Crimson Snow

by Jeanne Dams

  His tone was dismissive, but Hilda wasn’t quite finished with her speech. “If there is anything I can do, sir, to help recover the stolen documents—”

  Colonel George barked a short laugh. “Precious little you can do there, girl. I’ll just get in touch with Perkins and have him send me a copy.”

  “Perkins, sir? Who is he?”

  The colonel raised his eyebrows. “If it’s any business of yours, Hilda, Perkins is the Pinkerton’s man who’s investigating—”

  “Oh, sir! Excuse me, sir, but does he have a mustache?”

  “What on earth does that have to do with anything? Yes, he does, as a matter of fact. Full handlebar, sort of sandy-colored. Thank you, Hilda.” He turned back to his desk.

  This time she dared not ignore the dismissal. She curtseyed to his back and fled from the office, thoughts whirling in her head.

  Think. She had to think. Where could she be alone and undisturbed to get her thoughts in order?

  Mr. Williams’s room. With the household in some disarray, it was unlikely anyone would bother to clean a room that wasn’t in use. She ran lightly up the back stairs to the top floor and crossed the ballroom to Mr. Williams’s bedroom.

  There was no fire, of course, but there was a scuttle of coal standing ready. Hilda laid the fire quickly and skillfully and lit it, and soon a gentle warmth began to spread through the room. She sat down at Mr. Williams’s desk, found pen, ink, and paper, and began to put her thoughts in order.

  PERKINS

  That was the heading, in bold capitals. She paused a moment, shaking her head. If only Colonel George read the paper more carefully, he would have seen that a man named Perkins was missing, and might have put two and two together. As it was, valuable time had been wasted.

  She didn’t intend to waste any more. Rapidly she began setting down details:

  Red mustache.

  Pinkerton’s man, working for Col. G.

  Spying at Mrs. Schmidt’s.

  She paused at that last entry. She had assumed, when she had heard that story, that Perkins was the murderer, looking for prey. She had assumed that he was the man in the overcoat seen at the head of the alley where Miss Jacobs had been killed, and that he was probably her killer.

  But suppose she had been looking at this from the wrong end altogether? Perkins wasn’t a policeman, but he was a detective. Pinkerton’s men had a good reputation for honesty and integrity.

  If he wasn’t lurking as a killer outside Mrs. Schmidt’s house that night, what was he doing?

  There was only one answer to that, and Hilda wrote it down:

  He suspected that Mrs. Schmidt operated a bawdy house.

  Hilda shivered. She had been inside that house. Little Eileen O’Hara worked there. Did she live there? Was she—surely not! Twelve years old!

  Miss Jacobs had lived there, too. Erik’s teacher, whom he loved. The girl who had been so active in her church, who had loved to sing to the accompaniment of a mandolin, who was cheerful and friendly, but didn’t go out much and didn’t have much money.

  Was it possible that such a girl had also been a prostitute?

  Hilda remembered something Colonel George had said in passing, when Mr. Barrett had first asked her to help with the investigation. “There’s some doubt about how good she was.” Something like that.

  Hilda didn’t want to believe it, but there was some further evidence. Miss Jacobs had been a close friend of Miss Lewis, and Miss Lewis, if rumor was to be believed, was or had been with child. And Kathleen, the maid at the boarding house, hadn’t thought she had any particular men friends. It was more than possible, it began to seem likely, that the man responsible for Miss Lewis’s baby was not a friend at all, but a—Hilda didn’t know what to call him. Customer?

  If there was a baby. If all of this weren’t the merest speculation. Hilda wished she had just one solid fact, one thing she could say for certain that she knew. She held her head in her hands. A headache was coming on, she thought.

  She reached in her pocket to see if she had a packet of the headache powder that sometimes helped. Her fingers met folded paper. Money! The money Mr. Barrett and Colonel George had given her for Mrs. Chudzik. She would have to take her the clothes and shoes soon, but they wouldn’t be delivered by the Malloys’ coachman today. The weather was—

  She became very still, her thoughts backtracking. There was one thing she knew for certain. Nelka Chudzik was missing. And Nelka worked at the Oliver Hotel, and was there the day before Perkins disappeared.

  It was slender, but it was fact. Hilda didn’t know why Perkins had fled. She didn’t know why he had failed to pay his bill, and then had sent the money. She didn’t know why he had given a false name and address, though she knew that Pinkerton’s men often did work in disguise. She didn’t know what the blank message for him meant. But she meant to know those things as soon as she could.

  Her headache forgotten, she ran downstairs and approached Colonel George once more.

  “Sir, I am sorry to trouble you, but I must know how I can speak to Mr. Perkins. It is very important. I believe he might help to discover who killed Miss Jacobs.”

  …state’s sole evidence based on one mustache hair…

  —South Bend Tribune

  May 26, 1904

  28

  SHE HAD CAUGHT HIM in the middle of a complicated calculation. He put down his pen. “Hilda, I am very busy today. I don’t have time for this sort of thing. How could Perkins possibly be connected with the Jacobs affair?”

  “It would take a long time to explain, sir, but if you can tell me how I can find him and talk to him, I believe I might learn some important things.”

  His expression changed. He sighed wearily. “Well, I hope you’re right and you’re really onto something. I saw Robert Barrett yesterday and he’s not a well man. If you don’t find out something soon… Well. The Perkins fellow gave me an address where a telegram would always reach him. I meant to wire him today anyway about those reports. Why don’t you send that, and ask him whatever you want in the same wire? I know that address is around here somewhere.…”

  He produced it eventually, after scrabbling around in several drawers, and Hilda took it with a murmur of thanks. She had never sent a telegram in her life. She didn’t even know where the Western Union office was, but Anton would know. He was the one who was always dispatched with messages, unless Colonel George phoned the telegraph office himself. Hilda didn’t know how to do that either, but she was on the scent now, and nothing would keep her from sending that wire.

  She trudged upstairs for the third time in an hour. Really, there were a great many stairs. She would not miss them when she left this house.

  She paused on the second floor and moved out onto the landing of the main part of the house. It was shadowy on this dark winter day, but some of the architectural details were visible. The graceful curve of the stair railing. The carving on window and door frames. The well-fitted louvered shutters, folded now into the recesses on either side of the many windows. The rich carpets on the floor. The elegant chandelier hanging from the ceiling, not lit now, but ready to cast its warm gas glow when evening came. The plants on their delicate stands.

  It was beautiful, and familiar, and yes, Hilda admired it. But she knew just how much work it took to keep everything in shining, spotless order, the dusting and scrubbing and polishing that had to be done day in and day out by the five resident servants and the many dailies. Then there were the laundress, and the gardener, and the secretary who came in sometimes to help in the office, and the waiters and waitresses who came in for big parties.

  This house had been the center of her life for seven years. Things were about to change. Perhaps she would never see the inside of this house again.

  And then she laughed. Of course she would! She and Patrick would, with any luck at all, soon be very well-to-do indeed. She, Hilda Johansson Cavanaugh, would sit on committees with the likes of the Mrs. Studebakers and the Oliver ladie
s, and she and Patrick would be invited to parties at this house. Then and there Hilda resolved to keep an eye on the housekeeping standards of Tippecanoe Place when she was a fine lady visitor, and have a word with Mr. Williams if they were not acceptable.

  It was such an agreeable thought that she ran up the remaining flight of stairs as if on wings. How good life was! How fortunate she was! But it was not all good fortune. If she, Hilda Johansson, had not had a good brain, if she had not solved the Malloys’ problem for them, none of these wonderful things would have happened. And before she could settle into her new life, there was another problem looming before her to be solved, a big one. She’d best stop mooning about and get to work.

  Sitting in Mr. Williams’s room, she gave careful thought to the wording of the telegram she needed to send. Telegrams were not very private, not like letters. She didn’t know who might see it on its way to Mr. Perkins.

  After many attempts and crossings-out (and the waste of a good deal of Mr. Williams’s paper), she sat back to look at what she had written (in capital letters, like a proper telegram):

  YOUR REPORTS TO G STUDEBAKER STOLEN STOP SEND COPIES IMMEDIATELY STOP ALSO ARRANGE TO MEET AS SOON AS POSSIBLE STOP URGENT SIGNED H JOHANSSON FOR G STUDEBAKER

  It was going to be a ruinously expensive wire to send, but Hilda would pay for it herself. She still had plenty of expense money from Mr. Barrett, and she felt at least partly responsible for the loss of the reports.

  She looked out of the window. The weather was worse than ever. A stiff wind was driving the mix of rain and snow horizontally, and it was freezing as it hit the ground. She could see almost no one on the streets, not even in carriages. The roads were too bad to risk driving horses that might easily break a leg on the ice. Sighing, she went to her own room to don her warmest and most waterproof garments.

  She found Anton in one of the cellars, stoking the furnace. He looked like a guttersnipe, his face and shirt black with soot.

  “Have you been rolling in the coal?” asked Hilda pleasantly.

  Anton grinned. “It blew back on me when I opened the door. I’m not real good at the furnace yet, but I’m learning.”

  “Be careful you do not burn yourself to a crisp before you do learn. Now, Anton, I must take a telegram to Western Union.”

  “In this weather? I’ll take it, Hilda. Leastways, as soon as I get cleaned up I will.”

  “Thank you, but this one I prefer to take myself. Where is the Western Union office?”

  “Main Street, next door to the Oliver. Well, it’s in the Oliver, actually, in the building, I mean. But it’s no weather for a lady to be out in. Better let me.”

  She smiled at that. “I am not a lady. Not yet. Not quite. I will be careful, Anton.”

  Main Street was four blocks away. Hilda was chilled to the bone before she had reached the end of the driveway. The wind, coming straight from the north, blew rain against her cheek with the force of hail and penetrated every seam of her clothing. She could barely keep her footing. She was numb with cold and nearly blinded from the ice on her eyelashes when she reached the Washington Street side of the Oliver. That was the main entrance, and she could step in and get warm and cut through the lobby to the other side.

  “Be careful, miss!” A bellboy caught her arm as she slipped on the wet marble floor of the entry. “You didn’t ought to be out in that there ice storm, miss. Was you wanting a room?”

  She fumbled in a pocket for a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “No, I only want to warm myself for a little. If I go out that door over there, how far is it to the telegraph office?”

  “No need to go out, miss. There’s an entrance right here in the hotel. If you was wanting to send a telegram, I can do it for you, miss.”

  His voice was eager. Business had not been very good this morning, Hilda surmised. She reached in her pocket for the message she had composed so carefully.

  The paper was wet. Unfolding it, she found that the ink had run a little. “Will they be able to read this, do you think?” She handed the note to the boy.

  He read it, and his face changed. “Say, miss, if you’re writin’ to that Perkins fellow, you need to know there ain’t no such person. Well, there is, if you know what I mean, only that ain’t his name. And whatever his name is, I could get your message to him quicker if I just took it myself. ’Cause, on account of he’s here in the hotel right this minute!”

  Hilda blinked away the water that had dripped from her sodden hat into her eyes. “How do you know? Is your name Joe, perhaps?”

  “That it is, miss, and—oh! You’d be Miss Johansson! I didn’t reckernize you, but you talk kind of funny, like a Swede. Beggin’ yer pardon, miss.”

  “It does not matter. Joe, if you will go up to Mr. Perkins’s room and ask him to come down here, I will give you twenty-five cents. If he comes back with you, I will give you another twenty-five cents. Tell him it is about Colonel Studebaker’s business and I am a messenger for him. And is there a place where I can dry my face and tidy myself a little?”

  “You bet, miss! The ladies’ retiring room has towels, and mirrors, and there’s a maid there to help you. And when you’re done you can come back out to the lounge, and I’ll bring Mr. Perkins-or-whoever-he-is to you in a jiffy!”

  Hilda gravely handed him a quarter and went in the direction he pointed out to effect repairs.

  When she came out, as dry and neat as possible in the circumstances, she looked around for Joe. He was just coming out of the elevator with a man, and Hilda uttered a regrettable Swedish expression under her breath. The man was not well dressed—not shabby, exactly, but not the natty dresser Andy had described—and he was clean shaven. Plainly this was some other Mr. Perkins, and she had wasted time while the telegram to the real detective could have been on its way.

  Joe bowed the man to a seat and came to get Hilda.

  “Joe, that is not—” she began in an undertone.

  “Yes, it is, miss. He looks different, but he’s the same man. I follered him all one night. He can change his name, and he can change his clothes and shave off his mustache, but he can’t change his voice nor the way he walks. That’s the man as was cal-lin’ hisself Perkins the last time he stayed here.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Sure as I’m standin’ here, miss.”

  “Very well.” She handed over the other quarter and allowed herself to be escorted to the bored-looking man in the armchair by the potted palm.

  “This here’s Miss Johansson, sir, as was asking for Mr. Perkins.” And without waiting for the man’s reaction, Joe melted away, leaving Hilda to cope as best she could.

  The man had risen, of course. Now he bowed slightly. “I’m afraid there’s some mistake. My name is not Perkins.”

  “No,” said Hilda very quietly. “I do not imagine that it is. But you are a detective hired by Colonel George Studebaker to investigate a problem in this city. My first duty is to tell you that your reports to him have been stolen, and he needs you to give him copies. But I am investigating a problem, too, that I begin to think may be connected. We should go somewhere more private to talk, should we not?”

  “Here,” said the man in a near whisper, “are you a Pinkerton, too?”

  “Then it is true that they have hired some women? No, I am not, but I am an investigator, and we must talk.”

  “There’s always my room,” he said dubiously.

  “No.” Hilda blushed and was furious with herself. “I am an unmarried woman. That would not do at all. But there is a writing room, and I do not believe anyone is in it now.”

  He gestured acquiescence and Hilda led the way.

  “Now, how the dickens did you figure out who I am?” he said, when they had reached the quiet sanctuary of the writing room.

  “I still do not know who you are, only what you are.”

  “My name’s Frank Lowell, if you must know. But how—”

  “I work for the Studebakers. Colonel Studebaker told me your na
me—the name of Perkins, I mean—and I put that together with some other things. But there are questions I need answered, and quickly. A man is wrongly accused of murder, and he is very ill.”

  “I see.” Mr. Lowell looked at her sharply. “All right. There’s apt to be things I can’t tell you, but ask away. I’ll tell you what I can.”

  Hilda had tidied her thoughts while she tidied her face and hair. “The first matter is, where is Nelka Chudzik?”

  “And what makes you think I know?”

  “Mr. Lowell, if you ask me a question every time I ask you one, I will never learn anything. Let us not waste time. Do you know where she is, or not?”

  “You’re a businesslike young woman, aren’t you? All right, all right.” He held up his hand. “No more questions. Yes, I do know where she is. And no, I’m not going to tell you. I sent her off as much for her own good as for mine. She’d found out just a little more about me than was quite safe. I arranged with a cousin of mine, a respectable maiden lady, to meet her here at the hotel on the Wednesday afternoon and take her home. And as soon as I’ve finished with my work here, Miss Nellie’ll come back safe and sound.”

  Hilda nodded, trying to conceal her relief. “I was not sure, but I thought it might be something like that. Does her mother know where she is?”

  “Not where, but she knows the girl’s okay. At least, I let Nellie send her a letter. I guess the old woman can’t read, but if she got someone to read it to her, she shouldn’t be worrying.”

  “The last time I saw her she was very worried indeed. I do not think she knew where Nelka was. I hope that by now someone has read her the letter. I will see to it. Now, Mr. Lowell, I must tell you that I know what you were investigating for Colonel Studebaker, and I know that you went on at least one night to the house where Miss Jacobs roomed.”

  “How—”

  “A boy followed you,” she said, noting with some satisfaction the man’s embarrassment. “But that does not matter. Mr. Lowell, do you believe that Mrs. Schmidt’s house is—er—irregular in any way?” It was one thing to use the term “bawdy house” in the bosom of her soon-to-be family, and quite another to use it to a stranger, and a man at that.