing, demanding to know what the officer meant by such a question and how dare he imply such a thing about his daughter who was a reputable and hardworking young woman.
“Now, Mr Partkis, please keep calm, we are here only… ” the officer began, taking a step back from the still muscular and imposing if older Boat.
“Only here, it would seem,” Boat interrupted, his voice a quite roar, the father bear anxiously defending his cub, “to impugn my daughter’s reputation. She would not steal from her employer, if she were given the day off she would not be present to have participated in the theft. She is no longer a child and lives her own life; she is not expected to tell us all that she does.” The latter of course was a lie, their daughter though in her mid-twenties and living away from home most of the time, her servants room at the O’Shea’s being larger and more private than her bedroom at home, but she was still expected to ask her parents permission to step out with anyone. Neither father nor mother could envisage a situation where their daughter would take a day off work and not tell her parents.
“Boat, sit down,” Jack stated firmly, as Hugh hesitated thinking himself master in his own house, but Jack was still his sergeant major and, without murmur, he seated himself in the armchair opposite, his wife on the sofa between them her eyes still fixed on the front door down at the end of the small hall. “I realise how you both must feel, I have a daughter myself and, though she is married and a mother, if she went missing I would be as concerned as you are now. However, let us be sensible and acknowledge that youngsters can act without thought.”
“Not my Beatrice,” Hugh stated empathically; daring Jack, sergeant major or not, to contradict him.
“Beatrice being the daughter of the young man, who was then the age she now is, who diverted his journey and life to follow a pretty young woman from New York to Chicago,” Jack pointed out. “She being as pretty as the woman that young man followed and, we must be honest, the pretty young woman made no objection to being followed from New York to Chicago; I even hear she spoke with and encouraged the young man in his wilfulness.”
“Times were different then?” Hugh stated, though his tone was calmer and Mrs Partkis took here eyes off the door to look at Jack, her face softening at the thought.
“It is still by far the most likely explanation that her going off is completely innocent and simply a coincidence,” Jack told them, the tension in the room easing with each word. “You can be absolutely assured she was not harmed or they would have found her alongside poor Nina.” The thought of this causing Mrs Partkis to start, Jack quickly went on, “As you have said, she was not in the house at the time.” Jack did not say that the police would be thinking she had got back into the house when the others were asleep, bringing the tools that her accomplice, Mr O’Shea, needed and taking the diamonds away with her when she left. If either of her parents thought this then they could not accept it as a possibility and made no mention of it nor allowed themselves to dwell on it.
“You are right, Jack,” Hugh acknowledged, looking at his wife, who nodded her agreement, though neither looked less worried. “It is those darned police getting us worked up over nothing.”
“You have given them the names of all her friends and the places she is likely to visit?” Jack asked. “You have not thought of anyone else since they left?”
“No,” Mrs Partkis found her voice for the first time since the police had left. “Beatrice would not go to the theatre without a friend and there are few she would stay the night with, all of them girls of good family you understand.”
“Banjo and my son are visiting all those we named, as are the police,” Hugh explained. “We thought her friends might talk more openly to her brother than those heavy booted imbeciles the police… ”
“Father, please,” Mrs Partkis quietened her husband’s flaring temper. “The main thing is they are looking for her and pray be she is quickly found to put an end to this nonsense.”
“Of course, Mother, I apologise,” Hugh stated, chastised.
“What sort of theatres does she go to?” Jack asked, hoping that the more questions he asked the more likely they might remember something that had not yet come to mind.
“Oh, nothing too high-brow nor anything unfitting,” Mrs Partkis said. “Her favourite is the ‘The Bijou’ on Jackson and Halstead.”
“I believe she last went in January, to ‘Haverly’s Theatre’, she spoke of it often,” Hugh told Jack with a slight smile at the memory of his daughter’s enthusiastic retelling of what she had seen there.
“And, apart from visits with her friends is there anything else of note she does?” Jack asked, wondering if there was a man anywhere in the story, “Anything at all she does or visits for entertainment?”
“She regularly attends church, of course,” Hugh said, “she has friends there and occasionally they meet to read and discuss passages from the bible.”
“There are also the recitals and lectures, many from the church go,” Mrs Partkis explained. “You will have heard of them, it was the family of that poor girl who was killed the other day who gave them.”
“You mean the Blackstaffs?” Jack asked, knowing he should not be surprised at this given the growing popularity of the reverend’s lectures and Miss Blackstaff’s piano recitals.
“Yes,” Hugh nodded, scratching his head as he strove to clarify a memory, “she was quite taken with it, something on the ‘Understanding the Symmetry of God’s Great Work’. I didn’t really understand but it seemed to be about how music, poetry and the bible are all expressions of God’s love, how everything He created works like a clock.”
“It included numbers, ‘mathematics’, she said,” Mrs Partkis actually smiled at the thought of her daughter struggling to explain what she had heard. “How numbers are the key to all things. She likes numbers, she cannot spell, unlike her sister who is better than any dictionary, it is why she became a maid as she could not pass the certificates her sister has to use the typewriting machine.”
“I did not take Reverend Blackstaff as a man much interested in numbers,” Jack said, before the mother’s reminiscing became too broad. “He seemed more a man of words.”
“It was the son who gave these lectures not the father,” Mrs Partkis explained.
“It’ll be a long shot,” Jack told them as he left, though Boat winked at the reference knowing Jack was an expert on long shots from his days in the Sharpshooter battalion, “but I will make a few enquires myself. With the police and Beatrice’s brother visiting her friends, including those from the church, you’ll soon be scolding her for having forgotten to tell you she was staying with a friend as part of some outing or party.”
Martha had strolled up and down LaSalle and then Jackson for over an hour, expecting at any minute to see Minsky appear outside the Grand Pacific, she had even gone inside to check that he had not arrived already. They had agreed to meet an hour before, after he had passed on the diamonds and received his IOU’s back thereby clearing his debts, but she had been delayed at the O’Shea’s. She knew her Ibrahim, her darling Minsky, could not be involved in the murder of Josephine O’Shea and, despite what her heart told her, she suspected that act had been committed by Brandon, at least done by his orders. Perhaps, she thought, after the theft had been discovered Brandon had finally had enough of his wife, perhaps even suspecting her of stealing her own diamonds to pawn, and that was that.
She was beginning to think she was attracting notice by constantly walking up and down the streets near the
hotel entrance and there was still no sign of Minsky, her worries and concerns multiplying by the moment. He had assured her that he had already agreed a safe way to contact and meet with Black Rube, Minsky had also assured her he had no intention of going anywhere near Black Hawk territory and the meeting to exchange ‘the goods’, as he termed them, would be done somewhere public. She gave up her vigil and had the hotel doorman hail her a cab to take her to Minsky’s apartment, if something had gone wrong then he would have returned there.
As much as she tried she could not help but dwell on the worst. Minsky was experienced in crooked deals and criminals but, even so, the meeting might have gone wrong. Worse still she could not keep the thought out of her head that he might have simply absconded with the diamonds. He had talked of his plans to put his disreputable past behind him, that great fortune meant little to him now and he looked only for a comfortable life which might allow him to occasionally meet with Martha. He spoke of using the small cut of the proceeds he would be paid to purchase a tobacconist shop with a room above, smart enough that he could take tea with her on occasions. The diamonds, however, were worth a fortune and he would know how to dispose of them and with the money sail back to Russia to live the life of a grandee.
She knew she risked embarrassment going to his apartment like this, having perhaps to explain herself to his neighbors, but as it turned out none of the residents were home. After a moments reflection she had the cab take her to her daughter’s, she knew Jack would be out late, going wherever his curiosity led him, and her grandchildren would distract her. Minsky would contact her as soon as he was able, she knew it in her heart, and he would send a message to her home pretending to be one of her female friends.
The precinct station had the feeling of a fortress under siege with uniformed officers bustling about and a number of shady looking men, who Jack assumed were plain clothes detectives, wandering in an out. In the street outside a number of men stood about in knots, watching the precinct doors, with carriages lining the street on either side, looking very much as if they waited for a signal to storm the station doors. In the middle of it all Jack sat calmly on a bench just inside the door waiting patiently to ask O’Leary’s permission to speak with his prisoner. He suspected that any past misdemeanour Cage had committed in his superiors’ eyes had been washed away by O’Shea’s arrest, given the increasing number of authoritative and commanding men that breezed into the station causing the coppers present to bustle about even more in pretence of being fully occupied.
