Miss Franklin handed Dr. Keating a steaming cup. “We were just talking about Ida Mae’s invitation to speak at the Washington Equal Suffrage Association Convention this year.”
“Really, Ida Mae?” Dr. Keating asked. “That’s quite an accomplishment. Have you thought about what you’re going to say?”
“You have to talk about temperance,” the gray-haired woman said.
“Are you for it or against it, Mrs. Steele?” Dr. Keating asked.
So Mrs. Steele was the gray-haired woman, and Mrs. Noonan was the brunette, which meant the dyed woman holding Jane was Mrs. Reed. I tried to memorize their faces.
“For it, of course,” Mrs. Steele said. “Drink does nothing good for any man, and it’ll wreck a home quicker than a speeding locomotive.”
“I agree with Mrs. Steele,” Mrs. Noonan said. “Aside from tonics and cures, of course.”
“Lips that touch liquor will never touch mine,” Miss Franklin pronounced as if delivering a frightening ultimatum.
I leaned forward to see around Dr. Keating. Miss Franklin’s chin was up and her lips were pursed. I met Dr. Keating’s eyes and read a message not to laugh, which only made me want to. I quickly looked away.
“I’m not so sure,” Ida Mae said. “We’ve got the women on our side for the most part, but it’s the men who can give us the right to vote. We have to cut ourselves off from the Temperance Union if we want more men on our side, at least here in Hillyard.”
“Oh, they’re not going to like that at the convention,” Mrs. Steele said.
“Well, they’re going to have to like it sooner or later,” Ida Mae said. “We have to make people see that the women’s vote is more than just a women’s issue. Too many people think it’s a trivial matter, that giving women the vote is just a nice thing to do for the ladies. We have to make them see how important it is. It’s women’s votes that will save this country from the ruinous course it’s on.”
“Very nice, Ida Mae,” Dr. Keating said. “You should use that line in your speech.”
Ida Mae looked a bit self-conscious. “Well, I have written a little bit of it already. But it’s true. As long as women are kept from making the important decisions, things will only get worse. I tell you, socialism will take over this country before you know it.”
“You sound almost pleased about it, Ida Mae,” Mrs. Steele said.
“Maybe I am,” Ida Mae said. “It would be best if we could take care of our own people without it, but we’re not doing a very good job of it, are we?”
“Speaking of taking care of people, I’d better get back at it,” Dr. Keating said. “Miss Chumley, will you let me take a look at that arm of yours?”
“Don’t go so soon, Dr. Keating,” Miss Franklin said.
“I must, I’m afraid.” Dr. Keating stood and picked up her bag. “I have other patients to see this afternoon too. I don’t have much time for meetings, I’m afraid, but if I can show the people of this town that a woman can do a man’s job, maybe they’ll start to think a woman can vote too. Miss Chumley, where can I examine your arm?”
“We can go to my rooms, but I’m watching the baby.” I rose and reached for Jane.
“No, no.” Mrs. Reed hugged the child close. “You just leave her here with me. Go let Dr. Keating do her doctoring. I’ll take care of this little lamb.”
I couldn’t believe my luck. “Thank you, Mrs. Reed. If I see Cora, I’ll send her right in.” I scampered out of the room before she could change her mind. Dr. Keating followed me and I led her upstairs.
“I see you’ve taken off your wrapping,” Dr. Keating said.
“Yes. I took it off to bathe last night, and I couldn’t wrap it again by myself. I think it’s better, though.”
I opened the door to my sitting room and turned on the electric light with a surge of pride. Dr. Keating was my first visitor.
She walked in and looked around. “Charming,” she said, but without the high praise I felt the room deserved. I followed her gaze and saw the room through her eyes. I realized that, as much as I loved the little room, it wasn’t charming at all, especially when I compared it in my mind with Cora’s room. Aside from the furniture there was nothing in it except for one plum-colored pillow and a stack of seventh grade geography essays.
“I’m going to get a nice rug for the center of the room,” I said. “And pictures for the walls, of course, and books. I only moved in Friday night.”
Dr. Keating raised her brows just a smidge and said, “I was hoping for a kettle.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. There’s no way to heat water except downstairs. Well, there’s hot water in the bathroom, but that’s all. Ida Mae thought fireplaces were unnecessary upstairs, since we have these nice steam radiators.” I placed my fingers on the accordioned iron. It was hot, but not hot enough to blister my skin or boil water. “Did you want some more tea? I did see a nice oil burner yesterday at Tuppin’s Dry Goods, but Ida Mae doesn’t allow cooking in the rooms. And it cost a dollar,” I added when I remembered that I was a poor schoolteacher. “Would you like me to go downstairs and bring up a tray?”
“No, no, I don’t want tea. I thought we might boil the flannel for your arm, but it’s not necessary.” She scratched her head and made a grimace with her nose.
“Is something wrong, Dr. Keating?”
“No, no, not at all. I just wondered who turned on the spigot.”
“The spigot?”
“You didn’t make two peeps downstairs. And now...”
I slapped my hands to my mouth. I’d never been accused of talking too much before. It was as if my impersonation of Miss Chumley was changing me into someone unlike me. “I’m sorry,” I said through my fingers.
“No, don’t be sorry, Miss Chumley, and don’t stop, please.” She put her hand on my shoulder and smiled. “I like you this way. It’s a bit of a surprise, that’s all.”
“I couldn’t speak downstairs,” I said. “By the time I thought of something to say, somebody else was already talking.”
Dr. Keating nodded. “It happens that way sometimes, doesn’t it? And suffragists are not meek women. Go get your flannel, Miss Chumley.”
I retrieved it from the bedroom. When I returned to the sitting room I found she had made herself at home by moving the two chairs together. She sat in one and waved me forward to the other.
“Sit here,” she said. “I can examine your arm best from this angle.”
I sat and she took my arm. Her hands were larger than mine, and freckled. She turned my wrist about, wiggled my fingers, and pressed her own in various spots along my hand and arm. I watched her face as she worked. She had a gap between her two front teeth, and she thrust her tongue along it as she concentrated. Her braid, which was looped tightly at the back of her head, could not control the individual copper hairs that escaped and curled about her head like a thousand tiny halos.
She pressed on a particular spot on my wrist, and I sucked in a breath. She gave a nod, returned my hand gently to my lap, and sat back in the parlor chair, her arms resting along its sides. “I don’t like the looks of it,” she said. “It shouldn’t still be swollen like that. I think a bone in your wrist is broken. I ought to put a plaster cast on it.”
“Oh no, not a cast,” I pleaded. “It’s not that bad. It doesn’t feel broken.”
“Yes, it does,” she said. “You wouldn’t hiss like that when I touch it if it didn’t.”
“But I can move it.”
“Only in some directions. If you move it out of place, it’ll hurt like the dickens.”
“But I start teaching tomorrow. I don’t want to have a cast on my first day. How will I write on the blackboard?”
She stared at me and sucked at the gap in her teeth as she thought. “All right,” she finally said. “I’ll wrap it again, but we’ll use fresh flannel and I’ll make it good and tight.” She rummaged in her bag and came up with a roll. I gave her my hand and she began wrapping.
“What grade are you teaching?” she as
ked.
“Third,” I said. “Except for one class at the end of the day. Seventh grade geography.”
“Seventh grade? They’ll be as big as you.”
“Really?” I pictured Guy and Carrie, the only seventh graders I’d met. They were both smaller than I. Thinking of Guy reminded me of something else. “Did you hear about that man who was killed yesterday?”
“Hear about it? I should think so. They came and rousted my uncle out of bed to look at him and declare him dead. Uncle still acts as coroner around here, though I’ve offered to do the job.” She laughed, but not with humor. “I’m too dainty to look at dead bodies, they say.”
“I suppose there isn’t any doubt...”
“About whether he was dead? No, he was dead all right. He was shot in the head, you know. His face was...well, you don’t need to know the details.”
“I mean, is there any doubt it was him? Mr. Stanfield?”
She paused in her work and looked up. “Why? Did you know him?”
“No, not really. We rode the same train out here. He was kind to me.”
She frowned. “It was him all right. He had papers with him. He had a watch engraved with his name. They were his clothes and they were tailored for him perfectly. I’m sorry.” She finished wrapping and pinned the last bit of flannel place. “There you go. Be gentle with it and it should do.” She closed her bag and stood. “I’d better go finish my rounds.”
I opened the door and escorted her out. She paused in the hall. “I’ll stop by in two or three days and rewrap it for you.”
“That’s not necessary. I know you’re busy. My arm is fine, Dr. Keating. You don’t have to—”
She put her hand on my shoulder. “Do you want a cast?” There was a glint in her eye.
“No. Thank you, Dr. Keating.”
She squeezed my shoulder. “I’m not too busy to look at your arm. And I wish you would call me Adelaide. I feel we will be friends.”
I felt a rush of pleasure. “Thank you. I will. I feel that too, Adelaide. Please call me N—Mabel.” I nearly said Nell. A hiccup of a question crossed her eyes, but at the same moment the door below opened and Grace and Trissie breezed in.
“Adelaide!” Grace called out. She trotted up the stairs. “I’m glad to see you. Didn’t expect to see you up here, though.”
“You never know where I’ll turn up,” Adelaide said cheerfully. She removed her hand from my shoulder to slap Grace on the back like a man. “It’s good to see you, Grace.” When Trissie reached the top of the stairs, Adelaide leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “You look lovely today, Trissie. New hat?”
Trissie blushed and nodded. “Are you leaving?” she asked.
“She has time to come in and visit with us,” Grace pronounced. “You haven’t seen our rooms yet, Adelaide.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have time today. I have patients waiting for me. Another time, perhaps.” Adelaide turned back to me. “I’ll see you in a day or two, Mabel.” She smiled, gave a backward wave, and was gone.
Grace and Trissie stared at me with some surprise.
“I didn’t know you were so cozy with our doctor, Mabel,” Grace said.
I shrugged, held up my wrapped hand in explanation, and slipped back into my room.
Chapter Nine
A COLD WIND blew through my coat and flapped my skirts as I made my escape from the house. Fat white clouds scudded across the sky and blocked the sun more often than not, but I didn’t mind. Anything was better than being cooped up inside with Jane. Poor Cora. She’d returned to the house, finally, and took Jane off my hands. I didn’t blame her for wanting a day of freedom, but I would not be duped by her again.
I made my way downtown. The railroad did not rest on the Sabbath, and neither did its workers. Even on Sunday the pool halls and saloons of Hillyard were open and busy, but the businesses that might welcome a lady were all closed. Pemberton’s, Minthorn’s, and Hennessey’s Confectionary were all locked and dark.
I followed the silent trolley tracks west from downtown, then walked north two blocks and reached the school. It was closed too, of course, but I only wanted to see it before tomorrow. The building was solid brick, three and a half stories high with an elegant bell tower perched on top. I counted thirty-six windows on one side of the building and twenty-four on the front, not counting the many small panes that surrounded the entrance. “Hillyard High” was engraved in the stone across the top of the front door, but I knew from Mrs. Dunn that the building currently housed the elementary grades as well as the high school. It was an impressive building for the size of the town. I wondered who provided the funds to build it. The railroad?
The school was the last building in town. Beyond it a snowy plain spread wide, bisected by train tracks and a churned up road that paralleled them. On the right side of the tracks, in the distance, I saw small figures running about and heard the shouts and laughter of young boys. Avoiding the muddy snow, I stepped up onto the tracks and matched the length of my stride with the distance between the wooden ties. The sounds of the boys’ voices grew louder as I approached.
“Two balls! Come on, pitch it right.”
“I am. That was a perfect pitch.”
“Was not. You couldn’t hit the side of barn if it rolled up to you.”
“Oh yeah? Watch out. You better hit this one. It’s going to be perfect.”
“Foul ball!”
“Look out lady!”
A small white ball smashed into the ground beside me and shattered, pieces of it rolling into the ditch that ran alongside the tracks.
“Dead man’s foul. You’re out.”
“That is not a dead man’s foul!”
“Is too.”
“Is not.”
A herd of boys ran toward me and what was left of the ball. There were six of them, and one of them was Guy Dunn. A large boy with a round freckled face slid a foot into the shallow ditch and bent low.
“See? It’s in the ditch.”
“That’s not dead man territory. Besides, that’s not where it landed. Look it landed up here, didn’t it lady?”
Guy stood back from the others and looked embarrassed. “Hello, Guy,” I said.
“Hello, Miss Chumley,” he mumbled.
The other boys grew still and eyed me. After a long moment, a dark-haired boy, taller than Guy, squared his shoulders and said, “Hello, Miss Chumley. Guy said you’re going to be our Geography teacher. I’m looking forward to it ma’am. I’m Russell Gordon Walker.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Russell.” I’d seen his name on one of the essays I’d read, but I wasn’t sure which one. I looked at the other boys and wondered if any of them would be in my class too.
“This is Dewey, ma’am,” Russell said, waving his arm at the freckle-faced boy in the ditch. “He’s in our class too.”
“Hello, Dewey.”
He flushed bright red and looked at the ground.
“These other fellows are eighth graders. They’re not in our class.”
I was relieved. They were big boys. “I didn’t realize you could play baseball in the snow,” I said.
“It’s not baseball,” Guy said. “It’s a snowball. See?” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a ball of snow that glistened with a solid coating of ice. “We make them ahead of time. You make a snowball and roll it in water and let it freeze.”
“You must go through a lot of them in one game,” I said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Russell said. “They usually crack up when we hit them with the bat. It’s good practice anyway. And sometimes they fly, like this one.”
“What’s a dead man’s foul?” I asked.
Several boys talked at once. “It’s where we found the body. Right over here, ma’am. Dewey found it. Tell her, Dewey. Rory hit a foul ball past right field and Dewey went to get it and found the body. Now it’s an immediate out if the ball goes there. Tell her, Dewey.”
But Dewey was the only boy who didn’t
speak as they led me to dead man’s foul territory. It was only a few yards farther up the tracks, and I would have recognized it without their help. The ground was clearly disturbed. Footprints much larger than the boys’ trampled the snow and dirt and dry winter weeds. Wagon wheel tracks led horizontally from the scene, over the railroad tracks, and onto the road back to town.
“There was blood everywhere when we saw it,” one of the bigger boys said. “It was all over his head and on the snow. Marshal Mitchell covered it up.”
“Maybe you can still see it if we dig,” another eighth grader offered. He kicked at the ground.
“No, no.” I put out a hand to stop him. “That’s all right. But this must be where he was killed, then.”
“Yes, we got some of the shot,” Russell said. He pulled off his mitten and dug into a pocket to show me the pellets of lead he’d scavenged from the ground. “Marshal Mitchell took some of them, but we got the rest.”
“Why would he have come out here?” I asked, but the boys just shrugged and pocketed their gruesome souvenirs. I turned my back on the site of poor Mr. Stanfield’s death. I could think of no reason for Mr. Stanfield to have traveled half a mile north of town where there was nothing but a snowy playfield. Could he have been taken there by force? But why?
“I’ll see you boys tomorrow,” I said, and headed back toward town, once again stepping from wooden tie to wooden tie, developing an odd rhythm in my gait that accompanied my thoughts. The only person I knew in town who might know something of Mr. Stanfield was Carrie’s mother. Mr. Stanfield had called her Hester. Perhaps one night after school I would stop at Hennessey’s Confectionary and ask her.
By following the tracks, I reached the northern edge of Hillyard. There the tracks diverged and multiplied, threading out like veins in a body toward the various railroad shops that spread out on the east side of town. I stepped off the tracks onto the road that started beside Hillyard Lumber on my right. Most of the main downtown businesses showed only their backs to the railroad tracks. A few, like the lumberyard, the furniture store, and the depot, faced the rail yards.
I passed the lumberyard and the neighboring blacksmith shop. The next building was the undertakers. As I approached, the door opened and four men, one of them the marshal, hauled out a casket. I stepped back to avoid his notice.
Alias Mrs Jones Page 7
