The Fall Of White City (Gilded Age Mysteries Book 1)
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“Franz!” She shook him. “This does no one any good! Please try to calm yourself.”
He threw his head back and took a deep breath. Evangeline could see that his eyes were red from suppressed tears. “You are right, Fräulein, I must try. Even though I believe it is useless, I must try to act as if this nightmare will end, and I will somehow wake up from it.” He walked her back to the cot and seated her. Still standing and occasionally pacing fretfully, he began.
“I was foolish to think I could prevent anything. I should have known on the night she was killed. Perhaps there is such a thing as fate—schicksal—after all.”
Evangeline tried to bring him back to the point. “Facts, Franz, we must deal in facts if anything is to be done. What happened the night Elsa died that put you here?”
“Ja, ja Fräulein, das ist sehr zutreffend,” he lapsed into German.
“Sie müssen Englisch sprechen, Herr Bauer. Sie sind nicht in Deutschland jetzt,” Evangeline cautioned.
“If I was still in Germany, this would not have happened to me.”
“That is what we were speaking about, Franz. What did happen?”
He shook his head, as if to clear away the multitude of images crowding his brain and to select the one that mattered. “Elsa, she had been acting strange, merkwürdig, for many months before. First singing and humming to herself, laughing too easily—too happy. She would disappear in the evenings sometimes. When I would ask where she had been, she would just smile—a secret smile—geheimnisvoll. And so, I began to worry.
“I thought she must be seeing a man—someone she would not be proud to have me know about. One evening when she was out I searched through her room to see if I could find letters, anything. Instead, I found jewelry, a fine linen handkerchief—expensive things—things I knew she could never afford. I was afraid she was throwing herself away on some rich man who would afterward sweep her from him like so much trash swept into the gutter.”
Franz had worked himself up to quite a pitch by now. His face had become more feverish with each sentence. Evangeline was about to say something to quiet him. He seemed to guess her intention and waved his hand in irritation. “No, no, Fräulein. You must let me finish!”
She sat back down silently and waited.
He continued, “And then her happy moods became less and less. She sighed to herself when she thought no one was looking. When I would ask her what was wrong, she would shake her head and start to cry. I did not know what to do! Finally, I could stand this waiting and watching no longer. I decided to follow her and come face to face with this man, whoever he was.
“Last Saturday she left quietly in the evening. She did not think I was in the house when she let herself out. It must have been almost nine o’clock. When she left she was carrying a small valise. I thought she must be planning to stay away for the night. I followed her. She walked north for many blocks until she was near downtown and then she found a cab. I kept up on foot and saw the driver let her out by one of the fancy hotels on State Street—the one that is called the Templar House. I saw her go in by a side door.”
“You mean the Ladies’ Entrance?” Evangeline referred to the side entrance off of Monroe Street, where unaccompanied ladies could check in without being accosted by men in the front lobby.
“Yes, that was where she went. I walked up and down on the street. I wanted to wait until she was in her room, and I could catch her there with the man she came to meet. The more I walked, around and around the hotel, the angrier I came to be. How could she do this? How could she throw herself away like this? Who did this man think he was? Was he so rich that he could treat my sister like a... like a... straßenmädchen!” Franz seemed to be reliving the rage of that moment. Evangeline saw his face twisted by fury. Again she felt the strange sensation of seeing Elsa’s face distorted into a grotesque mask. She would never have believed Franz capable of such violent emotion. But she had never seen him provoked by such a set of circumstances either.
He paced back and forth, scarcely aware of her presence as he resumed his story. “So after some time I decided to go in. I walked up to the desk clerk and demanded he should tell me what room my sister was in. He looked at me like I was vermin—ungeziefer. Something that had crawled across his lobby floor. He was so polite but with so much disgust. ‘I am very sorry, sir. We are not in the habit of disclosing information about our guests to unidentified strangers.’
“‘Strangers! I am no stranger!’ I was furious. He had such contempt for me. ‘I am her brother. Tell me where she is at once!’
“The desk clerk said ‘Sir, please lower your voice. There are ladies here. They do not wish to be disturbed by the likes of you!’ This made me more and more angry. I wanted most of all to smash his face in. Instead, I pounded on the desk with my fists and demanded again to see her. But the desk clerk then refused to speak to me at all. Instead he rang the bell and had the bellboys throw me out into the street. I tried to come back in, but each time they pushed me back out. Finally, they said they would call the police unless I left for good.
“There was no hope. I knew that I must wait until she came home herself before I could speak to her. I was too angry, sehr gestört. I did not think it would be wise to go home. So I walked... and walked. For hours, it seemed, I walked. When I finally came back to my right mind, I found myself downtown again. I was close to the Sozialistische Tageszeitung office so I went in and decided to stay there until I was calm. I could not think of facing Mrs. O’Malley—of her asking questions. It was bad enough that Elsa was gone. How could I explain where I had been or why?”
He paused for breath. His mood seemed to shift. The rage of a moment before was replaced by grief. His eyes began to fill with tears again. “And then in the papers the next day... ,” he trailed off.
“So you didn’t see her at all that night?” Evangeline tried to keep a steady rein over her own feelings.
“No, I never saw my Elsa alive again.” His rage diffused, he slumped against the back wall.
“Try to keep your mind on the facts, Franz,” Evangeline counseled as much to herself as to him. “It will help.”
“Yes, yes, facts. What are those... those facts? My sister is dead and I am accused of murdering her.”
“Tell me about how you came to be arrested.”
Franz sighed again as if a heavy weight had been placed on his chest. He walked forward toward the bars, leaning against them for support as he continued. “All that day I stayed at the Tageszeitung office trying to decide what to do. Do I go to the police to find out what happened? Do I ask them to release her body for burial? Do I go home? Do I go to Fräulein Jane or to you so that someone at Mast House knows? Ich wüste nicht was ich tun sollte. I still could not make myself think clearly. One of my friends on the paper, Otto Schüler, he told me to come home and stay with him until I was better. And so, I stayed there for two days more. I knew I had to go home sometime. I would have to... to make arrangements... for Elsa...
“Finally that evening, Tuesday evening, I went back home. When I came there, the police were waiting for me. They had turned my room inside out. Mrs. O’Malley was crying and asking why did I do it. There was no sense in anything. One of the polizei showed me a pocket knife and said he found it in the back of my dresser drawer.”
“What?” Evangeline was shocked.
“Yes, a knife.” Franz shook his head in disbelief. “I carry no weapons with me. The knife was not mine. How it came to be there I cannot say, but they insisted it belonged to me just the same.”
“Was there any blood on it?” Evangeline was almost afraid of the answer.
“Yes, there was something on the blade. It maybe was dried blood. Again, I cannot say how.”
A sense of doubt crept into Evangeline’s brain. For the first time in their conversation, she was uncertain. “Franz, you say that you don’t remember anything after you were thrown out of the hotel? That you were walking aimlessly?”
He turned to h
er in amazement and then the shock fueled more anger. “Gott in Himmel, Fräulein, was sagen sie? What are you saying! That I killed my own sister, meine liebe Elsa, and did not know it?” He beat his fists furiously against the bars.
Evangeline stood up and backed toward the opposite end of the cell, ready to call for help if necessary. “Franz, please,” she said in the steadiest voice she could muster. “You must be calm. I cannot help you if you go on like this.”
“Help me? Bitte erklaren sie mir, Fräulein Klarheit. How will you help me?”
Evangeline felt herself momentarily overwhelmed by hopelessness. “I don’t know yet! I just don’t know. But there must be something, something that can be done.”
Franz threw his head back and laughed bitterly. “Even you do not believe me when I say the knife is not mine!”
His listener steadied her nerves and walked directly up to him. “Franz, look at me!” she commanded.
He obeyed.
“Tell me the truth as you know it. Did you kill your sister?”
Franz returned her gaze steadily. He took a deep breath, and answered in a surprisingly calm voice. “Fräulein LeClair, I did not kill my sister.”
Evangeline searched his face for a sign of hesitancy or deceit. She did not find it. At least in his own mind, he was telling the truth. Temporarily suppressing her own doubts, she tried to reassure him. “Then I believe you.”
At this Franz sighed. “You believe me and I am glad, but the judge and the jury, they will not also believe me.”
“Franz, you mustn’t say such things. Not if you’re really innocent.”
“The martyrs of Haymarket, Fräulein Klarheit, were they not innocent? And yet they were hanged just the same.”
Evangeline felt a chill creep down her spine at the memory of the infamous Haymarket riot. At a rally to support striking railroad workers, someone threw a bomb killing several policemen and onlookers. The organizers of the rally were put on trial for murder. None of them had thrown the bomb, but five were condemned to death and two to life imprisonment because their words were considered an incitement to murder.
“Only two months ago Governor Altgeld pardoned the ones who were left—the men sentenced to life in prison,” Evangeline offered uncertainly.
“And Governor Altgeld will never be re-elected again. He is hated everywhere for freeing these men who are called anarchists.”
Evangeline made no reply. She felt the truth of Franz’s comment.
“Look at me, Fräulein. What chance do I have? I am German. I am a newspaper writer for the Sozialistische Tageszeitung, a radical paper, and above all, I am a member of the Neue Arbeiter Partei, the New Workers’ Party. In the eyes of everybody, all these facts make me an anarchist.”
Again Evangeline couldn’t contradict his words. A German writer for a red newspaper, who was interested in organizing unions, would have been automatically branded an anarchist. Such a man, causing a disturbance in a public place the evening before a murder was committed, could as easily be branded a killer.
“What is the term they use for this thing that is happening to me?” Franz seemed already to know the answer.
“A witch hunt. It’s called a witch hunt, Franz.”
“Yes, that is what I thought.” Franz smiled ruefully at his visitor. “And so, Fräulein Klarheit, I ask you now: Was kann ich tun?”
“What to do?” Evangeline echoed his words. “I don’t know yet, Franz. I truly don’t know. But I won’t stand by and do nothing.”
The prisoner took her hand and kissed it. “I thank you for trying to help, but even so...” He sighed heavily, “Ich denke das ich bereits tot bin.”
Evangeline raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Ist das so, mein freund? Ich denke nicht. You give up hope too easily. You are not dead yet!”
Chapter 4—Aide-De-Camp
It was late Friday afternoon and Frederick Ulysses Simpson was in a buoyant mood. He fairly danced up the walk to Evangeline’s front door and knocked with the air of a man who expected to receive a warm welcome. Delphine, Evangeline’s housekeeper, answered the door with the air of a woman confronting a tradesman who had forgotten to use the service entrance.
“Bonjour, Delphine,” Freddie said jovially. Before the housekeeper could translate her scowl into its verbal equivalent, the young man took a note out of his vest pocket and waved it before her eyes. “Do you know what this is?” He paused for effect. “Non? Well then, let me tell you. It’s an invitation to tea from Miss LeClair. As she so prettily puts it, the honor of my presence is requested at four o’clock. And as you can hear from that monstrosity in the hall behind you, it’s chiming the hour even as we speak.” He stopped and waited, silently daring Delphine to contradict a direct order from her mistress. She hesitated a moment, then shrugged and showed Freddie in.
Over her shoulder, she called out to Evangeline, “Ne te déranges pas, ma chérie. C’est seulement le jeune Monsieur Freddie.” Her accent on the word “jeune” made Freddie wince.
He was painfully aware of just how young he looked. Freddie was tall, and still awkward for a man in his late twenties. He would have struck an observer as all elbows and knees with an Adam’s apple thrown in for effect. His boyishness was further emphasized by the humiliating profusion of freckles that decorated his clean-shaven face.
Delphine’s eyes held a gleam of malicious delight at the young man’s discomfort. She spoke English fluently, reserving her French for those moments when she wanted to appear particularly insufferable to someone—in this case Freddie.
Evangeline had just descended the double staircase into the front hall in time to see him arrive. “Ah, there you are. Quite prompt.”
Delphine did not appear at all pleased by Evangeline’s cordial greeting to her visitor. She had never given up hope that her darling mistress would marry someone suitable and seemed to believe that Freddie, by monopolizing the lady’s time, was keeping away more eligible bachelors. Refusing to comprehend the obvious, she asked pointedly, “Eh bien, ma chérie, will the young fellow be staying for tea, vraiment?”
Freddie made a mental note that at least this time she was insulting him in English. Evangeline answered with great determination. “Yes, Delphine, and bring him some of the special pastries I know you’ve got hidden in the pantry. We’ll be in the small parlor.” Delphine sighed, nodded, and disappeared without further comment.
Given the scale of Evangeline’s home, the word “small” seemed inappropriate when applied to any room in the house with the exception of the coal bin. The couple proceeded to the imposing parlor at the front of the house. Despite its heavy draperies and overstuffed upholstery, the room managed to look inviting bathed in the sun’s late afternoon rays.
Even Delphine’s inhospitable behavior couldn’t dampen Freddie’s spirits at the invitation. He seated himself comfortably in a purple velvet armchair to one side of the tea table. “I must say, I really feel honored, Engie.”
His hostess smiled as she seated herself on the loveseat. Her voice sounded almost apologetic. “It was the least I could do after your ordeal two days ago.”
Freddie basked in the glow of her approval. “Only too glad to lend you moral support in your time of need, Engie. I’d do it again in a trice.”
“You don’t know how glad I am to hear you say that, Freddie.” The lady looked at her companion pointedly, a small smile playing about her lips.
Something in her tone alerted the young man to danger, but at that moment Delphine entered carrying a tray. She set down the tea things with a thump and departed, allowing Evangeline to serve as hostess. Because this was a gentleman’s tea, the fare consisted of items a bit more substantial than watercress sandwiches. The lady of the house plied her guest with walnut mayonnaise sandwiches and chicken salad. Sweets included ice-cold coffee jelly with whipped cream, seed cake, and lemon gingerbread. While Freddie was busy consuming these delicacies, Evangeline poured tea and chatted amiably about the horrible Mrs. O’Malley.
“Did I really?” Evangeline’s face expressed mock surprise. “How cold-blooded of me to turn a social occasion to such a nefarious purpose.” The half-smile played about her lips once more.
Freddie caught his breath abruptly, feeling the same sensation as a man who has just stepped into a bear trap. “Oh no! Not again!”
Evangeline laughed demurely. “Freddie, calm down. It’s not as bad as all that. I don’t want any money from you, but I did want to talk to you about something—something very important.”
“Ye gods, what is it this time?”
Her tone shifted abruptly from flirtatious to grave. “It’s not only important, it’s deadly serious.”
Freddie eyed her skeptically.
Evangeline stood up and walked toward the north window. “I went to see Franz Bauer in jail yesterday.”
“You did what! You went to see a murderer without telling me? Without telling anyone?”
“I didn’t think I was in any danger. I had to see for myself. A man is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.”
“Innocent! Did you read yesterday’s paper? They found the murder weapon in his room, with traces of blood on it.” The words tumbled out of Freddie’s mouth so quickly they tripped over one another.
“He told me the knife wasn’t his.”
“Well, of course he’d say that! He’ll hang straightaway if he admits it was.”
Evangeline turned to gaze directly at her friend. “I don’t believe he was lying about the weapon, Freddie. He told me he couldn’t remember what happened that night.”
Freddie opened his mouth in protest. Evangeline stilled him by raising her hand. “I’m not sure either, Freddie. He’s convinced he wandered around the city all night. It’s possible he doesn’t remember what he did. He was nearly hysterical when I saw him, and that was several days after the murder. He may have been out of his head. I’m sure of his sincerity. I just don’t know about his innocence. Either way, finding a weapon in his dresser drawer looks a little too pat to me.”